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hometown, part two - pjs (m)

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. Tired of his life in the big city, Jay moves to a small town by the Korean seaside and renovates an old bookstore to turn into a café. Fate would have it that you work at the restaurant right across the street from him—quickly, memories from your time at culinary school together float back up to the surface, accompanied by old feelings.

genre+warnings. exes to lovers, small town au, slightly aged up characters, dual timeline, maximal angst in this one i’m sorry guys… but a lot of fluff too dw, smut (MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!), deceased parent, sick grandparent

word count. 35,857

a/n. tfw ur fic is too long to be posted in one part bc tumblr doesn't like posts with over 1000 paragraphs... whether you read part one already or waited for this to be posted to read it all in one go, i appreciate u so much for giving this a chance and truly truly hope u enjoy!!!!! this took me ages to write so if u could lmk what u think... i would cherish u forever <3 again thank you to @zreamy for betareading i have nothing funny to say this time... just TY and ILY... can't wait for mannycon!

read part one first!

small playlist here !

When you appear at his front door, Jay immediately knows something is wrong. Not because you’ve shown up unannounced—that’s something he can easily chalk up to your spontaneity, or dare he say it, your affection for him, two traits of yours that endear him to the core. No, it’s your lack of eye contact as you walk past him into his apartment that alarms him, as well as the fact you don’t bother taking your shoes off, and the way your head moves around frantically, troubled eyes and agitated hands scouring his place for—what? He’s never seen you in such a rush, you, who might get easily worried about things, but have an incredible capacity to take a step back and calm yourself down. You, who knows when to keep her head on her shoulders and when to let it up into the clouds. You, whom he’s only seen tearing up for two reasons: watching a movie, even the ones that have nothing sad about them, or out of stress, usually school-induced. And everything now points to the latter option, or a third, mysterious one. Nervousness emanates off you like smoke, and he feels it as if it’s his own.

He asks you what’s wrong, what you’re looking for, why you’re in such a rush, but your replies come out mumbled and unintelligible and only work to stress him further. Then, those fatal words, “I just need to gather a few things then I have to go,” words that are grammatically correct but make no sense whatsoever to Jay in this context.

“What?”

“I have a few things here. Some clothes. The lipstick I like is here. You can keep that book, um, the Woolf one? I think my sister-in-law has a copy at home.”

“Home? Y/N, what’s happening?”

“Or it might be a different one that she has… I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Just keep it.”

Jay is standing at the threshold between the hallway and the living room. He’s frozen there, as if a singular step will change everything. Aghast, he watches you rummage around the apartment he’s considered as much yours as his for the past few months, looking behind cushions, disappearing into the bathroom, then the bedroom, coming back with bits and bobs in your hands. He recognizes a bottle of cleanser, a pair of pajama shorts, the charger that doesn’t work for his phone and that he’d bought when you kept forgetting yours at home. Things that he loved seeing around when you weren’t there as a reminder of your time spent together. Signs that you washed your face here, that you slept here, that you spent so much time showing him cute animal compilations and taking photos of him cooking or sleeping or doing nothing in particular that your phone would die and you would need to charge it. Things that if someone, for one reason or another, refuted your existence as his girlfriend, he could point to and say, “No, look, she’s everywhere,” things that you were taking away one by one, his heart along with them.

Because there are only so many reasons why you would be doing this. You won’t look at him, won’t speak to him. The answer is so obvious and yet so inconceivable that he can’t bring himself to put it into words.

“I,” he starts, but his voice comes out all wrong, scratchy and uncertain. He clears his throat, wills himself to sound assertive, almost confrontational, as though you’re merely being an annoyance he has to reason with. But it’s no use; when he speaks next, his voice is as wobbly as his knees, as tentative as his hand reaching out for you. “I don’t care about the book. Can you just tell me what’s going on, please? Can you sit so we can talk about it?”

Your movements stop, finally, but Jay knows better than to be relieved. If anything, your unmoving hands, your sudden quietness, they mark the start of what he is sure will be one of the worst conversations of his life.

“I’m leaving,” you whisper, but you might as well have yelled directly into his ear—the words are loud in his head, unbearably so. And your tone, so casual, making him foolishly believe for a second that you’ll be leaving for a day or two, a week at most, a sudden trip home for a legitimate reason you’ll explain to him very soon. But then, “I’m dropping out. I’m going home,” you say, and Jay feels the words like a hatchet falling on his nape, smoothly slicing his head from the rest of his body.

Again, you’re following all of the rules of grammar, so why aren’t you making sense? Why can’t Jay even start to fathom what it is you’re saying? In his head, he repeats your words like they’re questions, “Leaving, dropping out, going home,” like they’re foreign concepts you’ve made up on the spot just to inconvenience him.

You’re not looking at him. Jay is staring right at you, stiller than he’s ever been, his body so tense he can feel his blood pumping out of his heart, going to his head, his fingers, his toes, feeling like he’s going to implode. Your hair hides the side of your face, and that’s all he gets to stare at, not even your eyes avoiding him, or your lips as they move to form more and more incomprehensible words. “My grandma had a stroke. A really bad one. So bad that my mother needs to look after her full-time, which means she can’t take care of the restaurant, not that she would know how to on her own anyway, which means I have to go do it.”

“What about your brother?” Jay says before he can think of a better answer, because he knows you won’t like it—his immediate reaction is always to give advice, look for answers, the practical side of him inherited from his dad that you said was “cold and unfeeling” the first (and last) time you argued about it. After that he always made sure to comfort and empathize with you first, which he could just as easily do, he just didn’t know that was what you needed; and when you specifically asked for it, he’d help you find the solution as best he could.

But what can he do? This is clearly not a conversation in which you are in search of either reassurance or advice. This is clearly not a conversation, point blank—you’ve made your decision already. You’re just letting him know about it.

You were always complaining about your brother, Seungkwan, the high-achieving eldest child with the successful start-up in Busan and a girlfriend you say deserves better than him. Rationally, Jay knew you would always go home one day and take up the family restaurant, not only was that the plan all along, you were the only one in the family suited for it. Even your mother would be unable to—an only child, she had been a rebellious teenager who hated cooking for the sole reason her own mother loved it. Her two siblings had long left Sojuk-ri and only gave signs of life every few months. If they had any interest in continuing the family business, they’d have shown it long ago.

So it’s you. You know it, Jay knows it.

You don’t reply to his question. He finally braves taking a step closer to you—everything has changed already anyway. “Um, what about… Can’t the restaurant just stay closed for a bit? Until your grandma gets better?”

All Jay sees is your hair fluttering when you shake your head no. “She’s in really bad condition. We don’t know how long she’ll need to stay in the hospital, and when she gets out, if she gets out, there is little to no chance she’ll be in shape to start working again. She’s seventy-two, Jay,” you say, voice breaking as you say his name, a sound he has to ignore for his own good. “It’s a miracle she was still able to stand and cook for so long. It’s about time I take over.”

“But-”

“It’s untimely, I know. But I don’t have a choice.”

Jay’s feet sink deeper and deeper into the floor with the weight of the situation. Neither of you say anything for a few moments. It’s dark and it’s quiet in his apartment, save for the soft glow and chatter of his TV screen, the documentary he’d been watching and hadn’t had time to pause still playing, oblivious to the tension in the room. His vision is blurry, his thoughts all over the place; It isn’t until you sniff and start busying your hands again that he snaps back into focus.

“Okay,” he says. “Let me get my stuff. I’ll drive you.” Your head whips up, and for the first time since you barged in five minutes ago, you look at him. But now, he’s the one who can’t meet your eyes, too scared of what he might find there. He finds his coat, his keys, chuckles to alleviate the stress in his body. “This isn’t how I planned on meeting your family, but like you said, we have no choice.”

It isn’t what you said—he’s aware of that. But for the past six months, the two of you have been a “we.” He wants to show you that not even the worst of tragedies can change that.

In a cruel turn of events, he’s now the one floating from room to room, putting things at random in his bag, while you stare, frozen. “I’ll just stay a few days, until Sunday, maybe? You stay as long as you need. I’ll come and get you when you’re good to come back. We might have to stop on the way to get gas… How long is it to your town again?”

“Jay…”

“Four, five hours? Look in the cupboards, I should have some snacks.”

“Jay!”

This time, the sound of his name, loud and abrupt, stops him in his tracks.

“I’ve already booked my train.”

He doesn’t need to hear it to understand the rest of the sentence. I’m going alone. It’s a one-way ticket.

“I’m sorry,” you say, choked up, and it’s the nail in the coffin. It takes Jay three steps to reach you by the couch and envelop you in a rib-breaking hug. Maybe, if he holds you close enough, you won’t want to go. Maybe you’ll tell him it’s an early April fool’s joke, two weeks in advance for an added element of surprise.

The tears that had been glistening in your eyes break free, pool at your jawline, create wet spots on the fabric of his hoodie. There’s a fissure in his heart that appeared at the same time you did behind his door, and deepens with every fractured sob that escapes your throat.

“It’s okay, baby,” he says, lips moving against the top of your head, a desperate attempt to reassure you as much as himself. “You’ll be okay, and I’ll be here for you no matter what, alright?”

But you shake your head against his torso, sobs doubling down in intensity, and his eyes burn, each tear leaving a trail of fire down his cheek. “No, Jay. This isn’t for you to take care of,” you say, voice muffled.

His confusion momentarily gets him to stop crying. He leans back to look at your face, looks past your red eyes, wet nostrils, pouty lips, concentrates on making this situation clearer. “What do you mean?” he asks, throat so dry his voice comes out croaky. “Of course I should take care of it. I should take care of you.”

It’s never been a problem for you to rely on him. If anything, he prides himself in his ability to answer to your every need, no matter how big or small. Why is that suddenly not the case?

You shake your head again, with more fervor, more resolve. “No. You… You have so many amazing things ahead of you, Jay. The Paris internship is just the beginning. I’ll only be holding you back.” With every word, the furrow between his eyebrows deepens, amid his confusion something hotter, uglier rises, something like anger, fueled by the hurt, the sadness. Maybe you notice this, the sudden sharpness of his gaze, the tension of his arms around you, because your head lowers. “And if I’m home, in my small, boring town, and you’re out in Europe or wherever… It would only be a matter of time.”

Jay’s blood turns cold. “A matter of time?”

You stay quiet, eyes trained on the floor, arms limp at your sides.

“A matter of time?” he repeats. “Before what?”

When your eyes meet again, everything inside of him dissolves. For the first time tonight, Jay sees everything clearly, finally understands what it is you came here for—or rather, he is forced to face the truth he repeatedly turned away from. With the clarity comes a sort of numbness, a shock so great he doesn’t know what to feel, and so doesn’t feel at all.

“Don’t make me say it, please,” you whisper, lips trembling.

Maybe Jay should be furious. Maybe he should push you away, pace around the room, yell at you for being such a coward and for leaving him behind and for giving him no say in this. But he can’t. Your whole body shakes with sobs and all he can do is pull you closer into his embrace and whisper, “It’s okay,” over and over again even though nothing has ever been less okay than this. He can’t even bring himself to hold onto some last remnants of hope, not when you have a death grip on his t-shirt and tears uncontrollably pour out of your eyes. You wouldn’t be this upset over something reparable.

And yet.

“It doesn’t have to be over,” he finds himself saying. “Please, not like this. We can figure it out.”

For some reason, this gets you to calm down—but not in the way Jay hopes. Raising your head, you take his face between your hands, and for a crazy second, he thinks you’re going to kiss him. “Baby, listen to me,” you say instead. “You’ll be fine, yeah? You’ll be fine. You’ll see and do amazing things just like I know you can. And I’ll be… I’ll be stuck in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere for the foreseeable future. Maybe even forever. I can’t do that to you, it’s not where you belong.”

“I belong wherever you are,” he exclaims forcefully, and his tone or his words, maybe both, make you flinch.

“It can’t work. We’ll both be too busy. We had such a good run, baby,” you say, and the past tense makes Jay feel like he’s wilting. “Let’s end it on a high note while we can. I don’t want to spend months on the phone, never getting to actually see you, or to feel that my place in your life gets smaller and smaller every day.”

“That won’t happen-”

“Except it will, Jay!” you say, your turn to be exasperated. You take a step back. A shiver runs through Jay at the loss of your warmth. “It will. And I can’t bear to witness it. It’s easier to end things now.”

Without waiting for him to speak again, you stuff the last few things into your bag, zip it, and turn around. It takes Jay five seconds too many to realize you’re leaving—you’re already at the door, giving him one last longing glance. He practically runs to you, resting a hand over yours on the doorknob. “Don’t go.”

Nothing. You say nothing, and your eyes don’t betray any sort of hesitation—just sadness, deep and unrelenting and immovable.

“I love you,” he says, like three simple words could fix this.

You reach a hand to his cheek, wipe a tear away with your thumb. How can he live without your touch to ground him?

“I love you, too. That’s why I have to do this.”

And then you’re gone. Jay stares at your retreating figure, speechless, too exhausted and confused to put up a fight. He stares at the empty corridor until the elevator doors open, disappearing in his apartment before his neighbor can see him in such an embarrassing state.

How long does he stay there, back against his front door, eyes out of focus as he fruitlessly tries to wrap his mind over what just happened? How long until he manages to get himself in bed, to stop crying, to finally fall asleep?

He doesn’t know. For a while after your departure, Jay doesn’t know, doesn’t understand anything. You walked out of his life and took everything that made sense with you.

.

Jay wakes up in a sweat. The bedside clock tells him it’s the middle of the night, and his heart beats so fast it hurts. He tosses and turns, desperate to think of something else, anything else, but he can’t get you out of his head. He hasn’t dreamed about you this regularly since the first few months after your break-up, when every night was filled with memories of your time spent together, fuzzy at the edges, distorted by sleep and confusion—a lovely date at the park ended with you breaking up with him, or his mind would make up unkind words you’d never said to him, things like, “I was never in love with you anyway,” or, “I have someone back home and we’re getting married and I hate you.” But his dreams are of a different nature now, and he doesn’t know which is the worse torture of the two. He imagines standing next to you in the finished café, holding your hand, or waking up next to you in his new bed, the sun shining softly on your face, or, cruelest of all, playing around on the beach with you and the family you might build in a few years from now. It’s been just over a week since your paths have crossed again, and he’s already thinking of raising children with you.

He’s doomed.

Last night’s dream was particularly bad: a night out with your culinary school friends, you under fluorescent lights — green, pink, orange — the same as you had been back then. All of a sudden, the scene slipped right in front of his eyes, and he stood in the threshold of his apartment on a rainy evening, watching you walk away. He closed the door, leaned against it, but it was your apartment he was in. Your door at his back, your lips on his, your bed you led him to. He didn’t need to see or even touch you to know the shape of your body. He’d traced its outline so many times it was as if it was etched into the very skin of his palms.

But then he wakes up, in the same bed he fell asleep in last night, and you’re not with him.

Replaying the dream, his breathing becomes heavy. The way you smiled at him, swayed your hips to the beat of the music; how you leaned in to shout something in his ear, something mindless like, “I love this song,” as your scent enveloped him, dizzying him like a drug he quit five years ago, only to relapse now; wrapped your arms around his neck, pressed your body to his, let him hold you by the waist. To this day, he can recall your exact curves, the texture of your skin, the warmth. He remembers it all. The sounds that escaped your pretty mouth. The places you liked most to be kissed. Your hands roaming his back, grabbing at his hair, fingernails digging into his skin unless he pinned your wrists above your head.

But with the remembering comes indescribable pain, the desire emerging in his stomach twisting and contorting until it is nothing but shame. Shame that sticks to his skin and renders him unable to look you in the eyes when he sees you next. He feels like a fifteen-year-old having wet dreams about a classmate, but infinitely worse.

Weeks pass quickly, and Jay is able to fill his time and thoughts with things other than indecorous images of you. Heeseung’s team is incredibly efficient : in just a month, they renovated the entire place floor to ceiling. The books abandoned by the last owner, Jay sorted through, kept those he liked, threw away the ones that were falling apart, went around second-hand bookstores and antiquaries to donate the rest. The bookshelves and other random pieces of furniture, two matching armchairs which desperately needed to see the hands of an upholder, a small dining table with a broken leg and a side table in surprisingly good condition were kept in a storage room for him to repair — or, more honestly, get repaired — and use later.

Despite having seen the progress in real time, when Jay steps inside the fully restored room, he marvels at how Heeseung and his colleagues managed to restore it to its full glory. The wooden beams and flooring give the place an undeniably cozy quality, while the bare, white walls and large window, now double-glazed and spotless, allows it to soak up the natural sunlight. They installed a counter that looks better than anything Jay could’ve hoped for, the sides lined with wood slats in keeping with the rest of the interior, the top covered with sleek marble, cold and smooth to the touch, for a touch of modernity. There’s a sink and electrical outlets, he just has to add decorations, a display case, and everything he needs to serve coffee and other drinks.

The sliding doors between what will soon be the front of house of Jay’s café and the kitchen now actually slide, a convenient bonus, and Jay, like any chef with self-respect, almost cries when he sees his brand new kitchen. It retains the charm of the main room but has all the modern necessities, a stainless steel sink, two huge ovens, an even huger fridge. And counter space. A lot of counter space. Jay can already imagine where he’ll place each of his appliances, where he’ll make bread dough, where he’ll frost and decorate cakes.

There are two other doors in the kitchen: one that leads to the pantry, the other, to the staircase going up to the living space. The stairs have been fixed up and don’t pose a safety hazard anymore—during his first visit, three out of twenty-ish steps were broken. Jay’s new apartment is unrecognizable. He hadn’t wanted downstairs to change too much from what it used to look like, out of respect, so to speak, for the building and for the people in Sojuk-ri who might be attached to it. Upstairs, however, was all his, and even though white surfaces, glass, granite and steel may appear cold and soulless to others, it was what Jay was used to and felt comfortable in. He liked that the two spaces felt so different from each other, and that he could now travel between the two atmospheres so easily.

The dilapidated carpet has been stripped back to reveal the original parquet flooring, which itself has been sanded and vitrified and now looks glossy and smooth to the touch. The walls are a clean, satisfying white; Jay has a few shelves and pieces of artwork he’d like to put up, but otherwise, he’ll keep the decorations to a minimum. There is no furniture right now, save for what’s in the kitchen and in the bathroom, and it makes the place look perhaps deceitfully bigger. But if Jay wanted a huge apartment, the likes of those he was used to back in Seoul, he would have found one here. After all, he could probably have bought a whole house in Sojuk-ri for the price of a two-bedroom in the city. The entirety of this new place is about as big as just the living room in the apartment he grew up in. But for now, he likes the idea of a small, cozy place right above his work. And this is more than enough: a living room, dining room and kitchen all in one, a separate bedroom, a bathroom. He even has access to the rooftop through a trapdoor and an extendable ladder, also fixed up by Heeseung, and maybe you’ll help him spruce it up so that it looks like Mrs. Yoon’s. Or maybe he’ll do it himself and surprise you with it. Yeah, that sounds a lot better.

Jay is a building owner now, and his building looks great, and if he ever gets sick of it, he’ll just have to work hard enough to afford having the café and living somewhere else at once.

He loses count of how many times he thanks Heeseung and his team, and just to make sure they know how grateful for and happy with their work he is, he buys them lunch at your restaurant. Also because he wants to tell you it’s done and show it off immediately.

And so, your break between the lunch and dinner shift is largely spent ooh-ing and aah-ing at the different renovated rooms, proudly smiling at Jay as if he’d done it all himself. He feels excited showing you the front of house and downstairs kitchen, enthusiastically rambling about what he plans to put where and the first items he wants to sell; he’s a bit shyer upstairs, exactly like the first time he’d brought you to his apartment all those years ago, even though this time around, the place is empty and doesn’t look lived-in at all. There are no posters to be potentially embarrassed about, no dirty dishes in the sink to turn your attention away from, no clothes left on the couch to discreetly hide. And yet, he still finds himself hanging onto your every expression and word, desperate to make a good impression like a kid showing their parent their results on a test.

“This is so exciting, Jay,” you say when the little tour is over and you’re back in the front of house, looking around as if you can imagine what will come out of the current emptiness. “I can’t wait to see what you do here.” You don’t say it with over-the-top enthusiasm, which reassures Jay, because that’s always been a tell-tale sign of your lying. Like when Sumin cooked every single dish you’d learned that year in a single night, in frenzied preparation for the exam, and you had to pretend everything was perfectly done to keep her mental breakdown from worsening. Or, like when, more recently, the young daughter of a regular couple at your restaurant drew a picture of… well, you, although the all-red skin and inhuman body proportions didn’t make for a striking resemblance. After a second of disbelief, the expression on your face making Jay almost do a spit-take, you told her it was the prettiest drawing you’d ever seen and you put it up on the side of the drinks fridge for everyone to see. In both cases and every other such occasion Jay has been a witness of, you’d widen your eyes, put on a big smile, and your voice would go up a pitch. And even if he liked to think he knew at least a little bit better than most people, one didn’t have to be a Y/N-facial-expression expert to know you were faking your reaction.

So when you look at him with a soft smile and sparkling eyes, he thinks you’re telling the truth. That this really is exciting, and that you really can’t wait to see him in action. Jay lets himself bask in the warmth of your gaze. He’s been keeping himself in check lately, not wanting to scare you off with the renewed intensity of his feelings. Every moment with you has felt excitingly new and familiar at the same time, a mix of the months before you started dating and were just getting to know each other, and of the last few weeks of your relationship, when you were really starting to settle into your own rhythm. That heart-pounding, chest-warming sensation has been nothing short of intoxicating. He doesn’t know if that’s how you’ve been feeling, too, and you might need more time before envisioning getting back together — or, you might not want to get back together at all, but Jay’d rather not think about that — so he’s taking things slow and trying his best not to make it too obvious just how hopelessly he is in love with you. But that’s hard to do when you look at him the way you are now, honey practically dripping from your eyes. It also doesn’t help that he’s been imagining not just himself, but the two of you in every room here—cooking together, watching TV, doing… other things. That people in love do. And your eyes now are giving him dangerous thoughts, thoughts like how this future he daydreams about might be something you want too.

His brain reminds him that wordlessly staring at someone after they’ve spoken doesn’t rank very high in the list of appropriate human interactions. “Thanks,” he simply says, hoping you hear his unspoken plea to stay by his side until the end of your days.

Because try as he might to calm himself down, all he sees when he looks at you is the rest of his life.

.

You love your hometown.

You love the small, square, colorful houses, the way they line up in neat rows in the streets of the town center, and the way they gradually space out as you drive further into the countryside, each with more room for a garden, a terrace, maybe even a pool for the residents that live in Sojuk-ri two months a year then leave their house to sit empty for the remainder of it. You love how easily accessible the beach is, how it always remains clean and how clear the water is, even when the population triples in amount during the summertime. You love how nice the people are, how it truly feels like you’re all one big family, the wide arms with which they welcomed even a Seoulite like Jay just because you knew him — and, let’s be honest, because of how charming he is — how you know most people here would have your back no matter what, and you’d do the same for them. You love living with your family, bickering with your brother like you have nothing better to do at age twenty-five, taking care of your mother and grandmother after all the caretaking they did, finding a sister in Yeonju after spending your childhood wishing for one, and soon, meeting the first baby of the next generation.

You really do love it, and it helps to remind yourself of that fact when this town makes you want to rip your hair out of your scalp, strand by strand. Every time Seungkwan grabs the TV remote and zaps out of the show you had been waiting all week to watch, you remind yourself of all the accounting work he does for Kim’s Kitchen without expecting anything in return. Every time Mrs. Jeon, a woman your grandmother grew up with, makes an innocently scathing remark about your lack of husband and children (her daughter already has two darling sons, as she makes sure to remind you of during every single conversation you have), you remind yourself of the meals she would drop off at your house, enough to feed your whole family, when your grandmother had her first long stay at the hospital. While everyone brought her food and gifts, which you were more than thankful for, of course, Mrs. Jeon was the one of the few who thought of the four of you at home, too scared and exhausted to think about eating, let alone cooking. Whenever the girls who go to the high school in the next town over ask you for the umpteenth unprovoked update of your and Jay’s relationship, you remind yourself of the pretty posters they made last summer for the restaurant and plastered all over town for tourists to see.

Today’s dinner shift has just started. It’s still too early for the restaurant to be filled with customers, but the perfect time for an after-school snack. With the chime of the bell comes the unmistakable chatter of three teenage girls entering Kim’s Kitchen. With a sigh, you brace yourself for the conversation you know is about to come and go fetch the ingredients for tteokbokki out of the fridge. Yeonju hasn’t clocked in yet—on weekdays, you can manage the restaurant on your own until 6 pm and have her come in later. When you don’t come out right away, the girls start calling your name.

“Three servings of tteokbokki, I know!” you yell back from the kitchen. You didn’t even serve rice cakes until a couple of years ago, when the snack shop down the road closed, and you felt the need to come to the rescue of the teenagers of Sojuk-ri and their insatiable craving for spicy food. One of them even asked you to cook Buldak for him once, saying you’d make it much better than he ever could. You said yes, of course, and regretted it when for weeks afterwards, teenage boys showed up to Kim’s Kitchen, armed with their colorful packets of Buldak ramen.

“No, come here, please!” one of them shouts.

You roll your eyes. “After I make this!”

This obviously is a no-good answer, and five seconds later, three heads peer out from behind the beaded curtain. “Hi, unnie,” they say in unison, smiling in a way that is almost ominous.

Yewon, Haewon, and Sawon, or The Three Wons, as they are often called around town. The first two are twins; their mothers have been friends since middle school and, when they miraculously gave birth to three baby girls just months apart from each other, decided it would be the best idea in the world to give them matching names.

You give them a stern look, biting back a smile as you turn back around. They will never know you enjoy these gossip sessions as much as they do, although you like them a lot more when they revolve around them and whatever high school drama they are involved in, and not your drama—if it can even be called that. Of course, they think that your ex showing up in your hometown after five years of no-contact is peak romance, and although you can’t disagree, you don’t want to hash out every single detail with these seventeen-year-olds. You only gave them a brief overview of your relationship back then and why you broke up, because it was too painful to talk about; you give as little away as you can about the way things are progressing now because, truth be told, it isn’t all that exciting. Well, it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to you in years—but it’s more an amalgamation of small moments that have your heart racing, rather than big, swoon-worthy events that would be easy to gush over.

“Whatever it is you have to say, I’m sure it can wait until your food is ready,” you tell them as you mix gochujang, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and MSG together.

“We just want to know how things are going with you and Oppa,” Yewon ventures.

“Don’t you have, like, homework to do?”

The girls shake their heads in unison. “This is more important,” Sawon says, a statement so ridiculous you can’t help but laugh.

“There really isn’t that much to say,” you sigh, although as the words leave your mouth, you’re aware that they aren’t quite truthful. There is a lot to say, you just aren’t sure how to articulate most of it. How can you tell them about the way your heart races every time his face comes into sight, as if every one of those times was the first after five years? About how your fingers keep reaching for him whenever he is near, desperate to feel his hair, his skin, or even just his clothes again, but you always reel them in because simply looking at him is already so hard to handle? About how you fall asleep crying every other night, an onslaught of intense and conflicting emotions washing over you—the relief of seeing him again, the hope of being loved by him again, the terrible guilt of having let him go in the first place, the senseless fear that he might not want this at all?

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Yewon counters. “You guys spend all your time together.”

You scoff. “All of our time is a bit of an exaggeration,” you mumble, once again fully aware you might not be saying the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in the court of law that The Three Wons have installed in your restaurant’s kitchen.

“Please,” Yewon says, matching your attitude in a way that has your head whipping around and your eyes widening. “You always go over to his café during your breaks…”

“I’ve seen you together at the beach, like, five times already…” Sawon continues.

“And he has all his meals here as if he isn’t a chef fully capable of cooking for himself,” Haewon concludes. You glare at her. She’s supposed to be the sensible one of the group! She wants to become a doctor, for God’s sake!

You feel like a kid who got caught with her hand in the candy jar. You turn around, humbled, and start cutting fish cakes and spring onions with perhaps a tad more vigor than necessary. “Okay, we hang out sometimes, so what?”

“So, what do you guys talk about, what do you do?” Yewon asks.

“Do you hold hands? Have you kissed yet?” Sawon enquires, and the idea alone is enough to make them dissolve into a fit of giggles. And maybe your ears suddenly feel hot, but that’s surely only due to the stove you turned on.

“Who hasn’t kissed yet?” a low, all-too familiar voice asks. How did you miss the bell? The girls shriek at the sudden presence of a man behind them, then relax at the realization that oh, it’s just Jay. Then shriek again because oh my God, it’s Jay!

“You! You and Y/N! How come you haven’t kissed yet?” Sawon asks, because apparently, boundaries aren’t a thing that matters.

If you felt like a kid with a fistful of candy before, you now feel like a murderer trying to dispose of a body. Jay doesn’t seem to share the sentiment. He’s taken aback for a second, then smiles, a devastatingly handsome, almost feline smirk that you can see has The Three Wons swooning—not that you can blame them. He looks at you as he replies. “You know, I’ve been wondering about that, too.”

None of you can believe what you’ve just heard. You stand there, unable to tear your gaze away from Jay’s while the girls jump around and high-five each other, celebrating like Korea just scored the winning goal of the World Cup.

You manage to turn around, clearing your throat as you slide the ingredients from your cutting board into the now hot broth, feeling Jay’s eyes burn into the back of your head. “Unnie! Did you hear? Did you hear?! Oppa wants to kiss you!”

Oh, you heard. You heard it loud and clear, and if your body is working automatically, your mind is occupied with something much different. The worst part? You don’t have to imagine how it would feel to have Jay’s lips on yours. You know what it’s like. The memory of it is still so vivid after five years, it might as well be tattooed on your lips.

You don’t reply to the girls’ incessant questioning and teasing, and just before they can start singing about you and Jay sitting in a tree, he says, voice gentle and firm at once — another thing that brings out memories you’d rather keep down — “Girls, how about getting that tteokbokki to go? You wait outside and I’ll bring it to you once it’s done, alright?”

Just like that, they skip out of the restaurant. A weak nagging at the back of your head says they only obliged because it was Jay who asked them, but you ignore it easily, much more preoccupied by his silent presence behind you in the threshold of the kitchen. Then, in just a few deliberate footsteps, he walks into your line of sight, back against the fridge, arms crossed over his chest, eyes on you in a way that lets you know he won’t speak up first. You keep yours on the food, watching as the sauce starts to bubble and the rice cakes start to soften.

“Is—is that something you really think about?”

“What, kissing you?” he says, the smirk detectable in his voice. You shrug. “Isn’t it something you think about?”

It’s all I’ve thought about since you showed up here, you think, but something stops you before you can say it. Just like something stopped you from kissing him the moment you saw him, tub of rice cakes in hand. The same something that has been preventing you from kissing him every time you’ve seen him since. Like a fear you can’t name or explain, or a desire so great it feels inconceivable to actualize it.

All you’ve done is talk. You’ve talked so much, it always feels as though you’ve said everything you could possibly say; and then, the next time you see each other, you find more things to tell each other. There are still so many things you could tell him about. Seungkwan’s infamous sixteenth birthday party. The stray cat you adopted for two weeks before its owners knocked at your door, asking for it back. Your dad, and more than the basics you gave him five years ago.

Despite having been together for six months previously, picturing a relationship with Jay now in which you might do more than talk makes you nervous. The good kind of nervous, of course—the butterfly-inducing, knee-wobbling kind of nervous. You turn to face him and prepare yourself to say something cool and bold to get the upper hand on him, like, Yeah, I’m thinking about it right now, let’s do it right now, no big deal, but then you meet his gaze and your infallible plan turns out to be very, very fallible. “Um,” is what comes out of your mouth instead.

With shaky hands, you grab a take-away container, the biggest you have, and pour the contents of your pan into it. You add a singular boiled egg to the tteokbokki instead of your usual three. Let them fight over it—who knows, in a roundabout way, it might teach them not to nose around other people’s business.

“What did you come here for?” you ask him as you hand him the box. Not in a combative tone, simply tentative, curious.

“I just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi.”

Jay smiles, kicks your foot gently with his. “Hi.” He takes the container, but sensing that there’s more you want to say, doesn’t leave just yet.

“Of course I think about it,” you tell the container. “I just…”

“Need more time?” he proposes.

Time. That feels right. “Yeah.”

He slides a hand underneath the take-away box, uses his free hand to brush some hair away from your face. “Good thing we’ve got plenty of that.” And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he leans in and presses a kiss to your forehead, so quick it’s over before you’ve even realized it started.

The bell chimes, and through the beaded curtains you perceive a group of four men, seating themselves at their usual spot by the window. “I’ll be here in a second!” you call to them, and their responses range from grunts of approval to friendly reassurances to take your time.

Jay’s eyes haven’t left your face. “Guess I should head out, then.” His voice is low and scruffy in a way that makes you briefly considering closing the restaurant for tonight.

You take a step back from him, the new distance at once relieving and painful. “Yeah.”

He heads out first, greeting the customers, ignoring their surprised expressions at seeing him come out of your kitchen. “See you later,” he tells you, and then he’s gone. The Three Wons’ excited chatter makes its way through the open door, and you bite back a smile at their shouts of “Thank you, unnie!”

You turn to your customers and, before you can even get their order, one of them opens their mouths. Half-jokingly, you cut in: “Whatever you’re going to say, just remember I’m the one making your food tonight.” That gets him to close it immediately, his friends laughing, even though it is obvious they are just as eager to know. But whether you try to explain yourself or not, you know that tonight, they’ll tell their new wives that that new boy was with Mrs Kim’s granddaughter at the restaurant, again, and their wives will tell their friends, and soon enough, word will have made its way around the entire town.

No matter. As you cook for them, you remind yourself of the fixed lightbulbs, the regularity at which they eat here, that time they stood up for Yeonju against a particularly entitled customer. And then maybe, their curiosity won’t be so aggravating.

That evening, you keep checking your forehead in the mirror. It won’t stop burning, but funnily enough, there isn’t any sort of mark left behind.

.

It seems that the rest of Jay’s life starts with a trip to the nearest furniture store. He didn’t even need to ask you to come with, you invited yourself along for the ride. “I don’t doubt your interior design tastes, Jay, but it’s common knowledge that every house needs a feminine touch to really come together,” you said, and how could he refute that logic?

He easily let you invite yourself, without thinking much of what it would entail. The second he closes the door after him and looks over at you in the passenger seat of his car, it isn’t regret that floods him, of course not, but a sensation like: how did I not foresee how this would make me feel? His brain had gone, more time with you, awesome, without taking into account all the memories of late-night drives and day trips that would inevitably come flooding back to him. Resting his hand on your thigh, glancing over at you once in a while, they’re reflexes that are as natural as checking his rearview mirror, reflexes he has to stifle now. With every passing day, he gets worse at suppressing his once familiar impulses. He shouldn’t, but he reaches out to tuck your hair behind your ear. He shouldn’t, but he guides you through the crowd of the Tuesday afternoon market with a hand on your lower back. Although there are things he still doesn’t have the guts to do: feel the dip of your waist against his palms and bring you closer to him, bury his face in the crook of your neck, press your back against a wall and—“Jay? Is everything okay?”

His knuckles have gone white around the steering wheel. You look at him, concern written all over your face—the realisation that he must look crazy snaps him out of it. He swallows, but the lump in his throat sticks.“Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that.” He chases any compromising images of you out of his head and focuses on mechanical motions instead. Turns the key in the ignition, places his foot on the clutch, moves the stick to first gear. This is fine. It’s easy.

“What were you thinking so hard about?”

You. Your eyes first thing in the morning. The scar above your right knee. The sensitive spot just beneath your ears. The last traces of your perfume after a long day. The near-constant taste of honey and sesame oil on your tongue.

“Nothing. Um, just going over all the furniture I need in my head.”

This makes you frown. “You didn’t make a list? That’s unlike you.”

Do you have to know him so well? “No, I did. I’m just—Nevermind.”

“Okay,” you say, chuckling. “I know you like to be mysterious sometimes, so I’ll let this one slide.”

“I don’t—I don’t like to be mysterious. I am mysterious,” he deadpans. You find that hilarious, for some reason.

“Oh, sure. That’s why you cried watching Legally Blonde, of all films-”

“It’s a beautiful story!”

“And why you doodle in your recipe notebook when you think no one’s looking.”

He lets out a faux exasperated sigh. “They’re not doodles, Y/N. They’re detailed and realistic sketches of the dishes I work on. We’ve been over this.”

The last sentence slips out of his mouth before he can think twice, and it catches the both of you off-guard. You have been over this—five years ago. Jay mentioned it like the conversation was had three days ago. There are moments, sometimes, when he feels so completely at ease with you by his side that he forgets five years ever went by since you were last together. It’s exactly like meeting an old friend—within minutes, you’re able to talk and joke with them as if no time has passed. But then he’s reminded of the reality of the situation, and it feels like the chasm between you reopens. Widens, even.

His fingers tense around the steering wheel again. He keeps his eyes on the road, but he can feel yours burning holes in the side of his head. He doesn’t turn to look at you, too afraid of the expression he might find on your face. The moment stretches uncomfortably, and he’s about to apologize, backtrack, say anything, but you thankfully beat him to it, and go on like nothing’s happened.

“Mm-hm. With hearts and stars around them.”

He needs a second to remember what it is you were speaking about and shake off his surprise. “Just wait a few years, when I inevitably become a world-renowned pastry chef, and watch how those doodles go up for trillions of won at auctions, alright?”

“Alright,” you say, smiling. “I’ll be around to make sure the fame doesn’t get to your head.”

“Thank you,” Jay replies, and he tries not to get emotional at the idea of you still being in his life a few years from now. He’s mysterious.

Mysterious, and unable to relax for the remainder of the twenty-minute car ride. He laughs at your jokes and keeps the conversation going, but an unnamable emotion brews in his chest, something he can’t or doesn’t want to explain. You don’t seem to notice it, or maybe you decide to ignore it. With each kilometer, you melt into your seat, body eventually fully turned towards Jay, the side of your face pressed against the headrest. His hand brushes your knee whenever he goes to change gears, but you don’t move it. He’s tempted to just leave it there, but he doesn’t.

He’s grateful for your continuous chatting to take his mind off the thoughts racing through it—then and now, he never gets tired of hearing you ramble about whatever it is that’s on your mind. Today, it’s Yeonju’s pregnancy, and your future niece or nephew. You’re worried about being a good aunt, and Jay assures you that you’ll do an amazing job, even though he’s never actually seen you interact with babies, or toddlers, or children. He believes what he says nonetheless. You say that you’ll just wait until they hit puberty and start hating their parents, then you can jump in as the cool aunt.

“Yeonju told me not to tell anyone, so don’t go around talking about this, okay?” you add somewhat belatedly.

“Alright,” he says, laughing. “Wouldn't she be upset that you told me?”

“Oh, you don’t count,” you say plainly.

The laughter dies so suddenly in his throat he almost chokes on it. “I don’t… count?”

His confusion and disappointment must be obvious in his tone, because you react almost immediately, thankfully giving his brain no time to work its way to the natural conclusion that you hate him and want nothing to do with him. You sit up, worried eyes wide open and hands busily shaking any misunderstanding away. “No, I don’t mean it in a bad way! It’s like… girl code. If you say to someone, Don’t tell anyone about it, it’s pretty much implied that they can tell their boyf—I mean, their best friend, or their mom, or whatever. As long as it’s not anything really bad and the other person has no reason to go around telling others about it.”

Jay stays quiet for a few seconds. You might’ve glossed over it, gone on like it didn’t slip out, but he heard it. That almost word.

“Right.” Another pause, to give himself time to think. “So, it’s okay to tell me, because I’m your… best friend?”

“You’re not my-”

“Right,” he repeats, satisfied with your immediate refutation. “And I think it’s safe to say I’m not your mom, either. So what am I?” He glances at you and you stare back, an expression of your face he can only describe as terrified. “A third, unknown category?”

Slowly, your surprise morphs into a smile, the sort you wear when you’re trying to pretend you’re annoyed with him but are only really amused. “You’re missing the point.”

“I know,” he says, grinning.

You cross your arms and sit back in your seat, turning to face the windshield this time. Instantly, Jay both misses the weight of your gaze on him, the warmth of knowing that you see him, and is relieved by its absence. It used to annoy him, when in the car with you, he could only steal glances your way every once in a while. Red lights were like an oasis back then. But now, he finds that the sparse eye contact helps him stay grounded; there is no glint of mischievousness or affection for him to get distracted by.

Your voice is quiet, hesitant, when you speak again. “You’re… someone I’m happy to have in my life. Someone special.”

Thank God the road isn’t busy today. If it was, what with Jay’s focus being flung out of the window for the five seconds following your statement, he’d have definitely caused an accident.

“That’s… nice,” he replies, quite stupidly, he has to admit. You don’t seem to rate his response much higher, and repeat the word back to him, clearly amused. Just in case he’ll hear your laugh again, he doubles down. “What? It is nice. It’s a nice thing to hear. You’re also special to me, if that was what you wanted me to say.”

“Hm. You’re right, it’s nice to hear.”

It wouldn’t be the smoothest of segues, but he could, right now, find a way to direct this conversation towards the one he’s been dying to have. Sure, outright asking, “What are we?” is and has been on the table this whole time, but he feels about six years too old for that question. Someone special. He can’t tell if you just shot him down or left the door open for something more. He wants to press, but is scared of being too insistent.

Before he can speak up, you change the subject, chatting away the tension that had grown in the small space of his car. For the most part, it works; Jay is able to listen to you rant about annoying tourists and the incompetence of some of your grandmother’s doctors without hyperfixating on the position of your body in the passenger seat or the status of your relationship. And a few minutes later, he’s parking in front of the wide, blue-and-yellow furniture store that promises to have everything he needs to decorate his new home.

He has precise ideas about the furniture and decorations he wants for the café, and has been scouring the Internet for the pieces that fit those ideas perfectly. Rather than a store full of sleek and modern items like this one, he’ll have to drive to a bunch of second-hand shops in the hope of finding vintage and unique pieces. But when it comes to his apartment, this store is perfect, and he’s a lot more relaxed about the things that will fill it. Your excitement upon getting out of the car is so palpable, practically skipping to the entrance and finding a cart to wheel around, that Jay finds himself ready to buy everything you point your finger at, just to see you happy. That was pretty much what happened in the past, on the few occasions you let him take you shopping. He remembers your shyness every time he pulled his credit card out, the stammered thank-yous, the kisses on his cheek outside of the boutique, the insistence on buying him coffee or ice cream or boba, “It’s the least I can do.”

And anyways, he can’t say he dislikes the idea of being surrounded by things you’ve chosen—it’d make him feel, by extension, chosen by you, too.

You were right, he has a list. It’s fairly sparse, considering the pieces of furniture he brought down with him, but what remains to be bought is important. A couch, for one; a bed frame — he wasn’t able to let go of his mattress, even though shipping it cost a pretty penny, but now he has nothing to rest it on — and then a couple of storage pieces, like a chest of drawers or a dresser. Heeseung and his guys built storage space into the walls of the apartment, but given Jay’s propensity towards buying new clothes, he would need the extra space.

Because there are only so many things he needs to buy, the two of you could be in and out of this place in thirty minutes. Breezing through the areas he doesn’t need anything for, like the kitchen and bathroom, quickly surveying his options, jotting down the details of the pieces he wants and finding them in the huge depot-like room at the end of this maze. There is no need, really, to turn this trip into an afternoon-long outing.

Lucky for Jay, he doesn’t believe in sticking to the strictly necessary.

Running around the different showrooms with you makes him feel like a kid again, playing pretend in the kitchens, turning every faucet in the bathrooms just to see if water actually comes out of one. (It never does.) Neither of you realizes how ridiculous you must look, frying invisible eggs on a cold stovetop, until you catch two children staring and shaking their heads at you. That gets you to calm down immediately. You still make sure to open every fridge in case a treasure lies there.

When you reach the bedrooms, of course, the first thing you do is throw yourself onto the nearest mattress. The first thing Jay’s mind does is throw itself into the gutter.

“Oh, this one’s not so comfortable,” you say, pressing your palm down into the fabric. “Too bouncy.”

Jay swallows. “I, um, I don’t need a mattress. I’ve got my old one.”

You raise your head to look at him. “I know. I’m thinking of getting my grandma a new one, she’s been complaining about her back recently.”

“Oh. Right.”

He stands there, unsure what to do with himself as he watches you go from mattress to mattress, sitting or lying down, evaluating them by pushing your palm down or, if it is a satisfactory push, your entire body into it. But in the end, there’s always something wrong—too hard, too soft, too accommodating to the shape of your body, too resistant. By the time you’ve tried them almost all out, his slight awkwardness has turned into amusement.

“Alright, Goldilocks. We can go to a proper mattress store later, this probably isn’t the best place for that.”

“Wait, no, I think this one’s good,” you say, trying out mattress number ten. “Come here.”

His feet take him to you before he can decide otherwise. He hesitates at the edge of the bed: the sight of you lying down makes him nervous, and a little bit sad, too. He used to love falling asleep a few minutes after and waking up a few minutes before you, just to get some time to unreservedly stare at your face. You used to love suddenly opening your eyes wide and getting him to have a near heart attack every time. “I’m just keeping you on your toes,” you’d say.

This is so close to the real thing. If he can ignore the blindingly white overhead lights, the chatter of the other customers, and the presence of a dozen or so wooden bed frames holding up slightly different mattresses lined up against the wall, he can imagine himself back in your apartment, or his, five years ago in Seoul. It requires some mental gymnastics, but he gets there—and it creates a heavy, unpleasant pit in his stomach. He wonders if you’ll open your eyes and try to scare him, or embarrass him when you catch him staring.

But all you do when your eyes flutter open is smile at him and tap the spot next to your body again. “Come on, I want to know what you think. I need a second opinion.”

This is stupid. He has no idea what kind of mattress would be good for your grandmother’s back—the only person who does is the woman herself. He could tell you there’s no point and drag you to the next part of the store, but instead, he joins you on the bed, shimmying his shoulders to find a comfortable position. But agitation fills him to the brim, the very ends of his fingertips and the outline of his ears feel hot and itchy, and he is unable to relax, unable to assess the mattress, barely able to breathe properly. As soon as his back hits the fabric, he’s ready to jump off of it again, but your voice keeps him there.

“This one’s nice, right?”

There’s a good foot or two between you, but the mere fact that the two of you are on a bed together, even in the middle of a furniture store, is enough to make him feel like you’re on top of each other. Your head is turned towards him, and there’s a knowing look on your face, soft and teasing at the same time, that has his heart beating unhealthily fast. This might be the moment that brings him to actual heart failure.

A feeling of déjà-vu floods him when you smile. You, a soju-induced haziness in your eyes, sitting across from him under the red tent of a pojangmacha. “So, are you two lovebirds finally together?” Mrs. Shin, the owner of the stall, asks, as she always does when you have a drink here. And, as always, you smile at Jay and let him reply. Let him set the terms, like the referee’s whistle before the first serve. The same smile you’re wearing now. That’s how it clicks—you’re waiting for him to make a move. It’s how you operated then, it’s how you operate now. Confident enough to give him the green light, too shy to make a bold first move, so you try to get the confirmation from him that you can indeed go for it.

He is hit with an onslaught of emotions, all of which too conflicting for him to make sense of.

“Can I tell you something?” you ask in a voice so low, Jay feels like it’s just the two of you in the store.

“Of course.”

Your smile turns into a grin, and you drop your voice even further to a whisper. “My grandma doesn’t actually need a new mattress.”

Jay’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Her back is actually one of the few things she doesn’t complain about. She used to do a lot of yoga, or something, so she has great posture even now.”

Slowly, as his mind wraps itself around your words, a grin to mirror yours spreads across his lips.

“I just wanted an excuse to get into a bed with you.”

A new kind of tension fills him, different from the one on the drive here—this time, instead of weighing him down, it makes him light as wind, reminds him that there is still so much possibility between the two of you. It makes him want to grab your hand and run out of this damn IKEA with you, forget the furniture. It can wait, he can’t.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks instead, borrowing your words. You nod. “If there weren’t families around right now, I think I’d kiss you.”

It’s your eyebrows’ turn to shoot up, and for a second, he’s scared he’s entirely miscalculated this moment—but then, your grin returns to your lips, lighting up your face. Your eyes glint with excitement.

“You think?”

It might be the first time since his arrival in Sojuk-ri that Jay sees you smile so unabashedly, and to be both the cause and recipient of such happiness fills him with indescribable emotion.

“No, I know.”

You let a beat pass, simply smiling at him, like you’re in as much disbelief as him that this is truly happening.

Your eyes drift down to his lips. Jay inhales sharply.

“Well, then, let’s—” You’re cut off by untimely buzzing and ringing—your phone in your back pocket. You throw Jay an apologetic look as you sit up and retrieve your cell. “My mom,” you huff before sliding your thumb across the screen.

“Hel-”

All Jay hears is a muffled voice pouring out of your speakers. He gets off the mattress, walks over to your side and lends you his hand to help you up—a needless gesture, perhaps, but he’ll take any excuse to touch you at this point, even briefly.

“Hello to you too, Mother. Yes, he’s standing right in front of me,” you say, looking right at Jay, whose eyebrows raise in surprise. “Are you free tonight?” you ask, and it takes him a few seconds to realize the question is directed at him.

“Me? Yeah, yeah, I am.”

“He says he’s free,” you tell your mother. “Alright.”

A beat passes before you say again, “Alright, Mom.” Jay can’t help but smile at the exasperation in your voice. He feels like he gets a glimpse into a teenage version of you, easily annoyed even at your well-meaning mother.A pang of sadness hits his chest then—Enjoy it while you can, he wants to say. All the nagging, fretting, constant checking-in. You only realize how precious it is once it’s gone.

You seem to notice something’s changed. Your expression softens, your eyes searching his. “Yep,” you say into your speaker. “See you later.” You hang up, stuff your phone back into your pocket, and reach for Jay’s hand, squeezing once. “Everything okay?”

He smiles. “Yeah,” he says, and he means it. Losing you had already been hard to deal with; losing his mom shortly after meant that for a while there, no one in the world truly got him, knew him inside and out, or close enough, at least. He had friends, sure, but nothing quite like what he had with either of you. When he had you both, he felt like the luckiest man in the world, like he must’ve been a saint in a previous life to deserve not one but two people whom he loved so whole-heartedly and who, like a miracle, loved him back.

And then he had neither of you, and some days, the light at the end of the tunnel was so faint, he wasn’t sure he’d ever see it.

Now, here you are, standing in front of him again, worry knotting your eyebrows. His emotion barely flickered through his features, and you somehow noticed it. Cared about it. About him. You mirror his smile, squeeze his hand a second time, then lead him away from the mattress section and back onto the beaten IKEA path.

You’re holding hands. In IKEA. Like all the other couples, perhaps newly engaged, newlyweds, newly parents, holding hands too. To any outsider, the two of you must look like all of them. A couple.

This is cool. Jay is cool.

He’s so cool, so focused on focusing on something other than your hand in his, other than the warmth that spreads from your palm and into his entire body, that he doesn’t notice you talking.

“Jay?” You shake his hand, finally getting his attention. “Are you listening?”

“Huh? Yeah, sorry.”

Your smile tells him you’re aware he has no idea what you just said, but you don’t tease him. “I was saying, my mother’s inviting you over for dinner tonight.”

This is cool too.

“Oh. Okay.”

You mark a pause. “Oh, okay?” you repeat, amused.

“No, I mean-” he starts. Exhales, the sound between a chuckle and a sigh. “Sorry. It’s just a lot of information at once.”

You nudge his shoulder with yours. “What do you mean, a lot of information? It’s just dinner.”

He looks down at you. You’re still wearing that mischievous smile, far too amused teasing him while trying — and failing — to pretend you’re not teasing him at all. You know how Jay is about these things: meeting the family, visiting their house for the first time, all these formalities that Jay takes to heart. Knowing you, he doubts you’ve forgotten what he’s told you about his own family, how cold and formal lunches with his paternal grandparents were, the perfect, polite Korean he had to speak with them; the fact that if things had gone differently, or if he had been a more obedient son, he’d have gone on set-up dates to meet a bunch of potential wives until he found the woman he could not only envision himself tolerating for the next fifty years of his life, but more importantly that would check all of his parents’ boxes. Even his mother, when the topic came up, would encourage marrying “wisely” rather than out of love only, and every time, he’d have to bite back the words, Look how that turned out for you.

He’s met your grandmother and mother already. Yeonju greets him warmly whenever he eats at the restaurant. He hasn’t met your brother yet, but judging from your descriptions of him, he isn’t the type to be over-protective of his little sister and wary of every boy she brings home. If anything, it seems like he can’t wait to hire a second person for the job of “man-making-your-life-a-living-hell,” although Jay is a highly unlikely candidate for the position.

All that to say, reasonably, there isn’t anything he needs to worry about. He’s heard and seen too much of your family to know they’re not going to put him under a microscope and determine whether he’s the right fit for you. But the part of him that wants to make a good impression on them is too great, and having less than an afternoon to psych himself up and be ready is not ideal.

You notice the distress on his face and pull him aside, standing in front of him with a no-nonsense look on your face and your hands holding his arms firmly. “Jay. There’s seriously nothing to worry about. They’re going to love you. They already do!” At this, he raises his eyebrows, silently asking you to go on. A little reassurance never hurt anyone. “This dinner thing? My mom’s been going on about it since she barged into your Airbnb.”

“I wouldn’t say she barged-”

“My grandma keeps asking what your favorite foods are so she can make them for you. She forgets every time I tell her, but that’s besides the point.”

“You know my favorite foods?”

You reply with an eye-roll. “Yeonju asks after you when you don’t eat at the restaurant. Seungkwan keeps saying he can’t wait to finally do “man stuff” with someone even though he doesn’t do any of the activities he keeps harping on about. I’ve never seen this man watch golf in his life, let alone actually play the damn sport.”

Your words manage to soothe him. He visibly relaxes, and your voice softens. “If anything, they’re the ones who are worried about meeting you. The two old bats are probably pulling out all the stops for dinner. All you need to do is be hungry. Nothing else.”

One of your hands rises and falters, hovering midway between his arm and his face, as if your body acted one way and your brain the other. But after a second, your palm finds his cheek, warm and comforting. “And it’s only fair that you sit through a dinner with my family after I did with yours, isn’t it?”

He groans and closes his eyes as if in pain, awkward memories he’d buried deep in his mind resurfacing. The few times you met his mother had gone, without much surprise, amazingly well, but his dad’s birthday lunch with his side of the family was a different story. Given his father has no siblings, there were no cool uncles or mysterious aunts or fun cousins to alleviate the atmosphere. His father, grandparents, and great-aunt Ms. Park (yes, he has to call her Ms. Park) don’t make for the coziest of committees. You’d made one joke that had been met with utter silence, then spoke only when directly spoken to for the remainder of the lunch, settling on returning Jay’s small, apologetic smiles and squeezing his hand underneath the table whenever one of his elders spoke harshly of him. You’d ranted for hours afterwards, told him every comeback you had to bite back in there. Seeing you so incensed over a few comments that he’d heard a million times before and barely registered now, he’d never felt so loved, so protected.

“I still feel bad I brought you with me. It was entirely selfish, I knew I couldn’t get through it without you there.”

“And you thought I should go down with you.”

He groans again, but it only makes you laugh. His barely-contained smile peeks through, happy to see you enjoy yourself even if it’s at his expense.

“I’ll be sorry my whole life, you know that?”

You giggle, grabbing his hand and resuming your walk around the store. “I appreciate it, but that isn’t necessary. We can laugh about it now, right?”

“Right.”

The conversation shifts back to your primary goal in coming here—you point out various items that Jay might need or like, but the last thing on his mind now is furniture. He decides to concentrate on the task at hand anyway, if only because of how seriously you seem to take it, comparing lamps and debating which might look better in his apartment. He doesn’t have the heart to tell you he doesn’t need a lamp.

An hour later, you walk out of the store with double the amount of things Jay planned on buying, him carrying two bags full of decorative items of varying utility, you pushing a cart with small pieces of furniture. He’s set up an order for the bigger items that will be delivered to his house sometime this week.

You spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking and assembling furniture together. Well, he assembles furniture, and you busy yourself placing a fake plant on a shelf, then relocating it to the coffee table, then returning it to the shelf, rinsing and repeating with everything he bought. He’s so entertained and endeared by the whole thing that he doesn’t notice the time passing, and before either of you know it, it’s fifteen minutes before the hour your mother expects you. And it takes ten to walk there.

At the realization he only has five minutes to get ready, he bolts up, scurrying to his bedroom to dig through his packed suitcases for an outfit. “Don’t change,” you say, watching him as you lean against his doorframe. “What you’re wearing right now is fine.”

“If I’m having dinner with your family, I’d like to look a little better than fine.”

This earns a roll of your eyes. You approach him and crouch to his level, grabbing his wrists to stop them from rummaging around his clothes.

“You always look better than fine, Jay. You know that.”

A smirk takes over his lips. “I don’t, actually. Mind expanding on that?”

“You’re an idiot. Just, come on,” you say, as bad as always at hiding your amusement and faking exasperation. “My mom wouldn’t bat an eye if you showed up in sweatpants and shirtless, but she won’t be as relaxed about tardiness.”

“...Do you want me to show up in sweatpants and shirtless?”

You burst out laughing as you walk out of his room. He can’t see you, but the sound of your laughter is enough for his heart to swell with pride. “Don’t be funny. We have to go.”

“I’m just saying, there’s something to be said about the fact that that was the first outfit you decided to put on your mental version of me.”

“If you can even call it an outfit.”

He joins you in the kitchen, standing right in front of you. Your arms are crossed, and you’re wearing the expression you always put on when you’re trying to signal that you’re not playing along. It's a tell-tale sign that you are, indeed, playing along with him.

“Don’t change the subject, Y/N.”

Technically, he doesn’t have to stand this close to you. He doesn’t have to speak in a low, quiet voice. He doesn’t have to let his gaze drift down to your lips, so soft-looking and utterly enticing, when you don’t reply immediately. But he’s aware of the effect all of these things had on you, back then—still have, if the wobble in your voice when you speak next is anything to go by.

“There is no subject to be changed, Jay,” you say, attempting to imitate his tone. “This is a nonsensical conversation. Now, can we go, or do you want to be late and bring my mother’s wrath upon your person?”

“I don’t know her that well, but your mother doesn’t seem the type to contain that much wrath.”

“Are you willing to test that theory?” Jay shakes his head. “Then let’s go.”

“Wait!” he says as you grab the handle of his front door. “I should bring something, shouldn’t I? Can’t go empty-handed.”

“It’s fi—”

He opens and closes his near-empty cupboards in search of a thank-you gift. “Wine?”

“They only drink Korean alcohol.”

“Chocolate? I got these when I left my last job.”

“Seungkwan’s allergic.”

“...One of those mugs you picked out earlier?”

“No way! I promise you, Jay, just bring yourself and your empty stomach. They aren’t expecting anything.”

He pauses. He can tell your patience is starting to run thin, but he can’t imagine showing up empty-handed. That was always the biggest no-no whenever visiting his own family.

“Do we have time to stop by the florist?”

“Nope,” you say, grabbing his hand and all but dragging him out the door. “Plus, my grandma doesn’t like cut flowers.”

“Is there anything they like?”

Walking down the stairs and onto the street, you don’t let go of his hand. Only when you notice people gawking at you and smiling exuberantly at your linked hands do you drop it. The chilly October air does nothing to cool the heat spreading all over Jay’s face and body.

“Yeonju craves something different every week. Seungkwan doesn’t deserve anything. Mom and Grandma will fawn over you if you bring them fancy traditional medicine or vitamins or something. They’ll want to make you their son-in-law, though, that’s what happened with Yeonju.”

Jay smiles. He doesn’t know if you’re saying these things on purpose, but he sure will jump at every single one of them. “Fancy traditional medicine it is, then.” You keep your eyes on the path ahead of you but smile softly. After a beat of silence passes, he says, “So are we just going to gloss over the fact that whenever you close your eyes and think of me, you picture me shirtless?”

Surprised, you bark out a laugh. “That is not what I said, Park Jongseong.”

“Close enough.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, seriously,” you say, smile widening.

“I’m not the one imagining you naked all the time.”

“Okay, shirtless to naked is a jump.”

“Is it?”

“Yes!” you laugh. “And if you really want to go there right now, just before we have dinner with my family, by the way, then let me remind you that you were the one who made it a point to walk around shirtless at all times. Even when it was freezing temperatures outside and I couldn’t afford to blast the heating in my apartment, you’d wear at most a sleeveless t-shirt. The only times I saw your arms covered was in public. So forgive me if when I think of you, which is not all the time, by the way,” you say, although the look you give him tells him you might be distorting the truth a smidge. “I picture you without a shirt on. Put me behind bars.” And before he can retort — he’s laughing too hard anyway — you go on, the outrage in your voice going up a notch, “And even outside, you’d always roll up your sleeves and make sure everyone could see your forearms. Yes, Jay, you have nice veins, nurses must love you.”

This is one of the few times you’ve spoken so openly of your past relationship instead of making vague allusions or skirting around the topic. It’s a relief, but it also makes Jay feel like his insides are riding a rollercoaster—he can’t talk or even think about your relationship without the glaring awareness that he wants nothing more than to get it back. Not go back to those times, but rather create a new time, here and now. A new, second time, that would hopefully also be the last.

You’d chide him if he got all sentimental on you in the middle of a back-and-forth, so he keeps the teasing streak instead. “Am I sensing some jealousy, Y/N?”

“Yes, I hate it when health workers do their job,” you deadpan, hitting his arm with the world’s weakest punch. “For God’s sake, Jay. Your ability to let things go really hasn’t gotten better.”

“You basically admitted having wet dreams about me, how was I going to let that go?”

“Jay!” you gasp, looking around at the empty street for eavesdroppers. You hit him again, harder this time, although not enough to hurt. Back in your pre-dating days, you would do this whenever you wanted to initiate physical contact but weren’t sure how to. Jay does now what he was too scared to do back then and takes your hand in his. No point in beating around the bush. “You’re putting words in my mouth,” you mutter, looking down at your hands with a pout, then around the two of you again. You’re out of the main street with all the shops and restaurants, so you’re alone; even if this wasn’t the case, Jay wouldn’t let go. Half the town knows you were in love, anyway.

Are in love.

A lot of hand-holding and general physical contact has taken place today, much more than has been your usual this past month. As much as Jay would like to take it in stride, it is a concerted effort not to freak out over it. To put too much meaning into it. He tries to focus on just being glad you’re this comfortable around him once again.

Your mother opens the door a second after you knock. Either she was actively waiting for your arrival, or she has superhuman speed. “Jay!” she exclaims, circumventing around her daughter to greet him. “Come in, come in!”

Jay doesn’t think anyone’s ever been this excited to see him.

“You’ve met him once, Mom,” you complain. “You can’t already like him more than you like me.”

“I like most people more than I like you, my dear,” she replies in a sing-song voice. So that’s where you get your bite from, Jay muses. She swings an arm around his shoulders, forcing him to hunch down to her level as she drags, rather than guides him inside the house. He tries to look back at you, to silently ask for your help, but all you do is smile innocently at him and let your mother do her thing. “I hope you’re hungry. The food is almost ready, just sit, make yourself at home.”

She all but pushes him down onto a cushion, leaving him to sit alone at the low table, already stacked with various side dishes, across from your smiling grandmother and sister-in-law. Your grandmother looks as peacefully unbothered as always, but Yeonju, whom he’s only crossed paths with at the restaurant, is staring a bit too intently to Jay’s liking. Her smile is too tight, her eyes too narrow—he can’t tell if she’s just suspicious or actively plotting his death. You watch, amused, leaning on your elbows on the kitchen counter, next to your brother and mother who are finishing up dinner. When he looks at you, sending silent SOS signs with his eyes, you only turn your back to him and pretend to want to help with the food.

“So, Jay…” she starts, and the sound of her voice, lacking any of the chipper enthusiasm it usually carries in Kim’s Kitchen, startles him.

“Yes?” he quickly replies.

She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her seat, studying him. “You seem like a nice enough guy, and I’m not in the habit of intimidating people, but I feel like this needs to be said at least once.”

Jay gulps.

“Unfortunately, if you hurt Y/N in any way, shape or form, I will have to hurt you in return,” she says with a slight wince, as though the choice isn’t entirely up to her. “Just so you know, I have a black belt in taekwondo, and I teach self-defense at the school gymnasium every Sunday. I’ve taught Y/N everything she needs to know.”

Jay stays silent, unsure how to respond to this… threat? He replays every interaction he and Yeonju have shared so far, which are limited to the confines of the restaurant and a couple of times he ran into her out in town, searching for a moment he might’ve offended her or led her to thinking he wasn’t good for you, but comes up blank. You carry a tray of side dishes over to the table, smiling innocently.

“She throws a mean punch,” you say brightly. He wonders for a brief second if you’re truly unconcerned with Jay’s safety, or the potential of a lack thereof, but then your eyes meet, and the glint of amusement in yours tells him you’re just messing around.

“Right. I’ll keep that in mind,” he finally says, side-eyeing you as you walk back to the kitchen. In the split second his gaze left Yeonju, her expression had returned to its usual friendly cheer.

Odd.

To Jay’s great relief, no further hiccups arise during dinner. For a few minutes after Yeonju’s threat, because yes, decidedly, it was a threat, he’s afraid he has gotten the complete wrong idea about your family and that he’s stepped into dangerous enemy territory. But everything goes smoothly. Your mother keeps piling food onto his plate and asking him questions that jump from surface-level to impressively private, which you keep telling him he doesn’t have to answer. Your brother keeps trying to simultaneously find common ground with him and embarrass you as much as possible; Jay thinks their common ground is recounting mortifying anecdotes starring you, although he doesn’t say so. You keep telling him not to listen to anything Seungkwan says, while Yeonju, who is now the image of amiability, keeps musing how nice it would be if he and Seungkwan found a “brother-in-law activity.” Your grandmother eats quietly, laughing at her grandchildren’s bickering, listening intently to Jay’s answers, adding a comment here and there. You go from looking exasperated with your family to smiling fondly at them—Jay’s never seen you so comfortable, so simply yourself, and it in turns helps him relax. The tension leaves his shoulders, he speaks without pondering each and every one of his words, he even dares crack a couple dad jokes that go over well, especially with Seungkwan, to your apparent dismay.

It goes without saying that the food is delicious—your talent for cooking wasn’t born by itself. Tender galbi-jjim that melts in Jay’s mouth, crunchy vegetable pancakes that are so hot from the stove they burn his tongue, tangy pickled cucumbers that refresh his taste buds with every bite. Jay was no stranger to good food, or to plentiful displays of dishes at the dinner table. For as many faults as his father may have, he made sure his family’s stomachs never went empty. He could’ve afforded a private chef, busy as he was, but he instead prepared every meal himself, even if that sometimes meant leftovers from the restaurant or elevated instant ramen, with perfectly poached eggs and homemade fish cakes.

And yet, when Jay takes a metaphorical step back and observes your family, there’s something so foreign about this scene, something he’s so unaccustomed to, that it makes his insides twist. The laughter, the bickering, the lively conversation. With her chopsticks, your mother places a charred piece of meat on his plate, saying these are the best bits; you give him the ends of the rolled omelet without so much as a glance or a word, but he knows it’s because you remember he likes those the most. His eyes water at the simple gestures, reminiscent of the way his mother would give him all the best parts of chicken or of crab, the way she’d pick every pea out of his mixed rice when his father couldn’t remember he didn’t like them for most of his childhood. Eating at the family table was always a quiet affair, a cemetery-like silence hanging over their three heads like they were in permanent grieving—of what, Jay never knew. When asked, his mother would reply that his father just liked to focus on his food, and he’d always think that that was what he was already doing all day, every day. With those good pieces of meat, Jay reckons his mother was just trying to make him feel less alone.

A warm hand atop his knee brings him out of his thoughts and back to the table. The conversation is still flowing, Seungkwan and your mother squabbling over who had a bigger part in your upbringing—your brother was still going through six diapers a day when you were born, but he doesn’t seem to think that’s a convincing argument. Only you noticed his brief zone-out. You’re looking at him with a soft smile, and he wonders whether you know exactly what it is that had him perturbed. He wouldn’t be surprised if you did.

Your hand barely leaves his knee for the remainder of dinner, only to help pass a dish once in a while, or when Seungkwan exasperates you so much you have to use both hands to punctuate your words. If anyone notices your left hand hiding under the table, they say nothing. That simple touch of yours tethers him to your dining room, prevents him from getting lost in unhappy memories. He takes your hand in his and squeezes.

No matter how much he insists on helping with the dishes, your mother forbids him from even stepping into the kitchen area and orders him to stay seated while Seungkwan and Yeonju wash up and she goes to get every single family photo album. At the sight of the massive leather-clad binders, you leap out of your seat. “I’d rather do the dishes than be here for this,” you say, even though the kitchen is just meters away and you’ll hear every single embarrassing thing your mother wants to share about your childhood. Jay is ecstatic.

Your mother pushes aside the albums that gather memories from before your birth, two binders full of photographs that start in her twenties and end at your brother’s second birthday party. “I’d be happy to show you these, too, but I know that’s not what you want to see right now,” she says with a knowing smile, and he can’t bring himself to disagree.

Well, they say all newborns are ugly, but even your squashed cheeks and the red splotches on your skin look adorable to Jay. A quick thought passes through him that only his own children, one day, will endear him more than this, and he immediately flushes as though he’d spoken out loud. He looks at you, obliviously loading the dishwasher, then at your mother, obliviously telling him about how your birth had been so much easier than Seungkwan’s—only he’s thinking about this family’s future generation.

Fashionability clearly wasn’t the order of the day when you were a child. Jay laughs at the clashing colors and patterns, yellow gingham top with camo shorts, neon pink t-shirt with orange leopard print leggings. Even your mother laughs, admitting she never had an eye for fashion and always bought clothing based on how “fun” they were rather than based on how they would fit together. “Gosik was always better at dressing them than I was. That’s why Seungkwan was a better-dressed toddler than Y/N…”

The name is unfamiliar to Jay’s ears, but he deduces it belongs to your father, a man you spoke about just once with him. Partly because you didn’t know much, partly because you didn’t care to—you knew he left the country to be with another woman when you were three, and that the only contact he and your mother shared was the monthly child support he sent her, then nothing the moment you turned eighteen. He was a senior at university, three years her elder, and had a playboy reputation—she felt special when he started giving her attention, then even more so when he stuck around for more than three months, then even more so when she actually got him to marry her. Granted, it was only because she was pregnant with Seungkwan. Still, his sudden departure, signalled by just a note on the kitchen counter and his side of the wardrobe empty, came as a surprise to her. She’d dropped out of school for him, become a stay-at-home mother for him, bore two of his children. All it took for him to abandon them was a pretty twenty-year-old model from America. Whatever happened there later, at least, he had the decency to never come crawling back. Thankfully, your mother had her parents and younger sister to look after you and Seungkwan while she finished her degree and found work as a court reporter in a bigger town, twenty minutes away from Sojuk-ri.

It was a late night when you brought up your father for the first time, and you’d told him you were glad for the no-contact: it allowed you to neither love nor hate him. You were just neutral—he was a stranger, and that made it easier.

Your mother sighs. “That’s all he was really good for, anyway,” she says, then moves on to the next page. There’s a picture of her on her first day at work, and her smile is just as bright — but with all of her teeth — as yours on your first day of school. It’s funny, seeing her dressed in smart clothes, when he’s only seen her in baggy t-shirts and loose floral trousers he suspects she borrows from her mother—he wonders if this will be your final form, too.

With or without your dad, the smiles don’t leave you or Seungkwan’s faces—on the beach, in the restaurant, which hasn’t changed a bit, at school shows, on the bus. There’s a period in your middle school years where you’re always either frowning or hiding your face from the camera, and Jay exclaims, “I knew she was a difficult teen!”

“I was not!” you yell back from the kitchen, but it only makes everyone laugh.

“It was short but intense,” your mother says.

“She was the worst!” Seungkwan adds, followed by a smacking sound, and an overdramatic “Ouch!”

“Oh, and there it is,” your mother says with a giggle, pointing to a photo that has Jay’s eyes widening and a gasp escaping his lips. “Her first boyfriend.”

“Her first boyfriend!” he repeats, loud enough for you to hear. Not two seconds later, your palms are splayed on the pages, hiding the pictures from view. “Why? Do you have something to hide, Y/N?”

You shake your head fervently, trying to close the album, but your mother’s grip is firm. “It’s harmless, honey. I’m sure Jay won’t take any offense to it.”

“Oh, definitely not,” Jay says, grinning. You look at him with murder on your mind.

“I know he won’t mind, it’s just… embarrassing.”

“He just saw dozens of pictures of you taking baths and going through puberty. This is nothing,” your mother reasons.

“Nothing at all,” he echoes. Of course, his idea of seeing you with another man is not his idea of fun, but this picture was taken about ten years ago, and he wants to know why you’re so eager to conceal it from him. With the sweetest, most convincing smile he can manage, he grabs one of your wrists and pries it away from the album. Jay doesn’t usually believe in using his strength against you, but this situation clearly demands it.

He immediately regrets it. What was he thinking, trying to be nonchalant? Ten years or ten days ago, he hates to see you looking all smitten with an ex-boyfriend. He hates even more to hear your mother ramble on how cute the two of you were, and he hates to see you suppress a smile as you look at the pictures fondly.

Fondly.

Something in one of the photos catches his eye. You seem to be at a restaurant, sitting side-by-side in a dark velvet booth, dessert in front of you, but this isn’t the important part. “Matching sweaters? Seriously? You never wanted to wear those with me!”

You’re sheepish as you avoid his gaze, a mix of amusement and guilt on your face.

“I was fifteen, Jay. It was another time.”

He scoffs. Jay isn’t a jealous man. As a child, he was never one to look upon his friends’ toys with envy; as a boyfriend, as long as he has the assurance his partner loves him, he doesn’t see exes or male friends as rivals. And while the more rational part of him knows he has nothing to worry about, the more emotional one tells him that you might contact this Donghyuck — what an idiotic name — and try to rekindle your past flame.

Seungkwan chooses this time to sit back down at the table and say, “What a nice guy. We all liked him, didn’t we?” When he feels Jay’s glare on him, he laughs awkwardly, adds, “Don’t worry, buddy, he’s married now. And he lives in Busan.”

With your mom between the two of you, you have to lean forward to look at Jay—you seem very amused by his reaction, and aren’t at all deterred when he switches his glare’s target from your brother to you.

Thankfully, the tryst between you and Donghyuck was short-lived—but a mere five pages of photos later, here you are again, a few years older, with another man on your arm. You’ve told Jay about your two boyfriends, but only now is he putting faces to names, and is he hearing anecdotes from your family about these people. It makes them too real, and it doesn’t help that this Sunghoon guy is disgustingly handsome. What also doesn’t help is you dreamily musing, “I wonder what would’ve happened if he didn’t have to move to Seoul for his ice skating career…” because the only thing missing right now is you making fun of him. Your family notices his sudden quietness, that they must already know is uncharacteristic of him and laughs along with you. Great. Now five people are making fun of him. Even your grandmother joins in.

Your mother rubs his back. He feels a little ridiculous, and can’t help but laugh a little at himself too. Weirdly enough, he finds himself enjoying being teased like this—it makes him feel part of the family. He reaches over to flip over the page, relieved to find pictures of you and your cousins at the beach, a smile on his lips. “That was enough of that, I think.” It’s smooth sailing thereafter—no more evil ex-boyfriends to defeat.

Twenty minutes later, your mother is turning over the last page of the most recent photo album. Even in the digital age, she’s made it a point to have printed photographs, and the latest ones were taken just a few months ago. “We’ll have to add pictures of you, now that you’re here,” she tells Jay, and it’s just about enough to make him cry.

When she leaves to return them to the shelves and comes back with a huge jar of what looks like homemade plum wine and a wide grin on her face, you grab Jay’s hand and pull him off the floor, saying, “How about I show Jay my room?” at the same time as Yeonju and Seungkwan scamper off, with the excuse of calling an early night. Even your grandmother sighs, shaking her hand disappointedly. Jay hates to see the smile fade off your mother’s face and so twists around to promise her a next time.

There’s a brief second after you close the door to your bedroom and haven’t turned the light on yet, in which you and Jay stand in complete darkness, your hand still in his. His mind has the time to go through a hundred different scenarios in that short time, most of them involving you ravishing him right then and there. Unfortunately, your hand releases his to find the switch instead, and your room is suddenly bathed in a dim yellow light, the product of what looks like a low-wattage bulb and a beige lampshade. It’s cosy, and with how close you’re standing to Jay, makes him think that those ravishing scenarios might not be so out of the question.

As though you read his mind, your gaze flicks up to his. You raise an eyebrow, the corners of your lips rising in a smirk. You’re standing unnecessarily close, almost chest to chest; in a nervous gesture, Jay’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, your eyes following the movement. You stare at his lips for a beat too long, your smirk faltering, and then, as if none of this was a fragment of Jay’s imagination, you take a step back and start walking around your room, pointing at random things and going into detail about where you acquired them and what they mean to you. On an ordinary day, this would have enchanted Jay; if anything, he would’ve been the one to initiate this show-and-tell while you would’ve patiently obliged him. This reversal of roles doesn’t go unnoticed by him, and now, he’s the one trailing close behind you, brushing his shoulder against yours instead of keeping his distance, leaning so that his head is level with yours when you show him the pictures on your wall, faking innocent blinks when you turn to face him and are clearly flustered by his proximity.

It’s always been like this with the two of you—if one flirts, all the other can do is stand there and try their best not to become a stuttering mess. He can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been able to shamelessly flirt with each other, and most of those times were abetted by alcohol. So he enjoys this upper hand while he has it, keeping his voice low and quiet, the way he knows you like it — you’d told him so yourself — and although he doesn’t quite touch you, he can’t help it if his hand brushes your shoulderblades or your hip when he reaches for something on your shelf.

If he’s being honest, he’s not living up to his reputation as a good listener: he’s so focused on you, your body language and micro-expressions, that he only takes in half of what you’re saying. He can tell from your sputtering and awkward chuckles that it’s mostly nervous rambling, anyway. It’s not that he doesn’t find the story of an eight-year-old you who tried out horse riding for three months then gave up when she fell off a Shetland pony interesting, it’s just that he already heard it from your mother half-an-hour ago and that he finds the goosebumps on your arms and the shapes your lips take to form different words vastly more fascinating.

He guesses he’s not being very discreet, though, because after about five minutes of this, you turn to face him and ask him if he’s even listening. Well, you can’t expect him to flirt with you and be subtle about it.

“Um…” he trails, a playful smile dancing on his lips. “Is it better to pretend that I was, or to be honest?”

Feigning annoyance, you hit him on the shoulder, but there’s no force behind your punch and before you can retreat your hand, he grabs it, lacing his fingers with yours, letting your intertwined hands hang between the two of you. You look at them, scrunching your nose to hide a smile, but Jay sees the way your cheekbones lift ever-so-slightly.

As quietly as he can, he takes a deep, stabilizing breath, and lifts his free hand to your face, tucking some stray strands of hair behind your ear before cupping your cheek with his palm. Your skin is warm and soft underneath his touch, and he watches the movement of his thumb across it, left and right, left and right like a pendulum, so that he doesn’t have to look into your eyes and lose his composure. “I had a really nice time tonight,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “Your family is amazing.”

Your façade has all but crumbled, leaving only softness and vulnerability to grace your features. “They loved you.”

He meets your eyes. The tear ducts in his own have started filling up again, and he wonders if he’ll make it through the evening without crying. There is just so much tenderness in your gaze, so familiar and so thrilling all at once, and he wants nothing but to dive right into it and stay there forever.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. My mom especially.” You chuckle, then add: “I think she might already be making wedding plans in her head.”

Jay grins, letting himself bask in the idea of becoming your husband. His heart swells so much at the thought that he almost considers getting down on one knee right there. “I’m not opposed to that,” is what he settles on instead.

You mirror his smile, then in one swift movement, bring your arms to his neck, taking a step towards him and burying your face in the crook of his shoulder. His hands drop to your waist, arms wrapping around your middle to bring you closer. “I knew tonight would go well, but I’m still so glad that it did,” you say, voice muffled against his skin. He hums in response. “I hope it isn’t too much to say this, but you’re family now, Jay.”

If he wasn’t choking up with emotion, he’d laugh at the idea that this might be “too much”—if tomorrow you woke up and told him you wanted a child, he’d acquiesce without any hesitation. Nine months is plenty of time to get ready, right?

He doesn’t know what to say. He hopes you don’t find it embarrassing how his breathing grows rugged, how a teardrop falls from one of his eyes to your hair; he hopes the way his grip tightens around you is answer enough. Surely, you know. What this means to him.

What you mean to him.

Suddenly, he’s overwhelmed with the need to tell you, to put it into words; he grabs the sides of your head gently, pries you away from his shoulder. “I love you,” he says, urgently, suddenly, like he’s only just realized it himself. Of course, he always knew; but perhaps he’s never felt it as intensely as he does now. “I love you,” he repeats, calmer this time, more assuredly, because it isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, it’s a feeling that’s been forced to lie dormant for five years, that has had time to marinate into something stronger, and that finally gets to break free.

Your eyes glisten, and as soft laughter escapes from your lips, a relieved sort of sound, you hide your face in the crook of his neck again. “Me too,” you mutter, just loud enough for him to hear. “I love you, too.”

Jay releases a breath at the words, and a feeling that he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be takes over him. They’re words that ground him, and he unconsciously tightens his hold around you. He indulges in the feeling of having you again, of really, fully having you, gently swinging your bodies side-to-side like a timid dance to an inaudible song. After a minute or five, he says, lips moving against the top of your head: “You know I’m never letting go of you now?”

Against the skin of his neck, he feels your lips shift into a smile. “You better not. And I’m never running away again. No matter what happens, I’m dragging you with me, like it or not.”

Jay hums. Hell would become heaven if you were just by his side. “That’s fine by me. More than fine.”

He feels a calm that he hasn’t in many years, like his heart is finally at peace after five years of frantically searching for its missing piece. And yet, when you lean back and drop your gaze to his lips, only one intention written in bold in your eyes, his heart rate picks up, he becomes hyperaware of his hands touching you, of the soft hairs at your nape against his palm, of the heave of your chest against his with every breath you take.

Before he can react, your lips are on his, surprisingly hesitant, just a brush of a kiss, like you only had just enough confidence to initiate and none to back up. Jay doesn’t let himself think, just does; his hands stop you before you can fully pull away, holding you still as he tilts his head and finds your lips again, with more force this time, and all the assurance that knowing you love him gives him. It stays soft, at first—your lips move against each other slowly, and Jay keeps himself under control, the way you’d try not to startle a cat that’s finally let you approach it. As much as his body and heart ache for you, he doesn’t want to be too much, too fast.

But it seems he’s worried for nothing. Quickly, you’re the one pressing your lips harder to his, letting go of his t-shirt to slip your hands underneath it, nails grazing the skin of his lower back. With that simple touch, your innocent kiss turns into something rawer, more desperate, five years of missing each other crammed into it—one second, he’s smiling against your lips, the next, his hand, tangled in your hair, pulls to coax a whine out of you. The sound goes straight to his dick.

You start to walk backwards towards your bed, pulling him with you until the back of your knees hit the mattress and he helps you down onto it slowly, never detaching his lips from yours. Once you’re settled on the bed, his forearms resting on each side of your head, knees caging one of your thighs, he lets his mouth travel away from yours, carving a trail of warm and hungry kisses along your jaw, your neck, your ear. Your breathing is loud and rugged, quiet whines for his ears only piercing through the silence of the room. When he finds the sensitive spot behind your right ear, untouched for five long years and all the more ticklish for it, you whisper his name, a purr of a sound that has Jay’s entire body feel tight and heavy.

One of his hands slips from under your head and to your hip, fingers hooking underneath the waistband of your trousers and relishing in the warmth of the skin there. He reaches under your t-shirt, splaying his hand out against the side of your stomach, lips finding yours again when you gasp and taking the opportunity to slip his tongue inside your mouth. Your hips bump up into his, seemingly unconsciously, and he grinds his body impossibly closer to yours just as a loud knock makes your door rumble. The sudden noise snatches you out of your lust, making you yell in surprise, and Jay is so quick to tear himself from you that he almost jumps off the bed. You sit up, eyeing your door in horror as though it had made the noise on its own.

“Oh! Sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to scare you,” your mom says from behind your door with a giggle. She doesn’t walk in, and Jay is mortified to think she might have understood what he and her daughter had been getting up to just seconds ago. “I just wanted to say, I’m going to bed, and there’s food for Jay to take home.”

“Alright, mom. Thanks.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ryu.”

“No problem! Don’t stay up too late, now,” she says. The sound of a second giggle and light footsteps as she walks off to her bedroom chills Jay to the marrow. At least, if she knows what you were up to, she isn’t mad at him for disgracing her daughter.

As though afraid she might come back and barge in any minute, the two of you stare silently at the door for a moment. Then, as his heart settles down from the near attack it just suffered, he looks at you, manages a smile he hopes is charming. “Walk me back?” he asks, and you raise an eyebrow at him. “I might get lost on the way. Or get robbed by a strange man.” Your eyebrow lifts further. “And,” he says, taking a step towards your bed, kneeling down in front of you, taking your hands in both of his. “We might have more privacy there.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?” you say, leaning down with a smile to kiss him again.

Neither of you says much on the way home—Jay’s thoughts are too erratic for him to come up with anything sensical, and you seem to be in a similar state, if your non-stop giggling is anything to go by. The air is cold but your hand is warm, perfectly fitted against his. You press yourself into his side as you walk, blaming the beer you had with dinner. Jay knows better but says nothing.

His focus is all over the place. Or, more accurately, his focus is on whatever will happen when he closes the door behind him, you in tow. It’s dark now, street lights shut off after ten p.m. to prevent light pollution, so only the moon and the stars blinking down at the two of you allow you to see where you’re stepping. It’s hard enough not to press you against the wall of any random building right now; he doesn’t know how he’ll hold himself back once home, where it’s even darker, warmer, more private. Where not even the most prying of eyes can see what you’re up to.

In his defense, the only woman he’s wanted for years is right by his side, smiling at him, laughing at nothing with him, squeezing his hand and whispering how much she’s missed him.

The time it takes to reach his new apartment and walk up the stairs seems to pass in slow-motion. He uses the little remaining self-restraint he possesses to unlock his front door without fumbling with the keys. But the moment the door closes, your bodies collide. The bag full of Tupperware he was holding hits the floor, his back to the door, your lips crashing against his.

The breath is knocked out of him. While your hands find the sides of his face, his find your waist, drawing you closer to him, body reacting to your touch before he can comprehend it. He has no time to think, let alone turn a light on or bring you to a more comfortable spot. In a distant part of his brain, he manages to notice old reflexes are kicking in: the rhythm of the kiss, the kind that always appeared when one — or two — of you felt particularly desperate. Then, there’s his hands on your waist, on your hips, on your lower back, all the places he knows you like to be held, the touches he knows will have you soon demanding more than kisses. There’s your hands in his hair, nails grazing his scalp, fingers pulling at the longer strands, and it feels so good, but above all it feels so impossibly right, like this is what he was put on Earth to do and feel. It’s the familiarity of it that really does him in, like your time apart was just a momentary blip in your relationship, a few misguided moments. The speed at which he remembers exactly what to do to have your knees buckle makes him think these last five years were nothing more than a fever dream, and it’s been a mere week since you last touched each other like this.

For once, his body takes precedence over his mind, and he couldn’t be more thankful for it. There are so many things he could worry about, so many questions he could stop everything to ask you—but why seek the vocal confirmation that you want this, that this means the same thing for both of you when your lips are already on his and your hands are already working to get his jacket off him? And if he really did need that extra confirmation, he has it when you break the kiss for a second, just to mumble the word “bedroom” against his lips—a request, an order, a plea, Jay doesn’t care, all he knows is it does an unbelievable job turning him on. He immediately complies, guiding you by your hips backwards into the apartment until you reach his beloved mattress. He briefly wishes his bed was more than just the mattress lying on the floor and the half-put together frame he bought in IKEA earlier, but at least it’s made up, the sheets are clean, and there are two pillows. It isn’t like you would protest; if anything, your eagerness is palpable, intoxicating in the way you settle yourself on his lap, each knee resting on either side of his thighs, instantly starting to rub yourself on his clothed erection as you deepen the kiss.

Jay always had more patience than you, or, rather, he always had more self-control than you, and he made sure to use it to his benefit. If in everyday life he was quick to do anything you asked, in bed, he liked nothing more than to take his time with you, no matter how much you begged, writhed and pleaded with him to give you what you wanted. If in everyday life he could hardly bear to see you cry in front of a sad movie, let alone because of something that had happened to you, in bed, he liked nothing more than the tears of frustration that would pool in your eyes after he’d spent half-an-hour barely touching you—and then those of pleasure streaming down your cheeks when he finally gave in.

Now, he’s being pulled in opposite directions. One part of him wants to do nothing, let you continue moving your hips against his until you drive yourself crazy, begging him the way you do so well to do something about the throbbing ache between your thighs. The other part says fuck that—he’s waited five years for this, why would he waste another second? You’re here, moaning his name against his ear, and he knows that if you had your way, you’d pull his cock out and take him right now without even bothering with foreplay.

And as if you can read other’s minds, or maybe because you know all too well what he’s like, you take his face between your hands and look him straight in the eye. “Baby, please… We can take our time later. I just want you right now. Been waiting too long.”

Jay, true to himself, lifts a hand from your waist to slowly tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, a soft smile on his lips. “Right now? Is that what you want?”

You fight an eye roll, and his smile widens, knowing exactly what he’s doing and proud to know it’s working. “I just told you it was.” He doesn’t move, causing you to sigh exasperatedly, busying yourself by planting kisses in his neck and along his jaw. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he retorts. It makes you lean back and give him another intent look.

“Never.”

Warmth unfurls in the pit of his stomach, settling comfortably there, and although you’ve seen him flustered a thousand times before, he kisses you again to hide his reddening cheeks. He tries for a tender kiss, a delicate touch to convey all the things he hasn’t been able to put into words: I’ve missed you, and I love you as much now as I always have.

But you’re having none of it. Your kiss tells him you’ve missed him, too, but rather than tenderness, for you, that translates to passion and intensity, the kind that Jay can’t help but fall into. He also can’t help his hands from sliding down to your ass, squeezing and pulling you closer to him; you respond by tightening your grip on his shoulders and lifting your head to release a breathy moan, granting him full access to your neck. And as one-track-minded as he is right now, he still has enough sense to only leave marks in the crook of your neck and around your collarbones, where scarves and t-shirt collars can cover anything you want to keep private. He has no problem letting everyone know that he finally, finally has you again, but he’s also aware of Sojuk-ri’s nosiness and overbearingness.

For now, this moment belongs to the two of you, and you only.

As expected, it isn’t long before your patience runs thin again. Your kisses get sloppier, the movement of your hips more erratic, your grip tighter, more demanding. Your hands find their way to his bare skin, slipping under his t-shirt, the furthest thing from shy as they explore the once-familiar territory of Jay’s upper body, leaving no part of his stomach, torso, waist and lower back untouched. He hopes his recent efforts at the gym are noticeable—a hope that is quickly confirmed when you take his t-shirt off and shamelessly smile at the sight underneath you, grabbing his arms, marvelling at the way your fingers don’t quite meet when you wrap your hand around his biceps. Your touch leaves a trail of fire against his skin, and he, who usually likes to stay in control, finds his command of himself slowly slipping away, his breathing growing more ragged.

When he manages to get your top off, too, you give him no time to admire the body that has been haunting his dreams for the past five years, to study its minute differences and similarities, to search for the beauty mark underneath your right breast and the scar right above your navel, just to reassure himself that it really is you he’s holding. You press your lips back to his right away, arching your back against his chest—he feels your hardened nipples brush his skin, the warmth of your body against his, and he knows this is it. There’s no point keeping up the pretense of having patience anymore. He wants you, and it’s a desire so all-consuming he hardly knows what to do about it. He feels dumb with it, his thoughts muddle, his words make no sense, his movements are frenetic—and he’s not even inside you yet. He’s not touching you, not really, not like he can and desperately wants to, and you’re not touching him, either—what will he be like when he gets to feel you again, warm, soaked, and impossibly tight around him? The thought alone has him teetering dangerously close to the edge.

You seem to sense his growing need, reaching down between your sweaty bodies to undo his jeans. “Are you still on the pill?” Jay asks, ready to rip off any remaining articles of clothing off you and plunge inside of you.

You shake your head. “Didn’t need it anymore, and I didn’t like the side effects.”

Jay closes his eyes, tries not to get distracted by the feeling of your lips on his neck and your fingers on his lower stomach, searching for some clarity in his thoughts. “Okay. Baby?”

“Mm?”

“I don’t have condoms here. Didn’t think I was going to need them.”

You scoff as if that was the least of your worries. “That’s fine. We’ll get Plan B tomorrow morning.”

Jay smiles, silently relishing in your careless eagerness, but one of you has to think straight here, and it clearly won’t be you. “And have the pharmacist tell everyone that Mrs. Kim’s granddaughter and the new guy are having unprotected sex?”

This gets you to look at him, a deep furrow in your brows. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Exactly.”

You pout, threading your fingers through his hair, a glint in your eyes that warns him whatever you say next will not be of help to this current situation. “But I want it so badly,” you whisper with a roll of your hips against his for emphasis, just in case he hadn’t understood you. “Just pull out in time.” For a very brief moment, he finds himself considering your words — maybe that Plan B idea isn’t so bad — but he quickly gets his act together.

“I know, I want it too, baby, but it’s too risky.”

“God, I missed hearing you call me baby,” you say, burying your face in the crook of his neck, voice a needy whine that Jay smiles — and hardens — at. There is truly no one who can inflate his ego like you.

“And I missed calling you baby.” He marks a pause here, rubbing your back in an attempt to soothe you, although it has the exact opposite effect. “You have no idea how much I want you. But you know we can’t… There are plenty of other things we can do.”

“But-”

He hushes you with a kiss. “You’re gonna have to be patient. Can you do that for me, baby? Hm?”

It’s a wonder, how easily he slips back into this role—gentle yet commanding, his tone dripping with promises that to get what you want, all you need to do is listen to him. It has an immediate effect on you, he can tell in the way your moans get whinier, in the way you press your body impossibly closer to his, creating friction, searching for the relief he won’t give you.

“Come on, lay down for me.”

Once you’re on your back, despite your squirming and many noises of protest, he takes his sweet time. He gets your jeans and underwear off, then his own, all while pressing soft kisses all over your breasts, sneakily darting out his tongue against your nipples every now and then. You grow more agitated with every passing minute until you seemingly cave in and wrap a hand around his dick. It isn’t until you touch him that he remembers how painful his erection had gotten—when he looks down at himself, he’s embarrassed to find his tip an angry red and leaking with precum already, and the mere sight of your fingers moving up and down is nearly enough for him to come right there and then in your hand.

He knows he’ll finish too quickly if all he focuses on is the feeling of your hand on him. His fingers quickly find their way to where you want him most, and he is greeted by a gasp when he slides two digits between your folds upwards, until they reach your clit, more sensitive and swollen than ever.

Holding himself up on his left forearm, he alternates between studying your face and peppering it with delicate kisses. His fingers trace slow circles against your clit, and if the way you keep buckling your hips up is any indication, you’d like him to make quicker work of it—but even this lazy, deliberate touch is enough to have your movements faltering, the speed at which you glide your hand around him irregular, like you’re so overtaken by your pleasure that you keep momentarily forgetting what you’re doing. But he’s not much different—he’d be lying if he said that the mere feeling of your hand, even still, around his length, messes dangerously with his head.

His focus, however, will always be on you, even when his pleasure is so overwhelming, it hurts. As his fingers pick up speed and apply more pressure to your clit, he drinks in every little sound that comes out of your mouth. How did he survive without this for so long? Your heavy breathing, heavenly moans, whiny pleads that make less and less sense the longer he works his magic on you. If all of this was suddenly taken away from him again… He can’t even bring himself to think about it.

“You missed this, baby?” he asks, partly to rile you up, partly because he needs to know that you did. That his absence in your life was as torturous to you as yours was to his.

“Yes, Jay. Fuck, I missed you so much.”

The fact that you said it was him rather than ‘this” that you missed doesn’t go unnoticed—in fact, he rewards it by pushing his middle finger deep inside of you. By now, your hole is soaking wet and pulsating with need, and he slips in so easily, he can add another one just seconds later. You gasp at the welcome intrusion, back arching off the bed, head falling back against the pillow. Jay truly regrets not having a condom right now. He overestimated himself, thinking he’d be satisfied with this—he’d do unspeakable things to be buried deep between your thighs, to have you more than gasping as he fucks you into tomorrow.

“Yeah?” he says. “Did you touch yourself while thinking of me?” His words are muffled against your warm skin, the soft kisses he places on the side of your face in total contrast to his words and relentless fingers.

“Fuck!” you exclaim when they brush against a certain area deep inside you. “Yes, fuck, I thought about you all the time. I always thought of you whenever I made myself come, but it wasn’t ever as good as this.”

Jay’s dick twitches in your hand. This reaction to your words makes you smirk, but he’s unable to feel any embarrassment right now, not when you’ve resumed the movement of your hand along his length and all he can do is concentrate on not making a mess of himself. You first, always.

With two fingers inside of you and his thumb brushing circles against your clit, it’s only seconds before your legs start shaking and the volume of your moans increase. You try and fail to match his speed, opting instead for slow but firm strokes, your grip tight, tighter yet the closer you get to your release.

“I’m so close, Jay,” you breathe out.

“I know, sweetheart.” He bends down, burying his face against the side of yours, lips tickling your ear as he says, “I’ve got you. Let it all out for me, baby.”

And you do. You’d don’t hold anything back—one long cry is torn from your throat, something halfway between a whine and a moan, as Jay’s fingers coax every last bit of your orgasm out of you. It’s the sweetest sound to have ever blessed Jay’s ears. Your fingernails dig into the skin of his bicep and his scalp, but his focus is so honed in on you, he barely registers the pain—and the little he does only adds to his pleasure.

His own orgasm arrives so quickly, he only notices once it’s happening. The lewd, wet sounds the movement of his fingers make, the feeling of your pussy clenching around them as you come, the way you whisper his name when you reach your peak, it’s all enough to push him over the edge. His release streaks your stomach white, the sight of which has him feeling faint.

Neither of you stop right away. Your hand keeps gliding up and down his length, slowly, lazily, the slight overstimulation sending shivers down his spine. Meanwhile, his fingers travel between your folds, letting your slick coat them thickly before they find your clit again. You’re so sensitive, hips bucking at the lightest of touches, and soft, quiet moans continue to pour out of your lips.

He’s not sure how long you stay there, languidly moving against each other like this, basking in the afterglow of your desire, fulfilled after so long, but it’s long enough for the peacefulness of the moment to diffuse and make way for hunger once more—he grows hard in your hand again, and you grow unsatisfied by his barely-there touch, repeating “Jay, please” over and over until his fingers fill you up again. Clearly, after five years apart, one ten-minute round is far from enough. You go for round after round, deep into the night, taking breaks for water and checking up on each other, sharing all the things you’d done to try and fill the gap you each had left in the other’s lives.

All this exertion makes you hungry for real food. You sit on the island, watching while Jay prepares some ramen for the two of you. And, while it cooks, what better way to inaugurate his freshly built countertop than eating you out on it?

Later, you take a shower, rendered useless ten minutes after you’ve dried off and gone to bed—Jay’s back rests against the wall where the headboard of his bed should be as you straddle him, dangerously moving your hips against his. Your chests are pressed flush to each other’s, his hands holding your ass, yours, his shoulders. This is the closest to actually fucking you’ve gotten—his dick is covered with your slick, and every time his tip brushes against your hole, not holding you down and pushing right into you is a Herculean task.

Needless to say, neither of you gets much shut-eye that night. You’ve probably slept a total of four hours by the time the sun rises—even then, you laze around in bed, unable to get enough of each other.

At some point, he’s holding you in his arms and thinking of how lucky he is. Not just that it is you, in his arms, that he gets to bury his nose in your hair and breathe in the scent of your scalp like a little freak, that he gets to feel you shift against him, on a never-ending search for the most comfortable position, that his ears are blessed to be on the receiving end of your every sigh, every mumbled word, every soft giggle. He feels just generally lucky that this is even possible, that his skin is conceived to feel the warmth of yours against it, his nose made to smell, his ears to hear, his eyes to see. He feels lucky that you were both born in this world as human beings and that your paths crossed out of everyone on this giant, godforsaken planet. Dolphins and dandelions may not have to pay taxes, but they also don’t get to do this with the love of their lives. In short, he feels lucky that he gets to be human with you, and when he tells you this, you laugh, hold him tighter, and say you missed his brain.

“I missed you,” he says. “Do you even know how much time I spent just thinking of you these past years?”

You smile softly, press an even softer kiss to his nose. “You’ve done a really good job showing me.”

Comfortable silence stretches between the two of you. In the warmth of Jay’s bedroom, time is reduced to a concept with no direct bearing on your reality. Kim’s Kitchen is closed today, and Jay has no other obligation than to hold you for as long as he can before one of you grows too hungry or needs the bathroom. If you want to stay like this all day, he’ll make no objection whatsoever. His comforter is the right kind of heavy on top of your intertwined bodies, and the blinds are shut just enough for the room to not be too bright but for him to be able to admire your features if he so wishes.

He falls in and out of sleep like this, lulled into slumber by the headiness of your scent enveloping him and the heat of your limbs draping over his, rising out of it when you shift against him or when you say his name, like you do now.

“Hm?” he replies, still half unconscious.

“You know you’re allowed to be angry with me, right?”

This wakes him right up. “What, baby?” he asks, not because he didn’t hear you properly, but because he can’t fathom the reason for such a question.

You clear your throat, propping yourself on your elbow so you can look at him. “I’m just saying, I’d understand if you were mad at me.”

Jay looks around the room as if he might find a camera hidden somewhere. “Are you… Did you do something?”

You frown, which makes him frown, and you stare at each other in confusion until you seem to realize where this conversation went wrong. “No. I mean, not recently. I’m talking about the way things ended, baby.” The mention of your breakup would usually put a damper on Jay’s mood, but the pet name has the completely opposite effect. He smiles, unperturbed. “I’m being serious!”

His grin widens. “I know, baby.”

“Then listen to me. I know you said you couldn’t bring yourself to be angry after our breakup, but I wanted to tell you that it’d be okay if you were. It’d be normal. I just… up and left you. Barely gave you an explanation, and then didn’t let you contact me. Just think about it, if you hadn’t shown up here, we’d still be in the same place.”

This thought actually upsets him. The idea that this right here, you and him together, is merely the product of a coincidence—his mother could’ve taken him to a different beach, or he could’ve settled in another town, or he could’ve thrown his project out of the window altogether. It doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because he spent five years deluding himself that your paths would inevitably cross again, but he doesn’t like thinking of a universe in which he hasn’t found his way home to you.

“Right. But me getting mad at you now wouldn’t achieve anything.”

You take some time to think. “I guess not. I just… This is my way of apologizing, I guess. Whenever I think of how I acted, I feel so guilty. You deserved better. You deserve the best.”

Jay smiles fondly, raising a hand to your head and patting down your hair, tousled from sex and sleep. “I have the best right now.”

“Ugh,” you groan, letting your head hang. “Why are you impossible to argue with?”

He chuckles, then with his thumb, lifts your chin so he can kiss you. “Our time together is too precious for us to waste it on asinine arguments. Yes, I had a hard time, and back then I really wished things had gone differently, but I just don’t want to think about that anymore. I spent so much time dwelling on the past, baby, I want to focus on the future now. Our future.”

You stare at him for a little bit, frowning, and Jay wonders if it’s now you who’s upset with him until your lips start trembling. You groan again, hiding your face in the crook of his neck. “You’re so perfect, it’s unfair.”

“Well, that’s nothing to cry about,” he says, rubbing your back soothingly, glad you can’t see the proud smile on his lips.

A few more hours pass by like this, and they are some of the most peaceful, euphoric, and, let’s face it, dirtiest hours of Jay’s life. Now that he has you again, he can’t understand how he managed for so long without you. He feels like his lungs are at full capacity once more, and he can finally breathe properly.

There’s a moment, just a few minutes before you finally decide to get out of bed and do something with the rest of your day, where you’re looking at him and tracing his features with your fingertips. You whisper, “I love you,” and he thinks: there is no such thing as coincidence when it comes to a love like this.

Only fate.

.

“Let’s keep this to ourselves for a little bit,” you say later that day. You’ve just spent a couple hours finishing up decorating Jay’s apartment and putting together the final pieces of furniture bought yesterday, and you’re now eating last night’s leftovers on his couch, watching Game of Thrones. Back in culinary school, you watched the first few seasons together, but ran out of time before you got to the last two—neither of you continued watching it afterwards. Five years later, you finally get to finish it.

Jay looks down at you, a questioning look on his face, then presses pause on the remote. “What do you mean, baby?”

“This,” you reply, gesturing between the two of you. “I don’t want to tell people just yet. I want it to just be ours.”

For a few seconds, you’re afraid he’s taking it the wrong way, that he somehow thinks your wish for secrecy is because you’re embarrassed and don’t want to be seen with him—which couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, you’re just as excited to parade him around town at some point and tell everyone he’s your boyfriend.

But for now, just a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, you want to create a world where it’s just the two of you. No prying eyes, no nosy questions, no gossip. Just the two of you.

You’re ready to explain all of this to him when his surprise softens into a smile, and he says, “Okay. Then this is just ours for now. We decide when we tell others.”

The next morning, you’re floating rather than walking home, heart so satiated with love, body electric with the remnants of your time spent with Jay. There’s a buzz-like feeling under your skin from the shared secret, from this knowledge that only the two of you are privy to. You smile all the way home, but the moment you step inside and four pairs of eyes peer at you from the kitchen table, where your family is eating breakfast, and your expression immediately falters.

Of course they know. You walked Jay home, then stayed there for two nights straight. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the two of you have been up to.

They stare at you. You stare back. “Hi?” you say.

Yeonju leaps out of her seat and rushes towards you, looping her arm over your shoulders and dragging you inside the apartment. “Guess our Y/Nie had an eventful weekend,” she says, which makes your mother and grandmother giggle and your brother groan loudly. Thankfully, you manage to get away with the least amount of information—not that they ask you about the juicy details, that’s something Yeonju will try to get out of you later. They just want to know whether you, and therefore they, can call him your boyfriend now. When you reply positively, your mother practically squeals and clasps her hands. You try to remember whether she was this enthusiastic when you got into culinary school.

“I’m going to be the luckiest mother-in-law in all of Sojuk-ri,” she says dreamily.

“You already are, mom,” Seungkwan says with a frown, rubbing Yeonju’s back as she wipes a fake tear from her eye.

“Oh, of course, honey.” Adding another scoopful of rice to Yeonju’s bowl, she says, “See, this is what happens when you raise great children. They marry great people.” She winks at you, and you can’t help but downplay the smile growing on your lips by rolling your eyes.

“Does that mean I raised you wrong?” your grandmother asks. Her daughter freezes, a deer caught in headlights. She brushes it off by laughing and says, “You’re making up for it now.” She gives you a look that you interpret to mean, I was just trying to be happy for you, and look how they all react. Can’t do anything in this family!

It’s only an hour later as you’re prepping vegetables for today’s lunch shift that it hits you—They marry great people. You didn’t think to correct your mother.

There’s a smile on your face the entire shift—you smile at the simmering broth, at the searing meat, at the bowls and plates and cutlery, at every customer that walks through the door, even at Yeonju. Of course, your good mood doesn’t go unnoticed, but you think it’s inconspicuous enough. Sure, it’s your sister-in-law who’s known for her unwavering cheerfulness, but can’t a girl just have a good day once in a while? It’s not like you’re a grump who stays holed up in her kitchen and only comes out to yell at customers. It shouldn’t be so weird that you’re… chirpier than usual. There’s no reason they should immediately assume it’s because you and Jay are together now. Only Yeonju knows what’s going on, and you’ve made your family swear on their honor that they wouldn’t say anything for now. You’re not sure how much their honor is worth, especially your mother’s, who can barely contain her excitement and wants nothing more than to share the happy news — she really seems to think you and Jay are engaged — but it’s better than nothing.

When you close for break time, you look both ways to make sure no one spots you crossing the street to Jay’s building—My boyfriend is a building owner, is a sentence you can now truthfully utter. You quickly make your way up the outdoor staircase and into his apartment through the unlocked door. Is it a bit dramatic to run towards him and jump into his arms, burying your face in the crook of his neck and inhaling, when you last saw him five hours ago? Maybe, but you don’t care. And he definitely doesn’t seem to, either: “I missed you, baby,” he says as he lowers your feet back onto the floor.

Your lips meet, and just like that, things pick right back up from where you left them this morning, half-naked bodies intertwined in his bed sheets when you noticed the time and had to go home to freshen up (and let your family know you were still alive) before work.

An hour or so later, your body is comfortably settled against his, head resting on his chest, his fingers tracing random patterns on your bare back, and you’re going over all the ways you can sneak around, things you want to do without anyone seeing. Dates at the beach, picnics made of convenience store items, daring the cold waters of October; driving around all the charity shops and second-hand furniture depots of the region, then spending hours just the two of you decorating the café. He tells you about a hundred times that you don’t have to help him if you’re too tired with the restaurant or simply don’t want to, and you patiently remind him every time that he doesn’t have to worry about it.

Of course, you could spend all your free hours holed up in his apartment, where no one can see you—and you definitely intend on spending a lot of time here. You’d just have to be cautious coming in and out, but once inside, you’d be safe and sound in Jay’s arms.

You tell him how giddy this all makes you feel—being in on a secret together, knowing it’s only a matter of time before everyone finds out or figures it out, but trying to keep it to yourselves nonetheless.

“Right, about that…” Jay starts, and your head immediately whips up at his guilty tone. He avoids your gaze. “I might’ve told Mrs. Kang about us.”

“Mrs. Kang?” you repeat, pronouncing her name like she’s a criminal on the loose rather than the friendly but over-bearing convenience store owner.

“She just…” Jay starts, then groans, wiping invisible sweat from his forehead. “You had your family to tell, okay? I went to buy eggs right after you left, and I was just so happy, I wanted to tell somebody…”

You scrunch your nose, trying to stop the smile from growing on your lips. He was just so happy. How can you be mad at that? “So what, you just told her, unprompted?” you ask, half pretending to be annoyed, half really amused.

“No, I’m not that stupid. She said she could see I was different. She said I was glowing, for heaven’s sake, and the way she said it, like she already knew the reason why. I thought, might as well just tell her.”

“Glowing?” you repeat, laughing. “What, like pregnancy glow?”

“Or, like, a sex glow, I don’t know,” he replies, chuckling too. “It was weird.”

You bury your face in his neck, and your giggles dampen against his skin. “Well, please keep your sex glow to yourself next time, Jay.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And I told her not to tell anyone, by the way.”

You lift your head back up, propping your elbow on the mattress. Stroking your boyfriend’s cheek, you coo, “Oh, sweet, innocent Jay. If you’ve told Mrs Kang, you’ve told all of Sojuk-ri. She’s practically the chief of the gossip committee. She’ll tell all the other ahjummas, who’ll tell their husbands and kids, who’ll tell their friends. And you know everyone knows everyone here, so I’ll take a guess that in… two days, tops, the cat will be out of the bag.”

Jay pouts. “But I promised her free coffee for a month if she kept it to herself,” he says, and he sounds so earnestly disappointed that Mrs Kang might betray his trust that you can’t help but burst into laughter, then immediately pepper his entire face with kisses. “I’m serious!” he exclaims, breathless from your attack and his laughing. “Who knows, she might like the idea of having a secret and free coffee than of getting to tell anyone.”

You sigh. “Only time will tell, baby.” The nickname makes Jay blush, as though it hasn’t slipped out of his own mouth dozens of times in the past twenty-four hours. Your body moves of its own accord as you lean in, pressing your lips to his in a kiss that he responds to immediately. It starts out as they always do—slow, tender, like you have all the time in the world to do this and you want to enjoy every single second. His big hands find your hips and pull you towards him so you’re straddling him. “I can’t believe you jeopardized some of your future revenue just to keep a secret,” you murmur when you break away from this kiss and press your lips to his jaw and neck instead.

Jay hums, and you can tell half of him has already clocked out of this conversation—your effect on him, you note, not without a little pride. “I wasn’t thinking when I told her. Then I thought you might be upset, so I tried to backtrack. I’m sorry.”

Your teeth scrape the corner of his jaw, and the moan he lets out has your stomach dipping pleasantly. “Don’t apologize, baby.” Your lips make their way to a spot behind his ear—somewhere not so obvious that it would be embarrassing, but still noticeable if one looks closely. Then you sink your teeth into his flesh — sensitive, seeing as he hardens immediately under you — and suck, just a few seconds, just until a small, reddish bruise appears. Jay whispers your name and you find his lips once more. The kiss is hungry this time, desperate, greedy. Since yesterday, every time with him feels like the first. Even if it starts out gentle and hesitant, quickly, something raw takes over both of you, like you can’t quite believe this is happening and need to make sure it’s real by tightly holding onto each other and grabbing everywhere you can reach.

Suddenly, sneaking around has lost all its appeal. Mrs Kang could tell there was something different with him? Good. Let everyone know who is the cause of that change. “Maybe it’s a good thing,” you say, breathless. “All those moms who think they can set you up with their daughters? They’ll know there’s no point.”

One corner of Jay’s lips rises into a smirk, a visual that gives you half a mind to yank his boxers off and give him the best head of his life. Instead, his hands grab your ass, nails digging into the flesh there, pressing your core right against his erection. You don’t even realize you’re grinding until heat starts pooling in your stomach, spreading to your entire body.

“Are you getting possessive now, baby? That’s unlike you,” he teases.

But you’re too lost in your growing pleasure to play with him—instead, your head falls back, and you whisper, “Don’t wanna lose you again.”

Jay’s dick twitches underneath you. Some things really don’t change: his number one turn-on is still emotional vulnerability. “You won’t. Ever again.”

You can’t lie—it turns you on like nothing else, too.

Only two thin pieces of fabric separate you from him as you rut against him, keeping a slow pace that is torturous for both of you but that has your nails digging into his shoulders. “Baby,” he whispers, but you’re so lost in the heat growing being your legs that the sound goes over your head. “Babe,” he repeats, louder, holding your hips tight to still your movements.

“Hm?”

“I went out to buy condoms earlier.” It takes a few seconds for the lust-induced haze in your mind to clear, but when it does, your eyes widen, and Jay misunderstands: “I drove to the next town over, don’t worry.”

“No, that’s not… the problem,” you assure him. He frowns, but before he can speak, you lean in for a kiss. “I just really want you to fuck me,” you whisper against his lips.

It works like a charm—one second, Jay is looking at you like he isn’t sure he heard correctly; the next, he’s rolling you onto your back; then, he’s tearing open the wrapper and rolling the condom down his length. When he pushes into you, you let out a loud gasp. The instant pleasure is so surprising that you wonder how you’ll be able to contain it all inside your body—and he’s only a couple inches deep. True to form, he freezes, asks you if you’re okay. You can’t nod and tell him to keep going fast enough. The pleasure might be overwhelming, but not having it would be infinitely worse.

It feels like forever until he bottoms out, and even then, he disregards your pleas for more and waits a few moments for you to adjust to him. Sure, it’s been five years of nothing bigger than two of your fingers inside of you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not ready. When you tell him this much, he chuckles, a low, confident sound that annoys you as much as it turns you on, and says, “I just don’t want to hurt you, baby.”

You huff, frustrated. “I promise you won’t, just—just move, please, Jay.”

So he does.

He barely retreats, just an inch or so, but when he slides forward again, he goes deep, deeper than before, his tip brushing against a spot that has a high, drawn-out whine escaping your mouth. He continues like this, thrusts deliberate and shallow, but he’s buried so far inside of you that even the smallest of movements has your throat going raw with moans and your fingers gripping his hair tightly. “See, baby?” he asks, voice low against your ear. “You can barely handle this much. If I fucked you like I wanted to, you wouldn’t be able to take it.” His tone is sweet, in complete opposition to the words themselves and to the way he’s slowly tearing you apart with each of his torturous thrusts.

“I can — oh, fuck — I can,” you say, breathless, not because you think you can, but because you don’t want him to hold back.

This man has the audacity to laugh, right beside your ear. One at a time, he grabs your thighs, hooking them around his hips. Then one hand returns to your face, pushing hair away from your eyes, while the other sneaks its way between your bodies, his thumb starting to trace circles against your clit. “Yeah? You gonna be a good girl and take what I give you?”

You’re already shaking in his hold. If his actions themselves weren’t enough, his words have you embarrassingly close to the edge. You nod eagerly. Last night and this morning were amazing—full of love, and tenderness, and raw emotion. Now? You’re craving something… different. A side of Jay that only comes out when he’s really desperate and that you aren’t afraid to seek out.

Gradually — because even if he talks a big game, he’s still your loving boyfriend, and he won’t even entertain the idea of accidentally hurting you — his thrusts pick up in speed, but he still makes sure to bury himself to the hilt every single time, and his thumb doesn’t leave your clit. With every drag of his cock along your walls, you feel your arousal growing, coating him and allowing him to go even deeper, even faster. Words tumble out of his mouth into your ears like he doesn’t even realize he’s saying them, murmurs of, I missed this pussy so fucking much, and, No one else has ever made you feel this good, have they, baby?

Who’s getting possessive now? a voice, somewhere at the back of your head, says, but you’re too out-of-it for the words to actually materialize.

And then—“I’ll be fucking this pretty pussy without a condom soon. You’d let me do that, wouldn’t you? Let me fill you up? You’d look so pretty with a round belly, baby. Everyone would know who it is you belong to.”

His face is buried in your neck, so he doesn’t see your eyes widen. Even in your most heated moments, he’s never spoken to you this way. And, until this exact point in time, you had no idea this was something you liked. You imagine it all—how he’d feel raw, how his cum shooting inside then leaking out of you would feel, knowing the consequences, wanting the consequences. Being pregnant with his child.

This isn’t something you’re capable of unpacking right now. All you know is that the more he talks and the longer he fucks into you, the closer the knot in your stomach comes to unravelling. “Fuck, keep going, I’m so close, baby,” you say, babbling.

Against the damp skin of your neck, you feel his lips widen into a smile. “Yeah? You like thinking about me stuffing you full of my cum?”

If you weren’t so into this, you’d be wondering what happened to your boyfriend, who, although he’s never been a stranger to dirty talk, he’s definitely never said anything like this. It’s driving you mad—and you know it has the same effect on him, too. His thrusts have become erratic, the movements of his thumb messy, the kisses in your neck sloppy. He’s just as close as you are.

“Yes, baby. I wish you could fill me up right now,” you purr.

One, two, three more deep thrusts, and Jay stills inside of you with a grunt. It’s enough for you to nose-dive right into the chasm of your own orgasm. It was building for so long that you see white when it comes, eyes shut tight, thighs shaking around Jay’s hips.

The two of you stay silent for a while, minds and bodies reeling from what just occurred. It takes some time for your breathing to steady again, for your body to stop trembling. Jay’s body is a heavy but reassuring weight on top of you. A shower would be great, but it’s even better to share this quiet moment with him. At some point, without changing positions, he asks, “Do we really want a baby right now?”

You laugh. “Not right now, no.”

A pause. “But eventually?”

“Eventually, yeah,” you reply with a smile.

“Okay,” he says, like that’s enough for now, and kisses your cheek.

Ten minutes later, he’s hard again, and you’re more than willing. But after that, it’s time for you to head back to Kim’s Kitchen for tonight’s dinner shift.

In the five years since you dropped out of culinary school, you’ve never really felt the need for somebody to take your place, once in a while, as Kim’s Kitchen’s chef. It wasn’t like you ever had anything more important to do than cook—sure, you were sometimes tired, or simply lazy, and had to force yourself out of bed and into the restaurant. But this—this is different. It’s not just your warm, comfortable sheets you have to extract yourself from anymore, it’s the heat of another body, it’s soft caresses and words spoken gently, it’s promises of never letting go and of an entire life spent like this. Leaving Jay here feels like your break-up all over again, only with less dramatic consequences, because it’s the one other time you’ve ever resented your grandmother for only passing her skills down onto you, and none of her daughters or other grandchildren. Of course, both times, you hated yourself for even letting the thought course through your head, and quickly snapped out of it. It isn’t a bad thing that your grandmother was healthy enough during her daughters’ teenage and young adult years to keep on handling the restaurant herself, and that she had her husband to do what is now Yeonju’s job. It isn’t a bad thing that your love from cooking developed independently, without any pressure from your family about needing someone to take over once your grandmother got too old. You love your job, you love (most of) your customers, you love your family. None of it is a bad thing.

But it is a terrible, terrible thing to have to untangle your limbs from Jay’s and go back to work, feeling all cold and forlorn.

At least, it allows you to confirm something—it seems Mrs Kang has kept her mouth shut. So far, at least. That evening, and the following day, no one in the restaurant or in town shoots you any sort of knowing look or secretive smile. The few comments that are made about you and Jay don’t stray from the ordinary, questions about how his café is going, or whether any progress has been made between the two of you, and it seems like they’re genuinely asking rather than waiting for the confirmation of their suspicions. Even when Jay comes in for a meal, customers look at the two of you conspiratorially, like they think they know something’s going on, rather than really knowing. Nobody notices the mark behind his ear, and if they do, they don’t question it. And anyway, you’re well enough familiar with the residents of Sojuk-ri to know that if they were aware of your relationship status change, they’d have bombarded you with congratulations and invasive questions already.

You even go see Mrs Kang herself under the pretense of buying ramen and soju — which isn’t necessary, but you like to see her outraged expression whenever someone buys alcohol from her store, as if she isn’t the one selling it — and as you’re checking out, even after she gets over her shock at seeing a 25-year-old buy soju, she says nothing. She looks around the store to make sure no one else is here, then shoots you a wink and mimics a zip over her mouth. In all your life here, you’ve never seen anyone handle a hot piece of gossip with so much poise and class. You’re impressed.

So, you keep going with your initial plan. What you said about making the mothers learn better than to try to set their daughters up with Jay was in the heat of the moment, and while you’re looking forward to that, too, you’re enjoying the peace and quiet that comes with your love life not being the center of everyone’s discussions. That was the case when Jay arrived last month and everyone found out you two knew each other; now that the attention has died down, you think you deserve another week or two of being left alone.

On your days off, you accompany him to all the nearby second-hand stores in the region and help him search for the pieces that perfectly fit his vision for the café—cosy, vintage, over-the-top, almost reminiscent of a grandma’s living room. These types of cafés were always the ones he felt most at ease in, he says, the ones he could spend hours in, with quiet music and the smell of brewing coffee. It initially surprised you that he didn’t want to go for a sleek, pared-back look, like in his apartment, but then you thought the two looks were just two different aspects of his personality. Sure, he could come off as cold and reserved to certain people when they first met him, and he was a very reasonable person, a logical decision-maker. But anyone who knew him better knew he was someone who liked to make others feel welcome and carefree, who wanted to make them laugh and feel like they could rely on him as much as they needed. You were glad that his customers and the inhabitants of Sojuk-ri would get to see this warm side of him.

Over the course of these trips, sometimes on his own, sometimes with you, he gathers almost everything he needs. For the rest, he searches for local artisans that might be able to make his visions come to life. In a little under a month, he’s able to stand at the threshold of his café and look at it proudly. The walls have blue and yellow floral wallpaper on the upper half, and dark, wooden wainscoting on the bottom; some of the old bookshelves have been secured to one and are filled with the books that didn’t reek of dust or came apart when simply picked up. One corner is reserved for low seating, with comfortable arm chairs upholstered with various patterned fabrics and two coffee tables, while arranged on the other side across the counter are a set of matching tables Jay found, and disparate chairs he did his best to make sure were of similar heights. Everywhere, there are all sorts of lamps with eclectic shades, trinkets you said were either adorable or hilarious and he couldn’t help but buy, photos and posters from the last century in what look like even older picture frames. For the counter, he found the perfect glass display cases for pastries, and a dozen mismatched mugs, plates and cutlery in all sorts of shapes and colors, but all with the distinct look of having come from someone’s grandma’s collection.

To the great joy of every storeowner in the street, he’s also spent a considerable amount of time whipping up test batches of the desserts and pastries he’s planning on selling and going around the neighborhood, asking for opinions and preferences. When you ask him why he’s so adamant on asking everyone what they think, he explains that while he wants to use the techniques and recipes he learned in Paris and London, he also wants to make sure he’s appealing to Sojuk-ri’s taste buds rather than importing something no one cares about. So far, this is what he’s settled on: black sesame cookies for those who don’t like overly sweet foods; a fudgy tahini brownie, because you can’t really go wrong with chocolate; a fruit tart that’ll keep the same pastry and cream base but will change according to the season; a classic carrot cake with citrusy frosting that he expects will be a crowd pleaser; and a creamy matcha crêpe cake, simply because The Three Wons begged him to have something matcha-based on the menu and they promised him every one at their school would also love it. Those will be his staples, to which he’ll add one or two special items that will change monthly or seasonally, depending on his whims, similarly to your menu changing daily according to what you find at the market and what you feel like cooking. In the mornings, before it’s socially acceptable to stuff your face with all sorts of creamy and chocolatey desserts, he’ll serve all the classic pastries: croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins, suisses.

Of course, you’re his biggest cheerleader, and you happily eat everything he bakes. You try to help him out sometimes, but the two of you are similar in the sense that if you share a kitchen with someone, you’d rather they simply sit somewhere and talk to you or watch you work. You can (somewhat) put your need for control to the side when you’re just cooking a homemade meal, but work is an entirely different thing. You’re not sure what you’d do to someone if they over-salted a broth or undercooked a meat you had to serve to a customer, and you don’t want to put Jay in a tough position by getting any measurement or consistency wrong on his test batches—they may be try-outs, but he takes them seriously. It’s not like you know much about baking, anyway, and you’re more than happy to sit on the chair you’ve dragged to the doorway, and watch his broad shoulders move around the kitchen, apron snug around his waist, sleeves rolled to his elbows, strong forearms and veins on display. No offense to his skills as a baker, but you think the sight is more delicious than anything he could come up with.

You tell him so, and his face turns redder than the red velvet cupcake batch he’s prepping for the opening, his first special menu item. You’re smug until, a few beats later, he says: “I know something that tastes even better.” His voice is low, and his tone makes it impossible for you to misinterpret his words.

It’s a good thing his apartment is only a flight of stairs away.

.

November 1st. Just under two months since Jay’s arrival in Sojuk-ri. In a few minutes, his café will be officially open for business, under the vaguely unoriginal name of Jay’s Café—if Kim’s Kitchen could do it, why not him?

The clock has yet to strike 8 a.m. and already, people are lining up outside, waiting for their morning coffee with big smiles and excited chatter. Jay is thankful that they don’t have to stand under rainy or windy weather—the sky is exceptionally clear for a mid-autumn day. He’s all set to open, and yet, he paces in the kitchen, in the front of house, behind his counter, desperate to find something to busy his hands with. But the coffee machine is ready to go, the display cases are filled with freshly-baked pastries, still warm from the oven, this afternoon’s desserts are all patiently waiting in the fridge. His eyes anxiously study the room for a crooked picture frame, a spelling mistake on the chalkboard where he asked Haewon to copy the drinks menu in her neat cursive, a dusty spot he might’ve missed after cleaning the place five times over.

“Should we open early?” you ask. Your voice has the immediate effect of soothing his racing heart; you don’t need to fill his ears with reassuring words, it’s all in your tone, in the way you look at him, a mix of your usual tenderness and amusement at seeing him so uncharacteristically shaken up. “You’re all set, and they came out this early…”

“Yeah, I think I’ll throw up if I keep watching you go back-and-forth like a tennis ball,” Yeonju adds, getting a chuckle out of Jay.

When you first brought up the idea of helping him out on opening day, he was adamant against it—you have your restaurant to take care of, and he could handle this on his own. But you were persuasive. You were already planning on closing Kim’s Kitchen for the day, partly to be there for him, partly to redirect people towards his café. It took a lot for him to agree, he wanted you to enjoy a day off, sleep in, come see him later in the day; it was a conscious decision of his to not hire anyone for now, he didn’t want to rely on you, he wanted to know he could do this on his own. “Of course you can do this on your own, baby,” you’d said. “And you will, but opening day and the first week, even weeks, maybe, are going to be crazy. When my grandma had her first stay at the hospital and we closed for a bit, we were full every single day for three weeks straight. People here don’t play around when it comes to supporting local businesses,” you reminded him. “Plus, they’re going to want to talk to you, ask you questions, you’ll barely be able to concentrate on work.” His resolve started to crumble. In the end, he agreed to let you help him out all day for the opening only, and in the following mornings before you had to open for lunch.

As for Yeonju, it was so obvious to you that she would come along that you hadn’t thought to clarify, but her presence came as a surprise to Jay. He could tell being up at 6 a.m. was rough for you, which made him feel terrible, but she seemed completely fine: “This baby is making me a morning person. Or just a no-sleep person,” she said with a wry chuckle and the maniacal look of someone who hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in a while. She’d broken the happy news at dinner recently, and your mother almost passed out—not only did she get the reassurance that her only daughter wouldn’t die a spinster barely a month ago, she was now becoming a grandmother. When Jay was washing the dishes later that evening, she told him, “Can you believe it? You and Y/N are going to be an uncle and an auntie,” and he felt so entirely part of this family at that moment that he almost fell to his knees right there in your mother’s kitchen.

Seungkwan wanted to be here, too, but he burnt himself trying to froth milk with the coffee machine the other day, so Yeonju forced him to stay home for the day. When he wasn’t around, she said it was a blessing in disguise—there was a reason why her husband wasn’t let inside the restaurant’s kitchen. He was perfect where he was, at home, doing the accounting.

“Alright,” he finally says, taking a steadying breath. You’re both right—there’s no point in twiddling his thumbs nervously for five extra minutes when he could just let people in now. With a hand on the doorknob, he looks back at you. All he needs is that little nod of your head, that look of pride in your eyes to give him the extra encouragement.

With a smile on his face that he hopes hides his nerves, he opens the door wide, and is greeted by sounds of delight and even clapping. “Hello, everyone, welcome in,” he beams. He stands by the door as the first customers head to the counter, thanking people for being here, shaking hands, receiving congratulations and shoulder claps, and when the line has advanced but not enough for everyone to be inside, he goes over to greet everyone individually. They’re all people he knows: the real estate agent who’s amazed by “what he did with the place,” The Three Wons and a group of their friends whom he swears should be at school by now, so he sends them off despite their protests, telling them to come this afternoon instead, all the friendly ahjummas who have gone from pestering him about winning back your affections to pestering him about asking for your hand in marriage in the span of two months—Jay doesn’t entirely disagree with them, but he seems to have more patience than they do.

Mrs Kang is here, too, excited about her half-off coffee: when she caved in and told everyone who would listen what she knew a week after promising Jay she’d keep it a secret, she came to him and admitted what happened (“It wasn’t my fault! Mrs Lim saw you come out of their house twice in one week, I had to explain the situation to her, you understand”). She felt guilty enough to not take him up on his offer of free coffee for a month, but not guilty enough to not ask for coffee at half-price instead. At that point, he didn’t care—he had spent a week feeling like the world consisted of only you and him, and that was enough for him.

He tries to head back inside so as not to let you and Yeonju do all the work, but your prediction was right—everyone wants a piece of his attention, asking him how he’s feeling, telling him what a good job he’s done so far already. That morning, the three of you brought some chairs out of Kim’s Kitchen for people to sit outside in case there wouldn’t be enough room in the café, and between the customers that have already been served and those still in the queue, it takes him almost ten whole minutes of small talk and endless thank-yous to slip back behind the counter. Yeonju is doing a great job taking orders and preparing pastries while you make the drinks, but it’d be even faster with an extra pair of hands, and there also needs to be someone checking up on the ovens and restocking things as you go.

The following hours pass in a blur of friendly chatter and endless orders. Things calm down slightly around nine thirty: there is no queue, but rather a steady stream of customers that only relents around eleven. Even though she promised she was fine, Jay brought down a high stool for Yeonju to sit on. She now keeps a hand on her belly most of the time, and is suffering through over-bearing, unwarranted pieces of advice and invasive questions on a daily basis. Jay thought he was good at keeping his composure, but she really is a master with her unwavering smile and patience.

The lunch hour is relatively quiet. It allows the three of you to take turns having lunch, and Jay can leave the two of you to handle things in the front of house while he gets the cakes and other baked goods ready for the afternoon. Around two, the pace at which customers trickle in starts to pick back up, with those who aren’t morning people and those from surrounding towns. Jay is busy in the kitchen frosting a second batch of red velvet cookies, so he doesn’t see the man walk in—rather, he hears the familiar, unmistakable low boom of his voice as he greets you and Yeonju, then asks where his son is.

His hand freezes on the piping bag. “He’s just in the back, Mr Park,” he hears you say. Before he has time to process, his dad appears in the doorway, a surprised expression on his face like Jay’s the one who showed up unannounced.

A few awkward beats pass as father and son silently stare at each other. Mr Park inhales deeply as if getting himself ready to launch into a monologue, but all that comes out of his mouth is “Hi.”

“Hi, dad.”

“I, uh, Y/N invited me. You—Well, I wasn’t sure if I should come, because you didn’t tell me you were opening today—”

“No, it’s good that you came. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Jay cuts in, scratching the back of his head.

Frowning, his dad shakes his head and waves the apology off with a hand. “It’s alright. You’re busy, I won’t hold you up. Will you let me know when you’re done?”

His father’s tone is different to what Jay is used to. It’s gentler, more hesitant, more conciliatory, even. Like he’s eager to mark a new beginning.

Jay nods as if in a daze, eyes widening slightly, taken aback by his dad’s sudden appearance and quick departure. He almost wants to say, “Already?” but it sounds like his dad will stick around, and he can wait until then. “Sure. Make sure you get coffee and something to eat before you go. On the house, of course.”

He smiles briefly, barely, but it’s there. “Thanks, son.”

A few minutes later, Jay walks out of the kitchen with a tray of cookies and refills the empty display cases. His father didn’t ask why Jay hadn’t said anything, and he isn’t sure he could provide him with an explanation. Why hadn’t he told him? It’s not like they never spoke. Phone calls were few and far between, always short, contrived affairs, but Jay was glad to have at least a vague idea of what was going on in his dad’s life, who in turn seemed genuinely curious to know how his son was faring, as well as his project. He’d said imprecise things like, “I’m hoping to open soon,” or “Should be ready in a couple of weeks,” but never gave him the actual date once he knew it. He didn’t sit down to really think about it, as per usual with any matters concerning his father, but he guesses it was a way of preventing disappointment. If his father didn’t know when Jay opened, he couldn’t fail to show up. Jay wouldn’t have to get his hopes up, and even the potential of being let down was nonexistent.

But he did show up, and although it might not be written in fluorescent marker on Jay’s face, he’s happy. And he only has one person to thank for that.

He has to head back to the kitchen, but he takes a second to slide up to you by the coffee machine. “Did I do the right thing?” you ask, watching as coffee trickles from the portafilter to the espresso cup underneath.

Jay smiles (briefly, barely), scans the room to make sure nobody who cares is watching. Then he leans in, whispers, “I love you,” only for you to hear, kisses the top of your head, then disappears back into the kitchen.

Later, he’ll find out that you unlocked his phone when he was sleeping and copied his father’s number into your own device, just a few days before the opening. His dad called in last-minute changes at work to accommodate for the overnight trip. He’ll chide you for being sneaky, but really, he’ll just be thankful that someone in his life could be so thoughtful, could care so much. And on top of that, it’ll give him leverage—if he takes your surprise guest in stride, you have to do the same for his.

He told his friends — your friends — to show up around closing time, and they did just that. It’s a little after four thirty, Heeseung and Seungkwan arrived a half-hour ago, and as Yeonju and her husband cash up, you and Heeseung clean the front of house, and Jay gets things ready in the kitchen for tomorrow morning, three figures from a different time appear behind the glass door of the café. There’s a loud knock before they open the door and spill in, all wide smiles and ecstatic greetings and wondrous gazes around the place. It might be just the three of them, but Sumin, Jaemin and Jake make about as much noise as a whole class of elementary school kids during recess. Jay rushes to greet them, hugging and clasping shoulders, thanking for coming and asking how the trip was, all while you watch, unmoving, cleaning towel still in hand. Only when he calls your name and gestures for you to come over do you seem to realize you’ve been silent this whole time.

“How-” you start, then shake your head. “Hi, guys.”

Sumin scoffs from what Jay assumes to be indignation at the basic greeting but takes you in her arms anyway. And indeed: “Not a peep from her in five years, and she says, Hi, guys.”

“I’m sorry-”

She hums in disapproval, rubs your back. “I know, it’s okay. We’ll talk about it later.” Hands on your shoulders, she leans back, studies your face with a small smile on her lips, then: “Nope! I’m not letting you cry. I had a plan to be snappy and passive-aggressive all evening, I can’t do that if you’re crying.” You laugh, throwing your head back as you wipe at your eyes as if that’ll make the tears stream back into them instead of onto your cheeks.

Jay watches you carefully as you hug Jaemin and Jake and let them playfully admonish you for going M.I.A., even once he joins in on the conversation, and the five of you fall back into your old dynamics as easily as slipping into water. Just like you were earlier, he’s anxious to be reassured that he did the right thing calling your friends here as a surprise to you. Unlike you, he’d kept in touch with them over the years, visiting them at their restaurants in Seoul or Japan or Australia or wherever they found themselves at any given moment, going out for drinks with other former classmates once in a while. A question would always come up at some point during these gatherings: what the hell were you up to? People would ask Jay first, but when he shook his head and tried not to let the hurt show on his face, they turned to Sumin, your closest friend back then, who was none the wiser. All anyone knew was that you’d gone home to work at the family restaurant, leaving behind your boyfriend, your diploma, and the Paris internship.

The second time he stepped inside of Kim’s Kitchen, rice cakes in hand, he was filled with doubt—maybe seeing him wouldn’t come as a pleasant surprise to you, or as a universe-generated stroke of luck, which was how it came across to him, and his presence would only anger you, or disgust you, or worse, leave you indifferent.

In the end, to his immense joy, it did none of those things, and everything is more than well between the two of you now. But would that extend to your old friends? Would you only be happy to see them, perhaps a bit remorseful of your actions, but happy nonetheless, or would it make you feel awkward, would you feel betrayed by Jay that he didn’t let you in on it? These worries course through his head and every time you smile, laugh, tell them it’s nice to have them here, and introduce your friends, brother and sister-in-law, they dissipate further and further—and when you turn to look up at him, beaming, and your hand finds his, he only feels relief.

He did the right thing.

Of course, Sumin’s sharp eyes notice this immediately—back in school, she knew something was going on between the two of you before anyone else, maybe even before you. “You two have gotten back together,” she plainly states, not even a question. Sheepish, you let Jay acquiesce for the both of you. “Knew it,” she says, and holds out her hand. “You two owe me.”

“Already?!” Jake, ever the drama queen, exclaims, hands on his head like his favorite soccer team just lost a game. Jaemin just begrudgingly fishes his wallet out of his back pocket. “But Jay, you only got here, like, two months ago…”

Jay shrugs, you smile, and Sumin replies, “It took them, what? Three months to start dating in school?” The two of you nod. “It makes sense that it’d be even quicker this time around.” She holds out her hand to Jake, who just glowers at her.

“I don’t carry cash, it’s 2025. I’ll buy you a meal,” he says, which seems to satisfy her.

“You know, maybe the next time we find ourselves in Sojuk-ri, you’ll be dressed in white and we’ll all be wearing our Sunday best…” she trails, giving you a pointed look.

You roll your eyes but can’t hide the grin on your lips. “You’d fit perfectly in this town, Minnie.”

Before Sumin can ask what you mean, Jay takes the opportunity to divert the conversation away from your relationship, and guides the three of them to a table. “We’re technically closed, but you guys are such special customers that we’ll make an exception for you,” he says in a jokingly pompous tone.

“You’re also the one who told us to come after closing time,” Jake remarks. Jay just smiles at his friend, feigning innocence.

You and Yeonju prepare coffees for everyone — Seungkwan offers help and is quickly banished from the counter, but he makes the most of this, sitting down with your former classmates, loudly and gladly sharing his surprise at finding out that you hadn’t lied about having friends — while Heeseung and Jay prepare plates with the unsold pastries of desserts of the day, which there aren’t many of, Jay notes with satisfaction. Conversation flows easily between all of you, especially when Jake asks for embarrassing childhood anecdotes and Seungkwan lights up. Jay doesn’t stay for very long, remembering his father, roaming somewhere around town. He does stay long enough to notice Heeseung’s uncharacteristic shyness—his friend had been instantly laidback around him, but maybe that was due to the professional setting in which they met, and the fact that they both knew you. Perhaps being around three strangers at once makes him more timid than usual; but when he seems to hold his breath and listen intently whenever Sumin speaks, or when he glances her way every time he cracks a joke, as if awaiting her reaction, Jay thinks something else might be at play.

He eventually takes his leave, entrusting you with the keys and making a plan to meet everyone back at your restaurant in an hour or so. Again, you’re technically closed for the day; but again, these are special customers you have here.

Jay calls his father—he’s sitting at the beach, he’ll wait for him there. When he joins him on the cold sand ten minutes later, his dad doesn’t turn to face him, doesn’t acknowledge his arrival, just stares straight ahead at the water. He almost wonders if he’s seen him at all, until the silence is broken. “I came here with your mother, too, you know.” Jay didn’t know, but he stays quiet, lets his father talk. “Just twice. The first time was our first trip together, a few days here, back when we started dating, and then again when she was pregnant with you and wanted to get away from the city. I think I bought a book where your café used to be, I’ll have to look for it.” A pause. “I don’t know why we never brought you here as a child. When you were old enough, we always went somewhere far away… Europe, the US, Thailand. We could’ve just spent a week here. It would’ve been nice.”

When Jay turns to look at his father, he’s startled to find the older man’s eyes red and wet. The only time he’d seen his father cry — not even cry, simply be wet-eyed — was at his mother’s funeral. Never before, never after.

Until now.

There are so many things Jay wants to say that he’s at a loss for words. He could get angry, tell his father how much he resents him for distancing himself from him when he was only a child, for caring so much about his mother but being so inept at showing her that she left anyway. Maybe someday this’ll happen—they’ll have a huge argument, they’ll let everything out, and that’ll be it. But here on this beach, where everything is peaceful, and where his father seems to be opening up to him for the first time, it doesn’t feel like the right time.

So instead, he places a hand on his father’s back, feeling a little clumsy but hoping it’s a soothing gesture, and says, “I’m glad you’re here now.”

Their eyes meet. “Yeah,” his father says, letting out a relieved, almost self-deprecating chuckle, like he’s embarrassed to be acting like this in front of his son. “Yeah.” Then, wiping his eyes, he shifts the topic towards Jay. “So, Y/N, huh?”

A smile tugs at Jay’s lips at the mention of your name. “Yeah, Y/N.” It’s a bit awkward, talking to his father about you — it’s different from his mother, with whom he could share details and receive advice from — but Jay is happy with any opportunity to blabber away about you. He tells him about his surprise at finding you here, about dealing with everyone’s eyes on the two of you, about meeting your family. From there, his father asks questions about your restaurant, about the people, about Jay’s life here, whether he’s adjusting well, whether he’s missing Seoul. It’s probably the most they’ve talked in one sitting since Jay’s childhood—and it’s only forty-ish minutes until Jay realizes they should probably head to Kim’s Kitchen.

The prospect of having dinner with not only your family but your culinary school friends first seems to scare his father off—he tries to decline the offer, says he doesn’t want to impose, but when his son reassures him that he wants him there, it seems to ease his concerns. Truthfully, Jay is also vaguely worried about this mix of people, he’s afraid his father’s coldness, or shyness, depending on how one sees it, might offend your mother and grandmother, that it’ll be awkward for chefs in their early career to sit with someone like him, famous for his food, of course, but even more so for his strictness.

It turns out that your family are huge fans of James Park. When Seungkwan, your mother and your grandmother see him walk in, they gasp loudly and rush towards the entrance, pointing at the two men side-by-side, piecing things together. You’re just as confused as Jay. It’s true that the topic of Jay’s parents only came up a few times, and he always replied briefly, saying his mother had passed away, and his father was the head chef of a reputed restaurant in Seoul. He never mentioned his TV presence; and since the show comes on while you work, you never knew your family tuned in every Friday evening to watch Jay’s dad help failing restaurants with an iron fist.

Under everyone else’s flabbergasted gazes, the three of them usher him enthusiastically into the restaurant, sitting him down at the head of the table, apologizing in advance for the food but hoping it’ll be up to his standards. “Traitors,” you mutter under your breath, only for Jay to hear. They quote iconic lines from his show at each other and burst into laughter like they’ve never heard anything so funny. Jay can’t help but chuckle along, amused by his father’s clear desire to become one with his chair.

Moments where the conversation stills slightly are inevitable, but it all goes surprisingly well, at least by Jay’s standards. Despite your protests, he helps you with the food, following your instructions to a T and bringing dishes out as the evening progresses. He can tell you’re holding your breath when his father takes his first bite of your japchae, but Chef Park seems to have turned his professional mode off, makes a simple comment that the food is good and eats everything heartily. Your friends pester your family for stories about you, about the restaurant, the town. They seem fascinated by this part of your life you left them out of, and Sumin especially is adamant on reminding you she won’t let you get away so easily this time around. When she says something about being one of your bridesmaids, whether you like it or not, your mother lights up, and the two of them tune everyone else out, launching into an impassioned discussion of your wedding, as though you and Jay aren’t sitting right there.

You all stay at the table late into the evening, accompanied by beer and soju and the snacks your grandmother takes it upon herself to whip up even though your stomachs are all more than full. It’s a rare sight seeing her so energetic and eager to cook, so your family lets her. But by the end of the night, Jay can tell you’re ready for everyone to leave. When you start checking out of the conversation, unfocused eyes gazing out towards nothing, he makes a few comments about the time and having to wake up early to open the café, and they seem to get the message. Your family heads home, Jay’s father to his Airbnb — the same one Jay stayed in — but Heeseung, Sumin, Jake and Jaemin are up for another round at Mr Kang’s bar. Of course, when they ask if you and Jay want to join and you reply that you need some “alone time,” a chorus of suggestive whoops is the necessary reaction. You chase them out, closing the door behind them with a contented sigh.

Jay feels your body relax into his embrace. You wrap your arms around his neck, rest your head against his shoulder, and he lets you lean some of your weight on him. You stay like this for a little, just enjoying each other’s warmth, the silence, the feeling of being alone.

“That went well, didn’t it?” he finally mumbles into your hair.

“It did. I think I even saw your dad smile a few times.”

He chuckles. “Sign of a successful evening.” He leans back, keeping one hand on your waist, the other coming up to tuck hair behind your ear. “You sit, I’ll go do the dishes. No arguing,” he adds quickly when you open your mouth to protest.

You exhale through your nose, a small smile playing on your lips as your palms cup the side of his face. It still evades him how your touch can be so comforting and electrifying at the same time—he’s not sure if he wants to melt into it or press your body against the door. But before he can do either, you press your lips to his, a small, chaste thing of a kiss. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” you ask, voice so soft and sincere it makes Jay’s heart twist.

“I’m the one who should be asking that,” he replies, but you immediately start shaking your head.

“You don’t have to do anything, baby. You never have. You’re perfect just the way you are.”

Jay doesn’t know whether you’re aware of what your words do to him, or if you just happen to always say the right thing by accident. Either way, he’s so moved, he feels the need to deflect before the tears welling up behind his eyes actually start to fall. “I’m still going to do the dishes,” he says with a grin, making you roll your eyes.

“If it makes you happy.”

“It does.” With one last kiss to your forehead, he heads into the kitchen. But you don’t sit back at the table like he thought you would. Instead, you follow him and hoist yourself up on an empty counter beside the sink, warning him not to get any water on you, which he replies to by flicking his wet hand at you. You laugh as you recount all the awkward and all the good moments of the evening, and it’s such a small thing, doing the dishes and talking with you, but Jay’s rarely felt such contentment in his whole life. The feeling settles comfortably in his stomach, its warmth spreading to every last inch of his body. He doesn’t know what it is exactly—only when you are back at his apartment does it click. He stands for a few moments on the terrace before heading in, looking out at a dark Sojuk-ri, moon and stars reflecting on the sea at a distance, the boats in the port bobbing gently in the water, and he’s reminded of one of his first nights here, when you came to find him, armed with soju and snacks, and spent an evening picking up the five-year-old remains of your relationship. Now, you come to find him again, wrapping your arms around his middle from behind, pressing a kiss to his nape, resting your chin on his shoulder, his own hands covering yours on his stomach. The foundations of your relationship have been renovated, sturdy and ready to be built upon once again.

It doesn’t matter where he was born, or where he was raised. This is his hometown.

.

Five years later

The clear spring sky outside lends the hospital a warmer, less sterile look today. The thin, white curtains sway gently in the breeze, and the sunrays fall in a golden light right onto your grandmother’s bed, where she sits up, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face. Her eyes are closed, but you know she isn’t sleeping; these visits, no matter how much she enjoys them, always sap what little energy she has. Especially when Jaehui started crying, you could tell the ruckus was a lot for her. Now, Jay is taking care of your two-year-old outside the room, probably going around the hospital corridors with her stroller until she calms down. It is late in the afternoon already, and she must be getting hungry and tired. Your grandmother told you to head home, but there’s something you want to tell her before you leave.

You’ve been mindlessly rambling about small things—how Jaehui and her cousins are getting along, how more and more tourists are arriving in town as spring slowly turns into summer, how your search for a new, bigger house is going. If your grandmother can tell you’re nervous, she doesn’t say anything, just listens and takes small bites of the orange you peel for her.

“Because, you know, now that Jaehui’s getting bigger, the apartment is starting to be a bit small for the three of us, and, well…” Instinctively, you place a hand on your stomach. “With a fourth person, even a tiny person, we’ll definitely need more space.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, taking your hand in both of hers. “That’s wonderful.”

You smile, already feeling the tears form behind your eyes. “Isn’t it?” you whisper. You already did it once, and yet, the second time feels just as miraculous.

“I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the second one, actually. With the way that boy looks at you… Let’s just say I thought you’d be blasting out babies like we used to in my day.”

Her words make you gasp, and you look around the room to make sure none of the other patients are listening. “Grandma!” you exclaim, half-laughing, half-trying to reprimand her.

“Don’t be embarrassed about it! Your husband adores you, and I don’t think he’s planning on stopping anytime soon.”

You look down at the floor, smile turning sheepish. Even after a wedding and a child together, you still feel giddy at the mention of Jay. “He’s amazing, Grandma. He takes care of us so well.”

She nods slowly. “Good. There’s a whole lot of people that would give him a serious whooping if he didn’t.”

A small laugh escapes your throat despite the tears pricking your eyes. Your lips tremble as you speak next, and you have to force the words out, but you feel the need to say them: “So, that’s why you have to hold on a little longer, Grandma, hm? Just a little while, so you can meet them."

Her smile turns melancholic, and she takes a deep breath. “I don’t know, honey. I’ve already had the privilege of meeting three of my grandchildren, can you believe? Not everyone gets to say that.”

“But, Grandma…”

She cuts you off with a squeeze to your hand and a small nod of her head, as if to say, It’ll be okay, don’t argue. Before you can say anything further, her expression turns pensive. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, too. But I’ve never told anyone, so you gotta keep it to yourself, okay?”

Your eyebrows raise. “Of course.”

“Get me that photo album, on the shelf over there,” she says with a gesture of her head. This is one of your family’s older albums, one from your grandmother’s early adult years when your mother and her siblings are still babies and young children. She asked your mother to bring it to her a few weeks after being admitted to the hospital, and you’ve gone through it multiple times already—you’re not sure what’s left to see.

She turns to a specific page, flipping through the album like she knows exactly where to go, and from behind a photo of your uncle’s third birthday, takes out a black-and-white photo of a man you don’t recognize standing in front of…

“The old bookstore?”

“Mh-hm.” The front of the building that now holds Jay’s Café and your apartment looks just the same, with a new paint job and a different sign. What you can glimpse of the inside, however, has totally changed—back then, it was mostly bookshelves and, well, books. The man standing in front of it seems to be very young, still, in his early twenties or so, but his self-assured posture and arms crossed over his chest points to him being the owner of the bookstore.

However, none of that answers your one question: “Why are you showing me this, Grandma?”

There’s a fondness in her eyes as she stares at the picture, a sad smile on her lips—an unmistakable expression, but one that you’ve never seen her wear. She inhales deeply before answering. “Before I married your grandfather, there was someone else I loved.” The words rattle you. Your grandfather was a decade older than her and passed away when you were a child. The few memories you have of him are positive, you remember him as a kind man, always ready to dote on his grandchildren and crack jokes; and whenever she mentions him now, which isn’t often, she only speaks highly of him. You know marriages of convenience weren’t rare back then, but still, you would’ve never guessed your grandmother had someone else. “Kwon Manju.”

You take the photo from her hands, inspect it more closely now that you know who the man is. “You had taste, Grandma. He was hot,” you say, and it makes her giggle—for a second, you feel like you’re gossiping with a friend rather than going down memory lane with your grandmother.

“He was a very charming young man, yes,” she says, chuckling. “And he… Well, we were so young, but we really loved each other. He was the son of the bookshop owner, I was the daughter of the restaurant owner. Their family didn’t mind us being friends when we were children, but once it turned into something else…” She trails off here, lets out a deep sigh.

“They opposed it?”

She nods, eats another piece of orange. You wait, concealing your impatience. “It wasn’t particularly prestigious to work in a restaurant back then, even if you owned it. My parents pulled me out of school as early as they could so I could learn how to cook. Meanwhile, their family had the money to put all of their kids through high school and university. He was the eldest son, and they wanted someone educated and sophisticated for him. Not someone who knew how to debone an entire fish and wore clothes that constantly smelled of kimchi.”

“Grandma…”

“We spent a while sneaking around, but they found out eventually. He talked about running away, but I couldn’t leave my family behind… In the end, he did leave Sojuk-ri, but not on his own terms. His parents were friends with a nice family of college professors who lived in Seoul, and they had a daughter his age. His younger brother was set to take up the bookstore. We didn’t even have time to say goodbye. And you know what it’s like here—it became a whole scandal, and my parents thought I’d never find a husband. Your grandfather was the only boy in town who didn’t care.

“He was a good man and he left us too early. I think, in the end, I loved him more than I ever loved Manju.” Your grandmother’s eyes meet yours then, and she almost looks surprised by your presence. Maybe she told this story for her own sake as much as yours—you remember the relief of letting yourself speak about Jay to someone else for the first time after five years, so you can barely imagine what it’s like, revealing a nearly lifetime-long secret. “I promise there was a use to me telling you about this,” she says, getting a laugh out of you. “It really struck me when I first saw Jay in the old bookstore. And when he turned out to be who he is… Well, I just thought, isn’t it neat that the man my granddaughter loves owns the building my first love used to own? Just a nice twist of fate, I suppose.”

When you walk out of your grandmother’s room a few minutes later, Jay is waiting for you outside, Jaehui in his arms. He smiles when he sees you, then his expression shifts to concern—you don’t realize you’re crying until he asks whether everything is okay. You nod, ready to share with him what you just learned, but your grandmother’s plea not to tell anyone stops you. Even if you know Jay wouldn’t go around blabbering about it, you feel the need to keep this to yourself. Something between you and your grandmother only. So instead, you smile, tell him you’re fine, that these visits just take a toll on you. You sense he knows you’re not telling him everything, but Jay being Jay, he doesn’t press, only acquiesces and presses a soft kiss to your forehead.

You know it isn’t easy for him to be here. Being in a hospital clearly reminds him of his mother, of everything he had to go through before and after her passing. You feel a sense of guilt that you get to have him by your side now when you weren’t there for him back then, but of course, when you tell him this, he reassures you there’s nothing to feel sorry about, that if your situation had been different at the time, you’d have been there; that your pine nut porridge helped a wondrous amount, and he’ll cook it for you in return as often and for as long as you need. “That’s what we promised when we exchanged our vows, isn’t it?” he said, smiling, teasing. (You found out that the mere mention of your marriage did a lot to get you going, even years after the fact, as if you were in a constant state of giddy newlywedded-ness.)

He proposes a detour by the beach before going home. Jaehui doesn’t wake up leaving the hospital or in the car, but the moment the waves can be heard, she awakes as if startled, crying to be let out of her stroller, and starts running around, albeit clumsily — running is only a recently developed skill of hers, as well as being a new way of making you scared for her safety at all times — on the beach.

You and Jay find a dry spot of sand to sit on, silently watching over your daughter together. The sun is melting into the horizon, large strokes of gold and pink staining the sky, the last sunrays of the day making the calm waves sparkle. From your calves, to your thighs, to your torsos, the sides of your bodies are pressed against each other, and with a sigh, you let your head rest on his shoulder. These days, you don’t need to talk much to understand what the other is thinking.

Jay takes your hand in his, raises it up to his lips to press the softest of kisses there, and it’s a touch that says: “I’m here. I’m never letting go.”

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