The video is a little grainy. Someone’s phone camera, probably. The kind held too low, shaking every time the person filming laughs or gasps or swears under their breath. The sound is ugly. Sneakers scuffing across concrete. Someone coughing. Someone saying, “Damn,” like it’s funny. Like the boy on the floor isn’t trying to breathe around a hand pressed hard to his ribs.

And then there is him.

Kong Wooyoung.

My thumb freezes over the screen before my brain has time to catch up.

He is taller than I remember.

That is the first stupid thought I have, and it hits me with such sudden force that shame follows right behind it, hot and mean and immediate. Taller. Bigger. Older in that way boys get when time decides to be cruel and generous at once, stretching them out, sharpening their faces, filling in the places that used to be all elbows and reckless confidence. His shoulders are broader now beneath a black sweatshirt, his arms heavier, his neck stronger. He has grown into himself with an ease that feels unfair, like even the years bowed down a little when they passed him. The boy I remember had been quick and loud and furious, all restless limbs and bruised pride, standing across from my brother in a competition hall with his jaw clenched and his eyes burning like he could set the mat on fire if he stared long enough.

This one smiles when he hits people.

Not a big smile. Not happy.

Worse.

It is small. Crooked. Almost bored.

The video catches him leaning back just enough for a fist to miss his face, his head tilting with a careless little sway, like the other boy is annoying him more than threatening him. Then his hand snaps out. Fast. Clean. Brutal. The sound of the impact crawls up my spine before I can stop it.

The boy drops.

Wooyoung looks down at him.

For one second, his expression changes—not into guilt, not even satisfaction. It goes blank in a way that makes my fingers tighten around my phone. Like the fight has already left him. Like the person at his feet stopped being interesting the second he stopped standing.

Then someone laughs off-camera, and Wooyoung looks toward them.

There it is again.

That smirk.

That stupid, cutting, sharp little smirk I remember from years ago, back when he still had baby fat in his cheeks and anger too big for his body, back when I sat in cold metal bleachers with my knees tucked up, pretending I was only there because Suho was competing, pretending I didn’t keep glancing across the gym every time Kong Wooyoung’s name was called.

My friend’s message sits under the link.

isn’t this the guy your brother fought years ago???

I don’t answer.

I watch another video.

Then another.

By the fourth one, my room has gone dark around me without my permission. The window reflects my face back at me in the glass, pale and half-lit by my phone, eyes fixed too hard on something I should’ve closed ten minutes ago. Outside, the city hums in the wet distance. Someone’s scooter whines past under the apartment building. Somewhere in the other room, Suho is asleep or pretending to be, because that is what my brother does when the world gets too loud—he shuts his eyes and makes his face go easy, like nothing can touch him if he refuses to react.

I used to hate that about him.

I used to envy it, too.

The next video starts automatically.

Wooyoung is laughing before the fight begins.

He rolls his shoulders like he has all the time in the world, bouncing once on the balls of his feet, loose and bright-eyed under a hanging light that swings slightly overhead. The place looks illegal in every possible way—basement walls stained with old water, concrete floor marked with shoe prints. Someone shouts something off screen.

Wooyoung hears it.

He looks over with that same sarcastic tilt to his mouth, says something I can’t fully catch, but I know the shape of it anyway. Something rude. Something funny enough to make the boys around him laugh, sharp enough to make the other fighter’s face tighten.

And there, in the dim yellow light, with his hair falling slightly over his forehead and one corner of his mouth lifted like nothing in the world has ever scared him, I remember being thirteen years old and watching him lose.

I remember the competition hall smelling like sweat, rubber mats, and vending-machine coffee. I remember Suho stretching beside me, calm as water, while I sat with his jacket folded in my lap and pretended not to look at the boy across the room.

Wooyoung had been impossible not to notice.

He was loud in a place where everyone else tried to look disciplined. He kept rolling his neck, cracking his knuckles, grinning at his friends like he was already bored. When his coach snapped at him, he only dragged his tongue along the inside of his cheek and looked away, smug and annoyed. I remember thinking he was irritating. I remember thinking he was pretty. I remember hating myself for both thoughts because Suho was standing right there and Wooyoung was the kind of boy my brother always beat without needing to make it personal.

And then Suho did beat him.

Badly.

Not cruelly. Suho was never cruel with it. That almost made it worse.

He had moved like he always did—easy, loose, untouchable. He let Wooyoung come at him, let him waste his anger, let him burn himself out against empty air and clean counters. I remember the sound of Wooyoung’s breath getting harsher. The bright red flush climbing up his neck. The way his eyes changed when he realized he couldn’t catch my brother, couldn’t scare him, couldn’t force the fight into becoming something messy enough for him to win.

When Suho landed the final kick, the whole gym seemed to exhale.

Wooyoung hit the mat.

For a second, he didn’t move.

I stood before I meant to.

No one noticed. Or maybe they did and forgot. But I remember it with the strange, humiliating clarity of a secret I never told anyone. My hand had tightened around Suho’s jacket. My heart had jumped—not because my brother won, because of course he won, but because Wooyoung was on the floor and I wanted him to get up.

Then he did.

Slowly.

Angrily.

He shoved off the mat, refusing help, refusing to look hurt, refusing everything except the fire in his own face. He spat blood into the corner of his mouth and looked at Suho like he hated him enough to live longer out of spite.

Then his eyes flicked past my brother.

To me.

Only once.

A glance, nothing more. Quick enough that I spent years convincing myself I invented it.

But I hadn’t.

Because I remember how it felt.

Like being caught with my hand too close to a flame.

Now, years later, I sit in the dark watching him break someone’s nose on video, and my throat feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with how time can take one small, stupid crush and bury it under homework, uniforms, winter mornings, family dinners, exams, and the ordinary ache of growing up—only to drag it back out years later with blood on its mouth.

I turn my phone off. The screen goes black. My reflection looks back at me. For a second, all I can see is the girl in the bleachers.

Then my phone vibrates again.

This time, it is not my friend.

It is someone from Suho’s school. A name I barely recognize, only saved because Suho once told me, lazily, “That’s Sieun. He studies too much,” and smiled in that quiet way he does when he likes someone but refuses to say it properly.

The message is short.

Too short.

Your brother might be in trouble.

My whole body goes cold before I open it.

The next messages come in uneven bursts. A location. My brother's birthday. An abandoned shopping mall. Sieun hurt. Beomseok’s name appearing in the middle of it all like a crack in glass. And then another name, typed with no idea what it will do to me.

Kong Wooyoung.

For a moment, the room disappears. It loosens at the edges. The walls blur. The shadows thicken. The phone in my hand becomes too heavy, too bright, too real. I read the message again, but the words do not change.

Paid to beat up Suho.

Paid.

As if my brother is an errand.

As if someone handed over money and pointed at him and said, hurt him, and someone else nodded.

My first breath comes shallow. The second comes worse.

Suho’s door is shut down the hallway.

Behind it, there is no sound.

My brother has always been too good at silence.

I stand.

The floor is cold under my feet. I don’t remember crossing the room. I don’t remember grabbing my jacket. I only remember the small metallic scrape of my keys in the dish by the door and the sudden, vicious brightness of the hallway light when I step outside.

The city at night feels like something holding its breath.

By the time I find the gym, morning has not quite arrived.

The sky is still bruised, caught between black and blue, with thin grey light gathering along the edges of buildings. The streets are damp from rain that must have fallen while I was on the bus. Everything smells like wet pavement, cigarette smoke, and old metal. The gym sits on a side street between a shuttered convenience store and a building with peeling signs in the windows, its entrance half-hidden down a narrow set of stairs. There is no clean sign. No polished front desk. Nothing that says people come here to become better versions of themselves.

This is not that kind of place.

This is where boys go when they want to turn pain into money.

I stand outside the door with my hand curled around the strap of my bag so tightly my knuckles ache. I can hear sound from inside—dull hits against a bag, sneakers dragging, someone laughing low. There is a rhythm to it, ugly and familiar. Impact. Breath. Impact. Breath. Like a heart learning violence instead of blood.

I tell myself to open the door.

I don’t.

For one unbearable second, I see Suho at thirteen, grinning with his mouthguard still in, hair damp with sweat, saying, “You worry too much,” like worry is a shirt I can take off if I get tired of wearing it.

Then I see him now.

Older. Taller. Still careless with himself. Still walking into danger because he thinks being strong means nothing can break him.

My hand moves.

The door opens with a groan.

Warm air hits me first, thick with sweat and old rubber and the sour, metallic smell of bodies pushed too hard. The lights buzz overhead. The room is bigger than it looks from outside, long and low-ceilinged, with heavy bags hanging like dark bodies from chains, a boxing ring shoved into the far corner, mats peeling slightly at the edges. A couple of boys turn when I come in. One of them has a towel around his neck and a bruise blooming under one eye. Another is sitting on a bench wrapping his hands, his gaze sliding over me with curiosity that makes my skin prickle.

I hate it. The way every room of boys has a temperature. The way you can feel it change when you enter.

I lift my chin anyway.

“Is Kong Wooyoung here?”

The boy on the bench smiles like he wants to be funny. “Depends who’s asking.”

I look at him.

I don’t know what my face does. Whatever it is, his smile falters just enough to make the other boy laugh under his breath.

Then a voice comes from the back.

“Who’s looking for me this early?”

The room shifts before I turn.

He is near the ring, one glove hanging loose from his hand, the other already off. His sweatshirt is gone. He wears a sleeveless black training top darkened slightly with sweat at the collar, and for one wild, stupid second, my brain gives me nothing useful. No speech. No anger. No plan.

Just him.

Kong Wooyoung, older and real and standing twenty feet away from me with sweat shining along his throat.

The videos did not do him justice.

That thought is so inconvenient I almost laugh.

He has filled out in a way the screen flattened. His shoulders are not just broader; they change the space around him. His arms are corded from training, veins faint beneath warm skin, hands rough from hitting things too often. His face is sharper now, the boyish softness burned away into angles. His hair is damp, pushed back messily from his forehead, but a few strands have fallen loose. His mouth is the same, though. That is what gets me. That mouth still looks like trouble found a body and decided to stay there.

He looks at me without recognizing me.

I feel it. The blank sweep of his eyes over my face, quick and assessing, used to girls coming in for reasons that probably have nothing to do with stopping a fight. Used to attention. Used to being wanted and feared and paid.

Then something catches.

His eyes narrow slightly.

The glove slips lower in his hand.

“No way,” he says.

It is quiet, but the boys nearby hear it.

Something flickers across his face, too fast to name. Not softness nor surprise, exactly. More like a memory putting its hand around his throat.

Then he smiles.

Slowly.

Meanly.

“Well, damn.” He tosses the glove onto the edge of the ring and starts walking toward me. “Ahn Suho’s little sister.”

I hate the way my stomach drops.

Not because he says it like an insult.

Because he remembers.

He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can smell sweat and faint soap and something sharper underneath, like cold air clinging to his skin from when he came in earlier. He looks down at me—not by much, but enough that it bothers me, because I remember when we were younger and he wasn’t this much bigger. Enough that my body notices before my pride can slap it.

His eyes move over my face again, slower this time.

I feel every inch of it.

It is not polite. It is not shy. It is not even disguised. He looks at me like he is matching the girl in front of him to one sitting years ago in metal bleachers with Suho’s jacket in her lap, and the corner of his mouth lifts like whatever he finds there amuses him.

“You grew up,” he says.

Something in my chest tightens.

“So did you.”

His smile sharpens. “Yeah? You noticed?”

There it is.

That same old irritation, sudden and bright, cutting through the tension like a match strike.

I should have expected it. I did expect it. Still, hearing him speak like that—casual, smug, like the world is a joke and he is the only one who knows the punchline—does something strange to the inside of my ribs. I remember him younger, blood at the corner of his mouth, glaring at Suho like defeat was something he could swallow and spit back out later.

He looks like he did spit it back out.

Over and over.

Until it became this.

I force my fingers to uncurl from my bag strap. “I need to talk to you.”

“You are talking to me.”

“Alone.”

One of the boys behind him makes a low sound, half-laugh, half-whistle. Wooyoung doesn’t look away from me.

For a second, his expression doesn’t change. Then his eyes flicker, just once, toward the others. “What, you guys need an invitation? Go stare at something else.”

The boy on the bench scoffs. “Hyung, seriously?”

Wooyoung turns his head slightly. He doesn’t say anything. The silence does the work for him.

The boys move, muttering, pretending they wanted to leave anyway. One disappears toward the locker area. Another goes back to the heavy bag, but even his punches get quieter. The room does not empty, not completely, but the space around us widens.

Wooyoung looks back at me.

“Alone enough for the princess?”

I almost flinch at the word. Not because it hurts. Because it is exactly the kind of thing he would say, and for some reason that makes it worse. Makes him too real. Too close to the boy I remember. Too far from him too.

I step closer.

His eyes drop briefly to my feet, then back to my face.

“I heard you were paid to go after my brother.”

The smile does not leave his mouth. But it thins. A small thing. Barely there. If I hadn’t been watching him so hard, I might have missed it.

“Straight to business,” he says. “No ‘long time no see’? No ‘how have you been, Wooyoung’? That’s cold.”

“How much?”

His head tilts. “How much what?”

“How much are they paying you?”

He lets out a short laugh through his nose, looking away like I have disappointed him. “Wow. You really are his sister.”

My jaw tightens. He sees it. Of course he sees it.

That is the thing about fighters. Real ones. They notice everything the body tries to hide. The swallowed breath. The clenched fingers. The half-step you do not take. The way your eyes betray you before your mouth can lie.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means you both walk in like you already decided how the world should work.” He looks back at me, eyes bright with something old and ugly. “He did that too. Your brother. Always calm. Always looking at people like they’re making too much noise.”

My voice comes out quieter than I expect. “You’re still mad he beat you.”

His smile vanishes. It fades slowly, like light draining out of a room.

For the first time since I walked in, I see the shape of his anger without the joke over it. It is not explosive yet. Not loud. It sits behind his eyes, old and well-fed, a thing that has been kept alive for years because some boys would rather polish humiliation than bury it.

The gym feels too warm.

Wooyoung takes one step closer. I make myself stay still.

His gaze dips, catches the tiny movement of my throat when I swallow, and something sharp flickers across his face. Satisfaction, maybe. Or interest. With him, they look too similar.

“You came all the way here to tell me something I already know?” he asks.

“I came here to tell you to stop.” He blinks once. Then he laughs. It is not loud, but it is cruel enough to make my skin heat.

“To stop,” he repeats, like the words taste funny. “That’s cute.”

My nails press into my palms. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”

“Then don’t say stupid things.”

The words hit fast.

For a second, I forget the plan. Forget the careful speech I put together on the bus, staring at my reflection in the dark window while the city slid past in pieces. I forget that I came here because Suho might be in danger, because he beat Sieun so bad that he had to reach out to me, because money is moving between boys like blood under a door.

All I see is Wooyoung’s mouth.

That smirk trying to come back.

That same arrogance. That same heat. That same infuriating certainty that if he keeps standing close enough, keeps looking hard enough, keeps twisting the knife with a joke, everyone else will back down.

I lift my hand before I think. His eyes flick to it. Not scared.

Ready.

The realization makes something cold move through me.

He thought I might hit him. And some part of him wanted to see if I would.

My hand stops halfway between us. The gym noise fades around the edges.

His gaze slides from my raised hand to my face, and the air between us changes again. Slowly this time. He watches me lower it, watches the restraint happen in real time, and I can tell by the faint curve returning to his mouth that he likes it. Not because it is weakness. Because it isn’t.

Because he can see I wanted to.

Because I didn’t.

“You always look like that?” he asks softly.

My voice feels scraped thin. “Like what?”

“Like you’re trying really hard not to do something reckless.”

I hate him for saying it.

I hate him more because it is true.

Suho has always been the calm one. The easy one. The one who shrugs off blood and bruises and attention, the one who smiles like getting hurt is only inconvenient if someone makes a big deal out of it. People think that means he is careless, but they don’t understand. Suho carries danger lightly because he refuses to let it own him.

I carry it like a lit match cupped in both hands.

Careful.

Burning anyway.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I say. Wooyoung’s eyes move over my face again, slower than before, and this time his smile does not look amused.

“No,” he says. “But I remember you.”

My breath catches so slightly I pray he misses it. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

He leans a little closer, not enough to touch, just enough to make the space feel deliberate. “You were always there. Sitting behind him. Holding his stuff. Looking all worried like he was going to die in a kids’ competition.”

The memory opens under me so suddenly I almost lose my footing. Bleachers. Cold metal. Suho’s jacket in my lap. Wooyoung on the mat, getting up with blood in his mouth.

“I wasn’t worried.”

“You stood up when I hit the floor.”

The room goes very still.

He remembers.

The thought moves through me slowly, impossibly, like a hand dragging through water.

He remembers.

Not just Suho. Not just losing. Not just the humiliation he has apparently carried around like a blade tucked under his tongue. He remembers me. A girl in the bleachers. A stupid moment. One breath. One movement I spent years pretending had meant nothing.

My mouth goes dry. Wooyoung sees it, and the smirk returns, but it is different now. Less cruel. More dangerous.

“I thought that was funny,” he says. “His sister looking scared for me.”

“I wasn’t scared for you.”

“Liar.”

The word is soft.

It lands harder than if he shouted.

I look away first, and I hate that too. My eyes fall to his hands because looking at his face suddenly feels impossible. His knuckles are red. One is split slightly, a thin dark line where the skin has opened. There is tape wrapped carelessly around his wrist. I wonder if he did it himself. I wonder who used to do it for him when he was younger. I wonder why I am wondering anything at all when those hands might be used on my brother for money.

That pulls me back.

Hard.

I look up again.

“You hurt Sieun.”

Something changes.

Not guilt. I don’t think Wooyoung is built to offer guilt easily, at least not where anyone can see it. But the air cools. His eyes narrow a fraction, his posture settling back into something more guarded.

“He got in the way.”

“He’s smaller than you.”

His mouth twists. “A lot of people are smaller than me.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

For a long second, neither of us moves, and the whole gym seems to breathe around us. Somewhere behind him, a bag chain creaks. Someone’s footsteps move in the locker area, then stop, like whoever it is can feel the tension and has decided they value their life too much to interrupt it.

I force myself to speak carefully.

“Whatever Beomseok is paying you, it isn’t worth it.”

Wooyoung’s expression sharpens at the name.

So I was right.

The knowledge settles sickly in my stomach. The thought of it makes my chest tighten with a colder kind of anger, one that does not flare but sinks. Suho had brought him home once. Quiet boy. Polite. Eyes too busy watching everything. I remember setting down drinks in front of them and thinking he looked like someone waiting for a door to slam.

Now he is paying people to make it happen.

Wooyoung clicks his tongue. “You’re really bad at negotiating.”

“I’m not negotiating.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Usually people offer something before telling me to walk away from easy money.”

The words hit me strangely.

Easy money.

There is something ugly and honest in how he says it. Not proud, exactly. Not ashamed either. Just plain. Like money is money, and pain is pain, and if the world is already going to make one out of the other, he might as well be the one holding the cash at the end.

For one moment, against my will, I see him outside the frame of his videos.

Not as the boy smiling over someone else’s blood.

As someone older than the kid Suho beat, but not old enough to have stopped being angry about it. Someone who found a way to make people cheer for the same violence that once humiliated him. Someone who turned losing into a business model because maybe being paid to hurt people feels better than hurting for free.

It does not excuse him.

I hate that I understand even a piece of it.

“How much?” I ask again.

His eyebrows lift slightly. “Why? You gonna pay me more?”

“If I have to.”

He laughs, but this time it comes out surprised. Then he looks at me properly. Really looks. The kind of look that makes every nerve under my skin stand at attention.

“You?” he says. “You’re gonna pay me?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“With what? Allowance?”

My face burns.

His smile widens.

There is the cruelty again, bright and easy, and I see exactly how he uses it. A jab before anyone gets too close. A joke sharp enough to make the other person bleed first. He is good at it. Too good. He knows where to press without knowing why it hurts.

I step into his space before I can talk myself out of it.

This close, I have to tilt my head slightly to keep looking at him. It makes my pulse kick in irritation. It makes his eyes drop again, briefly, to my mouth, then back up. The movement is so fast that if I were kinder to myself, I would pretend I imagined it.

I don’t.

“I’m not here to be mocked by you,” I say, and my voice is low enough that the words feel private. “I’m here because you’re going after my brother. So tell me what you want.”

His face changes. Not softening. Never that. But his attention gathers tighter, like a fist closing.

“What I want?”

“Yes.”

He studies me.

For a second, the old Wooyoung disappears entirely. The jokes fall away. The smirk fades. What remains is worse: a boy with years of resentment sitting behind his eyes and something new catching fire underneath it. He looks at me like he has found a door he did not know was unlocked.

Then he says, “I want him to know what it feels like.”

My stomach twists.

“What?”

“Your brother.” His voice is even now. Too even. “I want him on the floor. I want him looking up at me. I want him to remember it.”

The words should make him sound childish. They don’t. They make him sound honest. That is so much worse.

I think of Suho in that competition hall, young, calm and untouchable. I think of Wooyoung hitting the mat. I think of all the years between then and now, all the ways boys teach themselves to survive humiliation by turning it into hunger.

My fingers curl.

“So that’s it?” I ask. “You’re still thirteen?”

His eyes flash.

There.

Finally.

The hit lands.

His hand moves before I realize he is going to move at all.

He doesn’t grab me. Not exactly. His fingers close around the strap of my bag near my shoulder, tugging just enough to stop me when I instinctively step back. The motion is small, controlled, but the suddenness of it sends heat racing down my spine.

The gym seems to tilt. His face is closer now. Too close. “Careful,” he says.

The word comes out almost playful. It is not. I look down at his hand on my strap. Then back at him.

“Let go.”

His eyes search mine. For one sharp second, I think he won’t. Then his fingers loosen one by one. The strap slips back against my shoulder. The place he touched feels louder than the rest of me.

Wooyoung’s jaw works once, like he is biting down on whatever he almost said. When he speaks again, the sarcasm has returned, but it is thinner. “You came into my gym, started talking about my money, my fights, and my feelings—”

“Your feelings?” I repeat before I can stop myself, a small scoff leaving my lips.

He smiles. “What, you don’t think I have any?”

“I think you pretend you don’t because it makes you feel less pathetic.”

Silence.

The whole sentence hangs between us, bright and terrible. For a heartbeat, I think I have gone too far. Then Wooyoung laughs. Not because it is funny. Because if he doesn’t laugh, he might do something else.

He turns away, running a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking once with the sound. When he looks back at me, his eyes are bright in a way that makes my stomach drop.

“You always talk like this?” he asks.

“Only to people who deserve it.”

“Ah.” He nods, tongue pressing into his cheek. “So you missed me.”

The words are so ridiculous, so perfectly timed, that my anger stumbles. Just for a second. His gaze catches it.

“You did, didn’t you?” His smile turns wicked. “No wonder you watched the videos.”

I go still.

His eyes gleam.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “There it is.”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what?” He leans closer again. “You didn’t watch them? You didn’t look me up? You didn’t come here already knowing I got taller?”

My face goes hot so fast I feel dizzy. It is infuriating because he isn’t entirely right, but he isn’t wrong enough.

And he knows it.

He knows it the way fighters know openings. He sees the breath I fail to take, the way my eyes flick away, the small betrayal of blood rising under my skin. His smile shifts into something slower, more fascinated than cruel now, and that is somehow worse. Cruelty I can push against. Interest gets under the skin.

“You’re disgusting,” I say.

“Maybe.” He lifts one shoulder. “But you still came.”

“For Suho.”

“Sure.”

“I came for my brother.”

“I said sure.” The calmness in his voice makes me want to hit him again. This time, he smiles like he can feel it before I move. “Go ahead,” he says.

My breath stops.

He tilts his head slightly, offering his cheek in a way that is almost lazy, almost mocking, almost intimate enough to make my heart trip over itself. “You look like you want to. Might make you feel better.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“No?” His eyes return to mine. “Why not?”

Because I am afraid I’ll like the sound of it.

The thought appears whole and unforgivable, and I hate myself so much for it that I nearly step back.

Nearly. Instead, I lift my chin.

“Because I’m not you.”

Something dark flickers across his face. Not anger this time. Something lower.

He looks at me for a long moment, and the air between us thickens until breathing feels like something I have to do carefully. The gym fades again. The buzzing lights. The dull thud of someone hitting a bag too far away. The damp morning light leaking weakly through a high, dirty window.

All of it pulls back.

There is only Wooyoung looking at me like he cannot decide whether he wants to laugh, fight, or ruin his own life a little.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” he says.

My brows draw together. “Remember what?” He looks almost offended. Then the expression vanishes behind a scoff.

“Forget it.”

“No. What?”

“I said forget it.”

“You brought it up.”

“And now I’m putting it down.”

“That’s not how conversations work.”

“With me, they do.”

I stare at him.

He stares back, mouth tilted, but there is something guarded now. Something he has tucked away too quickly. It bothers me more than it should. The idea that there is a memory he has and I don’t. That he has carried something from back then besides Suho’s victory. That I was in the room of his past in some way I never understood.

My voice softens before I can harden it.

“What don’t I remember?”

For the first time, Wooyoung looks away.

It is so quick most people would miss it. But I don’t. His gaze cuts toward the ring, toward the hanging bags, toward anything that is not my face. His jaw tightens once.

Then he laughs under his breath.

“Nothing,” he says. “Just funny.”

“What is?”

His eyes slide back to mine. “You coming here like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like you can save him.”

The softness in me dies.

Just like that.

It is almost peaceful, the way it goes. One second I am leaning toward a memory, and the next I am back in the cold center of why I came. Suho. Sieun. Blood on concrete. Money exchanged in shadows. Wooyoung standing between my brother and whatever ugly thing Beomseok has set in motion.

I step back.

This time, Wooyoung notices the difference.

His expression shifts.

“You don’t get to talk about him like that,” I say. His brows lift, but he doesn’t interrupt. “You don’t know him. Not really. You know one fight from years ago. You know that he beat you, and you’ve been making that everyone else’s problem ever since.”

His smile is gone now.

Good.

I keep going, because if I stop, I might hear how hard my heart is beating.

“You want him on the floor? Fine. You want him to look up at you? Fine. Maybe you get that. Maybe you hurt him. Maybe you finally get whatever moment you’ve been starving for since you were a kid.” My voice shakes once, and I swallow it down so hard it hurts. “But it won’t fix anything.”

The room is too quiet.

Wooyoung does not move.

I see something pass through his eyes, small and fast and furious. Not because I insulted him. Because I came close to something. Because the truth is only useful when it is in your own hand. In someone else’s, it becomes a weapon.

“You done?” he asks.

“No.”

His mouth twitches. Despite everything, despite the anger sitting between us like broken glass, something almost pleased crosses his face.

Of course.

Of course he likes being pushed.

That was always his problem.

“I’m not asking you to forgive him for beating you,” I say. “I’m not asking you to be a good person. I’m not even asking you to care about what happens to Sieun or Beomseok or anyone else.” My throat tightens around the next words. “I’m asking you not to take money to destroy my brother because someone else is too much of a coward to face him himself.”

Wooyoung’s eyes sharpen.

“Destroy,” he repeats.

The word sounds different in his mouth.

He takes a step closer again, slower this time. I hold my ground because I have already backed up once and I refuse to give him another inch. He stops close enough that I can see the faint scar near his eyebrow, the tiny flecks of dried blood near one knuckle, the pulse moving in his throat.

“You think I can destroy Ahn Suho?”

The question is quiet.

Dangerous.

And there, beneath it, something almost hungry.

I should say no.

I should say my brother is stronger than him. Faster. Better. I should hand him the old humiliation again and remind him why he is angry in the first place. It would be easy. It would even feel good for half a second.

But I think of the videos.

I think of the way Wooyoung moves now. I think of how Suho hasn't fought professionally in years, hasn't even been working out. He is not in shape to fight someone who hasn't gotten off the mat or out of the gym since he was thirteen.

I think of time, and money, and grudges, and boys who turn themselves into weapons because nobody stopped them early enough.

My silence answers before I do.

Wooyoung sees it.

His smile returns, but slowly. Not mocking now. Triumphant in a way that makes my stomach sink.

“Wow,” he says softly. “You do think I can.”

“I think you can hurt him.”

He leans in a fraction.

“And that scares you.”

I hate him.

I hate him for saying it gently.

I hate him for watching my face like fear is something precious. Like he wants to put his hands around it and see what shape it makes.

“My brother has been hurt before.”

“Not by me.”

The words land like a promise.

For a second, I forget what air is supposed to do.

His eyes hold mine, and I see it then—not just revenge, not just money, not just old humiliation dressed up as ambition. I see the thrill of it. The possibility. The part of him that has waited years to find out whether he has become enough to make Suho bleed properly. Enough to rewrite the memory. Enough to turn the boy on the mat into the boy standing over him.

And I see something else too. The way his gaze keeps returning to me. Like I am tangled in it now. Like part of the reward has changed shape since I walked through the door.

I step closer before I can lose my nerve. This time, I enter his space so deliberately that his expression stills.

“If you touch him,” I say, “I’ll make sure you regret it.”

His eyes drop to my mouth again.

Then back.

“How?”

It is almost a whisper. The question should sound mocking. It doesn’t. It sounds curious.

Like he genuinely wants to know what I would do. Like some terrible part of him wants me to surprise him. Wants me to become sharper, meaner, less like the girl in the bleachers and more like someone who would walk into a gym before dawn with fear in her hands and still use it like a blade.

“I don’t know yet,” I say.

His smile spreads.

Honest this time.

Delighted.

“That’s the cutest threat I’ve ever heard.”

My hand lifts again. This time, I don’t stop it. I shove him. Hard. Not enough to move him much. He is too solid now, too rooted in his own body. But his shoulder rocks back half an inch, and the sound of my palm hitting his chest cracks through the space between us.

For one second, neither of us breathes.

His eyes are wide.

Not with pain nor with anger.

Surprise.

Then something else.

Something bright and immediate and dangerous enough to make my pulse go wild.

Behind him, someone mutters, “Oh shit.”

Wooyoung turns his head slightly. “Go outside.” No one moves. His voice drops. “Now.”

This time, they do.

The gym empties in pieces. Shoes scrape. A door opens somewhere. Someone laughs nervously and gets elbowed into silence. The sounds fade until there is only the buzz of the lights and the dull city morning pressing against the high windows.

I realize too late that I am alone with him.

Fully, now.

Wooyoung looks back at me. The place I shoved him is still under my palm in memory, warm and hard and alive. He rubs his chest once, slow, like he is thinking about it. Like he wants me to watch him think about it.

“You got stronger too,” he says.

My voice comes out thin. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do that.” His eyebrows lift. “That thing where you make everything a joke because you don’t know how to be normal.”

He laughs quietly.

Then he starts walking.

Not toward me. Past me.

For a second I think he is leaving, and panic flashes bright in my chest. But he only goes to the bench, grabs a towel, wipes the sweat from the side of his neck. His movements are unhurried now, almost too casual. It gives him the upper hand again. He knows it.

I follow him with my eyes, hating how aware I am of every shift in his body. He sits on the edge of the bench, elbows on his knees, towel hanging from one hand. The posture should make him look less dangerous.

It doesn’t.

“Do you know what’s funny?” he asks.

“Nothing about this is funny.”

“That’s what makes it funny.”

I stare at him.

He looks up at me through damp strands of hair, and the years collapse for one impossible second. I see the boy on the mat again. The blood. The glare. The way his eyes found mine afterward like he hated that I saw him fall.

“You came here for Suho,” he says. “But you keep looking at me like that.”

My stomach tightens. I don’t answer. His mouth curves. Not wide. Not cruel. Worse.

Knowing.

“I wondered about you,” he says. The confession is so sudden, so wrong in the room, that I almost miss it. My heart does something painful.

“What?”

He shrugs, looking down at his hand as if the tape around his wrist is more interesting than my face. “After competitions. Sometimes.”

The softness of it is a trick. It has to be. Wooyoung does not get to sound like that. Not here. Not after Sieun. Not after the videos. Not after taking money to hurt my brother.

But the words sink in anyway.

After competitions.

Sometimes.

I see myself at thirteen from outside my own body: knees tucked on a bleacher, hair falling in my face, Suho’s jacket in my lap. I wonder what he saw. I wonder if I looked as obvious as I felt. I wonder if he had been angry enough to notice everything, or lonely enough to keep the wrong things.

He glances up.

“There she is again,” he murmurs. I blink. His gaze is fixed on my face. “That look,” he says.

I turn away. “Shut up.”

He laughs under his breath. “Still cute.”

The word hits harder than it should.

Cute.

Not gorgeous. Not pretty. Not one of the words boys use when they are trying to get something. Cute. The way he says it is almost insulting, almost fond, almost like he resents the fact that it came out at all.

I grip the strap of my bag again.

“You’re not going to distract me.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You are.”

“If I was trying, you’d know.”

My eyes snap back to his.

He smiles.

There is heat in my face, my neck, somewhere behind my ribs where it does not belong. I hate that he can do this while sitting in a dirty gym with split knuckles and a paid fight hanging between us. I hate that attraction does not wait for permission from morality. It rises where it wants, stupid and physical, dragging memory behind it like smoke.

I think about Suho.

The heat turns bitter.

“You hurt my brother, and whatever this is—” I gesture between us, because I don’t have a better word for the awful, electric thing in the air, “—it dies.”

Wooyoung’s smile fades. Very slowly. For the first time, I see the threat land somewhere he did not expect. He sits back. His eyes stay on mine.

“What is this?” he asks. The question is quiet. Not teasing now. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Because there is no honest answer that does not ruin me a little.

This is nothing.

This is a childhood crush dragged out of its grave and given a dangerous face. This is fear and memory and the body being stupid. This is me standing in front of the boy who might hurt my brother and noticing the shape of his hands.

This is him looking at me like revenge has suddenly become complicated.

I swallow.

“It’s nothing yet.” His eyes darken. The word yet sits between us like a lit fuse.

For one suspended second, I think he might stand. I think he might cross the space between us and do something reckless, something cruel or soft or both. My whole body prepares for it without my permission, breath shallow, fingers stiff, heart beating too hard against the quiet.

He doesn’t.

He only laughs once, under his breath, and looks away.

“Damn,” he says. “You really know how to make a guy lose money.”

My knees almost weaken with relief. Or disappointment. I refuse to find out which.

“Then don’t take the fight.”

He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek, thinking. Or pretending to. With Wooyoung, even silence has attitude.

“It’s a lot of money.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” He looks at me again, and there is something colder there now. Older. “People like you never know what that means.”

My spine stiffens. “People like me?”

“Suho’s sister. Clean uniform. Good brother who wins things and smiles like life’s easy.”

The words cut because they are wrong in ways he does not know and right in ways I do not want to explain. He doesn’t know about overdue bills, about Grandma counting expenses under her breath, about Suho pretending he isn’t tired and taking two jobs to help, about all the tiny humiliations families keep private because poverty becomes uglier when someone else names it incorrectly.

But I understand enough. I understand that Wooyoung is not speaking to me, not entirely. He is speaking to every room he was ever outside of. Every coach who looked disappointed. Every opponent who laughed. Every time money turned a person into something usable.

“My life isn’t what you think it is,” I say.

His face gives nothing.

“Neither is mine,” he says.

For once, there is no joke after.

The silence that follows feels different.

Not peaceful. Never peaceful. But heavier. Less like a fight and more like two people standing on opposite sides of something neither of them built.

I take a breath.

“What did Beomseok offer you?”

Wooyoung watches me for a long moment.

"15 million won," It is worse than I thought. My stomach drops. He sees that too. “Yeah,” he says. “Exactly.”

I look down.

The floor beneath my shoes is scuffed with old marks, dark streaks from rubber soles, faint stains that might be sweat or blood or both. I think of Suho’s birthday. Of Sieun hurt in some abandoned mall. Of Beomseok with his quiet eyes and his shaking hands, buying violence because he couldn’t bear being powerless anymore.

I think of Wooyoung saying easy money. Nothing about this is easy. That is the lie boys tell themselves so they can keep doing it.

“I can’t match that,” I say.

“No kidding.”

I look up sharply.

He lifts both hands slightly, mock-innocent. “What? You wanted honesty.”

“I can find another way.”

His gaze sharpens. “What way?”

“I don’t know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I don’t know yet.”

“Then you’re wasting my time.”

He stands.

The movement is sudden enough that my body reacts before my mind does. He is in front of me again, close and tall and warm from training, blocking out part of the overhead light. Shadows cut along his cheekbones. His expression has hardened, but underneath it, I see frustration. Not only with me.

With himself.

“You should go,” he says.

“No.”

His jaw tightens. “Go home.”

“No.”

His eyes flash. “You think saying no enough times changes something?”

“It got you to keep talking.” For a second, he looks like he might smile. He doesn’t let himself. Instead, he steps closer until I have to tip my head back slightly.

“You’re annoying,” he says.

“You’re violent.”

“You came to a fighting gym.”

“You fight teenagers for cash.”

“They agree.”

“Sieun didn’t.”

His face hardens again. I see the exact second that lands. Not because it makes him feel bad enough. But because it takes away one of his excuses. The clean one. The one he could wrap around his knuckles and call business.

They agree.

Sieun didn’t.

I press forward because I have him there. Because I may not be able to beat him or pay him or scare him, but I can make him look at the part he would rather skip.

“He didn’t agree to be part of whatever revenge fantasy you and Beomseok are acting out.”

Wooyoung’s mouth twists. “Careful.”

“No.”

“You love that word, huh?”

“I’m learning from you. Repeating things until they get annoying.”

His eyes narrow. Then, to my surprise, he laughs.

It slips out of him before he catches it, small and reluctant and real. The sound changes his whole face for half a second. Softens nothing, exactly, but opens something. Makes him look younger. Makes the boy from the competition hall flicker through the man he is trying so hard to become.

My chest aches.

I hate that too.

He notices my face change, and the laugh dies.

“What?” he asks, sharper.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes search mine. Then his expression shifts into something I can’t read.

“You looked at me like that back then too,” he says. The air leaves me slowly. “In the competition hall.” I don’t move. “After I lost,” he continues, voice quieter now, almost flat. “Everyone else looked at Suho. You looked at me.”

My throat tightens.

“I was just—”

“Don’t lie.”

The words are not loud. They cut through me anyway.

He steps even closer, and this time I don’t think it is meant to intimidate me. Or maybe it is. Maybe with Wooyoung, intimacy and intimidation come from the same place, tangled too tightly to separate.

His eyes are fixed on mine.

“You looked sorry,” he says.

I barely breathe.

His mouth tightens. “I hated that.”

I understand before he explains.

Of course he hated it.

A boy like him could survive being hated. Laughed at. Challenged. Even beaten. But pity? Pity meant someone saw the wound instead of the weapon. Pity meant the fall mattered. Pity meant, for one second, he was not scary, not impressive, not untouchable.

Just a boy on the floor.

“I wasn’t sorry for you,” I whisper.

His eyes flicker.

“I just wanted you to get up.”

The silence after that is absolute.

Wooyoung looks at me like I have done something worse than insult him. Something worse than shove him. Like I have reached back through time and touched the one part of that day he never managed to turn into anger.

His throat moves once.

The gym door rattles faintly in the distance from the wind outside.

When he speaks, his voice is rougher.

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m still going to take the money.”

The words are supposed to land like a slap. They do. But he looks away when he says them. And that is worse, somehow.

My chest hollows out.

For a moment, I am so tired I can almost feel it in my bones. Not sleepy tired. Something older. The exhaustion of trying to put your hands between violence and someone you love, knowing violence does not care how soft your hands are.

I nod once.

Wooyoung looks back quickly, like he didn’t expect that.

“Okay,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s it?”

“No.”

I reach into my bag. He watches my hand carefully, his body going still in that fighter way again, ready for anything. It hurts a little, seeing it. How trained he is to expect the worst. How quickly softness disappears from him.

I pull out my phone.

His brows knit.

“What are you doing?”

I unlock it, open the video my friend sent me, and hold the screen up between us. His face flickers there in ugly blue-white light, younger by only a few days, maybe, but colder through the camera. He watches himself knock someone down. Watches himself smile.

For once, he does not make a joke.

“This is what you look like now,” I say. His gaze flicks from the screen to me. I keep my hand steady. “I don’t know what happened to you after that competition. I don’t know why you ended up here. I don’t know what you tell yourself before you take money to hurt people.” My voice lowers. “But this? This isn’t strength.”

His face empties.

“Don’t.”

The word is soft. Warning. I keep going anyway.

“This is just you making sure someone else ends up on the floor before you do.”

He knocks the phone from my hand. Not hard enough to break it. Not at me. But fast enough that it slips from my fingers and hits the mat with a dull thud.

The sound shocks both of us. For one second, Wooyoung looks at the phone. Then at me. His chest rises once, sharp. There it is. The anger underneath everything.

Not loud now. Not explosive. Worse. Barely contained. His eyes are bright with it, jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumps. The room seems to shrink around him.

I should be scared.

I am.

But I do not step back.

Instead, I crouch slowly and pick up my phone. My hand shakes once when I reach for it. I hope he doesn’t see.

Of course he does.

When I stand, something in his face has changed. The anger is still there. But so is something else. Regret, maybe, though he would probably rather get hit by a truck than call it that.

“I didn’t—” he starts.

Then stops. I look at him. He looks furious with himself for even trying. The smallest, saddest laugh leaves me.

“You didn’t mean to?” I ask. His mouth shuts. “Yeah,” I whisper. “That’s what everyone says after they scare someone.”

His face flinches. It is tiny. But it happens.

I put my phone back into my bag, fingers careful, movements slower than they need to be. The space between us feels ruined now, but not empty. Never empty. If anything, it is heavier. Full of all the things he almost said and all the things I am too proud to admit.

When I look up, he is watching me like he does not know what to do with his hands.

Good.

Let him feel it. Let him stand there with all that strength and no idea where to put it.

“I’m not asking again,” I say. His expression closes. “Don’t touch Suho. Don’t touch Sieun. Walk away from Beomseok’s money.”

He says nothing. The silence stretches. I wait.

For a second, I think he will refuse just to prove he can. I can see the impulse move through him. Pride first. Always pride. It lifts his chin, hardens his mouth, puts that old, ugly shine back in his eyes.

Then his gaze drops to my hand. The one still trembling slightly at my side. His jaw tightens. He looks away.

“Get out,” he says.

My heart sinks.

“Wooyoung—”

His eyes cut back to mine. “I said get out.”

The words are cold. Too cold. A door slamming before I can see inside.

I nod once because there is nothing else to do, because if I speak now, my voice might betray me, and I will not give him that. I turn toward the door with my bag strap cutting into my shoulder and my phone heavy inside it and my pulse still trapped somewhere in my throat.

I make it three steps before he speaks again.

“Hey.”

I stop. I don’t turn around right away. Behind me, he exhales like the sound annoys him.

“How’s Suho?” he asks. The question is rough. Reluctant. Almost hidden under irritation. I close my eyes for half a second. There it is. Not mercy. Not enough. But something.

“He pretends he’s fine,” I say.

Wooyoung is quiet. I turn, slowly.

He stands where I left him, one hand curled loosely at his side, the other rubbing at the tape around his wrist like he wants to peel himself out of his own skin. He does not look sorry. Not exactly. Sorry is too clean a word for his face. But he looks less certain than before, and for a boy like him, maybe that is the first crack.

“He always did that,” he says.

My chest tightens.

“Yes.”

His eyes lift to mine.

For a moment, we are back there again. Bleachers. Mat. Blood. A boy getting up because staying down would kill him in a way no one else could see.

Then Wooyoung’s mouth curves, faint and bitter.

“Tell him I said happy birthday.”

My stomach twists.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Yeah.” His smile sharpens, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “People keep saying that.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

The old pull is still there, awful and alive, but now it has teeth. It is not the sweet little crush I had when I was younger, when liking someone meant glancing across a competition hall and hoping no one noticed. This is different. Darker. Stupider. More dangerous. This is attraction standing too close to fear. This is memory with blood under its fingernails. This is looking at someone and knowing they might ruin something, maybe even you, and still feeling the body lean half an inch before the mind drags it back.

“I’ll come back,” I say.

Wooyoung’s expression stills. Then that smile returns, slow and helplessly pleased, as if I have just handed him exactly the wrong thing.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“To threaten me again?”

“If I have to.”

He nods once, eyes moving over my face like he is trying to memorize the shape of the promise.

“Good,” he says. The word is quiet. Too honest. A warning should not sound like an invitation.

I open the door.

Cold morning air spills in, clean and damp and pale. For one second, I stand there between the gym and the street, between the heat behind me and the grey light ahead, and I feel the whole world hanging by one thin thread.

Then Wooyoung calls after me, voice lazy again, almost normal.

“Y/N.” I look back. He is still watching me. Not smiling now. “Next time,” he says, “don’t come alone.”

The words settle over my skin slowly. Threat. Concern. Possession. Maybe all three. My fingers tighten around the doorframe.

“Next time,” I say, “don’t give me a reason to come at all.” His eyes brighten. Like he likes the answer. Like he hates that he likes it.

I leave before he can see what that does to me. Outside, the morning has finally broken open.

The sky is pale and cold over the rooftops, the city waking in pieces around me—shop shutters rattling up, buses sighing at curbs, early footsteps splashing through leftover rain. Everything looks ordinary in that cruel way the world always does after something inside you shifts. A woman walks past carrying coffee. A delivery scooter cuts through a puddle. Somewhere, a dog barks.

My hands are still shaking. I shove them into my jacket pockets and start walking. Behind me, beneath the city’s waking noise, the gym door stays shut. But I can still feel him there.

Kong Wooyoung, with his split knuckles and crooked mouth and years of anger sharpened into a living thing. Kong Wooyoung, who remembered me standing up when he fell. Kong Wooyoung, who took money to hurt my brother and still asked how he was. Kong Wooyoung, who looked at me like I was a problem he had no intention of solving properly.

The bus stop is half a block away.

I walk toward it slowly, the damp air burning cold in my lungs, my phone heavy in my bag with his videos still saved inside it. I should delete them. I should block every link, every search result, every stupid frame of him laughing under bad light.

Instead, when I reach the stop, I sit down on the cold metal bench and stare at my reflection in the dark glass of the advertisement board. I look older than I did last night.

My phone buzzes. For one terrifying second, I think it is Suho. It isn’t.

Unknown number.

No message at first. Then three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. My heart kicks once, hard. Finally, the text comes through.

you still stand up when i fall?

I stare at it until the letters blur. The bus pulls up in front of me with a hiss, doors folding open, warm yellow light spilling onto the wet curb. I don’t move. Another message appears.

cute.

I should not smile. I don’t, not really. But something in my mouth softens before I can stop it, and that small betrayal feels more dangerous than the entire gym did.

Then the third message comes.

tell suho i’m thinking about it.

No promise. No surrender. No mercy wrapped neatly enough to trust. Just that. Thinking about it. From Kong Wooyoung, it feels almost like blood drawn from stone.

I get on the bus with my hands still cold and my chest still tight and my brother’s name sitting like a bruise behind my ribs. The city moves past the window in silver streaks, rainwater catching the morning light, everything blurred and trembling as if the world has not quite decided what shape it wants to be.

I type three words. Delete them. Type again. My thumb hovers over send. Then I finally answer.

Think harder.

The reply comes before the next stop.

bossy.

I look out the window before anyone can see my face.

“Do you want a pillow?” Ah, there it is.

You sighed, no fight left in you to bite back. “I need the letters to all have the same size.”, you mumbled, understanding Sieun’s frown hence you wouldn’t have been able to decipher that gibberish either had it not left your own mouth.

Sieun rested his eyes on your face for a few more beats before sighing and closing his own books. With a gentle tug he grabbed your note book and shuffled it over his own, calmly starting to write down some notes. “You can rewrite them later.”

❀ AHN SUHO

stands in front of your door to pick you up for a ride when he knows you can’t fall asleep

Had someone asked you if your boyfriend had a superpower, you wouldn’t waste a beat before claiming that he did. Suho had a sixth sense: he always knew when you lacked something.

One time you had forgotten your jacket on a late date night and started shivering in the cold, so he just gasped as he pulled his own windbreaker off his shoulders, revealing a thick sweater you hadn't seen on him before, and draped it over yours. “I had a feeling I should put on warm clothes.”, he joked.

When your stomach rumbled on your way home a few days later, Suho’s notification popped up in that exact moment with a casual invitation to join him for dinner.

He always knew what you needed and when you did. Like tonight.

You had tried a myriad of sleeping positions, food, TV and phone screens burning into your retinas and still, sleep failed to mantle you in.

When you had almost given up and decided to binge watch the new show everyone around you was glazing, a loud knock on your front door had you jolt.

You opened it, shivering against the cold air you had invited it, to reveal your friend. He wore a lazy grin as he handed you his extra helmet. "Trouble sleeping?"

❀ OH BEOMSEOK

asks you to punch the straw through the lid of his drink and offers you the first sip of his drink

You thought you were slick, stealing glimpses at his drink but little did you know that he was following every gaze that drifted towards his cup. Maybe you should’ve chosen a bubble tea as well, instead of an iced coffee.

The most suble smile tugged on Beomseok’s lips as he tipped his drink towards you, the liquid immediately rushing to the inclination. “Wanna put the straw in?”, he offered you, honey-drippingly sweet. You went to decline, but he’d seen through you.

“The lid always rips when I do it.” His pout was artificial and you called it, but the gesture made your heart squeeze, so you took the straw out his grasp and started unwrapping the plastic with a bustle.

“Tell me what it tastes like?” After a pointy look from you, he added: “I forgot what I ordered.”

You kept the tug on your lips at bay as you lazily covered the printed label, that bore the ingredients, with your hand.

❀ PARK HUMIN (BAKU)

wakes you up with a call

There was absolutely no sound in your room, or at least not detectable in your position, hence the pillow over your head drowned everything out, your breath included.

The vibration of your phone was barely there, at least ignorable for now—only it kept getting louder. You groaned, blindly feeling your mattress for your phone, but the sensation of victory was short lived as you swiped your thumb over the screen to accept the call.

“Don’t start singing.”, you immediately hoarsed, earning a scoff and a cut off version of what you could only assume was the intro of eye of the tiger.

“You overslept again.”, Humin all but barked into your ear, making you wince as you moved the phone a little further away from your face. “I’m in front of your door, so open up, yeah?” You could basically hear the grin in his voice.

With a sigh, you ditched the rest of sleep and shot up to check the time. 7:54.

“Humin.”, you drawled. “Now we’ll both be late.”

❀ GO HYUNTAK (GOTAK)

lets you win in basketball 🏀 (only thing he doesn't suck at btw)

The red letters on the display were going up with every toss that made it through the hoop, consequently Gotak’s were skyrocketing while you tailed him close behind.

His eyes kept glimpsing back at you, but the triumphant smile that was plastered across his face seemed a little too droopy at the corners. He wanted you to win.  

“You only have like 5 shots left.”, you pointed out. You had seven. The one with the lower score had to pay for lunch — at least that was what you had agreed on.

When you had dunked the most recent one, your friend suddenly started to see double— or whatever other pretext he had come up with to excuse his sudden loss streak. 

As your highscore blinked repeatedly, the hasty rhythm biting your vision, you turned to Gotak, cocking a brow at his smug expression.

“Don‘t you do this like professionally?“, you inquired at which he just opened his mouth and closed it soon after, unable to come up with an excuse.

“Did you seriously just let me win?” Your guess must‘ve hit bullseye, but Gotak waved your accusation with a flick of his hand.

“Name one reason why I should’ve done that.”

“Oh, you absolutely did.”, you concluded with a scoff. Gotak slid his hands into his jean pockets as he led the way out the arcade.

“I just wanted to be a gentleman.” That statement was worth your eyeroll.

“You‘re basically calling me poor.“, you shot back, making your friend groan.

“Guess who’s not getting dessert.”, he drawled, stopping short as he heard the beeping sounds emit from your phone. “Who are you calling?“

You ignored him, waiting for your other friend to pick up the call.

“Humin,", you whined. "guess who just called me fat.“

❀ KANG WOOYOUNG

eats your left-overs to soothe your conscience

The plate scurried across the table with a loud clatter, making Wooyoung’s head whirl up as he shifted his attention from his phone to you.

You sighed, at which he arched an eyebrow. “I’m full.”, you announced with a pout.

Wooyoung eyed your half eaten plate before looking back at you. “That’s like two bites. Just eat it.”

Easier said than done. “Don’t you think I would if I had the capacity?” He knew how much you hated left-overs, calling it a waste of food, so when you offered him your fork, he took it with a light groan.

“Are you aware that I have to do extra sessions to train this off?” His tone was accusing, but speaking with a full mouth failed to capture any bite in his words so you just nodded along.

“Yeah, that sucks.”

❀ GEUM SEONGJE

flanks u in video games

“Get next to me!” Your voice was booming, but the explosions spilling out the cushioned headphones made you doubt that any volume had left your mouth.

“I am next to you.” Seongje’s annoyed voice on the other hand was clear as day, hence you were on call with him.

The screen before you flickered as a grendade exploded right next to you. You barley managed to steer the remote to the side, too caught up looking for your friend’s avatar.

“No, you’re not. You’re tailing behind.”

When he had finally picked up the pace and landed next to you, you continued running, subtly glimpsing at his kill count. The gap between yours and his couldn’t have been any further.

“Where do you keep finding people to shoot? There’s no one around me.”, you wondered aloud.

The click of Seongje’s gun was loud enough for you to hear but you barely paid it any attention as you eyed your next loot.

As usual, you were oblivious to the gunmen that had caught up with you.

“Yeah, I wonder why.”, Seongje just huffed.

❀ NA BAEKJIN

let’s you pick the movie

The night was bustling with laughter and excitement as the people around you mingled together, awaiting the start of the entry to the movies.

Your eyes kept darting back to the groups, curiosity lingering in your chest. You hadn’t made any research on that film, but you had heard that people were awaiting it for a year now after an accidental leak of production scenes.

Baekjin had asked you to accompany him to the cinema tonight because he needed his mind off things and you were glad to comply, happily accepting his choice of movie. Psychological thriller. Easy to keep track of the plot.

He noticed your sway of interest. He really picked up on everything.

You hadn’t noticed Baekjin slipping back to the register to swap out the tickets, but when the screen announced room B for the movie you thought you were about to watch and you headed for it, Baekjin softly tugged on your sleeve as he stirred you into the opposite direction. “We’re not watching that one anymore.”

❀ BAEK DONGHA

gives you his jacket, knowing that your closet is filled with more of his stuff than yours

Dongha did a double take as you ascended from the stairs of your apartment complex, narrowing his eyes as he let his gaze sweep over your outfit choice.

You closed the distance to him in a swirl, showing off your new top, but his eyes were still stuck on your pants. “What?”, you asked him, a snicker escaping you at his raised brow.

He hooked a finger in the waistband of the washed out denim, ignoring your complaint as he pulled the material back to take a look at the faint tag. “These are mine.”, he concluded, eyes wide in disbelief.

You just smiled sheepishly, snapping the denim out of his hold as you flashed him your white teeth. “I know.”

The evening grew frowsy, but the vibes were too immaculate to call it a night already. So you found yourself hurled together with two of your friends, exchanging meaningless conversation that made you laugh in the ecstasy, mingling with the cold that ran through your veins while taking drags from the a cigarette you kept passing around.

Your shoulders were almost touching from the way your body tried to create a barrier from the chill and you jumped at the contact of cold polyester brushing your sensitive skin.

Dongha had draped his jacket over you, a trail of smoke following him around as he made his way back to his other group of friends.

“You know, I’m gonna keep this.”, you called over your back but to your comfort, he just dismissively shook his hand in your direction.

❀ DO SEONGMOK

puts your hair in a tie (has one around his wrist)

One thing about Seongmok that kept surprising you, no matter how often he’d proven it, was his gentleness.

You had been busy prepping food in your kitchen, when he’d rung the bell to simply announce himself before opening the front door and seating himself in one of your kitchen chairs.

He didn’t say anything (as usual), just let his gaze sweep over the arrangement of snacks you had prepared for your friends’ arrival in a few hours and grabbed a bunch, knowingly avoiding your pointy look.

After a while of cutting fruits, your hair had slipped from where you had tucked it behind your ear, crowding your vision and tickling your nose, in addition to almost dipping into your snacks.

The shift behind you was as noticeable as a man of his statue could be, shuffling behind you to gather your ends in a high ponytail. He raked his fingers around the shape of your hairline a few times to make sure he had caught each one before snapping the hair-tie around the hair three times.

He tugged on the end of the ponytail one last time, tipping your head back in the matter and you met his eyes as you faced him grinning down at you.

❀ JEON YEONGBIN

lets you copy his answers in a test

The ticking of the clock inside the classroom was starting to harmonise with the rhythm of your pen tapping against your desk—a subconscious show of the calmness that was resting in your bones.

You hadn’t bothered to glimpse down to your test in the past ten minutes, hence the questions weren’t gonna be easier to answer than they’d been the last time you checked, and the sheet wasn’t gonna be any fraction less blank either.

You had calmly giving up, when a harsh kick on the back of your chair had you jolt in your seat. The polyester scraped against the floor but it wasn’t loud enough to make anyone look up.

With a breathy sigh and a violently pumping heart, you turned, meeting your friend’s annoyed expression. Yeongbin had his eyebrows raised, muttering something along a curse as he tapped his pen against his fully scribbled paper.

While you gladly copied his answers, he held guard to check for anybody noticing.

❀ YEONGI

braids your hair after you’ve showered because she likes it wavy

Her fingers were soft where they tangled between your strands of hair, a light tug here and there reminding you what task she was up to. A familiar warmth seeped from her touch and it made your entire body shudder in delight.

“I’m gonna fall asleep like this.”, you half-heartedly complained, but your eyelids were kinda growing heavy.

Yeongi scoffed. “If you keep whining, I’m never going to braid your hair again.” You muttered a little sure, subtly shaking your head. Like she’d survive that.

With a yawn you dropped your face on one of her thighs, the foot of the bed she was sitting on steady behind your back as you leaned your weight against it.

❀ JEON SEOKDAE

offers you a piggyback ride when he notices that your feet hurt

You were walking for a while now, straight pulses of pain shooting up your legs and the way your achilles heel clung to the material of your padded shoes, you could already assume the crimson mess that would await you once you had slipped out of them at home.

Seokdae seemed less troubled with the path, his breath not as laboured as yours while he stole some glances towards you. His eyebrows were knitted and his jaw was tense, clearly, he’d been thinking.

Your friend had noticed the trouble your shoes gave you and after you declined his numerous offers to take a break, he was contemplating a new approach. You jumped when he drew his shoulders together in a mock-shudder.

“What’s wrong?”, you asked at which he just shrugged. “My back feels cold.”

The statement was so ridiculous, it pulled a laugh from you. His intentions were clear and you were too tired to tease him. “I’ll warm you up.”, you relented, already throwing your arms around his neck as he lowered himself to help you climb up.

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