#cortis fluff

Seonghyeon found himself able to be authentically himself when he was with you. Louder, more energetic, or sometimes completely silent when he felt like it. For younger him, one thing was certain, he loved being around you.

As you two had gotten older, and he'd gotten busier, Seonghyeon found himself yearning for your presence. When you were around, he was glued to you, smiling constantly. When you weren't, he was wishing you were.

Seonghyeon had found himself talking to James, who he normally went to for advice.

"Sean, there's no way these feelings are platonic." James snorted.

"I'm not sure either..." Seonghyeon mumbles, staring down at his ramen, which was going cold. He had spent the last twenty minutes talking about how he wished you weren't on summer vacation so that he could see you.

James' eyes widen and he looks up at Seonghyeon, "Yo, you've never admitted it before. We've literally been waiting for this!"

"Don't make a big deal out of it," Seonghyeon huffs, "She probably doesn't even like me back."

"You've got to be kidding me," James shakes his head.

When you arrive home after your week long trip to Jeju Island, you hear your phone go off. Looking down, the contact name makes you smile to yourself, 'Seannnn🖕🖕' is what it reads. You swipe open your phone to find that he's asking if you're home. You reply by telling him you are, then he leaves you on read.

Your mom laughs quietly to herself from over your shoulder. Your head wips around so fast you could almost feel the whiplash.

"Mom! Don't read my texts!" You groan

"Seonghyeon's coming over, I'm guessing?" She smiles at you, but you can tell there's a weird reason behind the smile.

"Yeah... probably." You speak, narrowing your eyes at her the tiniest bit. She smiles again and hums, nodding her head as she turns to carry her suitcase to her room. You walk to your room, with your own suitcase, already anticipating how good seeing him will feel after a bit apart.

Around half and hour later, you hear the front door open, your dad welcomes someone in. Not to quickly after, your bedroom door opens and in comes Seonghyeon with the brightest smile on his face. His arms open and you practically launch yourself into them.

"Missed you," He mumbles into your neck.

"Missed you too," you smile, pulling back after a long moment, "Help me unpack?"

He nods quickly, then walks over to the opened suitcase that is already halfway unpacked. You both fall into a harmonious rhythm that was established years ago, when you were just little kids.

Everything was so natural, and for some strange reason you felt a little sense of uneasiness in your stomach. It was a bad type, but as if you wanted something, like something between you two was missing. The worst part was that you couldn't place your finger on what it was.

A week or two later, when Seonghyeon had free time, you were at his dorm. You two were together on the couch, close enough it could pass as cuddling. You're leaned into his side while is arm is around your shoulders. The TV plays quietly as you both talk softly over it.

Footsteps sound from hallway, but both of you were oblivious to it, too satisfied in each other's presence. A figure appears from his room and spots us on the couch.

"Oh, you're here?" Martin asks cheerfully as he looks down and the two of you.

You look up at him, smiling and offering a kind wave. You had always gotten along well with Seonghyeon's members. They became a group of friends that had always managed to make you feel comfortable.

"Sean." Martin directs his attention to Seonghyeon, who looks up, "Have you told her?"

Seonghyeon's eyes widen and his face flushes a deep red. Your brows furrow deeply and you look over to Seonghyeon in confusion.

"What's he talking about?" You ask, Martin then smirks at the two of us and exits to the kitchen.

"Nothing, he's just being stupid." Seonghyeon murmurs, face still strawberry colored. You roll your eyes and look away, nodding to his words.

Seonghyeon readjusts his grip on you, pulling you closer to him. His nose is touching your hair and he secretly breathes in the scent of your shampoo. The moment becomes comforting as you relax into his touch. For a second, you swear you feel him press a kiss to your head.

A few weeks later, you're back at the dorms. This time, Sbeonghyeon isn't with you at the current minute. You're sitting in the kitchen with Keonho and Juhoon while Seonghyeon uses the bathroom. He had left his phone on the counter.

"Hey," Keonho says, looking directly at you, "How do you feel about Seonghyeon?"

Your face twists into one of confusion, "What do you mean? He's been my best friend for years."

Juhoon speaks up, "You guys are so insufferable to watch. You both clearly have something going on."

"Sorry, what?" You say, surprise floating in your tone.

"Normal friends don't act like that. C'mon, do you ever feel the need to cuddle up with us?" Keonho urges for an answer.

You look up at Keonho, open your mouth, close it, then open it again. You shake your head, face twisting into a mock disgust.

"I... No, I don't want to cuddle up with you guys! But, that's just because..." You trail off, not able to finish your answer.

Just as you open your mouth again, Seonghyeon walks into the room. His face lights back up again as he sees you. He heads straight towards you, standing behind the chair that you are sitting in.

"What did I miss?" Seonghyeon almost chirps as you sit in the chair, cheeks blushing a light pink.

"Nothing really." Juhoon chimes into the coversation.

Seonghyeon nods and then changes his direction of conversation towards you. He looks down at you softly, in a way he's never looked at anyone else, but the same way he's always looked at you.

"James told me there's a new ice cream parlor near the Han River, wanna go tonight?" Seonghyeon asks.

You look up and nod, eyes soft, "Yeah, that'd be nice."

Keonho groans and walks out of the kitchen, "So oblivious!"

Seonghyeon and you walk along the path, one of your hands intertwined with his, the other holding a mint-chip ice cream. Seonghyeon, of course made fun of you for choosing the flavor, as it is his least favorite.

"That flavor sucks ass," Seonghyeon laughs.

"Hey! Not too much on it, it's good to me" You giggle back at him.

He lets go of your hand once you two find a bench to sit on. Instead, he wraps his arm around your shoulders as he continues to lick his vanilla ice cream, you lean into him.

Seonghyeon clears his throat once you both finish your ice creams, "Ahem... Can I talk to you real quick?"

"Mhm, anything." You hum, looking over to meet his eyes.

When you two make eye contact, something about the way he's looking at you is different. Or maybe it's the same, but you're finally noticing what it means. Your lips part as his open to speak up again.

"I've been feeling a certain way..." He starts, "Not for weeks, or months, I think years."

You nod, "Yeah."

He continues, "I- uhm, I really like you..."

Your eyes widen and you look at him, switching between his left and right eyes.

"Seonghyeon, I like you too." You say, so soft it could be a whisper.

His hand reaches up and his gaze drops to your lips, "Can I...?"

You nod and he leans down, pressing his lips to yours. His lips are plush, soft, and warm as they move against yours slowly. He finds himself pulling back reluctantly after a long moment of being engulfed in each other's presence.

"Can I be your boyfriend, please?" He asks, his voice almost pleading.

Your smile breaks out, contagious, and you throw your arms around his shoulders in a giant hug, "Yes!"

He laughs into your shoulder, both of you so happy your hearts could burst.

You two walk through the dorm entrance beaming with joy and laughing together, still holding hands. Actually, ever since he'd asked, Seonghyeon could not let go of you.

"I take it went well?" James' voice sounds from the living room. Your brows crease together as you glance at Seonghyeon, who nods.

"So well." He mumbles before smiling at you. He guides you to hang out in his room for a while before your mom came to get you. You throw questions his way about how James knew, who else knew, and even how he planned it out.

The smell of your mother’s cooking mixing with whatever someone else had brought. The sound of adults laughing from the living room. 

The older girls sitting somewhere upstairs, talking about things you weren’t allowed to know about because apparently being younger meant you were automatically incapable of understanding anything.

Your sister and Martin’s sister had each other.

They were close in age, close enough that they had grown into their own little world together without even trying.

And then there were Martin, Juhoon and James.

They were the same age, which meant they had always existed as a group in your mind. Not because you never interacted with them, but because there was always a line you couldn’t quite cross. They had their own jokes, their own games, their own conversations that moved too quickly for you to follow.

You were the youngest.

Four years younger was not a huge difference when you were older, but when you were seven, it felt like a lifetime.

It meant nobody wanted you on their team.

It meant people laughed when you said you could keep up.

It meant James would look at you with that irritating little smile of his and remind you, every chance he got, that you were still “the child.”

Which was ridiculous.

You were not a child.

You could literally do everything they could do.

Probably.

Maybe not exactly as well.

But still.

“Why are you following us?”

You looked up from where you were sitting on the floor, immediately offended because, firstly, you were not following anyone, and secondly, James always had a way of making completely normal things sound like crimes.

The hallway smelled faintly like the food everyone had just finished eating, the kind of warm, familiar smell that stayed in the walls after a crowded afternoon. 

James stood a few steps away with Martin and Juhoon beside him, looking far too pleased with himself.

“I’m not following you.”

“You are.”

“I’m going somewhere.”

“Where?”

You opened your mouth. Then closed it.

Because unfortunately, you had not planned that far ahead.

James noticed before a small grin appeared on his face.

“That’s what I thought.”

You frowned. “You’re annoying.”

“You say that every time.”

“Because it’s true.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is.”

James shrugged, completely calm in the way only someone who was about to annoy you more could be.

“No, you just get angry easily.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re doing it right now.”

You hated that he always had an answer.

Mostly because you were seven and he was eleven, which meant he had four extra years of knowing things you didn’t. You were convinced that was the only reason he won arguments.

Not because he was right.

Definitely not because he was right.

————————

The second thing you learnt was that people leaving rarely did it all at once. Nobody packed a suitcase and announced that they were becoming a stranger. There was no exact moment where you could point and say:

That was the last time things were the same.

It happened slowly, almost politely.

Your family moving to a different neighbourhood was the first crack.

Not a dramatic one. Nothing like the movies where everyone cries and promises they’ll never lose touch.

You were too young for that kind of goodbye.

You just remember your room looking unfamiliar because the boxes made it feel like someone else’s house. You remember your mother worrying about things that didn’t make sense to you yet. You remember adults saying things like it’s not that far and we’ll visit all the time in voices that sounded like they were trying to convince themselves.

And for a while, they were right.

The families still met.

At least, they tried to.

But there was a difference between something being possible and something being easy. Before, reunions happened because nobody had to plan them. Someone would call in the afternoon and somehow everyone would end up at the same house by evening.

After you moved, everything needed a date. A time. A reason.

The casualness disappeared.

“Come over this weekend.”

Slowly became:

“We should all meet soon.”

Soon became next month. Next month became whenever everyone’s schedules finally aligned. And somehow, without anyone deciding it, the reunions became less like a part of life and more like an event you waited for.

The boys changed the most. Not in a way you noticed immediately.

At first, they were just around less. Which was strange because you had never thought of them as people who could disappear. Especially James.

James had always been there.

Like the loud voices downstairs during family dinners.

Like the extra pair of shoes by the door.

Like the person who would steal food from your plate and then act offended when you complained.

But then he got older. And you realised then that older people had a habit of becoming busy.

First it was school and exams. Then things you didn’t understand because they involved words like applications and future and career choices.

You were still young enough that your biggest problem was finishing homework before dinner.

James was already preparing for a life that didn’t include running around his parents’ house with Martin and Juhoon every weekend.

You just started hearing about him more than you saw him.

“James got into a good university.”

“James is doing well.”

“James came home last week, you should’ve visited.”

You would nod.

You would say, “Oh, nice.”

And then you would go back to whatever you were doing. Because that was the thing about childhood.

You think the people around you are permanent.

You think the house you grew up in will always smell the same.

You think the people who annoyed you will always be there to annoy you.

You don’t know that one day you’ll miss hearing someone call you annoying.

—————————

The third thing you learnt was that time changes people in the most inconvenient ways. You weren’t sure who’d changed more though.

Because high school changed you in louder ways than you expected.

Not all at once.

There was no morning where you woke up and suddenly felt older, suddenly understood who you were supposed to become. It happened in smaller pieces.

You became good at things.

Not just good in the way children were when adults smiled and called them clever. 

You became the kind of good that required effort. The kind that came from staying up later than you wanted to, from rewriting notes until your hand cramped, from choosing one more chapter instead of one more episode.

You liked knowing that if you worked hard enough, there was a result waiting for you. There was something comforting about it.

Time was unpredictable. And so were people. 

People grew older. People moved away. People who promised they would always be around slowly became names you heard in conversations instead of faces you saw across a room.

But exams had answers.

Hard work had proof.

Your future was something you could build with your own hands.

And so you did. You became focused.

Maybe too focused, according to some people.

Your parents would tell relatives about your grades with a certain pride in their voices, and everyone would say the same things.

“You’ve become so responsible.”

“You’re so hardworking.”

“You’ll go far.”

You never knew exactly what to say to that. You would smile, thank them, and move on. 

Because you weren’t working hard because you wanted people to be impressed. You were working hard because, somewhere along the way, being the youngest person in every room had made you hate the feeling of being underestimated.

You had spent years trying to catch up to everyone else.

Now you were determined to be ahead.

So when the reunion came, you went into it with the same steady calm you brought to everything else. You were 15 then, the time you saw him after five years.

The house was warm with bodies and voices and the soft clatter of dishes being set down and moved around again, everyone talking over everyone else in the familiar, careless way that made old gatherings feel like they had never really ended. 

And then you heard his voice.

It came from behind you, loose and amused, threaded with the same teasing note that had once made you bristle on instinct before you had even turned around. “Still studying all the time?”

It should not have done anything to you. It was such a normal thing to say, so ordinary and so James that for one brief second your body forgot how to react at all. But the sound of it slipped under your skin in a way you had not expected.

You turned.

And there he was.

Not the boy you remembered, though some impossible part of him still belonged to that memory. 

He was taller now. Obviously. Broader in the shoulders, carrying himself with a kind of ease that had not been there before, a quiet confidence that sat on him almost lazily, as if he had grown into his own skin while you had not been looking. 

His face had changed in the gentle, inevitable way time changes people, soft edges made sharper, childishness worn down into something more defined, more grown.

You hated that your first thought was how much better he looked.

It was the way the light caught the side of his face, the way his voice had deepened, the way he stood with his hands in his pockets as if he had all the time in the world. 

It was the way he looked at you now, directly, without the smug distance of an older boy looking down at a younger child, but with real attention, as though he was actually waiting to hear what you would say.

That was worse than if he had been rude.

Rudeness you could deal with. Rudeness you understood. 

But this new version of James had softened in all the places that used to irritate you most. 

You gave him the expression you had perfected over the years, the one that said you were unimpressed even when your heartbeat had started doing something stupid and uneven behind your ribs. 

“Still talking too much?”

His mouth twitched, clearly pleased that you had answered immediately. “Still rude, I see.”

You should have been able to dismiss him then. Instead, you stood there with the noise of the room drifting around you, with the smell of food and perfume and old walls around you, and felt the strange, disorienting click of something shifting into place.

Because James was still James.

That was the problem.

He asked about your classes and actually listened to your answer. 

He teased you in that easy old way, but his voice had changed enough that it no longer felt like he was making fun of a child.

It felt almost unbearably affectionate.

And you hated that too.

You hated that he could say something small and thoughtful, something like, “You’ve worked hard, haven’t you?” in a voice so matter-of-fact it nearly sounded casual, and make your throat tighten around a response you did not know how to give. 

You hated that he looked at you as though your effort was visible, as though he could see the late nights and the sore eyes and the stubbornness it had taken to become this version of yourself. 

You hated the absurd, embarrassing warmth that spread through you when he did not treat your seriousness like a joke.

Most of all, you hated the fact that somewhere between one conversation and the next, your thoughts had begun to wander toward him when they should have stayed neatly arranged around your future.

It was gradual.

A look held a little too long. 

The awareness of him moving somewhere nearby, speaking to someone else, and the ridiculous, traitorous part of you that kept noticing where he was as though it mattered.

You told yourself it did not.

You told yourself very firmly, and more than once.

You were busy. You had plans. You had exams and deadlines and a life you had worked too hard to build to let yourself be distracted now. 

There was no room for this, for whatever this was, for the inconvenient little tug in your chest. 

So you did what you had always done when something threatened to become too important.

You ignored it.

You told yourself, with all the seriousness you could gather, that this was nothing. Just a reunion. Just James. Just one more small interruption in a life that had already decided where it was going.

———————

The fourth thing you learnt was that sometimes people come back at the exact moment you have finally stopped waiting for them.

By nineteen, you had stopped expecting James to be around.

Not because you had forgotten him.

You couldn’t have, not really.

Some people become so woven into the background of your life that even their absence leaves a shape behind. James existed in small, strange ways. In stories your parents told. In the occasional calls you made to his parents, because you were ever so fond of them, and they always loved to dote on you. In the occasional photo that appeared from some gathering you had missed because you were busy with classes or your friends or one of the hundred other things that seemed to fill your life now.

Because your life had become full.

Not in the lonely, exhausting way people sometimes imagined when they heard the word ambitious.

You still had late-night conversations with your friends that turned into arguments over the most pointless things. You still took too many pictures at events because you liked having proof that you had been there. You still had group chats muted because the notifications became impossible to keep up with. You still complained about assignments, procrastinated occasionally, laughed too loudly when something was funny, and made terrible decisions like agreeing to plans the night before an exam.

Somewhere along the way, you had become the person everyone expected you to be.

The smart one.

The reliable one.

The girl who had a plan.

And you liked that version of yourself.

So when the reunion came, James was not something you were looking for.

He was not some unfinished chapter you had been secretly waiting to reopen.

He was just James.

Or at least, that was what you told yourself.

Because then he walked through the door.

And suddenly, he was not twelve anymore.

Twenty-three sat on him differently than nineteen had. His shoulders were broader, his voice had deepened, the last traces of boyishness had completely vanished and there was a kind of calmness in his face that made him look like someone who had long ago stopped needing to prove himself in the same ways boys used to.

And James, James had expected to find the girl he remembered.

Not literally, of course. He knew time had passed. He was not stupid. He had seen enough family updates, enough scattered comments from his parents, enough occasional tagged posts and photos from people who were still connected enough to know what you were doing, to understand that you had grown up. 

He knew you were in college, knew you were doing well, knew you were the sort of person who was always busy with something. 

He had heard things in passing: that you were good at what you studied, that you were involved in clubs, that you had friends who adored you, that you still showed up at gatherings sometimes with your hair a little messy and your mind already on three other things.

He even knew, because his mother had no concept of private information, that you had once had a boyfriend and had ended it like you ended most things in your life that no longer fit: cleanly, with more composure than most people managed.

What he had not expected was the way you would occupy the room now.

There was no tentativeness in you anymore. No leftover childlike uncertainty, no looking around to see whether you were allowed to be where you were. You were the same and not the same, and that was the problem, because James had spent years remembering you one way and had just been given the unnerving task of noticing you all over again.

He leaned against the wall near the doorway while you spoke to someone else, and only half listened to the conversation happening beside him.

“Are you even listening to me?” his mother asked under her breath.

He blinked and looked back at her. “What?”

She followed his gaze, then gave him one of those looks mothers somehow always had, the kind that understood far more than they ought to. “You were staring.”

“I was not.”

“You were.”

“I was looking.”

“At her.”

He exhaled through his nose, because there was no point denying it to a woman who had raised him and survived every lie he had ever tried on her. “She’s changed.”

His mother smiled to herself. “Yes, she has.”

James frowned slightly, still watching you where you stood across the room, laughing at something Martin had said. “You knew that was going to happen?”

“Of course she changed,” his mother said, as if he were being deliberately dense. “She’s not fifteen.”

He gave her a look. “I know that.”

“Do you?”

He ignored that.

Because the truth was, he did know it.

He knew it in the abstract, the same way he knew the sky was blue and summer eventually ended. But knowing something and actually seeing it were different things. 

Seeing you like this, seeing the way your smile reached your eyes now, seeing the confidence in the way you carried yourself, seeing the ease with which people crowded around you because they wanted to be near you, had landed in him with a force that was almost absurd.

You looked up at that exact moment, as if you had felt the weight of his attention, and caught him looking.

For a second neither of you moved.

Then you lifted one brow in silent challenge, and it hit him all at once that you were aware of him too.

That was when the evening changed for him.

It happened gradually, in tiny, inconvenient moments that kept catching him off guard.

The way you laughed with everyone and then turned, almost instinctively, to include him when someone called for another opinion. The way you remembered details about his family without making a big show of it, as if of course you would. The way you spoke about your classes with the kind of passion that made it obvious you were not just surviving them, you actually cared.

And, worse than all of that, the way you seemed so entirely yourself.

At some point, while the adults were still talking and the plates were being moved and someone had turned music on low in the background, you ended up beside him in the kitchen, both of you reaching for the same glass of water at the same time.

You looked at the glass, then at him. “Seriously?”

He raised his hands, amused. “What? There’s only one.”

“There are three more.”

“I like this one.”

“You are impossible.”

He took the glass anyway, and you made an affronted sound.

“You still get dramatic over the smallest things,” he said.

“You stole my water.”

“I borrowed it.”

“That’s not how borrowing works.”

“It is when I give it back.”

“You haven’t given it back.”

“I haven’t finished.”

You stared at him in disbelief, then let out a laugh so full and genuine it made his chest feel tight for no reason he could immediately identify.

He paused.

You noticed. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You were staring.”

He looked away a fraction too late, caught cleanly. “You’re still loud when you laugh.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That was rude.”

“It was not.”

“It was.”

“No,” he said, and there it was, that same easy confidence from childhood, only now it sounded lower, calmer, and somehow far more personal. “It was honest.”

That made you smile in spite of yourself, and James felt the strange, helpless sensation of something inside him shifting, settling into place with a kind of quiet certainty he did not know what to do with.

Because it was not just that you were pretty, though you were, and that was obvious enough to be irritating. 

It was that he liked you. 

Not because you were the girl he remembered, but because you were the woman standing in front of him now, bright and alive and clever and sharp and impossible to pin down.

You did not notice the moment it turned for him. Or if you did, you pretended not to.Which, to be fair, was exactly the sort of thing he would have done at your age too.

James told himself, for exactly two seconds, that he was only looking because you were still talking.

That explanation did not survive the next moment.

You were standing near the kitchen counter with your head slightly tilted as you listened to his dad say something ridiculous enough to make half the room laugh. 

The light from above caught softly in your hair, turning the loose waves near your shoulders almost glossy, like they had been brushed with gold at the edges. A few strands had fallen free around your face, and you kept pushing them back absently without seeming to notice that the gesture made you look even more effortless. Your lip gloss caught the light every time you smiled, a thin, dewy sheen that made James stare a second too long at your mouth before he jerked his attention back up with a level of self-control that felt, at that moment, deeply overestimated.

He should have looked away.

Instead, he watched you and thought it was unfair, really, how little you seemed aware of yourself. Unfair that you could stand there in a fitted top and loose jeans, with your hair falling over one shoulder and that soft shine on your lips, and still look like you had no idea what you were doing to the people around you.

“Bro.”

James did not move.

“Bro.”

Still nothing.

“James.”

That finally got him.

He blinked and looked over.

Martin was standing beside him with the most ridiculous expression James had ever seen on another human being. One eyebrow raised, lips pressed together like he was physically fighting the urge to laugh.

“What?” James asked.

Martin looked behind him, then back at James.

“Nothing.”

The tone alone was enough.

James narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Martin’s grin appeared slowly. “Nah.”

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m being weird?”

“Yes.”

“You have been standing here for, like, five minutes.”

James frowned. “So?”

“So you have been staring in the exact same direction for five minutes.”

“I was not.”

“You were.”

“I was looking.”

Martin immediately turned to Juhoon, who had been quietly drinking his drink beside them.

“Did you hear that?”

Juhoon glanced over. “Hear what?”

“He said he was looking.”

Juhoon looked at James, then followed his gaze.

There was a brief pause.

“You were staring.”

James stared at him. “You too?”

“I’m just saying what happened.”

Martin nodded seriously. “Exactly. We’re not judging.”

“You are absolutely judging.”

“No, no,” Martin said, holding up his hands. “I support love.”

James nearly choked. “What love?”

Martin looked between him and you.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the love where you suddenly forget how eyes work?”

“Shut up.”

“You know she’s not going anywhere, right?”

James looked at him. “What?”

Martin shrugged. “You keep looking like she’s going to disappear if you st-”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll throw you out the window.”

Martin lifted both hands. “Okay, okay, relax. I’m just saying.”

Juhoon, still leaning there like this was all mildly entertaining background noise, looked over at you again and then back at James. “She’s pretty,” he said, not teasing, just stating it like a fact.

James went quiet for half a second.

Martin’s expression lit up with immediate mischief. “Ooh. See? Juhoon said it, not me.”

Juhoon glanced at Martin. “I said she’s pretty. I did not say he’s doomed.”

“That was implied,” Martin said.

James stared at them, then exhaled through his nose, half amused and half furious at being seen so quickly. He had known both of them long enough to understand that any attempt at denial now would be a waste of oxygen. 

————————

The fifth thing you learnt was that love did not always arrive like thunder. 

Sometimes it came quietly, with the ordinary weight of a shopping bag cutting into your fingers, with the smell of tea steeping too long in a kitchen that was already warm, with the soft, almost embarrassingly intimate comfort of knowing exactly how someone liked their toast.

It started in the smallest places, in the places that did not look like anything at all while they were happening. A message from James at an hour when the rest of the world had already gone dim and sleepy, his name glowing on your phone like a private little window left open in the dark. A joke sent while you were sitting with your notes spread across your desk, your highlighter uncapped, your hair tied up and falling loose in the back because you had stopped caring somewhere between the second page and the fourth cup of tea. A photo of something stupid he had eaten for dinner, the kind of meal that looked thrown together in a hurry, with a caption so dry it made you laugh into your sleeve. A voice note where he said your name like it meant something he had not yet decided to admit.

It was all so ordinary that you almost did not notice it becoming important. That was the trick of it, you thought.

Your life had edges to it. It was full of movement and noise and laughter and all the small messy freedoms.

James found his way into that life the way certain smells do, almost without permission, until you realise later that they have been with you all along.

And every time he appeared, the room seemed to change shape around him.

He still teased you, still wore that same maddening smile when you gave him attitude, still made you roll your eyes just to prove you could. But now there was something steadier underneath it, something that made you think of toothbrushes left in the same cup, of keys dropped into a bowl by the door, of the private ease of someone who knew how to return. 

He no longer seemed like the boy who had once stolen your snack and laughed about it. He seemed like the man who would remember to buy the right kind of fruit because you once mentioned, months ago, that you preferred the sweeter ones.

That was the sort of thing that began to frighten you.

Because love did not begin, for you, with some grand, cinematic revelation.

At some point, without deciding to, you started noticing details that had nothing to do with the conversation and everything to do with the person having it. The way he looked in the soft warm light of someone’s kitchen, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a glass of water in one hand and a half-smile on his mouth as if he had just stepped out of your ordinary life and into a place where everything familiar had become a little bit shinier. 

The shape of his laugh when it slipped out unexpectedly, low and brief and somehow always enough to make your stomach do something inconvenient. 

You told yourself, at first, that it was just the mere novelty of seeing him more often.

Then you told yourself it was because he had matured.

Then you told yourself you were only admiring how easy he made things seem, how naturally he folded himself back into your life without needing permission.

But the truth was much worse and much softer than any of that.

And he, for his part, had begun to change in ways he did not yet understand.

James was not the kind of person who fell quickly. 

He had always been too careful for that, too amused by the world to let it catch him entirely off guard. He liked to keep one hand on the steering wheel, even when he pretended not to care where the road was going. 

But with you, that began to fail him in the smallest, least dignified ways. He found himself looking for you in rooms before he admitted he wanted to see you. He found that your laugh stayed with him like the smell of something baking in a house. 

He noticed the domestic things first, because those were the things that slipped under his guard.

The fact that you could make a room feel lighter simply by walking into it, as if someone had opened a window and let the air move again. He noticed how you existed in the middle of your own life with such vividness that being near you felt less like visiting and more like being invited into warmth.

It made his chest ache.

It annoyed him how domestic his mind had become.

Worse, it unnerved him.

Because those were not the thoughts of someone who merely liked a girl from his childhood.

Those were the thoughts of someone who had started to want a life shaped around her ordinary presence, around the private rituals of knowing her, around the possibility of sharing small things with her until those small things became a world.

He noticed, too, the ease with which you made room for everyone. 

How you could be serious without becoming stern, fun without becoming careless, ambitious without ever losing the softness that made people feel comfortable around you. You were not one thing. 

That was part of the problem. You were everything at once. 

Bright and funny and stubborn and thoughtful and a little reckless in the way only a young person with a future to build can be. 

James had once known you as the baby, the kid who refused to stay out of older people’s conversations. Now he knew you as someone who had learned how to speak for herself, and the sound of that was enough to make his thoughts go strangely quiet.

He liked your focus. He liked your momentum. He liked that you were serious about your life without being consumed by it, that you could talk about your plans with shining eyes and then turn around and laugh at something unbelievably stupid. He liked that the world had not flattened you. If anything, it had sharpened you into someone who seemed somehow more alive for having had to become herself on purpose.

And that was the cruelest part, really.

Because love would have been simpler if you had been easy to reduce to one beautiful, obvious thing.

If you had simply been pretty and nothing else, he could have admired you from a safe distance and called it nothing.

If you had simply been clever, or kind, or ambitious, or funny, he might have filed it away as admiration and moved on.

But you were all of it.

You were the sound of someone laughing in the next room while the kettle began to whistle on the stove.

You were the taste of too-sweet tea at midnight.

You were the little domestic life he had not realised he was starving for, the one made of shared glances and inside jokes and messages that arrived at exactly the right time and the quiet comfort of being understood without having to explain every inch of yourself.

By the time he understood what was happening, it was already too late to call it anything else.

He did not fall in love with you in a single moment.

He fell in love with the repeat of you.

That was what love became for him.

A habit of the heart.

Something as ordinary and natural and terrifying as buying the wrong kind of fruit and hoping, stupidly, that she would still smile when she saw it.

———

That evening went on the way reunions always did.

The dads occupied the living room, talking loudly over each other with drinks in their hands. They had eventually moved from casual conversations into the kind of stories that only got funnier the more they repeated them. The mothers were in the kitchen, occasionally joining in from across the room. Music played quietly somewhere in the background.

Martin and Juhoon stayed sober, mostly because they had no interest in dealing with the consequences of everyone else’s choices.

James, unfortunately, did.

“You’re done,” Martin told him at one point.

James looked offended. “I’m fine.”

“You said that five minutes ago and then almost walked into a chair.”

“I was avoiding it.”

“You walked directly into it.”

“It moved.”

Juhoon looked at him. “The chair moved?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

Then Martin turned to you. “See what I deal with?”

You laughed.

James looked at you immediately.

And there it was again.

That little pause.

That moment where everything else seemed to disappear for half a second because he was too focused on the fact that you were laughing.

You shook your head. “You’re impossible.”

His smile softened.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You’ve mentioned.”

It was later when his mother found you.

The house had gotten quieter. Not silent, because your families had never been capable of that, but softer. The kind of quiet that came after hours of noise, when everyone had settled into their own corners and the evening was slowly beginning to end.

“Could you do me a favour?” she asked.

You looked up. “Of course.”

She hesitated for a second, “Could you check on James?”

You raised an eyebrow. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Just…” She smiled a little. “Very drunk.”

You tried not to laugh. “That sounds like his problem.”

“It is.”

You looked toward the stairs.

“And you want me to?”

“I think he’ll listen to you.”

That was a dangerous amount of confidence to place in you.

Still, you went.

You found him upstairs in the room at the end of the hall.

He was perched on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, one hand loosely covering his mouth, his head bent slightly as if he had been thinking too hard and then losing the thread of whatever it was he had been thinking about. 

The room was dim, lit mostly by the yellow glow of the lamp on the side table, which softened the shape of everything in it. The blanket had been shoved halfway down the bed. His shoes were off. His shirt was untucked in a careless way.

When he lifted his head, his eyes found yours slowly, as if the room had to make a small effort to bring them into focus.

“Hey,” you said softly, closing the door behind you. “Your mom sent me up.”

He gave a quiet laugh that sounded a little rough around the edges. “Of course she did.”

“You disappeared.”

“I didn’t disappear,” he said, though his voice was looser than usual, words dragging just slightly like he had to reach for them. “I came upstairs.”

“That counts as disappearing.”

He looked at you for a second, then leaned back on his hands and stared up at the ceiling as if the answer to that lived there somewhere. “I guess.”

You crossed the room carefully and stopped a little way from him, because even drunk James still had a way of making you feel too aware of where exactly he was in relation to you. 

The room was quiet except for the faint noise drifting up from downstairs, muffled laughter and the occasional clink of glass against glass.

You shifted in your seat. “You should drink some water.”

He made a small face. “You sound like my mother.”

“That was the goal.”

His mouth curved, slow and a little helpless. “That’s not very kind.”

“I came upstairs to babysit you. Kindness is over.”

“Babysit me?” he repeated, offended in a lazy sort of way,. “I’m older than you.”

“Yes, and yet here we are.”

He let out a short breath that might have been a laugh if he had been a little less drunk. He looked at you again and the whole room seemed to go still around the edges.

“You’re wearing gloss,” he said suddenly.

You blinked. “What?”

“Your lip gloss.” His voice had gone a little quieter, slightly rougher now, like he was thinking too close to speaking. “It’s shiny.”

You stared at him, caught between disbelief and the embarrassing fact that your face had warmed at the comment. “That’s a very weird thing to notice.”

His expression shifted into something almost apologetic, though he did not look sorry enough to take it back. “I notice things.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Yes,” he said simply. Then, with a faint smile that did not quite reach his eyes, “I know.”

You should have let that be the end of it. You should have stood up, handed him a glass of water, and walked back downstairs before the night got any stranger than it already was.

But James was looking at you in that soft, unfocused way that made it feel like he was trying to say something with his face that he could not quite get out with his mouth. And because you had known him long enough to be able to read the smallest shifts in his expression, you stayed where you were.

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Come here.”

It was not a command exactly. It sounded more like a request that had slipped out before he could stop it.

You frowned. “Why?”

He looked at you for a long second, then gave the smallest shrug. “Because I want you to.”

Your heart gave one very stupid, immediate jump.

You did not move.

James seemed to notice your hesitation. He leaned back slightly, only now there was something different underneath it. Something softer. Something that looked almost like he had been trying to hold himself back and had finally gotten tired.

“You don’t have to,” he said, and the gentleness of that almost made it worse.

You rose anyway, because apparently you had never once in your life been capable of making good decisions around James, and walked to stand in front of him. He looked up at you from where he sat, close enough now that you could smell the alcohol faintly on him, mixed with soap and laundry detergent.

His eyes moved over your face slowly.

“You’re looking at me like that again,” you said quietly.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to say something stupid.”

He laughed under his breath, “Maybe I am.”

“Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re drunk.”

He nodded once, but it was absent. His gaze dipped briefly to your mouth and then back up again, and the room seemed to close in by an inch.

You noticed.

He noticed that you noticed.

That was the problem.

James lifted one hand, slow enough that you could have stopped him if you wanted to, and let it hover in the air near your wrist as though he was asking without asking. His fingertips brushed your skin lightly, just enough to make you feel it all the way up your arm.

Your breath caught.

He looked at your hand, then back at your face. “Can I?”

You swallowed. “Can you what?”

He smiled faintly, almost shyly, and that should have been impossible for him to pull off while intoxicated, but there it was anyway. “Touch you.”

Your chest tightened in a way that was almost painful.

It was not a dramatic question. He did not sound hungry or reckless or careless with it. He sounded careful. Almost reverent.

Like even drunk, even with his head tilted slightly and his words slightly blurred at the edges, he still could not quite bring himself to treat you like anything less than something he should be gentle with.

You did not trust your voice, so you nodded.

His hand settled around your wrist with a warmth that made your thoughts go momentarily blank. 

“You’re warm,” he murmured before he seemed to realise he had said it.

You stared at him. “James.”

“What?”

“That was not a normal thing to say.”

He looked briefly embarrassed, which was almost funny given that he was still holding your wrist and staring at you, “I’m aware.”

You huffed out a small laugh despite yourself, and his eyes flicked to your face again with something like relief, as if hearing it had eased a knot in him he had not admitted was there.

“Sit,” he said after a moment, nodding toward the bed.

You hesitated. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking nicely.”

“You are not being nice.”

He looked offended. “I’m being very nice.”

“You’re being weird.”

“That’s not new.”

You rolled your eyes, but there was no heat in it, and after a second you sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. James looked at the space between your knees for a moment, then shifted a little closer as if the distance itself had begun to bother him.

When he spoke again, his voice had gone quieter.

“I missed this.”

You turned your head toward him. “This?”

He made a vague motion with his free hand, like he meant all of it and none of it at once. “You. Talking to you. Having you around.”

The honesty of it made you still.

James stared at the floor for a second, then let out a small, helpless breath. “It’s annoying.”

Despite yourself, you smiled faintly. “What is?”

He looked up at you, and the expression in his eyes made your smile falter before it had fully formed.

“You,” he said.

Then, before you could decide whether to be offended, he added, almost immediately, “Not in a bad way.”

You gave him a look. “That did not sound reassuring.”

A soft laugh left him, low and tired and too close to fondness for your comfort. “You know what I mean.”

You did, which was worse.

He leaned back again, one hand still loosely around your wrist, thumb brushing over the inside of it in a movement so absentminded it might have been accidental if not for the fact that he kept doing it. 

“You’ve been doing that,” he said after a while.

“Doing what?”

“Making it hard to look anywhere else.”

Your stomach tightened.

“James,” you said again, more carefully this time.

“You keep doing that thing where you act like nothing’s happening,” he murmured.

Your pulse had started doing something stupid and irregular.

“You talk to me like I’m just James. Like I’m still the same idiot you used to argue with in hallways. And I should be grateful for that, probably. I know I should. But then you laugh, or you look at me like that, or you say something sharp enough to make me remember exactly who you are, and suddenly it gets really difficult to keep pretending I’m not noticing.”

You could not breathe properly.

“Noticing what?” you asked, though you hated how small your voice sounded.

James was quiet for a second, and when he answered, it was with the kind of softness that made the words feel far more dangerous than if he had said them outright.

“You.”

His gaze never left yours.

“You make it so fucking hard for me to keep pretending I still see you as a kid.”

———————