The sunlight slips through the curtains at the wrong angle, brushing against your face like something gentle enough to ignore. You groan quietly, burying your face deeper into the pillow, instinctively shifting closer to the other side of the bed.

There is a dip in the mattress.

Faint. Subtle.

Like it has always been there.

You settle into it without thinking, your body moving on memory alone. Your arm drifts across the sheets, stopping just short of where she should be. Your fingers curl slightly, like they remember something your mind refuses to say out loud.

“…you’re awake,” you mumble, voice rough with sleep.

A quiet hum answers you.

Soft. Familiar.

“Go back to sleep,” Karina murmurs.

“You woke me up.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re breathing too loud.”

There is a pause.

Then a quiet scoff, almost fond. “You’re impossible.”

You smile into the pillow, eyes still closed.

You stay like that longer than you need to. Suspended in that fragile space between asleep and awake, where everything feels right as long as you don’t move too much. As long as you don’t think too hard.

“…what time is it?” you ask.

“Too early.”

“Rina, baby, that’s not a real answer.”

“It’s real enough.”

You huff softly, dragging your hand lazily across the bed again. This time your fingertips press a little deeper into the mattress, like you are testing the shape of something that isn’t quite there.

“Five more minutes,” you say.

“You said that ten minutes ago.”

“I mean it this time.”

“You always mean it.”

“…and I always fail.”

“Exactly. See, whoever said you’re stupid.”

“I’m guessing you did”

You crack one eye open.

She is there.

On her side, facing you. Hair messy, falling across her face in soft strands. Her expression is calm, a little amused, like she has been watching you for longer than you realized.

“You’re staring,” you say.

“You’re ugly when you wake up.”

“You say that every morning.”

“And I’m always right.”

You squint at her, then reach blindly for the blanket, tugging it up over your face.

“…you’re mean in the mornings.”

“I’m honest.”

“Same thing.”

She laughs quietly, the sound soft enough that it feels like it belongs in this half-asleep world more than anywhere else.

You peek out from under the blanket again.

She’s still in that same position, looking at you.

“You’re still staring,” you mumble.

“You’re still ugly.”

“…rude.”

You push yourself up slowly, stretching your arms over your head. Your hand drifts toward her again without thinking, reaching out to brush her hair away from her face like you always do.

You stop.

Just before contact.

Close enough that it feels like you did it.

Your fingers hover there for a second too long.

“…what?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

You pull your hand back, scratching your cheek instead like that was always the plan.

“Stay here,” you say, swinging your legs off the bed. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“You’re going to burn it again.”

“I burned it once.”

“You burned it three times.”

“Details.”

She shifts slightly, propping her head up with her hand as she watches you. There is something comfortable about it. Like she has always been there in the mornings, watching you fumble your way into being awake.

“You also almost set off the fire alarm,” she adds.

“That was one time.”

“That was the same time.”

“…still counts as once.”

She hums, unconvinced.

You grab a shirt from the chair, pulling it on as you head toward the door. You pause just before stepping out, glancing back at her.

“Don’t move,” you say.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

You nod.

The kitchen greets you the same way it always does. Quiet. Still. A little too neat in places you don’t remember cleaning.

You reach for two plates without thinking.

Set them down.

Side by side.

There is a small pause.

Then you keep going.

Eggs crack against the edge of the pan, the soft sizzle filling the space. It sounds louder than it should in the quiet.

“You’re staring again,” you call out, glancing over your shoulder.

She’s there, leaning against the counter now.

She always leans against the counter.

“I’m supervising,” she says.

“You’re judging.”

“I’m helping.”

“You’re not doing anything.”

“I’m emotionally supporting you.”

You laugh quietly, flipping the eggs with a little more confidence than before.

“Wow,” she says. “Look at that. Almost edible. You’re improving baby”

“You’re so annoying.”

“And yet you keep cooking for me.”

“…I’m a good person and a loving partner.”

“Debatable.”

You reach for two cups, filling both with water. One sits closer to you. The other sits across from you.

Untouched.

You don’t look at it for long.

“You want toast?” you ask.

“You’re going to burn it.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I won’t.”

“…fine. Make it.”

You slide the bread into the toaster, leaning against the counter as you wait. Your eyes drift back to her without meaning to.

She’s watching you again.

Quiet.

“You’re smiling,” she says.

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“…stop looking at me.”

“Make me.”

You hesitate, then grab a piece of bread from the bag, holding it up like a weak threat.

“I will throw this.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“You won’t.”

“…you’re right, I won’t.”

She smiles, and it’s enough to make you lower your hand.

The toaster pops.

You flinch slightly at the sound.

She doesn’t.

You don’t think about it.

“See?” you say, grabbing the toast. “Perfect.”

“It’s slightly burnt.”

“It’s golden.”

“It’s brown.”

“Golden brown.”

She shakes her head, but she’s smiling.

At the table, you sit across from her. Two plates. Two cups.

She looks exactly the same as always.

Like she belongs there.

“You’re not eating?” you ask.

“I will.”

You nod, taking a bite.

It tastes normal. Warm. Real.

“You improved,” she says.

“See? I told you.”

“I didn’t say it was good.”

“You implied it.”

“I implied it was edible.”

“That’s basically the same thing.”

“Not even close.”

You smile anyway.

Your eyes flick to her plate.

Still untouched.

You look away quickly, taking another bite.

“…you always rush,” she says.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I eat at a normal pace.”

“You eat like someone’s going to take it from you.”

“…are you going to take it from me?”

“No.”

“Then I’m fine.”

She hums softly, like she doesn’t fully agree.

You slow down anyway.

Just a little.

After breakfast, you leave the plates in the sink.

Karina’s plate remained untouched. You moved it to the fridge.

You tell yourself you’ll come back.

You always do.

You wipe your hands on a towel, glancing toward the living room.

She’s already there.

She’s always there first.

You walk in, dropping onto the couch with a quiet sigh. The cushion dips slightly under your weight.

You pat the space beside you.

“Come here.”

“I’m already here.”

“Closer.”

She rolls her eyes, but shifts anyway.

Close enough that you can pretend you feel her warmth.

You lean back, letting your head fall against the cushion.

“You’re going to fall asleep again,” she says.

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“…I might.”

She exhales softly, something fond hidden in the sound.

You turn your head slightly, looking at her.

“…stay today,” you say quietly.

She meets your gaze.

“I’m here.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

A small pause.

“…you’re overthinking again.”

You nod.

“…yeah.”

You don’t push it.

Instead, you reach for the remote, turning on something random. The screen flickers to life, filling the room with soft, meaningless noise.

You lower the volume a little.

The click sounds louder than it should.

She doesn’t react.

You don’t think about it.

Your shoulder leans just slightly toward her.

You stop before it actually touches.

“…hey,” you say after a while.

“Hmm?”

“If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?”

She tilts her head, thinking.

“…somewhere quiet.”

“This isn’t quiet?”

“It’s not the same.”

You nod slowly.

“…then I’d go with you.”

She glances at you.

“…of course you would.”

“Someone has to make your breakfast.”

“You’d burn it there too.”

“Wow. You really have no faith in me.”

“I have accurate expectations.”

You laugh softly, letting your head tilt back.

“…what about you?” she asks. “Where would you go?”

You think about it.

Then shrug.

“…here’s fine.”

She watches you for a second.

“…you’re lying.”

“…maybe. But you’re here. So that’s okay.”

The show continues playing in the background, something slow, something neither of you are really watching.

“See,” you murmur after a while. “You’re already falling asleep.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m resting.”

“You say that every time.”

“Because it’s true.”

You smile faintly, letting your eyes close.

For a while, everything feels normal.

Perfect, even.

Like nothing has ever been wrong.

Like nothing could be.

And if you stay like this long enough, you almost believe it.

Later, you order food.

Two portions.

When it arrives, you take both bags from the door.

You glance behind you.

She is still in the living room.

She stays in the living room.

“You didn’t come to get it?” you call out.

“I knew you would.”

You nod.

That makes sense.

You sit at the table again.

Two meals.

She does not touch hers.

You leave it there longer this time.

Long enough for it to go cold.

Even when you throw it away, you hesitate.

Like you are waiting for her to stop you.

She does not.

Evening settles.

You find yourself watching her more.

Not obvious.

Just enough to make sure she is still there.

She always is.

Until she is not.

You are in the middle of talking, turning toward her, expecting that small, unimpressed look.

The space beside you is empty.

Your words stop.

You blink.

She is back.

“…you’re being weird,” she says.

“You disappeared.”

“No I didn’t.”

“You just…”

“I haven’t left”

You nod.

“…yeah.”

Night comes.

It always feels easier.

You sit on the floor, back against the couch. She sits beside you.

Close.

Still not touching.

“You’re thinking again,” she says.

“…I always think.”

“Not like this.”

You let out a slow breath.

“…are you really here?”

Silence.

“…what do you think?” she asks.

“I think you’re right in front of me.”

“Then why don’t you ever touch me?”

Your chest tightens.

“I do.”

“No,” she says gently. “You don’t.”

You look down at your hands.

You do not answer.

“…you didn’t come see me,” she says.

The words land heavier now.

“…what?”

“You didn’t come.”

Your throat feels dry.

“I didn’t know where to go.”

A pause.

“You did, you just didn’t go” she says softly.

The memory presses in before you can stop it.

White flowers.

Too many of them.

People speaking in hushed voices.

A framed photo that you refused to look at.

Your hands clenched so tightly they hurt.

You shake your head.

“I couldn’t.”

She watches you.

Quiet.

“I kept everything the same,” you say, your voice smaller now. “I thought if I didn’t move anything…”

“…then it wouldn’t be real,” she finishes.

You nod.

“Dance with me,” you whisper.

She studies you for a second.

Then nods.

“…okay.”

There is no music.

You stand anyway.

You hold your hand out.

You hesitate.

Then you close your fingers like they are wrapping around hers.

You move slowly.

Carefully.

“…you’re stepping on my feet,” she murmurs.

A weak laugh leaves you.

“You don’t even have feet right now.”

“…rude.”

Your grip tightens around nothing.

You do not look down.

“You love me, right?” you ask.

She looks at you.

Soft.

Certain.

“…you know I do.”

“Say it.”

“…I love you.”

Your chest tightens.

This time, you say it back.

“…I love you too.”

The words feel heavier than they should.

Like they are late.

Like they are meant for somewhere else, another time, another life.

When you stop moving, the room feels still.

“…you know this is goodbye,” she says.

Not a question.

You shake your head.

“…no.”

“You do.”

Your eyes burn.

“I didn’t get to say it properly.”

“You’re saying it now.”

“It’s not the same.”

“I know.”

Silence settles between you.

“I should have been there,” you whisper. “I should have stayed. I should have—”

“You couldn’t,” she says gently.

“I could have.”

“You didn’t.”

The truth sits between you.

Heavy.

Unavoidable.

“…say goodbye,” she whispers.

You close your eyes.

Your hand tightens around nothing.

“…goodbye, Karina.”

When you open them, she is gone.

This time, you do not call out.

You already know.

The room is exactly the same.

But it feels different.

Not emptier.

Just… honest.

The next morning, the sunlight feels too bright.

You sit at the table with one plate.

One cup.

You eat slowly.

When you finish, you wash everything right away.

You do not leave anything behind.

Later, you pick up your phone.

You scroll up.

Message after message.

All sent.

None answered.

Your thumb hovers for a moment.

Then you type again.

I’m sorry I didn’t come see you. I’m sorry I didn’t show up in time. Maybe in another life, my love.

You stare at it.

Then, slowly, you press send.

The message delivers.

It sits there.

Quiet.

Unanswered.

You lock your phone.

You do not open it again.

A song plays softly from your record player.

Familiar.

It’s late.

The moon is out, and the city sleeps.

You stand in the middle of the room.

You take a step.

Then another.

Your body remembers the rhythm.

Even if nothing else does.

You close your eyes.

For a moment, it feels like she might still be there.

You open them.

You are alone.

You reach out nonetheless

You keep moving anyway.

Slow.

Unsteady.

And even when the song ends, you continue dancing.

Except, yeah. No. The so-called universe clearly had other ideas, because here you were, hands tied, a thick, uncomfortable blindfold over your eyes, and the scent of incense hanging around you like a curse. The blindfold ripped off with a tug, and there they were: three figures in dark robes, all with candles, strange charms, and enough assorted witchy knick knacks to look like a shitty halloween costume. Bound by a chalk-drawn circle on the cold stone floor, you realised the truth. You’d been kidnapped. By a cult.

Of course you had.

"I know, I know," you muttered under your breath, almost amused despite it all. Of course they were a cult. That’s just your luck. “Honestly, blame the author. Cliche little shit.”

“Hey, umm, fellas, can we talk this out?” You look around, trying desperately to get one of the cultists to look at you, but to no avail. “Let us begin.” The one most clad in regalia spoke, the other two nodding, as they began to chant softly.

You look at them in light amusement, despite the predicament you found yourself in. This all seemed ridiculous. This stuff didn’t exist. As if the world was on an agenda to prove you wrong today, from a small amulet lying on the table emerged a smoky figure, a cute but seemingly sinister smile on her face as her arms stayed close. Seeing the figure emerge, the three cultists immediately bowed down. “Who awakens me from my slumber.” The deep and husky voice of the figure boomed, her voice as smooth as velvet and twice as dangerous. “Oh exalted one, we bring you this fine sacrifice as an offering for your great power.” The main cultist spoke.

Sacrifice. Yeah, that word did not sound good. Panicking, your mind began to whir, neurons firing, trying as hard to think of something, a way to get out of this. “Wait! May I speak?” You quickly say, forcing the words from your mouth. All three cultists glared at you like they wished they’d gagged you sooner, one of them even moving to push you down. But with a snap of her fingers, the spirit stilled them, her gaze settling on you, curious and amused. “Speak.” “Oh exalted one, I bring you these 3 cultists as an offering for your great power.” You quickly say. There was a beat where you weren’t sure she’d respond at all, and then, she laughed—a low, husky chuckle that filled the room. “I accept.” She said, fingers snapping once again, the 3 cultists disappearing, the ropes around your wrist going free.

The spirit stood with her arms crossed, watching you with a gaze that was sharp but softened at the edges. She tilted her head, considering you, and then gave a faint, almost reluctant sigh, as if this entire situation had been some unnecessary hassle she couldn’t quite bring herself to resent.

“Well,” she said slowly, as if choosing her words carefully, “I guess you did offer those cultists. So, I owe you.” She paused, the hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth. “Three wishes. Don’t get too excited.” Her tone was cool, but there was a flicker in her eyes—curiosity, maybe, or the barest hint of a smile she hadn’t meant to let slip. Her arms dropped from their crossed position, one hand falling casually to her side, as if relaxing just enough to test the waters.

“So,” she continued, studying you with a mix of amusement and intrigue, “what’s it going to be? ”

You raised an eyebrow. “A little excited, aren’t we?”

A tiny snort escaped her, and she gave you a look somewhere between exasperated and amused. “It’s my duty, I don’t have a choice… but I’ll admit, you’re… a little more interesting than most of the mortals who’ve tried summoning me before.”

You couldn’t help but grin, sensing you were maybe, just maybe, getting through her walls. “Guess that’s something, right?”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. “So,” she said again, her voice a touch less frosty, “let’s hear it. What’s your first wish?”

You raised your hands, giving her a quick shake of your head. “Look, Genie woman-” “I’m not a genie! And call me Irene.’ Irene said almost indignantly

“Alright, Irene, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t actually need any wishes,” you said, surprised at your own words even as they came out. “I mean, sure, it’d be nice to have a few things, but I don’t want to get into any of this business.”

Her eyes widened slightly, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Excuse me?” she replied, her voice cool but laced with an edge of irritation. “You dragged me out of slumber, and now you’re… passing on your wishes?”

You shrugged, feeling strangely casual despite her intense stare. “In my defence, I didn’t wake you, the cultists did. And in the end, you got the cultists; I got to walk out of this situation without a scratch. So, no harm, no foul?”

She let out a frustrated sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’s not that simple.” Her voice softened, but you could still hear the exasperation there. “Without the wishes, I’ll be… bound to you.” Her cheeks flushed a faint pink, which she tried to hide by looking anywhere but at you. “Until your wishes are granted, I can’t sever the connection. It’s… an inconvenient rule.”

You paused, processing that, and she gave you an indignant look.

“Before you get any ridiculous ideas,” she added, her tone defensive, “this isn’t some arrangement I chose. It’s an ancient pact, one I’m obligated to follow.” She shifted uncomfortably, almost as if she were embarrassed to admit it. “So, if you have any decency, you’ll make your three wishes and let me be on my way.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise it was that serious,” you replied, trying not to smile at how put out she seemed. 

“Can’t I wish for your freedom?” 

“For the last time, I’m not a genie!” Irene said, her indignation now in full force

“So if I don’t make these wishes… you’re stuck with me?”

Her jaw clenched, her eyes narrowing. “Unfortunately, yes. And trust me, the last thing I need is to spend my time… babysitting a stupid human.”

There was a faint, grudging warmth to her tone, like she was trying to convince herself she didn’t mind either way. And maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t entirely against the idea. But the flash of vulnerability was gone in an instant, and she folded her arms, looking at you with an expectant glare.

“Well, give me some time to think about it, is that okay?” You ask with a sheepish smile.

“Fine, but you’d better not make me wait.” Irene grunted, rolling her eyes before she snapped her fingers, her form turning to mist, absorbed into a spiral, flying towards the amulet.

You stared at the amulet dumbfoundedly, scratching your head. This was going to be a tough sell in therapy

“Finally here to make your first wish?” Irene grumbled as she appeared in a swirl of smoky tendrils. But when she took in the sight of you—cross-legged in a bright blue monster onesie, surrounded by enough snacks to feed a village, her confident smirk immediately faltered.

Her gaze swept over the scene, and she raised an eyebrow, scoffing. “What is all this? Some weird human ritual? Or are you trying to summon a spirit with all this… junk food?”

You rolled your eyes, catching the way her lips twitched in what might have been amusement. “No, no, nothing like that. Jimin was supposed to come over for a sleepover, but she got called into work at the last minute. And… Well, the food was for her. She eats like a bear.”

Irene huffed, crossing her arms with a look of supreme indifference. “And that concerns me why?”

“Well…” you looked up at her, trying out your best pleading eyes. “I was hoping maybe you’d help me out with it?”

“Help you out?” She arched an eyebrow, her look turning sceptical. “Let me get this straight. You’re going to waste one of your precious wishes… on food?”

You nodded, trying not to laugh. “It’s my wish, right? So technically, I can do whatever I want with it?”

She crossed her arms, lips pursed, clearly torn between annoyance and disbelief. “Fine, whatever,” she muttered, snapping her fingers. “But don’t blame me if you regret it.”

With a flash, her elaborate robes transformed into soft, striped pyjamas in muted blues and browns, her hair pulled back in a neat braid, with a scrunchie around her wrist. She looked down, then let out an irritated huff, tugging at her sleeves as if they were a personal affront.

“Um… what exactly are you doing?” you asked, biting back a laugh.

She scowled, face flushing slightly. “Look, you weren’t specific, okay? So this is what you get. I’m ‘dealing with the food,’ just like you asked.” She added the last part in a mumble, like she was thoroughly unimpressed with herself, her indignation less befitting of a supernatural power and more fit of a teenage girl stuck at home, eliciting a chuckle from you

“Uh-huh. Well… have a seat,” you said, patting the couch beside you. “And, for the record, you look amazing.”

Irene went rigid, her cheeks taking on a noticeable pink hue as she shot you a glare. “D-Don’t say dumb things like that! It’s not like I dressed up to impress you, okay? Besides, I’m a supernatural being, of course I look amazing” she snapped, but despite her protest, she slowly sat down beside you, folding her arms and turning her face away.

You just chuckled, hitting play on the remote.

A few minutes into the movie, you noticed Irene sneaking little glances at the screen. She was practically rolling her eyes at every line, but you could tell she was getting into it, her lips starting to move along to the songs.

“Seriously? Aladdin?” she asked, voice laced with mock disdain. “I’m not a genie, you know.”

“Hey, I just wanted a way to explain you to Jimin. Aladdin was the closest thing I could think of.”

“Ugh, whatever.” Irene groaned, lying down as the movie started. As the movie played, you couldn’t help but chuckle. Irene wasn’t fooling anybody. She was acting like she’d rather be anywhere but here, but she was the one humming the songs, the one bobbing her head. She seemed almost human. “What’re you looking at, stupid human.” She mumbled the last part, blushing, clearly realising that she had been caught. “Nothing, nothing, you just look really cute like that.” “Shut up!” Irene grumbled

When the movie finally ended, she cleared her throat, fixing you with a glare that was more defensive than angry. “Alright, I have to know—why would you waste a wish on something this ridiculous? You have all this power, and you just… use it on snacks?” She sounded incredulous, as if your choice was somehow a personal offence to her.

You shrugged, the humour fading from your voice. “I don’t know… I just think this kind of power doesn’t belong in anyone’s hands. ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ right? I don’t think anyone ever did the world any good by trying to play god.” “That’s….new. Most of the people who used my powers just used it for their own selfish gain, but you’re different.” Irene pondered “Well, like you said, I’m an interesting mortal.” You quipped with a smile. “Stupid, but an interesting mortal.” Irene grunted. “So how does this go, does the wish just consume itself.” “Well, no, you need to say, my first wish has been granted.” Irene explains. “Alright, umm, my first wish has been granted.” You say, causing Irene to slip back into the amulet

You’d been pacing your room for nearly an hour, turning over your next wish in your mind. You were conflicted on this one. On the one hand, you didn't want to make wishes that were just made to benefit you, but…on the other hand, how much harm could this wish be? And this got Irene one step closer to being unbound from you anyways

In a swirl of smoke, Irene appeared, arms crossed, her gaze flicking over you with that ever-present mixture of annoyance and exasperation. "Another wish already?" she drawled, her voice dripping with boredom. "This had better be important. I’m busy."

You winced a little at her tone but pressed on, determined. “I—uh—I’ve got my high school reunion coming up, and, well... I don’t have a date. I was wondering if you could, you know, help out? Just, like, make sure I don’t show up looking like a total disaster?”

Irene raised an eyebrow, not a hint of sympathy in her expression. "So, let me get this straight. You want me to pretend to be your date? For a whole night? To keep up the charade for your high school buddies?" She scoffed, her voice thick with mockery. "Honestly, humans are so pathetic sometimes."

You shifted, feeling the familiar sting of her words, but held your ground. "I don’t need anything fancy. Just someone who won’t make me look like I’m still living in the basement."

Irene rolled her eyes. “Honestly, humans are so pathetic sometimes,” she muttered, but her gaze softened just a touch. With a deep sigh, she snapped her fingers, and in a swirl of light, her usual flowing robes were replaced by an elegant black dress, sleek and understated yet somehow breathtaking. Her hair was swept up in a loose, casual style, a few strands framing her face, and there was a faint flush on her cheeks as she looked you over with barely-concealed irritation.

“Wait,” you stammered, staring at her in surprise. “You… you’re my date?”

Irene scoffed, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from her shoulder. “What? You thought I’d conjure up some random person and just send you off? That’s not how this works,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. “I’m your wish, so I’m the one going.”

You struggled to keep a smile off your face, but she must have caught the glimmer of excitement in your eyes because she immediately turned away, feigning exasperation. “Don’t get any ideas. This is strictly for show,” she muttered.

The reunion venue buzzed with familiar faces and old classmates, some of whom you hadn’t seen since graduation. The moment you walked in with Irene on your arm, heads turned. Her cool, detached beauty drew immediate attention, and whispers trailed after you as people cast curious glances in your direction.

Irene’s expression remained perfectly unreadable, though you noticed her eyes darting around, subtly assessing the room with a hint of wariness. You leaned toward her, whispering, “See? You’re already the most intimidating person here.”

She huffed, but a small, self-satisfied smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Hardly a challenge, considering,” she murmured.

The reunion was in full swing, the laughter and chatter echoing around the grand ballroom as old friends and classmates reunited. Irene stood beside you, her presence commanding attention in a way that almost made you forget your nerves. She was cool and collected, her eyes scanning the room as if nothing could faze her.

“Everything okay?” you asked, still a little self-conscious as people gave you curious looks when they saw Irene on your arm. It was hard to ignore the whispers floating around.

Irene turned to you, her expression unreadable but softening just a fraction. “Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked, her tone casual but with a hint of something else—a little amusement at your discomfort. "People just like to gawk at anything different, don’t worry about it."

You nodded, unsure how to respond. It was obvious that she didn’t care about the stares. She never did. But you weren’t quite as unaffected. Still, the fact that she was here with you helped ease the tension. In her presence, with her arm looped around yours, the room didn’t feel so intimidating.

The evening passed by in a blur, with Irene at your side, casually deflecting people’s attempts to engage with her with a polite but icy tone. Her reactions ranged from curt one-liners to complete disinterest, but something about the way she carried herself made everyone respect the boundaries she set. They knew better than to push.

You caught up with some old friends, and every now and then, Irene would lean in close, offering a dry comment or two. When someone mentioned an awkward moment from high school, she would casually toss out a sarcastic remark that left the group laughing in spite of themselves. It felt almost like she was part of the conversation, even though her presence remained otherworldly.

It was when the slow music started playing, and the floor cleared a little, that Irene surprised you. She didn’t flinch when you tentatively extended your hand, as if she hadn’t even thought about it. “You’re going to make me look bad, aren’t you?” she said with a raised eyebrow, her lips curling just slightly.

You couldn’t tell whether she was teasing or genuinely reluctant. But either way, you didn’t have the courage to let the moment pass. You gently took her hand, feeling the softness of her skin and the coolness of her touch. “Just for the night,” you said quietly.

Irene nodded, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “Fine,” she muttered, but you saw the look in her eyes. There was something real there, a quiet warmth that surprised you. Something that said she didn’t mind it as much as she let on.

The music drifted through the room, the melody slow and soft, and you both swayed to it with an ease you didn’t expect. It wasn’t a grand, ballroom dance—just the quiet movements of two people trying to blend in.

Irene’s grip on your hand was firm but relaxed, her other hand lightly resting on your shoulder. The faintest glow of the room’s dim lights made the curves of her face softer than usual, and for the first time, she didn’t look like she was trying to escape.

“You’re not half-bad at this,” she said quietly, her voice almost a whisper as her gaze met yours. The teasing edge was gone, replaced by something else—something almost vulnerable. “You should get used to it. People will start thinking we’re a real couple.”

You tried not to let her words throw you off guard, but a small smile tugged at the corners of your mouth. “Is that so?” you teased, feeling a little emboldened. “Would that bother you?”

For a split second, Irene’s eyes flickered with something you couldn’t place—something deeper, more genuine—before she straightened, letting the mask fall back into place. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said firmly, though there was a softness to her voice that didn’t quite match the sharpness of her words. “This is all for show.”

You wanted to laugh but held it in, not wanting to break the fragile moment between you, though you had to admit, you’d been enjoying yourself, and hearing that it was all for show hurt a little. Instead, you just nodded. "Of course," you murmured, your eyes lingering on hers. She quickly averted her gaze, but there was still a softness there that hadn’t been there before.

For the next few moments, you both continued to sway together, caught in the rhythm of the music. You could feel the tension between you, the space between what she wanted to be and what she was allowing herself to feel.

And then, just as the song was about to end, Irene squeezed your hand—a fleeting touch that almost felt like an accidental intimacy. Her gaze met yours for the briefest moment, a look that spoke volumes, but she quickly pulled away, her cool, aloof demeanour returning in full force.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she muttered again, but the glimmer of a smile was still present, hidden behind her usual sarcasm. 

You watched her for a moment, noting the pink in her cheeks that she was desperately trying to ignore. “Thanks, Irene,” you said, your voice soft but sincere.

She rolled her eyes and took a step back. “Whatever. You’re welcome.” Irene said, unable to contain a blush as she looked away

The rest of the night passed in a similar rhythm. Well, you hoped it would, but clearly not.

As the night wore on, the buzz of the reunion picked up, and more familiar faces came and went. The wine flowed freely, and the tension between past and present felt less like a weight and more like a strange mix of nostalgia and regret. You were starting to relax, enjoying the unexpected camaraderie of having Irene by your side. It had become clear she wasn’t just tolerating the evening anymore—she was leaning into it, in her own subtle way. Her usual sarcastic quips were still there, but they had a bit more warmth, a bit more playfulness.

It was then that the moment you’d been dreading—Jackson—finally made his appearance.

You hadn’t seen him in years, but it didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to spot you. His face twisted into that familiar smug grin, the one you’d spent high school trying to avoid. He sauntered over, drink in hand, his eyes immediately darting to Irene. It only took him a moment to size her up, his grin widening into something far too pleased with himself.

“Well, well, well…” He looked at you first, then back at Irene, his gaze lingering longer than it should have. “What do we have here? I didn’t think you’d ever get a date for this thing, but, well, it seems you’ve outdone yourself.”

You tried to keep your expression neutral, but the old sting was still there, the reminder of high school’s worst moments rising to the surface. He wasn’t just an ass, he was an expert ass—a master at making people feel small.

Irene, however, didn’t flinch. Her eyes flicked over him, cool as ever. But the way her lips twisted, just slightly, into something that wasn’t exactly amusing caught you off guard. She wasn’t about to let him ruin your night. She wasn’t about to let anyone do that.

“So,” Jackson continued, taking a step closer to Irene with a suggestive grin, “did you get roped into this too, or are you the one with the real taste in men? Because, I gotta say” He motioned toward you, still grinning like he had the upper hand. “You could do a lot better.”

You tensed, but before you could say anything, Irene stepped in, her voice suddenly colder than the temperature of the room.

“Excuse me?” she cut in sharply, her tone dangerously sweet. “You think I’m here because I was roped into it?” She looked him over like she was inspecting a particularly repulsive insect. “No, darling, I’m here because I wanted to be. I wouldn’t waste my time with someone like you if I were paid to. And trust me,” she added, her voice turning slightly mocking, “I can do better than someone who thinks their charm is something worth showing off.”

The asshole’s smug expression faltered just slightly, his confidence wavering. “You can’t seriously think—” he began, but Irene cut him off again, her voice sharper than a whip.

“Oh, but I do.” Her eyes flashed with an icy intensity that made him take a step back. “But here’s the thing, buddy—you might want to look in a mirror and reconsider who’s really the joke here.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. It was the kind of smile that made people feel small. “I’m here, because I want to be here, and there is no one else I’d rather be here with. You talk a big game, but you’re just a sad sack, at least Y/N is a good person, someone who doesn’t make me want to smoothen out my ears with sandpaper”

Jackson blinked, clearly stunned by her words. He opened his mouth to respond, but Irene didn’t give him a chance. Her voice, calm and controlled, broke through the tension like a blade.

“If you’re really trying to flirt with me,” she continued, “you might want to step up your game. You might have been cute back in high school, still I doubt it, never had a thing for bullies with a Napoleon complex bigger than their little peanuts, but now? Well, it’s clearer now that nothing about you’s changed. You’re still the same pathetic little boy trying to prove something that doesn’t matter.”

His face turned a shade of red you couldn’t quite describe. He opened his mouth again, stammering, but no words came out. Finally, he turned on his heel, muttering something under his breath before practically running away.

You stood there, blinking in shock, your heart pounding in your chest. That had been… unexpected. Irene was usually so detached, so indifferent, that seeing her actually stand up for you—really stand up for you—felt different 

She stood there for a moment, arms crossed, her usual confident mask still in place. But when she turned to you, her eyes softened for just a moment, concern, care, maybe even a tinge of affection, all wrapped in one, just enough that you could see the faintest glimmer of something like… pride?

“You’re not a complete disaster, you know,” she said quietly, looking at you as if she were trying to convince herself more than anything. “That guy was pathetic, but you? You’ve got more going for you than you think.”

You blinked, not entirely sure how to respond. “Thanks,” you said after a beat, your voice soft but full of sincerity.

She rolled her eyes, the typical Irene sarcasm flooding back. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t about to let him run his mouth. Someone had to shut him down.” Her gaze flickered briefly to the spot where Jackson had since retreated, and she smirked. “Honestly, he deserved it. Can’t believe people like that still exist.”

You could see her trying to hide the fact that she did care, that she hadn’t just defended you out of duty. But the way her gaze lingered on you for a second too long gave it away.

“Let’s just get out of here,” she muttered, her hand brushing yours as she moved to leave the crowd behind. But before you could walk away, she glanced over her shoulder. “And don’t think for one second I’m doing this for you. I’m only here because I’m bored. Remember that.”

Just as you were about to leave, however, you heard a soft song began to play. “May I have one last dance?” You asked, bowing your head as you extended your hand to Irene. Irene didn’t immediately respond, and for a moment, you thought she might dismiss you or make some sharp comment. But when you looked at her, you saw something else—something subtle in the way she relaxed, just a fraction. She sighed, eyes flickering from you to the floor and back again, and for the briefest moment, you saw that tiny spark of warmth she usually hid so well.

“Don’t make me regret this. You’re lucky I like this song.” she muttered, her voice soft but steady.

With a small, almost imperceptible smile, you led her to the centre of the ballroom. The music swelled around you, filling the space with a gentle rhythm as the two of you settled into the dance. The movement was slow, effortless—just the two of you, caught in a moment of quiet connection. Irene’s hand rested lightly on your shoulder, and hers in your hand was warm, soft, but her fingers still held that quiet, guarded strength that reminded you who she was.

Her gaze stayed just slightly averted, a faint blush colouring her cheeks. It wasn’t something you were used to seeing, and it made your heart skip a beat. You’d seen her icy exterior so many times, but here, in the privacy of this slow dance, there was something else—something less perfect, less guarded.

“I didn’t expect you to dance like this,” she said, her voice surprisingly soft, the teasing edge in her tone barely there. “I thought you'd be a disaster.”

You chuckled quietly, not wanting to break the delicate silence between you. “Well, I’m full of surprises.”

Her lips quirked, so subtle it was barely noticeable, like a wind in the storm. "I guess so." She shifted slightly, her other hand resting gently on your arm, her movements smooth, as though she was slowly letting go of her usual defenses. For a moment, you felt her melt into you, and it made your chest tighten with something you couldn’t quite place.

The song continued, and the two of you swayed in perfect rhythm, as though you’d done this a hundred times before. You couldn’t help but notice how close you were now, how every little movement seemed to draw her nearer. The smell of her perfume lingered in the air, warm and comforting, and you couldn’t resist stealing glances at her—just a quick look at the way her face softened in the quiet of the dance.

Irene’s gaze flickered toward the ground for a second, but when she looked back at you, it was with a rare, almost hesitant warmth. "I don't do this," she said, her voice almost a whisper. 

“Hmm?” You hum in curiosity as you continue to sway.

"Letting people close. But…"

"But?" you prodded gently, your heart thumping just a little faster.

Her eyes met yours again, and for the first time all night, you saw something different—a quiet acceptance, not of you, but of the moment. “But it’s not the worst thing.” She looked away quickly, her cheeks flushing a deeper pink now, but you caught a smile tugging at her lips.

You both danced in silence for a while, the music winding down, the world outside of the ballroom forgotten.  Her hand tightened around yours, just a fraction, as if to hold on to this fleeting moment, a moment she’d never admit to wanting.

As the final notes of the song drifted into silence, you weren’t ready to let go. So, you didn’t. You held her for just a little longer, letting the stillness of the moment settle between you. Her breath was steady, her chest rising and falling against yours, and you couldn’t help but let your eyes drift closed for a second. It felt peaceful—almost perfect.

But then, of course, Irene cleared her throat, breaking the moment with her usual sharpness. “Well, that wasn’t terrible,” she said, voice laced with sarcasm, though her tone was quieter than usual. “But don’t get any ideas. I’m not turning into some sentimental fool just because you managed to stand on your feet without tripping.”

You smiled at the playful edge in her voice. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Her lips twitched, the faintest sign of a smile, but she quickly masked it again. “Good. Let’s get out of here before you start thinking I actually enjoyed that.” But there was something in her voice—a softness beneath the teasing—that told you more than her words ever could.

As the two of you pulled away from the dance floor, the night seemed to fade into the background, replaced by a quiet understanding between you. Irene, despite all the walls she’d built around herself, had let a little bit of them fall tonight. And in that moment, with her hand still resting lightly in yours, you knew this was more than just a dance. It was the start of something new—something neither of you had expected, but both of you felt deep down.

But Irene? She would never say it. She simply looked at you, rolling her eyes, and muttered, "I’m not a damsel in distress, so don’t go getting any ideas about saving me, okay?"

You grinned, your heart full in a way it hadn’t been in a long time. “I’m not,” you replied, but the unspoken truth hung between you two—there was something here, something that went beyond what either of you would admit.

“Well, the night’s over.” Irene said, her usual matter of fact tone, but you sensed a lower, almost unspoken tone to her voice, as if she was almost disappointed. “Yeah, I guess it is. My second wish is granted.” You say, Irene vanishing back into the amulet. You rest your hand on the amulet, allowing your hand to linger. You hadn’t wanted Irene’s power, you still didn’t, but you had come to value her presence, and this night had just left you wanting for more. Too bad you only had one more wish left.

You let out a long sigh, stepping out of the shop with your groceries clutched in your hands. You had to make your last wish soon. It was always part of the plan—the last step, the one you had promised yourself to fulfil. It’s what you wanted at first, and it’s what Irene had said she wanted, too. But now that the moment had come, the hesitation clung to you like a weight around your chest.

You couldn’t shake the thought that something wasn’t right. After everything that had happened between you two—after everything you had gone through together—the idea of letting her go felt more and more like an impossible choice. She might’ve wanted her freedom, sure, but now that it was so close, you weren’t sure if you were ready for the finality of it.

Your footsteps echoed in the cool evening air as you walked, the weight of the decision pressing in. Distracted by your thoughts, you barely noticed the soft sound of footsteps trailing behind you. It was too quiet, too deliberate. Your heart skipped a beat as a cold shiver ran down your spine.

You glanced over your shoulder. Figures. Three men, walking too close. They emerged from the shadows with knowing grins, their eyes narrowing as they stared at your bags.

"Hey, you!" one of them shouted, his voice thick with menace as he sized you up. "Looks like you’ve got some nice bags there. Why don’t you hand ‘em over?"

You groaned. “Of course, first a kidnapping, then a mugging. The writer needs to get some new material.”

The leader stepped forward, his face twisting into a grin that made your stomach flip. "Shut it. Empty your pockets. Now."

The second man—tall, broad-shouldered—took a step closer, and the third, a wiry figure, pulled out a knife. The metal gleamed menacingly in the dim light, sending a chill down your spine. Your pulse quickened. This was bad. So bad.

You needed a way out. Anything.

Panic clawed at you, and before you knew what you were doing, you reached up to your chest, hand on the amulet resting on your neck. 

The air around you shifted. A swirl of light filled the street, and the men froze, confusion flashing across their faces. In the blink of an eye, Irene appeared, stepping into the scene with effortless grace. Her presence was like ice—cool, calculating, and impossibly beautiful. She didn’t even look at the men as she turned her sharp gaze toward them, her eyes narrowing in distaste.

"What do you think you’re doing?" Her voice was low, smooth, but underneath it was something far more dangerous. She didn’t move, only stood still, her cold stare cutting through the group.

The leader’s bravado faltered just for a second, but it was enough. He took a step back, eyes wide with fear. "What the hell are you supposed to be? A freak?" he spat, trying to sound tough despite the growing unease in his voice.

Irene didn’t even blink. Instead, she flicked her wrist. The knife in the leader’s hand was torn from his grip with a flick of her fingers, sent spinning across the pavement, clattering into the street. His face twisted with shock, eyes widening as he tried to comprehend what had just happened.

"Didn’t see that coming, did you?" Irene’s voice was syrupy sweet, dripping with sarcasm. She turned her attention to the second man without missing a beat. Before he could react, Irene was on him, her hand wrapping around his wrist in an iron grip. With one fluid motion, she twisted his arm behind his back and slammed him face-first into the pavement with brutal force.

The third man, seeing the others go down so easily, hesitated, his eyes darting around as if looking for a way out. But Irene was quicker. She raised a hand, and in an instant, the man was yanked off his feet, his body jerking toward her like a puppet on invisible strings. He flailed uselessly as she pulled him closer, her expression unchanging.

"Running?" Irene’s voice was dark with amusement. "How pathetic."

She lifted her hand higher, and with a final flick, she sent him crashing into a nearby dumpster with a sickening thud. The man groaned, crumpled against the metal, barely conscious but too dazed to fight back.

The leader was the last one standing, his face pale, eyes flicking nervously between Irene and his downed companions. Irene stepped forward, her gaze steady and dangerous. "You’re lucky I’m in a good mood," she said, her voice smooth and cold, "but you do not threaten my human."

The man stumbled backward, his legs trembling. But Irene didn’t let him get far. With a swift movement, she grabbed him by the collar, lifting him off the ground with a terrifying ease.

"Get out of here before I make you regret it," she warned, her voice colder than the air around you.

The man’s pride shattered as he scrambled to his feet, his resolve gone. He turned and fled, leaving his comrades behind, their groans the only sounds as they slowly regained their senses. Irene let him go, her shoulders relaxed but her eyes never leaving the spot where he had disappeared.

You stood there, still processing what had just happened. Your heart was hammering, your legs shaking slightly, but the adrenaline was slowly starting to wear off. You couldn’t believe what you’d just witnessed..

Irene turned to you, her usual cool mask still in place, but there was something different in her eyes. Something almost... soft. "I... I don’t know what to say. You just... saved me."

Her eyes flickered over to you, and she let out a sigh, her usual nonchalance slipping back into place. "Don’t get all sentimental," she muttered, crossing her arms in front of her. "It’s not like I did it for you."

You couldn’t help but laugh softly, a nervous sound, but a laugh all the same. The tension was melting away, replaced by a strange warmth. "I know. But still, thanks. You really... protected me."

Irene’s gaze flickered away, and her cheeks flushed just a little. "It’s not a big deal," she grumbled, the sharpness in her voice fading. "Just don’t go getting yourself mugged again. You’re a pain in the ass to deal with."

You chuckled softly, stepping closer. "I’ll try not to. Promise."

She shot you a sideways glance, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "Yeah, you better."

The two of you walked in silence for a moment, the street around you quiet once again. The world felt a little less heavy now, your body still shaking but comforted by her presence.

You glanced down at your Amulet, then back at Irene. "I guess this is it, huh? My last wish?"

Irene froze. For a moment, she looked like she’d been struck by lightning. Her eyes widened, and she blinked, mouth parting as if she was about to say something but couldn’t find the words. Finally, she stammered, the icy coolness in her voice replaced by something... far less composed.

"That wasn’t a wish!" She snapped, her face flushed with embarrassment. "That was—! You—you didn’t wish for that! You’re—!"

You raised an eyebrow, a little surprised by her reaction. "But this is what you wanted, Irene. You're free now, right? Isn’t that what you wanted?"

Irene opened her mouth, then quickly shut it again, her face turning an even deeper shade of red. Her hands clenched, and in a flash, she bolted—vanishing into the amulet in a swirl of light, leaving you standing there, confused and left alone.

The apartment door slammed shut behind you, the sound echoing in your ears as you stood there, groceries still in hand. It had been weeks since you’d last seen your family, and you hadn’t been looking forward to this visit, but you couldn’t keep avoiding them. Not anymore. You took a deep breath, steadying yourself as you walked further into the dimly lit hallway of your childhood home. You had enough on your mind as it was, Irene having refused to emerge from the amulet

The place was just as you remembered—dusty corners, faded pictures on the walls, the smell of old furniture and lingering tension. You could feel it in the air before you even heard the voices.

"...You always do this, Mom. It's the same damn thing every time!" Your younger brother, Noah, yelled from the living room. "You never listen to anything I say. You just—"

"Noah, I told you, this isn’t a damn democracy! I’m the one who pays the bills here!" Your mother’s voice was strident, her temper rising as usual.

"You think you’re the only one who has problems, huh? You think it’s easy to get by in this house when everyone expects me to be some perfect kid?" Noah snapped back, his voice laced with bitterness.

The words hit you like a punch to the gut, dragging you back into memories you had long buried. The fighting, the yelling, the way they always pulled you into the middle of it. You’d spent your whole childhood walking on eggshells, trying to soothe the chaos, but it never worked. It never made them stop.

And now here you are again. As much as you tried to get away, you always ended up back here. The familiar pain crept back into your chest, an old wound reopening, threatening to consume you.

You swallowed hard, but the lump in your throat wouldn’t go away.

In the living room, your father’s voice cut through the argument, trying to mediate, but it was no use. His calm was as fragile as glass, and you knew it wouldn’t take much to shatter it. “Both of you need to calm down! This isn’t helping anyone!” he shouted, but no one listened.

You stood at the edge of the hallway, the tension in the air pressing down on you like a heavy weight. You wanted to go in. You wanted to be the peacekeeper, the one who fixed everything like you always did. But you could already feel the familiar panic creeping in, the suffocating sense of being caught in the middle. It was too much. It had always been too much.

You froze, the words slamming into you like a wave. The argument wasn’t directed at you, but it didn’t matter. The noise—sharp, accusatory, rising and overlapping—burrowed into your chest. It dragged you back, pulling you under, to a time you couldn’t seem to forget.

The yelling. The anger. The helplessness.

When you were a kid, this was the soundtrack to your life. You’d spent countless nights hiding under your blankets, trembling as the walls seemed to shake with their shouting. Even now, as an adult, the sound didn’t just echo in your ears—it lived in your body, burrowing into the spaces where fear and pain had carved out homes long ago.

The voices got louder, blending into one another until they were an unintelligible roar. Your hands tightened around the bag of groceries until the plastic handles bit into your skin, but it wasn’t enough to ground you. Your chest tightened, your breaths coming too fast, too shallow. The hallway around you seemed to blur, the walls closing in as your heart pounded harder, faster.

You couldn’t move. You couldn’t breathe.

And the worst part? You knew this would happen. You knew. But you came anyway, thinking this time would be different. It never was.

Your vision blurred as tears welled up, spilling hot and heavy down your cheeks. A small, broken sound escaped your lips—a plea, a whisper of desperation, before clutching your chest.

The words barely left your mouth before the air in front of you shifted. A sudden rush of cold, then a plume of silvery smoke, shimmering faintly in the dim light. From the haze, Irene emerged.

Her figure was unmistakable, her sharp eyes scanning the scene. The usual air of superiority that clung to her was still there, but it softened the moment her gaze landed on you. Her expression changed instantly, the sharp edges melting into something you’d rarely seen from her—concern.

“What’s happening?” Irene asked, her voice low but urgent as she crouched down in front of you. Her hands hovered near your shoulders, unsure for a moment, before finally settling there. “Hey. Look at me. What’s wrong?”

You couldn’t answer, couldn’t do anything but shake your head as the tears kept falling. Your breath hitched, caught in your throat, and you gasped, clutching at your chest.

“Shit,” Irene muttered, her voice tinged with panic. “Okay, okay. Listen to me. You’re safe. You’re okay. Just breathe. Can you do that for me? In through your nose. That’s it.”

Her hands moved to cup your face, her thumbs brushing away the tears streaking your cheeks. Her touch was cool, grounding, and her voice—low, steady—cut through the noise in your head like a lifeline.

“Focus on me,” she urged, her tone softer now. “Whatever’s happening out there doesn’t matter. None of it can touch you. You’re here. You’re with me. Just keep breathing.”

Bit by bit, the tightness in your chest eased. Your sobs turned into shaky breaths, though your shoulders still trembled under her steady hands.

When you finally managed to meet her gaze, her usual sharpness was gone. The Irene looking at you now was softer, her eyes filled with something warmer, more protective.

“They were yelling again,” you whispered hoarsely, your voice barely audible. “It just—it reminded me of when I was a kid. I couldn’t stop it then, and I still can’t... I just...”

Irene’s jaw tightened, her eyes flickering toward the muffled argument still raging in the living room. When she looked back at you, there was a quiet fury in her expression, like she’d burn the world down in an instant.

“You don’t have to stop it,” she said firmly. “You don’t have to fix it, or even deal with it. That’s not your job. And it’s sure as hell not worth tearing yourself apart over.”

She pulled you closer, her arm wrapping around you protectively. “Whatever this place took from you, it doesn’t get to keep taking. Not while I’m here.”

You leaned into her, the warmth of her words wrapping around you as much as her presence. For a long moment, you just let her hold you, her steady breaths anchoring you.

When the tension in your body finally eased, you pulled back slightly, meeting her gaze. “Irene...” you began, hesitating. “Why haven’t you taken my last wish yet? You just disappeared...”

Her expression softened, but only for a fleeting moment before she crossed her arms and glanced to the side, her cheeks faintly pink. “I—I didn’t disappear. I was... busy. Important genie things, you wouldn’t understand.”

Your brow furrowed. “Important genie things?”

“Yes. Very important,” she shot back, her tone defensive. “Unlike you, I don’t have the luxury of moping around all day.”

You tilted your head, a small, teasing smile forming despite yourself. “Irene, you’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?”

Her blush deepened as she snapped, “Avoiding you? Don’t flatter yourself! Why would I avoid someone like you?” She turned her nose up, but the crack in her voice betrayed her.

“Then why?” you pressed gently, your gaze steady on her.

Irene hesitated, her sharp facade faltering as her eyes darted away again. She muttered something under her breath, too quiet for you to catch.

“What was that?”

“I said…” She huffed, her arms tightening over her chest as her blush spread down to her neck. “I didn’t want you to use up the wishes, okay? Are you happy now?”

You blinked, caught off guard. “You didn’t want me to use the wishes? But I thought you wanted to leave. To be done with humans. To be done with... me.”

Her eyes snapped back to yours, wide and flustered. “Wha—Why would you think that?! I never said that! Don’t just go putting words in my mouth, you idiot!”

Your grip on her forearm tightened, grounding her. “So you don’t want to leave?”

Irene froze, her lips pressing together before she let out a groan, dragging a hand through her hair. “Maybe—maybe it’s not so bad,” she admitted begrudgingly, her voice dropping to a mumble. “If it’s with you.”

The vulnerability in her tone caught you off guard, and you couldn’t help the small, teasing smile that tugged at your lips. “Of course. I’m your human, aren’t I?”

Irene’s eyes widened before her blush turned scarlet. She immediately buried her face in her hands with a muffled, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you heard that.”

“I did,” you said, unable to suppress a light chuckle.

“Don’t you dare read into it!” Irene snapped, lowering her hands just enough to glare at you. Her face was still bright red, her pout far more endearing than intimidating. “I am not some lovesick little puppy, got it? I’m still an all-powerful genie, and you—y-you’re just a ridiculous human who happens to need a lot of supervision, that’s all!”

“Whatever you say,” you replied, your tone soft as you leaned closer.

Her breath hitched as you reached out, cupping her face and pulling her in to press a gentle kiss to her forehead.

“W-What—” Irene spluttered, pulling back with a glare that was more flustered than furious. “What do you think you’re doing?! You can’t just—you can’t just go kissing me like that without warning!”

You grinned. “I thought you were all-powerful. Shouldn’t you have seen it coming?”

Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again as she struggled to find a retort. Finally, she turned away with an exaggerated huff, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered, her voice quieter now. “Completely ridiculous.”

“Not bad for a stupid human, aren’t I?” You tease, hugging Irene tightly

Lights smear. Voices drag. Your own hands feel a fraction disconnected from the rest of you, as though your pulse forgot to keep them warm. But you keep walking down the hallway anyway, clutching the iced tea you bought out of habit, not out of thirst.

It’s late—later than you intended to still be on campus. The building is empty. The kind of empty that makes you aware of your breathing.

And then you hear it.

A soft thud. A muffled curse. The sound of someone very tired trying not to sound tired.

When you round the corner, she’s there. Sohyun. Hood half-off her head. Hair messy in a way you’ve never seen—like she ran her fingers through it a few dozen times too many. A tote bag hangs from one shoulder, overstuffed with scripts and notebooks and things she won’t have time to put down tonight.

She looks up and freezes. It takes her a second—one long second—to place you, and when she does, her shoulders drop with something that looks suspiciously like relief.

“Hey,” she breathes, and that single word is softer than anyone else ever gets from her. “You’re still here?”

You don’t mean to smile, but you do. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

She huffs a tired laugh—tiny, real, the kind she only gives when her guard is down. It makes something in your chest ache.

You’ve known Sohyun for months, in that comfortable, unspoken way people know each other when their lives overlap at strange hours. She’s an idol on the rise, constantly juggling rehearsals and filming and meetings you can only guess at. You’re… you. A person who studies too hard and sleeps too little and somehow always ends up in the same quiet hallways she’s hiding in.

You never plan to see each other. But somehow you always do. Tonight, though—tonight she looks different. Overwound, frayed, on the edge of something invisible.

You nod at the bench by the window. “Sit,” you say before thinking. And somehow, impossibly, she listens. She drops beside you, bag sliding to the floor. She leans her head back against the cold wall, eyes fluttering shut.

“You okay?” you ask gently.

Her voice comes out hoarse. “I don’t remember what okay feels like.”

You shouldn’t be the person she admits that to. You don’t know why you are. Maybe it’s because you’re safe. Because you don’t want anything from her. Because you aren’t part of the machine chewing at her every waking hour. Or maybe it’s because you’re the only person who ever asks her if she’s tired, instead of asking her to prove she isn’t.

Minutes pass like that—quiet, shared breath, glowing emergency lights humming above you. And then her shoulder bumps yours. Barely there. Careful. Like she’s scared you’ll flinch.

You don’t. If anything, you lean a little closer. Her eyes open slowly, heavy-lidded and exhausted. “Have you slept?” she asks.

You shake your head. “You?” She lets out a breath that almost counts as a laugh. “Not in a way that matters.”

The silence that settles between you is warm this time—strangely gentle, like you’ve both been walking through storms and finally found the same doorway. Then, very quietly: “Can I…” She swallows. “Can I stay here a bit? Just—not alone.”

Your heart stumbles. Of course she can. Of course.

But the way she asks—like she’s apologizing for existing—unravels you.

You say her name softly. “Sohyun.”

Her eyes flick to yours.

“You don’t have to ask.”

Her lips part. Something vulnerable flickers across her expression—raw, fleeting, impossible to look away from.

She shifts closer. This time less cautiously. Her shoulder presses against yours, deliberate.

“Thank you,” she whispers. The words are small. But they hit you like a tide. Because no one ever thanks you for staying. You don’t know how long you sit there—minutes, maybe hours—two tired souls leaning into each other because neither has the strength to stand alone tonight.

When her head finally droops onto your shoulder, you freeze only for a heartbeat before adjusting, letting her settle against you.

You hear her breathing steady. You feel her relax for the first time since you met. And it’s stupid—so stupid—but you let yourself imagine that maybe you could be someone she returns to on purpose. Someone she chooses not out of exhaustion, but out of want. You don’t know yet that love, for her, will be a slow undoing. You don’t know yet that this quiet closeness will become her escape, and then her fear.

For now, for tonight, she is here. Your shoulder beneath her cheek. Your heartbeat where she rests.The world soft around the edges.

And it almost feels like the beginning of something gentle. Something hopeful. Romance is in the air. But romance makes fools of the hopeful.

Chapter 2

If anyone asked you when it started—when the world tilted just slightly toward her, when coincidences began to feel suspiciously like choices—you wouldn’t know what to answer.

Maybe it was in the hallway. Or the convenience store. Or at the bus stop where time felt soft enough to stretch.

Maybe it was all of them at once. Because the truth is: Park Sohyun doesn’t enter your life like a moment. She arrives like a pattern.

It’s nearly eleven when you step out of your classroom, rubbing at your neck, blinking sleep out of your eyes. The building is quiet at this hour—just the buzz of old lights and your footsteps echoing down the polished corridor.

You turn a corner. And almost collide with her.

Sohyun stops short, clutching her bag to her chest. Her cheeks are already pink, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“Oh,” she breathes, hair slightly messy from rushing. “You’re here.”

You blink. “You’re… also here.”

She nods with the sincerity of someone trying very hard to look casual. “Just finished.”

You glance down at her hair—still damp from practice. Her shoes—pointing directly toward the practice rooms, not the exit. Her breathing—just a touch too fast.

“You just finished,” you repeat.

“Yes,” she insists.

“Sohyun,” you say gently.

She shifts her weight, looks away, pretends to study a vending machine that has been broken since last semester.

“…Okay,” she whispers, “I maybe finished a while ago.”

You smile. “You were waiting.”

She puffs out her cheeks—her signature tell of embarrassment. “Shut uuuup.”

You grin wider. “You’re a bad liar.”

Her eyes widen indignantly. “I’m excellent at lying. I once lied to a trainer about eating an extra pudding!”

“That’s… not the flex you think it is.”

She gives you a light punch on the arm—just enough to make your heart swing a little. And then she walks beside you, the hallway suddenly feeling less empty. Less lonely. More… something.

You don’t have a name for it yet. But it hums low in your chest, warm and hopeful.

You’re at the refrigerated section, debating between caffeine and sleep (sleep won’t win), when the bell above the door rings.

You don’t even turn. You already know it’s her. Sohyun stands frozen in the entrance, holding a random carton of milk like it’s evidence in a crime show. Her eyes widen when she sees you, her whole body going stiff like she’s trying to decide between fleeing or pretending she was invisible.

“You,” she says, sounding personally attacked.

“You,” you echo, amused.

She lifts the milk weakly. “I needed… dairy.”

You stare. “That’s banana milk.”

She looks down at it, betrayed. “Why do I keep grabbing the wrong one—?”

You laugh. She hates how much she likes making you laugh. She huffs, sulky and adorable, and follows you to the counter, pretending she just happened to buy two warm canned drinks and only realized it outside the convenience store.

“For you,” she says, shoving one toward you without looking. “It’s cold.”

You deadpan. “It’s hot outside.”

She frowns. “Then… emotional coldness.”

You snort.

She gasps. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You are!”

“I’m laughing near you.”

She groans dramatically, but her lips twitch upward anyway. There’s a faint tremble in your hand when your fingers brush hers while accepting the drink. She pulls back as though the contact burned her—in the soft, startled way that says she didn’t hate it. Maybe even liked it.

The bus stop is quiet at night. The kind of quiet where your breath sounds louder than it should.

You’re scrolling through your phone when you hear hurried footsteps.

You look up.

She’s there—hood up, hair sticking to her cheeks, breathing like she ran a marathon.

She stops right in front of you, trying and failing to appear composed.

“Oh hey,” she says, casually pretending she hadn’t just sprinted half the neighborhood.

“…hey,” you reply. “Coincidence?”

She nods with so much force her hood almost falls off. “Yes!”

“Sohyun.”

She deflates. “…Fine. I waited.”

“For me?”

She tucks her chin down, toeing at the ground. Her voice goes tiny.

“Maybe.”

You say nothing—not because you don’t know what to say, but because something in your chest shifts, warm and painful in the way soft things often are. She sits beside you, her shoulder brushing yours. Not quite on purpose, not quite accidental.

“Your practice ended an hour ago,” you murmur.

She doesn’t look at you. “Sometimes time… goes weird.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like… it moves differently when I’m walking somewhere.”

“Somewhere like here?” you ask softly.

She bites her lip. “Shut up.”

You’re starting to think that ‘shut up’ is Sohyun language for you’re right but I’m too shy to admit it.

Somehow, without deciding it, without ever needing words, meeting her becomes a rhythm. She finishes practice “coincidentally” when your class ends. She appears in hallways she has no reason to be in. She texts you occasionally—not enough to be obvious, but enough that your phone feels emptier without it. And every time she sees you, she brightens in a way she tries desperately to hide.

One night, as you wait for the bus, she begins talking about music.

“I want to compose something one day,” she says, eyes shining. “Something that feels like… like opening a window on a rainy morning. Or like the first breath after crying.”

You smile. “That sounds pretty.”

“Does it?” she asks, hopeful in the softest way.

You nod. “Very you.”

Her heart stutters—you can see it in the way her fingers twist around her drink, in the way her eyes soften.

“Do you think…” she begins, hesitant, “you’d like my music? I mean—if I made it big? If things changed?”

“Of course,” you say instantly. “I’d still be here. Still listening.”

She freezes. And then she smiles—a small, radiant, shy thing that looks like it escaped before she could hide it.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. That’s… good.”

You don’t realize you’re falling. Not yet. You don’t realize how your heart picks up whenever she appears. How her laughter hangs in your mind longer than it should. How her “coincidences” feel like little constellations forming a shape only the two of you can read.

She doesn’t realize it either. Or maybe she does— but she’s too gentle to name it, too scared it might disappear if spoken too loudly.

So instead, she waits for you in hallways. Buys you warm drinks you don’t need. Sneaks glances like she’s memorizing your face piece by piece. And you let her.

You walk slower so she can match your steps. You hold your drink with both hands so she won’t notice how warm it actually makes you.

You let her orbit closer. And she lets you pull her in.

For now— for this chapter— everything is sweet. Everything is hopeful. Everything is blooming quietly.

You don’t know what’s coming, and she pretends not to feel the ache in her future.

But tonight?

Tonight, she bumps her shoulder into yours and pretends she didn’t. Tonight, her cheeks warm when you tease her. Tonight, she waits for a bus she doesn’t need— because you’re there.

Tonight is soft.

Tonight is cute.

Tonight is the kind of sweetness you’ll ache for later.

And neither of you knows it yet, but these coincidences are the memories that will haunt you most.

Chapter 3

You show up at the company building with a paper bag warm in your hands and nervousness fizzing beneath your ribs like trapped fireworks. It’s late—past ten—when most trainees have already trickled out of the mirrored rooms and fluorescent hallways, their bodies heavy, their eyes hollow with exhaustion, their dreams bruised from another day of being told to smile wider, dance sharper, be perfect or be forgotten.

But still, you wait.

You lean against the cool wall in the lobby, pretending to scroll your phone, pretending you aren’t listening for every footstep, pretending you didn’t spend twenty minutes in the convenience store debating which snacks she might like even though you already know her preferences by heart.

When Sohyun finally appears, every excuse you had rehearsed evaporates.

Her hoodie is slipping off one shoulder, her bangs stick lightly to her forehead with sweat, and she looks so tired she seems almost translucent. But the moment her eyes land on you—the exact moment—something bright flares across her face.

Soft. Surprised. Like she’s been stumbling through the dark all day and suddenly found a light left on for her. “You’re here,” she breathes, a little startled, a little relieved.

“You sound surprised,” you tease, though your voice is softer than you expect.

“I— I always am.” A flush rises across her cheeks, faint but unmistakable. Your heart missteps.

You offer her the bag. “I brought snacks. Protein cookies. And those strawberry milk things you pretend you don’t like.”

She stares. Blinks once. Then her lips curl into a crooked grin that hits you square in the chest.

“I don’t pretend,” she counters, her voice weak with fatigue and something else. “I just— okay, fine, yes, I like them. A lot. Maybe.”

She holds the paper bag carefully, like it’s fragile. Like it’s meaningful.

You don’t point it out. You don’t need to.

Her fingers tighten around the handles, and then—without warning—she looks at you with a sudden decision in her eyes.

“Come with me.”

Before you can even ask where she’s going, she gently hooks her fingers in your sleeve, tugging you along through the dim, quiet corridors. Trainees’ voices echo faintly below through the stairwell, fading with every flight you climb.

You follow her up three sets of stairs, heart thumping louder with each step, until the rooftop door creaks open. Cold night air washes over you like a blessing. The sky is a deep navy, hazy with clouds. Neon lights flicker in the distance, blurry and distant like the city is dreaming its own dreams tonight. The rooftop is quiet—too quiet—like a place meant to hear secrets instead of footsteps. Sohyun walks ahead, then drops onto the concrete ground with a long, dramatic sigh before patting the space beside her.

Close. Too close. Deliberately close.

You sit, and the moment you do, her knee nudges yours. Just barely. But enough for your breath to snag.

She doesn’t move away.

Instead, she smiles a little, almost like she’s testing you. Testing the idea of you.

“I didn’t bring you up here to traumatize you,” she jokes, noticing how stiffly you sit at first.

“Could’ve fooled me,” you mutter.

She nudges you with the side of her foot—light, playful, almost tender. Then she leans back on her hands, head tilting upward toward the sky. Her shoulders lift and fall with a quiet breath.

“You know…” She pauses, searching for the right words. “Sometimes I come here because it’s the only place I don’t have to pretend. No trainers drilling me into the ground, no mirrors reminding me of everything wrong, no other kids trying to look confident while silently breaking.”

Her voice dips, barely audible. “I feel like… up here, I can actually breathe.”

You feel something twist inside you. Something protective. Something stupidly, recklessly fond.

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” you say softly.

She freezes. Just for a second. Just long enough for the air to tighten.

Then her expression shifts—cracks open, even. Her eyes glisten faintly in the city’s glow, vulnerability pooling in the dark like a reflection of the sky.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m not enough,” she whispers. “Like no matter how hard I try, I’m always one mistake away from losing everything. For the company. For the world. For—”

“For me?”

You don’t know why you say it. The words slip out like a truth you’ve been keeping warm inside your mouth. A truth you weren’t ready to release. Sohyun’s breath catches. She looks at you like she wasn’t expecting you to say it out loud, even though she wanted you to.

“Maybe,” she finally admits, voice trembling with something honest and terrifying.

You swallow hard. The rooftop suddenly feels too small for the size of your feelings.

“You are enough,” you say, firmer than before. “More than enough. You don’t have to try so hard to earn that. Not from me.”

Her eyes widen—so gently, so quietly. Like she’s hearing a foreign language. Like she’s learning how to accept something she didn’t know she was allowed to have.

For a moment—just one weighted heartbeat—she looks at you like you’re something she’s been searching for without realizing it.

Her gaze falls to your mouth. Slow. Lingering. Yours drops to hers, as if pulled. The space between you becomes electric, delicate, a trembling thread. She leans in just a little—barely anything, barely noticeable—but you feel it. Her warmth. Her breath. Her uncertainty. Her want.

The world feels like it’s leaning with her.

But she stops.

Not pulling back. Not retreating. Just… hovering.

Her forehead almost touches yours. Your breaths mix. The moment quivers like a fragile note suspended in air.

Then—gently—she lets her head fall onto your shoulder. Her hair brushes your jaw, light as a confession. Her hand reaches out, hesitating only a split second before curling into your sleeve, clutching like she needs something steady. You adjust your shoulder, letting her settle more comfortably against you, and you both sit there in a quiet that feels warm, safe, and impossibly fragile—like the start of something neither of you has the courage to name yet. And you stay. Longer than you should. Long enough for the night to wrap around you both like a secret.

Long enough to fall a little more in love with her.

“Stay a little longer,” she whispers, voice barely there.

You don’t say anything.

You don’t tell her that you’d stay forever if she asked.

Chapter 4

You go to the Han River that night for no reason at all.

Maybe it’s habit. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s because everything feels a little too loud lately, and the water always seems to quiet the noise in your head. The river glimmers under the streetlights, soft waves collapsing against the bank in gentle rhythms. Couples pass you with muffled laughter and linked fingers. Joggers run past with neon shoes and steady breaths.

You sit on a bench facing the water, hands folded in your pockets, mind drifting nowhere in particular.

You don’t expect anything.

Least of all her.

But then—A familiar voice breaks the hush of the evening. Your name, spoken with breathless awe and uneven emotion. You turn sharply.

Sohyun stands there, framed by streetlight and night sky, as if she’s stepped out of a memory you weren’t sure you had the right to keep.

Her hair is tied up messily. Her jacket is too big. Her eyes flicker—bright, watery, scared, overwhelmed, incandescent.

It’s the kind of expression someone wears when they’re standing on the edge of a dream and don’t know if they’re about to fall or fly.

“Sohyun?”

Your voice comes out softer than you expect.

She closes the distance between you in three quick steps, nearly tripping in her haste.

“You— I…” she starts, then stops, then laughs a little wildly. The sound trembles. “I needed to tell you in person.”

She’s shivering. Not from cold. From everything else.

You rise slowly from the bench as if approaching a skittish bird.

She lifts her hands like she can’t hold the words in any longer.

“I’m debuting.”

The world tilts.

For a heartbeat, you can’t breathe—your chest folds in around her words, your ribs expanding with relief and a quiet ache you don’t understand yet.

Then you’re moving before you even think to. You step forward. She steps into you.

You wrap your arms around her instinctively, but it’s her who truly holds on—fists gripping the back of your jacket, forehead pressed to your shoulder, entire body shaking with adrenaline and disbelief.

“I’m debuting,” she repeats into your neck, voice cracking. “It’s actually happening.”

You hold her tighter, because she feels like a miracle happening in real time, because you’ve watched her bleed for this dream in practice rooms and hallways and rooftops.

“Of course you are,” you murmur. “You deserve it.”

Her breath shudders against you. She clings harder, almost painfully, as if afraid the moment might slip through her fingers if she loosens her grip.

For a second—a fleeting, delicate second—you feel something in her hold that you’ve never felt before.

Fear. Joy. A quiet, desperate need.

Like she’s bracing for the world to pull her away.

Like she’s already mourning something she hasn’t lost yet.

You sit together afterward, side by side on the bench, watching the water glow with city lights. Sohyun talks in broken, breathless bursts—about the call from the company, the tears in the practice room, the congratulatory messages, the disbelief still clinging to her.

“I didn’t know where to go,” she admits, voice quiet. “But I knew who I wanted to tell.”

Your heart tightens.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

She leans her head onto your shoulder for only a second before pulling back—too aware of time, of schedules, of managers checking dorm rooms. Of the countdown already ticking.

“I can’t stay long,” she says reluctantly.

You nod, though it feels like swallowing something sharp.

For a while, nothing changes. At least not in ways you can measure.

She still sends texts with too many emojis. Still tells you about the choreo that made her ankles scream. Still laughs breathlessly when you tease her.

Hope is alive.

Small but real.

But then—Slowly. Quietly.

Something shifts.

It starts with the texting.

Before, her replies came so fast you sometimes wondered if she ever put her phone down.

Now, minutes stretch into hours. Hours stretch into days. Sometimes she forgets to reply entirely.

Other times she sends a rushed: Sorry! Practice ran over. I’ll text later!!

But “later” grows further and further away.

You keep telling yourself she’s just busy.

You keep believing it.

Then it’s the cancellations.

“Tomorrow? I swear I’ll be free tomorrow.”

“Wait—schedule just changed, I’m so so sorry.”

“Dorm curfew is strict today. Next time?”

There’s always a reason. Always valid. Always painful in a way that doesn’t show. You tell her it’s okay every time.

Because how could you not?

She’s chasing something enormous. But each promise postponed leaves a small, hollow bruise in the chest—one you don’t notice at first, one that grows silently.

One night, very late, she appears outside your apartment building. Hood up, mask on, breathing hard like she sprinted the last block.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. “But I wanted to see you.”

Your heart stutters.

She hands you a plastic bag—snacks, drinks, things she picked out with the same tenderness you once offered her.

“I owe you so many nights,” she says, eyes flicking up toward yours. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

Her voice is soft. Too soft. Too full of guilt and hope and a quiet pleading you don’t understand yet. She means it. You know she does. That’s what makes the ache worse. A van honks somewhere down the street.

Her phone buzzes twice. Her shoulders flinch. She looks at you one more time—really looks—like she’s memorizing you in the dim streetlight. Like she’s afraid the world will soon get too fast for moments like this.

She lifts a hand in a half-wave before backing away. And then she’s gone—swallowed by schedules and cameras and a future that doesn’t have room for pauses.

You stand alone with the snacks she chose for you, with the warmth of her promise lingering like smoke.

You believe her.

But as you walk up the stairwell to your place, something inside you whispers. It's quiet, faint, almost imperceptible

Hope can thin quietly, long before it breaks.

Chapter 5

Debut day feels unreal.

You arrive at the venue early, long before the seats begin to fill, because you want to see every moment—every test run of lights, every snippet of audio, every tiny step that proves she made it. You sit in the audience with your hands clasped too tightly in your lap, heart pounding like you’re the one about to go onstage.

And then the crowd begins to swell. Fans file in with banners and LED boards. The air vibrates with anticipation, like the entire arena is holding a collective breath.

You don’t know where she is backstage, but you can imagine her: pacing a little; refreshing her lip tint; adjusting her outfit; bouncing on her heels; whispering her lines to herself; trying to hide the way her hands tremble.

The moment the lights go down, the audience erupts.

And then—there she is.

Sohyun steps onto the stage like she was carved from the spotlight itself. Her hair catches the light in soft, unreal waves. Her eyes gleam like she’s swallowed a star. The music hits, and she moves—confident, sharp, breathtaking.

She looks powerful. She looks distant. She looks nothing like the girl who once sat with you on a freezing rooftop, knees touching yours, whispering that she was scared she wouldn’t be enough.

Your heart swells anyway. Pride expands so big in your chest it almost hurts. Tears sting your eyes before you’re even aware of them. You cheer. You scream her name with the rest of the crowd, even though she can’t possibly hear you.

When she smiles—bright, dazzling—it feels like the entire arena lights up. But her eyes never meet yours. Not once.

You tell yourself that’s normal. You tell yourself she’s busy, distracted, overwhelmed. There are cameras and choreo and lights; she can’t possibly pick out one face among thousands.

Still… something settles deep inside your ribs. A quiet ache. A tiny shadow. You ignore it. You clap until your palms sting. You watch every performance with your whole soul, committing every expression of hers to memory. Even when the show ends and the crowd disperses in a tidal wave of adrenaline and tears, you sit there for a moment longer, unwilling to break the spell. Because this is what she dreamed of. And you got to witness it.

That night, she shows up at your apartment. You don’t know how she made it past security or whether she sprinted or stumbled her way here, but she’s still wearing her stage makeup, smudged and glittering. Her hair is tied messily at the nape of her neck, and her eyes—god, her eyes—look exhausted in a way you’ve never seen before.

The smile she gives you is small and cracked around the edges.

“You watched, right?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” you answer immediately. “You were incredible. I was… I was so proud.”

Sohyun steps inside before you finish, like she’s afraid she might lose the courage if she stays in the hallway. She toes off her shoes, sets her bag down, and then she just… sinks onto your couch, like gravity suddenly doubled its weight on her shoulders.

She tries to talk—really tries. She starts telling you about backstage chaos, about last-minute changes, about fansigns already being planned. But halfway through a sentence, her voice drifts off. Her eyelids flutter. She falls asleep while still holding your hand.

Her fingers are loosely curled around yours, soft and warm, but twitching with leftover adrenaline. Her makeup leaves faint shimmer on your skin. Her breathing steadies, slow and uneven, like her body is catching up to all the days she pushed it past its limit.

You don’t move. You don’t dare.

Instead, you shift slowly to get her more comfortable. You pull a blanket over her, tucking it gently around her shoulders. You brush stray hairs from her forehead, careful not to wake her.

She sleeps with her hand still in yours. You watch her.

Her lips are parted just slightly, the remnants of a stage smile faded into something softer, more human. There’s a small crease between her brows, like even in sleep she’s bracing for something—criticism, pressure, the world waiting to judge her debut.

You squeeze her hand, just lightly. She doesn’t let go.

You tell yourself this distance is temporary. That once the first wave of chaos passes, she’ll come back to you with the same closeness, the same warmth, the same soft glow in her eyes meant only for you.

But as you watch her sleep—still curled toward you, yet impossibly far away—you feel something shift.

Not a crack. Not a break. Just the faintest tug. Like the beginning of a thread unraveling.

You close your eyes and breathe through it. Because you love her. And she’s shining. And if the light hurts a little— you pretend it doesn’t.

The shadow settles quietly inside you, patient and small. You pretend you don’t feel it.

Chapter 6

You don’t expect her message—not tonight, not at this hour, not with the way she’s been drifting just slightly out of reach these days.

But at 11:47 PM, your phone lights up.

Sohyun:

Are you awake?

I want to take you somewhere.

No emoji. No exclamation point. Just those words—quiet, urgent, a little lonely.

You grab your hoodie. Keys. Shoes. You don’t check the mirror. If she needs you, you’ll show up exactly as you are.

When you step outside, the street is almost empty—cars humming distantly, a few bars spilling late-night laughter into the air—but your attention snaps toward the figure leaning against the corner pole.

Sohyun. Hood pulled low. Mask covering half her face. Eyes wide and tired and warm when they land on you.

“There you are,” she whispers, relief softening every line in her body.

“You sound like you thought I’d say no.”

A small breath of a laugh. “Maybe I did.”

She doesn’t wait—she catches your sleeve between two fingers and pulls you toward the curb where a taxi slows down like it has been summoned for something important.

The ride is quiet. Not tense. Just… heavy.

Sohyun keeps her forehead against the window, watching the city pass as though it’s something she needs to memorize to stay grounded.

“You okay?” you ask.

“Mm.” A vague, heavy sound. “Just trying to keep my soul inside my body.”

“That bad?”

“Not bad. Just…” She scrunches her nose. “Big. Everything feels big lately.”

You don’t know what to say, so you reach out and brush your knuckles against her sleeve. Not a grab. Not a hold. Just a reminder. She leans the tiniest bit closer.

The ramen shop looks like a secret someone forgot to hide well. Tucked behind a run-down laundromat, half of its sign burnt out, its windows fogged with steam. It feels like it shouldn’t exist on any map—somewhere only tired dreamers go to remember they’re still human.

Inside, the air is warm enough to thaw bones. A few other patrons glance up—hoodies, masks, caps—but they don’t linger. They all look like they’re carrying the quiet misery of people who live too brightly on stage and too dimly in real life.

Sohyun blends right in. She takes the seat beside you, close enough that her thigh brushes yours, close enough that her breath warms the sleeve of your hoodie. And when the owner recognizes her, he doesn’t say her name—just offers a respectful nod and sets two bowls of ramen in front of you, steaming and rich.

She exhales at the sight. You can tell she hasn’t eaten in hours. You try to lighten the moment. Like you always do.

“So today I met a dog—”

Her head lifts.

“—in a yellow raincoat.”

She blinks. “Like… a detective dog?”

“More like a ‘captain of a tiny ship’ dog.”

She bursts into a laugh that collapses immediately into her palm—soft, tired, but bright. “I needed that,” she mumbles through her fingers.

“I figured.”

“I wish I saw him.”

“You would’ve kidnapped him.”

A shrug. “Maybe.”

She starts eating, small bites, shoulders slowly relaxing as the warmth reaches her. You watch her eyelids droop a little—her body finally remembering what relaxation feels like. You talk. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just about the small, meaningless parts of your day—the kind of things you always save for her, because she listens like you’re saying something important even when you aren’t.

But halfway through your story, her head dips. Her chopsticks pause mid-air. Her eyes flutter closed for half a second—just long enough for your chest to ache. Then she jerks awake, inhaling hard.

“I’m here,” she insists, voice too earnest for someone this drained. “I’m listening, I promise—”

“You’re exhausted,” you say, softer than a whisper. “I’m… trying.” She rubs her face with both hands, thumbs pressing into her temples. “I don’t want to keep fading on you. I really don’t.”

You nod, but she keeps talking, her voice cracking open like something she’s been holding back for too long.

“My life is growing so fast,” she whispers. “Faster than I am. And I’m scared I won’t recognize myself at the end of it.”

“Sohyun…”

“I’m scared I won’t be someone you can recognize either.”

She says it like an apology. Like a confession. Like a plea.

You reach out, slow enough to give her the chance to pull away—but she doesn’t. Your hand brushes over hers, warm to warm.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” you say. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her breath shakes. “You shouldn’t have to stay just because I’m trying my best.”

“Trying is enough.”

“Not for this,” she whispers. “Not for you.”

Your heart cracks in a way she doesn’t see—or maybe she does, because she looks down quickly, cheeks flushing with guilt.

The ramen cools between you. The silence grows warm, then fragile, then a little sharp at the edges.

For the first time, you both feel the shift. The ground beneath you isn’t steady anymore.

When you leave the shop, the alley is damp, neon lights trembling in puddles. Sohyun steps into the glow of a flickering streetlamp, looking almost unreal—glamour and exhaustion tangled together.

And then—slowly, hesitantly—she slips her hand into yours.

Her fingers thread between yours like she’s searching for reassurance she’s terrified to ask for.

Her voice comes out barely audible. A confession disguised as breath. “I feel like I’m stepping into this huge, terrifying world,” she murmurs. “And I’m scared there won’t be enough room for us in it.”

You step closer, forehead brushing hers. “We’ll make space.” Her eyes flutter closed. She doesn’t look convinced. Not fully. Not anymore.

But she squeezes your hand like she’s praying you’re right. Like she wants to believe you even as the future looms above you both—big, bright, and just a little too heavy. And in that tiny alley, under failing light, love begins to tremble. Not break. Not yet. But tremble,soft, fragile, like something that knows one day, it might have to learn how to hurt.

Chapter 7

It’s the silence that haunts you first. Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours. You don’t count them on purpose but your body does, learning the pattern of her absence like a second heartbeat.

You cook too much food.

You keep checking your window at night.

You find yourself staring at your phone, staring at conversations that have grown thin and polite, like a thread being pulled slowly from a sweater. She’s not gone. Not really.

Just drifting, like someone swimming to shore without realizing they’re leaving you behind in the water.

But the ache is familiar. Too familiar.

Some nights, you swear you feel her warmth in the room, a ghost memory of her laugh, the weight of her hand on your sleeve.

You turn your head, and find nothing but shadows. Hope keeps you alive. Hope also kills you a little.

So when your buzzer rings at 9:02 PM, it doesn’t feel real. You expect a delivery. A neighbor. Anything ordinary. Not her. But then

“…It’s me.”

Her voice doesn’t sound like Sohyun. It sounds like someone trying to remember how to be her. You open the door. And she looks like the wind has been carving pieces off her.

Her hoodie hangs: not fashionably oversized but emptily oversized.

Her eyes are rimmed pink. Her lips are chapped.

And her guilt walks in before she does, sharp, heavy, fragrant, like perfume applied too thickly in the dark. “Sohyun,” you breathe.

She tries to smile, but it collapses halfway, falling apart like something brittle.

“Hi.”

A ghost of herself. But still her.

God, still so her.

She toes off her shoes like she’s entering a memory she doesn’t know if she deserves anymore.

Then she sits on your couch, not at the end, not the middle, but the exact place she always used to sit.

Knees pulled to her chest.

Fingers tucked into her sleeves.

Like she’s trying to make herself smaller, less intrusive, less heavy.

You sit beside her.

Close enough to tell her she’s not alone.

Far enough to give her the choice.

She closes the distance in less than a breath.

Her shoulder presses yours.

Light. Tentative. But intentional.

She leans into you like she’s afraid she’ll break if she doesn’t.

Her voice comes out thin, trembling at the edges.

“I’m sorry.”

You inhale too quickly.

It hurts.

“For what?” you manage.

She laughs—

a small, broken thing that sounds like something shattering.

“For all of it,” she whispers.

“For being gone.

For being tired all the time.

For disappearing even though I promised I wouldn’t.

For making you think you’re… not important.”

Your heart flinches.

“You never made me think that.”

She looks at you then.

Truly looks at you.

And her eyes go soft—

devotion, regret, longing, shame

all swirling like storm clouds behind them.

“You’re lying,” she whispers.

And it’s not an accusation.

It’s a wound.

Her fingers tremble in her sleeves,

and your body moves before your mind decides, you take her hands gently, unwrap them from the fabric they’ve been clinging to.

Her palms are cold.

Her knuckles stiff.

Her pulse frantic.

She looks at your hands holding hers, and something inside her breaks so quietly you almost miss it.

“I hate this,” she breathes.

“I hate that I can never be here.

That I say I’ll come and then I don’t.

That I fall asleep in taxis.

That I’m always rushing, always late, always… gone.”

You want to say You’re not gone.

You want to say I understand.

You want to say Nothing will change.

But the words don’t come.

Because somewhere deep inside you, buried under devotion and longing, you feel the buckle.

Tiny.

Subtle.

But real.

Something in the foundation cracking.

She leans into you, forehead pressing softly to yours, breath shaking.

“I’m scared,” she whispers.

“Of what?”

“That I’m becoming someone who takes more than she can give.”

Her voice breaks.

“And that one day you’ll wake up and… resent me for it.”

Your breath catches.

Her honesty is too raw, too surgical, too precise in the place it lands.

“Sohyun—”

She keeps going, voice fraying.

“And I’m scared I’ll resent you too,” she admits, eyes shining with tears she hasn’t let fall.

“Not because of you, never because of you, but because I’ll want to give you everything, and I won’t be able to. And that’s not fair. Not to you. Not to us.”

Us.

The word stings.

You reach for her without thinking.

And she breaks into you like a wave.

Her body folds into your chest, arms around your waist, face buried in your shirt, tears soaking through with slow, trembling persistence.

She cries silently.

Painfully.

Like she’s trying to hide it.

Like even now, even here, she believes she has to be careful not to inconvenience you with the depth of her sorrow.

You hold her tighter.

Arms around her shoulders, your cheek resting in her hair, breathing her in like she’s something you’ve been starving for.

Because she still smells like herself.

Shampoo and vanilla hand cream.

Warmth and exhaustion and familiarity.

Because she’s still your Sohyun, even if the world is trying to pull her into something bigger, something brighter, something you fear you might not fit into.

Her fingers clutch your shirt.

Not politely.

Not gently.

But with the desperation of someone begging time to slow down.

And in that moment, you both feel it:

Love is here.

God, it’s here.

Burning.

Gripping.

Devoted.

But beneath it, quiet as breath, undeniable as dawn, the first buckle.

Not a break.

Not yet.

Just the unmistakable shift that comes when two people love each other so deeply they can feel the future calling them in opposite directions.

She loves you.

You love her.

Neither of you say it.

But that doesn’t matter.

The devotion is loud enough to echo.

And so is the fear.

Chapter 8

You don’t know when it starts—

the falling apart.

Maybe it’s always been there,

woven into the seams of the two of you, invisible until the fabric begins to strain.

All you know is that suddenly, loving her hurts in ways it didn’t before.

Not sharply.

Not violently.

Just… gently.

Like pressing on a bruise.

You still want her.

Still love her.

Still ache in that quiet, loyal way you’ve always ached.

But now you want something small, something simple, something human, to matter.

To feel like your place in her life isn’t shrinking every time a new schedule is added to her calendar. Every time she forgets to answer because rehearsals ran late. Every time she apologizes so softly you have to pretend it doesn’t wound you.

You don’t ask for much. Just proof that you’re real to her. Important to her. Chosen. But every time you reach for that assurance, she pulls gently away, not because she wants to, or that she doesn’t want to give you what she wants to, but because she’s terrified you’ll see how little she has left to give.

She sits across from you one night, hair tied messily, hands folded too tightly in her lap.

She’s trying to stay awake for you. Trying to listen. Trying to be present. And she is— just not fully. Not in the way you remember. Her eyes keep losing focus. Her voice keeps drifting. Her smile keeps trembling at the edges.

When you tell her a tiny story from your day, she nods, tries to laugh, but her eyelids are drooping.

You stop talking.

She notices too late, blinks hard, with guilt flooding her expression.

“Sorry— I’m listening, I…I want to. I’m just—”

“Tired,” you finish for her.

Her face crumples in relief and shame. You force a smile.

You tell her you understand. You don’t. Not really. But you want to.

She sees the effort on your face. She sees that brave, aching little smile you wear just for her. And it destroys something inside her.

She looks away, voice barely a whisper:

“I’m hurting you, aren’t I?”

You say no. You say of course not. You say she’s doing her best.

And she is. God, she is.

But something in your voice cracks anyway. Soft enough to hide. Sharp enough for her to hear.

It becomes a pattern. You reach a little. She recoils a little. Not emotionally, but out of fear. Fear of being the reason you dim. Fear of becoming a weight on your chest. Fear of loving you so much she ruins you.

She doesn’t run. She just… holds back. And you, desperate to keep her, pretend the space between you isn’t growing.

Every conversation ends with one of you apologizing. You apologize for wanting. She apologizes for not being enough. Neither apology fixes anything. They just hang there, gentle, heavy, tragic. Two people trying so hard and still failing each other without meaning to.

One night, after she leaves, you sit alone on your bed, leftover warmth fading from your sheets like a ghost. You press your hand to the place she sat, memorizing the absence. And it hits you: love shouldn’t feel like begging for sunlight through a half-shut door.

And she shouldn’t feel like she has to close herself off to protect you. But here you are. Two people holding on with both hands. Two people slipping anyway. There’s love, so much love it aches. So much devotion it burns. But it’s not enough. Not against time. Not against distance. Not against a world that keeps taking pieces of her and leaving you with the scraps.

This is the beginning. Not loud. Not cruel. Just heartbreak dressed as tenderness. A flower blooming beautifully even as you both feel the rot quietly spreading at the center. Neither of you says a word.

Maybe because you’re scared. Maybe because you’re hopeful. Maybe because you both know—two people trying their absolute best is sometimes still not enough.

Chapter 9

The storm is already in full rage when your phone rings.

You barely have time to breathe her name before her voice spills through the speaker—thin, shaking, tired in the way people are when they’ve been holding themselves upright through sheer will.

“Can we go out?”

A soft inhale, sharp around the edges.

“Just for tonight. I want to feel… normal with you.”

Normal.

The word lands like something delicate and dying.

You say yes instantly—not because you’re not tired, not because the rain isn’t violent, but because you hear it.

The breaking she’s trying so hard to keep out of her voice.

You meet her anyway. Maybe you always will.

The café she picks is nearly empty, just the hum of an espresso machine and the low murmur of rain against glass. The lights cast a warm glow, soft enough to make anything feel survivable for a little while.

She’s already there when you step inside.

Sohyun sits hunched over a cup of tea she’s forgotten about, sleeves pulled around her fists, hair slightly frizzy from the humidity, but there’s something else—something heavy, settling over her shoulders.

She looks up when she hears the door.

And then she smiles.

God, she smiles.

Not brightly.

Not effortlessly.

But desperately, like she’s clinging to something slipping through her fingers.

“You came,” she breathes out.

“You sound surprised.”

“I… always am.”

You sit across from her.

Her knees bump yours under the table, and instead of apologizing, she leaves them there—like she needs the contact to stay upright.

The conversation starts light.

Too light.

You talk about your day.

She laughs at all the right moments.

You tease her about her messy lunchbox.

She teases you about your terrible umbrella.

It feels almost normal.

Almost.

But there’s a tension underneath, like the two of you are clutching at threads of something fraying, tugging hard enough to hurt, but not enough to keep it from unraveling.

She stares at her hands while you talk.

Her fingers twist.

Her knuckles pale.

You don’t ask why.

You’re afraid you already know.

Somewhere between a shared pastry and another refill of her untouched tea, she reaches across the table.

Her fingers brush your wrist. Just once.

Then again, more sure this time. You look up.

She looks like someone trying to memorize you.

Like someone terrified time is running out.

“You look tired,” she whispers.

You laugh softly. “You say that every time.”

“That’s because it’s always true.”

You raise a brow. “And you? When’s the last time you slept?”

She hesitates.

You both know the answer isn’t tonight. Or last night. Or the week before.

But she shrugs, ducks her head, and says, “I’m okay.”

She isn’t. She hasn’t been for a long time. But so much of loving her now feels like accepting the lies she tells to keep herself from falling apart.

Hours blur.

Lightning flashes outside, reflecting in the windows.

She flinches—not from the thunder, but from how fast time is passing.

From how quickly the night is slipping away.

You talk about everything and nothing:

Her trainee days.

Your stupid coworker.

The ramen place near your apartment.

The stray cats in her company parking lot.

It’s mundane.

It’s ordinary.

It’s everything she’s starving for.

And everything she’s afraid to keep.

When the café begins closing, she startles like someone waking from a dream.

“We still have time,” she says quickly, half-standing before the employee even speaks.

You don’t tell her the truth:

She’s not talking about the café at all.

She’s talking about you. About this.

About whatever fragile, trembling thing still exists between you—held together by effort and hope and exhaustion.

You walk outside together.

The rain has softened, mist-like and cold.

She walks close to you—not out of affection exactly, but out of need.

Like if she doesn’t stay close, she’ll drift away entirely.

Her shoulder bumps yours.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

Finally, she exhales shakily and admits, “I missed you.”

You swallow around the ache in your chest.

“I missed you too.”

Her fingers twitch beside yours.

Not reaching—just trembling.

You hook your pinky around hers.

A compromise.

A quiet, fragile connection.

She holds your pinky like it’s the last thread she can still grasp.

On the way to her dorm, she stops suddenly beneath a flickering streetlamp.

Rain beads in her lashes.

Her breathing stutters.

“Tonight was…” She hesitates.

Her throat moves.

“…all I could handle. And more than I deserved.”

You open your mouth—

She cuts you off with a small shake of her head.

“No,” she whispers. “Let me say it.”

You close it.

She steps closer.

Close enough that you feel her breath warm your jaw.

Close enough that if either of you leaned in, something irreversible might happen.

Her voice trembles.

“Thank you. For loving me, even when I’m—”

“Don’t,” you whisper back, but she continues anyway:

“Even when I’m slipping. Even when I’m not here. Even when I…”

Her voice breaks.

“…when I can’t give you what you deserve.”

Something inside you cracks.

Not because she’s pulling away.

But because she’s trying so hard not to.

Her hands fist in the sleeves of your coat like she’s scared she’ll drown if she lets go.

You reach up, brushing your thumb across her cheekbone.

She leans into the touch instantly—

like she’s been starving for it.

Like she’ll break if you pull away.

“You’re enough,” you murmur.

But even as the words leave your mouth, you feel the tremor beneath them, the unspoken fear, the growing ache,the truth neither of you wants to name:

You’re both trying.

You’re both clinging.

And it’s still not enough.

When she finally steps back, she looks ruined and beautiful in the same breath.

She almost kisses you.

You know she wants to.

You want to.

But she pulls away at the last second, like someone terrified of giving you hope she can’t keep alive.

She whispers your name—quiet, tender, trembling from the effort of holding on.

Then she slips inside her building.

The door shuts between you.

And you stand there in the mist, the ghost of her warmth still clinging to your hand, realizing the tragedy wasn’t tonight ending.

The tragedy is that both of you fought, truly fought, to keep something that is already beginning to crumble beneath the weight of your devotion.

Chapter 10

She comes over trembling.

Not a nervous tremble, but the kind that comes from holding grief so tightly it begins to leak through the cracks in your bones.

You open the door and she’s standing there like she’s barely holding herself upright.

Her hair is damp from the mist outside.

Her lips are pale.

Her shoulders are trembling in small, uncontrollable jerks.

But it’s her eyes that destroy you.

They look hollow, scraped out, as if she emptied herself just to make room for the guilt.

She steps inside like she’s stepping into a memory she already misses.

She toes off her shoes automatically, lines them up next to yours with shaking hands, and then stands still, staring at the floor, like she’s afraid she’ll see her reflection in your eyes and break completely.

You whisper her name.

She flinches like it wounds her.

The air feels wrong.

Too quiet.

Too heavy.

Like a storm pressed flat between four walls.

She tries to speak.

Her breath catches.

Her throat locks up.

You watch her struggle not to fall apart.

Then she does.

Her knees buckle first.

Her hand slaps against the wall for balance.

Her breath shatters into a sob she tries to swallow.

You catch her before she fully sinks.

Your hands steady her waist, her shoulders, her trembling frame.

She folds into you so fast it feels like she’s been waiting weeks to collapse.

Her fingers claw into your shirt.

Her forehead presses into your collarbone.

Her whole body shakes with a grief so raw it frightens you.

“Sohyun,” you whisper, terrified.

She chokes on a sound you don’t know how to name.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps.

“I’m—God, I’m so sorry—please don’t—don’t make this harder—”

She breaks down like she’s been holding it in for years, not weeks.

You sink to the floor with her, arms wrapped tightly around her as she cries with an agony that feels ancient.

Her tears soak through your shirt, your skin, your ribs.

“I can’t—” she whispers, voice cracking.

“I can’t do this to you anymore. I can’t watch you wait for me. I can’t watch myself hurt you. I can’t—”

She can’t even finish the sentence.

You pull her closer, but she’s already slipping into a place you can’t reach.

Minutes pass.

Or hours.

Time is meaningless when you’re watching the person you love unravel in your arms.

She finally forces herself upright—not because she’s okay, but because she’s made a choice and she’s terrified she’ll lose her resolve if she stays held by you any longer.

She wipes her face with trembling fingers.

Her voice is heartbreak carved into sound.

“If we stay together,” she begins, “you will learn to resent me.”

You shake your head, violently, desperate.

She cuts you off with a soft, devastated smile.

“You will,” she says. “Because I can’t give you the love you deserve. I don’t have the strength. I don’t have the space. I’m already failing you every day and I hate myself for it.”

Her voice fractures.

“And I’ll grow to resent you,” she whispers, “because you’ll keep needing what you deserve, more than I can give. And I’ll feel like I’m drowning under my own inadequacy.”

She squeezes her eyes shut.

“And I love you too much to let us turn into people who resent each other, or for me to learn to dread the mention of your name or the sound of your voice.”

You don’t breathe.

You can’t.

Your heart feels like it’s being crushed in a fist that doesn’t know mercy.

She continues, quieter:“I know what’s coming if we try. I’ve been watching it happen in small pieces.”

She looks at your apartment

at your shared mug on the counter, her sweater on your chair, the blanket you always tucked around her legs when she fell asleep on your couch.

She looks at them like they’re tombstones.

“I can’t bear to watch us rot,” she whispers.

You pull her toward you again, and this time she doesn’t resist.

She falls into your arms, sobbing harder than before.

Her hands clutch your back so tightly her nails dig in.

Her shoulders shake with every breath she tries and fails to steady.

“Please,” she cries.“Please don’t hate me someday. Remember the girl you fell in love with. Please don’t remember me like this.”

You hold her face, pushing her hair back, whispering her name over and over like it might tether her to you.

But she’s already drifting away.

You’re both crying now.

It feels like dying in slow motion.

At some point, she forces herself to stand.

You rise with her, unsteady, haunted.

She steps back.

Just one step.

It feels like a cliff opening between you.

Her voice is barely a breath:

“This is the kindest thing I know how to do.”

You whisper:

“Have you thought this through?”

She nods, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.

“And you really think,” your voice breaks,

“this is the best thing to do?”

Her lips tremble.

She whispers, “…yes.”

You look at her.

Really look.

And despite the devastation in her eyes, the way her hands are shaking, the way she can barely breathe.

You still see it.

“God,” you whisper, almost laugh, almost cry,

“You’re still bad at lying.”

That breaks her.

A sob tears out of her.

She stumbles forward and throws her arms around you, holding you like she’s trying to memorize the shape of your body, the heat of your skin, the sound of your breathing.

It feels like she’s carving a final memory into herself.

You hold each other like it’s the last moment before the world ends.

It is.

You don’t know who lets go first.

You only know that when she steps back, the entire room tilts with the weight of what you’re losing.

She wipes her tears one last time.

Then she leaves.

And you’re left standing in the doorway, holding your own ribs as if trying to keep your heart from falling out.

The horror isn’t in the breakup.

It isn’t in the leaving.

It’s in the truth:

You loved each other.

Deeply.

Fiercely.

Hopelessly.

And somehow,

somehow,

it still wasn’t enough.

Chapter 11

You try to move on.

You really do.

You throw yourself into the routines you used to have before her, late-night convenience store runs, cheap dinners with friends, playlists that once made you feel whole.

You delete old messages.

You mute her notifications.

You even tell yourself a lie every therapist on earth has warned about:

Time heals everything. But time is a terrible doctor. And grief is a patient that refuses treatment.

You fail. Not dramatically—no collapse on the floor, no midnight phone call, no drunken confession to a friend. Your failure is quieter, softer.

It happens when you reach for your phone without thinking.

When you buy two bottles of banana milk at the store.

When you see the empty side of the couch and feel the ghost of her weight leaning against you.

When you catch yourself laughing at something and then freeze, because she would’ve laughed too.

You try again.

You go out more.

You let friends drag you across Seoul, from neon-lit arcades to cafés that close too early.

You pretend you’re present—try to stitch yourself back into the world of people who aren’t missing someone like a phantom limb.

Your friends think you’re doing better.

Maybe because you’ve stopped crying in bathrooms.

Maybe because you no longer whisper her name in your sleep.

Maybe because you’ve grown skilled at smiling at the right moments.

But the truth is simpler, sadder:

You haven’t healed.

You’ve just learned not to talk about it.

The world moves on without asking if you’re ready.

And she—

Sohyun—

moves faster than anyone.

Suddenly she’s everywhere.

Her face lights up subway stations, glowing from billboard screens and animated ads.

Her laugh echoes from variety shows you didn’t mean to watch.

Her eyes—those eyes that once looked at you like you were the only safe place she had—now sparkle on fancams watched by millions.

She’s luminous.

Brilliant.

Made for stages, cameras, applause.

She shines in a way that makes strangers fall in love with her.

But you see something they don’t.

In the split second between smiles, in the breath she takes before answering a question, in the way she grips her mic a little too tightly— you see flickers.

Regret.

Longing.

The quiet kind of hurt that sits behind her ribs and never fully dissolves.

Maybe someone else would call it imagination.

But you know her.

You knew her in rooms without cameras, in nights without sleep, in moments when all she could be was herself.

So you recognize what her eyes are hiding.

You wish you didn’t.

Because it hurts more now than it ever did.

The first month after the breakup is sharp pain—teeth, claws, heavy breathing.

The second month is dull ache—nothing dramatic, just a low throb.

By the third month, grief becomes something else.

A presence.

A shadow that walks behind you, sits beside you at meals, waits at the edge of your dreams, touches your shoulder when you hear her voice on TV.

Not loud.

Not violent.

Just… there.

A roommate you never invited.

One that doesn’t leave dishes in the sink, doesn’t slam doors, doesn’t inconvenience your day, just one that exists quietly, persistently, a reminder in the corner of your eye.

Some nights, when you close your eyes, you can almost feel her again, the warmth of her fingers, the weight of her head on your shoulder, the tremble in her voice when she whispered stay. And sometimes you let yourself remember.

Just for a moment.

Just for a breath.

Then morning comes.

And you keep going.

Because that’s the thing about heartbreak that no one tells you:

It doesn’t end.

It simply becomes something you live with.

Chapter 12

You didn’t buy the ticket.

You would’ve sooner carved open your own chest than willingly put yourself in the same room as her again.

But your friend pressed it into your hand, voice too soft, too pitying:

“You can’t run forever.”

Maybe they were right.

But God, you wish they’d been wrong.

Now you’re here—

standing in a crowd of people who love her loudly, while you are the only one who ever loved her quietly.

The venue shakes with anticipation.

Chants echo.

Lightsticks raise like a forest of trembling stars.

You feel sick.

Not the kind of sick that makes you want to leave, the kind that roots you to the floor with dread and longing in equal measure.

The lights cut.

Darkness falls.

The screams rise like a tidal wave.

Music blooms.

And then, she steps into the light.

Sohyun.

Your Sohyun.

Except she’s not yours and never will be again.

She looks unreal, sculpted from stage light and dream-dust, hair gleaming, smile polished, eyes shining with the kind of confidence that costs more than anyone in this room will ever understand.

She moves like she belongs to this world. To them. To the noise and the brightness and the unreachable distance.

She moves like she was never the girl who curled into your chest and begged you to stay. Never the girl who whispered I’m scared during dawn. Never the girl who broke in your arms because loving you was hurting you.

She’s everything she worked for.

And you’ve never felt further from her.

When the ballad begins, the stadium hushes.

Soft piano.

A ripple of blue lights.

She stands alone at the edge of the stage, breathing slow, eyes lowered.

This song is different.

New.

Raw.

Something she wrote.

Something she poured herself into.

You already know it will kill you.

The spotlight sweeps across the crowd, passing faces painted with adoration, and you almost pray it won’t reach you, but it does.

And then her gaze follows the light.

Her eyes lock on yours. Everything stops. Her breath, her posture, her practiced, perfect composure, all of it fractures in an instant.

Her lips part.

Her shoulders stiffen.

The note she was about to sing dies in her throat.

Only you notice.

Only you ever would.

Because you know what she looks like when she’s hurting.

You know the exact second her heart caves in.

Her eyes widen with recognition so sharp it’s a wound.

You feel it too, like someone has reached inside you and pulled, hard.

A tremor slips into her voice as she forces herself to continue singing,

but you can hear it.

The break.

The plea.

The collapse.

And God, she looks at you like she’s seeing a ghost she never learned how to stop loving.

She loves you again in that moment.

Not the bright, hopeful love from the beginning, but the ruined, exhausted kind, born from all the ways you tried to stay, and all the ways she had to leave.

Her eyes shine with longing so raw you have to look away.

But you can’t.

Because for a heartbeat, she is yours again.

And then she mourns you again.

That’s the part that destroys you.

Because in her gaze is the knowledge that you should have had a different ending—one where the world wasn’t too big, she wasn’t too breakable, and you weren’t left holding all the pieces alone.

Her voice shivers.

Her hand clenches around the mic.

Her throat works like she’s swallowing pain.

And then, she turns away.

Not dramatically.

Not bitterly.

Just quietly, like she’s placing a memory back onto a shelf she swore she’d never touch again.

The song continues.

The stage glows.

The crowd roars.

But you stand perfectly still, as if moving would make the moment real and you desperately need it to stay unreal.

Your chest aches, not sharply, not suddenly, but with the deep, crushing pressure of something breaking in slow motion.

You swallow. Then swallow again. You swallow everything: her voice, her dream, her pain, your shared history, your own heart, the entire brutal universe that has decided you cannot belong to each other.

Sohyun keeps singing like nothing happened.

But you saw it.

She saw you.

And in that single look, she loved you again, lost you again, and let you go all over again.

You stay until the end of the concert, not because you want to, but because you can’t move.

Because leaving would feel too much like a final goodbye.

And you’ve already survived one of those.

Lights smear. Voices drag. Your own hands feel a fraction disconnected from the rest of you, as though your pulse forgot to keep them warm. But you keep walking down the hallway anyway, clutching the iced tea you bought out of habit, not out of thirst.

It’s late—later than you intended to still be on campus. The building is empty. The kind of empty that makes you aware of your breathing.

And then you hear it.

A soft thud. A muffled curse. The sound of someone very tired trying not to sound tired.

When you round the corner, she’s there. Sohyun. Hood half-off her head. Hair messy in a way you’ve never seen—like she ran her fingers through it a few dozen times too many. A tote bag hangs from one shoulder, overstuffed with scripts and notebooks and things she won’t have time to put down tonight.

She looks up and freezes. It takes her a second—one long second—to place you, and when she does, her shoulders drop with something that looks suspiciously like relief.

“Hey,” she breathes, and that single word is softer than anyone else ever gets from her. “You’re still here?”

You don’t mean to smile, but you do. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

She huffs a tired laugh—tiny, real, the kind she only gives when her guard is down. It makes something in your chest ache.

You’ve known Sohyun for months, in that comfortable, unspoken way people know each other when their lives overlap at strange hours. She’s an idol on the rise, constantly juggling rehearsals and filming and meetings you can only guess at. You’re… you. A person who studies too hard and sleeps too little and somehow always ends up in the same quiet hallways she’s hiding in.

You never plan to see each other. But somehow you always do. Tonight, though—tonight she looks different. Overwound, frayed, on the edge of something invisible.

You nod at the bench by the window. “Sit,” you say before thinking. And somehow, impossibly, she listens. She drops beside you, bag sliding to the floor. She leans her head back against the cold wall, eyes fluttering shut.

“You okay?” you ask gently.

Her voice comes out hoarse. “I don’t remember what okay feels like.”

You shouldn’t be the person she admits that to. You don’t know why you are. Maybe it’s because you’re safe. Because you don’t want anything from her. Because you aren’t part of the machine chewing at her every waking hour. Or maybe it’s because you’re the only person who ever asks her if she’s tired, instead of asking her to prove she isn’t.

Minutes pass like that—quiet, shared breath, glowing emergency lights humming above you. And then her shoulder bumps yours. Barely there. Careful. Like she’s scared you’ll flinch.

You don’t. If anything, you lean a little closer. Her eyes open slowly, heavy-lidded and exhausted. “Have you slept?” she asks.

You shake your head. “You?” She lets out a breath that almost counts as a laugh. “Not in a way that matters.”

The silence that settles between you is warm this time—strangely gentle, like you’ve both been walking through storms and finally found the same doorway. Then, very quietly: “Can I…” She swallows. “Can I stay here a bit? Just—not alone.”

Your heart stumbles. Of course she can. Of course.

But the way she asks—like she’s apologizing for existing—unravels you.

You say her name softly. “Sohyun.”

Her eyes flick to yours.

“You don’t have to ask.”

Her lips part. Something vulnerable flickers across her expression—raw, fleeting, impossible to look away from.

She shifts closer. This time less cautiously. Her shoulder presses against yours, deliberate.

“Thank you,” she whispers. The words are small. But they hit you like a tide. Because no one ever thanks you for staying. You don’t know how long you sit there—minutes, maybe hours—two tired souls leaning into each other because neither has the strength to stand alone tonight.

When her head finally droops onto your shoulder, you freeze only for a heartbeat before adjusting, letting her settle against you.

You hear her breathing steady. You feel her relax for the first time since you met. And it’s stupid—so stupid—but you let yourself imagine that maybe you could be someone she returns to on purpose. Someone she chooses not out of exhaustion, but out of want. You don’t know yet that love, for her, will be a slow undoing. You don’t know yet that this quiet closeness will become her escape, and then her fear.

For now, for tonight, she is here. Your shoulder beneath her cheek. Your heartbeat where she rests.The world soft around the edges.

And it almost feels like the beginning of something gentle. Something hopeful. Romance is in the air. But romance makes fools of the hopeful.

Chapter 2

If anyone asked you when it started—when the world tilted just slightly toward her, when coincidences began to feel suspiciously like choices—you wouldn’t know what to answer.

Maybe it was in the hallway. Or the convenience store. Or at the bus stop where time felt soft enough to stretch.

Maybe it was all of them at once. Because the truth is: Park Sohyun doesn’t enter your life like a moment. She arrives like a pattern.

It’s nearly eleven when you step out of your classroom, rubbing at your neck, blinking sleep out of your eyes. The building is quiet at this hour—just the buzz of old lights and your footsteps echoing down the polished corridor.

You turn a corner. And almost collide with her.

Sohyun stops short, clutching her bag to her chest. Her cheeks are already pink, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“Oh,” she breathes, hair slightly messy from rushing. “You’re here.”

You blink. “You’re… also here.”

She nods with the sincerity of someone trying very hard to look casual. “Just finished.”

You glance down at her hair—still damp from practice. Her shoes—pointing directly toward the practice rooms, not the exit. Her breathing—just a touch too fast.

“You just finished,” you repeat.

“Yes,” she insists.

“Sohyun,” you say gently.

She shifts her weight, looks away, pretends to study a vending machine that has been broken since last semester.

“…Okay,” she whispers, “I maybe finished a while ago.”

You smile. “You were waiting.”

She puffs out her cheeks—her signature tell of embarrassment. “Shut uuuup.”

You grin wider. “You’re a bad liar.”

Her eyes widen indignantly. “I’m excellent at lying. I once lied to a trainer about eating an extra pudding!”

“That’s… not the flex you think it is.”

She gives you a light punch on the arm—just enough to make your heart swing a little. And then she walks beside you, the hallway suddenly feeling less empty. Less lonely. More… something.

You don’t have a name for it yet. But it hums low in your chest, warm and hopeful.

You’re at the refrigerated section, debating between caffeine and sleep (sleep won’t win), when the bell above the door rings.

You don’t even turn. You already know it’s her. Sohyun stands frozen in the entrance, holding a random carton of milk like it’s evidence in a crime show. Her eyes widen when she sees you, her whole body going stiff like she’s trying to decide between fleeing or pretending she was invisible.

“You,” she says, sounding personally attacked.

“You,” you echo, amused.

She lifts the milk weakly. “I needed… dairy.”

You stare. “That’s banana milk.”

She looks down at it, betrayed. “Why do I keep grabbing the wrong one—?”

You laugh. She hates how much she likes making you laugh. She huffs, sulky and adorable, and follows you to the counter, pretending she just happened to buy two warm canned drinks and only realized it outside the convenience store.

“For you,” she says, shoving one toward you without looking. “It’s cold.”

You deadpan. “It’s hot outside.”

She frowns. “Then… emotional coldness.”

You snort.

She gasps. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You are!”

“I’m laughing near you.”

She groans dramatically, but her lips twitch upward anyway. There’s a faint tremble in your hand when your fingers brush hers while accepting the drink. She pulls back as though the contact burned her—in the soft, startled way that says she didn’t hate it. Maybe even liked it.

The bus stop is quiet at night. The kind of quiet where your breath sounds louder than it should.

You’re scrolling through your phone when you hear hurried footsteps.

You look up.

She’s there—hood up, hair sticking to her cheeks, breathing like she ran a marathon.

She stops right in front of you, trying and failing to appear composed.

“Oh hey,” she says, casually pretending she hadn’t just sprinted half the neighborhood.

“…hey,” you reply. “Coincidence?”

She nods with so much force her hood almost falls off. “Yes!”

“Sohyun.”

She deflates. “…Fine. I waited.”

“For me?”

She tucks her chin down, toeing at the ground. Her voice goes tiny.

“Maybe.”

You say nothing—not because you don’t know what to say, but because something in your chest shifts, warm and painful in the way soft things often are. She sits beside you, her shoulder brushing yours. Not quite on purpose, not quite accidental.

“Your practice ended an hour ago,” you murmur.

She doesn’t look at you. “Sometimes time… goes weird.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like… it moves differently when I’m walking somewhere.”

“Somewhere like here?” you ask softly.

She bites her lip. “Shut up.”

You’re starting to think that ‘shut up’ is Sohyun language for you’re right but I’m too shy to admit it.

Somehow, without deciding it, without ever needing words, meeting her becomes a rhythm. She finishes practice “coincidentally” when your class ends. She appears in hallways she has no reason to be in. She texts you occasionally—not enough to be obvious, but enough that your phone feels emptier without it. And every time she sees you, she brightens in a way she tries desperately to hide.

One night, as you wait for the bus, she begins talking about music.

“I want to compose something one day,” she says, eyes shining. “Something that feels like… like opening a window on a rainy morning. Or like the first breath after crying.”

You smile. “That sounds pretty.”

“Does it?” she asks, hopeful in the softest way.

You nod. “Very you.”

Her heart stutters—you can see it in the way her fingers twist around her drink, in the way her eyes soften.

“Do you think…” she begins, hesitant, “you’d like my music? I mean—if I made it big? If things changed?”

“Of course,” you say instantly. “I’d still be here. Still listening.”

She freezes. And then she smiles—a small, radiant, shy thing that looks like it escaped before she could hide it.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. That’s… good.”

You don’t realize you’re falling. Not yet. You don’t realize how your heart picks up whenever she appears. How her laughter hangs in your mind longer than it should. How her “coincidences” feel like little constellations forming a shape only the two of you can read.

She doesn’t realize it either. Or maybe she does— but she’s too gentle to name it, too scared it might disappear if spoken too loudly.

So instead, she waits for you in hallways. Buys you warm drinks you don’t need. Sneaks glances like she’s memorizing your face piece by piece. And you let her.

You walk slower so she can match your steps. You hold your drink with both hands so she won’t notice how warm it actually makes you.

You let her orbit closer. And she lets you pull her in.

For now— for this chapter— everything is sweet. Everything is hopeful. Everything is blooming quietly.

You don’t know what’s coming, and she pretends not to feel the ache in her future.

But tonight?

Tonight, she bumps her shoulder into yours and pretends she didn’t. Tonight, her cheeks warm when you tease her. Tonight, she waits for a bus she doesn’t need— because you’re there.

Tonight is soft.

Tonight is cute.

Tonight is the kind of sweetness you’ll ache for later.

And neither of you knows it yet, but these coincidences are the memories that will haunt you most.

Chapter 3

You show up at the company building with a paper bag warm in your hands and nervousness fizzing beneath your ribs like trapped fireworks. It’s late—past ten—when most trainees have already trickled out of the mirrored rooms and fluorescent hallways, their bodies heavy, their eyes hollow with exhaustion, their dreams bruised from another day of being told to smile wider, dance sharper, be perfect or be forgotten.

But still, you wait.

You lean against the cool wall in the lobby, pretending to scroll your phone, pretending you aren’t listening for every footstep, pretending you didn’t spend twenty minutes in the convenience store debating which snacks she might like even though you already know her preferences by heart.

When Sohyun finally appears, every excuse you had rehearsed evaporates.

Her hoodie is slipping off one shoulder, her bangs stick lightly to her forehead with sweat, and she looks so tired she seems almost translucent. But the moment her eyes land on you—the exact moment—something bright flares across her face.

Soft. Surprised. Like she’s been stumbling through the dark all day and suddenly found a light left on for her. “You’re here,” she breathes, a little startled, a little relieved.

“You sound surprised,” you tease, though your voice is softer than you expect.

“I— I always am.” A flush rises across her cheeks, faint but unmistakable. Your heart missteps.

You offer her the bag. “I brought snacks. Protein cookies. And those strawberry milk things you pretend you don’t like.”

She stares. Blinks once. Then her lips curl into a crooked grin that hits you square in the chest.

“I don’t pretend,” she counters, her voice weak with fatigue and something else. “I just— okay, fine, yes, I like them. A lot. Maybe.”

She holds the paper bag carefully, like it’s fragile. Like it’s meaningful.

You don’t point it out. You don’t need to.

Her fingers tighten around the handles, and then—without warning—she looks at you with a sudden decision in her eyes.

“Come with me.”

Before you can even ask where she’s going, she gently hooks her fingers in your sleeve, tugging you along through the dim, quiet corridors. Trainees’ voices echo faintly below through the stairwell, fading with every flight you climb.

You follow her up three sets of stairs, heart thumping louder with each step, until the rooftop door creaks open. Cold night air washes over you like a blessing. The sky is a deep navy, hazy with clouds. Neon lights flicker in the distance, blurry and distant like the city is dreaming its own dreams tonight. The rooftop is quiet—too quiet—like a place meant to hear secrets instead of footsteps. Sohyun walks ahead, then drops onto the concrete ground with a long, dramatic sigh before patting the space beside her.

Close. Too close. Deliberately close.

You sit, and the moment you do, her knee nudges yours. Just barely. But enough for your breath to snag.

She doesn’t move away.

Instead, she smiles a little, almost like she’s testing you. Testing the idea of you.

“I didn’t bring you up here to traumatize you,” she jokes, noticing how stiffly you sit at first.

“Could’ve fooled me,” you mutter.

She nudges you with the side of her foot—light, playful, almost tender. Then she leans back on her hands, head tilting upward toward the sky. Her shoulders lift and fall with a quiet breath.

“You know…” She pauses, searching for the right words. “Sometimes I come here because it’s the only place I don’t have to pretend. No trainers drilling me into the ground, no mirrors reminding me of everything wrong, no other kids trying to look confident while silently breaking.”

Her voice dips, barely audible. “I feel like… up here, I can actually breathe.”

You feel something twist inside you. Something protective. Something stupidly, recklessly fond.

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” you say softly.

She freezes. Just for a second. Just long enough for the air to tighten.

Then her expression shifts—cracks open, even. Her eyes glisten faintly in the city’s glow, vulnerability pooling in the dark like a reflection of the sky.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m not enough,” she whispers. “Like no matter how hard I try, I’m always one mistake away from losing everything. For the company. For the world. For—”

“For me?”

You don’t know why you say it. The words slip out like a truth you’ve been keeping warm inside your mouth. A truth you weren’t ready to release. Sohyun’s breath catches. She looks at you like she wasn’t expecting you to say it out loud, even though she wanted you to.

“Maybe,” she finally admits, voice trembling with something honest and terrifying.

You swallow hard. The rooftop suddenly feels too small for the size of your feelings.

“You are enough,” you say, firmer than before. “More than enough. You don’t have to try so hard to earn that. Not from me.”

Her eyes widen—so gently, so quietly. Like she’s hearing a foreign language. Like she’s learning how to accept something she didn’t know she was allowed to have.

For a moment—just one weighted heartbeat—she looks at you like you’re something she’s been searching for without realizing it.

Her gaze falls to your mouth. Slow. Lingering. Yours drops to hers, as if pulled. The space between you becomes electric, delicate, a trembling thread. She leans in just a little—barely anything, barely noticeable—but you feel it. Her warmth. Her breath. Her uncertainty. Her want.

The world feels like it’s leaning with her.

But she stops.

Not pulling back. Not retreating. Just… hovering.

Her forehead almost touches yours. Your breaths mix. The moment quivers like a fragile note suspended in air.

Then—gently—she lets her head fall onto your shoulder. Her hair brushes your jaw, light as a confession. Her hand reaches out, hesitating only a split second before curling into your sleeve, clutching like she needs something steady. You adjust your shoulder, letting her settle more comfortably against you, and you both sit there in a quiet that feels warm, safe, and impossibly fragile—like the start of something neither of you has the courage to name yet. And you stay. Longer than you should. Long enough for the night to wrap around you both like a secret.

Long enough to fall a little more in love with her.

“Stay a little longer,” she whispers, voice barely there.

You don’t say anything.

You don’t tell her that you’d stay forever if she asked.

Chapter 4

You go to the Han River that night for no reason at all.

Maybe it’s habit. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s because everything feels a little too loud lately, and the water always seems to quiet the noise in your head. The river glimmers under the streetlights, soft waves collapsing against the bank in gentle rhythms. Couples pass you with muffled laughter and linked fingers. Joggers run past with neon shoes and steady breaths.

You sit on a bench facing the water, hands folded in your pockets, mind drifting nowhere in particular.

You don’t expect anything.

Least of all her.

But then—A familiar voice breaks the hush of the evening. Your name, spoken with breathless awe and uneven emotion. You turn sharply.

Sohyun stands there, framed by streetlight and night sky, as if she’s stepped out of a memory you weren’t sure you had the right to keep.

Her hair is tied up messily. Her jacket is too big. Her eyes flicker—bright, watery, scared, overwhelmed, incandescent.

It’s the kind of expression someone wears when they’re standing on the edge of a dream and don’t know if they’re about to fall or fly.

“Sohyun?”

Your voice comes out softer than you expect.

She closes the distance between you in three quick steps, nearly tripping in her haste.

“You— I…” she starts, then stops, then laughs a little wildly. The sound trembles. “I needed to tell you in person.”

She’s shivering. Not from cold. From everything else.

You rise slowly from the bench as if approaching a skittish bird.

She lifts her hands like she can’t hold the words in any longer.

“I’m debuting.”

The world tilts.

For a heartbeat, you can’t breathe—your chest folds in around her words, your ribs expanding with relief and a quiet ache you don’t understand yet.

Then you’re moving before you even think to. You step forward. She steps into you.

You wrap your arms around her instinctively, but it’s her who truly holds on—fists gripping the back of your jacket, forehead pressed to your shoulder, entire body shaking with adrenaline and disbelief.

“I’m debuting,” she repeats into your neck, voice cracking. “It’s actually happening.”

You hold her tighter, because she feels like a miracle happening in real time, because you’ve watched her bleed for this dream in practice rooms and hallways and rooftops.

“Of course you are,” you murmur. “You deserve it.”

Her breath shudders against you. She clings harder, almost painfully, as if afraid the moment might slip through her fingers if she loosens her grip.

For a second—a fleeting, delicate second—you feel something in her hold that you’ve never felt before.

Fear. Joy. A quiet, desperate need.

Like she’s bracing for the world to pull her away.

Like she’s already mourning something she hasn’t lost yet.

You sit together afterward, side by side on the bench, watching the water glow with city lights. Sohyun talks in broken, breathless bursts—about the call from the company, the tears in the practice room, the congratulatory messages, the disbelief still clinging to her.

“I didn’t know where to go,” she admits, voice quiet. “But I knew who I wanted to tell.”

Your heart tightens.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

She leans her head onto your shoulder for only a second before pulling back—too aware of time, of schedules, of managers checking dorm rooms. Of the countdown already ticking.

“I can’t stay long,” she says reluctantly.

You nod, though it feels like swallowing something sharp.

For a while, nothing changes. At least not in ways you can measure.

She still sends texts with too many emojis. Still tells you about the choreo that made her ankles scream. Still laughs breathlessly when you tease her.

Hope is alive.

Small but real.

But then—Slowly. Quietly.

Something shifts.

It starts with the texting.

Before, her replies came so fast you sometimes wondered if she ever put her phone down.

Now, minutes stretch into hours. Hours stretch into days. Sometimes she forgets to reply entirely.

Other times she sends a rushed: Sorry! Practice ran over. I’ll text later!!

But “later” grows further and further away.

You keep telling yourself she’s just busy.

You keep believing it.

Then it’s the cancellations.

“Tomorrow? I swear I’ll be free tomorrow.”

“Wait—schedule just changed, I’m so so sorry.”

“Dorm curfew is strict today. Next time?”

There’s always a reason. Always valid. Always painful in a way that doesn’t show. You tell her it’s okay every time.

Because how could you not?

She’s chasing something enormous. But each promise postponed leaves a small, hollow bruise in the chest—one you don’t notice at first, one that grows silently.

One night, very late, she appears outside your apartment building. Hood up, mask on, breathing hard like she sprinted the last block.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. “But I wanted to see you.”

Your heart stutters.

She hands you a plastic bag—snacks, drinks, things she picked out with the same tenderness you once offered her.

“I owe you so many nights,” she says, eyes flicking up toward yours. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

Her voice is soft. Too soft. Too full of guilt and hope and a quiet pleading you don’t understand yet. She means it. You know she does. That’s what makes the ache worse. A van honks somewhere down the street.

Her phone buzzes twice. Her shoulders flinch. She looks at you one more time—really looks—like she’s memorizing you in the dim streetlight. Like she’s afraid the world will soon get too fast for moments like this.

She lifts a hand in a half-wave before backing away. And then she’s gone—swallowed by schedules and cameras and a future that doesn’t have room for pauses.

You stand alone with the snacks she chose for you, with the warmth of her promise lingering like smoke.

You believe her.

But as you walk up the stairwell to your place, something inside you whispers. It's quiet, faint, almost imperceptible

Hope can thin quietly, long before it breaks.

Chapter 5

Debut day feels unreal.

You arrive at the venue early, long before the seats begin to fill, because you want to see every moment—every test run of lights, every snippet of audio, every tiny step that proves she made it. You sit in the audience with your hands clasped too tightly in your lap, heart pounding like you’re the one about to go onstage.

And then the crowd begins to swell. Fans file in with banners and LED boards. The air vibrates with anticipation, like the entire arena is holding a collective breath.

You don’t know where she is backstage, but you can imagine her: pacing a little; refreshing her lip tint; adjusting her outfit; bouncing on her heels; whispering her lines to herself; trying to hide the way her hands tremble.

The moment the lights go down, the audience erupts.

And then—there she is.

Sohyun steps onto the stage like she was carved from the spotlight itself. Her hair catches the light in soft, unreal waves. Her eyes gleam like she’s swallowed a star. The music hits, and she moves—confident, sharp, breathtaking.

She looks powerful. She looks distant. She looks nothing like the girl who once sat with you on a freezing rooftop, knees touching yours, whispering that she was scared she wouldn’t be enough.

Your heart swells anyway. Pride expands so big in your chest it almost hurts. Tears sting your eyes before you’re even aware of them. You cheer. You scream her name with the rest of the crowd, even though she can’t possibly hear you.

When she smiles—bright, dazzling—it feels like the entire arena lights up. But her eyes never meet yours. Not once.

You tell yourself that’s normal. You tell yourself she’s busy, distracted, overwhelmed. There are cameras and choreo and lights; she can’t possibly pick out one face among thousands.

Still… something settles deep inside your ribs. A quiet ache. A tiny shadow. You ignore it. You clap until your palms sting. You watch every performance with your whole soul, committing every expression of hers to memory. Even when the show ends and the crowd disperses in a tidal wave of adrenaline and tears, you sit there for a moment longer, unwilling to break the spell. Because this is what she dreamed of. And you got to witness it.

That night, she shows up at your apartment. You don’t know how she made it past security or whether she sprinted or stumbled her way here, but she’s still wearing her stage makeup, smudged and glittering. Her hair is tied messily at the nape of her neck, and her eyes—god, her eyes—look exhausted in a way you’ve never seen before.

The smile she gives you is small and cracked around the edges.

“You watched, right?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” you answer immediately. “You were incredible. I was… I was so proud.”

Sohyun steps inside before you finish, like she’s afraid she might lose the courage if she stays in the hallway. She toes off her shoes, sets her bag down, and then she just… sinks onto your couch, like gravity suddenly doubled its weight on her shoulders.

She tries to talk—really tries. She starts telling you about backstage chaos, about last-minute changes, about fansigns already being planned. But halfway through a sentence, her voice drifts off. Her eyelids flutter. She falls asleep while still holding your hand.

Her fingers are loosely curled around yours, soft and warm, but twitching with leftover adrenaline. Her makeup leaves faint shimmer on your skin. Her breathing steadies, slow and uneven, like her body is catching up to all the days she pushed it past its limit.

You don’t move. You don’t dare.

Instead, you shift slowly to get her more comfortable. You pull a blanket over her, tucking it gently around her shoulders. You brush stray hairs from her forehead, careful not to wake her.

She sleeps with her hand still in yours. You watch her.

Her lips are parted just slightly, the remnants of a stage smile faded into something softer, more human. There’s a small crease between her brows, like even in sleep she’s bracing for something—criticism, pressure, the world waiting to judge her debut.

You squeeze her hand, just lightly. She doesn’t let go.

You tell yourself this distance is temporary. That once the first wave of chaos passes, she’ll come back to you with the same closeness, the same warmth, the same soft glow in her eyes meant only for you.

But as you watch her sleep—still curled toward you, yet impossibly far away—you feel something shift.

Not a crack. Not a break. Just the faintest tug. Like the beginning of a thread unraveling.

You close your eyes and breathe through it. Because you love her. And she’s shining. And if the light hurts a little— you pretend it doesn’t.

The shadow settles quietly inside you, patient and small. You pretend you don’t feel it.

Chapter 6

You don’t expect her message—not tonight, not at this hour, not with the way she’s been drifting just slightly out of reach these days.

But at 11:47 PM, your phone lights up.

Sohyun:

Are you awake?

I want to take you somewhere.

No emoji. No exclamation point. Just those words—quiet, urgent, a little lonely.

You grab your hoodie. Keys. Shoes. You don’t check the mirror. If she needs you, you’ll show up exactly as you are.

When you step outside, the street is almost empty—cars humming distantly, a few bars spilling late-night laughter into the air—but your attention snaps toward the figure leaning against the corner pole.

Sohyun. Hood pulled low. Mask covering half her face. Eyes wide and tired and warm when they land on you.

“There you are,” she whispers, relief softening every line in her body.

“You sound like you thought I’d say no.”

A small breath of a laugh. “Maybe I did.”

She doesn’t wait—she catches your sleeve between two fingers and pulls you toward the curb where a taxi slows down like it has been summoned for something important.

The ride is quiet. Not tense. Just… heavy.

Sohyun keeps her forehead against the window, watching the city pass as though it’s something she needs to memorize to stay grounded.

“You okay?” you ask.

“Mm.” A vague, heavy sound. “Just trying to keep my soul inside my body.”

“That bad?”

“Not bad. Just…” She scrunches her nose. “Big. Everything feels big lately.”

You don’t know what to say, so you reach out and brush your knuckles against her sleeve. Not a grab. Not a hold. Just a reminder. She leans the tiniest bit closer.

The ramen shop looks like a secret someone forgot to hide well. Tucked behind a run-down laundromat, half of its sign burnt out, its windows fogged with steam. It feels like it shouldn’t exist on any map—somewhere only tired dreamers go to remember they’re still human.

Inside, the air is warm enough to thaw bones. A few other patrons glance up—hoodies, masks, caps—but they don’t linger. They all look like they’re carrying the quiet misery of people who live too brightly on stage and too dimly in real life.

Sohyun blends right in. She takes the seat beside you, close enough that her thigh brushes yours, close enough that her breath warms the sleeve of your hoodie. And when the owner recognizes her, he doesn’t say her name—just offers a respectful nod and sets two bowls of ramen in front of you, steaming and rich.

She exhales at the sight. You can tell she hasn’t eaten in hours. You try to lighten the moment. Like you always do.

“So today I met a dog—”

Her head lifts.

“—in a yellow raincoat.”

She blinks. “Like… a detective dog?”

“More like a ‘captain of a tiny ship’ dog.”

She bursts into a laugh that collapses immediately into her palm—soft, tired, but bright. “I needed that,” she mumbles through her fingers.

“I figured.”

“I wish I saw him.”

“You would’ve kidnapped him.”

A shrug. “Maybe.”

She starts eating, small bites, shoulders slowly relaxing as the warmth reaches her. You watch her eyelids droop a little—her body finally remembering what relaxation feels like. You talk. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just about the small, meaningless parts of your day—the kind of things you always save for her, because she listens like you’re saying something important even when you aren’t.

But halfway through your story, her head dips. Her chopsticks pause mid-air. Her eyes flutter closed for half a second—just long enough for your chest to ache. Then she jerks awake, inhaling hard.

“I’m here,” she insists, voice too earnest for someone this drained. “I’m listening, I promise—”

“You’re exhausted,” you say, softer than a whisper. “I’m… trying.” She rubs her face with both hands, thumbs pressing into her temples. “I don’t want to keep fading on you. I really don’t.”

You nod, but she keeps talking, her voice cracking open like something she’s been holding back for too long.

“My life is growing so fast,” she whispers. “Faster than I am. And I’m scared I won’t recognize myself at the end of it.”

“Sohyun…”

“I’m scared I won’t be someone you can recognize either.”

She says it like an apology. Like a confession. Like a plea.

You reach out, slow enough to give her the chance to pull away—but she doesn’t. Your hand brushes over hers, warm to warm.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” you say. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her breath shakes. “You shouldn’t have to stay just because I’m trying my best.”

“Trying is enough.”

“Not for this,” she whispers. “Not for you.”

Your heart cracks in a way she doesn’t see—or maybe she does, because she looks down quickly, cheeks flushing with guilt.

The ramen cools between you. The silence grows warm, then fragile, then a little sharp at the edges.

For the first time, you both feel the shift. The ground beneath you isn’t steady anymore.

When you leave the shop, the alley is damp, neon lights trembling in puddles. Sohyun steps into the glow of a flickering streetlamp, looking almost unreal—glamour and exhaustion tangled together.

And then—slowly, hesitantly—she slips her hand into yours.

Her fingers thread between yours like she’s searching for reassurance she’s terrified to ask for.

Her voice comes out barely audible. A confession disguised as breath. “I feel like I’m stepping into this huge, terrifying world,” she murmurs. “And I’m scared there won’t be enough room for us in it.”

You step closer, forehead brushing hers. “We’ll make space.” Her eyes flutter closed. She doesn’t look convinced. Not fully. Not anymore.

But she squeezes your hand like she’s praying you’re right. Like she wants to believe you even as the future looms above you both—big, bright, and just a little too heavy. And in that tiny alley, under failing light, love begins to tremble. Not break. Not yet. But tremble,soft, fragile, like something that knows one day, it might have to learn how to hurt.

Chapter 7

It’s the silence that haunts you first. Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours. You don’t count them on purpose but your body does, learning the pattern of her absence like a second heartbeat.

You cook too much food.

You keep checking your window at night.

You find yourself staring at your phone, staring at conversations that have grown thin and polite, like a thread being pulled slowly from a sweater. She’s not gone. Not really.

Just drifting, like someone swimming to shore without realizing they’re leaving you behind in the water.

But the ache is familiar. Too familiar.

Some nights, you swear you feel her warmth in the room, a ghost memory of her laugh, the weight of her hand on your sleeve.

You turn your head, and find nothing but shadows. Hope keeps you alive. Hope also kills you a little.

So when your buzzer rings at 9:02 PM, it doesn’t feel real. You expect a delivery. A neighbor. Anything ordinary. Not her. But then

“…It’s me.”

Her voice doesn’t sound like Sohyun. It sounds like someone trying to remember how to be her. You open the door. And she looks like the wind has been carving pieces off her.

Her hoodie hangs: not fashionably oversized but emptily oversized.

Her eyes are rimmed pink. Her lips are chapped.

And her guilt walks in before she does, sharp, heavy, fragrant, like perfume applied too thickly in the dark. “Sohyun,” you breathe.

She tries to smile, but it collapses halfway, falling apart like something brittle.

“Hi.”

A ghost of herself. But still her.

God, still so her.

She toes off her shoes like she’s entering a memory she doesn’t know if she deserves anymore.

Then she sits on your couch, not at the end, not the middle, but the exact place she always used to sit.

Knees pulled to her chest.

Fingers tucked into her sleeves.

Like she’s trying to make herself smaller, less intrusive, less heavy.

You sit beside her.

Close enough to tell her she’s not alone.

Far enough to give her the choice.

She closes the distance in less than a breath.

Her shoulder presses yours.

Light. Tentative. But intentional.

She leans into you like she’s afraid she’ll break if she doesn’t.

Her voice comes out thin, trembling at the edges.

“I’m sorry.”

You inhale too quickly.

It hurts.

“For what?” you manage.

She laughs—

a small, broken thing that sounds like something shattering.

“For all of it,” she whispers.

“For being gone.

For being tired all the time.

For disappearing even though I promised I wouldn’t.

For making you think you’re… not important.”

Your heart flinches.

“You never made me think that.”

She looks at you then.

Truly looks at you.

And her eyes go soft—

devotion, regret, longing, shame

all swirling like storm clouds behind them.

“You’re lying,” she whispers.

And it’s not an accusation.

It’s a wound.

Her fingers tremble in her sleeves,

and your body moves before your mind decides, you take her hands gently, unwrap them from the fabric they’ve been clinging to.

Her palms are cold.

Her knuckles stiff.

Her pulse frantic.

She looks at your hands holding hers, and something inside her breaks so quietly you almost miss it.

“I hate this,” she breathes.

“I hate that I can never be here.

That I say I’ll come and then I don’t.

That I fall asleep in taxis.

That I’m always rushing, always late, always… gone.”

You want to say You’re not gone.

You want to say I understand.

You want to say Nothing will change.

But the words don’t come.

Because somewhere deep inside you, buried under devotion and longing, you feel the buckle.

Tiny.

Subtle.

But real.

Something in the foundation cracking.

She leans into you, forehead pressing softly to yours, breath shaking.

“I’m scared,” she whispers.

“Of what?”

“That I’m becoming someone who takes more than she can give.”

Her voice breaks.

“And that one day you’ll wake up and… resent me for it.”

Your breath catches.

Her honesty is too raw, too surgical, too precise in the place it lands.

“Sohyun—”

She keeps going, voice fraying.

“And I’m scared I’ll resent you too,” she admits, eyes shining with tears she hasn’t let fall.

“Not because of you, never because of you, but because I’ll want to give you everything, and I won’t be able to. And that’s not fair. Not to you. Not to us.”

Us.

The word stings.

You reach for her without thinking.

And she breaks into you like a wave.

Her body folds into your chest, arms around your waist, face buried in your shirt, tears soaking through with slow, trembling persistence.

She cries silently.

Painfully.

Like she’s trying to hide it.

Like even now, even here, she believes she has to be careful not to inconvenience you with the depth of her sorrow.

You hold her tighter.

Arms around her shoulders, your cheek resting in her hair, breathing her in like she’s something you’ve been starving for.

Because she still smells like herself.

Shampoo and vanilla hand cream.

Warmth and exhaustion and familiarity.

Because she’s still your Sohyun, even if the world is trying to pull her into something bigger, something brighter, something you fear you might not fit into.

Her fingers clutch your shirt.

Not politely.

Not gently.

But with the desperation of someone begging time to slow down.

And in that moment, you both feel it:

Love is here.

God, it’s here.

Burning.

Gripping.

Devoted.

But beneath it, quiet as breath, undeniable as dawn, the first buckle.

Not a break.

Not yet.

Just the unmistakable shift that comes when two people love each other so deeply they can feel the future calling them in opposite directions.

She loves you.

You love her.

Neither of you say it.

But that doesn’t matter.

The devotion is loud enough to echo.

And so is the fear.

Chapter 8

You don’t know when it starts—

the falling apart.

Maybe it’s always been there,

woven into the seams of the two of you, invisible until the fabric begins to strain.

All you know is that suddenly, loving her hurts in ways it didn’t before.

Not sharply.

Not violently.

Just… gently.

Like pressing on a bruise.

You still want her.

Still love her.

Still ache in that quiet, loyal way you’ve always ached.

But now you want something small, something simple, something human, to matter.

To feel like your place in her life isn’t shrinking every time a new schedule is added to her calendar. Every time she forgets to answer because rehearsals ran late. Every time she apologizes so softly you have to pretend it doesn’t wound you.

You don’t ask for much. Just proof that you’re real to her. Important to her. Chosen. But every time you reach for that assurance, she pulls gently away, not because she wants to, or that she doesn’t want to give you what she wants to, but because she’s terrified you’ll see how little she has left to give.

She sits across from you one night, hair tied messily, hands folded too tightly in her lap.

She’s trying to stay awake for you. Trying to listen. Trying to be present. And she is— just not fully. Not in the way you remember. Her eyes keep losing focus. Her voice keeps drifting. Her smile keeps trembling at the edges.

When you tell her a tiny story from your day, she nods, tries to laugh, but her eyelids are drooping.

You stop talking.

She notices too late, blinks hard, with guilt flooding her expression.

“Sorry— I’m listening, I…I want to. I’m just—”

“Tired,” you finish for her.

Her face crumples in relief and shame. You force a smile.

You tell her you understand. You don’t. Not really. But you want to.

She sees the effort on your face. She sees that brave, aching little smile you wear just for her. And it destroys something inside her.

She looks away, voice barely a whisper:

“I’m hurting you, aren’t I?”

You say no. You say of course not. You say she’s doing her best.

And she is. God, she is.

But something in your voice cracks anyway. Soft enough to hide. Sharp enough for her to hear.

It becomes a pattern. You reach a little. She recoils a little. Not emotionally, but out of fear. Fear of being the reason you dim. Fear of becoming a weight on your chest. Fear of loving you so much she ruins you.

She doesn’t run. She just… holds back. And you, desperate to keep her, pretend the space between you isn’t growing.

Every conversation ends with one of you apologizing. You apologize for wanting. She apologizes for not being enough. Neither apology fixes anything. They just hang there, gentle, heavy, tragic. Two people trying so hard and still failing each other without meaning to.

One night, after she leaves, you sit alone on your bed, leftover warmth fading from your sheets like a ghost. You press your hand to the place she sat, memorizing the absence. And it hits you: love shouldn’t feel like begging for sunlight through a half-shut door.

And she shouldn’t feel like she has to close herself off to protect you. But here you are. Two people holding on with both hands. Two people slipping anyway. There’s love, so much love it aches. So much devotion it burns. But it’s not enough. Not against time. Not against distance. Not against a world that keeps taking pieces of her and leaving you with the scraps.

This is the beginning. Not loud. Not cruel. Just heartbreak dressed as tenderness. A flower blooming beautifully even as you both feel the rot quietly spreading at the center. Neither of you says a word.

Maybe because you’re scared. Maybe because you’re hopeful. Maybe because you both know—two people trying their absolute best is sometimes still not enough.

Chapter 9

The storm is already in full rage when your phone rings.

You barely have time to breathe her name before her voice spills through the speaker—thin, shaking, tired in the way people are when they’ve been holding themselves upright through sheer will.

“Can we go out?”

A soft inhale, sharp around the edges.

“Just for tonight. I want to feel… normal with you.”

Normal.

The word lands like something delicate and dying.

You say yes instantly—not because you’re not tired, not because the rain isn’t violent, but because you hear it.

The breaking she’s trying so hard to keep out of her voice.

You meet her anyway. Maybe you always will.

The café she picks is nearly empty, just the hum of an espresso machine and the low murmur of rain against glass. The lights cast a warm glow, soft enough to make anything feel survivable for a little while.

She’s already there when you step inside.

Sohyun sits hunched over a cup of tea she’s forgotten about, sleeves pulled around her fists, hair slightly frizzy from the humidity, but there’s something else—something heavy, settling over her shoulders.

She looks up when she hears the door.

And then she smiles.

God, she smiles.

Not brightly.

Not effortlessly.

But desperately, like she’s clinging to something slipping through her fingers.

“You came,” she breathes out.

“You sound surprised.”

“I… always am.”

You sit across from her.

Her knees bump yours under the table, and instead of apologizing, she leaves them there—like she needs the contact to stay upright.

The conversation starts light.

Too light.

You talk about your day.

She laughs at all the right moments.

You tease her about her messy lunchbox.

She teases you about your terrible umbrella.

It feels almost normal.

Almost.

But there’s a tension underneath, like the two of you are clutching at threads of something fraying, tugging hard enough to hurt, but not enough to keep it from unraveling.

She stares at her hands while you talk.

Her fingers twist.

Her knuckles pale.

You don’t ask why.

You’re afraid you already know.

Somewhere between a shared pastry and another refill of her untouched tea, she reaches across the table.

Her fingers brush your wrist. Just once.

Then again, more sure this time. You look up.

She looks like someone trying to memorize you.

Like someone terrified time is running out.

“You look tired,” she whispers.

You laugh softly. “You say that every time.”

“That’s because it’s always true.”

You raise a brow. “And you? When’s the last time you slept?”

She hesitates.

You both know the answer isn’t tonight. Or last night. Or the week before.

But she shrugs, ducks her head, and says, “I’m okay.”

She isn’t. She hasn’t been for a long time. But so much of loving her now feels like accepting the lies she tells to keep herself from falling apart.

Hours blur.

Lightning flashes outside, reflecting in the windows.

She flinches—not from the thunder, but from how fast time is passing.

From how quickly the night is slipping away.

You talk about everything and nothing:

Her trainee days.

Your stupid coworker.

The ramen place near your apartment.

The stray cats in her company parking lot.

It’s mundane.

It’s ordinary.

It’s everything she’s starving for.

And everything she’s afraid to keep.

When the café begins closing, she startles like someone waking from a dream.

“We still have time,” she says quickly, half-standing before the employee even speaks.

You don’t tell her the truth:

She’s not talking about the café at all.

She’s talking about you. About this.

About whatever fragile, trembling thing still exists between you—held together by effort and hope and exhaustion.

You walk outside together.

The rain has softened, mist-like and cold.

She walks close to you—not out of affection exactly, but out of need.

Like if she doesn’t stay close, she’ll drift away entirely.

Her shoulder bumps yours.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

Finally, she exhales shakily and admits, “I missed you.”

You swallow around the ache in your chest.

“I missed you too.”

Her fingers twitch beside yours.

Not reaching—just trembling.

You hook your pinky around hers.

A compromise.

A quiet, fragile connection.

She holds your pinky like it’s the last thread she can still grasp.

On the way to her dorm, she stops suddenly beneath a flickering streetlamp.

Rain beads in her lashes.

Her breathing stutters.

“Tonight was…” She hesitates.

Her throat moves.

“…all I could handle. And more than I deserved.”

You open your mouth—

She cuts you off with a small shake of her head.

“No,” she whispers. “Let me say it.”

You close it.

She steps closer.

Close enough that you feel her breath warm your jaw.

Close enough that if either of you leaned in, something irreversible might happen.

Her voice trembles.

“Thank you. For loving me, even when I’m—”

“Don’t,” you whisper back, but she continues anyway:

“Even when I’m slipping. Even when I’m not here. Even when I…”

Her voice breaks.

“…when I can’t give you what you deserve.”

Something inside you cracks.

Not because she’s pulling away.

But because she’s trying so hard not to.

Her hands fist in the sleeves of your coat like she’s scared she’ll drown if she lets go.

You reach up, brushing your thumb across her cheekbone.

She leans into the touch instantly—

like she’s been starving for it.

Like she’ll break if you pull away.

“You’re enough,” you murmur.

But even as the words leave your mouth, you feel the tremor beneath them, the unspoken fear, the growing ache,the truth neither of you wants to name:

You’re both trying.

You’re both clinging.

And it’s still not enough.

When she finally steps back, she looks ruined and beautiful in the same breath.

She almost kisses you.

You know she wants to.

You want to.

But she pulls away at the last second, like someone terrified of giving you hope she can’t keep alive.

She whispers your name—quiet, tender, trembling from the effort of holding on.

Then she slips inside her building.

The door shuts between you.

And you stand there in the mist, the ghost of her warmth still clinging to your hand, realizing the tragedy wasn’t tonight ending.

The tragedy is that both of you fought, truly fought, to keep something that is already beginning to crumble beneath the weight of your devotion.

Chapter 10

She comes over trembling.

Not a nervous tremble, but the kind that comes from holding grief so tightly it begins to leak through the cracks in your bones.

You open the door and she’s standing there like she’s barely holding herself upright.

Her hair is damp from the mist outside.

Her lips are pale.

Her shoulders are trembling in small, uncontrollable jerks.

But it’s her eyes that destroy you.

They look hollow, scraped out, as if she emptied herself just to make room for the guilt.

She steps inside like she’s stepping into a memory she already misses.

She toes off her shoes automatically, lines them up next to yours with shaking hands, and then stands still, staring at the floor, like she’s afraid she’ll see her reflection in your eyes and break completely.

You whisper her name.

She flinches like it wounds her.

The air feels wrong.

Too quiet.

Too heavy.

Like a storm pressed flat between four walls.

She tries to speak.

Her breath catches.

Her throat locks up.

You watch her struggle not to fall apart.

Then she does.

Her knees buckle first.

Her hand slaps against the wall for balance.

Her breath shatters into a sob she tries to swallow.

You catch her before she fully sinks.

Your hands steady her waist, her shoulders, her trembling frame.

She folds into you so fast it feels like she’s been waiting weeks to collapse.

Her fingers claw into your shirt.

Her forehead presses into your collarbone.

Her whole body shakes with a grief so raw it frightens you.

“Sohyun,” you whisper, terrified.

She chokes on a sound you don’t know how to name.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps.

“I’m—God, I’m so sorry—please don’t—don’t make this harder—”

She breaks down like she’s been holding it in for years, not weeks.

You sink to the floor with her, arms wrapped tightly around her as she cries with an agony that feels ancient.

Her tears soak through your shirt, your skin, your ribs.

“I can’t—” she whispers, voice cracking.

“I can’t do this to you anymore. I can’t watch you wait for me. I can’t watch myself hurt you. I can’t—”

She can’t even finish the sentence.

You pull her closer, but she’s already slipping into a place you can’t reach.

Minutes pass.

Or hours.

Time is meaningless when you’re watching the person you love unravel in your arms.

She finally forces herself upright—not because she’s okay, but because she’s made a choice and she’s terrified she’ll lose her resolve if she stays held by you any longer.

She wipes her face with trembling fingers.

Her voice is heartbreak carved into sound.

“If we stay together,” she begins, “you will learn to resent me.”

You shake your head, violently, desperate.

She cuts you off with a soft, devastated smile.

“You will,” she says. “Because I can’t give you the love you deserve. I don’t have the strength. I don’t have the space. I’m already failing you every day and I hate myself for it.”

Her voice fractures.

“And I’ll grow to resent you,” she whispers, “because you’ll keep needing what you deserve, more than I can give. And I’ll feel like I’m drowning under my own inadequacy.”

She squeezes her eyes shut.

“And I love you too much to let us turn into people who resent each other, or for me to learn to dread the mention of your name or the sound of your voice.”

You don’t breathe.

You can’t.

Your heart feels like it’s being crushed in a fist that doesn’t know mercy.

She continues, quieter:“I know what’s coming if we try. I’ve been watching it happen in small pieces.”

She looks at your apartment

at your shared mug on the counter, her sweater on your chair, the blanket you always tucked around her legs when she fell asleep on your couch.

She looks at them like they’re tombstones.

“I can’t bear to watch us rot,” she whispers.

You pull her toward you again, and this time she doesn’t resist.

She falls into your arms, sobbing harder than before.

Her hands clutch your back so tightly her nails dig in.

Her shoulders shake with every breath she tries and fails to steady.

“Please,” she cries.“Please don’t hate me someday. Remember the girl you fell in love with. Please don’t remember me like this.”

You hold her face, pushing her hair back, whispering her name over and over like it might tether her to you.

But she’s already drifting away.

You’re both crying now.

It feels like dying in slow motion.

At some point, she forces herself to stand.

You rise with her, unsteady, haunted.

She steps back.

Just one step.

It feels like a cliff opening between you.

Her voice is barely a breath:

“This is the kindest thing I know how to do.”

You whisper:

“Have you thought this through?”

She nods, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.

“And you really think,” your voice breaks,

“this is the best thing to do?”

Her lips tremble.

She whispers, “…yes.”

You look at her.

Really look.

And despite the devastation in her eyes, the way her hands are shaking, the way she can barely breathe.

You still see it.

“God,” you whisper, almost laugh, almost cry,

“You’re still bad at lying.”

That breaks her.

A sob tears out of her.

She stumbles forward and throws her arms around you, holding you like she’s trying to memorize the shape of your body, the heat of your skin, the sound of your breathing.

It feels like she’s carving a final memory into herself.

You hold each other like it’s the last moment before the world ends.

It is.

You don’t know who lets go first.

You only know that when she steps back, the entire room tilts with the weight of what you’re losing.

She wipes her tears one last time.

Then she leaves.

And you’re left standing in the doorway, holding your own ribs as if trying to keep your heart from falling out.

The horror isn’t in the breakup.

It isn’t in the leaving.

It’s in the truth:

You loved each other.

Deeply.

Fiercely.

Hopelessly.

And somehow,

somehow,

it still wasn’t enough.

Chapter 11

You try to move on.

You really do.

You throw yourself into the routines you used to have before her, late-night convenience store runs, cheap dinners with friends, playlists that once made you feel whole.

You delete old messages.

You mute her notifications.

You even tell yourself a lie every therapist on earth has warned about:

Time heals everything. But time is a terrible doctor. And grief is a patient that refuses treatment.

You fail. Not dramatically—no collapse on the floor, no midnight phone call, no drunken confession to a friend. Your failure is quieter, softer.

It happens when you reach for your phone without thinking.

When you buy two bottles of banana milk at the store.

When you see the empty side of the couch and feel the ghost of her weight leaning against you.

When you catch yourself laughing at something and then freeze, because she would’ve laughed too.

You try again.

You go out more.

You let friends drag you across Seoul, from neon-lit arcades to cafés that close too early.

You pretend you’re present—try to stitch yourself back into the world of people who aren’t missing someone like a phantom limb.

Your friends think you’re doing better.

Maybe because you’ve stopped crying in bathrooms.

Maybe because you no longer whisper her name in your sleep.

Maybe because you’ve grown skilled at smiling at the right moments.

But the truth is simpler, sadder:

You haven’t healed.

You’ve just learned not to talk about it.

The world moves on without asking if you’re ready.

And she—

Sohyun—

moves faster than anyone.

Suddenly she’s everywhere.

Her face lights up subway stations, glowing from billboard screens and animated ads.

Her laugh echoes from variety shows you didn’t mean to watch.

Her eyes—those eyes that once looked at you like you were the only safe place she had—now sparkle on fancams watched by millions.

She’s luminous.

Brilliant.

Made for stages, cameras, applause.

She shines in a way that makes strangers fall in love with her.

But you see something they don’t.

In the split second between smiles, in the breath she takes before answering a question, in the way she grips her mic a little too tightly— you see flickers.

Regret.

Longing.

The quiet kind of hurt that sits behind her ribs and never fully dissolves.

Maybe someone else would call it imagination.

But you know her.

You knew her in rooms without cameras, in nights without sleep, in moments when all she could be was herself.

So you recognize what her eyes are hiding.

You wish you didn’t.

Because it hurts more now than it ever did.

The first month after the breakup is sharp pain—teeth, claws, heavy breathing.

The second month is dull ache—nothing dramatic, just a low throb.

By the third month, grief becomes something else.

A presence.

A shadow that walks behind you, sits beside you at meals, waits at the edge of your dreams, touches your shoulder when you hear her voice on TV.

Not loud.

Not violent.

Just… there.

A roommate you never invited.

One that doesn’t leave dishes in the sink, doesn’t slam doors, doesn’t inconvenience your day, just one that exists quietly, persistently, a reminder in the corner of your eye.

Some nights, when you close your eyes, you can almost feel her again, the warmth of her fingers, the weight of her head on your shoulder, the tremble in her voice when she whispered stay. And sometimes you let yourself remember.

Just for a moment.

Just for a breath.

Then morning comes.

And you keep going.

Because that’s the thing about heartbreak that no one tells you:

It doesn’t end.

It simply becomes something you live with.

Chapter 12

You didn’t buy the ticket.

You would’ve sooner carved open your own chest than willingly put yourself in the same room as her again.

But your friend pressed it into your hand, voice too soft, too pitying:

“You can’t run forever.”

Maybe they were right.

But God, you wish they’d been wrong.

Now you’re here—

standing in a crowd of people who love her loudly, while you are the only one who ever loved her quietly.

The venue shakes with anticipation.

Chants echo.

Lightsticks raise like a forest of trembling stars.

You feel sick.

Not the kind of sick that makes you want to leave, the kind that roots you to the floor with dread and longing in equal measure.

The lights cut.

Darkness falls.

The screams rise like a tidal wave.

Music blooms.

And then, she steps into the light.

Sohyun.

Your Sohyun.

Except she’s not yours and never will be again.

She looks unreal, sculpted from stage light and dream-dust, hair gleaming, smile polished, eyes shining with the kind of confidence that costs more than anyone in this room will ever understand.

She moves like she belongs to this world. To them. To the noise and the brightness and the unreachable distance.

She moves like she was never the girl who curled into your chest and begged you to stay. Never the girl who whispered I’m scared during dawn. Never the girl who broke in your arms because loving you was hurting you.

She’s everything she worked for.

And you’ve never felt further from her.

When the ballad begins, the stadium hushes.

Soft piano.

A ripple of blue lights.

She stands alone at the edge of the stage, breathing slow, eyes lowered.

This song is different.

New.

Raw.

Something she wrote.

Something she poured herself into.

You already know it will kill you.

The spotlight sweeps across the crowd, passing faces painted with adoration, and you almost pray it won’t reach you, but it does.

And then her gaze follows the light.

Her eyes lock on yours. Everything stops. Her breath, her posture, her practiced, perfect composure, all of it fractures in an instant.

Her lips part.

Her shoulders stiffen.

The note she was about to sing dies in her throat.

Only you notice.

Only you ever would.

Because you know what she looks like when she’s hurting.

You know the exact second her heart caves in.

Her eyes widen with recognition so sharp it’s a wound.

You feel it too, like someone has reached inside you and pulled, hard.

A tremor slips into her voice as she forces herself to continue singing,

but you can hear it.

The break.

The plea.

The collapse.

And God, she looks at you like she’s seeing a ghost she never learned how to stop loving.

She loves you again in that moment.

Not the bright, hopeful love from the beginning, but the ruined, exhausted kind, born from all the ways you tried to stay, and all the ways she had to leave.

Her eyes shine with longing so raw you have to look away.

But you can’t.

Because for a heartbeat, she is yours again.

And then she mourns you again.

That’s the part that destroys you.

Because in her gaze is the knowledge that you should have had a different ending—one where the world wasn’t too big, she wasn’t too breakable, and you weren’t left holding all the pieces alone.

Her voice shivers.

Her hand clenches around the mic.

Her throat works like she’s swallowing pain.

And then, she turns away.

Not dramatically.

Not bitterly.

Just quietly, like she’s placing a memory back onto a shelf she swore she’d never touch again.

The song continues.

The stage glows.

The crowd roars.

But you stand perfectly still, as if moving would make the moment real and you desperately need it to stay unreal.

Your chest aches, not sharply, not suddenly, but with the deep, crushing pressure of something breaking in slow motion.

You swallow. Then swallow again. You swallow everything: her voice, her dream, her pain, your shared history, your own heart, the entire brutal universe that has decided you cannot belong to each other.

Sohyun keeps singing like nothing happened.

But you saw it.

She saw you.

And in that single look, she loved you again, lost you again, and let you go all over again.

You stay until the end of the concert, not because you want to, but because you can’t move.

Because leaving would feel too much like a final goodbye.

And you’ve already survived one of those.

See, while others had dreams, you only had terrors. Nightmares came to haunt you, night after night. It was a rare night to get more than 3 hours of sleep. While it did take some time, you did adapt to it. You didn't enjoy it, but well, beggars and choosers and all that. You set alarms around 2 hours in, hoping that you'd be pulled out of your sleep before any nightmares came. To make up for the lack of sleep, you resorted to snacking constantly and eating small amounts of food to make up for your lack of energy. Naturally, this brought up quite a few other problems. This did come with it's perks, though. As a corporate worker, one doesn't exactly have much personal time for R&R. So in the ungodly hours where everyone you knew slept, you stayed up, binge-watching any content you could find. Kpop, to be exact. You basically just binge-watch K-pop content at night—various shows, music shows, music videos, anything. Not exactly an awe-inspiring or particularly jaw-dropping talent, but well, it had its moments to shine. Particularly, a radio show, where your recognition of Ice Cream Cake within the first second of the song earned you a prize that many others had failed to obtain despite spending thousands on albums. A small intimate fan meet amongst Red Velvet and 100 lucky fans. Maybe your nightmares were actually real life, and life was a dream. Listen, if you could meet Red Velvet, you'd take whatever came with it. It seemed that the powers that be, decided to test that statement, as you excitedly hopped into bed, brimming with anticipation at meeting your idols tomorrow. You always turned your alarm clock on, you always did, right?

As you opened your eyes, you found yourself in a foreign room, framed works of arts lining every square inch of the walls around you. The room was dimly lit, shadows flickering against the walls like malevolent spirits, the only thing keeping you from complete darkness were the candles, desperately flickering as it tried its best to keep the room lit. You stood in the centre of the room, cold sweat pouring down your face, your breath coming in short, panicked gasps. The air was thick and oppressive, carrying a nauseating stench of decay that made your stomach churn. You knew in your gut that something was wrong. You’ve made it a point to always have your alarm set, and it pulls you out before anything happens right? You couldn’t be that careless right?

Well, you alway enjoyed proving yourself wrong.

Without warning, the walls began to close in, the room shrinking around you. You tried to move, but your feet were rooted to the ground, as if the floor had turned to quicksand, dragging you down. Panic surged through you as the winds grew stronger, extinguishing the candles, and the darkness crept closer, the shadows morphing into monstrous, writhing shapes that seemed to reach out with clawed hands.

A low, guttural whisper echoed, repeating your name over and over, each iteration louder and more insistent, filled with a sinister glee, followed by a loud cackle. You strained to see where it was coming from, but the source remained hidden.

Out of the corner of your eye, a figure emerged from the darkness. It was unfamiliar yet grotesquely horrifying, a twisted amalgamation of nightmares. Its eyes were hollow, pits of endless darkness that swallowed all light. Its mouth stretched into an unnatural grin, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. It reached out with skeletal hands, fingers elongating and curling like the legs of a giant spider.

You tried your best to stay calm. You had enough experiences with nightmares to know that however realistic it felt, it was all fake, and it would be over soon. The walls were almost touching you now, the space so confined you could barely breathe. The figure's icy fingers brushed your face, their touch burning like acid, sending waves of agony through your body. Their whispering voice was right in your ear, speaking in a language you couldn't understand, yet the words filled you with an overwhelming sense of dread and despair.

Breathe, just breathe. It would all be over soon. Just breathe

Just as the walls were about to crush you, everything stopped. The figure vanished, the walls receded, and you were left alone in the now cavernous, empty room. The silence was deafening, but it was short-lived. The ground beneath you began to crack and crumble, and you started to fall into an abyss of endless darkness, the wind howling in your ears as you plummeted into the void.

You reached out, grasping at nothing, feeling the cold, slimy tendrils of something unseen wrapping around your limbs, pulling you deeper. The whispers grew louder, now a cacophony of voices screaming your name, each one more frantic and desperate than the last.

You bolted up from your bed, shirt soaked in sweat, panting heavily as your chest heaved up and down, looking to your phone in regret. You should have just remembered to set that damn alarm. Great Start to the day. At least this one was a tame one.

With your fashion sense limited to dress to impress, and you still being thrown off by that nightmare, you decided to forgo any flashy attire, opting instead for a simple outfit, throwing on a baggy hoodie and some jeans, then heading out to the event. Once you reached the auditorium, you saw quite a large crowd already gathered, some assumedly being dispatched or some fans hoping to get lucky and see the idols in real life. Walking up to the entrance, you were stopped by two security guards, who, after verifying your ticket, quickly ushered you into the venue. Quickly grabbing a seat, you look up to the stage, and immediately you're struck in awe of the sight in front of you. Of course, you had seen them online before, and you had spent countless hours gushing to your friends over how pretty they were, but seeing them in person and so close was a whole different kind of ethereal. And amongst this collage of beauty and almost angelic perfection, one stood out to you. The other members looked good, that you couldn't deny, but Kang Seulgi just had this aura about her, and you found it hard to rip your eyes off of her. You could almost swear she locked eyes with you for a moment. For a moment, that took your mind off that horrible nightmare. Just for a momentAs the event kicked off, you were ushered to the front of the stage, feeling your heartbeat accelerate as you got closer to the stage, clutching the Red Flavour album tight against your chest. Walking up to the first seat, you were greeted with a warm smile by Wendy. You shared a quick conversation with her, talking about how much you loved her music. Catching on to your nervousness, Wendy let out a slight chuckle. "Take a deep breath, What's your name?" Wendy asked "Y/N" You mumbled out, embarrassed at having been caught going into fan mode. "Thank you for all your support, Y/N. I appreciate every one of our fans, and I look forward to releasing more songs for you guys to enjoy!" Wendy replied, motioning to your album, taking the cap off her pen. This continued with the other 3 girls, though the interactions varied, Yeri and Joy being more playful, while Irene, while still interacting, was more laid back, letting you do more of the talking. Finally, you reached the one who you'd been almost bubbling over in excitement to meet. As you reached Seulgi, before you could even say anything, Seulgi looked straight into your eyes. before quickly grabbing you by the hand. "You look tired." Seulgi said, worry evident in her tone. You did try to answer, you really did, but with Seulgi's hand on yours, her eyes locked on yours, your words couldn't leave your throat. "Are you okay Y/N?" Seulgi asked, looking worriedly at you. With a hard gulp, you force yourself to focus, slowly wiggling your hand away from under Seulgi's hand in an attempt to force your brain to rewire itself. Worried, Seulgi looked to her manager in a corner, beckoning her over to bring a bottle of water for you. "Thank you." Was all you could mumble, taking a seat as your eyes darted around wildly, from Seulgi's auburn locks, to her soulful eyes, there really was nowhere you could look without being entranced by her. "Your fatigue, is it a common thing?" Seulgi asked, akin to a therapist or medical professional more than an idol. "Yeah, but it's not a medical condition, it's just, I get nightmares. I don't really get more than 3 hours of sleep a night" You explain, nervously fidgeting, unable to maintain eye contact with her. "Oh, you poor thing, I'm sorry to hear that.  How do you even cope with this? Have you talked to anyone about all this?” Seulgi asked, leaning in closer to you.

“I usually listen to Kpop, but sometimes, I’ll just go to the beach near my house and just listen to the waves, maybe have some cookies, it helps. About telling others…I’ve mentioned it, but nobody really takes it seriously. I don’t want to get any special treatment for it either, so I tend not to talk about it unless anybody asks. You must think I’m some kind of weirdo.” You begin to mumble. Who needs nightmares when you have adolescent brats who could make fun of anything? “Nonsense, we all have our own problems, and it’s not like this is within your control. Stay strong, I’m sure there will be someone to help you soon.” Seulgi said, giving you a small smile as she reached out, gently squeezing you on your shoulder. “I’ve tried, Seulgi, it’s been a long time, at some point, you adapt instead of overcome.” You said, downtrodden, the most recent slip up induced nightmare still sending chills down your spine. “I have a good feeling about it. Trust me.” Seulgi said with a smile. It’s a curious thing, this has been said to you multiple times, many many times, parents, teachers, friends who were understanding, therapists, many, many people. And to be frank, after the first 3 or 4 times, you had kind of lost hope. They were just being nice, and you understood that. It’s not like they would say, “You’re stuck with this now, now scram kid, I want to watch Shark Tank.”, so you always took their words at face value, just a wish, and a hope for a better tomorrow. However, now, as you looked into the eyes of Kang Seulgi, international superstar, renowned kpop idol, there was a resolute hope, a belief even that what she said was true. Wow, you thought to yourself. Kang Seulgi was out of this world. The manager whispered to Seulgi, gesturing to the line that had begun to form behind me. “One moment.” Seulgi said to her manager, before Seulgi hastily grabbed your album, signing it. ‘Wishing you all the luck in overcoming your afflictions. I’ll be with you all the way, whether through our music, or in my thoughts. Your Dream girl(and better be your favourite), Kang Seulgi <3)”

“Woah” Is all you could mutter as you crashed onto your bed, reading what Seulgi had written on your album for what had to have been the hundredth time of the day. Or the thousandth, you’d lost track to be very frank. Could there really be a solution to your nightmares? Perhaps, but that was a problem for another day. Now, you sleep. The little sleep you can get anyways. Turning to your side, you set an alarm for 2 hours. Perhaps Seulgi was right, but unfortunately, you weren’t gonna risk another night terror at the assurance from a Kpop idol. Perhaps soon, not now.

As you tucked yourself into your bed, and drifted into your deep sleep, you sat up, hand moving to your phone, shutting the alarm off, before falling back into the bed, in a slumber all the while.

For the second time in as many nights, you sat up, this time finding yourself in a transparent room in the middle of the ocean, waves crashing around you, the symphony of silence chiming in your ears, the only thing audible being the crest and trough of the waves. This was calm. This was great. This was wrong.

You looked around, confusion stirring. Looking at the room, you saw a table with two seats, one seat occupied by a woman, who slowly sipped a cup of water as she admired the sea. Before you could ask anything, the woman spoke. “Do you like this? I scanned your subconscious, and this was an environment you found relaxing.” The woman’s voice was familiar. Too familiar. You recognised that voice. “Seulgi?” You say in disbelief. The woman ignores you, continuing to sip her water, as she beckoned you to a seat opposite of her, across the table

What the hell was going on? Was this a nightmare? This was definitely different from the nightmares you were accustomed to.

“This isn’t a nightmare, that much I can promise you. Trust me 0n this. Take a seat and I’ll explain.” Looking around, you tried to take in as much as you could as you moved to the vacant seat. You somehow overslept again, but instead of a nightmare, you were stuck in something more akin to a dream, with a lady you’d assume was similar to an oneiroi. The lady, who looked exactly like Kang Seulgi. None of this made sense. “I’m not an oneiroi, though I’m impressed you know about oneiroi. And before we go on, yes, I can hear what you’re thinking. Any other questions?” The lady said with a smile, snapping her fingers, a cup full of hot chocolate, your go-to drink by the beach, suddenly appearing in your hand. “What are you? How is this happening?” “Well, before anything, I apologise for taking so long. A peek into your subconscious shows how much suffering you’ve been through. And for your questions, I’m akin to a technician. I’m here to fix your nightmares, but it’s a long job, so while you sleep, instead of nightmares, I’ll be here. I can make this room anything, a batting cage, a movie theatre, whatever you need to relax. And when you wake up, you’ll feel well rested, as if you slept through the entire night.” Looking at her, your mind raced with the possibilities of all that could happen. Was this real? If this was real, it’ll finally be over, the sleepless nights, the 2 hour sleeps, the nightmares. You didn’t know if you could place your full faith in this. Then, your mind instantly bolts to the next question. “Why do you look like Seulgi?” You asked, and just as the woman was about to answer, you raised your hand, the answer seemingly having come to you. Seulgi had left a deep impression on you after that fanmeet, and with all that talk about helping your nightmares go away, all of that must have made your mind associate Seulgi with fixing your nightmares. That made sense. Clearly sensing your thoughts, the woman let out a light giggle. “You’re quick.” She quipped, causing you to shrug. “Well, if I’m to spend my time here with you, what do I call you?” You asked “Whatever you want.” “Would you mind if I called you Seulgi? That’s who you took your likeness from, and I’d probably end up calling you that anyways.” You asked, the woman nodding in agreement. “Alright, Seulgi, how long does this dream last? And can you make this place, like a nice old timey diner.” You asked, Seulgi nodding, snapping her fingers, and just like that, the room around them was morphed into a diner, as you found yourself in a small cubicle in the diner, sitting opposite to Seulgi. In front of you was your favourite food, a good bowl of Jjangmyeon, while Seulgi had a plate of Kimchi Tuna Fried Rice. “See that clock there?” Seulgi gestured to the wall clock, showing 10 minutes left. “Each of these dreams will last 2 hours. You lost some time on this one since I spent some time getting you here. When the time runs out, you’ll wake up at 0700 in this case. You need to spend a minimum of 2 hours here for any work to get done, so do account for it. You’ll have to at least get 4 hours of sleep for the next few months, how many exactly, I can’t be sure.” You nodded in understanding, making a mental note to make sure you changed your sleeping habits. “Seulgi, can I ask a favour of you?” You ask, slowly eating the bowl of Jjangmyeon.

“Shoot.” Seulgi replied. She knew what you were going to ask, but, well, this facilitates human interaction more. “Seeing as I’m going to spend quite a bit of time here, you’re going to be my only companion. For us to hang out, well somewhat normally, considering you’re basically an angel, could you not read my mind? At least that way, I can feel like I’m talking to a friend, and not an omniscient being.” You ask, Seulgi returning a small smile. “Of course. If that’ll help you relax more, by all means.” Seulgi said, before snapping her fingers As the time passed, you began to ask Seulgi questions, to which she answered with an amused smile all the while. “What are you? Are you a figment of my imagination? Or are you some sort of extraterrestrial, or supernatural?” You asked, before hearing a buzz from the clock. Hearing that, Seulgi let out a light giggle. “Oh well, questions for tomorrow night.”

You sat up in shock, finding yourself back in your bed. Wow, this was…wow. It was a foreign feeling but you felt rested, invigorated. You could get used to this.

“You’re looking chipper. What song is that anyways?” Lucy commented, letting out a light snicker as she watched you by the copier, humming a tune while you scanned some documents. “There’s no way you don’t know Cosmic. By Red Velvet? No? That’s kind of disappointing Lucy.” You commented as she shrugged, then rolled her eyes, taking a sip of coffee before heading back to her desk. So this was what working on a full night of sleep feels like. It’s great. Well, as great as working a corporate job can be.

As the night dawned, you laid in your bed once more, about to shut your eyes, just before you felt a wave of insecurity rush over you. What if last night was part of a bigger nightmare, give you a sense of false hope before showing you that rock bottom indeed had a basement? “This isn’t a nightmare, that much I can promise you. Trust me 0n this.” Seulgi, or technically Fake Seulgi’s words echoed in your mind. Could you trust her? Your finger lingered over the alarm app. A few seconds later, you sighed. In for a penny. Setting your phone to the side, you turned your lamp off, going off into sleep.

“Welcome back.” was all you heard, finding yourself in what looked to be a cosy home theatre. Looking around, you saw a widescreen TV, and a small two seater couch. “What’s this?” You ask, looking confusedly at Seulgi, who simply smiled. “Deadpool and Wolverine. I know you’ve been meaning to watch it but you haven’t been able to get tickets for it, so here.” Seulgi says with a smile, patting the seat beside her, two buckets of popcorn in her hands. “Oh, nice.” You say in jubilation. You rush towards the seat, Seulgi handing you the bucket of popcorn, before snapping her fingers, the opening sequence then beginning to play. Everything seemed normal, but all of sudden, you feel a hand slide on your arm, looping around yours, causing you to tense up. What was happening? You turn to your side, seeing Seulgi stare at the screen nonchalantly, as if her arm wasn’t looped around yours. “Everything okay?” Seulgi asked sweetly, in a way that made you almost certain she knew what she was doing. “Fine.” Was all you could say, causing Seulgi to giggle, going back to watching the movie. Would you really make Seulgi so flirty with you in your mind? Would you? Yeh, sounds about right. This was wrong though, and you knew it. Your heart rate accelerated, and you felt a crimson blush across your face. All this, for a fake imagined version of a Kpop idol you could only dream of even watching a movie together. It was wrong, and it had to stop.

Easier said than done, however. Especially when Seulgi looks at you the way she does, trapping you in her dark hazel eyes, showing you universes you had no clue even existed. It also didn’t help how clingy Seulgi was during the movie. Oh well, it’s probably just a one time thing, the next one would probably be the two of you just chatting like a couple of friends. Well, right and wrong.

You guys had many hangouts, but some stuck out more than the rest

In the dimly lit café, the ambiance is warm and inviting. Seulgi is seated at a corner table, her face illuminated by the flickering candlelight. You join her, and she greets you with a smile that seems to light up the entire room.

Seulgi leans in slightly, her voice playful. "I was hoping you'd come by. This place has the best coffee. Have you tried it?"

You smile, feeling a flutter of excitement, before rolling your eyes playfully. “Wow, tooting your own horn huh? Never pegged you for a self indulgent type.” “What can I say? I’m the best.” Seulgi says with a smile, causing you to playfully shove her, laughing at her faux confidence

As the conversation flows, you find yourself drawn to her laughter and the way she engages with you. Her presence makes everything feel more vibrant. She teases you about your taste in books, and you playfully banter back, though you use real life information on Seulgi instead of what you know of this Seulgi.

Another night, the scene shifts to a moonlit park. The path is lined with glowing lanterns, casting a golden light over the surroundings. Seulgi walks beside you, her dress fluttering with the gentle breeze.

Seulgi nudges you playfully as you stroll along the path. “I’ve never understood the hype around night strolls.”

"Have you ever noticed how peaceful everything feels at night? It’s like the world slows down just for us." “Umm, I’m not real? What are you saying?” Seulgi giggles as she playfully flicks you on the forehead, causing you to smile, but also pulling you out of the moment. Your feelings for this Seulgi was undeniable, but how could you feel that way for someone who was nothing more than a spectre of your own imagination? “Are you okay?” Seulgi gently asked, this time more gentle and careful, seeing the change in your demeanour. “Yeh.” You said with a forced smile, continuing to walk through the makeshift park

You talk about everything and nothing as you walk. She shares whimsical stories, and you respond with your own tales, each of you enjoying the other’s company.

Every now and then, she’d glance at you with a soft smile. The way she leaned in slightly when she spoke, or the way she let her fingers graze yours as you walked, created a sense of closeness that was both comforting and disorienting. You found yourself caught between the peace of the moment and the unsettling, terrifying reality of being in love with someone who didn't exist.

In another dream, you find yourselves at a bustling carnival. The air is filled with the sounds of laughter and carnival games. Seulgi is by your side, her eyes bright with excitement.

She tugs you towards a game booth, her voice filled with enthusiasm. "Let’s see if you can win me that plush toy! I’m counting on your skills."

You accept the challenge with a grin, the playful competition adding to the joy of the evening. As you win the plush toy and hand it to her, she laughs, her eyes sparkling. "I knew you had it in you!"

“Did you rig the game?” you asked with a chuckle, raising an eyebrow at Seulgi.

She grinned mischievously, wrapping her arms around the plush toy. “Who knows? Maybe I just wanted to see you win. Sometimes, a little magic can make things more fun.”

“Thanks for this though.” Seulgi whispered, gesturing to the plush, getting on her tiptoes, placing a soft kiss on your cheek.

As you stood stunned, she laughed, laughing as she pulled you to the Ferris wheel

You both ride the Ferris wheel together, sharing a quiet moment as you look out over the carnival below, the lights glimmering from the ground as you sat conflicted, attempting to combat your burgeoning feelings

Another night, you’re in a serene garden at twilight. The air is filled with the scent of blooming flowers, and the garden is bathed in a soft, golden light. Seulgi is with you, her presence calming and serene.

You sit on a bench, surrounded by the beauty of the garden. Seulgi turns to you, her voice gentle. "Isn’t it amazing how some places just feel right? Like they were meant to be experienced with someone special."

You nod, feeling the warmth of her presence. "It does feel like that. I’m glad we’re here together."

Seulgi rests her head on your shoulder, allowing your mind to wander far and wild

“This is really nice,” you said softly, almost to yourself. “It feels like the world has slowed down just for us.”

Seulgi tilted her head slightly, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m glad you think so. Sometimes, it’s these quiet moments that make everything feel right.”

“Thanks for making this for me.” You say

“Anything for you.”

In the next dream, you walk along a starlit beach, the waves gently lapping at the shore. Seulgi walks beside you, her dress flowing with the breeze.

Seulgi picks up a seashell and holds it up to you, her voice soft and playful. "I’ve always liked finding seashells. They make me think of stories and adventures."

“You’ve always?” You ask sceptically

“It’s called small talk genius. Try thinking of topics when you don’t exist.” Seulgi rolled her eyes, sticking her hand out.

You take the seashell from her, admiring its beauty. "You have a way of making even the smallest things feel special."

Seulgi’s eyes sparkled with a mix of mischief and affection. “That’s my job, after all. To make things special, even in dreams.”

As you walk along the beach, you talk about your hopes and dreams, all the while Seulgi looked at you, an undeniable look of adoration, but under the surface, you could sense a small look of apprehension. Oh well, problem for another night.

“What’s this?” You look at the envelope, a SM ent sign on it. Looking at it, you found that you were invited back for another fan sign, in two days, but it was only for one of the five members, and you got Seulgi. Wow, that was trippy. Meet the real Seulgi while you were in love with the fake one. This was going to be, mildly confusing The next night, things were different. Instead of coming into a special hang out/date that Seulgi would create, you found yourself back above the ocean, the same transparent box hovering over the ocean, a big grandfather clock in the corner of the room, ticking backwards from 2 hours. Paying it no mind, you move to find Seulgi, who was sitting at the same table as the first night. “Hey Seulgi, what’s with the sudden nostalgia trip?” You ask, letting out a small chuckle, going to sit opposite a rather uncomfortable looking Seulgi, who looked deep in thought. “Seul?” You prod lightly, seemingly pulling her out of her deep thought. “Hmm? Oh yeah, you know, I ran out of ideas.” She quickly sipped her cup of water, trying to force a smile. “Is everything okay?” You ask, slightly suspicious. Between the apprehension of the previous night, and her clear unhappiness here, something was off. “No, nothing, sorry, just, had a lot on my mind, with my upcoming schedules and p-” Seulgi was clearly stressed, and your eyebrow creased in confusion. “You have a schedule? What for? You’re a, well, I still don’t know what you are, but I didn’t think you’d have a schedule.” You ask. “Forget I said anything, what do you want to do? I’m out of ideas unfortunately.” Seulgi shrugs. “Hmm, maybe Karaoke?” You suggest, it was a fun way to pass time, and if this Seulgi was anything like the real Seulgi, you knew you were in for a vocal masterclass. “As you wish.” Seulgi theatrically bowed, snapping her fingers, a karaoke machine and a TV appearing before them. For the next hour and a half, you and Seulgi had a blast, going through the greatest hits, your uninspiring vocals being blanketed by a snap of a finger, granting you passable vocals for the next 2 hours. One song in particular, ironically a Red Velvet Song, Psycho, Seulgi shined and sang that song as if it was composed for her. “Wow, that was…amazing.” “Of course, I’m your dream girl.” She said, winking, causing you to smile, but also tilt your head in confusion. That sounded familiar. “Hey! It’s your turn.” Seulgi called out, handing you the mic. As you scrolled through the music list, your finger hovers over a certain Elvis song. You hesitated playing this song. You had come to terms with your crush on someone who didn’t actually exist. The Portuguese called it Saudade, the haunting desire for an imaginary love. It wasn’t right, but it was inevitable. Night after night of what were effectively dates, it was nigh impossible to not catch feelings for her, not only because she looks like Seulgi, but because of her playful and cheerful personality, a beacon and light for you. She was your salvation.

“Wise men say, only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you.” You sing, locking eyes with Seulgi, who seemed to understand what was going on As you continued to sing, Seulgi’s gaze never left yours, softening as you got lost in her eyes as she swam in the galaxies of yours. The song reaches it’s end, and, nothing. Silence. The two of you sit in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. You knew, the both of you had a choice to make, and it was evident on Seulgi’s face, that she was conflicted. The two of you begin to talk at the same time, causing yet another pause in the conversation. “You go.” You say, allowing Seulgi to go first. She nervously gulps, before starting to talk. “Y/N, I want you to know that I’ve really enjoyed the past two months.” Had it really been two months already? Wow, time flies huh. “Y/N. I know we have something, there’s something between us that I can’t explain, but…” Seulgi paused, and you felt your heart jump from your chest. Of course, what did you expect? This was obviously never going to work out, who could love y- “No, Y/N, it’s not that.” Seulgi suddenly said, causing you to weakly force a smile. “What did I say about peeking about my mind Seulgi?” You say, causing Seulgi to grimace. “It’s involuntary…I can’t turn it off today.” Seulgi says, causing to look at her in confusion. What’s so special about today? “It’s the last day, Y/N. My work here is done, no more nightmares, everything is fixed up, but…that means this too is done. All of it. The 2 hour meetings nightly, the carnivals, the parks. All of it. I’m really sorry.” Seulgi says, causing you to reel back in shock. You didn’t know these dreams would end. Maybe you did, but you just never acknowledged it. Looking hurriedly at the clock, you see the hour hand disappeared, the minute hand too, you only had 20 seconds left. You didn’t have time. Looking hurriedly at Seulgi, you found yourself unable to say a word, instead, you placed your lips on hers, pulling her into an embrace, stealing the last moments of, everything.

“No!” You sit up in your bed, cold sweat, as if you had a nightmare the same way you did before A sigh, you walk to the kitchen island, having to brew your own hot chocolate. As you sit at the island, your mind is in turmoil. That kiss solidified only one thing, and that was that you had fallen in love. And the person you loved was gone. As you slowly sipped your beverage, you notice the ticket for the fanmeet on the island. A last look at your lost love. It was all you had left.

The tavern always smells like honey and smoke.

It’s the kind of place that feels like it’s been there longer than memory — walls stained with laughter, ceiling beams holding whispers of too many winters. Outside, the night hums with music and the low buzz of insects. The moon hangs heavy above the hills, full, swollen and silver, the kind that looks close enough to touch if you reached just high enough.

You push the door open and step inside. Warmth greets you first, then noise. Someone’s playing a fiddle near the hearth, a tune bright enough to lift the heart but old enough to sound like it’s been carried through generations.

You find a seat at the counter, halfway between solitude and company. You don’t know why you came here tonight — only that something pulled you, a quiet gravity that feels older than reason.

Elias, the barkeep, wipes his hands on a linen rag and gives you a look that sits somewhere between surprise and something else entirely. It’s brief, fleeting.

“Evening,” he says simply, voice gravelly from years of laughter and smoke. “Haven’t seen you around before.”

You smile, shaking your head. “Just passing through.”

He studies you for a moment longer, like he’s looking for a detail he can’t quite find. Then he nods, turning to pour you a drink. “Travelers always come after the full moon,” he murmurs, mostly to himself.

You blink. “Sorry?”

“Nothing.” He slides a tankard across the counter, golden mead sloshing softly against its sides. “Sweetest we’ve got. Bit too much honey, if you ask me.”

Before you can answer, a voice rings out from behind you — smooth, lilting, carrying laughter even before the words take shape.

“You say that every time, Elias, and you’re still wrong. There’s no such thing as too much honey.”

You turn — and the rest of the tavern seems to fade.

She’s standing by the doorway, framed by moonlight and the chatter of the room, and for a heartbeat, you forget how to breathe.

Her hair catches the firelight like strands of gold spun thin. Her smile is wicked and bright, and her eyes — God, her eyes — gleam with the sort of knowing that makes you feel seen, even when you don’t want to be.

Sophia.

You don’t know her yet, not by name, but she already feels like a memory you should’ve kept.

She glides toward you with the ease of someone who belongs everywhere. Elias groans softly under his breath, but there’s fondness beneath it, a tired affection that sounds like routine.

“Here to argue with me about my mead again?” he asks.

“It’s tradition,” she says, slipping onto the stool beside you. “You can’t have a full moon without our monthly debate.”

You chuckle, glancing between them. “Do you two know each other?”

“Unfortunately,” Elias says.

“Tragically,” Sophia corrects with a grin. “He’s my favorite person to annoy.”

There’s something magnetic about her. She speaks in a rhythm that makes you lean closer without realizing. Every word dances. Every laugh feels like it was meant for you, even when it’s not.

You raise your tankard. “So, you’re the local expert on honey content, then?”

“Only when it comes to mead,” she says, turning her gaze toward you, sharp and playful. “Everything else, I’m still figuring out.”

You smile, already lost.

There’s no other way to describe it — you fall for her right then. Not slowly, not carefully. Instantly. Like you’d been walking a familiar path and suddenly realized the stars were brighter because she was standing under them.

She tells you about the town — the festivals, the flower stalls in the square, the way the cobblestones glisten after the rain. She speaks in colors, and somehow you can see every one. You tell her bits about yourself, small things — your travels, the people you’ve met, the way the forest looked when you arrived at dusk.

She listens like it’s all facinating, but her eyes flicker, just for a second, a glint of something you can’t decipher.

The tavern grows louder, but your world narrows until it’s just her voice, her laugh, her fingers tracing circles on the rim of her glass. She leans in, her shoulder brushing yours, and something electric hums between you.

“Do you always charm strangers this easily?” you ask, trying to sound playful instead of awestruck, or lovestruck.

“Only the interesting ones,” she says softly.

Elias passes by again, shaking his head. He catches Sophia’s eye — and for an instant, his expression softens. Then he’s gone, moving down the bar, refilling drinks, pretending not to look back.

You don’t see it. You’re too busy watching Sophia tilt her head back to drink, the firelight catching her throat, her smile curving like a secret.

Time slips strangely when you’re around her. One minute, you’re strangers. The next, you’re laughing like old friends, knees brushing beneath the counter.

When the crowd begins to thin, she looks toward the door. “Come on,” she says, standing. “You can’t waste a full moon indoors.”

You follow her out without question.

Outside, the night is soft and golden. The moon rests low above the horizon, enormous and impossibly bright. The air smells like clover and pine and the faint sweetness of mead still on your breath.

You walk side by side down the dirt road, your hands brushing every so often. The silence between you feels easy — not empty, just waiting to be filled.

When you turn back, she’s already watching you. There’s something in her gaze — a glimmer of affection, but something else too, something you can’t quite name.

It doesn’t matter. Not tonight.

All you know is that the world feels right beside her. That maybe you were supposed to walk into that tavern tonight. That maybe you were supposed to meet her.

And so you smile, and she smiles back — that wide, luminous grin that could outshine the moon itself.

Later, when she says goodnight, you think of something stupid like fate.

You fall asleep with her laughter still echoing in your head.

And when you dream, you dream of the same tavern, the same moonlight, the same laugh 

Waning Gibbous: The “First” picnic

You wake to sunlight and the faint scent of honey still clinging to your sleeves — a sweet reminder of the night before. The tavern, the laughter, the way Sophia said your name like she was tasting it. You’ve been replaying every moment since, like a song you can’t get out of your head.

You don’t expect to see her again.

That’s what makes the knock at your door so startling.

“Good morning!”

Her voice is unmistakable — warm and lilting, with that soft musicality that makes your heart do something stupid. You open the door to find Sophia standing there in the early light, holding a picnic basket and smiling like she’s been waiting for you all along.

She’s wearing a light dress the color of cream and sunlight, and her hair’s tied up with a ribbon that catches the breeze.

You blink, still trying to wake up. “Sophia?”

“Do you know any other Sophias who bring you breakfast at ungodly hours?” she asks, pretending to frown.

“It’s not that early,” you say automatically, even though it definitely is.

Her grin widens. “See? You’re already defending me. That’s a good sign.”

You can’t help but laugh. “So, breakfast, huh?”

“Well,” she says, tilting her head, “technically lunch. But breakfast sounds more romantic.”

You don’t even hesitate when she gestures for you to come along. Somehow, following Sophia feels as natural as breathing.

The two of you walk out of town and into the fields, where the grass bends in soft waves and the air smells faintly of clover. Sophia talks as she walks, hands moving animatedly — about the best pastries in the market, or about how Elias still doesn’t know how to pour mead without spilling some.

You mostly listen, stealing glances when you think she’s not looking. Her words come easily, full of color and rhythm — and every so often, she glances your way as if to make sure you’re still smiling.

You are. You can’t not.

When you reach the meadow, Sophia spreads out a checkered blanket and unpacks the basket with a flourish.

“Behold,” she declares, dramatically lifting a jar, “my greatest weakness: strawberry jam.”

“Your greatest weakness?” you tease. “Not bad dancing? Or too much talking? Or that thing you do with your nose?”

“Excuse me,” she says, pretending to be offended. “I am an excellent dancer and a delightful conversationalist. Also, I’ll have you know that my nose is adorable.”

“Debatable.”

She gasps, hand over her chest. “You wound me.”

You grin. “Maybe I’ll make it up to you with a compliment.”

She perks up. “Go on.”

You pause, pretending to think. “You have a nice… basket.”

Sophia groans, throwing a grape at you. You catch it midair — barely — and she claps, laughing.

“Fine,” she says. “You get partial redemption.”

The picnic is simple but perfect — flaky bread, cheese, strawberries, and the jam she swears could solve wars. You eat until you’re full, and then some, talking about nothing and everything: the weather, favorite colors, childhood dreams.

She tells you she used to sneak onto the roof to look at stars, because she liked pretending they could hear her.

You tell her you used to name every stray cat in your neighborhood.

“Every single one?”

“Even the mean ones.”

She laughs softly. “That’s very you.”

You raise a brow. “What does that mean?”

“It means you look at things like they’re worth loving,” she says, voice lighter than air — but there’s a softness in her gaze that makes your chest ache a little.

After lunch, she convinces you to play a dice game she claims is “incredibly simple.”

It’s not.

Ten minutes later, she’s giggling so hard she can’t even roll straight.

“Wait, wait,” you protest, pointing at her cup. “You’re making up rules as we go!”

“Am not!”

“Then explain how I just lost twenty points because my dice rolled an even number.”

“It’s a bonus penalty,” she says, completely deadpan.

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is now.”

You groan. “You’re insufferable.”

Sophia beams. “And you’re adorable when you’re losing.”

Your face heats instantly, which only makes her laugh harder. “You know,” she adds, grinning, “you make this too easy.”

You lie back on the blanket in mock defeat. “You’re evil.”

She flops down beside you, her hair brushing your shoulder. “Maybe. But at least I’m cute about it.”

You can’t argue with that.

For a while, the two of you just lie there, watching clouds drift lazily across the sky.

Sophia hums — a tune you swear you’ve heard before, though you can’t place it. It feels like how sunlight sounds.

“Do you ever think,” she says quietly, “that maybe the sky’s too big for one person to look at alone?”

You glance over. She’s smiling, eyes closed, face tilted toward the warmth.

“Then it’s a good thing you invited me,” you say softly.

She opens one eye, looking at you, and for a heartbeat, it feels like the world narrows down to that one look — the little spark in her gaze, the quiet recognition of something she won’t name yet.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “It is.”

Later, she kicks off her shoes and wanders barefoot into the stream that runs along the edge of the meadow. The water sparkles around her ankles, catching sunlight in little bursts.

“Come on!” she calls. “It’s not cold!”

“It looks cold.”

“It’s refreshing,” she insists, splashing water toward you.

You yelp as it hits your arm. “Sophia!”

She laughs so hard she almost falls. You chase her in, splashing back until both of you are soaked, breathless, laughing like children.

When you finally stumble back onto the grass, dripping and exhausted, she sits beside you and hands you a towel from the basket like she knew this would happen.

“You planned this,” you accuse.

“Maybe,” she admits, grin mischievous. “You always smile more when you’re caught off guard.”

You roll your eyes, but your heart’s not fooling anyone.

By the time the sun dips low, painting everything in gold, you’re both stretched out on the blanket again. The air is still warm, the world quiet except for the hum of cicadas.

Sophia props herself up on one elbow, watching you. Her eyes catch the last of the light, glowing amber.

“What?” you ask, suddenly shy.

“Nothing,” she says softly. “Just thinking that you look exactly how today feels.”

You blink. “What does that mean?”

She smiles. “Like sunshine. Like something I don’t want to forget.”

You don’t realize how close she’s leaned until you can see the tiny flecks of light in her irises.

Your heart stumbles over itself.

“Then don’t forget,” you say quietly.

Her smile falters — not in sadness, but in that way people do when they’re feeling too much, when feeling overwhelms in a tidal wave. “I’ll try not to,” she whispers.

You walk back together as the sky deepens to violet. The road is lined with fireflies, and she catches one in her hands, letting it glow between her fingers.

“See?” she says. “Even the little lights follow us home.”

Elias is sweeping outside the tavern when you arrive. He gives Sophia a long, unreadable look, and she offers him a cheerful wave.

“Evening, Elias!”

He nods slowly. “Evening, Sophia. At the waterfalls again?”

Sophia just smiles. “You always remember, don’t you?”

“Hard to Forget.”

You frown, not understanding, but Sophia just squeezes your arm gently. “Ignore him,” she says lightly.

And then she’s looking at you again, eyes soft, almost hopeful. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” you promise.

When you finally lie down that night, the scent of wildflowers still clings to your clothes, and you fall asleep smiling, the sound of her laughter echoing in your mind.

You dream of sunlight and honey and the way Sophia looked at you — like she already knew you’d follow her anywhere.

Third Quarter: The “First” Date

The sun was just beginning to sink when you saw her again. It was a daily occurrence by now, Sophia seemed to always know where to find you, spending at least a little of every day with you.

The sky had turned gold around the edges, a warm sort of light that made everything feel softer—the cobblestones, the chatter spilling from market stalls, even the wind. You were helping old Mr. Brehn at the bakery when you caught sight of her through the open doorway. Sophia, standing there like she’d stepped straight out of a dream you’d been too afraid to admit you were having.

She was laughing at something the flower vendor said, a ribbon of sound that wrapped around you, bright and unhurried. Her hair caught the last of the sunlight, haloed in gold, and she wore a soft cream dress this time, with her sleeves tied up and a faint dusting of flour smudged across her wrist—as though she’d been somewhere else, busy being radiant.

“Don’t stare too long,” Brehn said, elbowing you with a grin. “You’ll burn your bread.”

You pretended to focus on the dough. “I wasn’t staring.”

“You were absolutely staring.”

You were.

And when she spotted you through the doorway, her smile widened like she’d just remembered your name after a long time. “There you are,” she said, stepping inside.

“Me?” 

“You,” she confirmed, tapping your chest lightly with one flour-dusted finger. “I thought I might find you here.”

“You were looking for me?” you tried to sound casual, but the words tripped over each other on their way out.

Sophia tilted her head, pretending to think. “Maybe. Or maybe I was just following the smell of cinnamon. But either way…” she smiled, bright as a sunrise. “I’m glad it led me to you.”

Brehn made a sound behind you—something between a chuckle and a sigh—and muttered, “Young love, gods save them,” before shuffling to the back room.

Sophia leaned against the counter, eyes glinting. “Walk with me?”

You nodded before you even realized she’d asked.

The streets were quieter by the time you left the square. Lanterns had begun to bloom open one by one, their light flickering gently across the cobblestones. Sophia led you along the river path, the air full of late-summer sweetness and distant music from the town’s open-air musicians.

She carried a small satchel slung across her shoulder, and halfway down the path, she stopped and spread a blanket beneath a willow tree, right where the moonlight dripped onto the grass like silver ink.

“Sit,” she said, patting the space beside her.

You sat.

Out came a small collection of pastries, wrapped in parchment, and a flask that smelled faintly of honey and berries. There was even a single daisy tucked in a glass bottle of water—slightly wilted, but clearly chosen with care.

You smiled. “You’ve thought this through.”

She looked pleased. “It’s called preparation. You should try it sometime.”

“Oh, is that what this is? Preparation? For what?”

“For me charming you,” she said matter-of-factly, handing you a pastry. “Obviously.”

You almost choked laughing, and she grinned like she’d been waiting for exactly that.

The evening unfolded like it had been written in the stars. She talked, and you listened, though sometimes it was hard to tell which one of you was doing more of the talking. Sophia had a way of pulling the world closer with her words—stories about constellations that guided travelers, about a lake that froze into glass once every hundred years, about a child who swore they saw the moon blink.

You didn’t know how much of it was true, but the way she spoke made truth feel like a secondary concern.

At one point, a gentle breeze lifted her hair, and she pressed her hand to her chest dramatically. “The wind adores me,” she said.

“Can you blame it?” you replied before you could stop yourself.

Her grin faltered just long enough for color to rise in her cheeks. “That was smooth.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t take it back,” she interrupted, nudging your shoulder. “It was good. I’ll allow it.”

You both laughed then, your shoulders brushing, and for a moment the world seemed to tilt slightly, like it was holding its breath for you.

When the laughter faded, Sophia leaned her head against your shoulder. The movement was so natural you didn’t even flinch. You just breathed in—the faint scent of wildflowers and honey clinging to her hair.

“You smell like cinnamon,” she murmured.

“You told me to bring something that makes me happy,” you said softly.

Her head lifted slightly, and she blinked at you. “And you brought… roasted chestnuts?”

You hesitated, smiling. “No. I brought myself.”

There was a pause—long enough for the crickets to fill it—before Sophia laughed, the sound bubbling up warm and real. “That’s terrible,” she said, but she was smiling so hard her nose crinkled.

“It made you laugh, didn’t it?”

She pretended to pout. “Barely.”

“You laughed.”

“Only a little. But not because the joke was funny, only because you’re cute.”

“Still counts.”

Sophia giggled again, the kind of sound that made your ribs ache with happiness. And then she reached for your hand—casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world—and kept it there, fingers intertwined.

You watched the moonlight play over her face, turning her eyes to molten silver. “You know,” she said quietly, “the moon’s at the third Quarter tonight.”

“Is that bad luck?” you asked.

“Maybe.” She smiled softly. “Or maybe it means there’s more to come.”

Her thumb brushed over your knuckles absentmindedly, tracing slow circles. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward—it was tender, something that filled the air instead of breaking it.

When it grew late, she walked you home. You passed the fountain where children played during the day, now quiet under the silver light. Every now and then, she’d nudge you with her shoulder, like she was checking to make sure you were still beside her.

At your door, she stopped. The world was hushed—just you, her, and the sound of the river in the distance.

“The moon’s changing,” she said softly. “It always does.”

You nodded, not really knowing what to say.

Sophia looked up, eyes reflecting the stars, and for a moment you swore you saw something flicker behind them—a shadow of sorrow quickly tucked away. But then she smiled again, bright and certain.

“Promise me you’ll meet me again tomorrow?”

“As long as the moon’s still there,” you said, half-joking.

She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Then I suppose we’ll never run out of tomorrows.”

And before you could reply, she leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to your cheek. Just a whisper of a thing—light, fleeting—but it stole the air right out of your lungs.

Then she was gone, her cloak sweeping behind her, laughter echoing faintly down the lantern-lit street.

You stood there long after she disappeared, staring at the moon, heart racing in a way that didn’t feel entirely new—but you couldn’t understand why.

All you knew was that you were smiling, and the night felt like it had been waiting for you both.

Waning Crescent: The “First” dance

The town was unrecognizable that night.

Every month, the streets were dressed in silk banners and candlelight, the smell of roasted chestnuts and honey cakes drifting through the air. But this time—it all felt different. Maybe it was because you’d spent the whole day with Sophia, helping her carry lanterns for the children to hang by the river. Maybe it was because every time you looked up, you found her already looking back, smiling that secret, knowing smile that made your pulse stutter.

The moon hung low and sharp in the sky, a silver sickle slicing through the dark. The Waxing Crescent. A sliver of light that promised something was coming, though neither of you knew what it would take to get there.

Sophia was impossible not to notice that night.

She wore blue. Not the kind of blue that faded into the background, but the kind that shimmered when the lanterns caught it—like the reflection of moonlight on still water. Her hair was braided loosely down her back, the braid unraveling every time she turned to laugh at something someone said.

You’d barely stepped into the square when she found you. She didn’t even say hello. She just grinned, eyes bright, and grabbed your hand.

“There you are,” she said breathlessly. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten.”

“Forgotten?” you echoed, startled by her choice of word.

“Mm,” she hummed. “That you promised to dance with me.”

“I don’t remember promising that.”

She tilted her head, pretending to think. “Then maybe it was a dream.” Her fingers tightened around yours. “But if it was, I’m glad you showed up anyway.”

You laughed—because that was the thing about Sophia. She could say something utterly ridiculous, and yet somehow, you’d still want to believe every word of it.

The musicians struck up their first tune—a lively reel that sent the crowd spinning and clapping. Sophia pulled you straight into the chaos before you could even protest.

“I can’t dance,” you said, nearly tripping over your own boots.

“You’ll learn,” she replied, her laughter spilling into the music. “Just follow me.”

“I’ll step on your toes.”

“You say that like you haven’t already.”

Her teasing was quick and light, and soon your nerves melted under the sound of her joy. You moved the way she told you to—left, right, spin—and somehow, between her laughter and your stumbling, the rhythm began to find you both.

At one point, she twirled away from you, her skirt flaring, and the world blurred around her. When she turned back, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes soft with something you couldn’t quite name.

The music slowed. Couples began to draw closer.

Sophia stepped into your space, one hand resting lightly against your chest, the other still holding yours. You could feel her heartbeat through your fingers, quick but steady, like it had been waiting for this.

“See?” she whispered. “You’re not terrible at it.”

“Because you’re doing all the work,” you said quietly.

“Maybe,” she said, smiling up at you. “But you’re trying. That’s what counts.”

For a while, neither of you spoke. You just moved together, slow and quiet, surrounded by laughter and candlelight. Every now and then, you’d catch her looking at you—not in the playful way she usually did, but like she was memorizing the lines of your face.

It should have felt strange, but instead it felt like something inside you recognized her gaze. Like you’d been waiting for it.

Later that night, when most of the lanterns had dimmed and the music softened into something slow and wistful, Sophia led you away from the square.

“Where are we going?” you asked, but she only smiled and said, “You’ll see.”

You walked in companionable silence through the narrow streets until you reached the riverbank. The water shimmered under the crescent moon, scattered with reflections of floating lanterns. Sophia crouched down beside one, tracing her fingers through the rippling light.

“Every month,” she said softly, “they say the lanterns carry wishes upstream. Toward the moon.”

You knelt beside her. “Do you believe that?”

She hesitated, then shook her head lightly. “No. I think the moon already knows what we wish for. It just doesn’t always give it to us. Not in the way we think, at least.”

There was something in the way she said it—tender, almost mournful—but when you turned to look at her, she was smiling again.

“Come on,” she said, reaching into her satchel. She pulled out a small paper lantern, its edges faintly golden from the firelight. “Write something.”

You blinked. “What should I write?”

“Anything.” She grinned. “A wish. A secret. A bad poem.”

You laughed under your breath but took the quill she offered. You hesitated for a long time before writing, the ink pooling at the edge of each letter:

I hope this lasts.

When you handed the lantern back, Sophia didn’t ask what you wrote. She simply leaned closer and whispered, “It will. It’ll last forever”

And for that moment, you believed her.

Together, you set the lantern afloat. It drifted gently down the river, joining the countless others—small, trembling lights on a sea of silver.

Sophia leaned her head against your shoulder, watching it fade into the distance. “The moon looks happy tonight,” she murmured.

“Does it?”

“Mm. Maybe it likes seeing us like this.”

You smiled, eyes on the water. “Then let’s make sure we give it a reason every night.”

Sophia didn’t answer. She just squeezed your hand, her thumb brushing over your skin in a soft, fleeting pattern—one you didn’t yet recognize.

When she finally walked you home, the moon had risen higher, its curve gleaming pale against the dark. You turned at your door, about to thank her for the night, but she spoke first.

“Promise me something?”

“Anything.”

“Remember this,” she said quietly. “Even if… you don’t remember me.”

You blinked, startled. “What?”

Sophia smiled quickly, brushing it off with a laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I mean—just promise you won’t forget how perfect tonight was.”

“Oh.” You smiled back, still a little dazed. “That, I can do.”

And when she leaned in, her lips brushed your cheek, softer than moonlight.

When you closed your eyes that night, her laughter still echoed behind your ribs. You didn’t know what you were falling into—only that you were already in too deep.

New Moon: The “First” Sign

The night of the new moon was darker than it had any right to be. Not the kind of dark that feels empty, but the kind that hums with quiet life—the kind where every candle flicker feels like it’s standing guard against something vast and unseen. The sky was a blank sheet above the town, the stars trembling faintly against it, and as you climbed the path to Sophia’s cottage, the world felt softer, slower.

Her house sat on the crest of the hill, its windows glowing amber against the blue-black night. You could smell the lilac before you reached the door—the scent that seemed to follow her everywhere. Inside, she’d said, there would be dinner waiting. “Something sweet,” she’d promised, “but not too sweet. Balance is everything.”

When you knocked, she opened the door before you could even lower your hand.

“You’re early,” she teased, stepping aside to let you in. “Or maybe I’m late. I never know anymore.”

The cottage was just as you’d imagined—small and a little chaotic, but warm in a way that made your chest ache. Books were stacked in uneven piles along the walls, spilling over tables and chairs. Dried flowers hung from ceiling beams, their stems brittle but still fragrant. A cat-shaped teapot steamed quietly on the stove, and the fire snapped in the hearth like it was trying to keep up with her.

And then there was Sophia.

Her hair was loose tonight, falling in soft waves that caught the firelight. Her dress looked borrowed from the sunlight itself—simple linen, tied loosely at the waist, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she stirred something golden in a small pot.

You leaned against the doorframe, smiling. “You’re glowing.”

She laughed, glancing over her shoulder. “It’s the honey. I spill it on myself every time. I’m half sugar at this point.”

You grinned. “Elias told me you still argue with him about how much he puts in his mead.”

Sophia groaned, lowering her head dramatically. “Because he refuses to understand proportions! A spoon too little and it ruins everything.”

“Seems like you’d know all about balance.”

She turned, brow lifting, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Are you calling me sweet?”

“I didn’t say that,” you said, fighting a smile.

Her laugh was soft, easy—the kind that slipped under your ribs and stayed there. “You didn’t have to.”

While she worked, you wandered around the room, drawn by the clutter. Everything in her house seemed touched by memory: old glass bottles filled with dried petals, pressed leaves, maps with little red Xs marked in corners. It was the kind of home that told stories, one without a single empty surface.

Then something on the mantle caught your eye.

A small object, half-hidden behind a stack of worn books—a wooden sculpture of a hand. Its size was odd, its surface darkened with age. You leaned closer, realizing it was shaped like a monkey’s paw, its fingers curled unnaturally. Four were outstretched, and one—just one—was half drawn toward its palm.

You stared for a moment. The wood looked smooth, as though it had been touched too many times, worn down by time or memory.

Before you could look closer, Sophia’s voice floated from behind you—gentle, but firm in a way you hadn’t heard before.

“Careful with that.”

You turned, caught off guard. She was standing a few feet away, wiping her hands on a towel, her tone casual—but her eyes were fixed on you, sharp and unreadable.

“Sorry,” you said quickly. “Didn’t mean to snoop. What is it?”

Sophia hesitated for a breath too long. Then she smiled, light and easy again, slipping past you to place herself between you and the mantle.

“Something old,” she said simply, brushing a bit of dust from the wood before setting a candle in front of it, as if to hide it behind the flame. “A keepsake. Useless thing, really.”

Her voice softened again, playful, warm. “Now, are you going to stand there staring at my shelves, or are you going to taste the soup I nearly burned waiting for you?”

You blinked, disarmed by how quickly the moment shifted. “You? Burn soup? I thought you were perfect.”

She snorted, leading you toward the small table by the hearth. “Perfect people don’t spill honey on themselves every night. Sit down.”

You did. She served you a bowl of something golden and fragrant—it shimmered faintly when it caught the light, like sunlight trapped in broth. She sat across from you, chin resting on her hand as she watched you take the first bite.

“It’s amazing,” you said immediately. “What did you put in this?”

“Trade secret,” she said with a sly grin. “If I told you, you’d never come back.”

“Maybe I’d come back anyway.”

That earned a pause. Her smile faltered for just a second, something unreadable flickering across her face. Then she shook her head and laughed softly, reaching over to nudge your bowl. “Eat before I get sentimental.”

You stayed late that night, talking about nothing in particular. She told you about her garden—how she couldn’t keep lavender alive but her thyme grew too fast. You told her about your walks through the woods and how sometimes you thought you heard your name carried in the wind. She laughed, told you that meant the forest liked you.

At some point, she sat on the floor in front of the fire, humming quietly as you leaned against the wall beside her. Her head found your shoulder naturally, like it had always belonged there.

You thought about how every time you saw her, the rest of the world blurred a little. How you felt like you could live your entire life in that cottage, in that small pool of firelight, with her fingers tracing idle circles on your wrist.

When you finally stood to leave, she followed you to the door.

“Stay,” she said softly, just as you reached for the handle.

You turned. “You want me to?”

She smiled faintly. “I always do.”

Her voice had a strange echo to it then—a quiet longing that made something in your chest twist. But before you could ask, she rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to your cheek, feather-light.

“Go on,” she whispered. “It’s late. The moon’s gone tonight, remember?”

As you stepped outside, you glanced back once more.

She was standing by the hearth, her silhouette painted gold by the firelight. And though her expression was soft, her gaze flicked, just once, toward the mantle—toward that strange little hand you’d nearly touched.

The candle she’d set before it burned lower, wax pooling at its base. The wooden fingers hadn’t moved, but you could’ve sworn that one of them, the curled one, cast a slightly longer shadow than before.

Waxing Crescent: The “First” tears

You wake before dawn to a sound too fragile to belong to the world outside. It takes you a few seconds to realize it’s coming from Sophia.

The fire has gone out sometime in the night, leaving only faint embers pulsing in the hearth like slow, dying hearts. The light that fills the room is the silver kind that arrives before sunrise—the light that belongs to ghosts and memories. It spills across the wooden floorboards, across the table with its half-melted candles, and finally across Sophia’s face.

She’s turned toward the window, half-hidden by her hair. Her lips are parted. A tear slips quietly down her cheek.

You’ve seen her in so many forms before—mischievous, stubborn, tired, luminous—but never like this. There’s something ancient about the way she looks now, like a statue that has seen centuries pass in silence. The sight makes your chest ache.

You almost don’t move. She seems so still, so fragile, that even breathing too loud feels like it would break the spell. But when another tear traces its way down, something in you decides for you.

You reach out, your fingers brushing lightly against her cheek.

Sophia startles. Her eyes fly open, deep and dark and uncertain. She looks at you like she’s not sure if she’s dreaming—or if she’s still inside whatever dream she just left. Then she exhales, softly, and whispers your name as if remembering where she is.

“Hey,” you murmur. “You were crying.”

Her lashes flutter. She blinks once, twice, and looks away, toward the dying embers. Her voice, when it comes, is soft—gentle enough to almost make you forget it’s avoidance. “Was I?”

You nod. “Yeah. You were.”

She pushes herself up slowly, her hair falling over her face as she rubs her eyes with the back of her hand. The motion is too casual, too deliberate. “I must’ve been dreaming,” she says. “It happens sometimes.”

“Bad dream?”

Sophia hums, as if she’s deciding how much of the truth she’s willing to share. Finally, she says, “Not bad. Just… too familiar.”

You tilt your head. “Familiar how?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she pulls the blanket tighter around herself and turns her gaze toward the window, where the last sliver of moon hangs low. “There are some things,” she says after a long silence, “that stay with you even when you’ve left them behind. Places. People. Promises.”

There’s a weight in her tone that feels older than her. Something unspoken but heavy, like the echo of prayer still clinging to a ruined temple.

You reach for her hand. “You make it sound like you used to belong to something.”

Her lips twitch into a faint smile, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe I did.”

“Like a church?” you tease gently.

Her smile flickers at that. For a heartbeat, she looks almost wistful. “Something like that,” she murmurs. “Once.”

There’s a quiet in the room after that—an unspoken understanding that you’ve brushed against something she doesn’t talk about. Not because she can’t, but because it hurts to.

You don’t push further. You just keep your hand where it is, your thumb tracing small circles against her skin until her breathing steadies again.

When morning finally arrives, you wake to the scent of smoke and lavender. The hearth burns again, a pot bubbling softly above it. Sophia is at the counter, barefoot and wrapped in her shawl, humming an unfamiliar melody that sounds too structured, too reverent to be a simple tune.

It sounds like a hymn.

You sit up and watch her for a while, the early light washing her in gold. There’s something graceful about the way she moves—a rhythm too deliberate to be casual. Her gestures are small and precise, like she’s performing a ritual she’s forgotten she knows.

When she notices you watching, she smiles. “You should eat,” she says lightly, placing a plate in front of you. “I made something warm.”

You grin, still half-dazed. “You always wake up first. Do you ever sleep?”

“Sometimes.”

“You said that like it’s optional.”

She laughs, but it’s quieter than usual. “Old habits,” she says, and you catch the faintest trace of something else beneath her tone—something that sounds almost like confession.

“What kind of habits?”

She glances at you, eyes glimmering. “Ones you don’t need to worry about.”

You chuckle, even as curiosity tugs at you. “You talk like you used to be someone important.”

Sophia’s hand stills on the spoon. For a moment, you think you’ve crossed a line—but then she smiles again, softer this time. “I used to be someone obedient,” she corrects. “That’s not quite the same thing.”

Her words linger in the air, strange and heavy.

You take a bite of the food she’s made, but your eyes drift toward the shelf above the hearth—where something small sits in shadow. A wooden trinket, its surface dark and uneven. You frown, leaning forward just slightly.

It’s a totem. Carved, old, and curled inward.

The sight sends a faint chill crawling down your spine, but you don’t know why.

“What’s that?” you ask.

Sophia’s voice changes so subtly that if you weren’t listening for it, you might have missed it—the note of quiet alarm she hides beneath her calm. “That?” she says, turning toward you, her smile immediate and easy. “Just a keepsake.”

You raise an eyebrow. “From where?”

“From a long time ago.”

“Looks… strange.”

“Most old things do,” she says lightly, and then—before you can ask again—she crosses the room and sets a cup of tea in front of you, her body perfectly positioned between you and the shelf. “Drink before it gets cold.”

Her tone is kind, but her eyes flicker toward the totem for the briefest moment, sharp and assessing, before she looks back at you.

The message is subtle but unmistakable. She doesn’t want you near it.

You decide not to press. Still, you can’t shake the feeling that whatever that object is—it isn’t just decoration. And the way Sophia stands there, smiling like she’s trying not to betray something, makes you think she’s guarding it.

After breakfast, you both step outside. The world is gray and soft, mist curling low across the valley. Sophia tilts her face to the sky, eyes half-closed, as though listening for something distant.

“You really do like mornings,” you say, watching her.

“They’re the quietest part of the day,” she answers. “Before the world remembers its noise.”

You smile. “You sound like someone giving a sermon.”

She turns to you, sunlight catching her eyes, and for a heartbeat she looks almost ethereal. “Maybe I’ve given one before,” she says with a small shrug.

You laugh, thinking she’s joking. But she doesn’t laugh with you.

Instead, she looks at you for a long, unreadable moment, her expression caught somewhere between affection and sorrow. Then she smiles—a small, fleeting thing—and whispers, “Eat well today, alright? I want you strong.”

You nod, a little confused, but the way she says it makes something warm stir in your chest.

When you leave her cottage that afternoon, the clouds begin to roll in. You turn once, just to wave goodbye. She’s still at the window, hand resting lightly on the frame.

You tell yourself it’s just a trick of the light. But when Sophia’s gaze meets yours through the glass, there’s something there you can’t quite name. Not fear. Not guilt. Something older.

Something that feels like prayer.

First Quarter: The “First” Kiss

The night hums soft and low, the way summer nights do when the world decides to be kind for a while. The air smells like wet grass and river stones, touched with the faint sweetness of lilies. You follow the path by memory—past the crooked willow that leans too far, past the old fence where the wood gives way beneath your palm. The moon is fractured tonight, its light scattered in the rippling current below, breaking into pieces every time the water moves.

Sophia stands in the shallows barefoot, her skirt hiked to her knees, hem damp where it brushes the water. The pale gleam of moonlight turns her hair silver. Around her neck, the small pendant you’ve seen a dozen times before glows faintly, like it’s catching more light than it should.

For a moment, you just watch her—how she lifts her hand and lets the cold river thread through her fingers, how she looks like she belongs more to the moonlight than to the ground.

“Hey,” you call softly.

She turns, and her smile hits you like warmth after rain. “You found me.”

“You’re easy to find,” you say. “You glow.”

She laughs, quiet and embarrassed. “That’s the moon, not me.”

You shake your head, stepping closer. “No. It’s definitely you.”

The words come out before you can stop them, as natural as breathing. Lately, everything with her feels like that—instinctive, inevitable. She fills the silence so easily that you forget what life sounded like before her voice existed in it.

She looks down at the water, but not fast enough to hide the color rising in her cheeks. “You always say things like that,” she murmurs.

You grin. “Can’t help it.”

Her eyes flicker up at you—blue in the moonlight, uncertain, searching. You wade in until you’re close enough to see the tremor in her hands. The river folds around your legs, cold and alive, tugging gently at your balance.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” you say.

“Neither should you,” she replies, and then—her smile softens—“but I’m glad you are.”

For a while, neither of you speaks. The current hushes against your ankles. Fireflies blink in the reeds, the kind of quiet magic you only notice when someone else is beside you. Sophia tips her head back to look at the broken moon, and the pendant against her chest flares again—just faintly, like it’s reacting to something unseen.

You catch yourself staring. “That necklace,” you say. “It’s different tonight.”

Her fingers brush over it protectively. “It always shines brightest when the moon’s in pieces,” she says softly, eyes still skyward. “Like it’s trying to put it back together.”

You smile. “You talk about it like it’s alive.”

“Maybe it is,” she whispers, then glances at you. “Everything that remembers love is, a little.”

You don’t understand what she means, but the way she says it—quiet, reverent—makes you want to.

When she looks at you again, her expression has changed. Her eyes are glassy, rimmed with tears that catch the moonlight.

“Hey,” you murmur, stepping closer. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head quickly, as if that could undo the tears. “Nothing,” she says, laughing weakly. “You always ask that.”

“Always?”

Her breath catches—just barely—but then she smiles again. “It doesn’t matter.”

You want to press, but something about her tone tells you not to. So instead, you lift your hand to brush a strand of hair from her face. She doesn’t move away. If anything, she leans into your touch, her eyes fluttering shut.

Her skin is cool from the river, but her pulse beneath your fingertips is racing.

“I love you,” you say.

You don’t plan to, but the words come out anyway, honest and heavy and too full. Because it’s true—because somehow it feels like it’s always been true, like you were already in love with her before you even knew her name.

Sophia’s hands tremble as they rise to your face. Her touch is feather-light at first, then surer, her thumbs tracing the edge of your jaw as if she’s memorizing you. Her voice breaks when she whispers, “You always do.”

You frown, confused. “What do you mean?”

But she only smiles—a sad, radiant smile that feels like the end of something. “You always mean it.”

And before you can ask again, she leans in.

The kiss is soft, hesitant, the kind that feels like both a beginning and an apology. Her lips taste faintly of riverwater and honey, salt from her tears mixing with the sweetness of her breath. You feel her tremble, feel the way her fingers slide up into your hair as though she’s trying to anchor herself to this one perfect moment.

You kiss her back like you’ve been waiting a lifetime for it. Maybe you have.

When you finally pull away, she presses her forehead to yours, breathing you in. Her hands are still on your face, still shaking.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the first night,” you whisper.

Her answering laugh is quiet, wet with tears. “You did,” she says softly.

You open your mouth to ask what she means, but she leans in again, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth before you can speak. “Don’t ruin it,” she murmurs. “Just let it be.”

You do. You let the silence hold you both.

The wind shifts, carrying the scent of rain and riverweed. You shiver a little, and Sophia steps back just enough to study you, her gaze catching on the edge of your shirt where it’s come loose. Her eyes flicker—something sharp and sad passing through them—before she reaches out and gently pulls the fabric back into place.

“What?” you ask.

She shakes her head quickly, forcing a smile. “Nothing. You’ll catch cold if you keep standing there.”

You laugh, rubbing the back of your neck. “You sound like my mother.”

“Then she must have been wise.”

“Is that your way of saying I’m an idiot?”

Sophia grins—really grins—and you realize how much you’ve missed that look, even though it’s only been hours. “Maybe a little.”

You grin back. The two of you linger by the river until the moon slips lower, until her pendant dims to nothing. And when you finally walk her home, hand in hand, you can still feel the ghost of her kiss against your lips.

It isn’t until later—when you’re washing the river mud from your skin, the lamplight stretching long and soft across your back—that you notice the old scar.

A line, thin and pale, running across your back. You’ve never thought much of it, never remembered where it came from. But tonight, for some reason, when your fingers trace it, your heart stutters—like something inside you is almost remembering.

Outside, the river keeps singing. And somewhere not far away, Sophia stands at her window, watching the moon vanish behind clouds.

Her fingers touch her lips, then her pendant.

Waxing Gibbous: The “First” Goodbye

The night before the full moon was too still — the kind of stillness that felt like holding your breath before something breaks. The air shimmered faintly with silver light, soft and sharp all at once. The meadow was washed in it, all color drained away until even Sophia looked ghostlike, standing in the tall grass with her white dress brushing her knees, her hair unbound and dark as ink.

You thought she was beautiful. You always did.

She turned when she heard your footsteps, her expression soft but unreadable, eyes glimmering with something that wasn’t quite sadness and wasn’t quite peace. Behind her, the moon hung swollen, almost full — a blade of light suspended in the sky.

You smiled when you reached her. “You found our spot again.”

Sophia’s lips lifted, but it wasn’t a smile. “You always say that.”

Her tone was gentle, affectionate even, but there was something underneath it — something so quiet you could almost miss it if not for the way her fingers curled into her palms.

You stepped closer, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ve been distant,” you murmured. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Sophia hesitated, the way she always did when she was deciding whether to tell you the truth or protect you from it. Her gaze drifted upward, to the almost-full moon, and for a moment her face was lit like a painting — every line carved by sorrow and devotion.

“Do you know what tomorrow is?” she asked softly.

You grinned, thinking you knew the answer. “A lunar cycle since we first met?”

She laughed faintly, but it was hollow. “No. Not that.”

You frowned, tilting your head. “Then what?”

Her eyes met yours, and for a heartbeat, she looked like she might tell you everything. Then she looked away again. “Do you remember the first time you came here?”

“Of course I do,” you said. “You dragged me here to see fireflies.”

Sophia’s shoulders trembled, though she smiled. “You always say that too.”

You reached for her hand, and she let you take it. Her fingers were cold. When she finally spoke again, her voice was low and careful, like a prayer she wasn’t sure she was allowed to say.

“I used to be a priestess,” she said.

You blinked. “You?”

Her lips curved faintly. “Surprised?”

“A little. You don’t really strike me as the… temple type.”

She laughed softly at that, but it faded quickly. “Maybe I wasn’t very good at it. I thought I understood what faith meant. I thought if I prayed hard enough, the moon would listen.”

You squeezed her hand gently. “Did she?”

Sophia’s eyes filled, not with tears yet, but with something like exhaustion — the kind that comes from carrying the same pain too many times. “She did,” she whispered. “And that’s the problem.”

The wind stirred around you, cool and sweet. You could hear the river beyond the meadow, a steady hush. It should’ve been peaceful. Instead, it felt fragile.

Sophia stepped closer until your foreheads touched. Her breath trembled against your skin. “You were dying,” she said, her words breaking apart as she spoke them. “There was blood, and I… I couldn’t lose you.”

You froze, your pulse stuttering. “Sophia—”

“I begged her,” she continued, voice shaking. “I begged the moon to save you. I didn’t care what it cost. And she heard me. She always hears her priestesses.”

Her thumb brushed your cheek, tender and reverent, as if she were memorizing you again.

“She gave you back,” Sophia whispered. “But she didn’t give you whole.”

You stared at her, confused. “What are you saying?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Every time the moon wanes, you forget. And when she waxes, you return. The curse renews itself.”

You blinked, the words sinking like stones you couldn’t hold onto. “That’s not possible.”

Sophia smiled through her tears, shaking her head. “You always say that, too.”

Her hands moved to your shoulders, tracing down your arms until she found the edge of your shirt. She hesitated, then gently slid it aside, her fingertips brushing the long scar across your back — a pale, jagged line that you never remembered earning.

“This,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “This is where it started. You fell in my arms that night. I thought the moon saved you.” Her hand trembled against your skin. “But all she did was make sure I’d lose you over and over again.”

You swallowed hard, words caught in your throat. You wanted to tell her she was wrong, that you’d never forget her, that you’d always find her again — but there was a weight building in your chest, something heavy and cold. The world around you seemed to hum faintly, a vibration you could feel in your bones.

Sophia’s expression broke. She cupped your face in her hands, desperate now. “Please, stay,” she whispered. “Just this once, stay.”

“I’m here,” you said, trying to sound steady. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You always say that,” she repeated, a tear slipping down her cheek. “And then the next night, you look at me like I’m just some curious stranger.”

Your vision blurred. “Sophia…”

“Shh,” she murmured, pressing her forehead to yours. “Don’t fight it. It hurts more when you do.”

You tried to focus on her face — her eyes, her trembling smile, the scent of her hair. You wanted to memorize her, but everything was already slipping, fogging at the edges.

“I’ll remember,” you swore, your voice trembling. “I’ll remember you.”

Sophia let out a sound between a laugh and a sob. “You said that the first time. And every time after.”

Sophia’s hands cupped your face, trembling so hard it was a wonder she didn’t drop you. Her fingers pressed against your jaw, desperate, worshipful. “No, no, no,” she breathed, voice cracking. “Stay with me. Please—just a little longer.”

You tried to focus on her — the shape of her face in the moonlight, the streaks of tears shining silver down her cheeks — but the world was tilting, spinning away from you. Her voice was soft but distant now, like it came through water.

“Sophia,” you gasped, your breath hitching, your heart tripping over itself. “What’s happening to me?”

Her breath broke on a sob. “Shh,” she whispered, dragging you against her chest, clutching you so tightly you could feel her pulse shuddering against your skin. “It’s okay, love. You’re okay. Just breathe, please—breathe with me.”

You tried. You really did. But every inhale came shorter, shallower. The air refused to stay in your lungs.

“I don’t—” your voice faltered, trembling. “I don’t understand—”

“I know,” she said, brushing your hair back, her hand shaking violently. Her thumb traced the curve of your cheek as though memorizing it. “You don’t have to understand. Just listen to me. Please.”

Your body jerked with another uneven breath. Her forehead pressed against yours, her skin fever-warm, her tears dripping down to mingle with your own.

“It’s just the curse,” she whispered, though her voice broke halfway through. “It’s not your fault. It’s never your fault.”

Her words hit something inside you — something ancient and frightened. You reached for her hand, fingers weak, trembling. You could barely see now; the moon’s glow blurred and fractured, the edges of the world fading to white.

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Don’t go yet.”

You clung to her, your grip slipping. “Sophia…”

She made a sound — something between a sob and a prayer — and pressed her lips to your temple, again and again, her tears falling like rain. “You always love me,” she whispered, voice cracking. “And I never stop.”

You wanted to tell her you weren’t leaving, that you’d stay this time, that you could fight it. But your voice was gone, your mouth barely moving.

“S-Sophia…”

Her name broke apart in your throat.

Sophia’s arms tightened around you as if she could anchor you to this world by sheer will. “I’m here,” she whispered, her breath catching. “I’m right here. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

But she wasn’t calm anymore — she was breaking. You felt her shoulders shake with the force of her sobs, her body trembling as though the grief itself might tear her open. Still, she forced her voice steady for you, even as it shattered. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay, my love. You can rest now.”

You wanted to say something — anything — but all that came was a breath. You exhaled, slow and final.

Your body stilled.

The night went utterly silent. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. The moon hung swollen and merciless above, lighting the meadow in cruel silver.

Sophia didn’t move. She just held you, your head cradled to her chest, her fingers tangled in your hair. Her lips brushed your crown, your cheek, your closed eyelids. Each kiss was a plea the heavens wouldn’t hear.

When her voice finally came, it was raw — scraped hollow from crying too long, from praying too hard. “You promised you’d remember,” she whispered into your skin. “You always promise.”

Her tears stained your collar, her breath hitching like her lungs refused to let her go on. “And I always let you.”

She tilted your face toward hers, brushing one last tear from your cheek. The moon painted her in white fire — the priestess she once was, the lover she could never stop being.

Her voice broke as she said it — the words she always used when she could say nothing else.

“You’re not sleeping, are you?” she asked, tipping her head just enough to make it feel like an accusation softened with sugar.

Karina gave a dry laugh. “That obvious?”

Wonyoung plucked a dumpling off the plate between them, blowing on it before continuing. “You’ve got that haunted idol look. All the rookies get it. Usually right after their debut stage.”

Karina blinked, unsure if she should be flattered or insulted.

“I’m serious,” Wonyoung said. “It’s the ‘I’m so lucky but I want to disappear’ expression. I had it for a year.”

Karina stirred her tea. “It’s just… a lot.”

“Exactly,” Wonyoung said, like she’d been waiting for her to say that. “You need something. A place. A way to talk without talking.”

“And that makes sense to you?”

“It will,” Wonyoung said, suddenly shy, as if she’d broken some personal vow by saying too much. “There’s this café. It’s not famous. Kind of hidden, like someone built it for people like us. There’s this rule — or a few, actually. One session. One voice. Once a year. No names. No faces. No promises.”

Karina raised a brow. “Sounds like therapy if therapy came with a blindfold.”

“It’s not therapy,” Wonyoung said. “You don’t pay. You just… talk. And someone listens. And you don’t have to carry any of it home.”

Karina wanted to laugh it off. Wanted to say no thanks and carry her exhaustion like a badge. But something about the way Wonyoung said it — the quiet reverence, like she was talking about a secret chapel — kept her quiet.

She filed the name away. Café Dérive.

It’s almost midnight when she finds herself curled into the corner of Seulgi’s couch, in a hoodie three sizes too big, sipping lukewarm barley tea and blinking against exhaustion. This is the first time in months she’s had a few hours off that didn’t involve collapsing into bed.

Seulgi — older, calmer, and endlessly gracious — is flipping through a stack of old vinyls, humming something under her breath.

Karina doesn’t plan to bring it up. Not really.

But then she says it, like dropping a pebble into still water:

“Have you heard of Café Dérive?”

Seulgi looks up, just slightly. There’s a glint in her eye — something surprised, something proud. “I own it.”

Karina blinks. “Wait. What?”

Seulgi grins, sheepish but proud. “It’s kind of my secret. A side project. It’s meant to be quiet. Gentle. A place that doesn’t ask anything from you.”

Karina’s throat tightens. It feels like something folding open in her chest — a door she didn’t know she’d locked.

“And the booth?”

Seulgi nods. “Anonymous conversations. You wouldn’t believe how many people come just to be… human. No makeup. No stage. Just voices in the dark.”

Karina doesn’t say anything for a while. But the thought clings to her again. Wonyoung’s soft voice. Seulgi’s gentle reassurance.

And beneath it all, something deeper. A need she hadn’t named until now.

You’re twenty. Alone. In a foreign country that doesn’t quite feel foreign anymore, but still not like home.

Seoul, with its endless glass and noise, its cafés that close at 2 a.m., its winter light that always feels just a little too distant.

Your ex left you in spring. You’ve lost track of how many days ago that was. You remember the moment exactly — the quiet breath before she said it, the way her fingers tightened on the strap of her bag like she was bracing for a gust of wind.

You haven’t seen her since.

And you didn’t plan to wander into Café Dérive. You really didn’t. But you’d just finished tutoring two hyperactive kids whose mother paid in exact change and polite apologies, and the neon sign above the café flickered like an invitation — just enough warmth to feel like a maybe.

Inside, it smells like cinnamon and old books. The barista doesn’t ask your name. She just smiles and gestures toward a hallway that disappears into shadows.

You pass a sign nailed to the wall.

One session. One voice. Once a year.

No names. No faces. No promises.

You hesitate.

But only for a moment

The booth smells like cedarwood and vanilla. The walls are matte black, but the lighting overhead is soft, casting a warm glow onto the table that stretches between you and the divider. The partition is thick and smooth, carved from an old tree, worn down by time. At its center is a horizontal seam — just wide enough for voices to pass through clearly. And beneath the seam, a narrow slot in the table’s edge — where two people, anonymous and unseen, might choose to slide a note, or nothing at all.

You sit down. It’s too quiet, so you tap your fingers lightly against your side of the table. One beat. Two. The rhythm steadies your breath.

A moment later, you hear a soft exhale on the other side. Then a voice. Feminine, low-toned, but careful.

“…Hi.”

You straighten slightly. “Hi.”

A silence settles. Then she says, more to herself than you, “I don’t know how to start.”

You smile — though she can’t see it. “You already did.”

Another small pause. Then her voice again, a little lighter. “Right. I guess so.”

You hear the creak of her chair as she adjusts.

“I didn’t come here planning to say anything specific,” she says. “I just… needed someplace quiet. Someplace where no one would expect me to smile.”

There’s something raw in her voice, like she’s exhausted from performing normalcy.

You lean forward slightly, arms folded on the table. “Well. No one can see you here.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?”

“Maybe. Or terrifying.”

She lets out a breath — almost a laugh.

“I guess it depends on the day.”

You nod, even though she can’t see. “So what kind of day is today?”

A quiet settles again. Then, finally: “One where everything feels too loud. Too fast.”

You wait, and she continues.

“I’m supposed to be grateful. I am grateful, I promise. But sometimes I wonder if I’m allowed to admit I’m tired.”

Something in your chest stirs. Not pity, not curiosity — recognition.

“You are,” you say softly.

She doesn’t respond right away.

“I don’t usually talk like this,” she says. “I’m always careful. Always calculating. Like I’m onstage, even when I’m not.”

“Here’s the good news,” you offer. “You’re not onstage now. You’re just… here. You, me, and a wall.”

She exhales again, steadier now. “That sounds nice. Being just me.”

You feel the ache behind her words.

You decide to share something. Not to even the playing field — just to offer a piece of yourself back.

“I had a breakup earlier this year,” you say. “Pretty bad one.”

She shifts audibly, maybe sitting up straighter. “What happened?”

You hesitate. Then: “We made plans. Built a life on them. Then she decided she didn’t want any of it.”

“Did she say why?”

“She said I was too still. That I didn’t want to chase the world the way she did.”

The woman behind the wall is quiet for a long moment.

“Still isn’t bad,” she says eventually. “Sometimes stillness is the only thing keeping you sane.”

“That’s how I felt. But it wasn’t enough for her.”

She breathes in. “I’m sorry. That kind of heartbreak stays in the lungs.”

You blink. “That’s… oddly poetic.”

“I think about breathing a lot,” she says quietly. “How many times a day I have to remember to take one. Not just for survival, but so I don’t disappear into the version of me everyone else keeps drawing.”

You let the words sit there between you.

“People have versions of you?” you ask gently.

“All the time,” she murmurs. “Fans. Haters. Strangers. Stylists. Managers. Everyone wants a piece. But no one really knows what they’re holding.”

There’s weight behind her voice. You’re starting to understand the kind of pressure she’s under, even if you don’t know her name.

“Do you?” you ask. “Know what you’re holding?”

That catches her off guard.

“I used to,” she admits. “I think I was more myself before I became… this.”

You wait. And when she doesn’t finish the thought, you offer something of your own.

“I’ve been afraid of being forgotten,” you say. “But lately I’m more afraid of being remembered wrong.”

A beat. Then she laughs — gently, sadly.

“That’s exactly it,” she says. “I want to be known. But on my terms.”

There’s a softness building between you now. Not trust, exactly — but something like permission. To be real.

“What would you do if you could disappear for a while?” you ask.

She hums thoughtfully. “I’d fly somewhere no one knows me. Learn how to cook. Get a sunburn. Sleep late. Maybe write a poem I never show anyone.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“What about you?”

You pause. Then: “I’d start again. In a small town. Teach English to someone who doesn’t care about ambition. Drink coffee in the same shop every morning until the barista starts calling me by nickname. And I’d be… ordinary.”

You hear her smile through her silence.

Then: “You know, you might be the first person I’ve talked to in months who didn’t ask anything of me.”

“Maybe that’s why it feels easier to breathe in here.”

Another silence. But it’s gentle now. Familiar.

“How long do we have?” she asks, her voice quieter.

You check the clock on the wall. “Not much more.”

You hear her sigh. It sounds like disappointment.

“Funny, isn’t it?” she says. “How an hour with a stranger can feel safer than a lifetime with people who think they know you.”

You nod. “Not funny. Just… sad.”

Neither of you speak for a while.

Then she says, “Thank you. For letting me be faceless.”

“Thank you,” you say. 

You both know the time is nearly up.

You rise slowly, not wanting to break the moment too quickly.

“See you next year,” you say softly, almost a whisper.

There’s a pause. A breath.

And then, with the faintest, bittersweet smile in her voice—

“…No promises.”

You freeze. But not because you’re surprised. You get it. She’s still holding onto the rules — One session. One voice. Once a year. No names. No faces. No promises.

And yet, her voice lingers in the booth after she leaves.

Like she already knows she’ll be back.

2021

You don’t plan it. You don’t even mark it in a calendar.

But you’re there again—same time, same place, same booth. Just like last year.

The café is humming with soft lo-fi and clinking mugs, the scent of warm milk and cinnamon spilling through the air. You nod at the barista and slip through the narrow hallway to the final booth on the right.