𐔌՞. .՞𐦯

You have been to the gym more times than the library.

Not because you’re particularly athletic. No, God knows you’d rather nap. But it’s rather because of a certain six-foot Japanese guy named Nishimura Riki, who’s obsessed with having you watch him stretch before his basketball practice. Says it helps him focus better. Says you bring him luck to his games. Whatever it is, you are happy to indulge with his requests, if it means you get to have your free Baskin Robbins after his gym sessions.

And now, as the two of you walk down the pavement, hands brushing with each step, you’re brought back to three years ago—when Riki was still a head shorter, when his voice still had the childlike lilt to it, when he hadn’t gained all the mass and muscles he has now. The only thing that remains constant is this: his routine of dragging you to his stretching and practice sessions.

It still brings a smile to your face whenever you recall that moment, and Riki never fails to notice every time.

“You have that motherly sentimental smile on your face again,” he points out, eyeing you down like you were dirt on the ground, and you might as well be for how tall he is. “Whatchu thinking ‘bout?”

You roll your eyes. “Good old times, Ki. When you were less annoying and less tall.”

Riki snorts. “I’m always annoying. And taller than you.”

“Fuckass alpha genetics,” you grumble under your breath, the sharp end of your elbow meeting his ribs in a playful nudge. Riki lets out a loud hiss, draping his arm around your shoulders in a harsh tug.

“What’s got your panties in a twist, my favourite girl?”

“I don’t know, maybe the fact that I could’ve slept in instead of going to your alpha gym.”

“You love me too much to refuse me.”

You feel the air leave your lungs. That statement shouldn’t make your stomach twist like this, like you’re caught doing something you’re forbidden to. But if liking your childhood friend—your annoying, tall, and too-hot-for-his-own-good friend—is considered illegal, then by all means you’d rather serve your time in jail than admit it to him.

So you scoff, feigning annoyance as you shove his limbs off your body. Swinging your legs faster, you mutter something enough for his ears to hear, hiding the redness that blooms across your cheeks. “You know I only love your mom.”

“Yeah, but only for her sushi, though!” Riki retorts, chasing after your steps and catching up with you after a maximum of three long strides. Curse his long legs. “I know you’d marry into my family for her sushi.”

“I don’t plan on being a homewrecker. Konon is taken, and Misora is like my little sister.”

“Well, there is me.” There he goes again, making your heart stutter in your ribs, taking your breath away with words that might be simple to him but bring an entirely different meaning to you and your poor feelings. You bite your lip, refusing to answer. Riki takes it as a challenge.

“I’m the real deal, y’know?” Riki wiggles his eyebrows, hogging up your space like a fly, gauging your reaction with that smirk you know all too well. And fuck him for saying the truth. You really wish you could slap that shit-eating grin off his handsome face.

“What, for being an alpha?”

“Especially for being an alpha,” he replies, a cocky smirk adorning his plump lips, to which you just roll your eyes. 

He isn’t wrong, and that’s what you hate the most. Alphas are sought after; as a leader, as an heir, as a symbol of dominance and power. They’re at an advantage with everything, including their physique. You have never seen a short alpha; at least none is shorter than you are. Alphas dominate sports, finance and business, politics, education, and even medicines.

It’s hard to argue with Riki’s point of him being the real deal, when the very system you live in is the truth and proof to his claim.

People always want an alpha, and that fact will stay forever so long this system still exists. And it’s a bitter pill to swallow because you also belong to that category—not exactly because you need an alpha, but because a certain first love of yours is, unfortunately, an alpha.

Unfortunate, because alphas only want omegas as their mates.

Not betas. Not you.

And Nishimura Riki is not an exception to that equation.

You are so lost in your own thoughts that you almost missed the entrance to the gym, if not for Riki tugging your sleeve to bring you back to earth. You blink, look at the sign, and sigh.

“Tell me why I’m here again.”

Riki’s face lights up with a grin, dragging you to the entrance. “Because you’re my emotional support,” he jokes again, earning a glare from you.

His voice rumbles in a deep timbre when he chuckles, his other hand pushing the door open and instantly, the familiar chime of the bell greets you with a cold breeze from the built-in air-conditioners. 

Riki turns to you again, ruffling your hair affectionately, the same way he did when the both of you were eighteen; the same way he did when he was thirteen, begging you to wish him luck on his basketball match; the same way he did when you were eight, after you scraped your knees in the playground from a foul play.

“And because you’re a beta, you’re not affected by our pheromones.”

It’s a harmless reminder of your subgender, but it stings nonetheless. You give the receptionist a tight smile, hoping it doesn’t show the resentment you feel towards the flawed system, hoping the cracks from your own heart didn’t make its way into the lines of your mouth.

At first, you thought you were an anomaly to the system.

The doubt was inevitable when Riki presented at the ripe age of eighteen, and pretty much so did everybody else. You remember how lonely the classes were when Riki had to take two weeks off, and then the girl who sat in front of you did the same, and then the class president did so too, until there were only seven of you remaining in the class.

The appropriate age range to present is from sixteen to nineteen years old, but the most common one is definitely eighteen. So you told yourself to be patient and wait for your turn; that it might be you next day.

Then you hoped it’d be you next month.

Then you prayed it’d be you next year.

Then you wished the system never existed at all .

Because after three years, with you now turning twenty-one, the presentation never came. You told yourself it’s fine, it doesn’t exclude you from society because it just simply means that you’re a beta, right? Beta belongs to the subgenders too. But it’s hard to ignore the nagging voice of insecurity somewhere in your mind that keeps telling you how wrong everything is. It’s hard to ignore the changes when the changes happened so fast and so blatantly obvious—like the way Riki’s voice turned deeper, the way he grew into everything that an alpha is meant to be.

While you remained the same.

The poison seals its roots when you’re reminded of your family genetics—where every female of your bloodline was born an omega, someone who’s meant to be with an alpha, someone with a sweet and supposedly-alluring scent that you never get a whiff of. You feel like a tossed-aside rug, a forgotten scene from a movie. Hell, you even feel like an unknown city that keeps getting skipped in every world tour of your favourite boyband. 

Excluded, out of place, and awkward. Like a piece of puzzle that doesn’t belong. Like a wrong digit in an equation, where the existence of you brings a decimal-answer when people are looking for a whole number.

So with a reluctant resignation, one that you wished would never come, you accept your fate that you’re not an anomaly—you’re just normal. You’re just a beta. 

You’re just…not meant to be with Riki.

Perhaps you can try finding a beta that could fill the spot that Riki has. Jake Sim from chemical engineering is also a beta, and he is every bit a gorgeous man. But every time you attempt to look for someone else, someone who’s not over six feet tall, someone who’s not Japanese with features you memorise by heart—you feel your stomach sink with the urge to cry and throw up.

You want Riki. You only yearn for Riki, and it tears you apart that he is everything you want but can’t have.

It’s only morning, and you are already tormenting yourself with the thoughts of your unrequited love, your secret crush, your Nishimura Riki, Riki, Riki. You slump on the desk with a sigh, the lecturer’s high-pitched voice now a faraway island in your mind, earning a low chuckle from Jungwon, another alpha that you befriended on your first day here.

“You okay, Y/N?” 

You muffle a small ‘yeah’ and lift your head to face him, the action making you dizzy. You frown. “Just…a bit hungry. I skipped breakfast.”

Jungwon leans closer, lunch invitation heavy on his tongue, but stops mid-way. His nose scrunches, sniffing the air around you like a bunny.

“Uh, did you wear a new perfume?”

“What?” Sitting straight, you mimic his action and start smelling your clothes. “I don’t?”

Jungwon shifts in his seat, taking another whiff from the space around your neck before leaning back, a glint of amusement and curiosity dancing in his eyes.

“Well, you smell different. In a good way.”

“That’s because I wear Chanel number 5, duh,”  you say matter-of-factly, rolling your eyes to emphasise. Jungwon shakes his head.

“It’s not Chanel,” he moves closer again, and this time you actually retreat back from the sudden proximity. “You smell faintly like caramel. Like freshly baked cookies.”

“Okay, now you’re being creepy. I don’t smell like a bakery.”

Jungwon looks skeptical, watching you with that cat eyes of his, appearing contemplative and deep in thought before he shrugs and finally gives you some space. You breathe out in relief.

“Mhm. It’s about time you had a scent. Though yours is way too sweet for a beta.”

Your body seizes before your mind can catch up, every bone locking in place as you register his words. When you speak, your voice sounds foreign, even to you.

“I’m supposed to…have a scent?”

Jungwon tilts his head, not expecting that question from you. “Yeah? Everyone with a subgender should have one and can smell one. Can’t you smell me?”

No. The word is trapped behind your teeths, afraid to go out in fear of solidifying the truth that you were what you initially thought: an anomaly. Gulping down your nerves, you pretend to focus back on the lessons, though your lecturer’s voice is already drowned out by the loud thumping behind your ribs. 

Jungwon doesn’t buy it, though. That alpha is eyeing you, trying to catch even a tiny telltale of your true emotions.

You settle for a lie. “‘Course I can. You smell disgusting.”

That gets him to react. “Hey! I smell second best to Riki’s pheromones, for your information.” Jungwon gasps, scandalised, and kicks your legs under the table. You suck in a breath, your mind zeroing on the small fragment of his statement: Riki’s pheromones.

You leave the hall an hour later with your brain a whirlwind of panic and unanswered questions, of how much you regret not paying attention to any of your omegaverse classes, of how different you are—again—from the rest of the world, but now with a painful addition that you are also different from a normal beta, and of how Nishimura Riki is allegedly the best-smelling alpha of the century. 

The last thought is the loudest, if it’s not already obvious. But your insecurity seems relentless this time, because every time your brain wanders to how good Riki might smell like, it brings you back to the cold, harsh reality of your dysfunctioning senses. And that’s enough to push you off the edge.

The one-hour lecture was spent with you letting the weight of Jungwon’s words pressing into your mind. The concept of scent and subgenders aren’t foreign; not to everybody else but you. You know that alphas and omegas have a certain smell that tells each other apart. But you never knew that betas have one too.

Or they actually do. And it’s you who have none.

Fuck, why did you only sleep in those omegaverse classes in high school?

The distant voice of your omegaverse teacher nags at the back of your mind as you round the corner towards the library, forcing yourself to commit to another group discussion before you can retire and hide in your room after, but are blessed—or cursed—to see Riki instead. Your breath hitches, your steps halt.

The tall man is leaning against the wall with a laidback posture, one hand in the pocket of his sweats, scrolling his phone with a neutral boredom. Then, as if sensing your presence, he lifts his gaze, and lights up. 

Fuck him, honestly, in every literal and figurative way possible.

He always lights up every time he sees you, and you hate how much meaning it gives you. Like you’re the only sun in his dark universe; like you’re the only water in the middle of the desert when it probably means nothing to him.

“Y/N, c’mere!”

You force a relaxed posture and a small smile as you walk towards him. And then, without warning, Jungwon’s earlier words invade your mind again, and now your whole focus narrows down to the thoughts of the pheromones of the alpha standing in front of you, and the cruelty of your anatomy to decide that you don’t deserve to smell him.

Riki frowns when you get closer, noticing your slightly pale complexion. One of his arms hover, ready to pull you closer like usual. “You good? Did you see a ghost?”

And this time, you let him tug you, pulling you in like a strong whirlpool in the ocean and you are nothing more than a helpless boat, and you almost swore that you heard Riki sniff you. At the chance of standing in such close proximity with him, you dare yourself to nose the collar of his hoodie, inhaling his scent, dreading the nothingness that might come from it.

You hum, surprising even yourself when you can actually smell him. Clean musk, cedar, and sandalwood. He smells homey. But why couldn’t you smell this before? 

“You smell good. Is this your perfume?”

Riki laughs, though there is an edge to it .”What are you doing?”

Ignoring his question, you take a step closer, nosing at the fabric with newfound determination, unaware of the now-rigid posture of your best friend. Riki pushes your shoulders when you shift closer, holding you an arm’s length away from him in a swift motion. You blink, taken aback from the sudden shove, and scrunches your nose when you sense a spike in his scent.

You frown—your senses were never this sensitive.

Riki lets out a small chuckle after a moment of silence—and you can’t help but hear the faint tremble in it—then ruffles your hair. 

“That’s my pheromones, idiot, you know I don’t like wearing cologne. Did you just notice it now?”

Ah. His pheromones. 

So you can finally smell him.

You pause for a heartbeat before smiling. So I’m a normal beta, you think, feeling the relief washes over you, I can smell other people’s scents too. It might be a bit too late to notice these changes, but you’ll take anything that doesn’t label you as the exception to the system. Anything to fit in, anything that doesn’t point you towards the other end of society alone.

“With all that sweat you reek of? Yeah, I just noticed it now.” You retort, throwing him a teasing smile, stepping closer again to nudge his ribs like you always do. 

This time, the sharp inhale that Riki takes is unmistakable. He takes a hold of your wrist and brings it to his nose, sniffing at it like another bunny that reminds you so much of Jungwon just an hour ago.

“You smell…different,” Riki takes another whiff, “did you get too close to an omega?”

Your eyebrows knit. “No, that’s my scent.”

Riki’s expression mirrors yours. “But you never had a scent before.”

“I know, Jungwon also said it’s about time that I had a scent.”

“Jungwon?” Riki echoes, his voice clipped. “You let Jungwon scent you?”

You blink, mouth opening and closing at the sound of his sudden grim voice. “I—No? He didn’t scent me,” you don’t know where this feeling comes from, but the thought of Riki thinking that you were with another man, of upsetting him, makes your stomach drop. “He just sat too close just now. And he smelled me.”

You wince at how wrong it sounded.

Nothing else is spoken between the two of you, save for the distant chatter of passersby and the occasional sound of the library door opening and closing, letting people in and sending them out. You crane your neck to your silent best friend, his clenched jaw catching the hallway lights as he gathers his thoughts.

You’re about to say something to break the silence, but another deep voice calls out to Riki. You peek at his shoulders and see two of his basketball teammates—Heeseung and Jay—calling at him from behind. They wave when they notice your presence, and you wave back once before Riki moves to block your sight.

“I have practice until late. Don’t wait for me,” he mutters, voice barely above a whisper. His eyes are heavy with something unsaid, giving you a gaze that sends shivers down your spine, slightly concealed by the fringes of his dark hair. You nod wordlessly, squeeze his arms goodbye, and watch him jog up to his friends, your mind a mess of everything that has just unfolded.

The day follows you home and into the evening shower, and the thoughts of your newly-discovered developed senses, of Riki, only stops when you put on your pajamas. Your favourite Kuromi set of wool pajamas, the one Riki bought from his last visit to Japan, suddenly sits wrongly on your skin.

It’s itchy and very uncomfortable, which is not what you felt when you wore it last week.

“What the fuck,” you curse, discarding the clothes in an instant. Standing half naked in your own bedroom, you inspect the fabric like a microscope to a cell sample. The fabric feels strange to your touch; it prickles like tiny needles that poke at your skin in an unsettling way. You drop the pajamas on your bed and start looking for another set to wear.

To your frustration, every piece of clothing that you touch doesn’t feel right. Too rough. Too itchy. Too irritating. It only stops when you find your long-forgotten satin nightwear—the one you shoved to the darkest corner of your wardrobe because of how tight it had become. You exhale, the exhaustion from the day pressing on your bones like a wet blanket, slipping on the only fabric that doesn’t feel like sandpaper on skin despite how tight it hugs your body despite yourself.

That night, you drift off to sleep and dream of a certain alpha with the most alluring pheromones, whispering secrets and oaths in messy sheets and slicked, tangled limbs.

The next morning, you wake up with a pulsing pain in your hips and lower abdomen. A groan escapes your lips as you search for your phone, checking the menstrual tracker with your eyes half-open. You are still two weeks away from the next cycle, but the pain is, if not more, merciless and unforgiving as ever. 

But deadlines and tests chase you even in your sleep, so you brave up and force yourself to campus, all pained limbs and sweaty forehead. The painkillers work nothing to numb the pain, and you don’t want to risk going into the ER to swallow another one. So you endure. Or at least, you try to.

“Good morning, Y/N,” comes Jungwon, sharing yet another class with you. But his voice is loud, too loud for the morning to be good, so you snap at him before you can stop it.

“Can you lower your voice? You’re too loud.”

Jungwon stuns into a silence, gaping at you with his mouth hanging open before a flash of annoyances crosses his face. “Dude, I talk normally? What’s so loud about me?”

“You’re being loud now.”

Jungwon throws his hands in the air and plops down with a huff, pursing his lips in protest and refusing to speak to you for the rest of the lecture in an act of tantrum. You don’t say anything either, too occupied with your own thoughts, too irritated by the sounds of pens gliding across papers, too itched by the blouse you’re wearing, to care. At the first sign of the class ending, you bolt out of the class, leaving behind Jungwon and his unheard complaints about how sensitive and snappy you have been.

Sensitive. You’re sensitive all over your body, your senses suddenly reaching a new level of concentration that makes everything feel unbearable and irritating. You ditch the next class and go home, grab a new set of pads on your way, send a ‘sorry’ text to Riki’s lunch invitation, and sleep the day away in silk and satin. You dream of Riki again, of how safe you feel in his arms, of how much you like it whenever he towers over you with his height. You toss and turn all night, then wake up more tired than before when the first sunlight hits.

Weary and exhausted than ever, you groan as the aching in your body returns, and, perhaps amplifies, like something inside you is shifting. Like someone is renovating your organs and rearranging everything into a new layout, into a new system you’re too afraid to find out.

“Fuck,” you peel off every layer of your clothing and make home in your bath tub, basking in the warmth of the running water. Your muscles finally relax, and for the past two days of your pre-menstrual symptoms, soaking in hot water seems to be the only thing that helps. Only a soak and an odorless soap, though—because recently, your favourite sakura blossom-scented body wash has smelled too acidic for you.

When you’re done, you walk out to your roommate, Wonyoung, sitting on your bed with a stack of clothes neatly placed by her thighs. She looks at you with a scrunched nose, wearing an expression akin to concern. You greet her with a small, tired smile.

“Hey, Y/N. I brought my cotton clothes for you, but are you sure you’re okay?” She stands up and walks closer to you, touching your arms gently. “You don’t look good. And your scent…you’re distressed, Y/N. You need a familiar scent to feel better.”

You give her another dry smile. “I’m okay. Just PMS-ing.”

Wonyoung looks at you like she wants to say something but holds back. She rubs a circle into your arms, and for the first time ever, you can smell her—a soft, gentle scent of jasmine and warm milk, like a milk tea you get from a Chinese store. You sigh and unknowingly lean into the omega’s touch.

“Go to the doctor if it gets worse, Y/N,” Wonyoung urges you with a worry-laced voice. You hum and nod absentmindedly, not registering her words fully until she adds, “I think this is something more than PMS.”

Your stomach churns at her words, feeling the uneasiness crawl its way back into your spine. You wave a dismissive hand at her, attempting to look fine when you’re everything but. “I’ll get better after a nap, I promise.”

Wonyoung purses her lips, then nods. With a few words of comfort, she leaves your room, throwing one last look of worry before the door shuts with a click. You grab one of her cotton pajamas, feeling the smooth fabric with a content sigh and slip it on.

The buzz from your phone cuts your train of thoughts. Your heart leaps at the sight of Riki’s name blaring on the screen, hands scrambling to pick it up on the third ring.

“Y/N?” Riki’s deep timbre greets your ears, and you feel the hair rise in your skin. “Hey, where have you been? Jungwon told me you skipped classes today.”

Gosh, how you missed his voice. Overlapping schedules, his tournament preparations, and your aching body have become the reason for your lack of Nishimura Riki for the past three days. Hearing his voice now tugs something at your heart, like you need to see him now. Like you need to hold him now.

“Y/N?”

“Hey, Ki. I’m fine. Just a bit sore here and there, but it’s all good now,” you lie, because the last thing you want is for Riki to get worried about you and distracted from his practice. He can be a worrywart when he wants to be. 

“You sure? Then do you wanna watch my practice now?” he suggests, letting a heartbeat of silence settle between the both of you before he says again, this time with a quieter, almost-shy voice. “I kinda miss your nosy ass.”

That gets a laugh out of you. You, in fact, miss him a lot too. “Glad to know it’s mutual. But what do I get? It’s too cold for me outside.” It’s not even winter yet, but your current condition has been acting like it. You shiver just thinking about stepping out of the comfort of your warm apartment.

“I’ll treat you to some steak after, your highness. And don’t be silly, I have my hoodie with me now.”

Something unknown stirs inside of you at the mention of his hoodie. It’s like something asleep is finally waking up, and your head is dizzy with the thought of his hoodie, his scent, his presence, him, him, him. You hum as a reply, already reaching out to one of Wonyoung’s cotton blouses.

And that reminds you: “It better be cotton, Ki.”

The basketball court doesn’t change from the last time you stepped foot on it, which already feels like years ago with everything that went down between you and your body. Your gaze sweeps over two groups of male players stretching and warming up, looking for a certain dark-haired man. But you stop in your tracks when your nose senses something.

The court smells…weird. You can’t exactly pinpoint what produces that smell, but the source is apparent: it comes from those athletes scattered around the court. You inhale one more time and immediately feel your chest tightens, the urge to turn around and leave suddenly hits you like a truck.

Too lost in your own thoughts, you barely notice the shadow that suddenly looms over your figure until that person speaks.

“Y/N, right?”

You look up and instantly recognise him. Park Jongseong, or Jay, one of Riki’s closest friends from his ‘only-boys’ friend group. You give him a polite nod, noting his still-dry jersey and slightly messy hair. 

“Yes, that’s me.”

Jay’s lips curve into a boyish smile at that, and if it’s not for your huge, pathetic crush on Riki, you’d certainly let yourself fall for the handsome boy in front of you. “Riki’s gone to the locker room for a moment to grab something. Why don’t you sit at the bench first? We are about to start the friendly match soon.”

You agree without thinking, drifting further into the court like it’s routine. You’re a familiar face to them—the beta friend of Riki who always sits in the bleachers to watch him stretch and practice. You settle down on the bench at the furthest corner of the court, away from the buzz of alpha players and the smell that is getting pungent by the second, and closer to one of the goal hoops. Jay has gone to leave for a moment, but returns seconds later with a bottle of mineral water, condensed and wet.

“Have a drink first. He should be back soon.”

You receive it with a grateful smile. Riki always mentions how gentleman Jay is, especially towards the ladies. “Thank—”

“Yo, I already got her water.”

Riki strides in your direction, his voice playful but his expression hardens. He shoves Jay to the side, snatches the bottle given by him from your hand, and replaces it with another one. This time, the water bottle is still cold and wet from condensation, but is now wrapped by a few layers of tissues, just the way you like it. “Drink this instead.”

You beam at him. “Thanks, Riki.”

Beside him, Jay scoffs exaggeratedly. “I can’t believe you. Did it look like I was poisoning her?”

Riki doesn’t cast him a glance, his hands fast to untwist the bottle cap for you before you do, and miss the way heat makes its way on your cheeks. “You grabbed the wrong bottle.”

“Dude, they’re literally the same!”

“But did yours have tissues around it?” Riki shoots a brow up, and that makes Jay close his mouth. “Exactly. Now get lost, hyung.”

“Kids these days,” Jay mutters under his breath. He throws you another small smile before walking away with his rejected—or rather, discarded by Riki—mineral water. There is a triumphant smile on the younger’s face before he looks back at you already staring up at him.

Fuck, you probably look lovestruck. But you don’t find it in yourself to care in that moment.

Riki returns your gaze, his eyes trailing across your face before he ruffles your hair playfully. A giggle escapes your lips, trying to smack his hands away but Riki is always stronger than you. And that realisation makes something warm pool inside your belly.

“Is it still cold for you?” he asks, voice lowered and sounding almost intimate. You nod, willing yourself not to grin too wide when he drops his hoodie in your lap. It’s grey, bigger than your frame, and every inch of it smells like him. Like your Riki. “Wear this.”

The tension rolls off your body when you put it on, breathing in a lungful of his clean musk and sandalwood scent discreetly as Riki takes a seat beside you, his thigh brushing yours. For the first time in three days, the unknown force that’s been keeping you on edge quiets down, your chest lightens and your heart hums in contentment.

Safe. You feel safe. Riki has always been your safe space. But this time, you feel like you belong. Protected. You feel like you’ve been carrying the missing piece your whole life, and now it’s finally here.

“Better?” Riki muses from your side, watching you with an unreadable gaze, taking in the sight of your figure practically drowned in his way bigger hoodie. His jaw clenches, fingers twitching slightly before he forces his eyes back on you.

“Yes. Thank God it’s cotton, Ki,” you joke. Riki rolls his eyes. 

“You know I only wear cotton.”

“Nishimura Riki!”

From the center of the court, Lee Heeseung, the senior you know to be the team captain, calls for your best friend. He groans, shouting back a ‘coming!’ before glancing back at you.

“Just a few rounds of friendly match then I’m all yours, okay?”

Your heart stutters at that. Then, subtle like it’s meant to be a secret, you notice the way Riki freezes, his nose scrunching slightly at something he senses. When his eyes snap back to you, they’re darker now, heated and heavy with something he won’t say. The short exchange renders you breathless, your voice barely audible when you finally speak. 

“Yes. Okay.”

Riki lets his eyes linger on you for a moment before he nods. The warmth of his presence is instantly replaced with silence and coldness when he leaves to begin the match, and your heart deflates at his retreating figure. You grip the bench until knuckle-white, taking a deep breath to soothe your wailing heart, chest suddenly yearning for him to sit back on the bench with you.

“Get a fucking grip, Y/N,” you grit, head dizzy from Riki’s pheromones but your stomach is churning for no apparent reasons. “What the fuck is wrong with you lately?”

You decide to hyperfocus on the match commencing on the court to distract yourself from the confusing yet so consuming feelings that your mind and body have been going through lately. And it works for a while. You almost forgot how attractive Riki looks like when he’s on the court.

As if the universe had chosen him as the new gravity, every fibre of your being is drawn to him and him only. Your eyes follow his figure like a north-end of the magnet to the south, practically documenting his movement like a rolling camera. Riki moves like he dances; smooth and fluid, his reflexes against his opponent are faster than a venus flytrap. His boxy smile graces his features with every goal into the hoops, and you can’t help but let your heart flutter every time his eyes find yours with every point he scores.

You’re in love with Nishimura Riki. Your body knows it, your heart is no old news bearer to this. Heck, you think even your mom and Wonyoung know about this. Everyone does, except the person you love. Except Riki himself.

Loving him is so easy that it scares you sometimes. The hoodie presses on your skin like a symbol of his caring nature and a reminder of his platonic affection altogether.

You let yourself enjoy the match, the squeaking of sneakers against the floor becoming background noises. It’s a steady and peaceful match, or so you thought—until they start shouting. 

It’s a friendly match, but an alpha's nature of competitiveness knows no boundaries. Your eyes flick to the scoreboard, the gap between the teams decreasing with each goal.

“Get your shit together, Taesan!” Heeseung barks at someone near the hoop, posture stiff,  his booming voice makes your stomach twist. Soon, the air is condensed with adrenaline and rivalry, and before you know it, the palpable tension has already made its way into your head.

Your instincts kick-start at the heavy atmosphere, your nose twitching at the overwhelming pheromones that you sense. You gasp, the pain in your hips and abdomen resurfacing again, and this time you actually feel something shift inside. Your eyes widen in horror.

“Oh my God,” you clutch at the bench in desperation when you feel yourself falling. The floor catches you in a soft thud. 

Somewhere in the distance, Heeseung shouts at a mistake the second time, leaving your nerves more restless than before. Your vision blurs, ears ringing with a pitch that is nearly splitting your head open.

The pain, the cramps—they stab deeper, they pulse harder, they scream at you that nothing about this is related to your menstruation. You groan in pain. The pheromones spiking in the air are pressing into your lungs, making every exhale of oxygen a struggle, your head spinning like a planet losing its orbit. Somewhere at the centre of the court, everybody freezes, the ball bouncing away with no one to claim.

Heeseung halts mid-shout. “What the fuck,” he physically recoils at the scent wafting in the air, his nose wrinkling violently, “there’s an omega here?!”

The room holds its breath with him, with you, before heads snap in your direction. 

There, on the floor, you’re crouched down, noises of pain leaving your lips in breathless whispers. Your body is dotted with sweat, your temperature rising with each passing second, eyes wide and glassy. Oh God. Oh God. You clutch your stomach with a pained groan. What is happening to me?

It takes an alpha staggering towards you and a growl for all hells to break loose. Shouts come from every direction, Jay having to physically restrain one of their players from jumping on you. And among the chaos, there is one figure who stands still, a statue of anxiety and a pounding heart as his eyes locked on the outline of your body in his hoodie.

Another wail of pain leaves your lips and Riki finally snaps out of his trance. Without thinking, he’s already running towards you, snarling at another player who’s stepping in your direction and shoving him away with no care to the aftermath. 

He drops to his knees, angling his body to shield you from the raging alphas behind him. His hands hover, not knowing where to touch or if he should touch you at all.

“Y/N? Y/N, oh my God—what—” Riki chokes on the intense scent oozing from your neck, forcing restrain into his mind and body. His jaw clenches when he sees how pale you are, panic mixing with a strange desire to mark you. To claim you. He shakes his head.

“Riki,” you breathe out, rasp and breathless, shivering from the cold despite your warm body. “It hurts. It hurts…”

Riki’s breath stutters at his name on your lips. It does something violent to his chest, like his ribs are caving in around his heart.

“I know,” he says, voice hoarse, forcing it low despite the way his throat wants to tear itself open. He wraps the hoodie tighter around you, hands finally finding purchase at your arms, your waist—grounding, anchoring. “I’ve got you. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

You’re not. He knows that. He smells it—sharp, sweet, wrong. Too much for this place. Too much for you.

“Everyone back the fuck up,” Riki snarls over his shoulder, teeth clenched as another alpha so much as shifts closer. The sound doesn’t even feel like it comes from him; it’s deeper, rougher, edged with something feral that makes the surrounding players freeze mid-step.

Heeseung recovers first. “Clear the court. Now,” he barks, authority snapping through the haze. “Jay—help me.”

Jay’s already there, shoving bodies away, creating space with his broad frame. “Move. All of you. Unless you wanna get decked.”

Riki barely registers them. His world has narrowed to you—the way you’re trembling, the way your fingers fist weakly into his shirt like you’re afraid he’ll disappear if you let go.

“It hurts,” you whimper again, forehead dropping against his chest. “Riki, it—”

“I know,” he repeats, softer now, forehead pressing briefly to your hair. His hands shake despite himself. “Don’t talk. Just—just breathe with me, okay? Look at me.”

Your unfocused eyes struggle to lift, but when they do and land on him, something in his chest breaks.

That’s it.

Decision made, instincts roaring.

“I’m taking her,” Riki says, already scooping you up carefully, one arm under your knees, the other braced tight around your back. “Someone call an ambulance. Now.”

No one argues.

As he carries you out of the court, ignoring the burning stares and the lingering pheromones that scrape at his skin, one thought pounds through his head, loud and unrelenting:

I should’ve known. I should’ve protected you.

Riki likes to think that he knows you best.

You have been a constant in his life. Someone less than a companion, more like a feature infused in his system. The vital foundation. Someone that brings out the sides of him that he refuses to show others.

Fifteen years ago, when his family first moved to South Korea, Riki had already expected a dull, boring life. A six-year-old with every knowledge of Japanese but none of Korean, Riki initially thought that his parents were set on making him a loner.

But then came you. Knocking on his door with that small, soft fist of yours, hiding behind your mom’s legs the way he hid behind his mom’s. The both of you shyly looked at each other, listening to your mothers promising friendship and comfort in language that Riki was yet to understand.

Ever since that day, Riki found his life in a foreign country becoming bearable. Bearable, because his next-door neighbour is also his seatmate at school. You have always been the smarter one between the two of you, diligently teaching him how to read, to write, to speak in Korean, with a childlike patience that only someone like you could have. 

Bearable, because his next-door neighbour was also a fierce kid, telling other kids off when they made fun of Riki’s accent. You were small, smaller than him, even, but the fire in your eyes when someone spoke badly of him made you seem bigger than the whole sky.

Bearable, because somewhere along the way; between nights of sneaking out and going home scolded, between every basketball match where your voice always sounded the loudest, between every petty fight and shared laughter during study sessions; Riki finally realised the way you have made home in his heart. 

The way his eyes find your smile first in every joke. The way he looks for your presence before every game, and every time he scores. The way his heart aches with you when you fall sick, wanting the pain to consume himself instead of you.

Nishimura Riki is in love with you. The world seems to know it—except you.

Riki indulged in it, acknowledged it with his heart and arms open, until the day of his alpha presentation came. It was the first time in his life being away from you, separated from your warmth and presence. He spent restless nights dreaming of you, his instincts flaring at him to run and barge into the house next door. 

The same way it does to him now.

Riki likes to think he knows you best, and that includes knowing that you’re a beta—a medical statement that broke his heart when he first found out about it because his mom is so adamant that he mates with an omega.

But now, as he stares at the text sent by your sister, Riki feels like everything he used to know about you dissipates, becoming the very air he inhales that makes his chest feel tighter and limbs heavier. It takes everything in him not to knock on your parents’ house, to force his way in, and cradle you in his arms the way his wolf tells him to.

future sister-in-law

y/n’s presenting as an omega

Two weeks went by in a blur. You drifted in and out of consciousness, your mom and your sister being the only thing you could remember from your fragmented memory. One time you were in the hospital. The next time you opened your eyes, you were back in your childhood room. Your body ached all over; it felt like your bones were shifting into a new spine. 

When the daze of anesthetics finally wears off, a new day has already begun.

And you discover the earth-shattering truth with a shudder. It’s not only the day that’s new.

You’re also, apparently, new.

An omega. You’re now an omega.

“A late presentation, though rare, can happen, and your daughter is one of the chosen ones.”

You don’t know how to make of it. You just nod along, thoughts scattered everywhere, nose catching up scents that weren’t there before—or they’ve always been, but your senses only allow you to detect them now. The blooming rose, fresh rain scent of your mom. The citrusy pheromone of the alpha-doctor sitting in front of you. You have come for another check-up, a detailed medical explanation that your doctor has insisted you to listen to when you’re finally stable.

Your chest tightens as the scents sharpen—and you suddenly understand why your family always looked at you like you were missing something.

It settles wrongly on your chest, like a frame hung in a crooked angle. You’ve been wanting this your whole life—to be able to detect scents, to not feel excluded from the women of your family, to have a chance at love with Riki. 

It’s not that you hate it. You just don’t know what to do with it yet.

“But that also means that you’re quite fragile for now until your first heat cycle comes,” the doctor speaks again, snapping you out of your thoughts. He gives you a reassuring smile, as if noticing your unfocused self. “And from the test results, it should come in very near time. Perhaps a week or two from now.” 

“So soon?” Your mom sits straighter in her seat, leaning closer to peek at whatever medical result on the paper he’s holding. The doctor nods.

“This can only happen to late-presenting omegas. And since her body had developed way past its due age, it can be very dangerous if she spent it alone. She needs an alpha for her first heat cycle.”

That, finally, grabs your attention. Your body stills, the words hanging in the air like guillotine waiting to fall.

“An alpha?” you repeat, sounding disbelieving. The doctor confirms with a hum.

“Yes, a familiar alpha. Based on the examination, it seems that your presentation was triggered by overwhelming and heavy pheromones of agitated alphas. I was informed that you were watching a basketball match before you fainted, correct?” You nod, failing to find your voice to answer. “Omegas are very responsive towards alphas pheromones, especially when those alphas are running on adrenaline and being very competitive.”

Oh. You recall the way Heeseung’s loud voice shook you to your core, finally finding an explanation to the way your body reacted. You shift in your seat, suddenly too aware of your surroundings.

“And to tie it back to your heat cycle, Y/N, are you close with any of those alphas?”

The guillotine finally falls, cutting your oxygen like a cruel punishment meant to kill. You visibly stiffen, a certain face flashing in your mind like a broken record.

It’s your mom who speaks first. “Yes, she is close with Nishimura Riki. He was at the court with her.”

A small smile grazes the doctor’s lips. “Then that may be the safest option. Perhaps he can help with your daughter’s heat, seeing as she has no exclusive partner now.”

The doctor’s words keep looping in your head like a tape stuck on repeat—an alpha…a familiar alpha…

And somehow, you end up outside the locker room, waiting.

Waiting for the one person who has always been your anchor, whether you deserved him or not.

Nishimura Riki.

He steps out of the locker room with his usual lazy confidence, but there is a tension in his shoulders now. His hair is damp from a post-game shower, curly and messy, framing his eyes like velvet curtains. As if he was a radar specialised to sense you, his nose twitches, and then his head snaps in your direction.

There is a brieft silence between the two of you. You raise your hand and wave, and that’s all it takes for Riki to stride towards you with long steps. He drops his bag on the floor, not caring where it lands, and pulls you into his arms.

“Riki—” Your greetings die in your throats, muffled by the soft fabric of his hoodie as he tightens his hold. His palm, big and warm, cradles the back of your head in a firm yet gentle grip. You relax into his embrace, clutching at his hoodie, feeling grounded in his scent. He smells like soap and his own pheromones, and in the quiet, familiar warmth of being engulfed by Riki, you silently admit that your best friend does smell the best.

“God, Y/N,” he whispers, breath fanning the shell of your ears, making your skin tingles, “do you want me to die from worry? No replies, no call back. God.”

Your lips curve into a small smile before you break the embrace, putting a distance between the two of you to look at his face. His handsome, pretty face that you’ve missed so much.

“I’m sorry, Ki. Things were pretty rough.”

Riki doesn’t say anything. His eyes, heavy with care and unspoken desire, rake over your features before he slowly nods.

“I know. I’ve been through it too. How are you now?”

You bite your bottom lip, letting yourself indulge in his caring nature. “I’m good now. A whole lot different, but good.”

Riki’s face relaxes into a relief before he slings an arm around your neck again, his habit that you’re used to now. “Great. Now let me treat you to that steak place, you can’t say no—”

“No, Riki.” You cut him off, and that stops him in his tracks. Riki looks at you in confusion when you detach yourself from him, putting his arm back to his side. You throw the locker room a nervous glance, before looking back at him.

“There’s something…I must tell you.”

Riki’s scent spikes. You feel it like a soft punch in your chest. 

“What is it?” he asks, voice too low, like he’s scared of what’s to come.

“I…you know I’m a late-presenting omega, right? The doctor says that I’m quite unstable now,” you swallow, fiddling with the edge of your sweater. The words are heavy on your tongue, like lead pressing on a mattress. 

 “My heat will come in a week, and…and I must spend it with an alpha to regulate myself back.”

Riki doesn’t move, and so do you. And in that moment, you feel it. The impending consequences that come from telling him the truth. But between losing a friendship with Riki, being denied from his company that’s caused by your unrequited love, and letting yourself into another person’s life, forever yearning for Riki but still remains his friend; you’ll always choose the latter.

Because you’ll have him, as whoever he is; as your friend, your unrequited love, your crush—than a stranger.

“Y/N—”

“I need Jay to be that alpha.”

His eyes darken. “What?” Riki tries to keep it calm, but his voice is low and tight. “What do you mean, Jay?”

You take a deep breath, suddenly feeling the walls too close to your skin. Across from you, Riki is staring with a sharp, heavy gaze, his eyes pleading for an explanation.

He takes a step closer. “Why Jay?”

“I—I mean, you always told me that Jay is a gentleman. And if you trust him so much, then I think…” your voice trails off when Riki takes another step, but you’re determined to stay rooted in your place. 

“You think you can trust him just because I do?” He continues for you, his voice now an octave lower. You swallow.

“Not just because you trust him,” you say, voice shaky. “Because… because he’s the only one I know who won’t take advantage of me.”

Riki’s jaw tightens. His eyes narrow as if he’s trying to bite the words out of you.

“You think I would?” he snaps, then immediately regrets the sharpness in his tone.

His expression changes. Softer now, but still intense.

“I would never—”

You shake your head, too quickly. “No, Riki. That’s not what I mean. It’s just—” Your breath hitches, and your voice breaks. “You’re my best friend. I—We can’t. Best friends don’t do that.”

The words hit him like a strong wave, and it might as well be true from the way he falters in his stance slightly. You feel his distress before you smell it; burnt sandalwood and bitter musk, a telltale sign of his emotions. Your heart lurches in your throat, begging you to embrace and comfort the alpha in front of you.

But before you can do anything, Riki takes a step back first. He nods curtly, schooling his expression despite his scent. 

Then he speaks, voice low and clipped, like he’s swallowing a scream.

“Yeah. Best friends don’t.”

“Riki—”

“I’ll ask Jay about it,” he says, his voice sounding distant. Your heart breaks. “He’s a gentleman. He’ll be willing to help you.”

Without waiting for your reply, Riki turns around. He snatches his bag off the floor, posture rigid and tense as he walks away, leaving you behind with guilt clawing at your throat. Your legs weaken, and before you know it, you are back on the bench, clutching at your heart and feeling like you have broken something you shouldn’t.

riki ducky

jay agreed

You stare at the text, the last and only text you received from Riki since that fateful day at the locker room. He’s been avoiding you like a plague, keeping distance, and ignoring your texts and calls like you’re a desperate ex. You sigh. 

“I just—I don’t want to ruin our friendship! He’s the only alpha I want, but—” you run a hand through your hair. Wonyoung is slouching on the other end of the couch, listening to you like an unpaid therapist. “But does he want me?”

Wonyoung licks her popsicle and throws you a knowing look. “In my opinion, Y/N—you just need to go to his apartment. Trust me on this.”

You groan. “I just asked you that question! We don’t even know if he wants me!”

“Oh my God,” Wonyoung rolls her eyes, kicking at your thigh from where she’s sitting. “You guys are so insufferable and dramatic. Just go before I deliver you to him myself.”

“I’m not a parcel!”

“Just go!”

So, with reluctance and doubt scratching at your skin, you drag your feet to Riki’s apartment. It has been five days since he talked to you, and with your heat approaching fast, with your pre-heat symptoms wearing at your bones like a curse, you’re not sure if it’s the right idea to do so. He might kick you out. He might not even answer. Either way, it’ll be less embarrassing with no witnesses because Riki lives alone.

Stupid rich Japanese kid.

To your surprise, the door opens after the first ring, revealing a disheveled, messy Riki. His hair is tousled, like it’s been run by his fingers way too many times. His tank top sits snugly on his body, slightly crumpled and damp from sweat. His eyes, usually bright and lively, are now sharp and dark. You blink at him, taking in his unkempt figure swallowing the doorway with his height, before you finally ask:

“Can I come in?”

Riki opens the door wider like an invitation, letting you pass the threshold before closing it shut with a click. He lets you toe off your shoes, lets you lead him into the living room, lets you admire his furniture arrangement—though right now the space is untidy with unfolded clothes and discarded socks—but says nothing.

The hush between the two of you stretches, until Riki decides to break it, his voice low and grim.

“Why are you here? You should be with Jay.” 

There is a hint of bitterness in his tone, and the spike in his scent just proves it further. You take a step towards him, careful and slow, waiting for his permission. When Riki doesn’t move, when he doesn’t stop you; you take another step.

“Riki,” you start, hands raising to touch his arms but dropping them back. Riki only stares. “What’s wrong, Riki? You’ve been avoiding me.”

Riki doesn’t answer right away, a storm behind his eyes as he only stares at you with a blank face. But the twitch in his jaw doesn’t go unnoticed. “I’m not avoiding you,” he mutters, a barely restrained voice that tugs at your heart. “Just busy.”

“You’re not even replying to me,” you speak again, hearing the crack in your voice. Riki stiffens, his hands clenching into fists. “It—It hurts, Riki. I don’t know why you can’t just talk to me.”

Riki says nothing. His mouth is a prison, staring at you like he’s figuring how to breathe again. His scent reaches you—clean musk and sandalwood—only now it feels heavier, like the fragrance has been pulled down by the weight of his emotions. The sandalwood smells faintly burnt, and the musk has a dull edge, like he’s been holding his breath for too long.

And you hate it. You hate it so much that he’s been keeping things to himself. In another desperate attempt to get him talking, you tug at his wrist, the skin warm under your touch, but you flinch when Riki snatches his hand away. Wide-eyed and caught off guard, you stare at him with your heart in your throat.

Riki takes a step back, his mouth curling into a tight line. “Don’t touch me. I—I can’t deal with this right now.”

There is a jab of pain in your heart at his words, but you’re not backing down. Not now when the only person that you’re scared to lose is showing signs of slipping away. Not now when the wolf inside you is whimpering, agitated from Riki’s actions.

You have an idea where this is all coming from. Truly, you aren’t that stupid to not notice his distance right after you requested to spend your heat with Jay. If you have to point in one direction, you’d say that Riki has been acting like a jealous boyfriend. Surprisingly, that speculation doesn’t bother you. 

It’s the why that’s drilling into your mind, pulling you away from a good night’s sleep everyday. It’s the why that’s invading your thoughts, fraying every nerve in your system, keeping you hostage to your own overthinking.

Because admitting them will give you hope—and hope is a dangerous thing when you’re in love. Especially when it’s one-sided. Especially when it’s just you on the boat, drowning like a locked chest into the abyss when your lifeline, your Riki is walking away from the shore.

So you try to brave up. “Please, Riki. Don’t shut me out,” you exhale shakily, the words lodging in your throat, “if this is about me and Jay, you should just tell me.”

That seems to hit a spot. Riki scoffs, weaving his fingers through his already-messy hair, sounding disbelieving. “What, you think I’m jealous?”

Your eyes narrow, pulse racing in your ears. “It does seem like it.”

Riki returns your gaze, clicking his tongue, the one habit he does when he’s annoyed. “Don’t push it, Y/N,” he doesn’t hesitate his next words, eyes locked onto yours like he wants you to digest and understand them. “You can fuck Jay if you want. I couldn’t fucking care less about you.”

The words land like a slap, but it’s Riki who flinches. He stares at you, eyes widening, realisation dawning upon his features. But it’s too late. 

Your scent takes a sharp turn, burnt caramel filling the air. You stagger one step backwards, and Riki’s heart lurches when he sees your glassy eyes.

You swallow. “I see.”

“No,” Riki whispers, his wolf wailing in regret at the sight of your anguished, crumbled face, “fuck, Y/N. I—I didn’t mean that.”

You shake your head, a small, humourless laugh slipping past your lips like something is breaking. And it’s probably your heart. It’s definitely your heart. “It’s okay,” you say, too calmly. Too gently. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

Riki’s chest tightens at that. At how quiet you suddenly are.

You turn away from him, movements stiff, deliberate, like if you move too fast, you’ll shatter. Each step you take feels heavy, your body screaming for you to get out before you embarrass yourself further. Before he sees you cry.

“Y/N, wait!” Riki reaches out instinctively, fingers grazing nothing but air as you slip past him.

You don’t look back. You can’t. Your throat burns, your vision blurring as you make your way toward the door. The apartment feels suffocating now, walls closing in, every trace of his scent pressing down on your lungs.

“I shouldn’t have come,” you murmur, more to yourself than to him. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry for hoping. Sorry for loving him. Sorry for thinking you meant more.

The click of the door unlocking sounds painfully loud in the silence.

“Y/N.”

His voice cracks this time. Not sharp. Not defensive. It’s bare.

You pause, hand resting on the handle, shoulders trembling despite your efforts to stay composed. Your scent curls tighter, darker—burnt sugar and salt, grief bleeding into the air.

“I can’t stay here,” you say softly. “Not if that’s how you feel.”

The door opens a fraction before Riki’s hand slams against it, stopping it from opening any further.

You gasp, startled, heart leaping into your throat as his palm presses flat against the wood beside yours. He’s breathing hard now, chest rising and falling like he’s been running after something he’s terrified to lose.

“I said I didn’t mean it,” he forces out, voice rough, desperate. “Don’t—don’t leave. Please.”

Slowly, you turn back to look at him.

Riki’s eyes are red-rimmed, frantic, his scent spiraling wildly—clean musk fractured, sandalwood raw and aching, like it’s been split open. He looks nothing like the composed alpha who pushed you away moments ago.

“I can’t let you walk out like this,” he says, quieter now, like a confession he’s been holding back for years. “Not because of something I said just to hurt you.”

His fingers curl against the door, knuckles white.

“Please,” Riki whispers. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

Your lips tremble as the dam breaks. “Then why,” you sob, pushing at his chest weakly, “why would you say those things? Why would you push me away?”

Your hands feel useless against his broad body, like you’re trying to hold back a storm with nothing but your fingertips. Your breath comes out in ragged bursts, and you can’t stop the hot tears spilling down your cheeks. The air around you feels heavy, thick with the scent of him — sandalwood and something sharper, like his anger clinging to him even now.

“I know, I’m sorry, baby,” his voice is quiet, not at all budging from your soft hitting. It’s strange how calm he sounds when you feel like you’re breaking apart. He grabs your wrists, bringing them to his lips. His mouth is wet, trembling.

You pause.

His lips brush your skin again, a gentle pressure that feels almost reverent. It makes your heart twist, because you don’t know whether to feel comforted or crushed. You’re still shaking, still sobbing, still trying to understand how he could make you feel so safe and so hurt in the same breath.

“I care about you too much. So much that it drives me crazy.”

Riki finally looks up, his glassy eyes mirroring yours. The sandalwood now hangs bare in the air, stripped of any traces of pride. He looks smaller, like the weight of what he’s feeling is pressing him down.

“I’m so fucking jealous, Y/N. I—I can’t,” Riki swallows, closes his eyes in desperation, and then he drops.

He drops to his knees, and the sudden movement makes your breath hitch. His neck cranes to see you, like he needs to make sure you’re still there. His arms, pliant and strong, wrap themselves around your waist, pulling you in like you’re the only thing that keeps him from falling apart.

You can feel his heartbeat through his chest, fast and wild, matching your own. For a moment the world is just the two of you—his scent, his trembling breath, your tears—everything else fading until all that exists is the raw, aching truth between you.

Riki buries his nose into your stomach, the fabric dampens with his tears. “I’m sorry, so sorry, Y/N. Please, and this time I mean it, please don’t go to Jay.”

Your hands hover at your sides, not knowing where to place them. When you feel the muffled sob against your stomach, you finally let them drop into his hair, caressing the strands like you do a puppy. And right now, in this position and situation, Riki doesn’t seem less than one.

“Riki…” you whisper, soft and gentle.

“Please don’t go to Jay,” he pleads, looking up to you again, tears clinging to his lashes. Your heart clenches at the sight. “Please let me be your alpha. Please,” he confesses, gripping at your shirt like a lifeline.

“I only ever know to love you, Y/N,” he trembles like a dead leaf, his breath shaky, “And it kills me to even imagine you with someone that’s not me.”

Your lips part, your hands in his hair stilling.

I only ever know to love you, Y/N.

You don’t move at first. You think you don’t even breathe. You replay his words, re-reading the sentence in your mind as if scared the alphabets might rearrange themselves into something else—something that would call you out of your delusion.

But Riki, staring up at you earnestly, handing his heart over to you in his trembling palms, is not a delusion. He’s real. And he’s here, with you, saying words you only ever heard in your deepest fantasies.

You feel your shoulders sag a fraction, like something heavy just settled into place. 

“Riki, come here.” You tap slowly at his arms, willing yourself to hide your shaky voice. “You’ll hurt your knees, baby. Come here.”

“Come back to me.”

Riki obeys without thinking twice. His height towers over you, and when it used to feel like he’s as far to reach as he is physically from you; now it feels safe. It feels firm, grounded; a protection only he can give you. 

You cup his cheek, gazing into his eyes with a fondness you reserve only for him. The tears come back, but it’s not from pain anymore. There is a tinge of hurt still, from the words he carelessly threw to protect his pride. But his confession, your revelation, take priority now. It presses heavy on your tongue, begging to be let out, to escape from the misery of your unspoken feelings.

“Riki,” you start, almost breathless. “I love you, too.” 

Riki almost stops breathing, but you keep caressing his cheeks to remind him to. To remind him that it’s true. 

“I’ve always been. Even before I knew what it meant.”

Riki takes in a sharp breath before he lets himself lean into your touch. Pulling you into his arms, he buries his nose into your hair, inhaling lungfuls of your scent like a stray cat finally finding a home. You melt into his embrace, feeling every hard line of his body pressing into yours.

“I’m so sorry for feeling scared,” Riki whispers, still wet from tears, “I don’t want to ruin our friendship. You’re too precious to me, Y/N. I can’t risk that.”

You hum into his shoulders, taking in the way his scent becomes warmer, the sandalwood now is rid of its burnt edge. “I’m still hurt, but I get it. I was scared too, Ki. It’s the only reason why I asked for Jay.”

Apparently, Jay’s name serves as a trigger now. Riki breaks the hug and looks into your eyes, now dark with a desire waiting to be unleashed. He cups your jaw in a gentle manner, but the grip is firm.

“Will you let me take care of you?”

You nod, and when his face leans closer to yours, you let yourself get pulled in by the force of his affection; of the desire now curling and swirling in his eyes.

“Will you let me be your man?” he whispers, lips just a breath away from each other now. Riki noses your cheek with a tenderness akin to handling a glass. “Hm? Answer me, Y/N.”

Your breath hitches. “Yes, Riki. Please take care of me.”

Riki’s eyes soften as he stares into your eyes before he finally lets his lips engulf yours. The kiss starts slow at first, careful and tender and wet, tethering on the new boundaries made after a line has been crossed, before it gets heated and needy. 

Riki kisses like a starved man, like your mouth is a well of water to quench his thirst. His hands now wander; gripping at your waist, squeezing at your hip, feeling your body with his rough, calloused hands like he’s trying to memorise you by touch.

“Fuck,” he groans into your mouth, his body pressing into yours. He breaks the kiss, breath now ragged, and stares at you with a new level of depth that makes something inside you flutter. Your eyes are glassy and dazed, and Riki curses at himself for letting himself get carried away.

“I’m so sorry. Is your heat near?”

When you nod, Riki moves slightly, but your hands are faster, clamping around his arms like a pair of cuffs. “Where are you going?” there is a pout in your voice, and Riki near damn coos. “You said you’ll take care of me.”

Riki’s jaw clenches, his hands flexing at his sides, a barely contained desire that he tries so hard to control. “I—I want to, Y/N, trust me. But this—” he gestures at the both of you, trying to create words from air, “this will change everything about us. We can’t stay as just friends after this. And that’s a big thing, Y/N.”

Riki licks his lips, eyes flicking to yours in a brief glance before he looks to the floor again.

“I don’t want you to make hasty decisions or regret anything.”

Your chest swells at that, and you couldn’t help the grin that splits across your face. Rubbing into his arms in soothing circles, you can’t keep the love and affection from bleeding into your voice when you speak.

“I won’t regret anything with you, Riki.” You pause, watching the man before you earnestly. God, he’s so handsome. You smile. “I want to do this with you, Ki. I choose you. And I’ll have you so long you want to have me, too.”

Riki doesn’t move. His eyes search yours, looking for the faintest hint of discomfort and lies. But when all he can see is your eyes reflecting his love, he finally lets the tension off his shoulders.

“Okay,” Riki nods, wetting his lips once more. “Okay. I—thank you for that, Y/N, truly. I was about to kidnap you if you said no.”

You laugh at that, eyes wrinkling in joy, the tension easing up a bit. Riki touches your cheek, thumb brushing your tears slowly before letting go.

“Can you wait in my bedroom? I need to call your mom first. She needs to know that I’m about to eat her daughter alive.”

A rosy heat blooms across your face before you hit his shoulders playfully. Riki throws you a smirk, shrugging with nonchalance.

“What? Aren’t I a good future son-in-law?”

“Oh, shut up.” You roll your eyes, but the wide grin you have betrays you completely. “Be quick, Ki. Don’t leave me for too long.”

“Oh, I will, baby. I’m a greedy man after all.”

Riki winks, and you groan. To save yourself from further embarrassment, you make a small run for his bedroom, feeling his eyes boring holes into your skull as you leave.

The living room seems to expand in your absence. Riki lets out a low, dark chuckle. He pockets his phone out of his sweatpants and makes a quick dial to your mother.

It’s just a brief call, with him letting your mother know what’s going to go down in less than forty-eight hours, listening to the relief in her voice when she realises it’s going to be him. After giving her his words of promises, Riki finally heads to his room.

The door creaks open and in an instant, a heavy, thick wave of vanilla scent washes over him. Riki staggers, gripping his phone in an attempt to recover from the smell of arousal practically dripping in the air.

His eyes find you on the bed, and the sight nearly takes his breath away.

There, perched on the bed, body slicked with sweat and completely naked, is you. You’re hugging his blanket to your nose, inhaling his pheromones, dizzy from his masculine, earthy sandalwood.

Your eyes meet his, glassy and dazed, drunk on hormones and heat.

“It’s hot, Riki,” there are wet noises coming from you, and only then does he realise that you have been fucking yourself on your fingers, using your own slick as lube. Riki feels his cock throb, eyes tranced on the way your hips move. “Smell so good, alpha, need you to fuck me.”

Your heat is here, and the trigger has been his own pheromones, which smells the strongest in his room. Riki curses under his breath, mentally slapping himself for overlooking the effects his pheromones over omega nearing their heat. He pushes the door close with his foot, not breaking eye contact with you as you moan, fingers moving faster.

Riki’s hold on his phone is knuckle-white, feeling the restraint leaving his body with every inhale of your intoxicating scent. 

“Alpha,” you pant, fisting at his blanket closer, and Riki swears he’s leaking precum. “Need you s’bad. Please.”

Riki wills himself to not jump on you, hands clenching and unclenching as he tries to steady his own breathing. 

It’s probably the hardest he’s ever tried.

Closing his eyes, he forces control into his system, chanting like a mantra that he’s here to help you with your heat, to make it less painful for you. That now it’s about you and not him, and Riki will pull the trigger himself if he ever touches you in any way that you don’t consent to.

Taking one last breath, Riki opens his eyes again. This time, there is a primal need lurking in his gaze, but it feels grounded and controlled. He circles the bed slowly, letting your noises greet his senses like music of sins. He puts his phone on the bedside and turns to face you, still not saying anything.

You scramble to kneel on the bed and pull him close by his waistband, fingers soaked and shaking. Your big, misty eyes peer at him through your lashes, practically begging him to take you.

“Riki, please.”

His rough palm cups your cheeks, breath getting shallow and short. 

“Please what, baby?” he finally speaks, low and sensual. You pout.

“Please fuck me, alpha.”

Riki groans and finally, finally, leans down and captures your mouth in a rough kiss. You sigh, tugging his hair as you deepen the kiss. Your teeth clash against his, his tongue licking into your mouth, pushing back your moans into your throat.

“Such a needy baby,” he rasps, grabbing your hips as he moves you to the center of the bed, manhandling you with ease. You bite your lips at the show of his strength. “Can’t even wait for me, hm? Should I just leave you with your fingers?”

You shake your head frantically, choking out a moan when Riki slides up his clothed knee against your folds. “No, please. Need your fingers. Need your cock, Riki.”

“Yeah?” Riki taunts, his eyes darkening as you hump your cunt on his knees, desperate for friction and release. He leans down, silver chain dangling cold against your hot skin, catching the shell of your ear with his teeth. 

“Tell me how much you need it, baby,” he purrs, leaving hot trails down the side of your throat. You tilt your head back, offering your neck like a meal. And what a fucking meal you are to him. “Tell me how badly you need my thick cock in your pussy right now.”

He sucks on the tender skin to leave a mark before moving to litter more of it on your skin. You mewl, gripping his shirt desperately.

“Need you to—ah—need your cock to fill me up,” you whimper, arching your back when Riki descends, closing his mouth around one of your nipples. He sucks on it like he does a lollipop, flicking his tongue at the perky nipple, his other hand kneading your other boob. “Need you to fuck me until I can’t think—ah! Riki!”

His finger finds your clit and flicks the nub, pressing and rolling it with a precision that has you choke on lust. “I’ll fuck you good baby,” he rasps, watching you with his sharp, dark eyes, capturing your expressions into his memory. His sweatpants tighten painfully. “But I need to prepare you first, hm?”

“No,” you sob, hips bucking into his touch. Riki’s eyes never leave yours, his arm still holding himself strong over your body. “I’m ready. Just fuck me, please.”

Riki coos and kisses your tear-stricken face. “I know, baby. You’re fucking soaked down there.” He groans, feeling another slick ooze out of your hole as if proving his point. Riki bites his lip. “But I don’t wanna hurt you—fuck, you’re grinding on my palm, baby.” Riki lets out a dark chuckle, letting you use his palm to get off. “So fucking greedy.”

You whine when he removes his hand, your hole clenching at nothing. Riki pulls your ankle to the edge of the bed, hooking your legs over his shoulders as he slowly kneels for the second time that night, his hot breath fanning on your weeping cunt.

He draws a lungful of your arousal and groans, the scent wrapping around him like a warm blanket.

Caramel and vanilla fill his lungs, and for a moment his whole body stills—like he’s been struck by how perfectly you’re made for him. Riki holds your gaze, refusing to look away when he licks a fat stripe on your folds.

“Oh!” Your hand flies to tug at his hair, a sob escaping your lips. Riki laps at your cunt again, humming at the sweet taste on his tongue, flicking that muscle between your slits before pressing onto your clit. You choke, squishing his head between your thighs.

“So good, alpha, feels so good,” you cry out, grinding on his tongue as he plays with your clit. “‘M close, gonna come, ah, ah—”

The orgasm jerks your entire body, your vision going white for a few seconds. But Riki doesn’t stop. His eyes are hooded as he drinks in your juice, lapping at your folds without wasting a single drop before he slips in his index finger.

Your body arches off the mattress. “Riki!” You scream, the stretch burns but it burns so fucking good. He slides in another digit, finger-fucking you through another orgasm, caressing and pressing the spongy walls with all the fervor of a hungry man. His tongue continues flicking your clit, the numb bundle of nerves sending a tingling sensation across your body.

Tears brim along your lashline, too drunk on lust and heat pheromones and overstimulation. “‘M close, Riki, ah,” you pull his hair, eliciting a groan that vibrates in your pussy. “Riki!”

Your second climax hits you in shockwaves. The man between your legs kitty-licks your pussy, letting you ride out your orgasm before he climbs onto your figure. His mouth and chin are wet from your slick, lips shining with sin and spit.

“You taste divine, my love,” he pops his fingers into his mouth and makes a show of his tongue swirling around his cum-coated digits, sucking on the remnants of your juice. You mewl. “I can eat you out forever.”

You watch him grin, still breathless from your previous orgasm. But the heat crawls back into your nerves and before you know it, you’re wet again, needy again. Riki knows it, of course he does. He settles himself between your legs, peeling off his drenched tank top.

Your mouth waters at his well-defined body. You’ve always known how hot your best friend is, especially after his alpha-presentation. He’s all muscles and sinful lines, sculpted by the Greek gods themselves. Riki knows he’s hot, and he never fails to show you that he knows; if his smirk is anything to go by.

“My baby’s been waiting for my cock, aren’t you?” His thumb grazes your bottom lip with a gentleness that clashes with the hunger in his eyes. You hum, feeling his eyes soften on you.

Riki leans down and gives you a soft, slow kiss. He pecks the tip of your nose before caressing your cheek with his. Inside, your omega purrs in satisfaction at the display of affection.

“Tell me if it’s too much, yeah?”

You nod. Riki nudges your nose with his, his mouth curving into a small smile. “Use your mouth, baby.”

“Yes.” You breathe out, and your legs hook around his waist without thinking, pulling him closer. You grind your bare cunt against his clothed length, slow at first, then faster, as if you need to prove something to yourself. The fabric presses into you, and the friction sends a shock through your nerves. Riki groans, a disbelieving chuckle leaving his lips before he straightens up.

His eyes never leave you. “So impatient,” he sighs, his voice low and amused. 

He yanks his sweatpants and boxer off in one go, hissing when his cock springs free, rock-hard and rigid. You almost drool at the sight.

He’s big. Fuck, he’s too damn big.

“Cat got your tongue, baby?” Riki grunts, stroking his cock in languid motions, slicked with his precum,  watching your face like a predator stalking its prey.

Your eyes stay glued to him, glazing over in a trance. You can’t stop staring, like you’re afraid to blink and lose the image.

“So big,” you murmur, your voice shaking.

Riki can’t help the triumphant smirk on his face, his alpha howling in pride.

“Too big, alpha, fuck.”

“I know,” he rasps, lining his cock against your entrance,“I don’t even know if it will fit.”

Then, with a single thrust, he slides in. You gasp, the sting blooming sharp and hot before melting into something dizzying, your stomach tightening as if it’s being pulled inward around him.

“But you will make it fucking fit.”

Riki pushes in inch by inch, noting every micro-expression of discomfort in your pretty face, your breath stuttering, hands gripping at him as the pressure curls low in your belly.

“Tell me if it hurts, love.”

“It hurts,” you croak, the words breaking apart on your tongue, wrapping your arms around his neck, mouth moving against mouth. “But it hurts so good, Riki.”

Riki kisses you through the pain, whispering comfort and praises into your ears, easing you into it. When he finally bottoms out, you almost sob again, the fullness stretching deep, heavy and overwhelming, heat pooling in your stomach until it feels like you can’t think past it.

“Still good?” Riki asks, jaw clenching at the feeling of your walls hugging his length. You nod, feeling the tension in your muscle unclench.

“Y-You can move now, Riki.”

Something dark glints in his eyes. “I can’t fucking move, baby,” he chuckles lowly, the sound torn and breathless, vibrating straight into you, “your pussy’s sucking me in.”

You moan at his crude words, your walls clenching around his dick. Riki lets out a curse before sliding out and thrusting back in with a snap of his hip. You scream, the sound sharp and unplanned, nails scratching his arms as your stomach clenches tight.

“S’tight, love,” he gives you another sharp thrust, hitting that sweet spot easily, breath mingling with yours. “Pussy so tiny, baby, fuck,” he growls into your ears. You nod, mind turning mushy from heat and pleasure. “Can you feel me deep inside your—fuck—tight cunt,” he pants, each word making your belly flutter helplessly, shoving his cock with a powerful thrust that has you seeing stars, “filling you up with my fat cock?”

“Yes!” you sob, voice cracking, breath hitching between syllables, wetting your face with another round of tears. The air smells of pheromones and sex, slicked bodies tangled in sheets. “More, more, more, please.”

“So fucking good to me,” Riki stares you down, eyes clouded with lust, drinking in the way your breasts jingle every time his hips meet yours. He moans. “You’re so beautiful, my pretty baby. Were you gonna let Jay see you like this?”

Your walls instinctively clench at the image, your stomach dropping hot and heavy, and Riki lets out a dark, wicked laugh at that. His gaze sharpens, his pace getting rougher and sharper as he looks at you with newly-lit fire in his eyes. 

“You’re so fucking shameless,” he spits.

You whine from his harsh words, but your body only responds more, slick pooling hotter between your legs. The shame digs into your ribs, but the need overrides it.

Riki’s jaw twitches.

“Were you gonna beg for his cock, huh? You think he can fuck you good like this?”

“No—Riki, no—only you—ah, oh God.”

His thrusts don’t slow. They become relentless, each one harder than the last, his hips snapping in a steady rhythm that leaves you breathless. Your moans bounce off the walls, high and broken, tangled with the wet sound of skin meeting skin, as you shake your head, shame and lust clawing at your throat.

Riki lifts your hips and grabs your ass, the new angle making you roll your eyes in pleasure. You bite down on your lip, trying to hold back the sound, but the sensation is too much.

“Yes, yes—there! Fuck, Riki, more, please,” you moan, high-pitched and broken, feeling the familiar rush inside your belly.

His breath comes out ragged, his body leaning forward like he’s trying to bury himself into you. The heat between you tightens, and you can feel the way his length presses deeper with each thrust.

“I’m never letting go, baby,” Riki pants, damp fringes framing his eyes, his thrust growing faster and sloppy. “This pussy is fucking mine.”

“‘M yours,” you slur, mind turning fuzzy from the feeling of his cock splitting you open. “I’m only—ah—yours!”

“That’s right, baby,” Riki growls, pressing into your hips with a bruising grip. His breath is frantic, his voice pitching into a higher tone. “You’re fucking mine, shit—I’m close.”

“Please give me your knot—ah!” You scream, begging for his knot and cum incoherently, drool trailing down your chin. A stuttered moan leaves your chest when Riki thumbs at your clit, bringing you closer to the edge. His bulge is growing inside you, and you shudder in anticipation for his knot.

“Take my fucking knot,” he grunts, and you nod, mind going hazy from being fucked dumb.

“Knot—give me your knot—alpha—I’m—close! Oh God, Riki!” His name tears off your throat in a shrill scream, drowning out Riki’s low, guttural growl as he comes with you. His cock inflates inside your belly, pumping into you full and stretched, riding out the waves before he collapses on top of you, careful not to let his weight crash over you.

“Hey,” Riki whispers after a pause, brushing your hair from your forehead, his heart clenching at the sight of your tears. “Baby, is it too much? You good?”

You let out a low hum, closing your eyes as Riki peppers your face with kisses. Your body feels heavy, pleasantly spent, limbs loose like you might melt straight into the mattress if he lets go.

“M’good,” you murmur, voice thick and sleepy. “Just… a lot.”

Riki exhales, something like relief softening his features. He shifts carefully, cautious of the knot still swelling inside your belly, adjusting the sheets around you both, one hand resting warm and steady on your waist like an anchor. “Yeah,” he whispers, brushing his thumb under your eye. “I figured.”

He stays like that—no rush, no urgency—just tracing slow, absent patterns against your skin, grounding you back into yourself. Every now and then, he presses a kiss to your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth, like he’s checking that you’re still here with him.

“You did so good,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “So brave.”

Your chest tightens at that, but this time it’s not overwhelming. It’s gentle. Safe. You shift closer, instinctively tucking yourself against him, and Riki immediately wraps his arms around you, pulling you in without hesitation.

“I love you,” Riki whispers into your hair. The thrill and adrenaline finally die down, leaving behind small tingles of love and affection that makes your chest feel too small. You tighten your hold.

“I love you too, Riki,” you sigh, feeling another wave of heat coursing through your veins. Shit. You almost forgot that you’re in heat. Riki only laughs when he feels your hole pushing out more slick.

“My baby’s so horny, yeah?”

“It’s the heat!” You hide your face in his chest, cheeks burning, then peek one eye open at him. Riki’s starry eyes hold yours, unhurried, like he has nowhere else to be but in your arms. You shy away. “Can we do another round? Please?”

He laughs, a deep, throaty laugh that warms up your chest. Planting a gentle kiss on your forehead, Riki meets your pleading eyes with a boxy grin.

“Of course we can, my love,” he murmurs, “anything for you.”

A comfortable silence falls over you like a weighted blanket. Riki rubs his nose against your scent gland, basking you in his warm sandalwood and clean musk, feeling you grow relaxed in his arms as you wait for the knot to deflate before you speak again.

“And can you actually bring me to that steak place after my heat ends?”

Riki snorts quietly. “Yeah,” he says, tightening his hold on you. “I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

There's something about the soft lilt of your voice that makes him feel ashamed to even speak in your presence. There's something about your enticing eyes that makes him stutter and stumble with his own words, his grammar-police persona flying out the window. There's something about the sure sway of your hips that makes him want to avert his gaze and look more all the same time; like something sinful he shouldn't want but crave for anyway.

You're the kind of woman that makes Sim Jaeyun nervous.

Park Jongseong's cousin from the States that always comes to visit for summer, with that bold show of your body that'll usually often get frowned upon in his neighbourhood, that honey tint of your skin that's far from the local society's beauty standard. You're upfront and so unapologetically you, something he admires and makes him overly conscious if his hair looks nice or not.

It's another summer and you're here again. You're always a welcome addition to their annual trip to Jay's beach house, a road trip that's usually joined by the other five plus you and him. But this year, Nishimura Riki had a last minute decision to cancel his flight to Japan and opted to spend the summer with them instead of with his family.

Which leaves all of you with no space for one person inside Jay's SUV.

"I call dibs on the rear seats," Heeseung says before anyone gets the chance to and disappears into the car. Riki opens his mouth, about to follow the eldest of the group, when Jungwon shoots him a sharp look and blocks his way with his hand.

"No, Riki. You're not getting a seat."

Riki's face morphs into horror. "What?! Am I excluded from this trip?"

"You cancelled your flight this morning. You were never included in the trip."

Seeing the look of hurt on his face, Sunoo actually takes pity on Riki. Peering inside, the blonde mumbles with a pout when he sees a small ice box sitting beside Heeseung. "Surely we can squeeze him into the rear seat, right…?"

"All of his six-feet-one ass? I'd like to see you try, Sunoo hyung." Jungwon shakes his head. He leans on the passenger door, already the assigned co-pilot of the car, in charge of Spotify playlist and Waze and moral support to his Jay hyung. "Either one of you sits in another's lap, or we can Uber Riki to the beach house."

Hearing that, Riki immediately throws his hands. "It's a two-hour drive, hyung, I might just be paying for the Uber's car loan! It's gonna be so expensive!"

"If you can afford cancelling your flight with no refunds, then I think you can afford an Uber to Sokcho."

Riki whips his head to his Sunoo and Jake hyung, jutting out his lips in a pout that's borderline pitiful. Jake mirrors his expression, not really having the power to go against Jungwon's verdict—as if anybody could. Jake pities him, really, but it's Yang Jungwon. There's a whole menace behind those cute dimples and boba eyes.

Beside him, Sunghoon lets out a long sigh. "Then one of us will have to sit in another's lap."

It's an option that has everybody darting their eyes around, afraid that any eye contact with Jungwon will make them become the sacrificial thighs for the two-hour road trip. They're all men packed with mass and muscles, a result of a gym routine that unexpectedly becomes a problem today. Each of them at least weighs one hundred-forty pounds. Jake's sure that if he was chosen, he'd lose his legs by the time they exit Seoul.

Just in time, a loud thud is heard from the car boot. You and Jay walk into the scene, just having finished loading all of their stuff into the car. Jake adjusts his glasses instinctively, unknowingly fixing his appearence when his eyes land on you.

You've abandoned your cardigan, now only wearing a yellow camisole top that only reaches your belly button and a pair of jeans shorts that ends at the bottom swell of your ass. Your outfit choice hides nothing about your figure—your perfect body that admittedly has always been on his mind.

Jake gulps and lets his eyes trail down to your legs. You're seriously one of the most beautiful and hottest girls he's ever seen, and unfortunately, he has a severe problem of having a crush on baddies who are completely out of his nerdy league. You're definitely one of them.

When he looks up, Jake almost faints when your gaze catches his eyes with an unreadable expression. He quickly averts his eyes, adjusting the thick black rims of his glasses that didn't need adjusting.

Did you notice him staring?

"Car seat problem?" Jay asks when he senses the tension among the boys, already foreseeing this issue the moment Riki told him that he was joining their road trip over the phone this morning. They hesitantly nod.

"So what's the solution?"

"Riki takes an Uber to Sokcho—"

"Which will cost him his tuition fees," Jay comments, ever the hyperbole-user.

"—Or someone has to sit in another's lap."

Judging from the expression on Jay's face, he, too, doesn't think it's a comfortable position to be sitting in on a two-hour road trip.

But apparently, someone thinks otherwise.

"Oh, then let's do that!" You pipe in, flashing them with your charming smile. "I don't mind doing it!"

There's an elephant silence that follows your statement. Upon seeing their gaped expression, your smile slowly dies down, unsure if you had said the right thing.

"…Or not."

"Or yes!" Riki interrupts, relief flooding his senses. His eyes lit up as he looks around at each one of his friends. "Guys, she's offered to sit in anyone's lap. We can do that, right?"

Jungwon narrows his eyes. "It's a two-hour drive."

Riki blinks nervously. "But noona wants it."

"Then let Y/N noona sit in your lap."

Now, there's a rosy blush blooming across Riki's cheeks. Jake frowns. Lucky bastard. "I-I mean—"

"Not him," you cut in, a small smile playing on your lips. Jake can feel the exact moment everyone holds their breath, as if the air pauses on its own accord and waits for the rest of your sentence. Either they're anticipating or dreading to be your exclusive seat in the car—he's not sure. He's certain that he's the former, but he's also certain you'd pick someone more your type—Sunghoon or Riki, who are loyal gym buddies that possess strong thighs for you to sit on—or even Heeseung who's abandoned his nap and is eavesdropping the conversation now.

He doesn't know why, but surely someone hot like you would pick someone just as hot, right? And hot in Sim Jaeyun's definition is someone who matches your confidence (not him), someone who has a good body and is not shy to show them (Jake thinks his body is nice, but he's also always wearing long-sleeves), or just anyone but him.

Jay pinches the bridge of his nose. "Then who?"

When your eyes meet Jake's, the brown-haired boy almost loses his breath.

A smile curves up your lips. Jake thinks he's hallucinating because there's no way you are smirking at him.

"With Jaeyun."

There's a ripple of gasps, disbelief and shock mixing with a hint of betrayal (no doubt from Riki). Jay's brow disappears behind his hair.

"Seriously, Y/N? You don't have to—Riki's rich enough to pay for the Uber."

Riki's protest is muffled when Jungwon pulls him into a chokehold and slaps a hand over his mouth. Jake wants to pity him, really, but this time he thinks he's the one who needs help because what do you mean? There's no way—

"I'm serious. Jaeyun-ah."

—Oh my fucking God. Jaeyun. Jaeyun. Who's Jaeyun? Who the fuck is Jaeyun?

Jake has a trouble hearing you over the loud roar of his blood, heart threatening to jump out of his throat. But he manages a small, airy, 'Hm?' when all eyes are on him.

You tilt your head slightly, eyes never letting go of his, holding him hostage in your gaze alone. This, paired with the way you call his government name—a name you prefer over Jake because 'it's cuter' (according to you, not him) when he first introduced himself to you four years ago, and Jake had let you because he could never say no to you—are the most perfect, never-before-seen formula to unravel the physics genius Sim Jaeyun.

Yeah. Jake is a goner. And will soon have a boner if no one stops you from picking him as today's sacrificial thighs.

"Can I sit with you, Jaeyunnie?"

Someone please say no. Someone please stop you. Someone please tell this Jaeyun to say no because—because why him? Is this some kind of a cliché ploy that popular girls do to play with men's feelings, especially a physics nerd like him? Because if it is, Jake hates to admit that he'd be a willing participant (even if it'd break his heart a little).

"Yes, sure," he squeaks, finally recognising that Jaeyun is his name. He's still trying to process that you chose him—not Sunghoon with his ridiculous broad shoulders, or Riki with his ridiculous long legs, or Heeseung with his ridiculous charm—but him, who's sweating buckets and dampening his armpits underneath his long-sleeved T-shirt. His glasses almost glide down his nose from how sticky it is.

"It's settled, then!" Sunoo claps once, already red and irritated from having to stand under the unforgiving sun for longer than necessary. "Jake hyung and Y/N will sit together. So I will be sitting with—"

"Me!"

"Me!"

Sunoo ignores Sunghoon and Riki, and walks straight to the rear seats. "With Heeseung hyung!"

Soon, there's shuffling and then everyone's already inside the car. Riki sits in the middle with a pout, a penalty for causing the minor disruption and losing rock-paper-scissors to Sunghoon and Jake. Sunghoon is happily humming to a song from the 80s, occassionally turning around to tease Sunoo who's been trying to join Heeseung in his mandatory road-trip nap. Jay and Jungwon have settled into their designated seats as the drivers of the day, already talking about the route they're taking and traffic condition. While Jake—well, he's preparing himself for the inevitable.

You're still standing by the door, overseeing the situation at hand, and Jake tries to ignore the way his cheeks burn under your weighted gaze.

"Can I sit now?" You softly ask. Jake hesitates a moment before nodding his head frantically.

"Y-Yes."

You, on the other hand, do not hesitate at all. Jake instinctively spreads his legs when you climb into the car, already aiming his lap as your throne for the next 120-minute of the ride. His senses heighten, overly aware of his friends' eyes watching his every move, and the soft scent of peach from your body wash that invades his nose when your weight finally settles on him.

In a split second, Jake goes from never daring to touch you to having you resting your ass comfortably on his clothed dick, thanks to a certain Japanese who's now queueing songs like he didn't just commit a fatal crime against his Aussie hyung.

His slightly longer thighs bracket your exposed ones in a hesitant cage, every point of your skin meeting his seems to burn through the fabric of his jeans. Your hair and neck are one breath away from his nose now, where he's inhaling lungfuls of peaches and creams and your vanilla-ish perfume, and Jake chooses to blink at the ceiling to avoid looking over your shoulders and possibly flashing himself with the swell of your chest under that thin camisole top. The already-cramped space feels even smaller, and Jake doesn't think he can breathe properly.

While at it, Jake hopes his prayers could break through the car roof and reach the heavens.

God, please have mercy on me and let my other head not have a brain of its own.

God answers him shortly in the form of you shifting around.

"You comfortable?" You ask innocently, adjusting yourself on his lap. Jake nearly inhales his tongue, feeling blood rush to his ears and south. A strangled noise escapes his throat instead.

"Mhm."

From the front, he can hear a snort coming from none other than Jay. "You sound constipated, dude."

'Try having a pretty girl sit on your dick then!', is what Jake wishes he could say to his friend, but he knows that this is more of a him-problem. Someone like Jay won't get flustered in this kind of situation—at least not as bad as he is, who doesn't even fucking know where to put his hands, hovering in the air like he's about to conduct a choral speaking.

So, Jake resorts to conveying his rage through the rearview mirror instead, hoping that his glare and frown are enough to make Jay feel bad. (They don't, Jay finds him cute instead).

Jungwon comes to save the day as he turns to the backseat. "Do you have everything with you?" All of them except Jake hum. He thinks he doesn't have his sanity anymore, but of course the younger boy pretends to ignore him.

Jungwon eyes each one of his friends, his gaze stopping longer at the sight of Jake gripping the leather seat, the white of his knuckles almost matching his face, and you smiling innocently at him. Jungwon badly wants to laugh.

Jake widens his eyes at Jungwon. Help me!

The younger boy gives him an indecipherable look before turning to face the front. "Alright. We're not turning back for you even if you forgot your PlayStation."

Jake wants to say that they might want to leave a certain Sim Jaeyun to save him from this misery, but all words are gone from his mind when the car starts forward with a sharp jolt. Your back meets his chest in a soft thud, punching air out of his lungs. Your ass pushes deeper into his lap and Jake nearly pierces the leather with his nails from how desperately hard he's gripping it.

"Oops, sorry!" Jay chimes from the driver seat, sounding far from sorry.

You straighten up and turn around, looking more sorry than your cousin. "You okay? Sorry about that, Jaeyunnie."

Oh, fuck. Please don't use that voice on him when he's one bump away from kissing your lips. You're so close it feels like you're breathing in the same air he exhales, so close he can see the faint, tiny freckles dusting your cheeks and the bridge of your nose.

"Yeah," he manages, voice hoarse like he's just swallowed a bucket of sand. "I'm okay."

There's a halt in your movement, like you're actually seeing him through the calm façade he's exuding. His breath catches when your eyes drop to his lips briefly, the bitten-red skin tingles under your heated gaze.

Then, after a moment, you smile at him so easily; as if the tension never existed, as if the pull was only one-sided.

"If you say so."

When he's met with your shiny hair again, Jake lets out a breath he unknowlingly held. Your voice fills up the space softly as you begin talking to Jungwon and Jay, all cheery and unrestrained while he's exerting mental training equivalent to physical labour of a building constructor to stop his dick from hardening every time you move.

He hears a snicker from his left and immediately meets with Riki's mischievous eyes. The younger boy mouths something that has Jake closing his eyes and leaning on the headrest in defeat.

'Don't get horny now, Jake hyung.'

Jake is worried that if it's not now, it'll be the next time Jay hits a bump.

Instead of a road bump, Jake's personal enemy turns out to be you.

Ten minutes in, everything is still going fine. Jake is still breathing, alive, and hasn't popped a boner that could traumatise you and get him banned from the car permanently. You also seem okay, still engrossed in a conversation with the cat-duo driving the car, talking about college and your winter trip to Japan.

For a moment, Jake selfishly thinks if his lap was that…sitable, seeing as you haven't shown any signs of discomfort yet. Or, to be fair, it has been barely ten minutes since they're en route, and though those minutes are enough to pull the others into a car nap, ten minutes feel like one round of orbit around the Sun when he has you sitting on his lap.

Jake can feel himself melt into the seat. Maybe this isn't so bad at all. Maybe he can make it to Sokcho without having to cut his dick off before anyone could see his hard-on. He just has to sit really quietly and will his mind to avoid teetering dangerous territory.

Yeap. Everything is fine.

Not until you decide to put your hands on his thighs.

Jake almost jolts at the contact, flexing his thighs instinctively when you place your perfectly manicured fingers on the surface of his jeans. It's a brief touch, one that can pass as accidental, but the lingering heat it leaves behind feels almost physical.

His eyes dart to the back of your head, trembling with nerves nearly frayed at the edges, gauging your reaction, and bites the bottom of his lips when you resume your conversation as if nothing happened. Or nothing really happened to you.

It's just a touch, for God's sake. Calm your dick down.

If a simple touch from you could unravel him this fast, what about other things? What if you hug him, or-or if you hold his hand, or—wait, is he wishing for other things to happen between you and him? (He does, but he knows that it won't happen.)

Jake gulps harshly and decides to enjoy the scenery instead. He stares hard out the window, so intense like he's memorising every species of the trees they pass by, mind lost in a whirlwind of horny thoughts clashing with rationality, when you do something again.

This time, it isn't an innocent touch on his thigh. It's an innocent move to hear Jungwon better. You lean forward, pushing your ass deeper into his lap simultaneously, offering your ear to Jungwon who seems to be sharing a secret about Jay. Jake's breath hitches and his hands almost come up to hold your waist, the friction sending heat through his body.

Fuck. He peels his eyes away from the window forcefully and follows down the dip of your spine to where your ass meets his crotch. Your position highlights the narrow of your waist and the width of your hips, all sinful curves that have him swallowing harder, something inside his pants threatening to stir alive. Jake closes his eyes.

Think of Jesus, Jake. Think of Layla. He absentmindedly fixes his glasses. Think of quantum physics. Think of—

"—Oh!" You squirm excitedly, round butt wiggling slightly against his cock. "Yes, I met her before!"

Jake hisses before he can stop himself, the sound serving like a knife cutting the conversation. You and Jungwon instantly turn to look at him, the latter wearing a mischievous expression when he sees the heat painting Jake's face red.

"Are you okay?" You prompt in concern, noticing how stiffly Jake is nodding at you.

"Y-Yeah. Good. I'm horgoony."

Freudian slip is gonna be the death of him.

Jay and Jungwon burst out laughing, catching the slip as fast as any dirty-minded man would. Jake's face turns a darker shade of red, avoiding your eyes whose brows now pinching in confusion.

"Horgoony?" You echo, pretty confident you have never heard of that strange word spoken before. Jake immediately shakes his head, panic creeping into his chest when Jungwon shows a sign of opening his mouth.

No! Do not let that orange cat speak! Jungwon only cares about his downfall!

"I feel horribly good! Yeah," Jake stammers, to hell with any logical reasoning. "Like, I feel good because we're on a road trip. But also kind of horrible because I get motion sickness sometimes."

Now that the string of the sentences has flowed out of his mouth, Jake thinks he is kind of making sense. Satisfaction blooms in his chest when you nod in understanding, because two conflicting emotions—feeling good and horrible—can exist simultaneously, right? Like the way he wants to push you from his lap and hide in the deepest part of the Sokcho forest forever but also craves to just grab your hips and pull you close and have his way with you—wait stop.

What a horrible, horny, nothing-good man you are, Sim Jaeyun.

"That does sound horrible." Jake snaps out of his thoughts when he registers your voice, nodding fervently to amplify the faux pity that he's just orchestrated.

You give him a sorry look, the one where it pulls the corners of your mouth down into a frown. Jake sighs in relief. You bought it. Thank God for his smart brain.

"Yeah. I think I'm just gonna take a nap," he adds, voice turning softer when you still look at him in concern. He feels a strange need to overexplain.

"Motion sickness happens because your eyes see one thing while your inner ears and muscles feel another. If I take a nap, it'll eliminate the visual stimuli that causes the conflict…" Jake trails off, catching himself before he could go on and on and on on why humans experience motion sickness, and possibly bore you to death. He shakes his head imperceptibly. "So—yeah. I should take a nap."

To his surprise, you only give him a warm smile. "I never knew that, Jaeyun. Then what's the correlation between motion sickness and playing your phone in a moving vehicle?"

Jake blinks behind his glasses, genuinely taken aback that you're actually listening instead of zoning out halfway through his rambling.

"Oh. Um." He clears his throat. "It's kind of the same concept. Your eyes are focused on something stationary—your phone—but your body still feels the movement of the car."

You hum softly, leaning back against him slightly, prompting him to continue. Jake immediately forgets how lungs work.

"S-So your brain gets confused because the signals don't match," he continues weakly. "Your eyes tell your brain you're sitting still, but your inner ears are like, 'No, we're moving.' It's like mixed signals, and our body doesn't like mixed signals."

His ears are warming up from how true the words are to the situation he's having with you.

"And right now you're seeing my stationary body while the car's moving," you continue with a subtle tilt of your mouth, "so you're nauseous and all dizzy now, right?"

Jake almost chokes to death. Did you know about his little problem? He blinks at you rapidly, hand itching to touch his glasses in a fit of nerves.

Oh my God. He's going to die. He's going to die and Jungwon will write 'Sim Jaeyun was a smart friend, died a horny man with a dick that never went down, a standing ovation to his contribution to Seoul National University' as his headstone epitaph. You know about it so Jake is going to die!

He stumbles with his own words. "I-I mean—It's actually—"

You give him a cheeky smile. "I'm just joking with you, Jaeyun. You're probably sick because you're having me on your lap like this."

You start digging into your front pocket, frowning when it's empty. Jake holds his breath when your hands move to your back pocket, looking for whatever it is that gets you so determined and his dick so excited whenever your finger brushes against his crotch. Jake is almost blue from not breathing.

He thinks this time he's really going to die.

"Found it!"

You offer your palm to him, where two mint candies sit idly on the soft surface. Jake's chest slowly feels lighter as air rushes in, no longer collapsing under the pressure of your searching hand accidentally brushing against him moments ago. He clears his throat.

You beam at him. "These will soothe your sickness, Jaeyunnie. Please take them."

Jake studies your face.

Do you know what you're doing to him? Was everything done on purpose, or are you really oblivious to everything?

He swallows and forces a nod, taking the candies from your palm, feeling a spark of electricity in his system when his fingers brush your skin.

"Thank you, Y/N."

You turn your back on him, resuming your conversation with Jungwon and Jay. All sweet and cotton candy, unaware of the turmoil he's going through. Jake stares at the candies in his hand, a mocking sign to his misery, and heaves out a quiet sigh. He glances at his wristwatch.

It feels like two world wars had happened but it's only been twenty minutes into the drive. An hour and forty minutes of horny torture remains for Sim Jaeyun to endure, and he's not sure if he's going to survive.

He slowly closes his eyes. Maybe sleep can help with horniness, too.

It does, but only for a moment, because Jake could swear he just blinked when you tap his shoulder a few times.

Jake blinks, half-groggy and half-alert. Did he have a wet dream of you and get hard in his unconsciousness? Is that why you woke him up?

But he's met with your apologetic face instead. "I'm sorry for waking you up," you whisper, trying not to wake other boys who are fast asleep. "But my back's sore. Can I lean on you for a moment?"

In a flash, all incoherent thoughts fly out the window. Guilt starts lodging in his chest as he realises—glancing at his watch—that you've been sitting straight for one hour. Before he knows it, Jake is already nodding at you, adjusting his seat to accommodate the new position.

"Y-Yes, you can."

God, he's such a loser. The word 'no' seems to disappear from his dictionary whenever you're around.

You reward him with an appreciative smile and waste no time to turn around and lean back softly on him. The moment your back touches his chest, Jake can feel his system kick start, a chemical reaction that he can never understand no matter how hard he studies Biology.

You physically relax into his chest. "This is so much better," you sigh, a dreamy smile on your face, resting your head in the crook of his neck. Then you tilt your head upwards to glance at him. "Is this okay for you?"

Jake hopes you can't feel how fast his heart is beating through the fabric of his shirt. The brown-haired boy nods wordlessly. "More than okay."

For a moment, you just stare at him, brilliant eyes holding his in a soft gaze. It's a silent minute full of everything unspoken, rendering him speechless and even more restless because no matter how smart he is, he could never decipher the meaning behind this look you're giving him. There's something you hide that he feels like he should know, like an open secret waiting for the right time for him to catch.

This time, Jake is even sure that you can hear his heartbeat.

Then, as if that moment never happened, you close your eyes and get comfortable.

"We should sleep, Jaeyun. Don't want you to get carsick again."

You nuzzle closer and Jake holds his breath, feeling the silky strands of your hair brushing against his jaw. His hands hover, not knowing where to land, though the pinch of your waist is where he wants to hold the most. Eventually, Jake settles on his thighs, watching the difference between his veiny hands and the smooth span of your thighs.

Is he still sleeping? Is he dreaming or are you really sleeping on his chest?

It seems that sitting in his lap really tired you out, because you're fast asleep in less than five minutes. The guilt in his chest amplifies at the sight of your closed eyes, breathing evening out as sleep overtakes your being. Jake bites his lips.

He's so shameless, napping to avoid getting turned on instead of caring for your being. He’s so horrible, worrying more about his hard-on than the fact that you’ve been uncomfortable for an hour. Jake wants to cry so bad.

Jake spends the rest of the ride watching you sleep. He fixes your hair when it falls over your face, tucking it behind your ear carefully, and then smiles to himself when he sees your pout. He blocks the sunlight with his hand when it's glaring on your skin through the window, not minding letting his hand redden from the harsh light. He instinctively holds your waist at a sharp turn, firm and secure, though he lets go just as fast as if it burns, afraid that it's not a touch you'd receive had you been conscious.

Other than the carnal desire he has suppressed for you, this road trip also makes him realise the depth of the feelings he actually harbours for you. He's so doomed. He's so doomed because in what universe would a hot, sweet, popular California girl like yourself, return back the feelings of a bland, studious, quiet Korean-Aussie boy like him?

In fictions. In another lifetime. But not in Sim Jaeyun's current universe right now.

However, the Sim Jaeyun in this universe also will never know peace.

Because just as he's getting comfortable with the you-watching routine that he just recently discovered, the road has another plan for him when Jay finally, and actually, hits a bump this time.

The first bump is a mild surprise. Jake gathers it's a small bump, one that Jay overlooks while getting excited over Bon Jovi playing on the rodeo. But the aftermath brings you settling deeper into him, pressing on him in a way that has his breath hitching. Jake holds your waist on instinct.

"Oh my God, I didn't see that," Jay mutters from the front.

Jake tries to steady his breath. That's…a shock. One that shatters the soft atmosphere he created while watching you, now replaced with the same tension he's been fighting the last hour.

Jake lets go of your waist when he assumes that it's just a one-time thing. But then the bump happens again, and instead of a solid, big one—it's shaky, like they're sliding through endless, tiny jagged rocks.

"Damn bro, this road needs fixing," Jay makes another commentary. He glances at the rearview mirror. "You good, Jake?"

Jake doesn't know what to answer. "I think I am," he mumbles, voice clipped.

Is it good that you're practically bouncing in his lap, adding more pressure with almost no interval for him to recover mentally? He thinks not. But Jay doesn't have to know that.

"We're almost there," Jungwon chimes in, navigating the map. There's a shakiness in his voice that comes from the vibration caused by the bumps. "Fifteen minutes at most. We found a shorter route just now and traffic was smooth."

Fifteen minutes.

Jake thinks he might actually die in fifteen minutes.

Another bump sends your body rocking against him softly, your sleeping face scrunching for a brief second before relaxing. His grip tightens.

Fuck.

If Jay doesn't stop the car and fix this damn road himself then he's definitely going to pop a boner soon.

Jake squeezes his eyes shut when another bump rattles through the car, and then again, and again, and again until Jake can barely separate one sensation from another anymore. Until he doesn't know where he starts and where you end anymore. You shift unconsciously, settling heavier against his chest before Jay hits another bump.

This time, Jake makes a mistake of looking down at you.

He didn't notice it before, too lost in his sappy, romantic feelings for you. But right now, it's actually so damn obvious that the angle from where he sits taller than you and you lean against him, he can easily see your cleavage past the neckline of your camisole.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The road doesn't stop shaking beneath the tires, and so does his pulse as he watches your breasts bounce with every bump that comes their way. Jake averts his eyes, so stiff and so strained, but can't help letting his gaze drift back to watch the soft mounds shake.

This is bad. This is very, very bad, and Jake is nothing but a bad fucking pervert.

A particularly rough patch of road sends the entire car jolting. Your body bounces against him harder this time, more pressure and more friction that Jake almost whimpers. He tips his head back, gulping harshly as the line of his long neck glistens with a sheen of sweat.

Inside his jeans, he can feel his cock kick.

Oh, fuck—he's definitely hard now.

Oh my fucking God.

"This is the last one, promise!"

Jake doesn't even register Jay's words, or the way your head hits his jaw from impact, because his internal system is flooded with horny-filled panic. He can feel it: his dick twitching and getting semi-hard from the continuous stimulation from your bouncing. He doesn't even realise that he's now clawing at his own thighs, seeking strength that could neutralise his blooming lust, or that you are finally awake.

"Are we almost there?" You ask groggily, blissfully unaware of the raging boner forming under your ass. You sit up when the coastal view greets your blurry vision, mouth gaping in awe.

"Oh, wow!" You gasp, always excited to visit Sokcho no matter how many times you've been there. "It's beautiful as always!"

The road is smooth now, but Jake's final torture arrives in the form of you bouncing, excitedly and consciously, in his lap. You wiggle in enthusiasm, urging Jungwon to pass your phone that's been charging at the front to take some pictures and send it to the family groupchat.

"Jungwon, Jaeyun, look at those seagulls!"

Jake is seeing no seagulls. He's only seeing white hot, painful pleasure as you move in his lap, his brain dissolving into useless static. His fingers twitch, itching to grab your waist and force you to stay still, but you're so excited that he almost didn't have the heart to do it.

"Did you see that?" You lean to the window, and then shift happily when you spot kites in the sky. "We should do that too! Hey, Jay, do you think you can—"

Jake finally has had enough.

The restraint that he's been holding onto finally breaks like a taut wire getting cut. His hands snap to your waist, pulling you flush against his chest, hips almost bucking up from the delicious friction alone. His lips drop to the shell of your ears, hot, ragged breath brushing the sensitive skin as his voice lowers an octave.

"Y/N," Jake licks his dry lips, the tip of his tongue peeking through. He watches with dark eyes as the hair on your neck stands straight under his unforgiving proximity.

"Stop fucking moving."

And that's the moment you feel it.

A bulge, hard and rigid and big, poking your ass from where you rest in his lap.

Oh my fucking God.

Sim Jaeyun is hard.

You freeze, breath hitching.

Neither of you dare to move. Not even your excitement of being back to your uncle's beach house, or Jay's questioning look from where you cut your sentence, can bring you to move. No.

You couldn't, not when Jake's hard dick is nudging at you right now, so tangible and unmistakably his.

The brown-haired boy is still panting in your ear, shooting tingles through your system. His grip on your waist is almost bruising, like he's trying very, very hard to hold back from overstepping lines that shouldn't be overstepped.

You hadn't meant for this to happen. Sure, Jake is fun to tease. That boy is all broken words and nervous glances whenever you're in his proximity, and it can't be helped when he blushes prettily too.

You just can't stop yourself from seeking his attention in your own way, because aside from being a pretty boy, Jake is also such a sweetheart and so, so smart. And in an age where intellligence is a scarcity, you absolutely adore smart guys.

Especially the one who isn't condescending and is actually eager to help people like him.

So, really—you hadn't meant for this to happen. Offering to become the one without a seat is a decision you made when you consider yourself to be lighter than most of the guys, but offering to sit in Jake's lap is definitely a decision born from personal bias. You kind of knew what it would cause—seeing how stiff and awkward Jake had been—but you let it go halfway through when the soreness in your back outweighs your desire to tease.

Which has now brought you to this situation.

The car's still moving like nothing happened, and the boys are slowly stirring to life one by one. Everything is normal, except for the nails digging into your waist and the deep timbre in your ear.

You swallow harshly, not daring to move. Jake is so close, so close that you can feel every movement of his chest. You sit still in his hold, trying not to wince from how hard he's gripping your hips, and how hot you find the situation is.

His dick, despite no movement is being made, only hardens further. Jake gasps almost imperceptibly, almost matching the way your breath leaves your mouth when you notice, again, just how big he is.

Fuck. Fuck, that's so hot. Sim Jaeyun is so hot and you can feel yourself slowly getting turned on.

Without any warning, as if driven by an invisible force that urges to look at him, you finally turn around.

And Jake looks absolutely wrecked.

Beads of sweat dot on his forehead, the furrow of his eyebrows showing restraint and constraint. His lips are red from how hard he's biting them, and his previously clean, smooth glasses are now fogged up and hazy. His eyes, glazed over with tamed lust, lock into yours, half-lidded and dark.

A breath catches in your throat.

This is not the Jaeyun you know.

Or, more accurately, this is not the Jaeyun he usually shows.

This is another side of him, like seeing Jake wearing short-sleeves and showing his arms for the first time. Gone are his round, puppy eyes, now replaced with this narrowed, slit gaze that makes you shiver under his heated stare. He used to be so nervous around you, and you can feel that he's nervous now, too, but his pent-up sexual frustration seems to outweigh any rational daily-Jake thoughts.

This is still Sim Jaeyun. Just a different, never-before-seen side of Sim Jaeyun.

"Are we finally there?" Riki, the last one to awaken, stretches beside the two of you. You don't even notice that the car has pulled up into the driveway of Jay's ridiculously huge beach house from how piercing Jake's gaze is holding your eyes captive now.

Jake bites his lips, the fog in his head slowly clearing up now that the car has stopped. As if snapping out of a daze, he quickly maneuvers you into Riki's lap instead, showcasing his strength that he often hides. The latter yelps at the sudden weight and grabs your waist on instinct, before Jake darts out of the car without looking back.

"Sim Jaeyun! Bring your own fucking luggage!" Jay shouts from the car boot, but the brown-haired boy has already disappeared behind the door.

You sit, stunned in silence, still frozen and unable to speak. Not until Riki nudges at you, Heeseung and Sunoo impatiently asking the both of you to move so that they can get out.

"Are you okay, noona? Is hyung okay?"

You nod. You give the youngest a strained smile as you slowly move out of his lap and out of the car, careful not to start another war of hormones.

"We're okay."

The lie tastes bitter on your tongue.

Jake is avoiding you.

It's a foreseeable aftermath. It's inevitable. But it pains you regardless.

It gets to the point where he straight up refuses sitting next to you at dinner, which raises some eyebrows and teasing from the boys. But you know better.

He is deliberately avoiding you.

It frustrates you, really. Because every summer, it is your thing with Jake to sit in silence in the morning and read at the porch, enjoying the sunrise over wordless, comfortable silence. But now he purposely sleeps in, waking up later than usual, leaving you alone in the cold of dawn, your paperback copy of The Inheritance Games left untouched on your thighs.

At movie nights, he'll be the last one to join, just to see where you sit first to avoid being near you. He'll become extra quiet when you speak, acting like the floor is more interesting than your face, not even sparing you a glance.

And your patience is wearing thin. Almost thinner than the bikini you're wearing right now.

Fine. He can ignore you all he wants, act like he didn't just pop a boner after letting you sit in his lap. He can pretend like you never affected him, pretend like nothing happened, but one thing you know is that Jake could never betray his attraction for you.

So, be fucking it. You don't care if it's petty to pick the skimpiest bikini you own today, the one in hot pink that always contours the line of your cleavage, perfectly bunching up your tits and making them look rounder. The one that you know will drive Jake crazy from how bouncy your ass looks, basically confirmed when his eyes can't seem to stop trailing after you even after you dive into the pool.

You come to the surface with a gaping mouth, letting the water slide down the lines on your body, and make no show of hiding yourself from looking straight at Jake.

That coward has the nerves to look away after staring at you like a touch-deprived teenager.

"Is Sim Jaeyun single?"

The reason why you always agree to join the all-boys road trip is because it's not exactly all-boys. There are girls who live nearby. Girls you're acquainted with from how often you follow your cousin to his beach house every summer. Spoiled rich girls whose parents come from the same tax bracket as your and Jay's family.

And one of those girls is shamelessly checking Jake out now, hungry eyes drinking in the way his wet, long-sleeved shirt sticks to his torso, outlining the faint lines of his abdomen that he never shows. She's sitting on the edge of the pool, feet-dipping while you take a break from your swim.

You narrow your eyes, an ugly spark of jealousy blooming in your chest. You don't like the implication of the question, and you absolutely hate the way she's looking at him now.

"Don't even think about it."

Your neighbour only shrugs and continues her eye-fucking. "He's so my type. So nerdy, so smart. I wonder how he'll look like without the glasses?"

You will poke her eyes before she gets the chance to. "Use your own imagination," you hiss, almost bitter when you realise that you also have barely seen him without his glasses.

Jake has sensitive eyes that react badly to contact lenses, which explains his preference for thick glasses than going out without them. Even now, when everyone is fooling around Jay's enormous pool, his thick, black-rimmed glasses perch on the bridge of his tall nose—the nose you hope you can put into good use one day.

The girl only hums, half-listening to you. She sighs dreamily. "I can't believe that I have his number."

At this point, the jealousy has turned so ugly you're actually seeing green. Or red. Or whatever that Cortis song sounds like. "You have his number?"

She finally pays attention to you. "Yeap! I asked him yesterday. I don't know what I should say to start the conversation though," she pouts, glancing back at Jake who's now sitting on the side with Sunghoon, sipping on coconut water. "Should I ask him if I can join dinner at your house tonight?"

Jake gave his number to her?

You grit your teeth. The hurt has materialised into a knife, twisting in your chest in a sharp pain disguised in jealousy. So, while Jake's been avoiding you like a fucking plague, he's been spending his time giving away his number to any curious girl? He's been talking with other girls while leaving you with radio silence, one that you didn't deserve because it was him who popped that boner?!

You are the one who's supposed to ignore him—not the other way around!

What a fucking loser.

You can't stop the bitterness from leaking through your voice when you finally speak.

"It's me and Jay that you should ask—not Sim Jaeyun. And no, you cannot join dinner at my house tonight."

You leave her dumbfounded by the pool, seething in anger that the water on your skin could steam from the heat alone. You march to the slide doors, giving Jake and Sunghoon the nastiest side-eye you could ever give when the latter calls out to you, and slam the door behind.

Whatever. Or not whatever. Sim Jaeyun is a fucking pervert and a jerk and a coward, and stupidly hot while being so oblivious to how hot he actually is. Whatever! You don't care.

You don't care that he barely speaks a word to you. You don't care that he leaves any room you walk into. You don't care that he's flirting with other girls and giving away his number willingly when you had his on default for being Jay's younger cousin, and from Jay himself at that.

The corner of your eyes burn.

You wish you didn't care.

You're ignoring Jake.

Jake knows this the moment you no longer come to the porch to read. Instead, every morning is now spent in the garden with Jungwon, tending to Jay's mom's flowers. After, you'll brew some hibiscus tea that you pluck from the garden and share it with Sunoo and Riki.

And when he walks into the kitchen to get some food, you no longer meet his eyes, or save that apple that he knows you know he likes to eat for breakfast. You let Heeseung eat all of them! It's so—so unfair, because he likes apples and you know it!

It sends Jake to the end of a cliff. Why are you suddenly being like this?

His sanity is stretching thin as he tries to work his brain. Why the sudden change? Is it because of his silence? But he's just embarrassed to face you! Or—did you find out about it?

Genuine horror floods his mind when he thinks, oh no, you must've realised how disgusting he truly is. How dirty-minded and perverted he is, that every day he has to take cold showers three times a day whenever he catches a glimpse of you.

You in your sleepwear. You in your casual shirt. You in shorts.

You in bikini.

Jake has fallen out of any point of salvation, because God, could any man get this horny just from a mere look? In the back of his mind, he knows it's the image of you sitting in his lap that ignited the beginning of his undoing, but the continuous hard-on he gets whenever he's around you is definitely, entirely on him.

And Jake, oh so sweet Jake, doesn't dare touch himself to the thought of you. No. He'd rather leave his balls blue, take cold showers every morning, every evening, and every night, and let his dick go from standing tall like a national anthem was being played to becoming flaccid under the cold water without any action. He doesn't even have the guts to touch his own fucking dick, the guilt blocking him from doing anything to relieve himself.

So—did you find out about it? Because if you did, then Jake could understand the cold shoulders you're giving him.

But Jake is a mere man—maybe a bit perverted, and a bit too horny despite his image, so he couldn't stop himself from getting hard the moment he sees you walking into the living room in nothing but an oversized white tee that falls off your shoulder. He grabs the nearest cushion and places it on top of his crotch, blood already rushing south when he sees the strap of your black bra.

This is why he has to go to church sometimes; to balance everything out. Because Einstein never talked about the solution or formula to cure men's (Jake's) sexual desires that seem endless. And sexual desires that come from seeing a strap of a bra alone.

Whatever it is, Jake's soul has almost left his body, already tuning out of his surroundings. He doesn't even realise that Jay and Riki are wrestling for the TV remote, and accidentally sending said remote flying onto the floor just a few feet away from him.

He only comes to when you stand in front of him, back facing him, and bend over to pick up the remote.

You. Bend. Over. In. Front. Of. Him.

In a second, Jake has a full view of your ass. The shirt rides up slightly, revealing white shorts that stretches across the round flesh as you bend over to reach the remote and Jake feels like he's brought back to the car when he was fighting demons as you unintentionally ground his crotch with every movement.

His grip on the cushion tightens, head dizzy from the way you practically shove your butt in his face.

Jake releases a shaky exhale.

He can see the outline of your panties and wonders if it matches your black bra.

And he can see the outline of his doomed future if he stays in the living room any longer.

"Whose turn is it to pick the movie?" You casually ask, now straightening up as if you just didn't flash Jake with your perky ass.

"Jake hyung," Jungwon replies from the center of the long couch, carding his hand through Sunoo's silky hair, the blonde who's now laying down his head on his lap. "It's his turn."

Your face remains expressionless as you turn to the glasses boy. But instead of taking the remote from your hand, Jake stands up, avoiding eye contact and clutching the cushion tight over his crotch.

"I-I suddenly feel sick! Gonna skip tonight's movie, bye!"

Then he flees the living room, leaving behind six confused men and one very angry, very upset girl.

Jake thinks he deserves a medal for surviving the living room.

Or perhaps an exorcism.

The moment his bedroom door clicks shut behind him, Jake drops the cushion onto the floor and drags both hands down his face with a groan. His glasses nearly fall off his nose in the process.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

He paces once across the room, then twice.

Outside, he can still hear the muffled sounds of the movie downstairs—Riki yelling dramatically at a character, Sunoo complaining about spoilers, Jay laughing too loudly. Normal sounds. Normal people.

Meanwhile Jake feels like he's one accidental glimpse of your shoulder away from committing a crime.

His eyes squeeze shut.

That white shirt.

The black bra strap.

The way you bent over in front of him so casually, completely unaware that Jake nearly ascended right there on Jay's living room couch.

"Fuck," he whispers weakly to himself.

Jake drops onto the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees.

Maybe he should take another cold shower. That would make four today.

"I should sleep," he mutters to himself, breath shaky. "S-Sleep can help with motion sickness and horniness."

With a newfound resolution, he turns off the lamp and settles under the blanket. His movement is stiff and awkward, overly aware of the tent straining his shorts. Once he pulls the blanket over his chest, Jake closes his eyes, forcing sleep into his system.

Only, the image of you swimming in your hot pink bikini flashes behind his eyelids.

"No, stop. Not that," he whispers, brows scrunching in protest. He shakes his head, as if physically removing the image away, and tries again.

This time, the image of you in his lap comes back, stripped down to heated skin and soft breaths, your body moving against his in ways that make his stomach twist.

His eyes fly open. The image is so clear and vivid, thanks to his photographic memory and insane imagination—the very thing that's been saving him in the academic department now serving as the tool that brings him to his downfall.

His cock twitches involuntarily.

"N-No," he pants, chest moving rapidly. He grips the edge of the blanket, knuckles turning white. "I—Stop—"

Then he remembers just now: you bent over, giving him a delicious access to his ass-shaped sufferings, and Jake almost whimpers from the flashback alone.

The room rises in temperature, the air conditioner doing nothing to tone down the feverish lust spreading through his body. Jake finally relents and discards the blanket, glasses all fogged up as he stares at the bulge under his shorts.

"I'm sorry," he whimpers, slipping off his shorts and boxers until they bunch up around his knees. "I'm so fucking sorry."

His cock springs free, standing tall in the dimness of his room. The tip glistens, already drooling with precum that shows no sign of stopping. With shaky hands, hesitance still edging around his lust, Jake finaly touches himself.

He has to bite down hard on his lips to muffle the sound threatening to escape. His hand stutters, the feeling of finally rubbing some relief after days of holding back comes crashing down on him. His head spins from how heavy his cock is in his hold, veins protuding like they're going to combust.

He slowly starts moving his hand, lathering up precum to ease the glide. His head tips back, a strangled sound catches behind his throat.

"Oh, God," his head spins, sparks of lust bursting at the tip of his fingers. "Oh, fuck—"

Through his hazy gaze of the blurry lenses, Jake tightens his grip slightly. A moan escapes his lips at the force, his cock only getting heavier in his hand. He plays with the mushroom tip of his dick, thumbing the slit and hissing when it sends pleasure up his spine.

"Ngh—" his eyes squeeze shut, brain putting up pieces of his memory of you. His body jerks when the rough pad of his thumb touches the underside of his cock, and as if on cue, the image of your jiggly breasts inside the car flashes behind his closed eyes.

"Fuck—Y/N," Jake sobs, picking up his pace. His wrist turns and flicks, biceps flexing hard at the speed he's going. Guilt starts accumulating inside his chest the more he thinks of you, of your voice, of your gaze, of your scent—but guilt isn't enough to stop Jake from chasing his own release.

"'So sorry," he chokes, letting go of his bottom lip, bitten-red and swollen. He imagines it was your hand instead of his, smaller and softer, with those manicured nails that he loves so much. How tiny your hand would look around his hard dick, trying to grip his length in its fully erect state.

Jake isn't inexpereinced. He's had his own fair share of sexcapades with a few people, and he's always been told that he's bigger than average. The big dick that he hides under his pants, further concealed by his nervous persona that only certain girls find cute.

But seeing his state right now, Jake thinks he's the furthest thing from cute.

He's pathetic.

Pathetic and gross and disgusting, feeling bad for jerking off to the thoughts of you but still unable to retract his hand and stop. The sound of his cries that he fails to hide fills up the space, and for the first time in days he's very glad that he won paper-rock-scissors during room assignment.

"Oh, Y/N, Y/N, Y/N," he chants, mouth gaping open when he can feel himself close. His wrist is already tired and numb from the relentless pace he's set, the slick sound of his sinful act matching the roar of his blood rushing in his ears.

"Please, please, 'm gonna cum," he sobs, tears prickling at the corner of his eyes. His hips lift off the mattress. "Please—"

"Do not fucking cum, Sim Jaeyun."

Jake's entire body locks up.

His wrist stills immediately, pleasure crashing into horror so fast it makes his stomach twist. For a second, he genuinely thinks his heart stops beating.

The room goes dead silent except for his ragged breathing.

Through fogged-up lenses and teary eyes, Jake stares at you standing by the door, unable to process the fact that you're actually here.

That you heard him.

That you saw him.

Oh my fucking God.

His hand jerks away from himself like he’s been burned, chest heaving violently as he scrambles to sit up straighter. The blanket tangles around his legs from how abruptly he moves.

"I—"

Nothing comes out.

Jake has never felt this level of humiliation before.

Not when he failed his chemistry olympiad in tenth grade. Not when he tripped in front of his entire lecture hall. Not even when Jungwon found his hidden Pokémon card collection at nineteen.

This is worse. So much worse.

Because it's you.

You, standing there in that oversized white shirt slipping off your shoulder again, eyes dark and unreadable as you look at him sprawled across the bed like something shameful.

Jake feels sick. His face burns so hot he thinks he might actually pass out.

"S-Sorry," he chokes out instinctively, because apologising is the only thing his brain knows how to do right now. "I didn't—I wasn't—I—"

His voice cracks miserably.

Jake is going to cry.

What should he even say in this situation? Sorry that you caught him jerking off to you? Sorry that he's such a nerd, such a loser that the only time he could talk smoothly with you was when he was defining what motion sickness was, but never had the courage to tell you how much he likes you and how much you affect me? Sorry that he's such a pervert that he thinks of you in positions way too inappropriate to be just friends?

The weight of his arousal sits heavy against his thigh, a testament to a newfound, lifelong embarrassment that he'll carry to his grave.

Jake squirms under your heated gaze, and quickly covers his crotch with his blanket when you slip into his bedroom wordlessly. The door clicks shut, the sound amplified by the heavy silence hanging in the air. His body tenses up.

Oh my God—he messed up, didn't he? Jake hangs his head low in shame, tears gathering along his lashlines.

"I'm sorry—I didn't mean to…"

His vision turns blurry. Fuck, you must hate him now.

"I-It's wrong—I know that—I'm sorry—ah!"

Jake looks up in surprise when your bold hand cups his erection. There's angry lines in your forehead, a sneer on your mouth, but the nasty look you're giving him does nothing to soothe down his arousal.

If anything, twisted as it is—it turns him on even more.

"Couldn't even look me in the eye downstairs," you begin, "but you here you are, jerking off to me like I wouldn't find out?"

The venom in your voice hurts him. You're being mean with your words, and it hurts his feelings but Jake couldn't care less. His mind is a messy jumbles of guilt and pleasure and shame, so all he does is cry and shake his head.

"I-I'm sorry, Y/N—"

"Are you really sorry?" you tighten your grip on his cock, one knee dipping into the mattress. "Your dick doesn't seem sorry though."

Jake wants to cry—oh, he's already crying. His hand curls into the sheets beneath him, unable to form coherent words when you start rocking the heel of your palm on his hard-on. The friction from the blanket and the pressure from your hand only spark electric pleasure through his system.

Within seconds, Jake is all hard again—even harder than before.

"Tell me, Jaeyunnie. Did all of this happen because I sat in your lap?"

Jake whimpers pathetically. You knew. Of course you knew. You're not only hot and pretty and kind, you're also smart like him, so in tune with your surroundings. You're a little mean right now, but it's okay because Jake believes that he deserves this after avoiding you without any explanation.

"Answer me, Sim Jaeyun."

"Yes," he croaks, shame burning his face red. His eyes screw shut. The admission sets his being on fire, skin flushed from embarrassment. "O-Oh, God, y-yes."

He cracks one eye open when you don't reply. Instead, he's met with your fiery gaze. The edges have softened with lust, like you're also affected by this, but you're good at keeping your control.

Unlike him, who's unraveling like a loose thread under your touch alone.

Jake almost whines when you retract your hand, but the sound is muffled with a gasp when you yank the blanket open. He instinctively closes his crotch area with his hands, but you're fast to slap his wrists away.

"I'm so pissed off, Jaeyun," you mutter, swinging your leg over his thighs so now you're straddling him. You fix him with your sharp eyes, hand finding his dick again.

"You've been acting like we're strangers and it hurts me so bad."

Jake's mouth hangs open as you gather his precum and start working your wrist around his cock. His brain barely registers your words, too lost in a cloud of lust, but when he finally processes it, he desperately shakes his head.

He wants to apologise again and again and again, because he is truly sorry—he didn't know how affected you were. How could he not, when you're always described as everything out of his league, but he's always described as everything that doesn't fit your type?

"I'm sorry, I was just—fuck—just ashamed—" he gasps, hips bucking into your touch. "Didn't mean to—t-to hurt y—ngh, Y/N, faster please."

You coo at him, feigning sympathy as you set a ruthless pace on his cock. Jake is big—something that isn't a surprise anymore since that day you sat in his lap—but the sheer size of him is enough to make your mouth water and your panties damp.

Damn these nerdy boys. Acting all shy and innocent when they have this monstrousity hiding behind those ugly glasses.

"Faster? You wanna cum, Jaeyunnie?" you tilt your head. Jake nods frantically. "I don't think you deserve it, though. Why not ask from those girls you gave your number to?"

Something sharp twists in his stomach. Jake's eyes fly open, almost cowering when you give him a distasteful look. He grabs your arms desperately and shakes his head.

"N-No! She asked me first—" you put more pressure and Jake damn near loses his mind. "—said she needs—help—w-with Physi—cs—"

You roll your eyes. It's that easy to fool him? Can't he see the way those girls fuck him with their eyes? Without waiting for his sentence to finish, you sink down and take him in your mouth.

"Oh, fuck!" Jake screams, accidentally thrusting up his hips. He bites his lips, glasses crooked on the bridge of his nose as you take him deeper, tracing the line of his veins with your sinful tongue. "Oh, Y/N—please."

You hum around his length, tongue swirling as you hollow your cheeks to deepen the suction. Jake nearly busts from that alone, mind melting into a puddle of your name, the wet heat of your mouth serving as a better pleasure than his own hand.

You start bobbing your head up and down, marveling in the way the weight of his dick sits on your tongue. He's so big that you're so close to choking, but you don't care. You need to remind Jake how stupid he's been acting and how stupid he is if he thinks that you were not just as attracted toward him.

Jake sobs into his hands, hips jerking with every touch of his tip hitting the back of your throat. His head is getting dizzier, he can feel the coil in his stomach getting tighter and he knows that anytime soon, he will come undone on your skillful tongue.

But just as he's about to reach that high, you let go of him with a pop.

"No!" Jake whines, tears sliding down his cheeks. You're so mean. "P-Please let me cum."

"Not yet, nerdy boy." You mutter, red lips slick with saliva and precum. Jake can only sob, dick throbbing in need and desperation.

This is the punishment he deserves for being a jerk. He knows that, but he can't seem to stop crying. God, he's so pathetic.

Then he feels movement on his thighs. He blinks through the foggy lenses and lets out a breathless moan when you lift up your shirt and shorts and discard them away, leaving you in nothing but a pair of bra and panties. His mouth starts salivating at the display of your beautiful body, and Jake swears he almost cums when he sees that you're indeed wearing black panties.

Oh, fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. Just as he imagined—God, you're so perfect he wants to kiss you.

But instead of a kiss, you push his at his chest instead. "Lie down."

And like the obedient puppy that he is, Jake follows your word, carefully descending his back onto the mattress. He's still sniffling from the previous denial, but now it's mixed with anticipation of what's to come when you hover above him.

You trace a gentle finger along the tall bridge of his nose, a barely-there touch that makes him shiver. With a slow tap on the tip of his nose, you finally speak.

"Did anyone ever ride your nose, Jaeyunnie?"

H-His nose?

Girls always compliment his nose, but he's never given it many thoughts as to why they did that. "N-No. Never."

There's a wicked smile on your face as you stand on your knees. Jake watches with a mouth gaping open as you make a show of shimmying down your panties, painfully and traitorously slowly that he almost rips it with his hand.

"Ah, what a shame," you sigh dreamily. "Guess I have to be the first one then."

Once your panties are out of the picture, Jake is instanly hit with a wave of your arousal. Your pussy glistens under the moonlight, soaked with slick and dripping with need. Jake inhales shakily, stopping himself from darting out his tongue to get a taste.

Fuck. He's sure he has actually died in the car and this is heaven because not even in his wildest dream did he get to have you like this.

Too lost in his reverie, Jake belatedly notices that you have removed his glasses. Despite your mean words and your mean actions, the caresses of your thumb on his cheeks are so gentle that he thinks he's hallucinating.

"You're so handsome, Jaeyun," you murmur. "But I bet you'll look better buried between my thighs."

You give him no time to recover from your crude words when you slowly move to straddle his head. Then, with a hand in his hair, you descend, letting the tip of his nose nudge at your clit.

And oh my fucking God—you smell so divine.

"Ah, Jaeyunnie," you moan, rocking your hips slowly to test the waters. "Your nose feels so good."

You sound even more divine. Jake's eyes roll to the back, savouring the way your sinful moans fall on his ears as you use his nose to get off. The bridge of his nose slides through your folds—wet and sticky and so sweet that he can't get enough of it.

Jake wraps his arms around your thighs to give you support, and another moan escapes your lips upon seeing his veiny arms around your supple skin. He stares at you through half-lidded eyes, groaning despite your cunt suffocating him, the vibration sending jolts of pleasure to your system.

"Ngh—Jaeyun—"

He can't breathe, and he can't hear properly from how hard you're clamping his head with your legs, but he can't deny that this is the best way to die. Being suffocated by your leaking pussy sounds like a dream death compared to dying in Jay's old SUV.

You keep your rhythm, rocking your hips back and forth, grinding your clit on his nose and dragging your folds on the tall bridge until the sharp tip of his nose catches at your hole. The grip you have in his hair hurts his scalp, but everything is worth the pain when Jake can watch you fall apart on his face, his own cock pulsing with a trembling need to cum.

"Ah—ah—Jaeyun oppa—"

Fuck. Fuck that sacred nickname.

The dynamics between you two often makes Jake forget the fact that he is indeed older than you. Coming from the States, it's uncommon for you to address people with such honorifics.

But right now, using that very honorific against him ignites something inside him; a carnal desire that's been thrumming low in his guts, waiting to be unleashed.

This time, Jake barely stops himself from stealing a taste. He darts out his tongue, prodding your hole with the tip, and hums in satisfaction when your stance falters slightly.

"Don't," you hiss, but there's no heat in it. Jake takes it as a sign to continue, licking more into your weeping cunt until your pace turns sloppy.

He doesn't care. You're probably gonna be so mad at him and punish him more, but whatever it is you have prepared can wait. Right now, Jake is having the best pussy of his life—barely breathing but still eating so, so fucking well.

"Jaeyun—stop—"

"No," Jake protests when you try to get up, pulling you down until the full weight of your body rests on his face.

Oh God, choking on pussy has never felt so good.

"Sim Jaeyun!" You squirm, feeling the stirring inside your belly getting wilder. Despite your weak attempts, your hips keeps grinding on his nose, showing no signs of stopping. You throw your head back.

You knew his nose would be the best thing to ride on, but hearing the slurps of your slick and his saliva—the sinful noises of him feasting on your cunt—makes you almost regret not letting him eat you out first.

"Ngh—Jaeyun—I'm close—"

Jake pulls your hips harder, letting you grind your clit on the tip of his nose as his tongue pushes into your hole mercilessly. You let out a high-pitched scream, muscles pulling tight at his ministrations. The double stimulations are fast pushing you over the edge.

Soon, white hot pleasure crashes into you, your vision turning black momentarily. It's so blurry and messy that you haven't realised that you've been screaming his name raw, hips unrelenting to chase the high. Jake swallows every drop of your sweet nectar, moaning into your spasming hole as he licks it clean.

Fuck. He's already desperate to have another round.

When you come down from your orgasm, hair matted to your forehead, you look down at him furiously.

"Let me go! I told you not to do it!" You attempt to sit up, but Jake doesn't let go, shaking his head with a pout. His nose and chin are drenched with your release, it's so sinful and filthy and you can't lie that you like seeing him so wrecked and fucked over like this.

"Can I have more? Please," he begs, kissing your inner thigh unhurriedly. He's already so addicted to the taste of you, Jake thinks he's gonna die if he doesn't have another fill. "I'll be so good to you, Y/N. Wanna eat you out so bad."

You grit your teeth, pushing away the temptation to save your pride. "No. Get up, Jaeyun."

But Jake is stubborn. He's so desperate to have more of you that he doesn't mind if he's leaving his own cock neglected and balls blue. "Please, I need it bad," he nudges at your pussy with his finger, pupils blown wide at the strings of sticky cum decorating your folds. "Fuck, please, Y/N, I want to eat you out."

"I said get up, Jaeyun."

"Y/N—"

"Jake."

The sharpness in your voice cuts through the haze instantly.

Jake stills immediately.

The desperation in his eyes flickers into something softer, more uncertain, like a scolded puppy finally realising he’s crossed a line. His grip on your thighs loosens at once, chest rising and falling hard beneath you.

The sound of his English name on your tongue feels foreign and almost painful, because it lacks the usual warmth and intimacy that your 'Jaeyun' usually holds. Yet, something inside him pulses harder, liking the change more than he'd like to admit.

“S-Sorry,” he whispers automatically, voice rough. “I just…”

He doesn’t even know how to explain it. How could he? That hearing you moan his name made him lose every coherent thought in his brain? That he’s spent days trying to stay away from you only to end up here, beneath you, completely ruined anyway?

You study him for a long moment before finally shifting off his face.

“Sit up.”

Jake obeys instantly.

The movement is clumsy and needy. His hair is a mess, lips swollen, face still flushed from lack of oxygen and desire. Without his glasses, his eyes look unbearably open like this—too honest, too vulnerable.

You cup his jaw gently, the touch losing its cruelty. Jake melts into it.

"There he is," you murmur softly, fixing his bangs that are obscuring his eyesight.

Jake can feel his heart stutter traitorously. This version of you—tender and sweet—a glimpse of the usual-you, is always more dangerous than any teasing.

Wordlessly, you tug at his shirt, and Jake obediently holds up his arms to let you peel away the fabric. Your eyes flick downward, amusement tugging at your lips.

"You know," you start, fingers trailing slowly down his sculpted chest, "for someone who acted terrified of touching me in the car…"

He groans softly, already embarrassed.

"…You were pretty damn desperate down there, Jaeyun."

His face burns hotter. Fine, he's just a touch-starved man, desperate for you in every way possible. But how could he not? Have you even looked at yourself?

"I-I can't help it…" His eyes drop to your lips. "You tasted so good."

A breathy chuckle escapes you, quiet and fond. But to Jake's ears, he's already hearing the wedding bells chime.

And suddenly the humiliation twisting in his chest eases into something warmer when you climb into his lap again, turning slowly until your back presses against his chest.

The exact same position. That fucking position in the car that has his mind on an endless frenzy that he thinks he was genuinely getting crazy.

Jake goes completely still beneath you.

“Oh,” you whisper, settling against him deliberately. “Now you’re quiet again?”

His hands hover uncertainly near your hips, like he still can’t believe he’s allowed to touch you.

“You’re mean,” he mumbles weakly against your shoulder. You laugh, one hand patting his hair as the other one aligning his neglected cock on your entrance.

"But I know you like it, Jaeyunnie."

At the same time you presses on the nickname, you sink onto his cock slowly, letting the bulbous head of his length spear you open.

The both of you moan simultaneously. Jake's hands find puchase on your waist, trying his best to stop from manhandling you to just fucking bounce on his dick and letting you adjust. You, on the other hand, let the stretch burn, your walls spasming to accommodate his length.

"S-So big," you stutter, taking him inch by inch. Jake drops his head on your shoulder, his own breathing ragged. "So—full—"

When he finally fits inside you to the brim, you let out a long, drawn-out moan. He fills you up so good that you can feel every vein against your walls, every pulse kissing your insides. It's a dizzying experience that prompts you to start moving your hips.

Jake’s fingers dig into your waist, trembling.

Not because he wants to stop you.

Because he’s trying so hard not to lose himself completely.

The position alone is enough to send him spiraling—your back against his chest, your body in his lap exactly like the car ride, except now there’s no seatbelt digging into his side, no boys teasing from the front seat, no restraint left between the two of you.

Just you and him.

And the devastating realisation that you wanted him too.

Jake lets out a broken sound against your shoulder when you move again, his forehead falling against your skin. His entire body feels feverish, overwhelmed by too much sensation and too many emotions crashing into him at once.

"Wasn't this what got you so hard, Jaeyunnie?" You pant between breathless moans. "Me in your lap, bouncing on your cock like this?"

"Ngh—" A strangled noise escapes his throat. Jake watches with bated breath as your hands find the clasp of your bra and finally let the two soft mounds free. Now, he badly wants you to turn around, eager to relive the scene of your bouncy breasts in Jay's car.

"Did you not—ah—crave this?"

You arch your back, pleasure tingling every nerves as his cock drags against your walls. Jake feels his dick throb inside your hole, the same position that ruined him now had him completely at your mercy.

"S-So tight," he whimpers, mouth falling open at the way you clench around his cock and roll your hips. "S-So fucking tight, Y/N, fuck."

Jake clings onto you desperately, bucking his hips to chase your movement. But you hold down a firm hand on his thigh, completely in charge.

"Don't," you warn, grinding down on him in a way that makes your ass ripple. "Or I'll get up and leave."

Jake freezes instantly.

The warning slices straight through him, sharp and effective. His hands tighten on your waist, but he forces his hips back against the mattress despite every instinct screaming at him to chase you harder.

“O-Okay,” he breathes quickly. “Okay. Sorry.”

God, he sounds wrecked.

You can feel the way his thighs tremble beneath yours, the strain in his breathing every time you move your hips slowly against him. Jake drops his forehead between your shoulder blades with a weak groan, like simply holding himself back is physically painful.

"I'm still mad at you," you murmur. You roll your hips again, faster this time, and Jake nearly whimpers into your shoulder. His jaw clenches so hard he might pop a vessel.

"Are you sure you're not the one—" you moan, your thighs burning from how fast you're exerting yourself. The wet sound of skin hitting skin starts getting louder the harder you slam down your hips. "The one who's being—mean?"

Jake sobs into your skin, half-regretting, half-dizzy. The tight heat of your cunt pulses and flutters around his dick and he genuinely feels horrible for only thinking using his other head now.

Even so, he still manages to apologise again. "I'm s-sorry—"

You clench around him on purpose. Jake digs his nails deeper. "Fuck—"

"Stop fucking apologising," you seethe, voice trembling as you feel your release getting near. "Delete her number or I'll sit in Sunghoon's lap when we get back to Seoul."

There's no bite in your threat. It's just a spur-of-the-moment kind of things, one that you say just to rile him up.

But Jake takes your words like a verdict. He snakes an arm around your waist, lips worshipping your skin in desperate, wet kisses.

"I'm sorry, Y/N, darling," he begs, tears clinging to his lashes. He bites his lips in an attempt to stop himself from moaning because he's so, so close. "I will block her. Fuck—I will delete her number. P-Please don't sit with S-Sunghoon—"

His speech is interrupted by a high-pitched whine. Jake hasn't come all night, he's nothing more than a thread waiting to snap. The moment you bounce harder and faster, the supple skin of your butt jiggling wilder, Jake can feel that he's about to come.

"Y/N—ah—p-puh—lease—" he whimpers, voice scratching at his throat. "'M close, 'm g-gonna cum—"

But he should've known that you're so, so mean.

The moment you lift off his cock, Jake genuinely sobs out loud, thrashing under you.

"No! No, please—" he chokes, hiding his crying face behind his hands, too shattered when his orgasm being denied again. "Please, no—I wanna cum, please."

You turn around and the sight of him—red-faced, wet cheeks, lips trembling—it softens your heart. You quickly pull his wrists and rest his hands on your hips, your own cupping his cheeks.

"I'm sorry, baby," you shush him, blowing kisses to the tip of his nose as you take him again. Jake whimpers quietly. "I'm so sorry—I'll let you cum this time, hm?"

Jake weakly nods, then lets out a soft moan at the familiar feeling of your walls enveloping him. You move again, already sore, but you no longer have it in you to torture your poor, poor Jaeyun. This time, you immediately begin with a fast pace, giving him a show of your tits bouncing with every thrust.

"Ah—fuck—Jaeyunnie—" you bite your lips, expression so erotic that it has the brown-haired boy drooling. "Glasses—like you better with glasses."

Jake is too dazed to register your words, so you pick the glasses on your own and put them on him. And there he is—your sweet, sweet boy, your Jaeyunnie that you adore so much, your Jaeyun that thinks it's bad for wanting you this much.

"S-So—handsome, Jaeyunnie," you roll your hips, chest arching into his face. "My nerdy boy, you're mine, hm?"

Jake physically cannot take it anymore. The sight of you on top of him, bouncing on his cock like your life depends on it, putting on his glasses and calling him yours—it's too much for Sim Jaeyun who's never been given this kind of attention and affection.

Especially from you.

His lips move, but you can barely hear him.

"Hm? What did you say?"

"I said I'm sorry, Y/N," his nails dig into your waist. "I'm so fucking sorry, please don't be mad at me."

Your brows furrow in confusion, but before you know it, Jake is already flipping you around, changing your position in one swift movement. You have half a second to gain your breath before the boy hovering over you pulls you closer by your ankles and throws your legs over his shoulders.

"I'm s-sorry," Jake stutters, slipping his dick back into your cunt and starts thrusting fast. "I-I can't hold it anymore."

Despite the showcase of his strength, Jake looks absolutely ruined. There's a flicker of guilt in his eyes, but from the pace he's railing you, you know that his lust ovverrides whatever little guilt he has.

Soon enough, the air smells so thickly of sex. The sound of his balls slapping your ass, accompanied by your high-pitched moans and his groans are the only one filling up the space, to the point that you're sure one of the boys must've heard you.

It's so hot and filthy that Jake's glasses are all fogged up again. His grip on your waist is now leaving bruises, but you don't care because all you can think of is Jake, Jake's big cock, Jake's stupid glasses and just Jake, Jake, Jake.

"F-f-f-fuck," he exhales shakily, splitting you open with his cock. "I-I'm so—close—"

You thrash around, fisting the sheets until it tears from the force of your nails. "Jaeyun—" you gasp when he keeps abusing that spot that has you seeing stars. "Oh, fuck—Jaeyun—harder—"

Jake leans forward, straining his arms on either side of your head. His glasses slide down his slick nose slightly when he bends down to capture your lips in his thick ones. You both moan into the kiss, finally getting the taste of each other, tongues already clashing for more.

Jake licks into your mouth, hips never faltering, and sucks on your bottom lip. You whimper, the sensation becoming too much until you're just breathing against his lips, all heat and teeth and saliva. Jake groans.

"I-I'm gonna—cum—" he gasps against your mouth, face scrunching in pleasure when you clench around him. "O-Oh my fucking God, Y/N, fuck—please let me cum inside."

His hands find your waist again, thrusting harder than before. His head drops to your shoulder as he begs, again and again.

"P-Please let me cum inside, please," he whimpers, voice needy and whiny. "Please—I'm gonna—I wanna—"

"Just cum," you moan when his teeth scrape against your skin. "Jae—Jaeyunnie—"

Jake groans. With last few, deliberate thrusts, he finally cums—a full-body orgasm that has him shuddering, his cock spurting out rope after thick rope of his release, painting your walls white.

You follow him just a second after, vision blurring for a moment as your second orgasm rips through your body. Your mouth falls open on a silent scream, eyes rolling back from how delicious your climax is.

Jake takes a long moment breathing into your ear, grinding his hips slowly before he's finally pulling out. He hisses as he drags out his cock, careful not to overstimulate you, and watches in awe as white fluid flowing out of your pulsing cunt.

"Oh my fucking God."

You breathe out a laugh, sounding breathless and disbelieving. Seeing Jake sitting still by your legs, you open your arms toward him.

"C'mere, Jaeyunnie. Let's cuddle for a moment before washing up—I'm too sore to walk."

Jake perks up at that. Gone is the hungry, lust-driven boy a few moments ago, now replaced with the shy, kicked puppy holding his tail between his legs.

"Cuddle?" he echoes, unsure. "Are you not mad at me?"

"I could never be mad at you for too long," you reply, giving him a reassuring smile.

It gives Jake a flicker of hope. He scoots closer, still cautious and observing, like approaching a scared animal.

"But I avoided you…"

You drop your arms and pretend to think, making a show of tapping your chin with a finger.

"You're right. You were mean for that. Why don't you carry me to the bathroom and clean me up so we can cuddle afterwards?"

Hearing that, Jake finally relaxes, his tight muscles loosening. With an eager smile, he scoops an arm under your knees and your back, and then lifts you up easily as if you weigh nothing.

"Your wish is my command, my princess."

The next morning, you receive knowing looks from the boys. There are lingering stares on your neck from where Jake was mauling your skin last night, but you have no problem showing them off.

Jake, on the other hand, is on the edge of another breakdown.

"So, Jake," Jay starts, already planning a mischievous teasing inside his head. "How did it feel like to get railed—"

"I did not get railed!" he squeaks, ears blushing red. "I-I was the one who railed her! Right, Y/N?"

There's a laugh bubbling inside your chest as you watch Jake squirm under the relentless teasing of his friends. It felt good to be the one in charge, but after that display of strength and the way he manhandled you last night?

You don't mind having him on top of you.

But the both of you know who's truly in charge.

And if you choose to sit in his lap again, this time grinding and shifting on purpose that he gets hard until the car reaches Seoul, nobody has to know that.

Well, maybe Riki knows. But who cares.

wow okay

permanent taglist: @kristynaaah @seungiesdoll @in-somnias-world @rikismists @loviseamms @ikeupop @k3nza @heezeunx @ot7archives @petulapetula

The campus café is a small, cozy establishment nestled between the student union and the art building. You have been here exactly twice before, both times with Yunjin, and both times you have spent more money on a single drink than you usually spend on an entire meal.

Today, the café is moderately busy. A few students hunch over laptops, a couple in the corner have what looks like a very intense conversation about something, and a barista with an impressive mustache wipes down the counter. The smell of espresso hangs in the air.

"Why don't you grab us a table?" Heeseung suggests, pulling out his wallet. "I'll order. What do you want?"

You blink at him. "You don't have to pay for me."

"I'm the one who invited you. It's the least I can do." He tilts his head, that curious expression settling over his features. "Consider it part of the starting slow thing. Coffee first, then maybe a meal, then eventually I'll work up to buying you a gift."

You don't know how to respond to that, so you just tell him your order: a vanilla latte, the most basic thing on the menu, and flee to a small table near the window before your face can betray you any further.

Okay, okay, okay. This is fine. This is manageable. You are just having coffee with Heeseung, the guy who thinks you confessed to him, the guy you have been actively trying to repel, the guy who starred in your extremely inappropriate dream three nights ago. This is fine. Everything is fine.

You watch him at the counter, chatting easily with the mustachioed barista like they are old friends. He laughs at something the barista says, and the sound carries across the café, warm and genuine. A group of girls at a nearby table glance over at him, then put their heads together and whisper. Heeseung doesn't seem to notice. Or if he does, he doesn't react, doesn't do any of the things you would expect from someone with his reputation.

It's infuriating.

A few minutes later, he walks toward your table with two cups in his hands. "One vanilla latte for the lady," he says, setting yours down with a flourish, "and one Americano for me. I got you an extra shot of vanilla. You seem like you could use it."

"I could use a lot of things," you mutter, wrapping your hands around the warm cup. "Vanilla is a start."

Heeseung settles into the chair across from you, his long legs stretching out under the table. "So," he says, "do you want to tell me why you were hiding behind a bulletin board earlier? Or should I just keep guessing? My current theory is that you're secretly a spy for a rival university and you're gathering intel on our science department."

"Your theory is wrong."

"Then what's the real reason?"

I was hiding from you, you don't say. I was hiding from you because I dreamed about you eating me out and now I can't look at your face without spontaneously combusting.

"I'm just… very committed to checking bulletin boards," you say instead. "There's a lot of important information on them. Club announcements. Study group postings. Lost and found notices. Someone lost a cat last week. Did you see that poster? Very sad. I hope they found the cat."

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Rambling. You ramble when you're nervous." He takes a sip of his Americano, his eyes never leaving your face. "It's cute. But you don't have to be nervous around me, you know. I'm not going to bite."

The word "bite" should not make your stomach flip. It is a normal word. A mundane word. A word that people use in completely innocent contexts all the time. But your brain, still apparently haunted by the ghost of that dream, chooses to remind you of the part where Heeseung's lips trailed down to your collarbone, and suddenly you can't look at his mouth anymore.

"I'm not nervous," you lie. "I'm just… naturally like this. I'm a naturally weird person. This is my baseline."

"Your baseline is being weird?"

"Extremely weird. The weirdest. I once alphabetized my entire book collection by color instead of author name because I wanted to see what it would look like. It looked terrible. I kept it that way for three months."

Heeseung considers this. "That's not really weird. That's just… creative organizational choices."

"I also talk to my plants. All of them. Individually. I have a succulent named Jason and I tell him about my day."

"That's just being a good plant parent."

"I cannot snap my fingers. I've tried for nineteen years and I simply cannot do it. My fingers make no sound. It's like they're broken but specifically only for snapping purposes."

Heeseung smiles now, that same genuine smile that appeared in the cafeteria when you talked about League of Legends. "Okay, that one's a little weird. But in an endearing way."

Endearing. He called you endearing. This is not going according to plan.

"I should go get napkins," you say abruptly, pushing back your chair. "We need napkins. For the coffee. In case of spills. You can never be too prepared."

Heeseung glances at the napkin dispenser that is already sitting on the table between you. "We have napkins."

"These aren't… good napkins. I need the good ones. The thick ones. From the counter. I'll be right back."

You escape before he can protest, weaving through the tables toward the counter where the barista is busy steaming milk. You don't actually need napkins. You need a moment to breathe, to collect yourself, to remind your heart that it is supposed to be beating for Jungwon, not doing gymnastics every time Heeseung smiles at you.

The barista hands you a stack of napkins without you even having to ask. You clutch them to your chest like a shield and turn back toward your table.

Heeseung is watching you, his chin propped on his hand, his expression soft and curious and completely unguarded. The afternoon light from the window catches the angles of his face, the sweep of his hair, the slight quirk of his lips. He looks like a painting. He looks like something you would pin to a Pinterest board titled "dream boyfriend" and then immediately feel bad about because no real person should look that good while just sitting in a café.

You start walking back toward the table, your mind a whirlwind of panic and confusion and the desperate need to get through this interaction without making a bigger fool of yourself.

And then your foot catches on the leg of a chair.

It happens in slow motion. One moment you are walking, your napkins clutched to your chest, your eyes fixed on Heeseung. The next moment your toe hooks around a wrought-iron chair leg that is sticking out slightly from a nearby table, and your body pitches forward, and the napkins fly out of your hands, and the coffee, dear God, the coffee who's sitting on the table gets knocked off and sloshes out of your cup in a great wave.

Time speeds up again. You hit the floor with a thud that rattles your teeth, and the coffee hits you approximately 0.3 seconds later, soaking through your sweater and your jeans and possibly your very soul. The liquid is still warm, not scalding but definitely not pleasant, and it is everywhere, on your clothes, on your hands, dripping from the ends of your hair, pooling on the floor around you in a sad, beige puddle.

The café goes silent.

You sit there, on the floor, covered in your own vanilla latte, and stare at the puddle spreading beneath you. The napkins have scattered across the tiles like confetti, completely useless now. A drip of coffee rolls down your forehead and off the tip of your nose.

This is it. This is the moment you finally break. All the stress of the past week, the letter, the misunderstanding, the dream, the bulletin board incident has been building toward this, and now, sitting in a puddle of expensive café coffee with every eye in the establishment fixed on you, you feel the tears prick at the corners of your eyes.

You are going to cry. You are going to cry in front of Heeseung and the mustachioed barista and the couple in the corner and those girls who have been whispering about Heeseung earlier. You are going to cry, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

But then you look down at your hands, and you realize something.

His coffee. The Americano. The cup who's been next to yours, you have managed, in the chaos of your fall, to keep it upright by holding it. Your arm lifted it above your head at the last second, some primal survival instinct kicking in to protect the beverage that isn't even yours, and the Americano is still sitting perfectly intact in its cup, not a single drop spilled.

You are covered in latte. Your sweater is ruined. Your dignity is in shambles. But his coffee is safe.

"I saved yours," you say, your voice coming out as a croak. You hold up the Americano like a trophy, your arm trembling slightly. "Look. I saved yours."

Heeseung is already out of his chair, already crouching beside you, his expression shifting from shock to concern to something else entirely, something soft and wondering and absolutely devastating.

"You saved my coffee," he repeats.

"It was a reflex. I don't know why. I don't even like you that much. I mean, I like you a normal amount. A regular amount. The amount you're supposed to like someone you accidentally-" You stop yourself before you can say more. "I saved your coffee."

Heeseung stares at you for a long moment. Then, very deliberately, he reaches out and takes the Americano from your hand. He looks at you, covered in vanilla latte, sitting in a puddle on the café floor, your glasses askew and your hair dripping.

And then he pours his own coffee over his head.

Just… tips the cup over and lets the dark liquid cascade down his hair, over his forehead, along the sharp bridge of his nose, soaking into the collar of his black hoodie and leaving trails of coffee across his skin.

You gape at him. The entire café gapes at him.

"What-" you start, but your voice has stopped working.

Heeseung sets the empty cup down with a quiet click and smiles at you, a warm, genuine, completely unhinged smile that makes your heart do a full backflip inside your chest.

"Now we match," he says.

You can't speak. You can't think. You can only stare at him, this absurd, beautiful, incomprehensible boy who has just poured coffee on himself in the middle of a crowded café for no other reason than to make you feel less alone in your humiliation.

"But… your hoodie," you manage. "Your hair. The floor. The-"

"I have other hoodies. My hair will dry. And the floor can be mopped." He reaches out and gently straightens your glasses, which have gone crooked during your fall. His fingers brush against your temple, feather-light. "You looked like you were about to cry. I couldn't let you cry alone."

"Alone?" Your voice cracks. "You couldn't let me cry alone?"

"I mean, ideally you wouldn't cry at all. But if you are going to cry, I figure I should give you company. Solidarity in humiliation, you know?" He's still smiling, still crouching in front of you, still covered in Americano like it is the most normal thing in the world. "We make a pretty good pair of disasters, don't you think?"

Your heart flips. It doesn't flutter. It doesn't skip a beat. It does a full, acrobatic, Olympic-level flip inside your chest, and you feel the sensation reverberate through your entire body.

Why is he like this?

Why is Lee Heeseung, reputed womanizer, notorious player, the guy everyone warns you about, sitting on the floor of a café covered in his own coffee just to make you feel better about spilling yours? Why is he looking at you like that, with those dark, gentle eyes, like you are something precious instead of the absolute disaster you clearly are?

You don't know. You don't understand. And the not understanding is starting to become a problem, because every time you think you have Heeseung figured out, he goes and does something like this, and your careful mental categories crumble a little more.

"We should probably…" You gesture vaguely at your coffee-soaked selves. "Clean up. Or something."

"Probably," Heeseung agrees. He stands up and offers you his hand, his coffee-stained, still-damp hand and you have no choice but to take it. His grip is warm and solid, and he pulls you to your feet with an ease that suggests you weigh nothing at all. "There's a student services office around the corner. They keep spare t-shirts for emergencies. We could both use a change of clothes."

You look down at your sweater, which is now more latte-colored than its original blue. "That's… probably a good idea."

Heeseung pulls out his wallet and drops several bills on the nearest table, far more than the cost of two coffees with a nod to the mustachioed barista. "For the mess," he says. "Sorry about the floor."

The barista nods slowly, his expression suggesting he has seen many things in his years at the café but has never quite witnessed anything like this.

And then Heeseung guides you out of the café, his hand hovering at the small of your back but not quite touching, and you walk through the student union in matching coffee-stained clothes like the world's most unfortunate pair of twins.

The student services office is a small, cluttered room tucked into a corner of the union building. It is staffed by a perpetually exhausted-looking graduate student who has clearly seen too much in his years of dealing with student emergencies. When you and Heeseung walk in, dripping coffee and smelling like a coffee explosion, he doesn't even blink.

"Coffee incident?" he asks flatly.

"Yes," Heeseung says.

"Both of you?"

"I'm told we match now."

The student stares at him for a long moment, then sighs with the weariness of someone who long ago stopped questioning the absurdities of university life. "We have spare t-shirts in the back. They're not fashionable. They have the university logo on them. You don't get to complain about the design."

"We wouldn't dream of it," Heeseung says.

The student disappears into a back room and emerges a moment later with two folded shirts. They are, as promised, aggressively unfashionable, a mustard yellow color with the university mascot printed on the front in peeling letters. Beneath the mascot are the words "Embrace the process!"

"These are incredible," Heeseung says, holding up his shirt with genuine delight. "I'm keeping this forever."

"The bathrooms are down the hall," the student says, already turning back to his computer. "Please don't track coffee into them. I just had the floors cleaned."

You and Heeseung change in separate bathrooms, and when you emerge, you are confronted with the sight of Heeseung wearing a mustard-yellow shirt that is slightly too small for him, the fabric stretching across his shoulders in a way that is definitely not doing things to your heart. The coffee has been wiped off his face, but his hair is still damp, curling slightly at the ends, and the combination of the terrible shirt and the wet hair and the ridiculously attractive face is so absurd that you actually laugh out loud.

"What?" Heeseung asks, grinning. "Do I look as good as I think I do?"

"You look like you traded shirts with a child."

"A very fashionable child. This slogan will hype me up for my next exam." He looks you over, his eyes crinkling. "You don't look half bad yourself. Yellow's a good color on you."

You are wearing the exact same shirt. You look like a banana. But Heeseung says it like he means it, and you feel that traitorous flutter in your chest again.

"We should go," you say, because standing in a hallway with Heeseung while wearing ridiculous matching shirts is doing something strange to your brain chemistry. "I have… I need to… there's a thing…"

"The mysterious thing," Heeseung says. "Your nemesis. Your arch-enemy. The eternal obstacle to us spending more time together."

"It's a very busy thing. It takes up a lot of my schedule."

"Right." He is still smiling, still looking at you with that soft, curious expression. "Well, before you run off to your very important thing, let me walk you to-"

"There you are, Heeseung! I've been looking everywhere for-"

The voice comes from the end of the hallway, and you know that voice. You know it the way you know your own heartbeat, the way you know the lyrics to every Ariana Grande song, the way you know that vanilla lattes are now your mortal enemy.

Jungwon walks toward you, his phone in his hand and a slight frown on his face, like he has been searching for Heeseung for a while. He looks so unfairly beautiful that your heart does the thing it always does when you see him, that painful, hopeful, aching thing that feels like a bruise that won't heal.

But then his eyes land on you, and he stops walking.

"Y/N?" His gaze travels from your face to your shirt to Heeseung's matching shirt to the general air of disaster that still clings to both of you. "What… happened to you guys?"

"Coffee incident," Heeseung says, with the casual air of someone explaining something completely normal. "She spilled hers, so I spilled mine too. Now we're twins."

Jungwon blinks. "You poured coffee on yourself?"

"Matching disasters. It's a new concept. We're pioneering it."

You want to say something, anything, to salvage this situation. Jungwon is looking between you and Heeseung with an expression you can't quite read, and your brain screams at you to explain, to clarify, to make sure he doesn't get the wrong idea about what he is seeing.

"It's not… we're not-" you start, but your voice comes out squeaky and strange. "The coffee was an accident. Well, my coffee was an accident. His coffee was on purpose. But not in a romantic way. In a… solidarity way. Against the humiliation. We are fighting humiliation together."

"Fighting humiliation," Jungwon repeats slowly.

"Enemies," you say, nodding too hard. "We're humiliation enemies. Humi-nemies. It's a whole thing."

Heeseung watches you with that amused expression again, and you can tell he is biting back a smile. "Humi-nemies," he echoes. "Right. That's what we are."

Jungwon is quiet for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, he smiles, but it isn't his usual warm smile. It is something smaller, something more careful, something that makes your stomach drop even as you can't identify why.

"You guys make a cute couple," he says.

The words hit you like a physical blow. Your mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. No sound comes out.

"We're not-" you try, but Jungwon is already stepping back, already half-turning away.

"I've got to get to class," he says. "Heeseung, I'll catch up with you later. Y/N… nice shirt."

And then he walks away, and you stand in the hallway with your heart in your stomach and Heeseung's matching shirt still warm against your skin.

"We're not a couple," you say, but it comes out as barely a whisper.

"Not yet," Heeseung says cheerfully, apparently completely oblivious to the emotional devastation that just occurred. "But we're off to a good start, don't you think? Coffee disasters, matching outfits, running into my friends, this is basically a textbook meet-cute progression."

You turn to stare at him. He is grinning, still radiating that unshakeable, inexplicable joy that seems to follow him everywhere. He has no idea. He has absolutely no idea that the boy you actually like just saw you in matching shirts with someone else and assumed you were a couple.

"Are you okay?" Heeseung asks, his smile fading slightly. "You look a little pale. Was the coffee too hot? Do you need to sit down?"

"I'm fine," you manage. "I just… I need to go. The thing. The very important thing. It's calling me."

You don't wait for him to respond. You turn and walk away, not running, because running would be too obvious, but walking very quickly, your mind a tornado of panic and regret and the image of Jungwon's smile fading as he says the words that just shattered your entire world.

You guys make a cute couple.

He thinks you are a couple. Yang Jungwon, the boy you have been pining over for four months, the boy you wrote a three-page love letter to, the boy who poked your cheek in the library and called you cute, he thinks you are dating Lee Heeseung.

You are trapped. You are so, so trapped.

By the time you reach your dorm room, you are practically vibrating with suppressed emotion. You close the door, lean your back against it, and press your hands to your face.

You guys make a cute couple.

"We're not a couple," you whisper to your empty room. "We're not a couple. We're humi-nemies. That's a real thing that I definitely didn't just make up because I can't communicate like a normal human being."

Your room does not respond.

You slide down the door until you are sitting on the floor, your legs stretched out in front of you. You look ridiculous. You feel ridiculous. Your entire life has become a comedy of errors, and you are the punchline.

But even as you sit there, drowning in self-pity and the lingering scent of vanilla latte, you can't quite forget the look on Heeseung's face when he poured his coffee over his head. The way he smiled at you, open and unguarded. The way he said I couldn't let you cry alone like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Why is he like that? Why is he so… him?

You don't have an answer. And that, more than anything else, is starting to scare you.

The library has become your second home.

Not by choice, exactly. More by necessity. The library is neutral territory, a place where you can exist without fear of coffee-related disasters, unexpected bulletin board ambushes, or tall informatics students appearing out of thin air to pour beverages on themselves in acts of solidarity. The library has rules. The library has silence. The library has mercifully dim lighting that hides the dark circles under your eyes from three consecutive nights of restless sleep.

It has been four days since the coffee incident. Four days since Jungwon looked at you in your matching shirt and said those fateful words: You guys make a cute couple. Four days of replaying that moment over and over in your head, analyzing every micro-expression on his face, every nuance in his voice, trying to determine if there was something else there, something like disappointment, or regret, or maybe even jealousy.

You have come to no conclusions. Your analytical skills, apparently, are useless when applied to matters of the heart.

So you do what any reasonable, emotionally overwhelmed STEM student would do: you throw yourself into your studies with the intensity of someone trying to forget their entire life. You have read the same paragraph about cellular respiration seventeen times. You have highlighted so many sentences that your textbook looks like a rainbow has thrown up on it. You have consumed approximately four hundred milligrams of caffeine in the past three hours alone, and your hands shake slightly as you turn another page.

It is fine. Everything is fine. You are fine.

"You're going to burn a hole through that book if you keep staring at it like that."

The voice comes from directly above you, and you jolt so hard that your highlighter goes skidding across the table and rolls onto the floor. You look up, your heart already doing that familiar, traitorous leap, and there he is.

Jungwon.

He stands beside your table with a gentle smile on his face, his backpack slung over one shoulder, his hair slightly messy like he has been running his fingers through it.

"Sorry," he says, stooping to pick up your fallen highlighter. "I didn't mean to startle you. You just looked so intense. Like you were trying to intimidate the biology into making sense."

"The biology is winning," you admit, accepting the highlighter with a hand that trembles slightly. From the caffeine. Definitely from the caffeine. "I've been reading the same page for twenty minutes and I still have no idea what oxidative phosphorylation is."

"It sounds like a spell from Harry Potter."

"That's what I've been thinking! But apparently it's something about electrons and I just-" You gesture vaguely at the chaos of papers spread across your table. "I'm losing the war."

Jungwon laughs, that bright, sunny sound that never fails to make your heart flutter. "Mind if I join you? I've been looking for a quiet spot to study, and honestly, sitting next to someone who's fighting for their life against biology sounds way more entertaining than sitting alone."

Your heart, the same heart that belongs to this boy, that has belonged to him since the moment he slid gummy bears across a library table at 2 AM, screams YES with the force of a thousand suns. Your brain, the traitorous organ that got you into this mess in the first place, reminds you of all the reasons this is a terrible idea.

"You probably don't want to sit with me," you say, the words tumbling out before you can stop them. "I'm not very good company right now. I've been mainlining caffeine and I think I can hear colors."

"That sounds like excellent company." Jungwon pulls out the chair across from you and sits down without waiting for permission. "What colors can you hear?"

"Biology textbook beige, mostly. It sounds like despair."

He laughs again, and the sound settles into your chest like a warm blanket. This is fine. This is okay. You can study with Jungwon without making it weird. You have done it before, you have spent a whole hour in this very library, watching him take notes and push his glasses up his nose and poke your cheek with that devastating smile. You can do it again. You are a professional. You are a master of emotional compartmentalization.

For a while, you actually do study. Or at least, you both pretend to. Jungwon opens his philosophy book and starts reading, his brow furrowed in concentration, his pen tapping absently against his notebook. You stare at your biology textbook with renewed determination, willing the words to make sense.

But your eyes keep drifting up, against your will, over the top of your book, to the boy sitting across from you. The way the library light catches the highlights in his hair. The way he bites his lower lip when he is thinking. The way his fingers curl around his pen, elegant and deliberate.

"You're doing it again," Jungwon says, not looking up from his book.

Heat floods your cheeks. "I'm not doing anything. I'm reading about oxidative phosphorylation. It's very interesting. Lots of electrons."

"Y/N." He looks up then, and his expression is softer than you expected. Gentler. "It's okay. I told you before, right? I don't mind being looked at like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm something worth looking at." He sets down his pen and folds his hands on the table, giving you his full attention. "You have a very particular way of looking at people. Did you know that? It's like you're trying to memorize them. Every detail. Like you're cataloguing things that most people wouldn't notice."

Your heart pounds so hard you are certain he can hear it. You want to say I'm only looking at you like this because it's you. But the words won't come. "That's… that's my STEM brain. I'm very analytical. I notice things. It's a curse."

"I don't think it's a curse." Jungwon's voice is quiet, thoughtful. "I think it's actually really special. Most people don't pay attention like that. Most people look at you and see what they want to see, not what's actually there." He pauses, his eyes searching your face. "You're different, Y/N. You actually see people."

The words hang in the air between you, heavy with meaning. This is it. This is the moment. The conversation has shifted into something deeper, something more intimate, and you can feel the confession building in your chest like a wave about to break.

You can tell him. Right now. You can tell him everything, the letter, the misunderstanding, the way your heart has been his since the very beginning. You can clear the air and finally, finally be free of the tangled web you have accidentally woven around yourself.

"Jungwon," you say, and your voice comes out steadier than you expect. "There's something I need to tell you. About Heeseung. About the confession. About everything. It's not what you think. It's never been what you think."

Jungwon's expression flickers, surprise, confusion, something else you can't quite name. "What do you mean?"

"I mean-" You take a deep breath, gathering your courage. "The letter. The one I gave to Heeseung. It wasn't-"

"Wait." Jungwon holds up a hand, stopping you mid-sentence. "Before you say anything else, can I say something first?"

You nod, your heart hammering.

Jungwon leans back in his chair, his eyes never leaving your face. "I've been watching you and Heeseung," he says slowly. "The past few weeks. Ever since he told me about the confession. And I've never seen him like this before."

Your stomach drops. "Like what?"

"Like… happy. Genuinely happy. Not the surface-level people-pleasing happiness he shows everyone else, but something real. Something that goes all the way down." Jungwon's voice is earnest, almost protective. "Heeseung is my friend. One of my best friends. And I know what people say about him, that he's a player, a womanizer, that he'll charm you and then move on. But that's not who he really is."

You don't know what to say. You don't know where this is going. But you can't seem to interrupt, can't seem to find the words to stop him.

"Heeseung is…" Jungwon pauses, searching for the right words. "He's the guy who will stay up all night helping you debug code even when he has his own assignments due. He's the guy who remembers everyone's birthday and always gets them a gift that shows he actually paid attention to what they like. He's the guy who can't say no to anyone, ever, because he's so terrified of disappointing people that he'd rather burn himself out than let someone down."

He smiles, but there is something sad in it. "Girls think he's flirting with them because he's nice to everyone. And he won't correct them because he doesn't want to hurt their feelings. So he just… lets them believe what they want to believe, and then he feels guilty when they get attached, and the whole thing becomes this cycle he can't break out of. It's not malice. It's the exact opposite of malice, it's too much kindness, too much caring, and not enough ability to set boundaries."

Your throat is dry. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I think you're different." Jungwon meets your eyes, and his gaze is steady and sincere. "I think you actually see him. Not the reputation, not the rumors, but the real him. And I think he's starting to see the real you too." He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is softer. Almost fragile. "So I need you to promise me something."

"What?"

"Take care of him. Please." Jungwon's smile is gentle, but there is something behind it, something that looks a lot like pain, carefully hidden, expertly concealed. "He's been alone for a long time, even when he's surrounded by people. I don't think he even realizes how lonely he is. But you… you could change that. I can see it."

The wave of emotion that crashes over you is so overwhelming that you can't speak. This isn't how this conversation is supposed to go. You are supposed to confess to Jungwon. You are supposed to clear up the misunderstanding. You are supposed to finally tell him the truth.

Who knows - Daniel Caesar playing now

But Jungwon isn't finished.

"There's something else I should tell you," he says, and his voice drops even lower, barely above a whisper. "Something I probably shouldn't say. But I think I need to, or I'll regret it forever."

"What is it?"

Jungwon looks down at his hands, folded on the table. When he speaks, his voice is steady, but you can hear the effort it takes to keep it that way.

"I like you."

The words don't make sense. They can't make sense. You hear them, understand them individually, but your brain refuses to assemble them into a coherent meaning.

"What?" you breathe.

"I like you," Jungwon repeats, and now he looks up at you, and his eyes are so full of something, regret, maybe, or longing, or both, that it makes your chest ache. "From the first day of philosophy class. You sat in the front row, near the window, and you had like eight different colored highlighters lined up on your desk, and you took notes so furiously that your pen ran out of ink halfway through the lecture. I remember you made this little frustrated noise and searched your bag for a spare, and you looked so genuinely distraught that I almost offered you mine."

The library. The philosophy lecture. The day you ran out of ink. You remember it, vaguely, distantly, a moment so mundane you never thought about it again. But Jungwon remembers. Jungwon has been watching you, just like you have been watching him.

"I noticed you after that," he continues, and his voice is achingly soft. "The way you always sat in the same spot. The way you organized your notes. The way you bit your lip when you were concentrating. I kept telling myself I'd talk to you, but I could never find the right moment. And then midterms happened, and we were both in the library at 2 AM, and I saw you looking exhausted and stressed, and I just…" He laughs, but it is a sad sound. "I gave you gummy bears because I couldn't think of anything else to do. It felt so stupid at the time. Who gives gummy bears to a stranger at 2 AM?"

"A stranger who hadn't slept in thirty-six hours and was about to cry over organic chemistry," you whisper. "It wasn't stupid. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me."

Jungwon's smile flickers. "I was working up the courage to actually talk to you. To ask you out properly. But then…" He trails off, and his expression shifts, something closing off behind his eyes. "Then Heeseung told me about the confession. And I saw the way he looked when he talked about you. And I knew… I knew I'd missed my chance."

No. No, no, no. This is wrong. This is all wrong. He hasn't missed his chance. The chance is right here, right now, sitting in front of him with a heart full of feelings that have always been meant for him.

"Jungwon," you say, and your voice cracks. "The letter… it wasn't-"

"I'm not telling you this to make things awkward," Jungwon interrupts gently. "I'm telling you because I want you to know. I like you. I really, really like you. And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd been braver, if I'd said something sooner, if I hadn't waited until it was too late." He pauses, and his eyes meet yours, and the weight of what he says presses down on your chest like a physical force. "But I'm glad it's Heeseung. He deserves someone like you. And you deserve someone who sees you the way he does."

"You don't understand," you try, desperation creeping into your voice. "It wasn't supposed to be Heeseung. The letter was meant for-"

"Take care of him," Jungwon says again, and this time his voice is final. Resolute. Like he has already made his peace with something you haven't even realized he was struggling with. "That's all I ask."

He stands up, gathering his book and his notebook, and you watch him with a growing sense of panic. This can't be how it ends. You can't let him walk away without knowing the truth.

But then he pauses, looking down at you with that devastating smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes your heart do somersaults, and he reaches out and gently pokes your cheek.

"Boop," he says softly.

The gesture that once made you giddy with joy now feels like a knife twisting in your chest.

"Liking you was never a waste of my time, Y/N," he says, and his voice is tender in a way that breaks your heart into a thousand pieces. "I don't regret it. Not even for a second."

And then he walks away, and you are left alone at your table with a biology textbook you haven't read and a heart that is shattering into so many fragments you don't know if you will ever be able to put it back together.

I like you.

I gave you gummy bears because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

Liking you was never a waste of my time.

He liked you. He liked you this whole time. All those months of pining, of yearning, of writing and rewriting that letter and he has been feeling the same thing. You have been two ships passing in the night, each carrying the same cargo of unspoken feelings, and you have missed each other by a margin so narrow it is almost laughable.

But it isn't laughable. It is devastating. It is the most devastating thing that has ever happened to you, and you are sitting in the middle of a silent library trying not to fall apart.

You don't remember packing up your things. You don't remember leaving the library. One moment you are staring at the spot where Jungwon was sitting, and the next you are walking across campus in the fading evening light, your backpack hanging heavy from your shoulders, your feet carrying you automatically toward your dorm.

And then the tears come.

They start slow, a burning sensation behind your eyes, a tightness in your throat. You try to swallow them down, try to hold them back, but they won't be contained. By the time you reach the pathway between the science building and the student union, you are crying openly, tears streaming down your cheeks in hot, relentless rivers.

This isn't a romantic cry. This isn't the kind of crying that happens in movies, where the heroine looks beautiful and tragic and a single perfect tear rolls down her cheek. This is an ugly cry. A messy, hiccuping, snotty cry that makes your nose run and your shoulders shake and your breath come in ragged gasps. You are crying because the boy you liked liked you back, and instead of ending up together like you were supposed to, everything has gone terribly, irreversibly wrong.

You stop walking. You can't keep going. Your legs won't carry you any further. You lean against the rough bark of a tree and press your hands to your face, trying to muffle the sounds that escape from your throat.

You cry for the letter you sent to the wrong person. You cry for the courage it took to write it, and the cowardice that has kept you from correcting your mistake. You cry for Jungwon, who liked you and gave up on you because he thought you wanted someone else. You cry for yourself, for the hopeless romantic who dreamed of grand gestures and perfect moments and has ended up with nothing but misunderstandings and a heavy heart that breaks into smaller and smaller pieces.

You cry until your throat is raw and your eyes are swollen and you don't think you have any tears left to shed.

And then a voice, gentle, concerned, painfully familiar, cuts through the fog of your grief.

"Y/N?"

You look up.

Lee Heeseung stands on the pathway a few feet away, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his expression shifting from casual curiosity to alarm as he takes in your tear-streaked face and trembling shoulders.

"Hey," he says, and his voice is softer than you have ever heard it. "Hey, what's wrong? What happened?"

You should make an excuse. You should say you are fine, that it's allergies, that you just got something in your eye. You should tell him to leave you alone, to give you space, to let you fall apart in private.

But the words won't come. All that comes out is another sob, and your knees buckle slightly, and then Heeseung is there, his hands on your shoulders, steadying you.

"It's okay," he says, even though he doesn't know what is wrong, even though you haven't explained anything. "It's okay. I've got you."

"No, you don't understand," you choke out. "Everything is messed up. Everything is so messed up and it's all my fault."

"Then we'll fix it." He says it with such simple certainty, like it is the most obvious thing in the world. "Whatever it is, we'll fix it."

"You can't fix this. No one can fix this."

"Maybe not." Heeseung's hands move from your shoulders to your upper arms, his grip gentle but grounding. "But I can be here. I can listen. And I can promise you that whatever it is, you don't have to deal with it alone."

Something in his voice, the steadiness, the sincerity, the complete lack of judgment, cracks through the last of your defenses. You stop trying to hold yourself together. You let the tears fall, let your shoulders shake, let yourself be exactly as broken as you feel.

And Heeseung doesn't flinch. He doesn't look uncomfortable or try to escape or offer meaningless platitudes. He just stands there, his hands warm on your arms, his presence solid and unwavering, letting you cry without asking for explanations or justifications.

After a while, you don't know how long, the tears begin to subside. Your breathing steadies. The storm inside you quiets to a dull, aching calm. You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand, suddenly aware of how awful you must look, how puffy and red and wrecked.

"I'm sorry," you whisper. "Your jacket is probably wet."

"My jacket has survived worse." Heeseung's voice is gentle. "Come on. Let's sit down somewhere."

He guides you to a bench nearby, a small wooden bench tucked under a cluster of trees, partially hidden from the main pathway. You sit down heavily, your legs still shaky, and Heeseung sits beside you, close enough that you can feel the warmth of his body but not so close that it feels invasive.

Dream - Keshi playing now

For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The evening settles around you, the sky shifting from pale blue to soft pink to deeper purple. A few stars start to appear, faint pinpricks of light against the darkening canvas overhead. The campus is quiet, most students already back in their dorms or the library, and the only sounds are the distant hum of traffic and the occasional rustle of leaves in the breeze.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Heeseung asks eventually.

"Not really."

"Okay." He doesn't push. He doesn't pry. He just sits there, his shoulder almost touching yours, his presence a quiet comfort in the gathering dark.

"You're not going to ask questions?"

"You'll tell me when you're ready. Or you won't. Either way, I'm not going anywhere."

The simplicity of it, the uncomplicated, undemanding kindness of it, makes your eyes sting with fresh tears. You blink them back, determined not to start crying again.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" you ask, your voice hoarse.

Heeseung turns his head to look at you, and his expression is unreadable. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because… because I'm a disaster. Because I've been weird and awkward and I ran away from you and hid behind bulletin boards and spilled coffee on myself and I can't seem to do anything right. Because you barely know me, and what you do know is mostly just me making a fool of myself."

Heeseung is quiet for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, he smiles. Not the smirk or the teasing grin, but something softer. Something realer.

"Can you guess the movie I've watched recently?"

The question is so random that you blink. "What?"

"A movie I've watched recently. Can you guess?"

"Am I supposed to?"

"No, because I've never told you." He leans back on the bench, tilting his face up toward the emerging stars. "I don't usually tell people. It's kind of embarrassing."

You sniffle, curiosity temporarily overriding your grief. "What is it?"

"To All the Boys I've Loved Before."

You stare at him. "The Netflix movie? The one with Lara Jean?"

"The very same." He doesn't look embarrassed at all. If anything, he looks almost proud. "I've watched it like eight times. Maybe nine. I lost count somewhere around the sixth viewing."

"But… that's a teen romance. That's a movie about fake dating and love letters and-" You stop. "Oh."

"Yeah." Heeseung's smile turns wry. "The parallels weren't lost on me. Girl writes love letters she never meant to send. Letters end up reaching the boys. Chaos ensues." He glances at you sideways. "Sound familiar?"

Your heart does something strange, something fluttery and uncertain. "Why did you watch it?"

"Because Lara Jean is a hopeless romantic who's terrified of actually living the romance she dreams about." Heeseung's voice is thoughtful, almost contemplative. "She's brave on paper but scared in real life. She has all these feelings and no idea what to do with them. And she's convinced that if she actually tries to be vulnerable, everything will fall apart."

He turns to look at you fully, his dark eyes catching the faint glow of the distant streetlamps. "Does any of that sound familiar to you?"

Your breath catches in your throat.

"You write beautiful letters," Heeseung continues, his voice dropping lower. "You pour your heart onto paper because it's safer than saying things out loud. You make graphs about video game balance because you're passionate and detail-oriented and you can't help but go all-in on the things you care about. You talk to your plants and name your succulents and hide behind bulletin boards because real life is scary and rejection is terrifying and it's easier to dream about love than to actually risk your heart for it."

You can't speak. You can barely breathe. He is describing you, not the surface-level you, not the "weird first-year STEM student" you, but the real you. The you that lives in daydreams and love letters and the safety of your own imagination.

"The letter you wrote wasn't just a confession," Heeseung says quietly. "It was a work of art. The calligraphy, the words, the way you talked about noticing small things and finding beauty in ordinary moments, that's not something you write to just anyone. That's something you write when you've been paying attention. When you really see someone."

He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is almost a whisper.

"You remind me of her. Lara Jean. The girl who was so busy dreaming about love that she almost missed it when it showed up in front of her. You are Lara Jean. My Lara Jean."

Your heart races. Your palms are sweaty. The evening has grown dark around you, the stars fully emerged now, and Heeseung's face is half in shadow, half illuminated by the distant campus lights.

"Why are you telling me this?" you whisper.

"Because I think you're scared," Heeseung says simply. "I think you've been scared since the moment you handed me that letter. I think you're scared of what it means, scared of being vulnerable, scared of letting someone actually see you. And I want you to know that I see you anyway. Even when you're trying to hide."

He reaches out, and his hand finds yours in the darkness. His fingers are warm, his grip gentle.

"You don't have to be scared with me," he says. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to hurt you. And I'm not going to stop being interested just because you're awkward or clumsy or you spill coffee on yourself or you ramble about League of Legends until you run out of breath." He squeezes your hand. "That's the stuff I like about you. That's the stuff that makes you real."

You stare at him, your eyes still swollen from crying, your nose still red, your heart still aching from the conversation with Jungwon. And yet, sitting here on this bench with Heeseung's hand in yours and his words echoing in your ears, something shifts. Something changes.

"I don't know what I'm doing," you admit, your voice barely audible. "I don't know what I want. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel."

"Then don't figure it out tonight." Heeseung stands up, still holding your hand, and gently pulls you to your feet. "Come on. Let's get you back to your dorm. You need rest and probably some water. Crying is dehydrating."

Despite everything, the heartbreak, the confusion, the complete emotional chaos of the past hour, you almost smile. "That's a very practical observation."

"I'm an engineering student. We're practical by nature." He falls into step beside you, your hands still joined, and begins walking you toward your dorm building. "Also, I may have done some research on crying. You know, for science."

"You researched crying for science?"

"It was for a psych elective. But also for life skills. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that emotional tears contain stress hormones that need to be flushed out of your system. Crying is literally good for you."

"You're very weird," you say, but there's no bite to it.

"Coming from the girl who named her succulent Jason, I'll take that as a compliment."

You walk in silence for a while, the campus quiet and peaceful around you. The stars are bright overhead, and the air is cool against your tear-stained cheeks, and Heeseung's hand is warm in yours, steady and reassuring.

When you reach your dorm building, he stops at the entrance, turning to face you. The light from the lobby spills through the glass doors, illuminating his features, the sharp line of his jaw, the gentle curve of his lips, the way his dark eyes fix on your face like you are something worth looking at.

"Y/N," he says.

"Yeah?"

"I meant what I said earlier. You don't have to figure everything out tonight. You don't have to have all the answers. But whatever you're going through, whatever made you cry like that… I hope you know you can talk to me. About anything. Even if it's hard. Even if it's confusing. Even if it's not what you think I want to hear."

Your throat tightens. He has no idea how relevant those words are. He has no idea that the thing that made you cry is, in part, him or at least, the situation he is unknowingly caught up in.

"Thank you," you whisper.

Heeseung smiles, that same soft smile that appeared when he poured coffee over his head, when he called you a little mouse, when he listened to you talk about video games for fifteen minutes straight. And then, before you can react, he leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to your cheek.

It isn't romantic or it isn't supposed to be. It is brief and soft and chaste, the kind of kiss you might give a friend who is hurting. But his lips are warm against your skin, and when he pulls back, your cheek is tingling, and your heart does that traitorous flutter again.

"Goodnight, little mouse," he says. "Get some sleep."

And then he walks away, his hands in his pockets, his silhouette disappearing into the darkness of the campus night.

You stand there for a long moment, your hand pressed to your cheek where his lips have been, your heart a tangled mess of grief and confusion and something else, something warm and growing, something you don't want to name.

This is supposed to be simple. You are supposed to like Jungwon. You have liked Jungwon for four months. You wrote him a letter and dreamt about him and catalogued his habits and built an entire future around the idea of him.

But Jungwon walked away. Jungwon made his choice. Jungwon told you to take care of Heeseung and then poked your cheek one last time, a goodbye disguised as a signature gesture.

And Heeseung… Heeseung poured coffee on himself to make you feel less alone. Heeseung held your hand and told you that you were his Lara Jean. Heeseung kissed your cheek and called you little mouse and looked at you like you were something precious.

You don't know what to do anymore. You don't know what to feel. The map you have been following, the one that leads straight to Jungwon has crumbled in your hands, and now you stand in unfamiliar territory with no compass and no guide.

You push open the door to your dorm building and walk to your room in a daze, your mind still spinning. When you finally collapse onto your bed, still in your clothes, still wearing the tear tracks on your cheeks, you stare up at the ceiling and try to make sense of the chaos in your heart.

Jungwon liked you.

Jungwon gave up on you.

Heeseung said he wouldn't go anywhere.

Heeseung kissed your cheek.

You press your fingers to the spot where his lips have been and close your eyes.

"I don't know what I'm doing," you whisper to your empty room. "I really, really don't know what I'm doing."

Your room, as always, offers no answers. But somewhere in the distance, you can almost hear Heeseung's voice: You don't have to figure everything out tonight.

So you don't. You let the exhaustion pull you under, let sleep claim you, and try very hard not to think about the fact that the boy who just comforted you through your heartbreak is the same boy who might be slowly, quietly, unexpectedly stealing your heart.

The university, in its infinite and questionable wisdom, has decided that what the student body really needs is a three-day trip to a skiing station.

You received the email three weeks ago, skimmed it with the vague interest of someone who has never skied in her life and has no intention of starting now, and promptly archived it into the dark abyss of your inbox alongside seventeen other emails you will never open again. The trip is optional, after all. Attendance is not mandatory. You can simply stay on campus, enjoy the quiet emptiness of the dorms, and continue your ongoing mission of avoiding all tall informatics students while trying to piece together the shattered remnants of your romantic life.

It is a perfect plan. Flawless. Foolproof.

Until Yunjin gets involved.

"You're going," Yunjin says, standing in the doorway of your dorm room with her arms crossed and her expression one of immovable determination. She has just finished reading the email over your shoulder, and the glint in her eye is the same one she gets when she is about to bulldoze through every objection you can possibly raise.

"I'm not going," you reply, not looking up from your biology textbook. "I don't ski. I don't snowboard. I don't even own a proper winter coat. The heaviest thing I own is a cardigan, and I'm pretty sure it's made of acrylic."

"Then we'll get you a coat."

"Yunjin."

"Y/N."

"I can't go to a skiing station. I have studying to do. I have lab reports to write. I have approximately eight hundred flashcards to review before the next exam. My social life is already a disaster zone, I don't need to add frostbite and potential avalanche-related injuries to my list of problems."

Yunjin steps fully into the room, closes the door behind her, and fixes you with a look that you recognize as her "I'm about to say something brutally honest and you're not going to like it" expression. "You've been moping for two weeks."

"I haven't been moping. I've been processing."

"You've been moping. You've been staring at walls, listening to sad music, and eating instant ramen for every meal. I saw you crying over a nature documentary the other day because the baby penguin got separated from its family."

"That was emotionally manipulative editing! They set it to sad piano music! Anyone would have cried!"

"Y/N." Yunjin sits down on the edge of your bed, her voice softening. "I know about Jungwon. I know he told you he liked you and then walked away. I know you've been carrying that around like a weight on your chest. But hiding in your room isn't going to make it better. You need to get out. You need fresh air. You need to do something that isn't just staring at the same four walls and replaying the same conversation over and over in your head."

You set down your highlighter. "What if I run into Jungwon on the trip?"

"Then you'll be a normal human being about it. Or you'll be weird and awkward, which is your default state anyway, so nothing will have changed."

"Comforting."

"What if you run into Heeseung?"

The question catches you off guard. Your hand stills on your textbook, and you feel that familiar, complicated flutter in your chest, the one that has been appearing more and more frequently whenever someone mentions his name. "I don't know. I haven't really talked to him since…" Since the night he kissed your cheek. Since the night you realized that maybe, just maybe, your heart is no longer as firmly in Jungwon's camp as you always assumed.

"Exactly," Yunjin says, as if your silence has proven her point. "You need to figure things out. And you can't do that if you're hiding in your dorm room subsisting on sodium and self-pity. The ski trip is three days. Three days of fresh mountain air, hot chocolate, and the chance to actually talk to people face-to-face instead of through a fog of depression ramen."

"The ramen isn't that bad."

"The ramen is a cry for help."

You are quiet for a moment, staring at the pages of your textbook without really seeing them. Yunjin is right. You know she is right. You have been hiding from Jungwon, from Heeseung, from the tangled mess of feelings that you still haven't sorted out. The past two weeks have been a blur of avoidance and overthinking, and you are no closer to clarity than you were on that bench under the stars.

"Fine," you say finally, the word escaping before you can stop it. "I'll go."

Yunjin's face lights up. "Really?"

"But I'm not skiing. I refuse to ski. I'll sit in the lodge and drink hot chocolate and judge people from the window like a ghost."

"That's the spirit."

The morning of the trip arrives with a gray sky and a biting chill in the air. You stand outside the student union with your hastily packed duffel bag, which contains exactly zero items suitable for winter sports because your wardrobe is approximately eighty percent oversized sweaters and twenty percent academic stress, and watch your breath fog in the cold morning air.

The bus is already parked at the curb, a massive coach with the university logo emblazoned on the side. Students mill around, dragging suitcases and carrying thermoses of coffee, their chatter filling the air with a buzz of excitement. You spot a few familiar faces from your classes, a group of engineering students comparing snowboards, and your heart lurches, a flash of dark hair that might be Jungwon disappearing into the bus.

Yunjin has already boarded, abandoning you for a seat near the front because she wants to "network with the economics majors" or some other nonsense that you can't relate to. You are alone, clutching your bag and wondering if it is too late to fake a sudden illness, when a voice speaks directly behind you.

"Need help with your bag?"

You spin around so fast that your duffel bag swings in a wide arc and nearly takes out an innocent bystander. The innocent bystander, thankfully, has very good reflexes. He ducks, straightens up, and smiles at you with that familiar, devastating smile that has been haunting your dreams for weeks.

Heeseung.

He wears a black puffer jacket that makes his shoulders look even broader, a gray beanie pulled low over his hair, and a pair of snow boots that actually look like they belong on a ski trip. His cheeks are slightly pink from the cold, and his eyes are bright with that unshakeable, inexplicable cheerfulness that seems to follow him everywhere.

"Hi," you say, because your brain has apparently decided that monosyllables are all you can manage.

"Hi," he replies, his smile widening. "Fancy meeting you here. I thought you said you were photosensitive and couldn't be exposed to direct light. Is snow-light different from regular light?"

"That was a lie and you know it."

"I know." He reaches out and gently takes your duffel bag from your white-knuckled grip. "Come on. Let's find seats together. The bus is filling up."

"I… what… together?"

"Unless you already have a seatmate?"

Yunjin has abandoned you. You have no allies, no escape routes, and no valid excuses. "No," you admit. "I don't."

"Great." Heeseung starts walking toward the bus, your bag slung easily over his shoulder like it weighs nothing. "Fair warning, I'm a chronic window-seat person. I need to be able to stare dramatically at the scenery while contemplating the meaning of life."

"That's very specific."

"It's a lifestyle choice."

You follow him onto the bus, your heart doing that complicated gymnastics routine that it has perfected over the past few weeks. Heeseung navigates through the aisle with practiced ease, nodding at people who call out to him, exchanging quick greetings, but never stopping until he reaches an empty row near the middle of the bus.

"Window seat's yours," he says, gesturing for you to go first.

"I thought you said you were a chronic window-seat person."

"I am. But I'm making an exception." He stows your bag in the overhead compartment, then steps back to let you pass. "Consider it part of the whole starting slow thing. Sacrifices must be made."

You slide into the window seat, your heart hammering, and Heeseung settles in beside you. The seats are closer together than you expected. His shoulder brushes against yours, and even through the layers of your coats, you can feel the warmth of his body. You press yourself slightly closer to the window, trying to create more space, but the universe, in its infinite comedic wisdom, has clearly designed this bus to maximize accidental physical contact.

"Comfortable?" Heeseung asks, his voice tinged with amusement.

"Extremely. Never been more comfortable in my life. This is peak comfort."

"You're pressed against the window like you're trying to phase through it."

"The window is cold. The glass is… nice. I like glass."

Heeseung laughs, that genuine, surprised laugh that you heard in the cafeteria and the café and on the bench under the stars. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"The rambling thing. The nervous rambling thing." He turns in his seat slightly, facing you. "You know you don't have to be nervous around me, right? I thought we established this. Coffee disaster solidarity. Matching shirts. The whole thing."

"I'm not nervous," you lie. "I'm just… the bus is very… bus-like. It's making me feel things."

"Bus-like feelings."

"Exactly."

Heeseung shakes his head, still smiling, and pulls a pair of earbuds from his jacket pocket. "Here. Music helps me relax on long trips. We can share if you want."

He offers you one of his earbuds, holding it out between his fingers like it is something precious. The gesture is so simple, so unexpectedly intimate, that your breath catches in your throat. Sharing earbuds means sitting close enough for the cord to reach. Sharing earbuds means listening to his music, hearing the songs he likes, experiencing something together in the quiet space between words.

"Okay," you whisper, taking the earbud.

Your fingers brush against his, just for a second, and the contact sends a spark of electricity up your arm. You quickly insert the earbud, focusing very hard on not thinking about how close he is, how warm his shoulder feels against yours, how the faint scent of his cologne fills the space between you.

"What are we listening to?" you ask.

"A playlist I made," Heeseung says, scrolling through his phone. "It's kind of all over the place. Some indie, some R&B, some stuff I found on TikTok that got stuck in my head. I'm not very organized with my music."

"That's shocking. I assumed an informatics engineering student would have their music meticulously categorized by genre, mood, and decade of release."

"You assumed wrong. My playlists are chaos. This one is literally called vibes idk."

"That's the worst playlist name I've ever heard."

"It's an accurate playlist name. You'll see."

Lovers - Anna of the North playing now

He presses play, and music fills your ear.

"We should play a game," Heeseung says after a few songs have played. "To pass the time."

"What kind of game?"

"Twenty questions. But the version where you can skip questions if you don't want to answer. No pressure, no judgment, no awkwardness."

You consider this. Twenty questions with Heeseung is a dangerous proposition. There are so many things you don't want to answer, so many topics you have been carefully avoiding, so many truths that are still tangled up in misunderstandings and misplaced letters. But there is also something disarming about the way he offers the terms, no pressure, no judgment, no awkwardness, like he genuinely cares about making you feel safe.

"Fine," you say. "But you go first."

"Okay." Heeseung leans back in his seat, his shoulder still pressed against yours, his expression thoughtful. "What's your favorite movie of all time?"

"Pride and Prejudice. The 2005 version with Keira Knightley."

"The hand flex scene?"

You turn to stare at him. "You know about the hand flex scene?"

"Every person with a functioning heart knows about the hand flex scene. It's cinema history. Mr. Darcy flexing his hand after helping Elizabeth into the carriage because he's so overwhelmed by touching her? Iconic. Revolutionary. I think about it at least once a week."

You don't know what to do with this information. Lee Heeseung, reputed womanizer, hot informatics engineering student, the guy who is currently wearing a beanie and looking unfairly attractive in bus lighting, knows about the hand flex scene from Pride and Prejudice. He thinks about it weekly.

"You're very strange," you say.

"I prefer culturally literate."

"You said you've watched To All the Boys I've Loved Before at least six times."

"That's one of my favorite modern movies. Pride and Prejudice is my favorite classic. I contain multitudes." He nudges your shoulder with his. "Ask me something else."

The questions flow back and forth as the bus winds its way out of the city and into the mountains. You learn that Heeseung has an older brother who he FaceTimes every Sunday, that he chose informatics engineering because he loves the logic of coding but secretly dreams of being a music producer, that he loves Shin ramyeon and has created his own way of eating his instant noodles. He learns that you started collecting highlighters in middle school and now own over forty different colors, that you have named every plant in your dorm room after characters from classic literature, that you once won a poetry contest in high school but never told anyone because you were embarrassed.

The landscape outside the window shifts as the bus climbs higher into the mountains. Snow begins to appear, first in patches, then in sweeping blankets that cover the trees and the slopes and the distant peaks. The sky is a pale winter blue, and the sun glints off the snow.

"Next question," Heeseung says. "What's something you're scared of?"

The question hangs in the air between you, weightier than the ones that have come before. You could give a surface-level answer, spiders, heights, the dark, but something about the quiet intimacy of the bus, the warmth of his shoulder against yours, the gentle music in your ear, makes you want to be honest.

"Being seen," you say quietly. "Really seen. By someone who matters."

Heeseung doesn't respond right away. When he does, his voice is soft. "Why?"

"Because if someone really sees you, they might not like what they find. It's easier to stay on the surface. To be the version of yourself that you can control." You pause, watching the snow-covered trees blur past the window. "I'm good at dreaming about things. Imagining them. Writing them down. But actually doing them… actually putting myself out there… that's the scary part."

"That's why you write letters," Heeseung says. It isn't a question.

"Yeah. It's safer on paper. You can edit a letter. You can cross things out and start over. You can't do that with real life."

Heeseung is quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks, his words are careful and measured.

"For what it's worth," he says, "I've been seeing you for a few weeks now. The real you, I mean. The one who rambles and spills coffee and hides behind bulletin boards. And I haven't found anything I don't like yet."

Your heart stutters. You don't know what to say, so you say nothing, just let the music fill the space between you and try to memorize the exact timbre of his voice saying those words.

The skiing station is everything the brochure promised and more. A sprawling complex of wooden lodges and snow-covered slopes, nestled in a valley surrounded by towering peaks. The air is crisp and clean, carrying the scent of pine and woodsmoke, and the snow glitteres under the afternoon sun like a carpet of crushed diamonds.

You step off the bus and immediately sink three inches into a snowdrift.

"Excellent start," Yunjin says, appearing at your elbow and grinning. "Really graceful. Ten out of ten."

"I didn't see it."

"It's snow. It's everywhere. How did you not see it?"

You extract your foot from the drift and shake the snow off your boot with as much dignity as you can muster. "I was distracted by the scenery."

"Uh-huh." Yunjin's grin widens. "And by the scenery, you mean the six-foot-tall informatics student you spent the entire bus ride cuddled up with?"

"We weren't cuddling. We were sharing earbuds. There's a difference."

"There's really not."

You grab your duffel bag from the luggage compartment and follow the crowd toward the main lodge, your cheeks burning despite the cold. The lodge is a massive timber-frame building with a soaring ceiling, a massive stone fireplace, and windows that look out over the slopes. Students are already scattered across the lobby, checking in, collecting room keys, and making plans for the afternoon.

Your room is small but cozy, with a window that faces the mountains and a bed that looks impossibly inviting. You dump your bag on the floor, plug in your phone to charge, and then immediately find yourself staring out the window at the snow-covered landscape.

Yunjin finds you an hour later, dragging you out of your room and into the lodge's main café for hot chocolate. The café is warm and bustling, filled with students comparing ski passes and swapping stories about near-misses on the slopes. You find a table near the window, and Yunjin wastes no time in grilling you about the bus ride.

"So," she says, stirring her hot chocolate with a cinnamon stick, "Heeseung."

"What about him?"

"You spent three hours cuddled up with him on a bus."

"Sharing earbuds is not cuddling."

"You let him listen to music with you. You played twenty questions. You told him about your highlighter collection and the poetry contest you never told anyone about." Yunjin fixes you with a knowing look. "Those are not casual bus acquaintance topics. Those are I'm emotionally vulnerable with this person topics."

You stare into your hot chocolate. "I don't know what I'm doing, Yunjin. Everything is so tangled up. I started this whole mess because I was too scared to confess to the right person, and now the wrong person has been nothing but kind and thoughtful and unexpectedly perfect, and the right person told me he liked me and then walked away, and I don't know what I'm supposed to feel anymore."

Yunjin is quiet for a moment. Then she reaches across the table and places her hand on yours. "Maybe there isn't a supposed to. Maybe there's just what you actually feel, when you strip away all the expectations and the plans and the ideas about how things were meant to go."

You look up at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you've been so focused on the idea of Jungwon, the letter, the confession, the grand romantic gesture, that you might have missed what's been happening right in front of you." She squeezes your hand. "Heeseung poured coffee on himself so you wouldn't feel alone. He held your hand while you cried. He looked at you on that bus like you were the most interesting person he'd ever met."

"That doesn't mean-"

"Y/N." Yunjin's voice is gentle but firm. "When are you going to stop being scared and start being honest?"

The question hits you like a punch to the chest. Because she is right. Yunjin is always right, that is the infuriating thing about her. You have been scared since the moment you walked into that PC room, scared of rejection, scared of humiliation, scared of what would happen if you actually let someone see you. And that fear has led you into a labyrinth of misunderstandings and half-truths, and somewhere along the way, you have gotten so lost that you can't even see the exit anymore.

"I need to tell him," you say quietly. "Heeseung. I need to tell him the truth about the letter."

Yunjin nods. "I think that's a good idea."

"He might hate me."

"He might. But he also might not. And either way, you'll finally be able to stop carrying this around." She leans back in her chair, blowing on her hot chocolate. "Besides, from everything you've told me about him, I don't think hating you is high on his list of priorities."

"What if it ruins everything?"

"What if it fixes everything?"

You don't have an answer to that. You just sit there, watching the snow fall outside the window, and feel the weight of your decision settling onto your shoulders. Tonight. You will tell him tonight. Before dinner, maybe, or after. You will find a quiet moment, away from the crowds and the noise and the chaos of the ski trip, and you will finally, finally tell him the truth.

Finding Heeseung turns out to be easier said than done.

The ski station is massive, a maze of slopes and trails and lodges that all look exactly the same. You wander through the main lodge, check the café, peek into the game room, and even brave the equipment rental shop where a terrifyingly efficient employee tries to convince you to try snowboarding. You escape with your dignity barely intact and a pamphlet about beginner lessons that you immediately stuff into the nearest trash can.

It isn't until you step outside, squinting against the glare of the sun on the snow, that you spot him.

He is on the intermediate slope, a dark figure against the white expanse of snow, cutting down the mountain with the kind of effortless grace that makes your heart lurch into your throat. He is snowboarding, of course he is snowboarding, because apparently there is nothing Lee Heeseung can't do and he moves like he was born on a board.

You have two options. Option one: wait at the bottom of the slope like a normal person and flag him down when he finishes his run. Option two: try to reach him now, which will involve navigating the snowy terrain between you and the slope, a task for which you are woefully underprepared both in terms of footwear and basic motor coordination.

You choose option two, because you are an idiot.

The path to the slope is a gentle incline of packed snow that looks deceptively easy to traverse. You take three steps and immediately realize your mistake. The snow is slippery, not the powdery kind of snow that crunches satisfyingly underfoot, but the packed, icy kind that has been trampled by hundreds of skiers and snowboarders and now has the texture of a skating rink.

You take a fourth step. Your foot slides. You windmill your arms frantically. Your other foot slides in the opposite direction. For one glorious, suspended moment, you do something that might generously be called a split, and then gravity takes over and you go down in a tangle of limbs and snow and absolute humiliation.

"Y/N?"

The voice comes from above you. You look up, snow clinging to your hair and your eyelashes and probably places you don't want to think about, and there is Heeseung, standing over you with his snowboard tucked under his arm and an expression somewhere between concern and barely suppressed laughter.

"Hi," you say weakly. "I was looking for you."

"You found me." He kneels down beside you, brushing snow off your shoulder. "Are you okay? That looked like a pretty spectacular fall."

"I've had better. I've also had worse. This is somewhere in the middle."

"Your standards for falls must be very high."

"I'm an overachiever."

Heeseung laughs and offers you his hand. You take it, and he pulls you to your feet with the same easy strength he showed in the café, steadying you when you wobble on the slippery snow.

"Come on," he says, still holding your hand. "Let's get you somewhere less treacherous. The beginner slope is over there, it's flatter and a lot less likely to attack you."

"I don't snowboard."

"I'll teach you."

"Heeseung-"

"It'll be fun. I promise." He already guides you toward the beginner slope, his hand warm and solid around yours. "Besides, you came all this way to find me. The least I can do is give you a snowboarding lesson."

The beginner slope is, as promised, much less intimidating than the intermediate one. It is a gentle hill with a slow incline, populated by other beginners who fall over with the same frequency and enthusiasm that you anticipate for yourself. Heeseung finds a quiet spot near the edge, props his snowboard in the snow, and turns to you with an expression of exaggerated seriousness.

"Okay, lesson one: standing on the board without falling."

"That sounds fake."

"It's very real. I've done it many times."

"Show-off."

He grins and proceeds to walk you through the basics of snowboarding with the patience of a saint and the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely loves sharing his hobbies. He holds your hands when you wobble, catches you when you fall, and laughs with you instead of at you when you face-plant into a snowbank for the third time in ten minutes.

"You're getting better," he says, pulling you upright after your fourth fall. Snow dusts his beanie and clings to his eyelashes, and his cheeks are flushed pink from the cold. "That time you almost made it five feet."

"Almost being the key word."

"Almost is progress. Almost is the first step toward eventually."

You look at him, really look at him and feel something shift in your chest. This is it. This is the moment. You can't put it off any longer.

"I need to tell you something," you say, your voice coming out steadier than you feel. "Can we sit down for a minute?"

Heeseung's expression flickers, curiosity, concern, something else you can't name but he nods. "Of course."

You find a bench near the edge of the slope, tucked under a pine tree whose branches are heavy with snow. The afternoon sun starts to sink lower in the sky, painting the mountains in shades of gold and pink, and the air is cold enough to make your breath fog. You sit down, and Heeseung sits beside you, close but not too close, his snowboard propped against the bench.

For a long moment, you don't say anything. You are gathering your courage, trying to find the right words, trying to figure out how to start a conversation that might change everything.

"The letter," you say finally. "The one I gave you in the PC room. There's something I need to tell you about it."

Heeseung doesn't react. He just waits, his dark eyes steady on your face.

"It wasn't meant for you," you say, and the words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other in their hurry to escape. "I wrote it for someone else. For Jungwon. I'd been planning to confess to him for weeks, and I'd written this whole letter, and I asked someone where he was and they said he was in the PC room, and I walked in and I saw someone sitting at the computer and I just assumed it was him, and I didn't look, I didn't check, I just handed over the letter and started talking, and then you looked up and it wasn't him at all, it was you and I was so embarrassed and everyone was watching and I couldn't correct you in front of all those people, and then everything spiraled and I kept trying to tell you but I couldn't find the right moment and then Jungwon found out and I couldn't correct it in front of him either and now everything is a mess and I'm so, so sorry, and I understand if you're angry, I understand if you hate me, I just… I couldn't keep lying to you anymore. You deserved to know the truth."

You stop talking. Your heart pounds so hard you can feel it in your temples. Your hands shake, and you press them together in your lap to keep them still. You don't look at Heeseung, you can't look at him, can't bear to see the expression on his face.

The silence stretches for what feels like an eternity.

And then Heeseung says, in the most casual voice imaginable: "I know."

Your head snaps up. "What?"

"I know the letter wasn't meant for me." He smiles, not a smirk, not a grin, but something gentle and warm and completely without judgment. "I've known since the beginning."

"But… how… since when-"

"Since I read it." Heeseung leans back on the bench, looking out at the snow-covered slope with a thoughtful expression. "The letter was beautiful. Every word of it. But it wasn't about me. It was about someone who smiles a certain way, someone who gave you gummy bears at 2 AM, someone who studies hard during free time at the library." He glances at you sideways. "I've never given anyone gummy bears. And I'm an informatics student, I don't take philosophy."

Your brain short-circuits. "You knew. This whole time. You knew."

"I knew."

"And you didn't say anything?"

"What was I supposed to say?" Heeseung's voice is gentle. "You were so flustered and embarrassed, and I could see you panicking in front of everyone. If I called you out right there, you would have been humiliated. And then I kept waiting for you to tell me yourself, but you never did, and eventually I just…" He shrugs. "I got curious. You wrote this incredible letter, and you were so weird and skittish and interesting, and I wanted to understand you. So I kept showing up."

"You kept showing up because I was interesting?"

"At first. Then it became something else." He turns to face you fully, his expression open and earnest. "You're not like the other people who confess to me. They want the idea of me, the reputation, the image. You didn't even want the real me. You wanted someone else entirely. And that was… refreshing. You weren't trying to impress me. You were trying to get rid of me. It was the first time anyone ever hid behind a bulletin board to avoid me."

"I wasn't… I didn't…" You bury your face in your hands. "This is so humiliating."

"It's not humiliating. It's human. You made a mistake. A very entertaining, very elaborate mistake." He gently pulls your hands away from your face, forcing you to look at him. "And somewhere along the way, while you were busy trying to make me lose interest, I got to know the real you. The one who names her plants after literary characters. The one who writes passionate essays about video game balance. The one who cried over a baby penguin last week."

"Yunjin told you about that?"

"Yunjin and I have been texting. But don't worry she didn't spilled all your dirty secrets."

You gape at him. "You and Yunjin have been texting?"

"She reached out after the coffee incident. Said she wanted to make sure my intentions were good." He smiles, a little sheepishly. "I think I passed the test. She said I was less of a disaster than expected."

"I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill both of you."

"Before you do, let me finish." Heeseung's voice softens, and he takes your hand in his, the same way he did on the bench under the stars, steady and warm and reassuring. "I knew the letter wasn't for me. But I also know that somewhere along the way, something changed. Maybe it changed for you too. Maybe it didn't. Either way, I wanted to give you the space to figure it out on your own terms."

You stare at him, your mind reeling. He knew. He has known this entire time, and instead of being angry or hurt or humiliated, he just… waited. Gave you space. Let you come to him when you were ready.

"You're not upset?" you whisper.

"I'm not upset."

"You don't feel… I don't know, betrayed? Lied to?"

"Y/N." He squeezes your hand. "You were scared. I get it. I've spent my whole life being scared of disappointing people, scared of saying no, scared of letting anyone down. I know what it's like to be trapped in a situation you didn't mean to create. I'm not going to hold that against you."

The tears threaten again, not the ugly, heartbroken tears from that night on the pathway, but something softer. Something that feels almost like relief.

"I'm sorry," you say, your voice cracking. "I'm so sorry for not telling you sooner."

"You're telling me now. That's what matters."

"I don't know what I feel," you admit. "About anything. About anyone. Everything is so confusing."

"Then don't figure it out right now." Heeseung stands up, pulling you gently to your feet. "We have three days at a ski station. There's a jacuzzi. There's hot chocolate. There's an entire mountain to explore. Let's just… enjoy it. See what happens. No pressure, no expectations, no misunderstandings."

Just like that, the weight you have been carrying for weeks, the guilt, the anxiety, the tangled knot of secrets, begins to loosen. Not disappear entirely, but loosen enough that you can breathe again.

"There's really a jacuzzi?" you ask.

Heeseung grins. "There's really a jacuzzi. I saw it on the map. Outdoor, heated, with a view of the mountains. Very romantic. Very much the kind of thing you'd put in a letter about someone."

"You're making fun of me."

"A little bit. But also, I'm serious." He picks up his snowboard and tucks it under his arm. "What do you say? After dinner? We can go check it out."

You think about it. The jacuzzi. With Heeseung. In a swimsuit. In warm water under the stars, surrounded by snow-covered mountains. It is terrifying. It is ridiculous. It is exactly the kind of thing the hopeless romantic inside you has always dreamed about.

"Okay," you say. "After dinner."

By the time dinner rolls around, you are a nervous wreck.

You have spent the rest of the afternoon in your room, alternating between staring at the ceiling and frantically texting Yunjin for advice. Yunjin has responded with a series of increasingly unhelpful messages:

Yunjin: wear the cute swimsuit

You: i don't OWN a cute swimsuit

Yunjin: wear the one you borrowed from me for the pool party last semester

You: the black one???

Yunjin: YES the black one. he won't know what hit him

You: i don't want him to be HIT i want this to be NORMAL

Yunjin: nothing about your life has been normal since the moment you walked into that PC room. embrace it. wear the swimsuit.

You wear the swimsuit.

Underneath your clothes, of course. Underneath a thick sweater, a pair of jeans, and the oversized winter coat you borrowed from Yunjin specifically for this trip. You feel like you are wearing armor, except the armor is actually a swimsuit, and the battle is against your own nervous system.

Dinner is a blur. The lodge's restaurant is packed with students, the noise level somewhere between "lively" and "chaotic," and you barely taste the food on your plate. You keep glancing toward the table where Heeseung sits with a group of his friends, and every time he catches your eye, he smiles at you, that same soft, knowing smile that makes your stomach do complicated acrobatics.

At one point, you accidentally make eye contact with Jungwon across the dining hall. He sits with a group of philosophy students, and when your gazes meet, he raises his hand in a small wave. His expression is unreadable, not sad, not angry, just… neutral. You wave back, and then you both look away, and that is it. A quiet acknowledgment of everything that has happened and everything that hasn't.

After dinner, you return to your room and proceed to have a minor meltdown.

The text from Heeseung arrives at exactly 8:47 PM.

Heeseung: jacuzzi? meet in the lobby in 10? bring a towel

You stare at the message for approximately three full minutes. Then you type out seventeen different responses, delete all of them, and finally settle on:

You: okay

Just "okay." No punctuation. No enthusiasm. Just the monosyllabic response of someone who is either incredibly chill or seconds away from spontaneous combustion.

You grab your towel and make your way to the lobby. The lodge is quieter now, most students either in the game room or in their own rooms recovering from the day's activities. The fireplace in the main lobby still crackles, and a few people gather around it with mugs of hot chocolate.

Heeseung is already there, leaning against the reception desk with a towel slung over his shoulder and that same gray beanie pulled over his hair. He has changed out of his snowboarding gear into something simpler and when he sees you approaching, his face lights up with that genuine smile that never fails to make your heart flutter.

"Ready?" he asks.

"No," you admit.

"Good. Let's go anyway."

The jacuzzi is on the outdoor deck of the spa building, a steaming oasis surrounded by snow-covered rocks and pine trees draped in lights. The mountains rise in the distance, dark silhouettes against a sky so full of stars it looks like a painting. The air is freezing, the kind of cold that makes your lungs ache, but the water is perfectly, blissfully warm, and when you finally shed your coat and your sweater and your jeans and slip into the bubbling water in your borrowed black swimsuit, you let out a breath you didn't realize you have been holding.

"This is nice," you admit, sinking down until the water reaches your chin. "This is really, really nice."

"Told you." Heeseung slides into the water across from you, his towel discarded on a nearby bench. The lights catch the angles of his face, the curve of his shoulders, the way his hair curls slightly at the ends from the steam. "Sometimes I'm right about things."

"Sometimes."

"Rarely. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon."

You laugh, and it feels good, lighter than it has in weeks. The warm water, the cold air, the stars overhead, the boy across from you who has known the truth all along and hasn't run away, it all feels like something out of a dream.

"I'm glad you told me," Heeseung says quietly. "About the letter."

"Me too."

"And I'm glad you're here. At the ski station. In the jacuzzi. With me."

Your heart flutters. "Me too."

"So what happens now?" Heeseung asks, but there is no pressure in his voice. Just curiosity. Just openness.

"I don't know," you say honestly. "But I think… I think I'd like to find out."

Heeseung smiles, soft and real and full of something you are only just beginning to recognize.

"Then let's find out," he says. "Together."

The jacuzzi is bathed in purple light.

You don't know if it is intentional or if someone just installed colored LEDs and called it a day, but the effect is undeniably, unfairly romantic. The water glows with a deep violet hue, shifting to indigo where the bubbles break the surface, and the steam rising into the cold mountain air catches the light and turns it into something almost magical. It looks like a movie.

A romance movie, specifically. The kind you have watched a hundred times in your dorm room, wrapped in a blanket, dreaming about the day something like this would happen to you.

And now it is happening. And you are absolutely, catastrophically unprepared.

Heeseung sits across from you in the bubbling water, his arms stretched out along the edge of the jacuzzi, his head tilted back slightly to look at the stars. The purple light paints shadows across the planes of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the column of his throat disappearing into the steam. Droplets of water cling to his skin, and when he tilts his head forward to look at you, his dark eyes reflect the violet glow in a way that makes your stomach drop straight through the floor.

"You're doing it again," he says, his voice low and amused.

"Doing what?"

"Staring at me like you're trying to figure me out."

"I'm not staring. I'm… observing. It's different."

"Is it?"

"It's scientific. I'm conducting research."

Heeseung's lips curve into that familiar smile, the one that is definitely a smirk's first cousin by now, maybe even its sibling. "And what has your research concluded so far?"

"That you're very annoying," you say. "And that the purple light is doing unfair things to your bone structure."

"Unfair things to my bone structure," he repeats, laughing. "That's a new one. I'll add it to the list of compliments I've received."

"You keep a list?"

"Mentally. It's not written down anywhere. I'm not that egotistical."

"Debatable."

He laughs again, and the sound echoes across the water, mixing with the gentle hum of the jacuzzi jets. You try very hard to be normal, to act like you aren't sitting in a bubbling hot tub with a boy who has known your secret all along and has still chosen to be here, in the purple light, looking at you like he wants to kiss you.

And then he reaches for your foot.

His hand closes around your ankle beneath the water, warm and gentle, and before you can process what is happening, he lifts your leg, guiding your foot toward him. Your heel presses against his chest, against the firm warmth of his skin, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, and your breath catches in your throat so abruptly that you make a small, strangled sound that is definitely not dignified. The memory of your wet dream surges instantly, and you mentally thank the purple lights for hiding the sudden flush on your face.

"What are you doing?" you manage, your voice coming out several octaves higher than normal.

"You were floating awkwardly," Heeseung says, like this is a perfectly reasonable explanation. His thumb traces a slow circle against your ankle bone, feather-light and devastating. "I thought you might want something to anchor you."

"My ankle. You're anchoring my ankle."

"Ankles are very anchorable."

"That's not a word."

"It is now. I'm an engineering student. I can invent words."

Your heart pounds so hard you are certain he can feel it through the sole of your foot. His hand still wraps around your ankle, warm and steady, and the position is so unexpectedly intimate, your leg stretched across the space between you, your foot pressed against his chest, his thumb drawing lazy patterns on your skin, that you don't know where to look or what to say or how to breathe.

"You know what's funny?" Heeseung says, his voice conversational, like he isn't currently holding your foot against his heart. "The jacuzzi scene in To All the Boys I've Loved Before."

Your brain, which is already operating at approximately ten percent capacity, struggles to process the shift in topic. "The… jacuzzi scene?"

"Lara Jean and Peter. The ski trip. The hot tub." He gestures vaguely at the purple water around you. "They're in a jacuzzi together for the first time, and Lara Jean is all nervous, and Peter is trying to be cool about it, and there's all this tension because they're fake dating but they're both starting to feel real things."

"I know the scene," you say, your voice faint.

"It's kind of the turning point in the movie. The moment where the fake relationship starts becoming real." Heeseung tilts his head, and his eyes meet yours, and there is something in them, something dark and warm and knowing—that makes your skin tingle. "Funny how we ended up in a jacuzzi too. At a ski station. Just like them."

"Are you saying we're in a romance movie?"

"I'm saying the parallels are getting a little uncanny." His thumb traces another circle on your ankle, slow and deliberate. "The letter. The ski trip. The hot tub."

"Well, technically the parallels are there but it's still different…"

"You're right. At the end of the day we're not in a movie… This is real life."

"Which means…"

"Which means we're in uncharted territory now." Heeseung's voice drops, becoming something lower, something that vibrates through the water and into your bones. "No movie to reference. No script to follow. Just… whatever happens next."

Your mouth is dry. When did your mouth become so dry? You are surrounded by water, and yet every drop of moisture has apparently evaporated from your body.

"That's terrifying," you whisper.

"Is it?" His hand tightens slightly on your ankle, grounding you. "I think it's kind of exciting. Don't you?"

You don't know how to answer that. You don't know how to articulate the complicated knot of fear and anticipation and something else, something warm and fluttering that has taken up residence in your chest. So you do what you always do when you don't know what to say: you deflect.

"You're very smooth, you know that?" you say, aiming for teasing and landing somewhere closer to breathless. "Has anyone ever told you that? The ankle thing, the movie reference, the uncharted territory line, it's a lot."

Heeseung's lips twitch. "Is it working?"

"I'm not answering that."

"That's an answer in itself."

"You're insufferable."

"And yet you're still here." His eyes flicker down for just a moment, barely a second, but enough to make your skin flush. "Letting me hold your ankle."

You pull your foot back, but he doesn't let go. His grip remains gentle, steady, his palm warm against your skin. "I'm not letting you do anything. You just… did it."

"And you didn't stop me."

"I was being polite."

"Polite." Heeseung's smile widens. "Right. That's what this is. Politeness."

The purple light flickers slightly, casting new shadows across his face. The bubbles swirl around you, warm and enveloping, and the cold mountain air nips at your exposed shoulders, creating a contrast that makes every sensation feel heightened. You are acutely aware of everything, the heat of the water, the chill of the breeze, the rough texture of the jacuzzi edge beneath your fingers, the steady pressure of Heeseung's hand on your ankle.

"Can I ask you something?" Heeseung says.

"You're going to anyway."

"True." He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is softer. More curious. "Have you ever done this before?"

"Done what? Sat in a jacuzzi?"

"Been physical with someone. Intimate." He says the words without embarrassment, without leering, just genuine curiosity. "You get so flustered every time I touch you. Earlier, when I kissed your cheek, I thought you were going to combust. And I'm not trying to make fun of you, I'm genuinely asking. Is this… new for you?"

Your cheeks, already flushed from the heat of the water, burn even hotter. "That's a very personal question."

"You don't have to answer. Remember? Twenty questions rules. No pressure."

You are quiet for a moment. The bubbles churn around you. The stars glitter overhead. Heeseung's thumb continues its slow, hypnotic circles on your ankle.

"I've kissed people before," you say finally. "A few times. But it was always… quick. Awkward. Spin the bottle at parties, that kind of thing." You pause, gathering your courage. "I've never had a real relationship. I've never… you know."

"Made out with someone?"

The bluntness of the question makes you choke on air. "I… that's… yes. That. I've never done that."

"Okay," Heeseung says simply.

"Okay? That's all you have to say?"

"What else would I say?"

"I don't know. Something. Most people would say something."

Heeseung is quiet for a moment, his expression thoughtful. Then he says, "I haven't either. Much, I mean. I've had my few moments but the amount you can count on your fingers. People assume I have, because of the reputation, but the truth is I've never really… connected with someone like that. I've had opportunities, I guess, but I didn't want to do it just for the sake of doing it. I wanted it to mean something."

The confession catches you off guard. You assumed, everyone assumed, that Lee Heeseung was experienced, that his womanizer reputation was built on a foundation of romantic conquests. But here he is, in the purple light of the jacuzzi, telling you that the reputation is just that: a reputation. Smoke and mirrors. Assumptions built on his inability to say no.

"We're both disasters," you say.

"Absolutely. But at least we're disasters together."

"Disaster twins."

"Matching shirts and everything."

You laugh, and it comes out lighter than you expected. The tension that has been coiling in your chest begins to ease, replaced by something warmer. Something that feels almost like comfort.

Wus Good/Curious - PARTYNEXTDOOR playing now

Somewhere in the lodge, someone has connected their phone to the outdoor speakers. The song that starts playing is slow and sensual, the timing so absurd, so perfectly, comedically timed, that you can't help but laugh. "Did you plan this?"

Heeseung laughs too, shaking his head in disbelief. "I swear I didn't. The universe is just showing off at this point."

"This is the least romantic song that could have possibly played."

"I don't know. It's got a certain vibe." His eyes meet yours, and there is a glint of mischief in them. "Very sensual. Very on-the-nose for a jacuzzi scene."

"It's about-" You stop, your face heating.

"It's about what?"

"You know what it's about."

"I want to hear you say it."

"You're the worst."

Heeseung grins, and the purple light catches the curve of his lips, the sparkle in his eyes, the way the water droplets trace paths down his neck and across his collarbone. The song continues playing, and you are suddenly very aware of how close he is, how the space between you has somehow shrunk without you noticing.

"Come here," he says softly.

"What?"

"Come here. I want to show you something."

Your heart hammers so hard you can feel it in your throat. "Show me what?"

"Trust me."

And you do. That is the terrifying thing. Despite everything, the misunderstandings, the secrets, the weeks of chaos and confusion, you trust him. You trust the boy who poured coffee on his head to make you feel less alone. You trust the boy who held your hand while you cried. You trust the boy who has known your secret all along and has never once made you feel foolish for it.

You move through the water, closer to him, and the purple light swirls around you like something out of a dream. When you are within reach, Heeseung's hands find your waist beneath the water, gentle but sure, and he guides you until you are straddling his lap, your knees on either side of his hips, your faces inches apart.

"Is this okay?" he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

Your breath comes in short, shallow gasps. His hands are warm on your waist, his thumbs tracing slow circles against the curve of your hips. His face is so close you can see the individual droplets of water on his eyelashes, can count the shades of brown in his eyes, can feel the warmth of his breath against your lips.

"Yes," you whisper. "This is… okay."

"You're shaking."

"I'm nervous."

"I know." His hands slide up from your waist, over your ribs, coming to rest on either side of your face. His palms are warm against your cheeks, his fingers threading gently into the wet strands of your hair. "We don't have to do anything you're not ready for. We can just sit here. We can talk. We can get out and go back inside. Whatever you want."

The gentleness of his voice, the patience in his eyes, the way he holds your face like you are something precious, it makes your chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the realization that you are in very, very deep trouble.

Because this boy, this absurd, beautiful, incomprehensible boy who stumbled into your life through a misplaced letter and a catastrophic misunderstanding, has somehow become someone you can't imagine letting go of.

"What I want," you say, your voice barely steady, "is for you to kiss me."

Heeseung's eyes darken. The purple light flickers across his features, and his thumbs trace the line of your cheekbones, and his lips part slightly, and for one suspended moment, the entire world holds its breath.

"Okay," he murmurs. "But we're going to do this right."

And then he kisses you.

His lips meet yours softly at first, gentle, exploratory, the barest brush of contact. He tastes like the mint tea he had after dinner, and his mouth is warm, and the kiss is so sweet and so tender that you feel your entire body melt into him. Your hands, hovering awkwardly at your sides, come up to rest on his shoulders, and you feel the muscles beneath his skin shift as he pulls you closer.

But then you try to deepen the kiss, and it goes wrong.

Your nose bumps against his. Your teeth clack together with an audible click. You pull back, mortified, your face burning. "I'm sorry… I didn't… I don't know what I'm doing-"

"Hey." Heeseung's voice is gentle, his hands still cupping your face. "Hey. It's okay. Look at me."

You force yourself to meet his eyes, expecting to see amusement or frustration or something worse. But all you see is patience. Warmth. Something that looks a lot like affection.

"Everyone's first real kiss is awkward," he says. "That's normal. That's how it's supposed to be."

"It wasn't supposed to be with someone who actually knows what they're doing."

"Then let me teach you." His thumb traces your lower lip, feather-light. "We'll go slow. You follow my lead. And if at any point you want to stop, just say the word. Okay?"

Your heart pounds so hard you can feel it in your temples. "Okay."

He leans in again, slower this time, giving you every opportunity to pull away. When his lips meet yours, the pressure is deliberate, gentle but firm, guiding you. His mouth moves against yours in a slow, languid rhythm, and you follow, mimicking his movements, learning the dance as you go.

"Tilt your head a little," he murmurs against your lips. "There. Like that."

You adjust, and suddenly the angle is better, the kiss deepening naturally. His hands slide from your face down to your waist, pulling you closer, and you feel the length of his body against yours, warm and solid and very, very real.

"Now try parting your lips," he whispers. "Just a little."

You do, and the kiss changes. Becomes something deeper, more intense. His tongue brushes against your lower lip, a question rather than a demand, and when you open for him, the sensation is so overwhelming that a soft sound escapes your throat, something between a sigh and a gasp.

"Good," Heeseung breathes. "You're doing so good."

The praise sends a shiver down your spine. Your fingers curl into his shoulders, gripping him like he is the only solid thing in a world. The kiss deepens further, his mouth moving against yours with a confidence that makes your head spin, and you follow his lead, letting him guide you, letting yourself get lost in the warmth of his body and the taste of his lips and the steady, grounding pressure of his hands on your waist.

"Now," he murmurs, pulling back just enough to press a kiss to the corner of your mouth, "there's variation. You don't have to do the same thing the whole time."

"Variation," you repeat, your voice dazed.

"You can kiss here-" His lips brush the edge of your jaw. "-and here-" A kiss to the sensitive spot just below your ear. "-and here." A kiss to the hollow of your throat that makes your breath catch and your fingers tighten on his shoulders.

"That's… a lot of places."

"There's more." He pulls back, and his eyes meet yours, dark and warm and full of something that makes your stomach flip. "But we can save those for later. If you want."

"If I want," you echo, still dazed.

"Only if you want." His hand comes up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone.

"This is insane," you whisper.

"Completely insane."

"I can't believe this is happening."

"Neither can I." He presses his forehead against yours, his breath warm against your lips. "But I'm really, really glad it is."

"Can we try again?" you ask, your voice small but steady. "The kissing thing. I think I need more practice."

Heeseung laughs, and the sound vibrates through his chest and into yours. "Practice makes perfect."

"I'm a STEM student. I believe in empirical evidence."

"Then let's gather some data."

He kisses you again, and this time, you are ready. Your lips meet his with more confidence, your hands sliding from his shoulders into his hair, it is soft, damp from the steam, and the way he sighs against your mouth when your fingers thread through it makes you feel powerful in a way you have never experienced before.

This time, when you deepen the kiss, it's less clumsy. It's more natural, instinctive, the kind of kiss that feels like it has been waiting to happen for weeks and is finally making up for lost time. Heeseung's hands tighten on your waist, pulling you impossibly closer, and the water swirls around you.

Your hands roam over his chest, feeling the firm muscles beneath your fingertips. Heeseung's tongue teases your lower lip, seeking entrance which you grant without hesitation. The kiss becomes hungrier, more desperate as your bodies press together in the warm water. He has been patient with you, letting you set the pace, never pushing for more than you are ready to give.

You feel something hard pressing against your thigh through the thin fabric of your swimsuit. You pull back slightly, breathless, your cheeks flushed with both desire and embarrassment.

"Don't mind it," Heeseung murmurs, his voice husky with arousal. "It's just a natural reaction to kissing someone I find incredibly attractive."

But instead of shying away, something bold awakens inside you. You've been waiting for this moment, wanting to take your relationship to the next level. Taking a deep breath, you meet his gaze directly, though your words come out in a clumsy rush.

"I want to... I mean, if you want to... I think I'm ready to... do it," you stammer, feeling your face heat up even more. "With you."

Heeseung's eyes widen slightly before softening with affection. "Are you sure? Here? Your first time should be special."

"It is special because it's with you," you insist, trying to sound more confident than you feel. "I want this. I want you. I want to be honest with myself."

A slow smile spreads across his face. "Okay," he murmurs, his hands moving to cup your face. "But we need to prepare you properly. I don't want to hurt you."

His thumb brushes against your cheek as he continues, "Have you ever... touched yourself before?"

You shake your head, feeling a mix of embarrassment and excitement.

"That's okay," he assures you. "I'll teach you. I'll make sure you feel good."

WGFT - Gunna playing now

Heeseung shifts slightly, adjusting your position on his lap. One hand trails down your back, over your hip, and between your legs. Even through the fabric of your swimsuit, his touch sends sparks through your body.

"First, I need to make sure you're ready," he explains softly. His fingers find the edge of your swimsuit bottom, toying with the fabric. "May I?"

You nod, your breath catching in anticipation.

Slowly, his fingers slip beneath the fabric, finding your folds. You gasp at the contact, your body tensing for a moment before relaxing into his touch.

"It's twitching," he murmurs against your ear. "That's good. It means your body wants this too."

His fingers explore gently, learning your anatomy as you bite your lip to hold back moans. He finds your clit and circles it slowly, watching your face for reactions.

"When I touch you here, it should build pleasure." he explains.

He demonstrates, applying a bit more pressure. You can't help but arch your back, a soft cry escaping your lips.

"Like that?" he asks with a knowing smile.

You can only nod, lost in the sensations he's creating.

After a few minutes of this delicious torture, he slides one finger lower, testing your entrance. "I'm going to prepare you," he warns softly. "It might feel a little strange at first, but I promise it will get better."

His finger enters you slowly, carefully. There's a slight discomfort, but as he begins to move in and out, the sensation transforms into pleasure. He watches your face intently, adjusting his movements based on your reactions.

"Does that feel good?" he asks.

You nod, your hips beginning to move in rhythm with his hand.

He adds a second finger, stretching you further. "You're so tight," he groans. "I can't wait to be inside you."

His words send another wave of desire through you. His thumb returns to your clit, rubbing in circles as his fingers continue their work inside you. The dual stimulation is overwhelming in the best way possible.

"Heeseung," you gasp, your hands clutching at his shoulders.

"I know, little mouse," he murmurs, kissing you deeply. "Let it build. Don't fight it."

The pleasure intensifies, coiling in your stomach like a spring. Your movements become more erratic as you chase the feeling building within you.

"That's it," he encourages. "Good girl"

With a cry, you shatter, waves of pleasure washing over you. Heeseung continues his movements, drawing out your orgasm until you collapse against his chest, trembling and breathless.

"You're so beautiful when you come," he whispers, kissing your forehead. "Can you do more?"

You can only nod, still recovering from the intensity of your first orgasm with someone else.

He slides down his shorts slightly just to reveal his already hard cock and slides your swimsuit to the side. His hands move to your hips, and you begin to grind against him instinctively. The water sloshes around you as you move, his lenght sliding between your folds, creating a delicious friction under the water. Lost in the moment, you shift your hips, trying to get closer, to feel more of him.

Suddenly, you both freeze as you feel him slip inside you. There's a sharp pain, followed by a sense of fullness that takes your breath away. Your eyes widen in shock as you look at Heeseung, whose expression mirrors your surprise.

"Oh my god," he gasps, his hands tightening on your hips. "I... I didn't mean for that to happen. Are you okay?"

You nod, still processing what just happened. The initial pain is already fading, replaced by a strange mix of discomfort and pleasure.

"I'm so sorry," Heeseung continues, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. "I should have been more careful. I didn't..."

As he stammers through an apology, you can't help but let out a small laugh. The absurdity of the situation , your first time happening so accidentally, so clumsily, suddenly strikes you as hilarious.

Heeseung looks at you in confusion before a smile breaks across his face. "You're laughing?"

"We're so clumsy," you giggle, the tension breaking between you. "All that careful preparation and then..."

He joins in your laughter, the moment transforming from awkward to intimate. "Well," he says once the laughter subsides, "since we're already here... are you okay to continue? We can stop if you want."

You shake your head, a new determination filling you. "No, I want to continue. Show me what to do."

Heeseung's expression softens with affection. "Okay," he murmurs, his hands guiding your hips. "Just relax and let me do the work. Move with me, but let me lead."

He begins to move slowly, guiding you in a gentle rhythm. The water sloshes around you as you find a pace together. With each thrust, pleasure builds, different from before but just as intense.

"You feel so good," Heeseung groans, his control beginning to slip. "So tight around me."

His praise only heightens your arousal. You try to meet his movements with your own, but your motions are awkward and uncoordinated. You feel clumsy, unsure of exactly how to move to maximize pleasure for both of you.

"Don't worry about doing it perfectly," Heeseung reassures you, noticing your frustration. "Just feel. Let your body respond naturally."

He adjusts your position slightly, changing the angle of his thrusts. A gasp escapes your lips as he hits a particularly sensitive spot.

"There," he murmurs, repeating the movement. "How does that feel?"

"Amazing," you breathe, your hands clutching at his shoulders.

Heeseung's hands roam your body, caressing your breasts, your back, your hips. His mouth finds your neck, sucking gently at your pulse point. Marking you as his.

"I've wanted this since the moment we got in the jacuzzi," he admits between kisses. "But I was too scared you would run away if I decided to act up."

"I want it," you assure him, your voice breathy with pleasure. "I want all of you. I'm not scared anymore."

Your words seem to unleash something in him. His movements become more deliberate, more purposeful as he chases his own release. One hand moves between your legs again, finding your clit and rubbing in time with his thrusts.

The dual stimulation quickly pushes you toward another orgasm. "Heeseung," you cry out, your nails digging into his shoulders.

"I know," he groans. "Come with me this time."

His words are all it takes to push you over the edge. As you clench around him, Heeseung finds his own release, burying his face in your neck with a guttural moan.

For a moment, you stay connected, catching your breath as the water continues to bubble around you. Heeseung presses soft kisses to your shoulders, your neck, your cheeks.

"Are you okay?" he asks softly, pulling back to look at you.

You nod, a contented smile spreading across your face. "Better than okay. That was..."

"Incredible," he finishes for you, returning your smile. "You're incredible."

As you slowly separate, Heeseung adjusts your swimsuit back into place before

As you both recover in the warm bubbling water, you notice something pressing against your thigh again. You glance down and see that Heeseung is already getting hard once more. A blush spreads across your cheeks as you meet his eyes.

"Already?" you ask with a small laugh.

Heeseung grins, a hint of embarrassment in his expression. "I can't help it," he admits. "You feel so good, and I've wanted this for so long. My body seems to have a mind of its own around you."

A boldness takes hold of you, spurred by the confidence your first time gave you. "If you want to do it again... your way this time... I don't mind," you say, trying to sound casual despite the flutter in your stomach.

Heeseung's eyes darken with desire at your words. Without warning, he pounces, lifting you effortlessly from his lap. He carries you to the edge of the jacuzzi and gently sets you down on the edge. The contrast between the warm water and the cool air sends a shiver through your body.

"My way?" he asks, his voice husky with arousal. "I like the sound of that."

He kneels in the water between your legs, his hands spreading your thighs apart. His eyes never leave yours as he leans forward, pressing soft kisses to your inner thigh. You watch, mesmerized, as he works his way upward, leaving a trail of fire on your skin.

When he reaches your core, he pauses, his breath warm against your most sensitive flesh. "I've wanted to taste you since the first time I saw you in that swimsuit," he confesses, his voice low and intimate.

Then he dives in, his tongue exploring your folds. You gasp, your hands flying to his hair as waves of pleasure wash over you. Heeseung maintains eye contact as he eats you out, his dark eyes watching your every reaction, learning what makes you moan, what makes you arch your back.

"You taste so sweet," he murmurs against you before returning to his task, his tongue circling your clit before dipping inside you.

The sensations are overwhelming, building quickly toward another orgasm. Heeseung seems to sense your approaching release and redoubles his efforts, adding his fingers to the mix, curling them inside you as he continues to lavish attention on your clit.

"Heeseung," you cry out, your hips bucking against his face. "Please don't stop."

He doesn't. Instead, he increases his pace, his tongue and fingers working in perfect harmony until you shatter, crying out his name as waves of pleasure crash over you. He continues his ministrations, drawing out your orgasm until you're trembling and breathless.

Only then does he pull back, a triumphant grin on his face as he licks his lips. "Delicious," he declares, rising from the water.

He kisses his way up your body, over your stomach, between your breasts, along your collarbone, up your neck, until finally his lips claim yours. You can taste yourself on his tongue as the kiss deepens, passionate and hungry.

Without breaking the kiss, Heeseung positions himself at your entrance. This time, there's no accidental slip, he enters you deliberately, slowly, filling you completely. You moan into his mouth at the exquisite stretch and fullness.

He begins to move, his hips thrusting in a deep, slow rhythm that drives you wild. Each stroke is measured and controlled, hitting all the right spots. His movements are faster and harder than before, but still gentle, still considerate of your inexperience.

"You feel incredible," he groans, his voice thick with pleasure. "You're taking it well."

His hands roam your body as he moves, caressing your breasts, your hips, your thighs. His mouth finds your ear, his warm breath sending shivers down your spine as he whispers praises and encouragements.

"You're doing so well," he murmurs. "Taking me so deep. You feel amazing wrapped around me."

His words only heighten your arousal, pushing you closer to another peak. You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, matching his rhythm as best you can despite your inexperience.

After a few minutes, Heeseung pulls out gently. "Turn around," he commands softly.

You obey, positioning hands at the edge of the jacuzzi. He enters you from behind, this new angle allowing him to reach even deeper inside you. You cry out at the intensity of the sensation.

"Is this okay?" he asks, his voice strained with restraint.

"More than okay," you manage to gasp. "Don't stop."

He resumes his movements, his hands gripping your hips as he thrusts into you. The water sloshes with each movement, adding to the sensory experience. Heeseung's pace increases, his thrusts becoming more urgent as he chases his release.

His moans fill the night air, raw and uninhibited. "I'm getting close," he warns. "Where do you want me?"

"Inside me," you answer without hesitation.

Heeseung hesitates for a moment. "Are you sure? We didn't use anything."

Your mind races for a second before you respond, "I'm on the pill. It's okay."

With a groan of relief, Heeseung continues his movements, his pace becoming erratic as he approaches his climax. With one final deep thrust, he buries himself inside you, his body trembling as he finds his release.

For a moment, he stays inside you. Then he pulls out gently and helps you turn back over. He leans to slowly kiss you while stroking himself a few times before releasing again onto your stomach, warm and sticky.

You look at him in surprise.

"I couldn't," he explains, noticing your confusion. "I couldn't resist, I wanted to see you covered of me."

He reaches for a nearby towel, gently cleaning your stomach before pressing a soft kiss to your lips. "Next time," he promises, "I'll be more gentle. We'll take our time, explore everything properly."

"There's going to be a next time?" you ask with a smile.

Heeseung grins, pulling you into his arms. "Oh, there's definitely going to be a next time. And a time after that, and after that... I'm never getting enough of you."

The walk back to your room feels like floating.

Not literally, of course, your feet are very much on the ground, leaving wet footprints on the wooden floorboards of the lodge hallway, but your mind is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere purple-lit and steaming, somewhere filled with the taste of mint tea and the feeling of warm hands on your waist and the sound of Heeseung's voice murmuring instructions against your lips.

You have had sex. In a jacuzzi. Under the stars. With Lee Heeseung.

The hopeless romantic inside you does cartwheels. The realistic part of your brain is still buffering, stuck on a loading screen that says "please wait while we process what just happened." Your body is somewhere in between, pleasantly warm despite the cold air, tingling in places you hadn't known could tingle, wrapped in your borrowed coat and your towel and the lingering sensation of his skin against yours.

Heeseung walks beside you, his hand intertwined with yours. He hums softly, and when he catches you looking at him, he smiles that devastating smile and squeezes your hand.

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing. Just… processing."

"Processing what?"

"Everything." You gesture vaguely with your free hand. "The conversation. The jacuzzi. The… everything after the conversation."

"The everything after the conversation," he repeats, his smile widening. "Very descriptive."

"I'm a STEM student, not a poet."

"You wrote a three-page love letter with calligraphy. You're absolutely a poet."

"That was a one-time thing. A fluke. I've since retired from poetry."

"Tragic. The literary world has lost a great talent."

You reach your door, and Heeseung stops, turning to face you.

"Are you okay?" he asks, and his voice is gentle. "Really okay? That was… a lot. I know it was a lot. And I want to make sure you're not freaking out."

"I am absolutely freaking out," you admit. "But in a good way. I think. It's hard to tell. My brain is still catching up."

"Good freak-out or bad freak-out?"

"Good. Definitely good. Just… overwhelming." You pause, searching for the right words. "It wasn't how I imagined my first time would be. It was awkward and clumsy and it accidentally went in, and I'm pretty sure I made some very weird sounds, and-"

"It was perfect," Heeseung interrupts softly. "It was real. It was you. That's all I want."

Your heart, which has already been through approximately seventeen different emotional states in the past hour, does another complicated flip. "You're very good at saying the right thing."

"I'm not trying to say the right thing. I'm just telling you the truth." He reaches up and tucks a damp strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers lingering against your temple. "You're amazing, Y/N. And I'm not saying that because of what just happened. I'm saying it because it's been true since the moment you walked into that PC room and handed me a letter that wasn't meant for me."

"You're going to make me cry again."

"Please don't. I've seen you cry twice now, and both times it made me want to fight whoever made you sad. I can't fight myself. That's a conflict of interest."

You laugh, and it comes out a little watery. "You're ridiculous."

"I'm aware." He leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead, soft, gentle, lingering. "Goodnight, little mouse. Get some sleep."

"Goodnight, Heeseung."

He pulls back, his hand slipping from yours, and walks backward down the hallway for a few steps, still smiling at you. "Dream about me."

"I make no promises."

"I'll take that as confirmation."

He turns the corner and disappears, and you are left standing in front of your door with the lingering warmth of the best night of your life.

The moment you step into your room, Yunjin is on you like a hawk on a field mouse.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"

You close the door behind you, leaning against it with a dazed expression. Yunjin sits cross-legged on her bed, her phone in her hand, a half-eaten bag of chips on the nightstand. Her eyes are wide, her expression a mixture of curiosity and accusation.

"The jacuzzi," you say faintly.

"For three hours?"

"Was it three hours? It doesn't feel like three hours."

"Y/N." Yunjin shuts her laptop with a decisive click. "You're wearing a towel. Your hair is wet. You have that look on your face, the one that says I just did something and I don't know how to process it. Spill. Now. Every detail."

You push yourself off the door and collapse onto your bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"We had sex," you say.

"What?!"

"We had sex, don't make me repeat it please or I'm gonna die…"

Yunjin is silent for exactly two seconds. Then: "YOU GUYS FUCKED?"

"Yeah…"

"IN THE JACUZZI?"

"There aren't exactly a lot of alternative locations. The water is warm. There's purple lighting. It's very atmospheric."

Yunjin scrambles off her bed and crosses the room in three steps, grabbing your shoulders and pulling you upright. "I need details. I need all the details. How did it happen? Who initiated it? Was it good? Was he good? Did he-"

"Yunjin!" You press your hands to your burning cheeks. "I can't just… I don't know how to-"

"Start from the beginning. The jacuzzi. What happened?"

You take a deep breath, gathering your scattered thoughts, and then the words start tumbling out of you as you tell her everything.

Yunjin is quiet for a moment, processing. Then she lets out a long breath. "So your first time was in a jacuzzi, under the stars, with a hot informatics engineering student who knew you'd accidentally confessed to the wrong person and liked you anyway."

"That's… yeah. That's basically the summary."

"And you're telling me you're still worried this is some kind of disaster?"

"I'm not worried," you say slowly. "I'm just… confused. About what we are. We don't exactly have the what are we conversation. We just kind of… had sex. And now I don't know if we're dating, or if it was a one-time thing, or if he's going to wake up tomorrow and realize he made a huge mistake and-"

"Stop." Yunjin holds up a hand. "Just stop. I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to actually hear it."

"I'm listening."

"Lee Heeseung has known your secret for weeks. He's seen you at your absolute worst, hiding behind bulletin boards, choking on lettuce, spilling coffee all over yourself, crying on a bench in the middle of the night. He's seen you ramble about video games until you run out of breath, and he's seen you face-plant in the snow eight times in one afternoon. And after all of that, he still chooses to spend three hours in a jacuzzi with you and make sure your first time is special and safe and good."

Yunjin leans forward, her expression intense. "That's not the behavior of a guy who's going to wake up tomorrow and change his mind. That's the behavior of a guy who is completely, thoroughly, absolutely gone for you."

The words settle into your chest. "You really think so?"

"I know so. And I think you know so too. You're just scared to admit it because admitting it means this is real, and real is scary."

"When did you get so wise about relationships?"

"I've been watching you be a disaster for months. I've picked up a few things."

You laugh, and it comes out lighter than you expected. "So what do I do?"

"Tomorrow, you go find him. You see how he acts. And if he acts like nothing's changed except that he's even happier to see you than usual, then you'll have your answer."

"And if he acts weird?"

"Then I'll key his snowboard."

"Yunjin!"

"Kidding. Mostly." She grins and flops back onto her bed. "Now go to sleep. You've had a big night. You need rest. And honestly, I need time to process the fact that my best friend had a romantic jacuzzi rendezvous while I was sitting here eating chips and doomscrolling on TikTok."

"You could have come to the jacuzzi."

"And interrupt whatever is happening between you two? I'm a good friend, not a saint. I'd be third-wheeling so hard I'd need a snowplow to get out."

You laugh again, and for the first time in weeks, you feel light. Unburdened. Like the weight you've been carrying since the moment you walked into that PC room has finally been lifted.

"Goodnight, Yunjin."

"Goodnight, you absolute disaster of a human being. Dream about your hot engineer boy."

"He's not my-"

"Yet. He's not your boy yet. But I give it twenty-four hours."

You throw a pillow at her. She catches it and tucks it under her head with a satisfied grin.

The next morning, you wake up with a start, your heart racing. Dreams of purple light and warm water and hands on your waist and a voice murmuring good girl, you're doing so good against your lips haunt your memory.

You press your face into your pillow and scream.

It is a happy scream, mostly. A disbelieving, giddy scream. But it is also a nervous scream, because in approximately one hour, you are going to have to go downstairs and face Heeseung in the cold light of day, and you have absolutely no idea how that is going to go.

Would he be awkward? Would he be distant? Would he pretend nothing happened? Would he-

Your phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Heeseung: good morning little mouse. breakfast in 30?

You stare at the message for a solid ten seconds. Then you type back:

You: okay

Heeseung: you're very eloquent in the morning

You: i haven't had caffeine yet

Heeseung: i'll have a vanilla latte waiting for you. extra shot of vanilla. just like last time

Heeseung: hopefully with less spilling this time

You: no promises

You get dressed in a daze, pulling on approximately four layers of clothing because you still don't own proper winter gear and the borrowed coat can only do so much. Yunjin is already gone, she has left a note on the nightstand that says went to find the economics majors. don't do anything I wouldn't do. (do everything I wouldn't do), so you are alone with your thoughts as you make your way down to the lodge's dining hall.

You spot Heeseung immediately. He sits at a table near the window, two cups of coffee in front of him, his hair still slightly messy from sleep. When he sees you approaching, his entire face lights up.

"There you are," he says, standing up and pulling out a chair for you. "I was starting to think you'd bailed."

"On breakfast?"

"On me. On this. On everything." He says it lightly, but there is a flicker of vulnerability in his eyes, a tiny crack in his usual confident demeanor. "I wasn't sure if you'd want to see me this morning, or if you'd need space, or-"

"Hey." You reach out and touch his hand, just briefly. "I'm here. I want to see you."

The relief that washes over his face is so genuine, so unguarded, that your heart clenches. "Okay. Good. That's… good."

You sit down, and he slides the vanilla latte toward you. Your fingers brush as you take the cup, and the contact sends a spark of electricity up your arm. You both pretend not to notice, but the way Heeseung's ears turn slightly pink suggests he feels it too.

"So," you say, taking a sip of your latte to give yourself something to do with your hands. "Breakfast."

"Breakfast," he agrees. "Eggs. Bacon. Possibly a pastry if we're feeling adventurous."

"Very adventurous."

"I'm a risk-taker."

You try to eat normally. You really do. But every time you look up from your plate, Heeseung looks at you with that soft, wondering expression, and you forget how to chew, and you end up staring at him with a piece of toast halfway to your mouth like you've been frozen in time.

"You're doing it again," he says.

"Doing what?"

"The staring thing. The I'm trying to figure you out thing."

"I'm not trying to figure you out. I already figured you out. You're a people-pleaser who can't say no and you have a secret soft spot for romantic comedies."

"Then what are you thinking about?"

You set down your toast. "I'm thinking about last night. And what it means. And what we are now."

Heeseung's expression shifts, becoming more serious. "Do you want to have that conversation? The what are we conversation?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"I asked you first."

"That's very mature."

"I have my moments." He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. "Look, I know we did things kind of backwards. Most people start with coffee and work their way up to jacuzzis. We started with a misplaced love letter and somehow ended up in a hot tub under the stars. It's not exactly a conventional timeline."

"When has anything about us been conventional?"

"Fair point." He reaches across the table and takes your hand, his thumb tracing circles on your palm. "I don't know what we are. Labels feel… complicated. But I know what I want us to be."

"What's that?"

"Something real. Something that isn't built on misunderstandings or accidents or letters that weren't meant for me. Something that's just… us. Figuring it out together."

Your heart does that fluttering thing again. "That sounds terrifying."

"I know. But you've been scared this whole time, and you've still kept showing up. That's the bravest thing I've ever seen."

"I haven't felt brave. I've felt like a disaster."

"Disasters can be brave. The two aren't mutually exclusive." He squeezes your hand. "So what do you say? Want to be brave together?"

You look at him, really look at him, and see the boy who poured coffee on his head, the boy who held you while you cried, the boy who knew your secret and waited for you to tell him in your own time. And you feel the fear, familiar and insistent, coiling in your stomach.

But beneath the fear, there is something else. Something warmer. Something that feels a lot like hope.

"Okay," you say. "Let's be brave together."

Heeseung smiles, real and open and devastating. "Okay."

The afternoon finds you back on the beginner slope, strapped into a snowboard and wondering how you let Heeseung talk you into this again.

"You said you wanted to practice," he reminds you, tightening the bindings on your boots. "Snowboarding, I mean. Not… other things."

"My entire body is sore from yesterday. Both from the snowboarding and from the… other things."

"Then we'll take it slow. No jumps, no tricks, just a gentle run down the beginner hill." He stands up and offers you his hand. "I'll be right there the whole time."

"You said that yesterday, and I still fell eight times."

"And you got up eight times. That's the important part."

You take his hand and let him pull you to your feet. The beginner slope stretches out before you, populated by other beginners who fall over with roughly the same frequency as you.

"Okay," you say, taking a deep breath. "Okay. I can do this. I'm a capable human being. I understand physics. Snowboarding is just physics with extra steps."

"That's the spirit."

"I'm going to fall."

"Probably."

"And you're going to catch me?"

"Always."

The word hangs in the air between you, heavier than it should be. Always. Not just on the ski slope, but everywhere. Always.

"Okay," you whisper. "Let's go."

You push off.

The first few seconds are wobbly, your balance shifts, your arms flail slightly, your heart pounds in your ears. But then something clicks. Your body remembers the lessons from yesterday, the way Heeseung taught you to lean into the turns, to keep your weight centered, to trust the board beneath your feet.

You pick up speed, and instead of panicking, you lean into it. The wind rushes past your face, cold and exhilarating.

And then, miraculously, impossibly, you reach the bottom of the slope without falling.

"I DID IT!" you scream, your voice echoing across the mountain. "I DID IT! I SNOWBOARDED!"

You are laughing, giddy with adrenaline and triumph, and you turn around to find Heeseung, to share this moment with him, to see the proud expression on his face.

But Heeseung isn't at the bottom of the slope.

He is still at the top.

And he is shouting something.

"Y/N! Y/N L/N!"

The entire slope seems to go quiet. Other skiers and snowboarders slow down, turning to look at the boy standing at the top of the beginner hill, his hands cupped around his mouth, his voice carrying across the snow with startling clarity.

"I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY!"

Your heart stops. Then starts again, twice as fast.

"I'VE BEEN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SAY THIS FOR WEEKS!" Heeseung shouts. "AND I REALIZED THAT THE BEST WAY TO TELL YOU IS THE SAME WAY YOU TOLD ME, WITH WORDS THAT I CAN'T TAKE BACK!"

People are staring. Everyone is staring.

"LEE HEESEUNG, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" you shout back, your voice cracking.

"I'M CONFESSING!" he yells. "PROPERLY! IN FRONT OF EVERYONE! BECAUSE YOU DESERVE A CONFESSION THAT'S JUST FOR YOU! YOU DESERVE THE LOVE YOU'VE DREAMED ABOUT!"

"THE FIRST LETTER WASN'T FOR ME!" Heeseung continues, his voice ringing across the snow. "BUT I WANT TO WRITE YOU ONE! I WANT TO WRITE YOU A HUNDRED LETTERS! I WANT TO LEARN YOUR FAVORITE HIGHLIGHTER COLORS AND THE NAMES OF ALL YOUR PLANTS AND THE EXACT WAY YOU LIKE YOUR VANILLA LATTES!"

Someone in the crowd lets out a wolf whistle. Someone else starts recording on their phone. You can't move, can't speak, can't do anything except stand at the bottom of the slope and stare up at the boy who shouts his heart out for everyone to hear.

"YOU'RE A DISASTER!" Heeseung yells, and his voice is full of joy, full of affection, full of something that looks a lot like love. "YOU'RE A HOPELESS ROMANTIC WHO'S TOO SCARED TO LIVE THE ROMANCE YOU DREAM ABOUT! YOU HIDE BEHIND BULLETIN BOARDS AND YOU CHOKE ON LETTUCE AND YOU SPILL COFFEE ON YOURSELF AND YOU MAKE GRAPHS ABOUT VIDEO GAME BALANCE AND YOU CRIED OVER A BABY PENGUIN IN A NATURE DOCUMENTARY!"

"This is the worst confession I've ever heard!" you shout back, but you are laughing, tears streaming down your face, your heart so full it feels like it might burst.

"I'M NOT FINISHED!" Heeseung takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, his voice is softer, still loud enough to carry, but more intimate, more vulnerable. "YOU'RE A DISASTER, Y/N L/N! AND I'M A DISASTER TOO! I'M A PEOPLE-PLEASER WHO CAN'T SAY NO, I HAVE A REPUTATION THAT DOESN'T REFLECT WHO I ACTUALLY AM, AND I POURED COFFEE ON MY HEAD BECAUSE I COULDN'T STAND TO SEE YOU CRY ALONE!"

He starts walking down the slope toward you, his snowboard forgotten at the top, his boots crunching through the snow.

"AND I THINK, NO, I KNOW THAT I'VE BEEN FALLING FOR YOU SINCE THE MOMENT YOU WALKED INTO THAT PC ROOM AND LOOKED AT ME LIKE I WAS THE WORST THING THAT HAD EVER HAPPENED TO YOU!"

He gets closer now, close enough that you can see the nervousness in his eyes, the vulnerability beneath the bravado, the way his hands shake slightly despite his confident posture.

"SO I'M ASKING YOU, IN FRONT OF ALL THESE PEOPLE, ON THIS VERY EMBARRASSING SKI SLOPE, IF YOU'LL BE MY DISASTER. OFFICIALLY. NO MORE MISUNDERSTANDINGS. NO MORE LETTERS MEANT FOR OTHER PEOPLE. JUST US."

He stops a few feet away from you, his breath fogging in the cold air, his dark eyes fixed on your face.

"WHAT DO YOU SAY, LITTLE MOUSE?"

The silence that follows is deafening. Every person on the slope watches you, waiting for your answer.

And you, you, the hopeless romantic who has always been too scared to live the romance you dream about, you take a deep breath, throw your arms out wide, and shout at the top of your lungs:

"I LIKE YOU TOO, YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT! I'VE LIKED YOU FOR WEEKS AND I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO SAY IT AND YOU JUST SHOUTED IT FROM A MOUNTAINTOP LIKE A CHARACTER IN A KDRAMA!"

Heeseung's face breaks into the biggest smile you have ever seen. "IS THAT A YES?"

"THAT'S A YES! THAT'S A THOUSAND TIMES YES! NOW COME HERE AND KISS ME BEFORE I PASS OUT FROM THE EMBARRASSMENT OF HAVING THIS CONVERSATION IN FRONT OF LITERALLY EVERYONE!"

He doesn't need to be told twice. He crosses the distance between you in three long strides, catches your face in his hands, and kisses you, deep and thorough and joyful, right there at the bottom of the beginner slope, with the snow sparkling around you and the crowd erupting into cheers and someone's phone recording what will undoubtedly become the most-watched video on the university's social media for the next month.

When he pulls back, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath warm against your lips, he grins like he has just won the lottery.

"You shouted your feelings from a mountaintop," he murmurs. "You, the girl who was too scared to even correct a misunderstanding, just shouted your feelings from a mountaintop."

"You started it."

"I did. And you finished it." He kisses the tip of your nose. "I'm so proud of you."

You have never been more embarrassed in your entire life, and you have never been happier.

"We're still disasters," you say.

"Absolutely. But now we're disasters who are dating."

"Are we dating? Is that what this is?"

"This is me, shouting from a mountaintop that I want to be with you. I'm pretty sure that counts as dating." He pauses, his expression shifting to something more serious. "Unless you don't want-"

"I want." You grab the front of his jacket and pull him closer. "I want everything. The letters and the coffee disasters and the matching shirts and the snowboarding lessons and the jacuzzi conversations and the ridiculous mountaintop confessions. I want all of it."

Heeseung kisses you again, and this time it is softer, sweeter, full of promise.

"You know what this means," he says against your lips.

"What?"

"We're going to have to tell Jungwon."

You groan. "Can we wait until after the trip? I need at least twenty-four hours to recover from this before I have another emotionally complicated conversation."

"Deal." He pulls back, taking your hand in his. "Come on. Let's get out of here before someone asks us for an interview."

And hand in hand, laughing like fools, you run away from the crowd and the chaos.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

You’re staring at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror, and the girl staring back looks like she’s about to either throw up or ascend to another dimension. Maybe both. In that order.

The letter is clutched so tightly in your hand that the pale lavender envelope is starting to crease, and you force yourself to loosen your grip before you ruin the one thing you’ve spent three weeks perfecting. Three weeks. That’s twenty-one days of drafting, crossing out, rewriting, Googling “how to write a love letter without sounding like a desperate loser,” and then rewriting again. You’ve used up an entire pack of stationery. You’ve watched so many calligraphy tutorials that the YouTube algorithm thinks you’re training to become a medieval scribe. All for this one moment. This one letter. This one massive, terrifying, possibly life-ruining leap of faith.

You are a hopeless romantic. Hopeless being the operative word.

It’s not that you don’t believe in love. You do. Desperately, overwhelmingly, with every fiber of your first-year STEM student soul. You believe in meet-cutes and slow burns and the exact moment when two people look at each other and the entire world goes soft around the edges. You’ve read about it a hundred times. You’ve watched it play out on every screen you own. You’ve composed entire daydreams about it during particularly boring chemistry lectures. Love is your favorite subject, the one you’ve studied with more dedication than calculus or physics combined. There’s just one tiny, inconvenient, absolutely infuriating problem.

You’re terrified of it.

Not the idea of it. The idea is lovely. The idea is safe. The idea lives in your head where everything unfolds exactly the way you want it to, where you always say the right thing, where you never trip over your own feet or laugh too loud at the wrong moment or stand frozen in a doorway like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. But real love? The kind that requires vulnerability and eye contact and actually speaking words out loud with your mouth? That kind of love makes your palms sweat and your heart race in a decidedly unromantic, fight-or-flight kind of way. You are, and this is the most embarrassing part, a coward. A romantic coward. You dream of grand gestures but can barely manage a coherent sentence when an attractive person so much as glances in your direction.

Which brings you back to the letter.

The letter is your loophole. Your workaround. Your way of confessing your feelings without actually having to say them, because writing them down felt manageable in a way that speaking never has. You can be eloquent on paper. On paper, you can say things like “the first time I saw your smile, it felt like someone had turned on all the lights in a room I didn’t even realize was dark” without immediately wanting to crawl into the nearest hole and live out the rest of your days an hermit. On paper, you’re brave. On paper, you’re the kind of person who goes after what she wants.

In reality, you’ve been hiding in this bathroom for fifteen minutes, and your hands are shaking so badly that a passing person would think you are having an epileptic seizure.

“Okay,” you whisper to your reflection. “Okay. You can do this. You are a woman on a mission. You are a warrior. You are-”

A toilet flushes in one of the stalls behind you, and you nearly launch yourself through the ceiling.

A girl you vaguely recognize from your introductory programming class emerges, gives you an odd look as she washes her hands, and leaves without saying anything. You wait until the door swings shut, then press your forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and contemplate every life choice that has led you to this moment.

His name is Jungwon.

Yang Jungwon. Second year. Undeclared major but leaning toward something in the humanities, which you know because you may have done a bit of light, respectful, completely non-creepy research. He has a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and a laugh that sounds like sunshine if sunshine could make noise, and he holds doors open for people even when they’re still like ten feet away, which creates that awkward situation where the person has to speed-walk to not seem rude, but he never seems to mind. You first noticed him at the campus library during midterms when he quietly slid a pack of gummy bears across the table toward you at 2 AM, muttering something about glucose being good for brain function, and then went back to his book like he hadn’t just fundamentally altered the trajectory of your entire emotional existence.

That was four months ago. You’ve been pining ever since. Pining, yearning, longing, you’ve run through the entire lexicon of unrequited affection, and you’re exhausted. Today, you’ve decided, is the day it ends. One way or another.

You push yourself off the mirror, square your shoulders, and march out of the bathroom with the determination of someone going to war. The envelope is slightly damp from your grip, but it’s still intact, and the words inside are still true, and somewhere on this campus, Yang Jungwon is about to receive the most heartfelt confession letter ever written by a first-year student who has consumed an unhealthy amount of romance media.

Now you just have to find him.

—————

The hallway is bustling with students, the usual midday chaos of people rushing to classes or huddling in groups to complain about assignments. You scan the crowd, looking for a familiar face that might point you in the right direction, and your eyes land on a guy leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone with the dead-eyed expression of someone who has just finished a three-hour lab.

“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out about an octave higher than normal. You clear your throat. “Sorry, um, do you know where I can find Yang Jungwon? Second year?”

The guy looks up, blinks slowly, deciding whether or not to acknowledge your presence, and then shrugs. “PC room, I think. Saw him heading there like twenty minutes ago.”

The PC room. Of course. It’s in the engineering and informatics building, a place you’ve rarely ever been to. But you know where it is, roughly, and you thank the guy with what you hope is a normal smile and not the rictus grin of someone rushing toward emotional catastrophe.

The walk across campus takes approximately seven minutes, and you spend every single one of them rehearsing what you’re going to say. You’ve already written the letter, so technically you don’t have to say anything, you can just hand it over and flee but you want to say something. Something cool. Something memorable.

“Hey, Jungwon, this is for you.” Simple. Direct. Good.

“I wrote you something. No pressure, just read it when you have time.” Casual. Low-stakes. Excellent.

“Hi, I’ve been emotionally compromised by your existence for several months, please accept this paper rectangle of feelings.” Okay, maybe not that one.

The engineering building looms in front of you before you’re ready. You push through the main doors and immediately feel out of place. The students here move with a different energy, less frantic, more focused, the kind of people who probably know what a server is and have opinions about programming languages you’ve never heard of.

You follow the signs toward the PC room, your footsteps echoing in the corridor, and with every step, your heart climbs higher up your throat. This is it. This is the moment. You’re going to walk in there, find Jungwon, hand him the letter, and then whatever happens happens. At least you’ll have tried. At least you’ll have been brave, even if it’s only for thirty seconds.

The door to the PC room is slightly ajar, and you can hear voices inside, multiple voices, which gives you pause. You assumed he’d be alone. Or with maybe one other person.

You hesitate. Your hand hovers over the door handle. Every instinct is screaming at you to turn around, go back to your dorm, and spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. And maybe you would, if not for the small, stubborn voice in the back of your mind that says: You’ve already come this far. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to be the kind of person who actually does the thing instead of just dreaming about it?

Yes. Yes, you do.

You squeeze your eyes shut, take a breath so deep it makes you lightheaded, and push the door open with more force than strictly necessary. It slams against the wall with a bang that makes approximately twelve heads swivel in your direction, and for one horrifying moment, you are the center of attention in a room full of strangers.

But you don’t see any of them. You only see the figure sitting at the computer closest to the door, his back half-turned to you, hair falling over his forehead, the exact silhouette you’ve been looking for. Or at least, the exact silhouette you think you’ve been looking for.

You don’t stop to confirm. You don’t let yourself think. You just march forward, thrust the letter out in front of you like a shield, and launch into the speech you’ve been rehearsing for three weeks.

“This is for you. I’m sorry if this is weird or sudden but I’ve liked you for a really long time and I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. You don’t have to respond right away. You don’t have to respond ever, actually. I just wanted you to know that someone out there thinks you’re wonderful and I wrote it all down because I’m better at writing than talking and honestly I might pass out if I keep standing here so please just take this and I’ll go-”

You finally look up.

And the face staring back at you is absolutely, categorically, one hundred percent not Jungwon.

The boy in front of you is taller than Jungwon. Broader shoulders. Sharper jawline. Different eyes, darker, deeper, currently widened in a mixture of surprise and something you can’t quite read. His lips are parted slightly, as if he was about to say something before you launched into your emotional word-vomit, and he’s holding a half-eaten protein bar that’s now frozen halfway to his mouth.

The room has gone completely, utterly silent.

You can feel the stares of every single person boring into the back of your head. Someone coughs. Someone else whispers something that sounds suspiciously like “did she just-” before being shushed by their neighbor.

And then the boy, the very handsome, very wrong boy, sets down his protein bar, takes the letter gently from your trembling hand, and says in a voice that’s low and smooth and completely unfamiliar: “Wow. Okay. What’s your name?”

This is the worst moment of your entire life. You are going to die right here, in this PC room, surrounded by computer monitors and half-empty energy drink cans and a dozen witnesses who will spread this story to every corner of the university within the next three hours. Your obituary will read: here lies Y/N, the loser who can’t even recognize her ultimate crush.

“Y/N,” you croak, because your mouth is apparently still functioning even though every other part of you has shut down. “L/N Y/N. First year. STEM.”

You don’t know why you said STEM. He didn’t ask for your department. You’re offering information nobody requested. This is a disaster.

But the boy, he’s looking at you with an expression you can’t decipher, his head tilted slightly to the side like you’re a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. He’s wearing a dark hoodie with the informatics department logo on it, and there’s a pair of expensive-looking headphones draped around his neck, and his hair is slightly mussed in a way that suggests he’s been running his fingers through it while concentrating. He’s absurdly good-looking, the kind of good-looking that makes you simultaneously want to stare and look away, and you’re only now noticing the way several girls in the room have been watching him since you entered, not just because of your blunder, but because they’ve been watching him.

“I’m Heeseung,” he says, and there’s a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”

Lee Heeseung. The name registers somewhere in the back of your panic-addled brain. It’s familiar in the way that campus gossip is familiar, attached to words like hot and player and don’t get your hopes up because he’ll charm you and then move on. You’ve heard girls in your dorm talking about him in hushed, giggling tones, trading stories about brief encounters and misinterpreted invitations. And you, in your infinite wisdom, have just handed a love letter meant for someone else directly into his notorious hands.

You have to fix this. You have to tell him it was a mistake. You have to-

“I’m flattered,” Heeseung says, and his smile widens slightly, not quite a smirk but definitely approaching smirk territory. “Really. This is... I mean, no one’s ever confessed to me with an actual letter before. It’s kind of old school.” He turns the envelope over in his hands, examining it with what seems like genuine curiosity. “The handwriting is really pretty. Did you do the calligraphy yourself?”

“Yes,” you say, because you are physically incapable of lying when put on the spot, and also because your brain has apparently decided that the best course of action is to just answer whatever questions he asks like this is a normal conversation and not the emotional equivalent of a tornado.

“Impressive.” He looks at you, really looks at you, and something shifts in his expression. The teasing edge softens just a fraction. “A confession is a lot, though. I mean, I’m honored, but we don’t even know each other.”

This is your opening. This is the moment where you say “actually, that’s because this letter wasn’t meant for you, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, I’m so sorry, please forget this ever happened.” The words are right there, lined up on your tongue, ready to go.

But the room is still watching. A dozen pairs of eyes. The whispers have stopped, but the staring hasn’t, and you can feel every single gaze like a physical weight pressing down on you. If you correct him now, in front of everyone, you’ll have to explain. You’ll have to admit that you walked into a crowded room and confessed to the wrong person like an absolute buffoon. You’ll become a campus legend for all the wrong reasons: the girl who was too stupid to even identify her own crush. The story will follow you for the rest of your university career. You’ll never live it down.

But if you just... let him believe it... if you just nod and agree and leave as quickly as possible... you can fix this later. Privately. Without an audience. You can find him tomorrow, or send him a message, or do literally anything other than humiliate yourself further in front of all these people.

Your mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

“I know,” you hear yourself say. “It’s a lot. I know.”

Heeseung nods thoughtfully, like you’ve said something profound. “But I’m not against it. Starting slow, I mean. If you want.”

What.

“What,” you say, but it comes out more like a statement than a question.

“I’m okay with starting slow,” he repeats, and now the smile is definitely back, a little crooked, a little curious. “You’re cute. And clearly brave. I like that. So if you want to, I don’t know, get coffee sometime and see where this goes... I’m open to it.”

Someone in the room lets out a low whistle. Someone else says “Heeseung, are you serious right now?” in a tone of utter disbelief. But Heeseung doesn’t look away from you. He’s waiting for your answer, his gaze steady and warm, and you are standing in the epicenter of a complete and total catastrophe with absolutely no idea how to get out.

Say no. Say it was a mistake. Say the truth.

“Okay,” you whisper.

Okay?! Okay?!

“Okay,” he echoes, and the smile breaks fully across his face, transforming him from handsome to devastating. “Good. I’ll find you. Y/N, first year, STEM, right?”

You nod mutely.

“Cool.” He tucks your letter carefully into the pocket of his hoodie, like it’s something precious, like he’s planning to read it later, and the gesture makes your stomach twist with guilt so intense you think you might actually be sick. “I’ll see you around, Y/N.”

You don’t remember leaving the room. You don’t remember the walk back across campus or the elevator ride to your floor or the moment you collapsed face-first onto your dorm bed. All you know is that one moment you were standing in the PC room, and the next you are here, staring at the ceiling, replaying every single agonizing second on an endless loop.

You confessed to the wrong person.

You confessed to the wrong person.

And for some reason that you absolutely cannot comprehend, he said yes.

Across campus, in a PC room that has finally returned to its normal hum of activity, Lee Heeseung pulls a slightly crumpled lavender envelope out of his hoodie pocket and stares at it for a long moment.

“Dude,” says his friend Jay from the next computer over, not bothering to hide his grin. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Heeseung says honestly. And he doesn’t. He’s used to attention, he knows how to handle it, how to smile and nod and gently redirect without hurting anyone’s feelings. It’s a skill he’s developed over the years, the only way he knows to deal with the unfortunate side effect of his people-pleasing tendencies. He’s nice to someone, he helps them with an assignment, he holds a door open or offers a pen, and suddenly they’re looking at him with stars in their eyes, and he doesn’t know how to tell them that he was just trying to be polite without sounding like an arrogant jerk. So he lets them down easy, or he avoids the situation entirely, and his reputation grows in ways that don’t reflect the truth at all.

But this, this is new. A letter. An actual, physical, handwritten letter, with swooping calligraphy and a lavender envelope and a girl who looked so terrified that he thought she might actually pass out right there on the linoleum floor.

She looked at him like he was a natural disaster. Like she was watching a building collapse in slow motion and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

And then she said okay anyway.

“She’s interesting,” Heeseung murmurs, more to himself than to Jay, and carefully opens the envelope.

“Interesting how?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s too busy reading, his eyes moving slowly across the carefully penned words, the ink slightly smudged in places where the writer’s hand might have trembled. It’s beautiful. It’s earnest. It’s the kind of letter that someone writes when they mean every single word, when they’ve poured their entire heart onto the page without holding anything back.

He’s never received anything like it before.

And he wants to know more about the girl who wrote it, the girl who burst into his afternoon like a hurricane of nerves and feelings.

“Jay,” he says, still staring at the letter, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “I think something interesting just walked into my life.”

He doesn’t notice the way his friend shakes his head and mutters something about “here we go again.”

He’s too busy wondering when he’ll see Y/N next.

—————

The following forty-eight hours of your life can be accurately described as a masterclass in strategic avoidance and tactical regret.

You skip two classes. Not on purpose, exactly, you just can’t bring yourself to leave your dorm room when every shadow in the hallway might be Lee Heeseung coming to collect on that coffee date you apparently agreed to in a moment of temporary insanity. You survive on instant noodles and the protein bars your friend left on her desk with a sticky note that said “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY,” which this absolutely qualifies as. You watch three entire seasons of Bridgerton without retaining a single moment because your brain is too busy replaying the PC room incident on a continuous, merciless loop.

“I’m Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”

“I’m okay with starting slow.”

“You’re cute.”

You bury your face in your pillow and scream, but it comes out muffled and pathetic, like a small animal giving up on life.

By day three, you’ve developed a system. You only leave your room during off-peak hours, skittering through campus, your head on a constant swivel. You’ve memorized the locations of every vending machine in buildings Heeseung is unlikely to frequent. You’ve started taking the long way to your remaining classes, cutting through the art department and the greenhouse and once, memorably, a service corridor that smelled strongly of bleach and soap. You’ve become a ghost. A phantom. A creature of the shadows who survives on granola bars and instant noddles.

But the problem with running away from your problems is that your problems don’t actually go anywhere. They just wait. And think about you. And eventually, when you least expect it, they catch up.

It happens on a Thursday.

You’re crouched behind a potted plant near the science building, scanning the courtyard for any sign of tall, attractive informatics students, when your phone buzzes with a text from your best friend, Yunjin.

Yunjin: heard you’ve been living like a sewer rat. want me to bring you real food?

You: can’t. i’m in the middle of a crisis

Yunjin: You’re executing what we talked about yet?

You: it’s in process

Yunjin: at the end of the day, you will have to tell him

You stare at the message for a long moment. It’s such a simple solution. So elegant. So reasonable. And yet, every time you imagine yourself walking up to Heeseung and saying “actually, I meant to give that letter to someone else,” your entire body physically recoils like you’ve touched a hot stove. The humiliation would be astronomical. The look on his face, surprise, then confusion, then that horrible moment of realization that he was never supposed to be the recipient would haunt you for the rest of your natural life. And you’d still have to explain the Jungwon part. And Jungwon would find out. And then you’d be the weird girl who couldn’t even confess to the right person, and Heeseung would be the guy who got accidentally confessed to, and everyone would laugh about it for weeks, and-

Your phone buzzes again.

Yunjin: i can hear you overthinking from across campus. just rip off the bandaid. what’s the worst that could happen

You type back a single message: he could tell everyone and i’d have to transfer schools and change my name and become a farmer in New Zeland

Yunjin: dramatic. but valid. good luck with your plant hiding

You shove your phone back into your pocket and peek around the potted plant again. The courtyard is clear. This is your window. You take a deep breath, steel your nerves, and scuttle out from behind the foliage.

The plan for today is simple: find Heeseung, explain the misunderstanding, and disappear forever. You’ve spent the entire morning psyching yourself up for this. You’ve practiced the speech in the mirror seventeen times. You’ve even written a script on your phone that you can refer to in case of emergency. It’s thorough, it’s clear, it leaves absolutely no room for misinterpretation, and it ends with a sincere apology and a polite request that you both pretend this never happened. It’s perfect. It’s foolproof. All you have to do is locate the target.

Easier said than done. You’ve been looking for him since yesterday, not to talk to, but to observe from a safe distance so you could plan your approach and the universe, in its infinite comedic wisdom, has made him completely unfindable. It’s like he vanished off the face of the earth the moment you actually wanted to see him. Three days ago, you couldn’t walk three feet without catching a glimpse of him, but now? Now he’s a ghost. A myth. A concept rather than a physical entity.

You’re going to have to ask for help.

This is, objectively, a terrible idea. Asking for help means talking to people, and talking to people about Heeseung means potentially revealing that you’re looking for him, which means potentially revealing why you’re looking for him, which means the whole campus could know about the letter situation by lunchtime. But you’re running out of options, and you’re running out of granola bars, and you can’t live behind potted plants forever.

You find your informant near the engineering building, a girl with neon green headphones and a laptop covered in stickers, sitting on a bench and typing furiously at something that looks like code. She seems approachable. She seems like she won’t ask too many questions. You approach with what you hope is casual confidence and not the desperate energy of someone who has been living on protein bars.

“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out surprisingly normal. Points for you. “Do you know where I can find Lee Heeseung? Third year, informatics?”

The girl looks up, her eyes flicking over you with mild curiosity. She doesn’t ask why you’re looking for him, which makes you want to hug her. “Heeseung? Yeah, I think I saw him heading to the quad about ten minutes ago. Something about meeting up with some people before his next class.”

The quad. Of course. The most open, public, exposed location on the entire campus. The place where literally everyone congregates. The absolute last place you want to have a conversation about accidental love confessions.

“Great,” you say, and your voice is definitely an octave higher now. “Great. Thank you. Thanks. So much.”

The girl gives you a weird look, shrugs, and goes back to her coding.

You’re already moving, your feet carrying you toward the quad before your brain can catch up and talk you out of it. This is fine. This is progress. You’ll find him, you’ll pull him aside, you’ll give him the speech, and then you’ll be free. You’ll be a normal person again. You’ll be able to walk through campus without checking every corner for a tall informatics student who thinks you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date.

The quad is bustling when you arrive, clusters of students sprawled across the grass and gathered around the stone benches near the fountain. The afternoon sun is bright and warm, the kind of weather that makes everyone want to be outside, which is lovely and picturesque and deeply inconvenient for your purposes. You squint against the glare, scanning the crowd for a familiar dark-haired figure.

No Heeseung.

You circle the perimeter, weaving between groups of friends and dodging a frisbee that comes sailing dangerously close to your head. You check near the fountain, near the big oak tree, near the cluster of food trucks that’s set up along the east edge. Still no Heeseung. Your informant said ten minutes ago, he should be here. Unless he already left. Unless you missed him. Unless this is a sign from the universe that you should give up and commit to the farmer life plan after all.

You’re so focused on your search that you don’t notice someone approaching until a shadow falls across your path, and a voice, warm, familiar, the exact voice you’ve been daydreaming about for four months, says:

“Y/N? Hey, it is you!”

You look up.

Yang Jungwon is standing right in front of you, smiling like the sun just came out from behind a cloud, and every single coherent thought in your brain immediately evaporates.

He’s wearing a soft-looking cream sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his dark hair is slightly windswept, and there’s a tiny mole near his chin that you’ve never noticed before but is now seared into your memory forever. He’s holding a book, something with a cracked spine and a title in a language you don’t recognize and he’s looking at you with genuine, undiluted pleasure, like running into you is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.

“It’s me,” you say, because you are a conversational genius. “I mean. Yes. Hi. Hello.”

Smooth. Flawless execution. Ten out of ten.

Jungwon doesn’t seem to notice your complete lack of verbal grace. His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes in exactly the way you’ve catalogued in your mental Jungwon database. “I thought I recognized you. You’re in my philosophy elective, right? Front row, near the window?”

He knows where you sit. He knows where you sit. This is both the best and worst information you’ve ever received, because on one hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, but on the other hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, and now you have to be a normal human being and not the disaster you currently are.

“Front row near the window,” you confirm, nodding a little too vigorously. “That’s me. I like the natural light. For... note-taking purposes.”

“Makes sense.” He shifts his weight, tucking the book under his arm. “You take really detailed notes, by the way. I sat behind you once, and I was honestly impressed. Your color-coding system is no joke.”

Jungwon has looked at your notes. Jungwon has been impressed by your notes. Your brain is short-circuiting at approximately the speed of light, and you have to physically resist the urge to fist-pump in the middle of the quad.

“Thank you,” you manage. “I have a lot of highlighters. Maybe too many. Is there such a thing as too many highlighters? I don’t think so, but I’ve been told my stationery collection is concerning.”

Oh no. Why are you talking about stationery? You need to say something charming. Something witty. Something that will make him see you as more than the girl with the aggressive color-coding system.

“I don’t think it’s concerning,” Jungwon says, and there’s a teasing lilt to his voice that makes your knees go weak. “Passionate, maybe. Dedicated. I respect it.”

“Passionate and dedicated,” you repeat faintly. “That’s... yeah. That’s my brand.”

He laughs, and it’s exactly like you remember, bright and warm, the kind of laugh that makes you want to do whatever you just did again and again just to hear it on repeat. “I like it. Passion is underrated.” He tilts his head, studying you with an expression you can’t quite read. “So what brings you to the quad? You usually eat lunch in the science building courtyard, don’t you?”

Your heart stutters. He knows where you eat lunch. He’s observed your habits. This is either a sign of mutual interest or you’ve accidentally become the subject of a sociological case study, and at this point you’re willing to accept either outcome.

“I’m, um, looking for someone,” you say, and the confession letter debacle comes crashing back into your consciousness like a wrecking ball through a glass window. Right. You’re supposed to be finding Heeseung. You’re supposed to be fixing the misunderstanding. That’s why you’re here. Not to bask in the radiant warmth of Jungwon’s attention like a lizard on a sunny rock.

“Anyone I know?” Jungwon asks, and there’s something in his tone, curiosity, maybe.

“Probably not,” you say quickly. “Just a... just a person. A random person. Not important.”

Jungwon raises an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced, but before he can press further, a new voice cuts through the afternoon air like a knife through butter.

“There you are.”

You freeze. Your blood turns to ice. Every cell in your body screams in unison: run.

Lee Heeseung is walking toward you across the quad, his headphones hanging around his neck and his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jacket. He looks exactly as devastatingly attractive as he did three days ago, which is deeply unfair. His expression is a mixture of curiosity and amusement, and when his eyes meet yours, that slight smile, the one that’s not quite a smirk but definitely is a smirk’s second cousin, curves across his lips.

“I heard you’ve been looking for me,” he says, coming to a stop beside Jungwon like this is the most natural gathering in the world. “You know, if you wanted to see me, you could have just messaged. I would have given you my number at the PC room.”

Jungwon looks between you and Heeseung with visible confusion, his earlier smile fading into something more guarded. “Wait. You two know each other?”

This is it. This is the moment the universe has been building toward. Every terrible decision, every act of cowardice, every misguided attempt to avoid embarrassment, it’s all led here, to this exact spot on the quad, with the wrong guy standing next to the right guy and your entire romantic future hanging in the balance.

“I wouldn’t say know,” you begin, but Heeseung is already talking over you, apparently immune to the desperate telepathic signals you’re trying to beam directly into his brain.

“She confessed to me two days ago,” Heeseung says, and his tone is so casual, so conversational, like he’s discussing the weather or what he had for lunch. “Walked right into the PC room, handed me a letter, told me she’d liked me for a long time. It was very romantic. Very old-school. I was impressed.”

Silence. Jungwon stares at Heeseung. Then at you. Then back at Heeseung.

“She... confessed to you,” Jungwon repeats slowly, and his voice has gone flat in a way that makes your heart splinter into approximately seven thousand pieces.

“Full confession,” Heeseung confirms, still smiling. “I’m thinking we’ll start with coffee. Keep it simple, you know? She’s shy. I don’t want to overwhelm her.”

This is a nightmare. This is a waking, breathing, actively-unfolding nightmare, and you are trapped in it like a fly in amber, unable to move or speak or do anything except watch as every possible future with Jungwon crumbles to dust before your eyes.

Because here’s the thing you realize in that horrible, crystal-clear moment: you can’t correct Heeseung now. Not in front of Jungwon. Not when Jungwon has just been told, in no uncertain terms, that you confessed to someone else. If you explain the truth, that the letter was actually meant for Jungwon, that the whole thing was a catastrophic mistake, then what? Jungwon would know you’d been planning to confess to him, but he’d also know that you somehow managed to mess it up so spectacularly that you confessed to his friend instead. You’d look incompetent at best and completely unhinged at worst. And Heeseung would be humiliated, and Jungwon would be awkward, and you’d be the epicenter of a social catastrophe so immense that all three of you would have to avoid each other for the rest of your academic careers.

You are trapped. Completely, utterly, irreversibly trapped.

“Interesting,” Jungwon says, and the word is so neutral that it cuts deeper than any insult ever could. “I didn’t realize you two ran in the same circles.”

“We don’t,” you croak. “We really, really don’t.”

“We’re just getting started,” Heeseung says cheerfully, and he has the audacity to wink at you. Like this is some kind of adorable inside joke instead of the emotional apocalypse it actually is.

You have to get out of here. You have to escape before the sob building in your chest forces its way out and makes everything infinitely worse. You can feel it pressing against your ribs, hot and insistent, and if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to burst into tears in the middle of the quad in front of both of them, and then the disaster will be complete.

“I have to go,” you blurt out, and you’re already backing away, your feet moving before your brain can issue any kind of warning. “I have… a thing. A class. A lab. A lab class. It’s very important. I can’t miss it. I have to go.”

Heeseung’s brow furrows slightly. “Wait, I thought you wanted to talk to-”

“Nope! No talking! We’re good! Everything’s fine! Bye!”

You spin around and power-walk toward the nearest exit, which happens to be in the direction of the fountain, which you only realize when your foot catches on the low stone ledge and you go sprawling forward with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.

Your knee hits the ground. Your dignity hits the ground approximately three feet to the left. Several people turn to look.

“Y/N!” That’s Jungwon’s voice, concerned and moving closer, and you absolutely cannot handle that right now.

“I’m fine!” you shriek, scrambling to your feet with adrenaline-fueled desperation. “Totally fine! Happens all the time! I’m very clumsy! It’s part of my charm!”

You don’t look back. You can’t look back. If you look back, you’ll see Jungwon’s worried expression and Heeseung’s confused one, and you’ll have to confront the full magnitude of what just happened, and your fragile emotional state simply cannot withstand that kind of pressure. So you run. Not jog, not power-walk…run. Across the quad, past the food trucks, through a gap between two buildings, and out onto the main campus pathway like the hounds of hell are snapping at your heels.

You don’t stop until you reach the arts building, and you don’t start breathing normally until you’ve locked yourself in a practice room on the third floor, surrounded by soundproof walls and a piano that’s seen better days. You slide down against the door, pull your knees up to your chest, and let out a sound that’s halfway between a groan and a wail.

Everything is ruined. Everything. You had one chance, one single, solitary chance to fix the misunderstanding and salvage your dignity and maybe, just maybe, preserve the possibility of something with Jungwon somewhere down the line. And instead, you let your hopeless romantic heart get distracted by a five-minute conversation about philosophy notes and highlighters, and now you’re the girl who confessed to Lee Heeseung, and Jungwon thinks you’re interested in someone else, and there is no conceivable way to untangle this mess without making everything exponentially worse.

You’re going to have to transfer schools. You’re going to have to move to another country. You’re going to have to fake your own death and start a new identity as a goat farmer in New Zeland.

The door handle jiggles behind you. “Occupied!” you yell, your voice cracking.

“Y/N? Is that you?”

Your best friend Yunjin’s voice filters through the door, muffled but unmistakable, and the sound of it is enough to crack the dam you’ve been desperately trying to hold together. You scramble to your feet, fumble with the lock, and yank the door open to reveal Yunjin standing in the hallway with a cup of bubble tea in each hand and an expression of profound concern on her face.

“I saw you running,” she says, her eyes scanning your disheveled appearance. “Like, truly running. I’ve never seen you run before. You once told me running was for people who don’t appreciate the journey.”

“Yunjin,” you crumble, and your voice is so pitiful that she immediately sets down both drinks and pulls you into a hug.

“Okay,” she says, steering you back into the practice room and closing the door behind her. “Okay. Sit down. Tell me everything. What happened? Did you talk to Heeseung? Did you fix it?”

You laugh, but it comes out wrong, high and wobbly, on the edge of hysteria. “Fix it? Fix it? Yunjin, I made it so much worse. I made it so much worse that I think I actually created new dimensions of worse. Scientists are going to have to invent new words to describe how badly I messed this up.”

“That’s... improbable,” Yunjin says carefully. “But I’m listening.”

She settles onto the piano bench, and you collapse onto the floor in front of her, crossing your legs and burying your face in your hands. The story spills out of you in a torrent, the quad, the search for Heeseung, the unexpected appearance of Jungwon, the conversation that made your heart soar, and then the moment Heeseung appeared like a harbinger of doom and casually announced your confession to the one person you never wanted to know about it.

“And then I fell,” you finish miserably. “In front of both of them. And I ran away. And now Jungwon thinks I like Heeseung, and Heeseung thinks I like Heeseung, and I can’t correct either of them without making everything even weirder, and my life is a romantic comedy written by a petty incel.”

Yunjin is quiet for a moment. Then she lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay. That’s... that’s a lot.”

“I know.”

“And you’re telling me you couldn’t just say, hey Heeseung, sorry for the mix-up, the letter wasn’t for you, my bad?”

You look up at her, your eyes rimmed with red. “In front of Jungwon? After Heeseung already told him I confessed? What would Jungwon think of me?”

Yunjin considers this. “That you’re a disaster, probably.”

“Exactly!”

“But a lovable disaster,” she adds. “Disasters can be endearing.”

“Yunjin, please focus.”

She holds up her hands in surrender, but there’s a glint in her eye that you recognize, the one that means she’s about to drop some wisdom on you whether you’re ready for it or not. Yunjin has been your best friend since orientation week, when you both accidentally joined the wrong club meeting and ended up spending two hours in a competitive gardening seminar before realizing your mistake. She’s practical where you’re dreamy, decisive where you’re hesitant, and she’s talked you down from approximately four hundred anxiety spirals since the semester started. If anyone can find a way out of this mess, it’s her.

“Okay,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Let me present you with an alternative perspective.”

“I’m listening.”

“Lee Heeseung,” she says, ticking off points on her fingers, “has a reputation. A big one. Everyone knows it. He’s the guy who’s super nice to everyone, especially girls, and then they fall for him and he gets all surprised when they expect something more, and then things fizzle out because he wasn’t looking for anything serious.” She makes air quotes with her fingers. “Sound familiar?”

You blink. “I mean... I’ve heard things. But he didn’t seem like-”

“That’s his whole thing,” Yunjin interrupts. “He doesn’t seem like it. That’s why it works. He likes when everyone is after him. But nice doesn’t equal interested, so girls get the wrong idea and then they get hurt. It’s a cycle.” She pops a tapioca pearl into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “My point is, you don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to fix this. You just need to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For him to get bored.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Think about it. You’re not actually interested in him, right? You’re not going to fall all over yourself trying to get his attention. You’re not going to be waiting outside his classes or accidentally showing up wherever he hangs out. You’re not going to be like every other girl who’s chased after him.”

You frown. “So... what, I just... do nothing?”

“No, you do the opposite of chasing.” Yunjin grins, and it’s slightly wicked. “You make yourself as uninteresting to him as possible. You’re awkward, you’re weird, you’re clearly not trying to impress him. You don’t dress up when you know you might see him. You talk about boring things. You mention, I don’t know, your extensive collection of vintage stamps or whatever nerdy hobby you can think of. You make yourself boring.”

“I don’t have a stamp collection.”

“Then make one up! The point is, Heeseung is used to girls who want him. If you clearly don’t want him, his interest is going to fizzle out faster than a cheap sparkler. He’ll move on to the next girl who bats her eyelashes at him, and you’ll be free. No confrontation necessary.”

You turn this over in your mind. It’s... not the worst idea you’ve ever heard. In fact, compared to your current strategy of blind panic and tactical fleeing, it’s practically genius. If you can’t correct the misunderstanding without making everything worse, maybe you can just... let it die on its own. Let Heeseung’s fabled short attention span work in your favor. Become so aggressively unappealing that he loses interest within a week and never thinks about you again.

And once he’s out of the picture, once enough time has passed, maybe you can try again with Jungwon. Properly. With better aim.

“You’re a genius,” you tell Yunjin, the hope creeping back into your voice. “An absolute genius. I could kiss you.”

“Please don’t, you’re covered in grass stains.” She nudges one of the bubble teas toward you with her foot. “Drink your tea. Hydrate. And then we’re going to brainstorm all the ways you can make yourself seem as unappealing as possible to a hot third-year informatics student.”

You grab the drink and take a long sip, the sweetness settling something in your chest. For the first time in three days, you feel something other than panic. You feel strategic. You feel determined. Lee Heeseung might think you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date, but he hasn’t met the version of you that’s about to emerge, a version so bland, so uninteresting, so aggressively mediocre that he’ll run in the opposite direction before the week is out.

“Okay,” you say, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. “Okay. Let’s do this. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested starts now.”

Yunjin raises her bubble tea in a toast. “To being boring.”

You clink your cup against hers. “To being boring.”

Somewhere across campus Heeseung is still standing in the quad with a confused expression on his face and a lavender envelope in his pocket, wondering why the girl who supposedly has a crush on him just sprinted away like she was being chased by bears.

He’s not used to this. He’s not used to any of this.

And that, he realizes with a small, bemused shake of his head, is exactly what makes it so interesting.

—————

Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested lasted exactly four days before it encountered its first major obstacle.

That obstacle is approximately six feet tall, has flowing hair that falls perfectly across his forehead, and is currently walking directly toward your table in the cafeteria with a tray in his hands and a smile on his face that suggests he has absolutely no idea he's supposed to be losing interest in you.

You spot him approximately 2.3 seconds too late. By the time your brain registers the approaching danger, you are already mid-bite into a sad cafeteria sandwich, your mouth full of bread and lettuce and the dawning realization that you are trapped. There is no escape route. Your table is in the corner, surrounded on three sides by walls and on the fourth side by Heeseung's rapidly approaching form. You are a cornered animal. A very stupid, very panicked cornered animal with mayonnaise on her chin.

"Y/N!" Heeseung says your name like it's his favorite word, bright and warm and entirely too enthusiastic for someone who's supposed to be a notorious womanizer with a short attention span. "I was hoping I'd run into you. Mind if I sit?"

Mind if he sits? Of course you mind. You mind immensely. You mind with every fiber of your being. Sitting with Heeseung is the exact opposite of what Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is supposed to accomplish. Sitting with Heeseung means talking to Heeseung, and talking to Heeseung means opportunities to accidentally charm him, and charming him is categorically Not The Goal.

But Heeseung is already pulling out the chair across from you, and his smile is so genuine, and there's a tiny bit of what looks like grease on his cheekbone that suggests he's just come from some kind of engineering lab, and you are weak. You are so, so weak.

"Go ahead," you hear yourself say, and then immediately want to punch yourself in the face.

Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested, Day Four, 12:34 PM: catastrophic failure already in progress.

Heeseung settles into the chair with an easy grace, setting his tray down and immediately stealing one of your fries like you're old friends who share food on a regular basis. You watch the fry disappear into his mouth and feel a small part of your soul leave your body.

"So," he says, leaning back and studying you with those dark, unreadable eyes. "You ran away from me pretty fast the other day. Should I be worried? Do I have something on my face?"

He doesn't. He absolutely doesn't. He has the kind of face that belongs on a billboard, all sharp angles and soft edges and that one little mole on his forehead that you are definitely not noticing because noticing things about Heeseung's face is counterproductive to the mission.

"No," you say quickly. "No, you're fine. Your face is fine. I mean, you don't have anything on your face. I just remembered I had somewhere to be. Very suddenly. It was urgent."

"An urgent… lab class?" Heeseung's lips twitch. "That's what you said, right? An urgent lab class on a Thursday afternoon?"

Your face heats. "Yes. Exactly. Lab class. Very urgent. Science doesn't wait."

"Mmm." He pops another one of your fries into his mouth. "Well, the good news is, you don't look like you're in a hurry right now. So we can actually talk. You know, like normal people who are supposedly getting to know each other?"

Right. Getting to know each other. Because you confessed to him. Because he thinks you like him. Because you're living in an elaborate lie of your own making.

This is your chance, though. This is the perfect opportunity to implement Phase One of the Make Him Uninterested plan: Be Weird and Off-Putting. You just have to be the most boring, strange, unappealing version of yourself that you can possibly imagine. How hard can it be?

Pretty hard, as it turns out, because your brain chooses this exact moment to go completely blank.

"So," Heeseung says, apparently unbothered by your silence, "tell me about yourself. What do you like to do for fun? Besides writing beautiful love letters and then running away from the recipient?"

You choke on your own saliva. Just… straight up choke on nothing, like a cartoon character. "I don't…that wasn't…I do normal things. Normal fun things. Like… watching paint dry. And counting ceiling tiles. Very relaxing. You should try it."

Heeseung's expression flickers, confusion, amusement, something in between. "Counting ceiling tiles?"

"There are forty-seven in this cafeteria," you say, doubling down with the desperate energy of someone who has already committed to the bit. "Forty-eight if you count the one that's partially covered by that vent over there. But some people don't count partial tiles. It's a philosophical debate, really."

"Fascinating," Heeseung says, and the worst part is that he sounds like he actually means it. "What else?"

What else? What else can you say that will make you sound completely unappealing? You cast around for inspiration, your eyes landing on your sandwich. Okay. Fine. If words can't do the job, maybe actions can.

You pick up your sandwich with both hands and take the weirdest bite you can physically manage, mouth open slightly too wide, chewing with exaggerated jaw movements, making an unfortunate amount of noise in the process. You feel like a cow. You look like a cow. You are embodying the spirit of a cow, and surely, surely, this is enough to make any self-respecting hot informatics student run for the hills.

Heeseung watches you chew. His expression doesn't change.

"Good sandwich?" he asks mildly.

"Mmf," you say, still chewing, still being a cow. "Very good. I love-"

And then the lettuce hits the back of your throat.

You don't know how it happens. One moment you're chewing normally, well, abnormally, but in a controlled way and the next moment a piece of lettuce stages a rebellion and lodges itself directly in your windpipe. Your eyes go wide. Your hand flies to your throat. You make a sound that is somewhere between a wheeze and a honk.

"Y/N?" Heeseung's amused expression shifts to concern. "Are you okay?"

You are not okay. You are choking. You are choking on lettuce in front of Lee Heeseung in the middle of the cafeteria, and this is how you're going to die.

Heeseung is on his feet now, moving around the table with surprising speed. "Hey, hey, can you breathe? Do you need me to-"

You shake your head frantically, still making dying cow noises, and grab your water bottle with shaking hands. The first gulp does nothing. The second gulp, by some miracle, dislodges the lettuce just enough for you to cough it up into a napkin with all the grace and dignity of a cat hacking up a hairball.

Silence.

The entire cafeteria, you're convinced, is staring at you. In reality, probably only a few nearby tables have noticed, but it feels apocalyptic. You sit there, red-faced and teary-eyed, clutching a napkin full of your own near-death experience, and want the floor to open up and swallow you whole.

Heeseung kneels beside your chair, one hand hovering near your shoulder like he isn't sure if touching you would be welcome. "Hey. You're okay. You're okay, right? Do you need me to get you anything? More water? A doctor? A new sandwich without lettuce?"

His voice is gentle. Genuinely gentle. Not the smooth, charming tone you expect from someone with his reputation, but something softer, something that sounds almost like real concern.

"I'm fine," you croak, your voice ravaged. "I'm fine. That happens. All the time. I'm very bad at eating. It's one of my traits."

"One of your traits," Heeseung repeats, and the corner of his mouth twitches despite his obvious worry. "Being bad at eating?"

"It's a lifestyle choice."

He laughs. Not a polite chuckle or a mocking snicker, but a real laugh, surprised and bright and completely unguarded. He sits back down in his chair, shaking his head, and looks at you with something that is definitely not boredom or disinterest.

"You're really something else, you know that?"

You don't know how to respond to that, so you don't. You just sit there, still clutching your napkin of shame, and wonder how Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has somehow resulted in him laughing at your jokes and looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's encountered all week.

"So," Heeseung says, propping his chin on his hand, "I've been wondering. What made you decide to confess to me? Was there a specific moment? Something I did?"

Oh no.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

This is the worst possible question he could ask. You can't tell him the truth…I didn't mean to confess to you, I meant to confess to your friend, you just happened to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time, please don't hate me…but you also can't just… not answer. He's looking at you expectantly, his dark eyes curious and open, and you have approximately three seconds to come up with a convincing lie before the silence becomes too awkward to recover from.

"Your… kindness," you say, grasping at straws. "You're very… kind. To everyone. I noticed."

Heeseung tilts his head. "My kindness?"

"Very kind," you repeat, nodding vigorously. "So kind. The kindest. I saw you… hold a door open for someone once. It was… inspiring."

"I held a door open."

"A door. Yes. It was a very heavy door. And you held it. For a long time. Multiple people went through. It was very impressive."

Heeseung stares at you for a moment, and you stare back, your face burning, your soul evacuating your body. This is it. This is the moment he realizes you are completely unhinged and decides to never speak to you again. This is the victory of Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested.

"That's…" Heeseung starts, and then pauses. "That's the first time anyone's ever confessed to me because I held a door open. Usually I get compliments about my face. Or my voice. One girl told me I had a nose made to be sat on, which I still don't fully understand."

"Your node is… fine," you say weakly. "I didn't notice your nose. Or your face at all. Just the door. The door was the important part."

"A door," Heeseung says, and that smile is spreading across his face again, the one that makes him look less like a notorious player and more like someone who has just found a particularly entertaining puzzle. "You wrote me a three-page love letter because I held a door open."

"The calligraphy alone took a week," you say, and immediately regret it.

Heeseung laughs again, and this time it's softer, almost wondering. "You're not what I expected," he says. "At all."

"Is that… good or bad?"

"I haven't decided yet." But he's still smiling, and his eyes are still fixed on you with that curious intensity, and you're starting to get the sinking feeling that everything you do, no matter how strange or off-putting you try to be, is having the exact opposite effect of what you intend.

You need a new strategy. Something foolproof. Something so aggressively unappealing that even the most determined people-pleaser can't pretend to be interested.

And then, like a gift from the gods of social awkwardness, the topic of video games comes up.

Heeseung mentions something about blowing off steam after a tough assignment by playing a few rounds of something, and the question slips out before you can stop it: "Wait, do you play League of Legends?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Sometimes. You?"

And that's it. That's the moment the dam breaks.

You don't mean to start geeking out. It just happens. One moment you're thinking be boring, be uninteresting, be bland, and the next moment you're fifteen minutes deep into an impassioned monologue about the current meta, the problems with the jungle role, and why Riot Games needs to nerf a specific champion into the ground before she single-handedly destroys the competitive scene.

"-and don't even get me started on the new items, because the balance team clearly doesn't play their own game, which is fine, whatever, it's not like I have strong opinions about it except I absolutely do, and I wrote an entire essay about it on the subreddit that got like two thousand upvotes, so clearly I'm not the only one who thinks the armor penetration scaling is completely broken-"

You stop.

You stop because you have just realized, with dawning horror, that you have been talking for an incredibly long time without letting Heeseung get a single word in. You have been gesticulating. You have been making sound effects. At one point, you're pretty sure you drew a diagram on a napkin to illustrate the optimal jungle pathing route.

This is it. This is definitely, absolutely it. There is no way a hot third-year informatics student wants to listen to a first-year STEM girl rant about video game balance for fifteen straight minutes. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has just achieved its first genuine success.

You brace yourself for the polite excuse, the awkward glance at his phone, the slow backing away.

Instead, Heeseung leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, and says: "Okay, but hear me out, what if the armor penetration scaling isn't the problem, and it's actually the base damage values that need to be adjusted? Because if you look at the win rate data across different elos, the issue isn't consistent at all levels of play."

You blink.

"I main ADC," he adds, as if this is a perfectly normal confession. "So trust me, I feel your pain about the jungle situation. Do you know how many times I've been left to solo dragon because my jungler was AFK farming? Too many. Too many times."

"You… main ADC?"

"Vayne and Kai'Sa mostly. Sometimes Jhin if I'm feeling dramatic."

You have no response to this. Your brain has short-circuited somewhere around the phrase "win rate data across different elos," and it's still rebooting.

"Your essay on the subreddit," Heeseung continues, pulling out his phone. "What was the title? I want to read it. I love seeing well-reasoned arguments about game balance, and honestly, most of what gets posted is just people complaining without any actual data to back it up."

"It was… it was called The Current State of Armor Penetration: A Statistical Analysis and Why I'm Losing My Mind," you say faintly.

Heeseung types something into his phone, scrolls for a moment, and then his face lights up. "Found it. Two thousand three hundred upvotes and fourteen awards? That's impressive. Wait, you made graphs? You made graphs?"

"I was very passionate about the subject."

"Passionate," Heeseung repeats, looking up from his phone with an expression you can't quite read. "Yeah. I'm starting to get that about you."

He tucks his phone away and smiles at you, and it isn't the smooth, practiced smile you expect from the campus womanizer. It's something smaller. Something realer. Something that makes your stomach do a weird, traitorous flip that you immediately try to suppress.

"You know," he says, tilting his head as he studies you, "you remind me of a mouse."

Your brain screeches to a halt. "A… mouse?"

"Yeah. A little field mouse. The way your nose scrunches up when you're thinking, and how you get all twitchy and skittish when you're nervous. It's cute. It's really cute."

Cute. He calls you cute. He compares you to a rodent and somehow makes it sound like a compliment, and worst of all, worst of all, you can feel a traitorous blush spreading across your cheeks like wildfire.

"I'm not…I don't…mice are not cute. Mice are pests. They carry diseases. I'm basically a health hazard."

Heeseung laughs, and it's the same genuine laugh from before, and he's looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's seen in years. "A health hazard. Right. Well, consider me warned."

He stands up, gathering his tray, and for one beautiful, hopeful moment, you think the ordeal is over. But then he pauses, looking down at you with that unreadable expression, and says the words that haunt you for the rest of the day:

"I was interested before, but now?" He shakes his head, still smiling. "Now I'm really interested. See you around, little mouse."

And then he walks away, leaving you alone at your corner table with a half-eaten sandwich, a napkin full of regurgitated lettuce, and the sinking realization that Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is not only failing, it's backfiring spectacularly.

You try to be weird, and he calls you cute.

You try to be boring, and he engages with your niche gaming opinions.

You try to choke to death in front of him, and he kneels beside your chair with genuine concern in his eyes.

You bang your forehead against the cafeteria table once, twice, three times, not caring who sees. This is a disaster. This is an unmitigated, unprecedented, absolutely catastrophic disaster. Hana's plan was supposed to work. Heeseung was supposed to get bored. He was supposed to move on. He was not supposed to look at you like you're a puzzle he wants to solve, or call you a mouse in a tone of voice that makes your heart do gymnastics, or read your League of Legends essay and compliment your graphs.

You need to regroup. You need to call an emergency meeting with Yunjin. You need to figure out a new strategy before this situation spirals even further out of control.

But first, you need to go to the library and return the books that are due today before you accrue another fine, because no matter how catastrophic your love life becomes, the university library shows no mercy.

—————

The library is your sanctuary. It always has been, a quiet, climate-controlled haven where the smell of old paper and the soft hum of fluorescent lights can soothe even the most tensed of nerves. After the cafeteria incident, you need sanctuary more than ever. You slip through the main doors with your stack of books clutched to your chest, inhaling the familiar scent of knowledge and dust, and feel some of the tension begin to ease from your shoulders.

Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. You return your books, you find Yunjin, you regroup, and you figure out a way to-

"Y/N?"

The voice comes from somewhere to your left, and you know that voice. You know it the way a flower knows the sun, the way a compass knows north, the way a hopeless romantic knows the exact cadence of her crush's greeting.

Jungwon is sitting at a table near the history section, surrounded by a fortress of textbooks and loose papers. He's wearing glasses…glasses…and his hair is slightly mussed from what you assume is hours of intense studying, and he's looking at you with that smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes your entire nervous system short-circuit.

"Hey," he says, waving you over. "What are you doing here?"

Existing in the same space as you, you think. Breathing the same air. Trying not to spontaneously combust.

"Returning books," you say, holding up your stack as evidence. "I have some overdue ones. The library fines are no joke."

"Tell me about it. I had to pay fifteen thousand won last semester because I forgot about a book I'd checked out for a research paper." Jungwon winces at the memory. "My wallet still hasn't recovered."

"That's brutal."

"The library giveth, and the library taketh away."

You laugh, and it comes out surprisingly normal, not too loud, not too high-pitched, just a regular human laugh from a regular human person who is definitely not having an internal meltdown about how good Jungwon looks in glasses.

"Hey," Jungwon says, glancing at the empty chair across from him, "if you're not in a hurry, do you want to study together? I've been here for three hours and my brain is starting to melt. It would be nice to have some company."

Your heart stops.

Yang Jungwon, the Yang Jungwon, the owner of the smile and the laugh and the gummy bears at 2 AM is asking you to study with him. This is the kind of moment you've daydreamed about for months. This is a meet-cute in progress. This is the universe throwing you a lifeline after the cafeteria disaster, a chance to actually spend time with the boy you've been pining over since midterms.

"Yes," you say, before your brain can remind you of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. "Yes, I'd…I'd love to. Let me just return these first."

You practically skip to the returns desk, your heart doing a full backflip in your chest. By the time you make it back to Jungwon's table, your philosophy textbook and notebook spread out in front of you, you've convinced yourself that this is exactly what you need. Some time with Jungwon. Some time to remember why you wrote that letter in the first place. Some time to reconnect with the feelings that got buried under the chaos of the Heeseung situation.

The only problem is that you can't focus on studying at all.

You try. You really, genuinely try. You open your textbook to the assigned chapter. You uncap your highlighter. You fix your eyes on the page and attempt to absorb information about ethical frameworks and moral philosophy. But your eyes keep drifting up, against your will, over the top of your book, to the boy sitting across from you.

Jungwon is studying. Actually studying, not fake studying, not pretending to study while secretly watching you the way you're watching him. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his pen moving steadily across his notebook as he takes notes. Every so often, he pauses, taps the end of his pen against his chin, and then resumes writing with renewed focus. The late afternoon light slants through the window behind him, catching the highlights in his dark hair and making him look like he's stepped out of a painting.

He is beautiful. He's so beautiful that it makes your chest ache, a soft, sweet ache that you've been carrying around since the moment you first saw him in this very library. You watch the way his fingers curl around his pen, the way he bites his lower lip when he's thinking, the way his glasses slide down his nose and he pushes them back up with an absent gesture.

"I can feel you looking at me," Jungwon says, not glancing up from his notebook.

Your entire body jolts like you've been electrocuted. "I wasn't…I was just…there's a clock behind you. I was checking the time."

Jungwon looks up then, and there's a knowing glint in his eyes that makes your stomach do a slow, somersaulting flip. "The clock is to your right, Y/N. Not behind me."

You look to your right. Sure enough, there's the clock, hanging on the wall in plain view, which you would have noticed if you'd spent even one second actually looking for it instead of gazing at Jungwon's face like a Renaissance painter studying their muse.

"I'm… directionally challenged," you say weakly.

"Uh-huh." Jungwon sets down his pen, and the smile playing at the corners of his mouth is soft and teasing and absolutely devastating. "Come here for a second."

"What?"

"Just come here. Lean forward a little."

Your body obeys before your brain can intervene. You lean across the table, your heart hammering so loudly you're certain the entire library can hear it. Jungwon leans forward too, closing the distance between you, and you catch a faint whiff of something clean and subtle, laundry detergent, maybe, or the kind of fragrance that just smells like him.

His hand reaches out, and before you can process what's happening, his index finger gently pokes your cheek.

"Boop," he says.

You make a sound. You don't know what the sound is supposed to be. Maybe a laugh, maybe a question, maybe a plea for mercy. What comes out is something closer to a squeak, a small, strangled, completely undignified squeak that would be embarrassing if you had any brain cells left to feel embarrassment.

Jungwon's smile widens, and his finger lingers on your cheek for just a moment longer than necessary. "You had an eyelash," he says. "Right there. But also, you just looked really cute staring at me like that. I couldn't resist."

Cute. He calls you cute. That's twice in one day that a devastatingly attractive boy has called you cute, and your hopeless romantic heart doesn't know whether to celebrate or go into cardiac arrest.

"I wasn't staring," you whisper, but it comes out completely unconvincing.

"You were absolutely staring." Jungwon withdraws his hand, but his smile stays, warm and fond and knowing. "It's okay. I don't mind. It's kind of nice, actually. Being looked at like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm something worth looking at."

The words settle into your chest like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples through your entire body. He thinks it's nice. He thinks you're nice or at least your staring is nice and he pokes your cheek and calls you cute and now he's going back to his studying like he hasn't just fundamentally altered your brain chemistry.

You try to return to your textbook. The words swim in front of your eyes, meaningless and blurry. You highlight a sentence at random, realize you have no idea what it says, and highlight it again for good measure. The page is now approximately forty percent highlighter ink.

"You're going to run out of highlighter at that rate," Jungwon observes, not looking up.

"I have backups," you say. "I always have backups."

"Of course you do."

The studying session continues for another hour, and you absorb approximately zero information about ethical frameworks. What you do absorb is a comprehensive catalogue of Jungwon's study habits: the way he organizes his notes with color-coded tabs, the way he mutters to himself when he's working through a difficult concept, the way he absentmindedly drums his fingers against the table when he's thinking. Every detail is another entry in your mental Jungwon database, another thread in the tapestry of your affection.

By the time you pack up your things and say goodbye, "See you in philosophy," Jungwon says, and you respond with something that might be words or might be a series of enthusiastic nods, you are floating. You are literally, physically floating, your feet barely touching the ground as you drift out of the library and across campus toward your dorm.

Jungwon pokes your cheek. Jungwon calls you cute. Jungwon says he likes being looked at by you.

You are winning. Despite the Heeseung disaster, despite the cafeteria catastrophe, despite everything, you are winning.

By the time you reach your dorm room, you are a mess of giddy energy with nowhere to go. You close the door behind you, throw your backpack onto your desk chair, and then proceed to wriggle across your bed like an ecstatic worm, kicking your feet and muffling your squeals into your pillow.

"He called me cute," you whisper to your empty room, your voice muffled by fabric. "He poked my cheek. He did the boop thing. The boop thing, you guys. Who does the boop thing? Adorable people, that's who. Perfect people. People with beautiful smiles and kind eyes and-"

You roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. The ceiling has forty-three tiles in your room. You counted them on your first night in the dorm. But right now, all you can see is Jungwon's face, the way he looked at you across the library table, the way his finger felt against your cheek, the way his voice went soft when he said like I'm something worth looking at.

You are going to marry him. You are going to marry Yang Jungwon and have a beautiful wedding with string lights and wildflowers and a three-tier cake, and you will tell the story of how you stared at him in the library and he poked your cheek and-

You stop wriggling.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

You can't marry Jungwon. You can't even confess to Jungwon, because Jungwon thinks you confessed to Heeseung. Jungwon thinks you're interested in someone else. Jungwon was sweet and friendly and maybe a little bit flirty, but that's just his personality. He's nice to everyone. He gives you gummy bears at 2 AM; he probably gives gummy bears to everyone who looks tired. You aren't special. You are just… there.

The giddiness begins to drain out of you, replaced by the familiar weight of reality. You are still trapped in the Heeseung situation. You are still the girl who confessed to the wrong person. And no matter how many times Jungwon pokes your cheek, that fundamental fact isn't going to change.

With a heavy sigh, you drag yourself through your evening routine: shower, skincare, the episode of the baking show you're halfway through and finally crawl into bed around midnight, your emotions a tangled knot of hope and despair.

Sleep comes slowly, a gradual descent into darkness, and then-

—————

You are in the PC room again.

But this time it's different. The lights are dimmer, the computers all dark, the chairs empty. It's just you, and the door is swinging shut behind you, and there's someone waiting at the computer closest to the door.

Heeseung.

He's sitting in the chair, facing away from you, his headphones around his neck and his shoulders relaxed. When he hears your footsteps, he turns, and his expression isn't surprised or amused or curious. It's something else entirely. Something darker. Something that makes your breath catch in your throat.

"You're here," he says, and his voice is lower than you've ever heard it, a rumble that vibrates through your bones. "I've been waiting for you, little mouse."

"I'm not-" you start, but he's already standing, already moving toward you, and you can't seem to make your feet work. You're rooted to the spot, watching him approach with a mixture of fear and something else, something you don't want to name.

He stops inches away from you, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body, close enough that you can see the individual strands of his hair and the curve of his lips and the way his eyes, God, his eyes are fixed on your mouth.

"You know what I've been thinking about?" he murmurs, and one of his hands comes up to brush a strand of hair away from your face, his fingers lingering against your temple. "I've been thinking about that letter. The way you said you only had eyes for me. The way you said you couldn't stop thinking about me."

"That wasn't-" you try, but your voice comes out as barely a whisper, and Heeseung's thumb is tracing along your jawline now, feather-light and devastating.

"I can't stop thinking about you either," he says, and his face is getting closer, closer, and you can feel his breath against your lips. "Do you want to know what I think about?"

Your heart is hammering. Your skin is on fire. You can't move, can't speak, can't do anything except stare up at him with wide eyes as his other hand settles on your waist, warm and solid and pulling you closer.

"I think about this," he whispers, and then his mouth is on yours.

The kiss is…it's…

It's intense. It's consuming. It's the kind of kiss that erases every rational thought from your brain and replaces it with pure, unfiltered sensation. His lips are soft but insistent, moving against yours with a confidence that makes your knees weak. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you make a sound against his mouth, something small and breathless and completely involuntary.

When he finally pulls back, his forehead resting against yours, his voice is rough. "You’re what I’ve been looking for my whole life, Y/N. You’re my miracle."

And then his lips are on your neck, trailing fire down to your collarbone, and your head falls back, and his name escapes your mouth in a way you've never said it before-

He kneels before you, his movements fluid and deliberate. His eyes never leave yours as he unzips his jeans, freeing his already hard cock. It stands proud and thick, the tip glistening with pre-cum. He takes your foot in his warm hand, bringing it to his shaft.

"Look what you do to me," he murmurs, his voice husky with desire. He wraps your foot around his length, his thumb pressing against your arch as he begins to move your foot up and down his cock. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, a low groan escaping his lips.

The sensation of his hot skin against your sole sends shivers through your body. You watch, mesmerized, as he uses your foot to pleasure himself, his hips thrusting in rhythm with the movements of your foot. His other hand moves to your ankle, his grip firm but gentle, his fingers stroking your sensitive skin.

His eyes open, locking with yours again, and the intensity in his gaze makes your breath catch. "You're so beautiful," he breathes, his movements becoming faster, more urgent. "You’re perfect the way you are."

His breathing grows ragged, his muscles tensing. With a guttural moan, he comes, his hot release spilling over your foot and his hand. He leans forward, his tongue darting out to taste his own cum from your skin, his movements slow and sensual. He licks your foot clean, his tongue tracing patterns on your arch, between your toes, sending waves of pleasure through your body.

Then he shifts, positioning himself between your legs. He looks up at you, his eyes dark with desire. "I need to taste you," he says, his voice rough with need.

He hooks his fingers into the waistband of your panties, pulling them down slowly, his eyes never leaving yours. He tosses them aside, then leans in, his breath hot against your most sensitive flesh.

His tongue flicks out, teasing your clit, and you gasp, your hands flying to his hair. He chuckles, the vibration sending another jolt of pleasure through you. "Patience, little mouse," he murmurs against your skin.

His tongue moves in slow, deliberate circles, building your pleasure gradually. He alternates between broad, flat strokes and quick, precise flicks of his tongue against your clit. His fingers join in, one, then two, sliding inside you, curling to hit that spot that makes you cry.

Your hips buck against his face, your breath coming in ragged gasps. "Heeseung," you moan, your fingers tightening in his hair.

He responds with increased enthusiasm, his tongue working faster, his fingers pumping in and out of you. The pressure builds inside you, a coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter until it snaps.

You come with a cry, your body convulsing as waves of pleasure wash over you. But Heeseung doesn't stop. He continues his assault on your senses, his tongue and fingers working in perfect harmony to bring you to the edge again.

And then you are squirting, your release flooding his mouth and chin as he drinks you in, his movements never faltering. He looks up at you, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he laps up every drop.

When he finally pulls away, his face glistening with your juices, he crawls up your body, capturing your lips in a searing kiss. You can taste yourself on his tongue, and the intimacy of it sends another wave of desire through you.

"Tell me you’re only thinking of me," he whispers against your lips, his hands roaming your body. "and not Jungwon."

You wake up.

You wake up in your dorm room, in your bed, at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday morning, with your heart pounding and your skin flushed, your panties soaked and your sheets twisted around your legs like they've been through a battle.

For a long moment, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.

Did you just… did you just dream about… did Lee Heeseung, the guy you're supposed to be making uninterested in you, the guy you've been trying to avoid and ignore and repel, just star in what can only be described as an extremely obscene dream? The virgin you are just cringed at the memory.

You press your hands to your burning cheeks and let out a sound that is somewhere between a groan and a scream.

"No," you whisper to the empty room. "No, no, no. This isn't, this can't…I don't even like him. I like Jungwon. Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon for four months. I wrote a letter to Jungwon. I have a color-coded mental database of Jungwon's habits. I want to marry Jungwon and have a three-tier wedding cake with wildflowers!"

But your brain, traitorous and unhelpful, keeps replaying fragments of the dream, the way Heeseung's eyes go dark, the way his voice rumbles against your ear, the way his hand feels on your waist, the way his tongue is warm and-

You grab your pillow and press it over your face, screaming into it with all the force your lungs can muster.

This is wrong. This is so, so wrong. You are a Jungwon girl. You've always been a Jungwon girl. You don't think about Heeseung like that. You don't think about Heeseung like anything. Heeseung is an obstacle. Heeseung is a problem to be solved. Heeseung is the guy you're actively trying to repel, not the guy who shows up in your subconscious and does things that make you blush in the privacy of your own bed.

"I'm a psychopath," you say to your pillow. "I'm a complete and utter psychopath. Who dreams about this with a guy they're supposed to be making uninterested? A psychopath, that's who. A deranged lunatic. A person with a broken brain."

Your pillow, predictably, does not respond.

You drag yourself out of bed and into the bathroom, splashing cold water on your face and avoiding your own reflection in the mirror. You don't want to look at yourself. You don't want to see the evidence of the dream still lingering in your flushed cheeks…and between your legs.

This is a problem. This is a Major Problem with capital letters and possibly a warning siren. You can't afford to be having dreams about Lee Heeseung. You can't afford to be thinking about Lee Heeseung at all. Your entire strategy, Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested depends on you being able to keep a clear head and a steady heart, and neither of those things is going to be possible if your subconscious keeps ambushing you with extremely vivid, extremely inappropriate content.

You need to talk to Yunjin. Immediately. Before your brain can conjure up any more unauthorized imagery.

But as you grab your phone and type out a frantic message, EMERGENCY MEETING REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY CODE RED REPEAT CODE RED, you can't quite shake the lingering sensation from the dream.

The way Heeseung's thumb traces along your jawline.

The way he calls you little mouse in that low, rumbling voice.

The way he says you were perfect the way you were like he means it, like it's true, like he's been into you his whole life and hasn't even known it.

You shake your head violently, flinging droplets of water across the bathroom mirror.

"Nope," you say out loud. "Nope, nope, nope. We're not doing this. We're not thinking about this. We're going to go to class and eat lunch and avoid all tall informatics students, and we're going to get our brain back on the Jungwon track where it belongs."

But even as you say it, even as you try to mean it, a small, treacherous part of you wonders if maybe, just maybe, the Jungwon track isn't the only track worth following anymore.

You shove that thought into a mental box, lock it, and throw away the key.

You have a plan. You have a strategy. You are going to make Heeseung uninterested, and you are going to figure out a way to untangle the misunderstanding, and you are going to end up with Jungwon like you were always supposed to.

The dream is just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. It can't mean anything.

You refuse to let it mean anything.

(But when you catch yourself glancing toward the informatics building on your way to class, you walk a little faster, and you definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent do not wonder what Lee Heeseung is doing right now.)

—————

The dream haunts you for three days.

Not in a supernatural, ghost-in-the-corner kind of way. More in an I-can't-make-eye-contact-with-my-own-reflection kind of way. Every time you close your eyes, fragments of it flicker behind your eyelids like a movie you hadn't asked to watch. The dark PC room. The way Heeseung's voice drops to a rumble. The phantom sensation of his tongue on your clit, his hand on your ankle, his look-

You physically convulse every time the memory resurfaces, which is approximately every forty-five minutes. Your philosophy notes become a graveyard of distracted doodles, half of which look suspiciously like the curve of someone's jaw. You have to throw away an entire page because you accidentally write "little mouse" in the margin instead of "moral relativism."

Yunjin is no help whatsoever.

"So you had a wet dream about the hot guy who you’re supposedly getting bored of," she says over bubble tea the day after the incident, her expression thoroughly unimpressed. "This is a problem because…?"

"Because I don't like him, Yunjin! I like Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon since midterms! Jungwon is the goal! Jungwon is the three-tier wedding cake!"

"And Heeseung is…?"

"A temporary obstacle! A misunderstanding with legs! A very tall, very inconvenient plot twist!"

Yunjin sucks on her tapioca pearls with the air of a therapist who has heard it all before and is no longer surprised by anything. "You know what they say about protesting too much."

"I am not protesting too much. I am protesting exactly the right amount. I am protesting a perfectly calibrated quantity."

"Sure." She pats your hand with condescending sympathy. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. Oh wait-"

You throw a tapioca pearl at her face. It sticks to her cheek for a solid three seconds before falling off, and the look of absolute betrayal on her face is the only bright spot in your otherwise nightmare-plagued week.

But now it's Thursday. Thursday, 2:15 PM. You're stationed in the science building's main hallway, crouched behind a bulletin board that is absolutely not wide enough to hide your entire body, waiting for the coast to clear so you can sprint to your next class without encountering any tall informatics students.

Your system has evolved since the early days of the crisis. You now have a color-coded schedule of Heeseung's known movements, courtesy of some light reconnaissance work that Yunjin calls "stalking" and you call "strategic intelligence gathering." You know his class schedule. You know his preferred study spots. You know that he tends to grab coffee from the campus café at exactly 3 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means the science building hallway should, theoretically, be a Heeseung-free zone at 2:15.

Theoretically.

You're just about to make your move, a quick dash to the stairwell, then up two flights, then a straight shot to classroom 307, when you hear it.

"Hey, is Y/N L/N in there?"

Your blood freezes. Your muscles lock. Your soul briefly departs your body and then slams back into it with force.

That's Heeseung's voice. That's unmistakably, undeniably, catastrophically Lee Heeseung's voice, and it's coming from approximately ten feet to your left, where the door to your department's main office stands open.

You press yourself harder against the bulletin board, praying for invisibility, praying for a sudden power outage, praying for the ground to open up and swallow you into its merciful embrace. None of these things happen. Instead, you hear the department secretary respond with cheerful obliviousness.

"Y/N L/N? First year, STEM? I think I saw her in the hallway just a minute ago. Let me check, oh, there she is! Y/N! You have a visitor!"

The secretary is pointing directly at your bulletin board. Your bulletin board that is not hiding you at all. Your bulletin board that is, in fact, leaving approximately seventy percent of your body completely visible to anyone who happens to look in that direction.

Heeseung turns.

Your eyes meet.

Time stops.

There are moments in life that feel like they stretch into eternity, moments so profoundly awkward, so cosmically embarrassing, that the universe itself seems to pause and take notice. This is one of those moments. You are frozen in a half-crouch behind a bulletin board, your backpack dangling from one shoulder, your hair escaping from the ponytail you threw it into this morning, your expression one of pure, unfiltered terror. Heeseung is standing in the doorway of the department office, looking unfairly attractive in a simple black hoodie and jeans, his eyebrows rising slowly toward his hairline.

A small crowd of students has paused in the hallway to watch. You can feel their eyes on you like a physical weight. Someone whispers something to their friend. Someone else pulls out their phone.

You are going to die. You are going to perish right here in the science building hallway, and your ghost will be doomed to haunt this bulletin board for all eternity.

"Y/N?" Heeseung's voice is a mixture of confusion and amusement. He takes a step toward you, and you instinctively take a step back, which results in you bumping directly into the bulletin board and causing several flyers to flutter dramatically to the ground. "Were you… hiding behind that?"

"No," you say, too quickly. "No, I was…I dropped something. A contact lens. I was looking for my contact lens."

"You don't wear contacts."

"I might! You don't know my life!"

"Your glasses are literally on your face right now."

You reach up and touch your glasses, which are indeed sitting on your nose, clearly visible, doing their job of correcting your vision. You have no response to this. There is no response to this. You have been caught in a lie so transparent it's essentially a window.

Heeseung's lips twitch. "You know, most people who have a crush on me don't run away and hide behind furniture. This is very confusing for my ego."

The crowd is still watching. Why is the crowd still watching? Don't they have classes to go to? Midterms to study for? Lives to live that don't involve spectating your public humiliation?

"I wasn't hiding from you specifically," you say, because apparently your mouth has decided to operate independently from your brain. "I was hiding from… the sun. It's very bright in here. I'm photosensitive."

"You're a STEM student hiding from the sun in a basement hallway with no windows," Heeseung says slowly. "That's… a new one."

"It's a medical condition. It's very serious. My doctor says I need to avoid direct fluorescent lighting."

"The fluorescent lighting is what's getting you."

"Absolutely. It's my greatest enemy. Well, second greatest. After-" You stop yourself before you can say after incredibly hot informatics students who keep appearing in my life like a recurring nightmare.

Heeseung waits. When you don't finish the sentence, that smile, the one that's definitely a smirk's second cousin, maybe even its first cousin at this point, spreads across his face.

"Well," he says, "now that I've found you and dragged you out of the shadows, literally, I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee. With me. Right now."

Every single person in the hallway is looking at you. The secretary is looking at you from the office doorway, her expression one of grandmotherly delight at what she clearly perceives as a romantic overture. The students who stopped to watch are exchanging glances and whispers. One girl gives you an encouraging thumbs up.

You are trapped. You are cornered. You are a mouse being offered coffee by a very tall, very persistent cat.

And just like every other time Heeseung has put you on the spot, you open your mouth and the wrong words come out.

"I love coffee," you say. "Coffee is my favorite liquid. After water. And possibly juice. But it's definitely in the top three."

"Is that a yes?"

"…Yes."

You’re staring at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror, and the girl staring back looks like she’s about to either throw up or ascend to another dimension. Maybe both. In that order.

The letter is clutched so tightly in your hand that the pale lavender envelope is starting to crease, and you force yourself to loosen your grip before you ruin the one thing you’ve spent three weeks perfecting. Three weeks. That’s twenty-one days of drafting, crossing out, rewriting, Googling “how to write a love letter without sounding like a desperate loser,” and then rewriting again. You’ve used up an entire pack of stationery. You’ve watched so many calligraphy tutorials that the YouTube algorithm thinks you’re training to become a medieval scribe. All for this one moment. This one letter. This one massive, terrifying, possibly life-ruining leap of faith.

You are a hopeless romantic. Hopeless being the operative word.

It’s not that you don’t believe in love. You do. Desperately, overwhelmingly, with every fiber of your first-year STEM student soul. You believe in meet-cutes and slow burns and the exact moment when two people look at each other and the entire world goes soft around the edges. You’ve read about it a hundred times. You’ve watched it play out on every screen you own. You’ve composed entire daydreams about it during particularly boring chemistry lectures. Love is your favorite subject, the one you’ve studied with more dedication than calculus or physics combined. There’s just one tiny, inconvenient, absolutely infuriating problem.

You’re terrified of it.

Not the idea of it. The idea is lovely. The idea is safe. The idea lives in your head where everything unfolds exactly the way you want it to, where you always say the right thing, where you never trip over your own feet or laugh too loud at the wrong moment or stand frozen in a doorway like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. But real love? The kind that requires vulnerability and eye contact and actually speaking words out loud with your mouth? That kind of love makes your palms sweat and your heart race in a decidedly unromantic, fight-or-flight kind of way. You are, and this is the most embarrassing part, a coward. A romantic coward. You dream of grand gestures but can barely manage a coherent sentence when an attractive person so much as glances in your direction.

Which brings you back to the letter.

The letter is your loophole. Your workaround. Your way of confessing your feelings without actually having to say them, because writing them down felt manageable in a way that speaking never has. You can be eloquent on paper. On paper, you can say things like “the first time I saw your smile, it felt like someone had turned on all the lights in a room I didn’t even realize was dark” without immediately wanting to crawl into the nearest hole and live out the rest of your days an hermit. On paper, you’re brave. On paper, you’re the kind of person who goes after what she wants.

In reality, you’ve been hiding in this bathroom for fifteen minutes, and your hands are shaking so badly that a passing person would think you are having an epileptic seizure.

“Okay,” you whisper to your reflection. “Okay. You can do this. You are a woman on a mission. You are a warrior. You are-”

A toilet flushes in one of the stalls behind you, and you nearly launch yourself through the ceiling.

A girl you vaguely recognize from your introductory programming class emerges, gives you an odd look as she washes her hands, and leaves without saying anything. You wait until the door swings shut, then press your forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and contemplate every life choice that has led you to this moment.

His name is Jungwon.

Yang Jungwon. Second year. Undeclared major but leaning toward something in the humanities, which you know because you may have done a bit of light, respectful, completely non-creepy research. He has a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and a laugh that sounds like sunshine if sunshine could make noise, and he holds doors open for people even when they’re still like ten feet away, which creates that awkward situation where the person has to speed-walk to not seem rude, but he never seems to mind. You first noticed him at the campus library during midterms when he quietly slid a pack of gummy bears across the table toward you at 2 AM, muttering something about glucose being good for brain function, and then went back to his book like he hadn’t just fundamentally altered the trajectory of your entire emotional existence.

That was four months ago. You’ve been pining ever since. Pining, yearning, longing, you’ve run through the entire lexicon of unrequited affection, and you’re exhausted. Today, you’ve decided, is the day it ends. One way or another.

You push yourself off the mirror, square your shoulders, and march out of the bathroom with the determination of someone going to war. The envelope is slightly damp from your grip, but it’s still intact, and the words inside are still true, and somewhere on this campus, Yang Jungwon is about to receive the most heartfelt confession letter ever written by a first-year student who has consumed an unhealthy amount of romance media.

Now you just have to find him.

—————

The hallway is bustling with students, the usual midday chaos of people rushing to classes or huddling in groups to complain about assignments. You scan the crowd, looking for a familiar face that might point you in the right direction, and your eyes land on a guy leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone with the dead-eyed expression of someone who has just finished a three-hour lab.

“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out about an octave higher than normal. You clear your throat. “Sorry, um, do you know where I can find Yang Jungwon? Second year?”

The guy looks up, blinks slowly, deciding whether or not to acknowledge your presence, and then shrugs. “PC room, I think. Saw him heading there like twenty minutes ago.”

The PC room. Of course. It’s in the engineering and informatics building, a place you’ve rarely ever been to. But you know where it is, roughly, and you thank the guy with what you hope is a normal smile and not the rictus grin of someone rushing toward emotional catastrophe.

The walk across campus takes approximately seven minutes, and you spend every single one of them rehearsing what you’re going to say. You’ve already written the letter, so technically you don’t have to say anything, you can just hand it over and flee but you want to say something. Something cool. Something memorable.

“Hey, Jungwon, this is for you.” Simple. Direct. Good.

“I wrote you something. No pressure, just read it when you have time.” Casual. Low-stakes. Excellent.

“Hi, I’ve been emotionally compromised by your existence for several months, please accept this paper rectangle of feelings.” Okay, maybe not that one.

The engineering building looms in front of you before you’re ready. You push through the main doors and immediately feel out of place. The students here move with a different energy, less frantic, more focused, the kind of people who probably know what a server is and have opinions about programming languages you’ve never heard of.

You follow the signs toward the PC room, your footsteps echoing in the corridor, and with every step, your heart climbs higher up your throat. This is it. This is the moment. You’re going to walk in there, find Jungwon, hand him the letter, and then whatever happens happens. At least you’ll have tried. At least you’ll have been brave, even if it’s only for thirty seconds.

The door to the PC room is slightly ajar, and you can hear voices inside, multiple voices, which gives you pause. You assumed he’d be alone. Or with maybe one other person.

You hesitate. Your hand hovers over the door handle. Every instinct is screaming at you to turn around, go back to your dorm, and spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. And maybe you would, if not for the small, stubborn voice in the back of your mind that says: You’ve already come this far. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to be the kind of person who actually does the thing instead of just dreaming about it?

Yes. Yes, you do.

You squeeze your eyes shut, take a breath so deep it makes you lightheaded, and push the door open with more force than strictly necessary. It slams against the wall with a bang that makes approximately twelve heads swivel in your direction, and for one horrifying moment, you are the center of attention in a room full of strangers.

But you don’t see any of them. You only see the figure sitting at the computer closest to the door, his back half-turned to you, hair falling over his forehead, the exact silhouette you’ve been looking for. Or at least, the exact silhouette you think you’ve been looking for.

You don’t stop to confirm. You don’t let yourself think. You just march forward, thrust the letter out in front of you like a shield, and launch into the speech you’ve been rehearsing for three weeks.

“This is for you. I’m sorry if this is weird or sudden but I’ve liked you for a really long time and I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. You don’t have to respond right away. You don’t have to respond ever, actually. I just wanted you to know that someone out there thinks you’re wonderful and I wrote it all down because I’m better at writing than talking and honestly I might pass out if I keep standing here so please just take this and I’ll go-”

You finally look up.

And the face staring back at you is absolutely, categorically, one hundred percent not Jungwon.

The boy in front of you is taller than Jungwon. Broader shoulders. Sharper jawline. Different eyes, darker, deeper, currently widened in a mixture of surprise and something you can’t quite read. His lips are parted slightly, as if he was about to say something before you launched into your emotional word-vomit, and he’s holding a half-eaten protein bar that’s now frozen halfway to his mouth.

The room has gone completely, utterly silent.

You can feel the stares of every single person boring into the back of your head. Someone coughs. Someone else whispers something that sounds suspiciously like “did she just-” before being shushed by their neighbor.

And then the boy, the very handsome, very wrong boy, sets down his protein bar, takes the letter gently from your trembling hand, and says in a voice that’s low and smooth and completely unfamiliar: “Wow. Okay. What’s your name?”

This is the worst moment of your entire life. You are going to die right here, in this PC room, surrounded by computer monitors and half-empty energy drink cans and a dozen witnesses who will spread this story to every corner of the university within the next three hours. Your obituary will read: here lies Y/N, the loser who can’t even recognize her ultimate crush.

“Y/N,” you croak, because your mouth is apparently still functioning even though every other part of you has shut down. “L/N Y/N. First year. STEM.”

You don’t know why you said STEM. He didn’t ask for your department. You’re offering information nobody requested. This is a disaster.

But the boy, he’s looking at you with an expression you can’t decipher, his head tilted slightly to the side like you’re a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. He’s wearing a dark hoodie with the informatics department logo on it, and there’s a pair of expensive-looking headphones draped around his neck, and his hair is slightly mussed in a way that suggests he’s been running his fingers through it while concentrating. He’s absurdly good-looking, the kind of good-looking that makes you simultaneously want to stare and look away, and you’re only now noticing the way several girls in the room have been watching him since you entered, not just because of your blunder, but because they’ve been watching him.

“I’m Heeseung,” he says, and there’s a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”

Lee Heeseung. The name registers somewhere in the back of your panic-addled brain. It’s familiar in the way that campus gossip is familiar, attached to words like hot and player and don’t get your hopes up because he’ll charm you and then move on. You’ve heard girls in your dorm talking about him in hushed, giggling tones, trading stories about brief encounters and misinterpreted invitations. And you, in your infinite wisdom, have just handed a love letter meant for someone else directly into his notorious hands.

You have to fix this. You have to tell him it was a mistake. You have to-

“I’m flattered,” Heeseung says, and his smile widens slightly, not quite a smirk but definitely approaching smirk territory. “Really. This is... I mean, no one’s ever confessed to me with an actual letter before. It’s kind of old school.” He turns the envelope over in his hands, examining it with what seems like genuine curiosity. “The handwriting is really pretty. Did you do the calligraphy yourself?”

“Yes,” you say, because you are physically incapable of lying when put on the spot, and also because your brain has apparently decided that the best course of action is to just answer whatever questions he asks like this is a normal conversation and not the emotional equivalent of a tornado.

“Impressive.” He looks at you, really looks at you, and something shifts in his expression. The teasing edge softens just a fraction. “A confession is a lot, though. I mean, I’m honored, but we don’t even know each other.”

This is your opening. This is the moment where you say “actually, that’s because this letter wasn’t meant for you, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, I’m so sorry, please forget this ever happened.” The words are right there, lined up on your tongue, ready to go.

But the room is still watching. A dozen pairs of eyes. The whispers have stopped, but the staring hasn’t, and you can feel every single gaze like a physical weight pressing down on you. If you correct him now, in front of everyone, you’ll have to explain. You’ll have to admit that you walked into a crowded room and confessed to the wrong person like an absolute buffoon. You’ll become a campus legend for all the wrong reasons: the girl who was too stupid to even identify her own crush. The story will follow you for the rest of your university career. You’ll never live it down.

But if you just... let him believe it... if you just nod and agree and leave as quickly as possible... you can fix this later. Privately. Without an audience. You can find him tomorrow, or send him a message, or do literally anything other than humiliate yourself further in front of all these people.

Your mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

“I know,” you hear yourself say. “It’s a lot. I know.”

Heeseung nods thoughtfully, like you’ve said something profound. “But I’m not against it. Starting slow, I mean. If you want.”

What.

“What,” you say, but it comes out more like a statement than a question.

“I’m okay with starting slow,” he repeats, and now the smile is definitely back, a little crooked, a little curious. “You’re cute. And clearly brave. I like that. So if you want to, I don’t know, get coffee sometime and see where this goes... I’m open to it.”

Someone in the room lets out a low whistle. Someone else says “Heeseung, are you serious right now?” in a tone of utter disbelief. But Heeseung doesn’t look away from you. He’s waiting for your answer, his gaze steady and warm, and you are standing in the epicenter of a complete and total catastrophe with absolutely no idea how to get out.

Say no. Say it was a mistake. Say the truth.

“Okay,” you whisper.

Okay?! Okay?!

“Okay,” he echoes, and the smile breaks fully across his face, transforming him from handsome to devastating. “Good. I’ll find you. Y/N, first year, STEM, right?”

You nod mutely.

“Cool.” He tucks your letter carefully into the pocket of his hoodie, like it’s something precious, like he’s planning to read it later, and the gesture makes your stomach twist with guilt so intense you think you might actually be sick. “I’ll see you around, Y/N.”

You don’t remember leaving the room. You don’t remember the walk back across campus or the elevator ride to your floor or the moment you collapsed face-first onto your dorm bed. All you know is that one moment you were standing in the PC room, and the next you are here, staring at the ceiling, replaying every single agonizing second on an endless loop.

You confessed to the wrong person.

You confessed to the wrong person.

And for some reason that you absolutely cannot comprehend, he said yes.

Across campus, in a PC room that has finally returned to its normal hum of activity, Lee Heeseung pulls a slightly crumpled lavender envelope out of his hoodie pocket and stares at it for a long moment.

“Dude,” says his friend Jay from the next computer over, not bothering to hide his grin. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Heeseung says honestly. And he doesn’t. He’s used to attention, he knows how to handle it, how to smile and nod and gently redirect without hurting anyone’s feelings. It’s a skill he’s developed over the years, the only way he knows to deal with the unfortunate side effect of his people-pleasing tendencies. He’s nice to someone, he helps them with an assignment, he holds a door open or offers a pen, and suddenly they’re looking at him with stars in their eyes, and he doesn’t know how to tell them that he was just trying to be polite without sounding like an arrogant jerk. So he lets them down easy, or he avoids the situation entirely, and his reputation grows in ways that don’t reflect the truth at all.

But this, this is new. A letter. An actual, physical, handwritten letter, with swooping calligraphy and a lavender envelope and a girl who looked so terrified that he thought she might actually pass out right there on the linoleum floor.

She looked at him like he was a natural disaster. Like she was watching a building collapse in slow motion and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

And then she said okay anyway.

“She’s interesting,” Heeseung murmurs, more to himself than to Jay, and carefully opens the envelope.

“Interesting how?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s too busy reading, his eyes moving slowly across the carefully penned words, the ink slightly smudged in places where the writer’s hand might have trembled. It’s beautiful. It’s earnest. It’s the kind of letter that someone writes when they mean every single word, when they’ve poured their entire heart onto the page without holding anything back.

He’s never received anything like it before.

And he wants to know more about the girl who wrote it, the girl who burst into his afternoon like a hurricane of nerves and feelings.

“Jay,” he says, still staring at the letter, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “I think something interesting just walked into my life.”

He doesn’t notice the way his friend shakes his head and mutters something about “here we go again.”

He’s too busy wondering when he’ll see Y/N next.

—————

The following forty-eight hours of your life can be accurately described as a masterclass in strategic avoidance and tactical regret.

You skip two classes. Not on purpose, exactly, you just can’t bring yourself to leave your dorm room when every shadow in the hallway might be Lee Heeseung coming to collect on that coffee date you apparently agreed to in a moment of temporary insanity. You survive on instant noodles and the protein bars your friend left on her desk with a sticky note that said “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY,” which this absolutely qualifies as. You watch three entire seasons of Bridgerton without retaining a single moment because your brain is too busy replaying the PC room incident on a continuous, merciless loop.

“I’m Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”

“I’m okay with starting slow.”

“You’re cute.”

You bury your face in your pillow and scream, but it comes out muffled and pathetic, like a small animal giving up on life.

By day three, you’ve developed a system. You only leave your room during off-peak hours, skittering through campus, your head on a constant swivel. You’ve memorized the locations of every vending machine in buildings Heeseung is unlikely to frequent. You’ve started taking the long way to your remaining classes, cutting through the art department and the greenhouse and once, memorably, a service corridor that smelled strongly of bleach and soap. You’ve become a ghost. A phantom. A creature of the shadows who survives on granola bars and instant noddles.

But the problem with running away from your problems is that your problems don’t actually go anywhere. They just wait. And think about you. And eventually, when you least expect it, they catch up.

It happens on a Thursday.

You’re crouched behind a potted plant near the science building, scanning the courtyard for any sign of tall, attractive informatics students, when your phone buzzes with a text from your best friend, Yunjin.

Yunjin: heard you’ve been living like a sewer rat. want me to bring you real food?

You: can’t. i’m in the middle of a crisis

Yunjin: You’re executing what we talked about yet?

You: it’s in process

Yunjin: at the end of the day, you will have to tell him

You stare at the message for a long moment. It’s such a simple solution. So elegant. So reasonable. And yet, every time you imagine yourself walking up to Heeseung and saying “actually, I meant to give that letter to someone else,” your entire body physically recoils like you’ve touched a hot stove. The humiliation would be astronomical. The look on his face, surprise, then confusion, then that horrible moment of realization that he was never supposed to be the recipient would haunt you for the rest of your natural life. And you’d still have to explain the Jungwon part. And Jungwon would find out. And then you’d be the weird girl who couldn’t even confess to the right person, and Heeseung would be the guy who got accidentally confessed to, and everyone would laugh about it for weeks, and-

Your phone buzzes again.

Yunjin: i can hear you overthinking from across campus. just rip off the bandaid. what’s the worst that could happen

You type back a single message: he could tell everyone and i’d have to transfer schools and change my name and become a farmer in New Zeland

Yunjin: dramatic. but valid. good luck with your plant hiding

You shove your phone back into your pocket and peek around the potted plant again. The courtyard is clear. This is your window. You take a deep breath, steel your nerves, and scuttle out from behind the foliage.

The plan for today is simple: find Heeseung, explain the misunderstanding, and disappear forever. You’ve spent the entire morning psyching yourself up for this. You’ve practiced the speech in the mirror seventeen times. You’ve even written a script on your phone that you can refer to in case of emergency. It’s thorough, it’s clear, it leaves absolutely no room for misinterpretation, and it ends with a sincere apology and a polite request that you both pretend this never happened. It’s perfect. It’s foolproof. All you have to do is locate the target.

Easier said than done. You’ve been looking for him since yesterday, not to talk to, but to observe from a safe distance so you could plan your approach and the universe, in its infinite comedic wisdom, has made him completely unfindable. It’s like he vanished off the face of the earth the moment you actually wanted to see him. Three days ago, you couldn’t walk three feet without catching a glimpse of him, but now? Now he’s a ghost. A myth. A concept rather than a physical entity.

You’re going to have to ask for help.

This is, objectively, a terrible idea. Asking for help means talking to people, and talking to people about Heeseung means potentially revealing that you’re looking for him, which means potentially revealing why you’re looking for him, which means the whole campus could know about the letter situation by lunchtime. But you’re running out of options, and you’re running out of granola bars, and you can’t live behind potted plants forever.

You find your informant near the engineering building, a girl with neon green headphones and a laptop covered in stickers, sitting on a bench and typing furiously at something that looks like code. She seems approachable. She seems like she won’t ask too many questions. You approach with what you hope is casual confidence and not the desperate energy of someone who has been living on protein bars.

“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out surprisingly normal. Points for you. “Do you know where I can find Lee Heeseung? Third year, informatics?”

The girl looks up, her eyes flicking over you with mild curiosity. She doesn’t ask why you’re looking for him, which makes you want to hug her. “Heeseung? Yeah, I think I saw him heading to the quad about ten minutes ago. Something about meeting up with some people before his next class.”

The quad. Of course. The most open, public, exposed location on the entire campus. The place where literally everyone congregates. The absolute last place you want to have a conversation about accidental love confessions.

“Great,” you say, and your voice is definitely an octave higher now. “Great. Thank you. Thanks. So much.”

The girl gives you a weird look, shrugs, and goes back to her coding.

You’re already moving, your feet carrying you toward the quad before your brain can catch up and talk you out of it. This is fine. This is progress. You’ll find him, you’ll pull him aside, you’ll give him the speech, and then you’ll be free. You’ll be a normal person again. You’ll be able to walk through campus without checking every corner for a tall informatics student who thinks you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date.

The quad is bustling when you arrive, clusters of students sprawled across the grass and gathered around the stone benches near the fountain. The afternoon sun is bright and warm, the kind of weather that makes everyone want to be outside, which is lovely and picturesque and deeply inconvenient for your purposes. You squint against the glare, scanning the crowd for a familiar dark-haired figure.

No Heeseung.

You circle the perimeter, weaving between groups of friends and dodging a frisbee that comes sailing dangerously close to your head. You check near the fountain, near the big oak tree, near the cluster of food trucks that’s set up along the east edge. Still no Heeseung. Your informant said ten minutes ago, he should be here. Unless he already left. Unless you missed him. Unless this is a sign from the universe that you should give up and commit to the farmer life plan after all.

You’re so focused on your search that you don’t notice someone approaching until a shadow falls across your path, and a voice, warm, familiar, the exact voice you’ve been daydreaming about for four months, says:

“Y/N? Hey, it is you!”

You look up.

Yang Jungwon is standing right in front of you, smiling like the sun just came out from behind a cloud, and every single coherent thought in your brain immediately evaporates.

He’s wearing a soft-looking cream sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his dark hair is slightly windswept, and there’s a tiny mole near his chin that you’ve never noticed before but is now seared into your memory forever. He’s holding a book, something with a cracked spine and a title in a language you don’t recognize and he’s looking at you with genuine, undiluted pleasure, like running into you is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.

“It’s me,” you say, because you are a conversational genius. “I mean. Yes. Hi. Hello.”

Smooth. Flawless execution. Ten out of ten.

Jungwon doesn’t seem to notice your complete lack of verbal grace. His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes in exactly the way you’ve catalogued in your mental Jungwon database. “I thought I recognized you. You’re in my philosophy elective, right? Front row, near the window?”

He knows where you sit. He knows where you sit. This is both the best and worst information you’ve ever received, because on one hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, but on the other hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, and now you have to be a normal human being and not the disaster you currently are.

“Front row near the window,” you confirm, nodding a little too vigorously. “That’s me. I like the natural light. For... note-taking purposes.”

“Makes sense.” He shifts his weight, tucking the book under his arm. “You take really detailed notes, by the way. I sat behind you once, and I was honestly impressed. Your color-coding system is no joke.”

Jungwon has looked at your notes. Jungwon has been impressed by your notes. Your brain is short-circuiting at approximately the speed of light, and you have to physically resist the urge to fist-pump in the middle of the quad.

“Thank you,” you manage. “I have a lot of highlighters. Maybe too many. Is there such a thing as too many highlighters? I don’t think so, but I’ve been told my stationery collection is concerning.”

Oh no. Why are you talking about stationery? You need to say something charming. Something witty. Something that will make him see you as more than the girl with the aggressive color-coding system.

“I don’t think it’s concerning,” Jungwon says, and there’s a teasing lilt to his voice that makes your knees go weak. “Passionate, maybe. Dedicated. I respect it.”

“Passionate and dedicated,” you repeat faintly. “That’s... yeah. That’s my brand.”

He laughs, and it’s exactly like you remember, bright and warm, the kind of laugh that makes you want to do whatever you just did again and again just to hear it on repeat. “I like it. Passion is underrated.” He tilts his head, studying you with an expression you can’t quite read. “So what brings you to the quad? You usually eat lunch in the science building courtyard, don’t you?”

Your heart stutters. He knows where you eat lunch. He’s observed your habits. This is either a sign of mutual interest or you’ve accidentally become the subject of a sociological case study, and at this point you’re willing to accept either outcome.

“I’m, um, looking for someone,” you say, and the confession letter debacle comes crashing back into your consciousness like a wrecking ball through a glass window. Right. You’re supposed to be finding Heeseung. You’re supposed to be fixing the misunderstanding. That’s why you’re here. Not to bask in the radiant warmth of Jungwon’s attention like a lizard on a sunny rock.

“Anyone I know?” Jungwon asks, and there’s something in his tone, curiosity, maybe.

“Probably not,” you say quickly. “Just a... just a person. A random person. Not important.”

Jungwon raises an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced, but before he can press further, a new voice cuts through the afternoon air like a knife through butter.

“There you are.”

You freeze. Your blood turns to ice. Every cell in your body screams in unison: run.

Lee Heeseung is walking toward you across the quad, his headphones hanging around his neck and his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jacket. He looks exactly as devastatingly attractive as he did three days ago, which is deeply unfair. His expression is a mixture of curiosity and amusement, and when his eyes meet yours, that slight smile, the one that’s not quite a smirk but definitely is a smirk’s second cousin, curves across his lips.

“I heard you’ve been looking for me,” he says, coming to a stop beside Jungwon like this is the most natural gathering in the world. “You know, if you wanted to see me, you could have just messaged. I would have given you my number at the PC room.”

Jungwon looks between you and Heeseung with visible confusion, his earlier smile fading into something more guarded. “Wait. You two know each other?”

This is it. This is the moment the universe has been building toward. Every terrible decision, every act of cowardice, every misguided attempt to avoid embarrassment, it’s all led here, to this exact spot on the quad, with the wrong guy standing next to the right guy and your entire romantic future hanging in the balance.

“I wouldn’t say know,” you begin, but Heeseung is already talking over you, apparently immune to the desperate telepathic signals you’re trying to beam directly into his brain.

“She confessed to me two days ago,” Heeseung says, and his tone is so casual, so conversational, like he’s discussing the weather or what he had for lunch. “Walked right into the PC room, handed me a letter, told me she’d liked me for a long time. It was very romantic. Very old-school. I was impressed.”

Silence. Jungwon stares at Heeseung. Then at you. Then back at Heeseung.

“She... confessed to you,” Jungwon repeats slowly, and his voice has gone flat in a way that makes your heart splinter into approximately seven thousand pieces.

“Full confession,” Heeseung confirms, still smiling. “I’m thinking we’ll start with coffee. Keep it simple, you know? She’s shy. I don’t want to overwhelm her.”

This is a nightmare. This is a waking, breathing, actively-unfolding nightmare, and you are trapped in it like a fly in amber, unable to move or speak or do anything except watch as every possible future with Jungwon crumbles to dust before your eyes.

Because here’s the thing you realize in that horrible, crystal-clear moment: you can’t correct Heeseung now. Not in front of Jungwon. Not when Jungwon has just been told, in no uncertain terms, that you confessed to someone else. If you explain the truth, that the letter was actually meant for Jungwon, that the whole thing was a catastrophic mistake, then what? Jungwon would know you’d been planning to confess to him, but he’d also know that you somehow managed to mess it up so spectacularly that you confessed to his friend instead. You’d look incompetent at best and completely unhinged at worst. And Heeseung would be humiliated, and Jungwon would be awkward, and you’d be the epicenter of a social catastrophe so immense that all three of you would have to avoid each other for the rest of your academic careers.

You are trapped. Completely, utterly, irreversibly trapped.

“Interesting,” Jungwon says, and the word is so neutral that it cuts deeper than any insult ever could. “I didn’t realize you two ran in the same circles.”

“We don’t,” you croak. “We really, really don’t.”

“We’re just getting started,” Heeseung says cheerfully, and he has the audacity to wink at you. Like this is some kind of adorable inside joke instead of the emotional apocalypse it actually is.

You have to get out of here. You have to escape before the sob building in your chest forces its way out and makes everything infinitely worse. You can feel it pressing against your ribs, hot and insistent, and if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to burst into tears in the middle of the quad in front of both of them, and then the disaster will be complete.

“I have to go,” you blurt out, and you’re already backing away, your feet moving before your brain can issue any kind of warning. “I have… a thing. A class. A lab. A lab class. It’s very important. I can’t miss it. I have to go.”

Heeseung’s brow furrows slightly. “Wait, I thought you wanted to talk to-”

“Nope! No talking! We’re good! Everything’s fine! Bye!”

You spin around and power-walk toward the nearest exit, which happens to be in the direction of the fountain, which you only realize when your foot catches on the low stone ledge and you go sprawling forward with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.

Your knee hits the ground. Your dignity hits the ground approximately three feet to the left. Several people turn to look.

“Y/N!” That’s Jungwon’s voice, concerned and moving closer, and you absolutely cannot handle that right now.

“I’m fine!” you shriek, scrambling to your feet with adrenaline-fueled desperation. “Totally fine! Happens all the time! I’m very clumsy! It’s part of my charm!”

You don’t look back. You can’t look back. If you look back, you’ll see Jungwon’s worried expression and Heeseung’s confused one, and you’ll have to confront the full magnitude of what just happened, and your fragile emotional state simply cannot withstand that kind of pressure. So you run. Not jog, not power-walk…run. Across the quad, past the food trucks, through a gap between two buildings, and out onto the main campus pathway like the hounds of hell are snapping at your heels.

You don’t stop until you reach the arts building, and you don’t start breathing normally until you’ve locked yourself in a practice room on the third floor, surrounded by soundproof walls and a piano that’s seen better days. You slide down against the door, pull your knees up to your chest, and let out a sound that’s halfway between a groan and a wail.

Everything is ruined. Everything. You had one chance, one single, solitary chance to fix the misunderstanding and salvage your dignity and maybe, just maybe, preserve the possibility of something with Jungwon somewhere down the line. And instead, you let your hopeless romantic heart get distracted by a five-minute conversation about philosophy notes and highlighters, and now you’re the girl who confessed to Lee Heeseung, and Jungwon thinks you’re interested in someone else, and there is no conceivable way to untangle this mess without making everything exponentially worse.

You’re going to have to transfer schools. You’re going to have to move to another country. You’re going to have to fake your own death and start a new identity as a goat farmer in New Zeland.

The door handle jiggles behind you. “Occupied!” you yell, your voice cracking.

“Y/N? Is that you?”

Your best friend Yunjin’s voice filters through the door, muffled but unmistakable, and the sound of it is enough to crack the dam you’ve been desperately trying to hold together. You scramble to your feet, fumble with the lock, and yank the door open to reveal Yunjin standing in the hallway with a cup of bubble tea in each hand and an expression of profound concern on her face.

“I saw you running,” she says, her eyes scanning your disheveled appearance. “Like, truly running. I’ve never seen you run before. You once told me running was for people who don’t appreciate the journey.”

“Yunjin,” you crumble, and your voice is so pitiful that she immediately sets down both drinks and pulls you into a hug.

“Okay,” she says, steering you back into the practice room and closing the door behind her. “Okay. Sit down. Tell me everything. What happened? Did you talk to Heeseung? Did you fix it?”

You laugh, but it comes out wrong, high and wobbly, on the edge of hysteria. “Fix it? Fix it? Yunjin, I made it so much worse. I made it so much worse that I think I actually created new dimensions of worse. Scientists are going to have to invent new words to describe how badly I messed this up.”

“That’s... improbable,” Yunjin says carefully. “But I’m listening.”

She settles onto the piano bench, and you collapse onto the floor in front of her, crossing your legs and burying your face in your hands. The story spills out of you in a torrent, the quad, the search for Heeseung, the unexpected appearance of Jungwon, the conversation that made your heart soar, and then the moment Heeseung appeared like a harbinger of doom and casually announced your confession to the one person you never wanted to know about it.

“And then I fell,” you finish miserably. “In front of both of them. And I ran away. And now Jungwon thinks I like Heeseung, and Heeseung thinks I like Heeseung, and I can’t correct either of them without making everything even weirder, and my life is a romantic comedy written by a petty incel.”

Yunjin is quiet for a moment. Then she lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay. That’s... that’s a lot.”

“I know.”

“And you’re telling me you couldn’t just say, hey Heeseung, sorry for the mix-up, the letter wasn’t for you, my bad?”

You look up at her, your eyes rimmed with red. “In front of Jungwon? After Heeseung already told him I confessed? What would Jungwon think of me?”

Yunjin considers this. “That you’re a disaster, probably.”

“Exactly!”

“But a lovable disaster,” she adds. “Disasters can be endearing.”

“Yunjin, please focus.”

She holds up her hands in surrender, but there’s a glint in her eye that you recognize, the one that means she’s about to drop some wisdom on you whether you’re ready for it or not. Yunjin has been your best friend since orientation week, when you both accidentally joined the wrong club meeting and ended up spending two hours in a competitive gardening seminar before realizing your mistake. She’s practical where you’re dreamy, decisive where you’re hesitant, and she’s talked you down from approximately four hundred anxiety spirals since the semester started. If anyone can find a way out of this mess, it’s her.

“Okay,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Let me present you with an alternative perspective.”

“I’m listening.”

“Lee Heeseung,” she says, ticking off points on her fingers, “has a reputation. A big one. Everyone knows it. He’s the guy who’s super nice to everyone, especially girls, and then they fall for him and he gets all surprised when they expect something more, and then things fizzle out because he wasn’t looking for anything serious.” She makes air quotes with her fingers. “Sound familiar?”

You blink. “I mean... I’ve heard things. But he didn’t seem like-”

“That’s his whole thing,” Yunjin interrupts. “He doesn’t seem like it. That’s why it works. He likes when everyone is after him. But nice doesn’t equal interested, so girls get the wrong idea and then they get hurt. It’s a cycle.” She pops a tapioca pearl into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “My point is, you don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to fix this. You just need to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For him to get bored.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Think about it. You’re not actually interested in him, right? You’re not going to fall all over yourself trying to get his attention. You’re not going to be waiting outside his classes or accidentally showing up wherever he hangs out. You’re not going to be like every other girl who’s chased after him.”

You frown. “So... what, I just... do nothing?”

“No, you do the opposite of chasing.” Yunjin grins, and it’s slightly wicked. “You make yourself as uninteresting to him as possible. You’re awkward, you’re weird, you’re clearly not trying to impress him. You don’t dress up when you know you might see him. You talk about boring things. You mention, I don’t know, your extensive collection of vintage stamps or whatever nerdy hobby you can think of. You make yourself boring.”

“I don’t have a stamp collection.”

“Then make one up! The point is, Heeseung is used to girls who want him. If you clearly don’t want him, his interest is going to fizzle out faster than a cheap sparkler. He’ll move on to the next girl who bats her eyelashes at him, and you’ll be free. No confrontation necessary.”

You turn this over in your mind. It’s... not the worst idea you’ve ever heard. In fact, compared to your current strategy of blind panic and tactical fleeing, it’s practically genius. If you can’t correct the misunderstanding without making everything worse, maybe you can just... let it die on its own. Let Heeseung’s fabled short attention span work in your favor. Become so aggressively unappealing that he loses interest within a week and never thinks about you again.

And once he’s out of the picture, once enough time has passed, maybe you can try again with Jungwon. Properly. With better aim.

“You’re a genius,” you tell Yunjin, the hope creeping back into your voice. “An absolute genius. I could kiss you.”

“Please don’t, you’re covered in grass stains.” She nudges one of the bubble teas toward you with her foot. “Drink your tea. Hydrate. And then we’re going to brainstorm all the ways you can make yourself seem as unappealing as possible to a hot third-year informatics student.”

You grab the drink and take a long sip, the sweetness settling something in your chest. For the first time in three days, you feel something other than panic. You feel strategic. You feel determined. Lee Heeseung might think you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date, but he hasn’t met the version of you that’s about to emerge, a version so bland, so uninteresting, so aggressively mediocre that he’ll run in the opposite direction before the week is out.

“Okay,” you say, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. “Okay. Let’s do this. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested starts now.”

Yunjin raises her bubble tea in a toast. “To being boring.”

You clink your cup against hers. “To being boring.”

Somewhere across campus Heeseung is still standing in the quad with a confused expression on his face and a lavender envelope in his pocket, wondering why the girl who supposedly has a crush on him just sprinted away like she was being chased by bears.

He’s not used to this. He’s not used to any of this.

And that, he realizes with a small, bemused shake of his head, is exactly what makes it so interesting.

—————

Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested lasted exactly four days before it encountered its first major obstacle.

That obstacle is approximately six feet tall, has flowing hair that falls perfectly across his forehead, and is currently walking directly toward your table in the cafeteria with a tray in his hands and a smile on his face that suggests he has absolutely no idea he's supposed to be losing interest in you.

You spot him approximately 2.3 seconds too late. By the time your brain registers the approaching danger, you are already mid-bite into a sad cafeteria sandwich, your mouth full of bread and lettuce and the dawning realization that you are trapped. There is no escape route. Your table is in the corner, surrounded on three sides by walls and on the fourth side by Heeseung's rapidly approaching form. You are a cornered animal. A very stupid, very panicked cornered animal with mayonnaise on her chin.

"Y/N!" Heeseung says your name like it's his favorite word, bright and warm and entirely too enthusiastic for someone who's supposed to be a notorious womanizer with a short attention span. "I was hoping I'd run into you. Mind if I sit?"

Mind if he sits? Of course you mind. You mind immensely. You mind with every fiber of your being. Sitting with Heeseung is the exact opposite of what Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is supposed to accomplish. Sitting with Heeseung means talking to Heeseung, and talking to Heeseung means opportunities to accidentally charm him, and charming him is categorically Not The Goal.

But Heeseung is already pulling out the chair across from you, and his smile is so genuine, and there's a tiny bit of what looks like grease on his cheekbone that suggests he's just come from some kind of engineering lab, and you are weak. You are so, so weak.

"Go ahead," you hear yourself say, and then immediately want to punch yourself in the face.

Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested, Day Four, 12:34 PM: catastrophic failure already in progress.

Heeseung settles into the chair with an easy grace, setting his tray down and immediately stealing one of your fries like you're old friends who share food on a regular basis. You watch the fry disappear into his mouth and feel a small part of your soul leave your body.

"So," he says, leaning back and studying you with those dark, unreadable eyes. "You ran away from me pretty fast the other day. Should I be worried? Do I have something on my face?"

He doesn't. He absolutely doesn't. He has the kind of face that belongs on a billboard, all sharp angles and soft edges and that one little mole on his forehead that you are definitely not noticing because noticing things about Heeseung's face is counterproductive to the mission.

"No," you say quickly. "No, you're fine. Your face is fine. I mean, you don't have anything on your face. I just remembered I had somewhere to be. Very suddenly. It was urgent."

"An urgent… lab class?" Heeseung's lips twitch. "That's what you said, right? An urgent lab class on a Thursday afternoon?"

Your face heats. "Yes. Exactly. Lab class. Very urgent. Science doesn't wait."

"Mmm." He pops another one of your fries into his mouth. "Well, the good news is, you don't look like you're in a hurry right now. So we can actually talk. You know, like normal people who are supposedly getting to know each other?"

Right. Getting to know each other. Because you confessed to him. Because he thinks you like him. Because you're living in an elaborate lie of your own making.

This is your chance, though. This is the perfect opportunity to implement Phase One of the Make Him Uninterested plan: Be Weird and Off-Putting. You just have to be the most boring, strange, unappealing version of yourself that you can possibly imagine. How hard can it be?

Pretty hard, as it turns out, because your brain chooses this exact moment to go completely blank.

"So," Heeseung says, apparently unbothered by your silence, "tell me about yourself. What do you like to do for fun? Besides writing beautiful love letters and then running away from the recipient?"

You choke on your own saliva. Just… straight up choke on nothing, like a cartoon character. "I don't…that wasn't…I do normal things. Normal fun things. Like… watching paint dry. And counting ceiling tiles. Very relaxing. You should try it."

Heeseung's expression flickers, confusion, amusement, something in between. "Counting ceiling tiles?"

"There are forty-seven in this cafeteria," you say, doubling down with the desperate energy of someone who has already committed to the bit. "Forty-eight if you count the one that's partially covered by that vent over there. But some people don't count partial tiles. It's a philosophical debate, really."

"Fascinating," Heeseung says, and the worst part is that he sounds like he actually means it. "What else?"

What else? What else can you say that will make you sound completely unappealing? You cast around for inspiration, your eyes landing on your sandwich. Okay. Fine. If words can't do the job, maybe actions can.

You pick up your sandwich with both hands and take the weirdest bite you can physically manage, mouth open slightly too wide, chewing with exaggerated jaw movements, making an unfortunate amount of noise in the process. You feel like a cow. You look like a cow. You are embodying the spirit of a cow, and surely, surely, this is enough to make any self-respecting hot informatics student run for the hills.

Heeseung watches you chew. His expression doesn't change.

"Good sandwich?" he asks mildly.

"Mmf," you say, still chewing, still being a cow. "Very good. I love-"

And then the lettuce hits the back of your throat.

You don't know how it happens. One moment you're chewing normally, well, abnormally, but in a controlled way and the next moment a piece of lettuce stages a rebellion and lodges itself directly in your windpipe. Your eyes go wide. Your hand flies to your throat. You make a sound that is somewhere between a wheeze and a honk.

"Y/N?" Heeseung's amused expression shifts to concern. "Are you okay?"

You are not okay. You are choking. You are choking on lettuce in front of Lee Heeseung in the middle of the cafeteria, and this is how you're going to die.

Heeseung is on his feet now, moving around the table with surprising speed. "Hey, hey, can you breathe? Do you need me to-"

You shake your head frantically, still making dying cow noises, and grab your water bottle with shaking hands. The first gulp does nothing. The second gulp, by some miracle, dislodges the lettuce just enough for you to cough it up into a napkin with all the grace and dignity of a cat hacking up a hairball.

Silence.

The entire cafeteria, you're convinced, is staring at you. In reality, probably only a few nearby tables have noticed, but it feels apocalyptic. You sit there, red-faced and teary-eyed, clutching a napkin full of your own near-death experience, and want the floor to open up and swallow you whole.

Heeseung kneels beside your chair, one hand hovering near your shoulder like he isn't sure if touching you would be welcome. "Hey. You're okay. You're okay, right? Do you need me to get you anything? More water? A doctor? A new sandwich without lettuce?"

His voice is gentle. Genuinely gentle. Not the smooth, charming tone you expect from someone with his reputation, but something softer, something that sounds almost like real concern.

"I'm fine," you croak, your voice ravaged. "I'm fine. That happens. All the time. I'm very bad at eating. It's one of my traits."

"One of your traits," Heeseung repeats, and the corner of his mouth twitches despite his obvious worry. "Being bad at eating?"

"It's a lifestyle choice."

He laughs. Not a polite chuckle or a mocking snicker, but a real laugh, surprised and bright and completely unguarded. He sits back down in his chair, shaking his head, and looks at you with something that is definitely not boredom or disinterest.

"You're really something else, you know that?"

You don't know how to respond to that, so you don't. You just sit there, still clutching your napkin of shame, and wonder how Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has somehow resulted in him laughing at your jokes and looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's encountered all week.

"So," Heeseung says, propping his chin on his hand, "I've been wondering. What made you decide to confess to me? Was there a specific moment? Something I did?"

Oh no.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

This is the worst possible question he could ask. You can't tell him the truth…I didn't mean to confess to you, I meant to confess to your friend, you just happened to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time, please don't hate me…but you also can't just… not answer. He's looking at you expectantly, his dark eyes curious and open, and you have approximately three seconds to come up with a convincing lie before the silence becomes too awkward to recover from.

"Your… kindness," you say, grasping at straws. "You're very… kind. To everyone. I noticed."

Heeseung tilts his head. "My kindness?"

"Very kind," you repeat, nodding vigorously. "So kind. The kindest. I saw you… hold a door open for someone once. It was… inspiring."

"I held a door open."

"A door. Yes. It was a very heavy door. And you held it. For a long time. Multiple people went through. It was very impressive."

Heeseung stares at you for a moment, and you stare back, your face burning, your soul evacuating your body. This is it. This is the moment he realizes you are completely unhinged and decides to never speak to you again. This is the victory of Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested.

"That's…" Heeseung starts, and then pauses. "That's the first time anyone's ever confessed to me because I held a door open. Usually I get compliments about my face. Or my voice. One girl told me I had a nose made to be sat on, which I still don't fully understand."

"Your node is… fine," you say weakly. "I didn't notice your nose. Or your face at all. Just the door. The door was the important part."

"A door," Heeseung says, and that smile is spreading across his face again, the one that makes him look less like a notorious player and more like someone who has just found a particularly entertaining puzzle. "You wrote me a three-page love letter because I held a door open."

"The calligraphy alone took a week," you say, and immediately regret it.

Heeseung laughs again, and this time it's softer, almost wondering. "You're not what I expected," he says. "At all."

"Is that… good or bad?"

"I haven't decided yet." But he's still smiling, and his eyes are still fixed on you with that curious intensity, and you're starting to get the sinking feeling that everything you do, no matter how strange or off-putting you try to be, is having the exact opposite effect of what you intend.

You need a new strategy. Something foolproof. Something so aggressively unappealing that even the most determined people-pleaser can't pretend to be interested.

And then, like a gift from the gods of social awkwardness, the topic of video games comes up.

Heeseung mentions something about blowing off steam after a tough assignment by playing a few rounds of something, and the question slips out before you can stop it: "Wait, do you play League of Legends?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Sometimes. You?"

And that's it. That's the moment the dam breaks.

You don't mean to start geeking out. It just happens. One moment you're thinking be boring, be uninteresting, be bland, and the next moment you're fifteen minutes deep into an impassioned monologue about the current meta, the problems with the jungle role, and why Riot Games needs to nerf a specific champion into the ground before she single-handedly destroys the competitive scene.

"-and don't even get me started on the new items, because the balance team clearly doesn't play their own game, which is fine, whatever, it's not like I have strong opinions about it except I absolutely do, and I wrote an entire essay about it on the subreddit that got like two thousand upvotes, so clearly I'm not the only one who thinks the armor penetration scaling is completely broken-"

You stop.

You stop because you have just realized, with dawning horror, that you have been talking for an incredibly long time without letting Heeseung get a single word in. You have been gesticulating. You have been making sound effects. At one point, you're pretty sure you drew a diagram on a napkin to illustrate the optimal jungle pathing route.

This is it. This is definitely, absolutely it. There is no way a hot third-year informatics student wants to listen to a first-year STEM girl rant about video game balance for fifteen straight minutes. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has just achieved its first genuine success.

You brace yourself for the polite excuse, the awkward glance at his phone, the slow backing away.

Instead, Heeseung leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, and says: "Okay, but hear me out, what if the armor penetration scaling isn't the problem, and it's actually the base damage values that need to be adjusted? Because if you look at the win rate data across different elos, the issue isn't consistent at all levels of play."

You blink.

"I main ADC," he adds, as if this is a perfectly normal confession. "So trust me, I feel your pain about the jungle situation. Do you know how many times I've been left to solo dragon because my jungler was AFK farming? Too many. Too many times."

"You… main ADC?"

"Vayne and Kai'Sa mostly. Sometimes Jhin if I'm feeling dramatic."

You have no response to this. Your brain has short-circuited somewhere around the phrase "win rate data across different elos," and it's still rebooting.

"Your essay on the subreddit," Heeseung continues, pulling out his phone. "What was the title? I want to read it. I love seeing well-reasoned arguments about game balance, and honestly, most of what gets posted is just people complaining without any actual data to back it up."

"It was… it was called The Current State of Armor Penetration: A Statistical Analysis and Why I'm Losing My Mind," you say faintly.

Heeseung types something into his phone, scrolls for a moment, and then his face lights up. "Found it. Two thousand three hundred upvotes and fourteen awards? That's impressive. Wait, you made graphs? You made graphs?"

"I was very passionate about the subject."

"Passionate," Heeseung repeats, looking up from his phone with an expression you can't quite read. "Yeah. I'm starting to get that about you."

He tucks his phone away and smiles at you, and it isn't the smooth, practiced smile you expect from the campus womanizer. It's something smaller. Something realer. Something that makes your stomach do a weird, traitorous flip that you immediately try to suppress.

"You know," he says, tilting his head as he studies you, "you remind me of a mouse."

Your brain screeches to a halt. "A… mouse?"

"Yeah. A little field mouse. The way your nose scrunches up when you're thinking, and how you get all twitchy and skittish when you're nervous. It's cute. It's really cute."

Cute. He calls you cute. He compares you to a rodent and somehow makes it sound like a compliment, and worst of all, worst of all, you can feel a traitorous blush spreading across your cheeks like wildfire.

"I'm not…I don't…mice are not cute. Mice are pests. They carry diseases. I'm basically a health hazard."

Heeseung laughs, and it's the same genuine laugh from before, and he's looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's seen in years. "A health hazard. Right. Well, consider me warned."

He stands up, gathering his tray, and for one beautiful, hopeful moment, you think the ordeal is over. But then he pauses, looking down at you with that unreadable expression, and says the words that haunt you for the rest of the day:

"I was interested before, but now?" He shakes his head, still smiling. "Now I'm really interested. See you around, little mouse."

And then he walks away, leaving you alone at your corner table with a half-eaten sandwich, a napkin full of regurgitated lettuce, and the sinking realization that Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is not only failing, it's backfiring spectacularly.

You try to be weird, and he calls you cute.

You try to be boring, and he engages with your niche gaming opinions.

You try to choke to death in front of him, and he kneels beside your chair with genuine concern in his eyes.

You bang your forehead against the cafeteria table once, twice, three times, not caring who sees. This is a disaster. This is an unmitigated, unprecedented, absolutely catastrophic disaster. Hana's plan was supposed to work. Heeseung was supposed to get bored. He was supposed to move on. He was not supposed to look at you like you're a puzzle he wants to solve, or call you a mouse in a tone of voice that makes your heart do gymnastics, or read your League of Legends essay and compliment your graphs.

You need to regroup. You need to call an emergency meeting with Yunjin. You need to figure out a new strategy before this situation spirals even further out of control.

But first, you need to go to the library and return the books that are due today before you accrue another fine, because no matter how catastrophic your love life becomes, the university library shows no mercy.

—————

The library is your sanctuary. It always has been, a quiet, climate-controlled haven where the smell of old paper and the soft hum of fluorescent lights can soothe even the most tensed of nerves. After the cafeteria incident, you need sanctuary more than ever. You slip through the main doors with your stack of books clutched to your chest, inhaling the familiar scent of knowledge and dust, and feel some of the tension begin to ease from your shoulders.

Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. You return your books, you find Yunjin, you regroup, and you figure out a way to-

"Y/N?"

The voice comes from somewhere to your left, and you know that voice. You know it the way a flower knows the sun, the way a compass knows north, the way a hopeless romantic knows the exact cadence of her crush's greeting.

Jungwon is sitting at a table near the history section, surrounded by a fortress of textbooks and loose papers. He's wearing glasses…glasses…and his hair is slightly mussed from what you assume is hours of intense studying, and he's looking at you with that smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes your entire nervous system short-circuit.

"Hey," he says, waving you over. "What are you doing here?"

Existing in the same space as you, you think. Breathing the same air. Trying not to spontaneously combust.

"Returning books," you say, holding up your stack as evidence. "I have some overdue ones. The library fines are no joke."

"Tell me about it. I had to pay fifteen thousand won last semester because I forgot about a book I'd checked out for a research paper." Jungwon winces at the memory. "My wallet still hasn't recovered."

"That's brutal."

"The library giveth, and the library taketh away."

You laugh, and it comes out surprisingly normal, not too loud, not too high-pitched, just a regular human laugh from a regular human person who is definitely not having an internal meltdown about how good Jungwon looks in glasses.

"Hey," Jungwon says, glancing at the empty chair across from him, "if you're not in a hurry, do you want to study together? I've been here for three hours and my brain is starting to melt. It would be nice to have some company."

Your heart stops.

Yang Jungwon, the Yang Jungwon, the owner of the smile and the laugh and the gummy bears at 2 AM is asking you to study with him. This is the kind of moment you've daydreamed about for months. This is a meet-cute in progress. This is the universe throwing you a lifeline after the cafeteria disaster, a chance to actually spend time with the boy you've been pining over since midterms.

"Yes," you say, before your brain can remind you of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. "Yes, I'd…I'd love to. Let me just return these first."

You practically skip to the returns desk, your heart doing a full backflip in your chest. By the time you make it back to Jungwon's table, your philosophy textbook and notebook spread out in front of you, you've convinced yourself that this is exactly what you need. Some time with Jungwon. Some time to remember why you wrote that letter in the first place. Some time to reconnect with the feelings that got buried under the chaos of the Heeseung situation.

The only problem is that you can't focus on studying at all.

You try. You really, genuinely try. You open your textbook to the assigned chapter. You uncap your highlighter. You fix your eyes on the page and attempt to absorb information about ethical frameworks and moral philosophy. But your eyes keep drifting up, against your will, over the top of your book, to the boy sitting across from you.

Jungwon is studying. Actually studying, not fake studying, not pretending to study while secretly watching you the way you're watching him. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his pen moving steadily across his notebook as he takes notes. Every so often, he pauses, taps the end of his pen against his chin, and then resumes writing with renewed focus. The late afternoon light slants through the window behind him, catching the highlights in his dark hair and making him look like he's stepped out of a painting.

He is beautiful. He's so beautiful that it makes your chest ache, a soft, sweet ache that you've been carrying around since the moment you first saw him in this very library. You watch the way his fingers curl around his pen, the way he bites his lower lip when he's thinking, the way his glasses slide down his nose and he pushes them back up with an absent gesture.

"I can feel you looking at me," Jungwon says, not glancing up from his notebook.

Your entire body jolts like you've been electrocuted. "I wasn't…I was just…there's a clock behind you. I was checking the time."

Jungwon looks up then, and there's a knowing glint in his eyes that makes your stomach do a slow, somersaulting flip. "The clock is to your right, Y/N. Not behind me."

You look to your right. Sure enough, there's the clock, hanging on the wall in plain view, which you would have noticed if you'd spent even one second actually looking for it instead of gazing at Jungwon's face like a Renaissance painter studying their muse.

"I'm… directionally challenged," you say weakly.

"Uh-huh." Jungwon sets down his pen, and the smile playing at the corners of his mouth is soft and teasing and absolutely devastating. "Come here for a second."

"What?"

"Just come here. Lean forward a little."

Your body obeys before your brain can intervene. You lean across the table, your heart hammering so loudly you're certain the entire library can hear it. Jungwon leans forward too, closing the distance between you, and you catch a faint whiff of something clean and subtle, laundry detergent, maybe, or the kind of fragrance that just smells like him.

His hand reaches out, and before you can process what's happening, his index finger gently pokes your cheek.

"Boop," he says.

You make a sound. You don't know what the sound is supposed to be. Maybe a laugh, maybe a question, maybe a plea for mercy. What comes out is something closer to a squeak, a small, strangled, completely undignified squeak that would be embarrassing if you had any brain cells left to feel embarrassment.

Jungwon's smile widens, and his finger lingers on your cheek for just a moment longer than necessary. "You had an eyelash," he says. "Right there. But also, you just looked really cute staring at me like that. I couldn't resist."

Cute. He calls you cute. That's twice in one day that a devastatingly attractive boy has called you cute, and your hopeless romantic heart doesn't know whether to celebrate or go into cardiac arrest.

"I wasn't staring," you whisper, but it comes out completely unconvincing.

"You were absolutely staring." Jungwon withdraws his hand, but his smile stays, warm and fond and knowing. "It's okay. I don't mind. It's kind of nice, actually. Being looked at like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm something worth looking at."

The words settle into your chest like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples through your entire body. He thinks it's nice. He thinks you're nice or at least your staring is nice and he pokes your cheek and calls you cute and now he's going back to his studying like he hasn't just fundamentally altered your brain chemistry.

You try to return to your textbook. The words swim in front of your eyes, meaningless and blurry. You highlight a sentence at random, realize you have no idea what it says, and highlight it again for good measure. The page is now approximately forty percent highlighter ink.

"You're going to run out of highlighter at that rate," Jungwon observes, not looking up.

"I have backups," you say. "I always have backups."

"Of course you do."

The studying session continues for another hour, and you absorb approximately zero information about ethical frameworks. What you do absorb is a comprehensive catalogue of Jungwon's study habits: the way he organizes his notes with color-coded tabs, the way he mutters to himself when he's working through a difficult concept, the way he absentmindedly drums his fingers against the table when he's thinking. Every detail is another entry in your mental Jungwon database, another thread in the tapestry of your affection.

By the time you pack up your things and say goodbye, "See you in philosophy," Jungwon says, and you respond with something that might be words or might be a series of enthusiastic nods, you are floating. You are literally, physically floating, your feet barely touching the ground as you drift out of the library and across campus toward your dorm.

Jungwon pokes your cheek. Jungwon calls you cute. Jungwon says he likes being looked at by you.

You are winning. Despite the Heeseung disaster, despite the cafeteria catastrophe, despite everything, you are winning.

By the time you reach your dorm room, you are a mess of giddy energy with nowhere to go. You close the door behind you, throw your backpack onto your desk chair, and then proceed to wriggle across your bed like an ecstatic worm, kicking your feet and muffling your squeals into your pillow.

"He called me cute," you whisper to your empty room, your voice muffled by fabric. "He poked my cheek. He did the boop thing. The boop thing, you guys. Who does the boop thing? Adorable people, that's who. Perfect people. People with beautiful smiles and kind eyes and-"

You roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. The ceiling has forty-three tiles in your room. You counted them on your first night in the dorm. But right now, all you can see is Jungwon's face, the way he looked at you across the library table, the way his finger felt against your cheek, the way his voice went soft when he said like I'm something worth looking at.

You are going to marry him. You are going to marry Yang Jungwon and have a beautiful wedding with string lights and wildflowers and a three-tier cake, and you will tell the story of how you stared at him in the library and he poked your cheek and-

You stop wriggling.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

You can't marry Jungwon. You can't even confess to Jungwon, because Jungwon thinks you confessed to Heeseung. Jungwon thinks you're interested in someone else. Jungwon was sweet and friendly and maybe a little bit flirty, but that's just his personality. He's nice to everyone. He gives you gummy bears at 2 AM; he probably gives gummy bears to everyone who looks tired. You aren't special. You are just… there.

The giddiness begins to drain out of you, replaced by the familiar weight of reality. You are still trapped in the Heeseung situation. You are still the girl who confessed to the wrong person. And no matter how many times Jungwon pokes your cheek, that fundamental fact isn't going to change.

With a heavy sigh, you drag yourself through your evening routine: shower, skincare, the episode of the baking show you're halfway through and finally crawl into bed around midnight, your emotions a tangled knot of hope and despair.

Sleep comes slowly, a gradual descent into darkness, and then-

—————

You are in the PC room again.

But this time it's different. The lights are dimmer, the computers all dark, the chairs empty. It's just you, and the door is swinging shut behind you, and there's someone waiting at the computer closest to the door.

Heeseung.

He's sitting in the chair, facing away from you, his headphones around his neck and his shoulders relaxed. When he hears your footsteps, he turns, and his expression isn't surprised or amused or curious. It's something else entirely. Something darker. Something that makes your breath catch in your throat.

"You're here," he says, and his voice is lower than you've ever heard it, a rumble that vibrates through your bones. "I've been waiting for you, little mouse."

"I'm not-" you start, but he's already standing, already moving toward you, and you can't seem to make your feet work. You're rooted to the spot, watching him approach with a mixture of fear and something else, something you don't want to name.

He stops inches away from you, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body, close enough that you can see the individual strands of his hair and the curve of his lips and the way his eyes, God, his eyes are fixed on your mouth.

"You know what I've been thinking about?" he murmurs, and one of his hands comes up to brush a strand of hair away from your face, his fingers lingering against your temple. "I've been thinking about that letter. The way you said you only had eyes for me. The way you said you couldn't stop thinking about me."

"That wasn't-" you try, but your voice comes out as barely a whisper, and Heeseung's thumb is tracing along your jawline now, feather-light and devastating.

"I can't stop thinking about you either," he says, and his face is getting closer, closer, and you can feel his breath against your lips. "Do you want to know what I think about?"

Your heart is hammering. Your skin is on fire. You can't move, can't speak, can't do anything except stare up at him with wide eyes as his other hand settles on your waist, warm and solid and pulling you closer.

"I think about this," he whispers, and then his mouth is on yours.

The kiss is…it's…

It's intense. It's consuming. It's the kind of kiss that erases every rational thought from your brain and replaces it with pure, unfiltered sensation. His lips are soft but insistent, moving against yours with a confidence that makes your knees weak. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you make a sound against his mouth, something small and breathless and completely involuntary.

When he finally pulls back, his forehead resting against yours, his voice is rough. "You’re what I’ve been looking for my whole life, Y/N. You’re my miracle."

And then his lips are on your neck, trailing fire down to your collarbone, and your head falls back, and his name escapes your mouth in a way you've never said it before-

He kneels before you, his movements fluid and deliberate. His eyes never leave yours as he unzips his jeans, freeing his already hard cock. It stands proud and thick, the tip glistening with pre-cum. He takes your foot in his warm hand, bringing it to his shaft.

"Look what you do to me," he murmurs, his voice husky with desire. He wraps your foot around his length, his thumb pressing against your arch as he begins to move your foot up and down his cock. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, a low groan escaping his lips.

The sensation of his hot skin against your sole sends shivers through your body. You watch, mesmerized, as he uses your foot to pleasure himself, his hips thrusting in rhythm with the movements of your foot. His other hand moves to your ankle, his grip firm but gentle, his fingers stroking your sensitive skin.

His eyes open, locking with yours again, and the intensity in his gaze makes your breath catch. "You're so beautiful," he breathes, his movements becoming faster, more urgent. "You’re perfect the way you are."

His breathing grows ragged, his muscles tensing. With a guttural moan, he comes, his hot release spilling over your foot and his hand. He leans forward, his tongue darting out to taste his own cum from your skin, his movements slow and sensual. He licks your foot clean, his tongue tracing patterns on your arch, between your toes, sending waves of pleasure through your body.

Then he shifts, positioning himself between your legs. He looks up at you, his eyes dark with desire. "I need to taste you," he says, his voice rough with need.

He hooks his fingers into the waistband of your panties, pulling them down slowly, his eyes never leaving yours. He tosses them aside, then leans in, his breath hot against your most sensitive flesh.

His tongue flicks out, teasing your clit, and you gasp, your hands flying to his hair. He chuckles, the vibration sending another jolt of pleasure through you. "Patience, little mouse," he murmurs against your skin.

His tongue moves in slow, deliberate circles, building your pleasure gradually. He alternates between broad, flat strokes and quick, precise flicks of his tongue against your clit. His fingers join in, one, then two, sliding inside you, curling to hit that spot that makes you cry.

Your hips buck against his face, your breath coming in ragged gasps. "Heeseung," you moan, your fingers tightening in his hair.

He responds with increased enthusiasm, his tongue working faster, his fingers pumping in and out of you. The pressure builds inside you, a coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter until it snaps.

You come with a cry, your body convulsing as waves of pleasure wash over you. But Heeseung doesn't stop. He continues his assault on your senses, his tongue and fingers working in perfect harmony to bring you to the edge again.

And then you are squirting, your release flooding his mouth and chin as he drinks you in, his movements never faltering. He looks up at you, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he laps up every drop.

When he finally pulls away, his face glistening with your juices, he crawls up your body, capturing your lips in a searing kiss. You can taste yourself on his tongue, and the intimacy of it sends another wave of desire through you.

"Tell me you’re only thinking of me," he whispers against your lips, his hands roaming your body. "and not Jungwon."

You wake up.

You wake up in your dorm room, in your bed, at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday morning, with your heart pounding and your skin flushed, your panties soaked and your sheets twisted around your legs like they've been through a battle.

For a long moment, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.

Did you just… did you just dream about… did Lee Heeseung, the guy you're supposed to be making uninterested in you, the guy you've been trying to avoid and ignore and repel, just star in what can only be described as an extremely obscene dream? The virgin you are just cringed at the memory.

You press your hands to your burning cheeks and let out a sound that is somewhere between a groan and a scream.

"No," you whisper to the empty room. "No, no, no. This isn't, this can't…I don't even like him. I like Jungwon. Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon for four months. I wrote a letter to Jungwon. I have a color-coded mental database of Jungwon's habits. I want to marry Jungwon and have a three-tier wedding cake with wildflowers!"

But your brain, traitorous and unhelpful, keeps replaying fragments of the dream, the way Heeseung's eyes go dark, the way his voice rumbles against your ear, the way his hand feels on your waist, the way his tongue is warm and-

You grab your pillow and press it over your face, screaming into it with all the force your lungs can muster.

This is wrong. This is so, so wrong. You are a Jungwon girl. You've always been a Jungwon girl. You don't think about Heeseung like that. You don't think about Heeseung like anything. Heeseung is an obstacle. Heeseung is a problem to be solved. Heeseung is the guy you're actively trying to repel, not the guy who shows up in your subconscious and does things that make you blush in the privacy of your own bed.

"I'm a psychopath," you say to your pillow. "I'm a complete and utter psychopath. Who dreams about this with a guy they're supposed to be making uninterested? A psychopath, that's who. A deranged lunatic. A person with a broken brain."

Your pillow, predictably, does not respond.

You drag yourself out of bed and into the bathroom, splashing cold water on your face and avoiding your own reflection in the mirror. You don't want to look at yourself. You don't want to see the evidence of the dream still lingering in your flushed cheeks…and between your legs.

This is a problem. This is a Major Problem with capital letters and possibly a warning siren. You can't afford to be having dreams about Lee Heeseung. You can't afford to be thinking about Lee Heeseung at all. Your entire strategy, Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested depends on you being able to keep a clear head and a steady heart, and neither of those things is going to be possible if your subconscious keeps ambushing you with extremely vivid, extremely inappropriate content.

You need to talk to Yunjin. Immediately. Before your brain can conjure up any more unauthorized imagery.

But as you grab your phone and type out a frantic message, EMERGENCY MEETING REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY CODE RED REPEAT CODE RED, you can't quite shake the lingering sensation from the dream.

The way Heeseung's thumb traces along your jawline.

The way he calls you little mouse in that low, rumbling voice.

The way he says you were perfect the way you were like he means it, like it's true, like he's been into you his whole life and hasn't even known it.

You shake your head violently, flinging droplets of water across the bathroom mirror.

"Nope," you say out loud. "Nope, nope, nope. We're not doing this. We're not thinking about this. We're going to go to class and eat lunch and avoid all tall informatics students, and we're going to get our brain back on the Jungwon track where it belongs."

But even as you say it, even as you try to mean it, a small, treacherous part of you wonders if maybe, just maybe, the Jungwon track isn't the only track worth following anymore.

You shove that thought into a mental box, lock it, and throw away the key.

You have a plan. You have a strategy. You are going to make Heeseung uninterested, and you are going to figure out a way to untangle the misunderstanding, and you are going to end up with Jungwon like you were always supposed to.

The dream is just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. It can't mean anything.

You refuse to let it mean anything.

(But when you catch yourself glancing toward the informatics building on your way to class, you walk a little faster, and you definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent do not wonder what Lee Heeseung is doing right now.)

—————

The dream haunts you for three days.

Not in a supernatural, ghost-in-the-corner kind of way. More in an I-can't-make-eye-contact-with-my-own-reflection kind of way. Every time you close your eyes, fragments of it flicker behind your eyelids like a movie you hadn't asked to watch. The dark PC room. The way Heeseung's voice drops to a rumble. The phantom sensation of his tongue on your clit, his hand on your ankle, his look-

You physically convulse every time the memory resurfaces, which is approximately every forty-five minutes. Your philosophy notes become a graveyard of distracted doodles, half of which look suspiciously like the curve of someone's jaw. You have to throw away an entire page because you accidentally write "little mouse" in the margin instead of "moral relativism."

Yunjin is no help whatsoever.

"So you had a wet dream about the hot guy who you’re supposedly getting bored of," she says over bubble tea the day after the incident, her expression thoroughly unimpressed. "This is a problem because…?"

"Because I don't like him, Yunjin! I like Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon since midterms! Jungwon is the goal! Jungwon is the three-tier wedding cake!"

"And Heeseung is…?"

"A temporary obstacle! A misunderstanding with legs! A very tall, very inconvenient plot twist!"

Yunjin sucks on her tapioca pearls with the air of a therapist who has heard it all before and is no longer surprised by anything. "You know what they say about protesting too much."

"I am not protesting too much. I am protesting exactly the right amount. I am protesting a perfectly calibrated quantity."

"Sure." She pats your hand with condescending sympathy. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. Oh wait-"

You throw a tapioca pearl at her face. It sticks to her cheek for a solid three seconds before falling off, and the look of absolute betrayal on her face is the only bright spot in your otherwise nightmare-plagued week.

But now it's Thursday. Thursday, 2:15 PM. You're stationed in the science building's main hallway, crouched behind a bulletin board that is absolutely not wide enough to hide your entire body, waiting for the coast to clear so you can sprint to your next class without encountering any tall informatics students.

Your system has evolved since the early days of the crisis. You now have a color-coded schedule of Heeseung's known movements, courtesy of some light reconnaissance work that Yunjin calls "stalking" and you call "strategic intelligence gathering." You know his class schedule. You know his preferred study spots. You know that he tends to grab coffee from the campus café at exactly 3 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means the science building hallway should, theoretically, be a Heeseung-free zone at 2:15.

Theoretically.

You're just about to make your move, a quick dash to the stairwell, then up two flights, then a straight shot to classroom 307, when you hear it.

"Hey, is Y/N L/N in there?"

Your blood freezes. Your muscles lock. Your soul briefly departs your body and then slams back into it with force.

That's Heeseung's voice. That's unmistakably, undeniably, catastrophically Lee Heeseung's voice, and it's coming from approximately ten feet to your left, where the door to your department's main office stands open.

You press yourself harder against the bulletin board, praying for invisibility, praying for a sudden power outage, praying for the ground to open up and swallow you into its merciful embrace. None of these things happen. Instead, you hear the department secretary respond with cheerful obliviousness.

"Y/N L/N? First year, STEM? I think I saw her in the hallway just a minute ago. Let me check, oh, there she is! Y/N! You have a visitor!"

The secretary is pointing directly at your bulletin board. Your bulletin board that is not hiding you at all. Your bulletin board that is, in fact, leaving approximately seventy percent of your body completely visible to anyone who happens to look in that direction.

Heeseung turns.

Your eyes meet.

Time stops.

There are moments in life that feel like they stretch into eternity, moments so profoundly awkward, so cosmically embarrassing, that the universe itself seems to pause and take notice. This is one of those moments. You are frozen in a half-crouch behind a bulletin board, your backpack dangling from one shoulder, your hair escaping from the ponytail you threw it into this morning, your expression one of pure, unfiltered terror. Heeseung is standing in the doorway of the department office, looking unfairly attractive in a simple black hoodie and jeans, his eyebrows rising slowly toward his hairline.

A small crowd of students has paused in the hallway to watch. You can feel their eyes on you like a physical weight. Someone whispers something to their friend. Someone else pulls out their phone.

You are going to die. You are going to perish right here in the science building hallway, and your ghost will be doomed to haunt this bulletin board for all eternity.

"Y/N?" Heeseung's voice is a mixture of confusion and amusement. He takes a step toward you, and you instinctively take a step back, which results in you bumping directly into the bulletin board and causing several flyers to flutter dramatically to the ground. "Were you… hiding behind that?"

"No," you say, too quickly. "No, I was…I dropped something. A contact lens. I was looking for my contact lens."

"You don't wear contacts."

"I might! You don't know my life!"

"Your glasses are literally on your face right now."

You reach up and touch your glasses, which are indeed sitting on your nose, clearly visible, doing their job of correcting your vision. You have no response to this. There is no response to this. You have been caught in a lie so transparent it's essentially a window.

Heeseung's lips twitch. "You know, most people who have a crush on me don't run away and hide behind furniture. This is very confusing for my ego."

The crowd is still watching. Why is the crowd still watching? Don't they have classes to go to? Midterms to study for? Lives to live that don't involve spectating your public humiliation?

"I wasn't hiding from you specifically," you say, because apparently your mouth has decided to operate independently from your brain. "I was hiding from… the sun. It's very bright in here. I'm photosensitive."

"You're a STEM student hiding from the sun in a basement hallway with no windows," Heeseung says slowly. "That's… a new one."

"It's a medical condition. It's very serious. My doctor says I need to avoid direct fluorescent lighting."

"The fluorescent lighting is what's getting you."

"Absolutely. It's my greatest enemy. Well, second greatest. After-" You stop yourself before you can say after incredibly hot informatics students who keep appearing in my life like a recurring nightmare.

Heeseung waits. When you don't finish the sentence, that smile, the one that's definitely a smirk's second cousin, maybe even its first cousin at this point, spreads across his face.

"Well," he says, "now that I've found you and dragged you out of the shadows, literally, I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee. With me. Right now."

Every single person in the hallway is looking at you. The secretary is looking at you from the office doorway, her expression one of grandmotherly delight at what she clearly perceives as a romantic overture. The students who stopped to watch are exchanging glances and whispers. One girl gives you an encouraging thumbs up.

You are trapped. You are cornered. You are a mouse being offered coffee by a very tall, very persistent cat.

And just like every other time Heeseung has put you on the spot, you open your mouth and the wrong words come out.

"I love coffee," you say. "Coffee is my favorite liquid. After water. And possibly juice. But it's definitely in the top three."

"Is that a yes?"

"…Yes."

“good girl,” he murmurs, pushing his glasses up again. “you’re so fucking pretty when you moan like that. louder, baby. please. i love hearing you.”

he buries his face back between your legs like a man starved, licking and sucking with messy enthusiasm. his glasses start to fog up from the heat of your pussy, the lenses catching streaks of your wetness every time he grinds his nose against your clit. he doesn’t care. he just keeps going, desperate to memorize every single sound that makes your thighs shake around his head.

“jake— oh my god—” you cry out, fingers digging hard into his shoulders as you come again, hips jerking against his tongue. your nails drag down his back, leaving fresh crescent moons on top of the ones from yesterday.

that’s what finally breaks him.

he pulls back with a wet gasp, lips swollen and shiny, face covered in your gloss and your juices. his glasses are completely fogged, one lens streaked. he looks wrecked. adorable. filthy.

“can’t— can’t wait anymore,” he pants, voice cracking. he shoves his sweatpants down just enough to free his aching cock, flushed dark and dripping. “need to be inside you, sweetheart. please.”

you barely have time to nod before he’s crawling up your body, kissing you messily. his swollen lips smear your own lipgloss everywhere — your chin, your cheeks, your neck. he bites your bottom lip with a needy whine and pushes in with one deep thrust, burying himself to the hilt.

“fuck— so tight,” he groans, forehead pressed to yours. “you feel so good every single day… i can’t get enough of you.”

he starts slow, like always — rolling his hips deep and grinding against your clit, still trying to be the attentive boyfriend. but then you moan his name all breathy and broken, and something in him snaps.

jake’s glasses slip down his nose as he starts fucking you harder, faster, the wet sound of skin slapping skin filling the room. every thrust punches little squeals out of you and it drives him insane.

“that’s it— fuck, make that sound again,” he begs, voice ragged. “love it when you get loud for me.”

he hooks your legs higher around his waist and pounds into you like tomorrow doesn’t exist — desperate, eager, so focused on making you feel good that his own pleasure almost feels secondary. his back burns deliciously from your nails, fresh marks joining the old ones. every time you scratch him he moans louder, hips stuttering.

“jake— baby— right there— don’t stop—” you cry out, clenching around him.

his glasses are completely fogged up now, sliding down with every hard thrust. he doesn’t take them off. he wants to see you like this — blurry and perfect.

“gonna cum— fuck, sweetheart, cum with me,” he pants, voice breaking into a whimper as he buries his face in your neck, biting down gently.

you come first, nails digging deep into his back as you shake and moan his name like a prayer. jake follows right after with a broken cry, hips jerking sloppily as he fills you up, trembling on top of you.

for a minute the only sounds are both of you trying to catch your breath.

he stays inside you, face hidden in your neck, placing lazy, sloppy kisses wherever he can reach. when he finally pulls back, his glasses are crooked, completely fogged and streaked, lips swollen and red, face shiny with your gloss and your cum.

he looks so proud. so lovesick.

“was that good?” he asks softly, voice shy even after fucking you senseless. “did i do it how you like?”

you laugh breathlessly and pull him down for another messy kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue.

“you’re getting too good at this, nerd,” you tease, gently pushing his foggy glasses up his nose. “we’re really doing this every day?”

jake smiles, dimples deep, cheeks still flushed as he rubs his nose against yours.

“every day,” he promises, already grinding slowly into you again, half-hard. “i’m gonna keep learning you until i can make you scream without even thinking. until i know your body better than my own notes.”

he kisses you again — slow, sweet, and a little bit filthy — swollen lips moving lazily against yours.

“now… tell me what you want next, baby. i’m ready to study.”

© jongst4r, 2026