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Of course, Mark Lee didn’t mind spending time with you. In fact, the Mark Lee at the start of this semester would kill to be in his shoes at that moment. If only his past self could see him now, walking alongside you, his crush, with your belongings in his hands. He would much rather prefer having your hand in his but maybe that would take his unconfessed feelings a little too far. 

You huffed in response. You were fully capable of carrying your book bag despite your lack of energy. It wasn’t even that heavy but every time you would try to snatch your bag back, Mark merely walked a little faster down the sidewalk. Even when you ran into the bike lane to catch him off-guard, his fast reflexes bested your failed attempt. 

His lean arm reached out and draped over your unexpecting shoulders just to tug you to the inner corner of the sidewalk while he stayed on the side closer to the street. The gesture itself was tiny but extremely thoughtful of him. You couldn’t believe how something so small left you just a tiny bit shell-shocked. 

A comfortable silence fell upon you as Mark’s grip slipped away. It gave you time to admire the petals flying with the breeze. Many students on campus loved taking this path. It was nicknamed Blossom Road due to all the cherry blossoms that lined the path. The street was prettiest during the golden hour and hundreds flocked to the area at that time to enjoy the hidden treasure and attempt to capture the beauty on camera. 

It was also a popular place for couples. You secretly wished to find a partner to enjoy Blossom Road with. Taking this path with Mark almost felt like your dream was being fulfilled. But you’d never voice that out loud. Shaking that daydream away, you brought your attention back to your friend. His hand was extended outward to catch a few petals in his palm, a smile taking over his thin, pink lips. 

“So, Marky, any plans for today?” A flush took over his cheeks at the nickname that caught him off guard. He retracted his hand, his fingers curling into a fist before shooting you a look. You had heard Johnny call him that once, driving the younger to whine at the cute endearment before Donghyuck jumped in to tease their friend.

“Don’t—don’t call me that!” he squeaked, cringing at the way his lower voice cracked. Why did his voice always fail him while in your presence? Why couldn’t it fail in front of the people he didn’t harbor feelings for?

Mark hopped a bit to adjust the falling straps of his beaten-up Jansport backpack. The old thing was falling apart at the seams with sloppy stitches and random patches but it also added to the item’s character. You once asked Mark why he kept a ratty bag for so long and he shrugged with a smile. Johnny later told you that Mark was the type to fully treasure anything and everything given to him, whether it was time, friendship, love, or gifted items. That bag was given to him during his senior year of high school by his parents. The patches that kept it alive were gifted by many of Mark’s friends.

You wondered if the boy would add a patch to his unique bag if you were the one to give it to him. You hoped he would.

“I just have class in like”—Mark checked his watch, another cherished gift of his, from his older brother—“thirty minutes or so. You?”

“Thirty minutes?! Shouldn’t you be heading there right now? What building is it in? Why are you walking me home?” You stopped in front of him, making him halt on the spot, before placing your palms on his t-shirt clad chest. It was firmer than you thought it would be…not that you had ever thought about his chest in the first place.

Mark’s bright laugh brought you back to reality. As did his touch that circled around the back of your hands. You felt the calluses on the tips of his fingers tickling your skin, most likely from the many times he plucked on the bronze strings of his guitar. Were his hands always this warm and comforting? 

Were your hands always this cold? Mark wondered as his eyes momentarily paused on where they met. He wanted to rub his thumbs across your icy skin in hopes to warm you up but he stopped himself from doing so.

“Stop worrying, it’s at a building close to the dorms, I promise,” he replied, knocking his shoulder with yours. 

“Then we’ll just separate when we get to your building, you don’t have to walk me all the way there.”

“Shut up, I’m walking you home and you can’t do anything about it.” 

You stuck your tongue out at the finality of his words before continuing down the path. 

The conversations you carried jumped from the exam you just took to songs you randomly discovered while searching for new music. The boy, like you, was always excited to find new artists and often shared playlists with you whenever he created a new one. It was something shared between the two of you and no one else. It was special and it was yours.

As you walked down the path, you shared Mark’s wired earphones as he excitedly introduced the song to you. At first, you suggested using your AirPods, only to find them dead and in desperate need of a charge. But after you slipped the device into your ears and felt the short distance between your two bodies, you couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling of being so close to your cute friend. 

You couldn’t help but enjoy the way the back of his hand brushed yours as you made your way home more than anything else in that moment. 

Before the two of you knew it, you arrived in front of your dorm building. Was the path to the dorms really that short or did time just pass that quickly whenever Mark was with you? He couldn’t really tell. The fifteen minute walk didn’t feel like a quarter of an hour at all. 

Mark wished he could make the time he had with you last. He wished he took smaller steps or suggested sitting down on a bench that lined the trail. To take a moment to admire the blossoms raining down on you. 

Maybe he could do it the next time you had class together. He’d gladly walk you home again. 

Tugging the earphone out of your ear, you awkwardly gestured to your building. “That’s me.”

Mark slipped the strap of your bag off his back and handed it back to you, your fingers touching as he did so. He jutted his chin out and pursed his lips towards the main door. “Go ahead, I’ll stay here until I see you in. Gotta make sure you’re safe.” 

“But your class—”

“Trust me, I won’t be late,” he answered before you could say anything else. “Go.”

“Fine,” you laughed. “Thanks for this. You really cheered me up, Marky.”

“It’s no problem,” Mark chuckled, his palm rubbing the back of his neck. He still wasn’t one who could gratefully accept praise from another. Even when being showered with compliments, he still remained humble and you loved that about him.

Raising your hand, you waved at him. “I’ll see you later, okay? Text me when you get to class so I know you’re safe too.”

Just as you’re about to turn on your heel, Mark stopped you. “Hey, Y/N, wait—” His rough fingers were suddenly in your hair, plucking a sole cherry blossom petal from your strands. Your face grew hot as his pads tickled your skin. “Uh, so-sorry. You, um, had this in your hair.”

“Oh.” Your stare lingered on the petal trapped in between his fingers. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll—I’m gonna go in now.”

“S-sure.” 

“Bye, Mark.”

“See you around, Y/N.” With that final greeting, you made your way into the building, the doors sliding open once you strike your fob on top of the sensor. 

Mark watched your pretty back grow smaller with a hopelessly fond smile on his lips. Even with the housing quad bustling with liveliness as most students were making their way home, his sight remained on you as you waited for the elevator. When you turned around, your eyes met his through the glass doors. Even though you waved him away, your crush remained in his spot.

A loud ding announced the arrival of a lift, causing you to face the elevator, and you almost ran into Jeno on the way in. Your hallmate was dressed in an all-black biking ensemble, his helmet unbuckled and pressed against his strong chest. He swung the key to his bike lock in between his long fingers. 

“Going out for a ride, Jen?” You asked, sliding into the space as Jeno stepped out.

“Yeah, it’s nice out right now.” Eyeing you up and down, he asked, “You done for the day?”

“Finally,” you rolled your eyes, “Mark walked me home.”

Jeno’s face was painted with shock and confusion. He quickly checked the time on the smartwatch resting on his wrist before cocking his head. “Huh, alright then.”

“Something wrong, Jeno?”

The black-haired boy shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about. We’re still on for dinner tonight with Jaemin after his class, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you in a bit. Have fun!” You managed to shout before the doors closed on you.

Jeno laughed and made his way outside, jogging over to where his bike was securely locked. Right next to where a lovestruck Mark still stood. The younger of the two slapped his friend’s arm, snapping him out of whatever thought lingered in his big head. “Dude, you’ve got it bad.”

“Dude, shut up.” Mark groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “I know, man. I just…wanted to spend more time with her.”

Taking another glance at the time, Jeno pointed out, “You’re also going to be late. You have around ten minutes to get to your class on the other side of campus. You’re lucky Jaemin’s in that class, too, stupid.” He easily unlocked his bike, rolling it to his side.

“Shit, you serious, bro?” Mark peeked at his phone screen, eyes widening when he saw that he had nine—no, eight minutes—to book it across the vast university space. Hastily stealing the bike out of his friend’s grip, Mark planted his feet on the pedals before rushing out onto the bike lane. “Let me use your bike, Jeno!” 

“Like you gave me much of a choice,” Jeno yelled at Mark’s back as he faded into the distance, “Lovesick idiot.”

And although the whole trip to your dorm caused him to miss the short pop quiz at the beginning of class, Mark Lee would definitely walk you home again. 

AUTHOR’S NOTE. hello there! surprise! here’s my new mini-series starring everyone’s favorite little marky!!! as you can tell from above it’s a four-part series based on some of my favorite songs (three songs by the dreamies and the last one by bread.) hope you enjoy! please tell me what you think!

TAGLIST. @keemburley @johtenrecs @bat-shark-repellant  @bebsky @donutswithjaminthemiddle @suhnnyskhies @baekhyuns-lipchain @emmybyeakitty @taeyongslilkitty @sokkigarden @inlovergirlsworld @iwishiwasthemoontonight @hauju @stvrrynight @loeycity​ @ppangjae​

reply to this post or send an ask to be added to the taglist!

NETWORKS. @czennienet @neowritingsnet @ankathi-a​ @dreamwritersnet​

Lee Jeno | 이제노

Late nights spent looking at new desk setups and decorations for your shared gaming spaces. Laughing at Hyuck’s incessant yelling down the mics when you ‘accidentally’ let yourself get killed in-game to spend more time with Jeno away from the screen. Content smiles when he wraps his arms around you from behind while you’re making hot chocolates, his head buried in the crook of your neck. Constant discussions over adopting a puppy and all the aesthetic things the pair of you could do as pup-parents.

Lee Donghyuck | 이동혁

Staying up watching as he plays round after round with the others, chuckling as he shouts obscenities over his headphones. Filming Hyuck to use as ‘blackmail’ material in the group chat later on. Popping open a can for the pair of you when he finally finishes playing, the clock hits two am easily. Throwing a pillow in his face when he suggests something absolutely insane and laughing at his over-the-top offended face. Pretending to film that reality show he keeps talking about whenever he starts going off on one of his tangents. Sharing snacks while you bicker over what to watch and watching the same show for the nth time.

Na Jaemin | 나재민

Late night coffee runs where you gawk at the sheer amount of extra espresso shots he adds to his drink order. Running after him as he pulls you to the next 24/7 café he finds. Listening to him ramble about his day while you watch with an endeared smile because how does he still have all this energy? Waking up at unholy times because Jaemin’s calling you over to bake muffins with him. Enjoying your freshly made midnight snacks with a drama marathon wrapped under blankets.

Zhong Chenle | 천러

Falling asleep against his shoulder three dramas into your tv marathon, his hands gently laced through your hair. Playing with Daegal and struggling not to wake up the entire neighbourhood with your shared laughter, the small dog just too cute. Wandering the convenience store looking for the best midnight snack before settling on buying an entire bag full because no one could come up with a clear answer. Nibbling on the bag of snacks on the way home while ranting about each other’s day and making fun of his hyungs – with good intentions.

Park Jisung | 박지성

Waking up to Jisung pleading you to join him on one of his late-night craving-induced trips to the store to get ice creams. Laughing about your brain freezes while trying to down the frozen treats. Watching (read; supervising) him make ramen and applauding when he manages to not burn the kitchen down; his hyungs aren’t exactly keen on waking up to the smell of a burnt kitchen and a panicking Park Jisung. Eating said ramen by the balcony and watching the rain hit the ground outside. Counting as many graveyard shift workers making their way across the street and wondering what their day looks like. Laying in each other’s lap and relaxing while you play with each other’s hair.

© copyright work of armysantiny 2022-2023

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Renjun:

you were both sitting in silence doing your own thing

spending time together when you looked up from your work

and just admired renjun who was casually painting

you were thinking to yourself how lucky you were to have him

and suddenly “i love you”

your jaw dropped as you realised that you’d said it out loud

renjun’s eyes never leave the page

the only that he’s heard you is the smile that suddenly appears on his face

you try to focus back on your work

but your mind is still reeling and you have no idea how you could be so stupid and say it so carelessly

a few minutes pass when renjun calls your name

he holds up his painting for you to see and you swear you nearly cried

“i love you” was written in beautiful cursive letters and surrounded by drawings of your favourite flowers

he just has time to put it back down before you’re in his arms

hugs you tighter than he ever has before

and nothing could describe the feeling he has in his chest or the amount of love he has for you

Jeno:

cue the confused puppy noises

looks over at you with wide eyes and his jaw drops

you don’t realise what you’ve done

until you think back over the past few seconds and you freeze

you try and backtrack

but you’re stumbling over your words and can’t get a proper sentence out

jeno on the other hand

just slowly stands out of his gaming chair

and proceeds to launch himself at you

like literally he just runs at you and throws himself on you

and smothers you in the biggest hug of your life

he starts laughing happily and starts saying how he loves you too

you’re lucky you were standing by his bed cause with the speed he came at you and you were knocked backwards onto the comfortable surface

but you couldn’t care less because jeno couldn’t stop saying how much he loved you and how happy he was that you loved him

he’s just on such a high he feels like he’s never coming down

“IM IN LOVE AND SHE LOVES ME BACK!”

Hyuck:

goes dead silent

like it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop in a house five miles away

CONGRATS!!! you made the lee donghyuck speechless

but you don’t feel that now, all you feel is small

cause he’s still not replying

and you think you’ve royally messed up

“sorry- i didn’t mean to-” you begin to get up

you’re so mortified you’re ready to run away

something finally snaps hyuck out of it

and he moves like lightening

running to grab you before you leave and spinning you back before you even registered that he was there

just plants kisses all over your face

before stopping to give you one on your lips

and you swear you’ve never been kissed like this

“i love you too” he whispered after he pulls away

and you stay in the romance for a few seconds

before the inevitable teasing begins

pulls back with a cocky look on his face

“so how much?” “oh forget it”

Jaemin:

you were saying goodbye when it happened

he gave you a hug and kiss and as you let go you said it

he just freezes

your eyes widen and you don’t know what to say

jaemin just turns around slowly and stares at you

“say it again” he whispers

“what?” “say it again” “i love you”

this boy honest to god screams and runs towards you

wraps his arms around your waist and swings you around like mad

buries his face into your shoulder and places kisses all over your neck

pulls away suddenly just so that he can look deep into your eyes and say “i love you too. i love you more”

decides not to say goodbye and instead takes out

like buys you flowers on the way and gets your favourite street food etc.

just spoils you like mad

cause this boy is whipped and nothing makes him happier than hearing that his baby loves him

and being able to tell his baby how much he loves them

Chenle:

you were about to fall asleep

curled up together like the adorable beans you are

talking about your days and basically anything that comes to mind

you’re both getting tired and your words and getting slower

chenle places a goodnight kiss on your forehead

and a soft “i love you” slips out of you

not a second passed before chenle casually replies “i love you too”

literally neither of you quite register what was said

then in sync both of your eyes shoot open

and you stare at each other

“do you?” you ask

chenle nods before asking “do you?” and you nod

he just smiles

his arm tightens around you and he pulls you closer

you keep moving closer to each other until there’s literally no space in between you cause he just never wants to feel apart from you in any way

the two of you find you’re not tired anymore

and stay up just kissing and sharing quiet confessions

completely in your own world

Jisung:

poor baby would probably have wanted to say it first

and it’s been on the tip of his tongue for like a week by now

but he’s chickened out of saying it

so when you say it without thinking he just pouts

and you’re like “oh god no”

he’s so preoccupied with the fact that you said it that he doesn’t realise that you actually said it

like those three words

and when it finally hits him

he just looks at you

which is a little intimidating cause he’s the size of a tree

“really?” he asks in tiny

“maybe...” you respond also in tiny

it’s honestly such a pure sight

his face just slowly shows that adorable gummy smile and he can’t hold himself back anymore

just pulls you in for the biggest hug and refuses to let go

jaemin tries to grab him to practice and jisung is not letting go of you

finally it hits him that he actually needs to tell you that he loves you too

so he does, pulling back so that he can look at you in the eyes

Because despite girls lamenting about the games they played, and despite girls ganging up on, writing about and exposing them all they could, these fuckboys continued to exist. They continued to have more staying power than good guys. And the truth of it was very easy for you to see. Fuckboys existed because girls allowed them to exist. Girls like you. Girls that wanted the thrill of the unknown when it was paired with the accessibility of sex. Fuckboys never turned down sex. And you never turned down a fuckboy.

In some ways, you think you were addicted to them. You liked to think you had a higher sex drive than most, but even so, you needed your nights to be spend in the sharp oblivion of pleasure that these fuckboys brought you. It was your reward for working so hard during the days. You had a roster (rather, a black book) full of them. You had told yourself you’d go through all of them before you graduated and insofar, you had been pretty steady in your ambition. But there was one thorn in your side, that no matter how much you tried, you couldn’t remove. The fucker that had pricked at you for way too long, but not in the way you’d hoped.

Lee Haechan. 

He was one fuckboy, who, despite your tireless efforts, had never rolled in the hay with you. And dammit, tried you had. You had tried to get his attention many times, but he’d never really looked your way. You hated him. Because this thorn on your side had eventually started to mess with your head and your ambition and your roster. Good thing he hated you in return.

You couldn’t say what it was. But the best way you’d explain it is that you had a mental bug that liked patterns and it had made you sleep in patterns and study in patterns and eat in patterns and fuck in patterns. You had gone through your damned black book in patterns and he was. Messing. It. The. Fuck. Up. You hated him.

What was it that made him so arrogant, anyway? 

He wasn’t as good looking as the rest of his friends. He wasn’t that rich or that talented or that special in any way of the word compared to the people he hung around. You knew because you could swear you had fucked half of them.

You knew he hung around with Wong Yukhei. That boy was tall and gorgeous, even if he didn’t come from money. He had a face you could stare at without getting bored, and he was always down to fuck, even during times you’d hear he was seeing someone. So what if looked in the mirror every time you fucked? If you had a face like that, you’d keep looking in the mirror, too.

You knew his roommate was an older student, but he was handsome and had a banging body. He had a talent in fucking with a cock to match, and you suspected that if you had fucked him more than once, you could’ve actually fallen for him. But he was about to graduate soon and your need for a cock between your legs was greater than your need for a grip on your heart.

One of his other friends was Lee Jeno. And truth be told, you needed to fuck Lee Haechan so you could strike him off your roster and finally get to Lee Jeno. You needed to complete that pattern because fuck you, Lee Jeno was getting hotter and hotter by the day and you’d just sat through one of his swimming championships and spent the entire time ogling at the way his briefs clung to his bulge for dear life and your mouth had watered so bad that you’d gotten home that night and rubbed your pussy raw till you knocked out.

So, yes. Lee Haechan was a thorn on your side. He was a roadblock you needed to get past. You needed to put his arrogant prick inside of you so you could get over it and move on and start sleeping around the way God had intended. You fucking hated that he was down to fuck anything that fucking moved but he didn’t want to fuck with you and you didn’t know why. The arrogant fucking asshole. You hated him with everything you had and you needed to fuck him just to wipe that arrogant smile from his face.

It was just as well that the new semester was about to begin, because the break had given you some time to think and organize your plan of action. It didn’t take much scheming effort to find out what classes Lee Haechan was opting for this time around. He always did whatever Lee Mark did and Lee Mark’s girlfriend had a big old mouth when she was drunk and a girls night out with tequilas-a-plenty before school began seemed like the right thing to do and as you knew it, you had a complete list of Lee Haechan’s whereabouts by the time you got home. You were going to be a thorn in his side just like he was till he gave up his arrogant act and just gave it up.

So you came home buzzed that night and signed up for as many classes with Lee Haechan as you could. But it wasn’t enough. The alcohol in your veins was making you want to do something more reckless, so you whipped your phone out and opened Snapchat, only to discover that the motherfucker in question had you blocked.

What an asshole.

But it was okay. Snapchat wasn’t the only SNS you were on. How much more could he hide from you? You went on Instagram instead and shamelessly slid into his DMs. You stood in front of your floor length mirror ass-first and took a picture. You looked cute as fuck. It didn’t matter to you that the hem of your dress was hitching dangerously high. You looked good. You typed in,

‘too much ass for the first day back 🍑?’ as your caption and you hit send.

You smiled to yourself in the mirror. Who could resist you? No one could. Even tonight, on what was presumably a girls night out, men were all over you. Dancing with you in the club, grinding up against your ass in their drunken, lustful haze. Wanting to get you alone. Not many men had ever turned you down. Lee fucking Haechan had to be some sort of a saint. 

You felt the adrenaline in your veins when you heard your phone buzz. Maybe he wasn’t a saint after all. You read his message,

‘Why you asking me?’

You smirked and laid down your bait.

‘wait, who dis? aren’t you lee donghyun?’ you shamelessly typed in.

‘Wrong message I’m guessing? This is Lee Donghyuck.’

‘who tf is lee donghyuck? Idk any lee donghyuck, why r u on my list?’

‘it’s haechan?’

‘ew okay. This wasn’t for you. Don’t be a perv and screenshot or anything okay?’ You were an expert liar.

‘Wasn’t planning on it, L/N,’ was all the fucker sent back. You needed more ammo, so you sent,

‘what if it was for you 😉’

You didn’t get a reply for a while and you thought this was it for the night. But as you were getting ready for bed, your phone finally buzzed.

‘In that case, yeah, it is too much ig’

You smirked to yourself. Operation Fuck Lee Haechan seemed a-go, 

All things considered, you were having the perfect first day back. All your schedules aligned incredibly with all your other socials. You found yourself the perfect outfit that made you look cute enough for college and attractive enough for the boys. As if for a litmus test, you had purposely taken the long route so you’d run into Woobin. He had never been able to resist you and before your second class had begun, you had even fooled around with him a little bit. It was nice to know that the boys hadn’t lost interest in you. Dicks tend to be fickle, and you had wondered if most of your fuckboys had found other flings during the break. But knowing that you still had them riveted gave you the confidence that you still had it. It would’ve been the absolute perfect day, all things considered.

Except when you finally made it to the first class you had together with Lee Haechan, you learnt that the TA had the seats pre-assigned. Which put him next to another girl. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t kept smiling at her throughout the class. Not that that had ever been a barrier for you. But still, it was another stupid obstacle you’d have to go through if you didn’t do something about it sooner rather than later.

So, as the class ended, you knew you had to get at least one chat in.

“Since when are you called Donghyuck?” you almost inconsiderately barged into his conversation with the girl. She seemed nice enough, but men were creatures of little focus. You needed to block her away from his vision so she’d be out of his sight and out of his mind.

But Lee Haechan was right in your sight. And you saw that he’d caught a nice suntan in the break because his skin was glistening gold beneath the denim jacket he wore. You wondered if all of him was as golden.

“Since birth? Why do you ask?” he replied shortly. He had been talking to the other girl just fine. Why the fuck was he being so rude to you?

“How come people call you Haechan then?” you kept talking.

“None of your business,” he rolled his eyes and the girl behind you giggled. What a bitch she was and what an asshole he was. He had the audacity to quip at you and walk away.

“Okay, ruuude!” you called after him, but let it go. You knew guys usually acted differently around others in particular and in public in general. So you waited till the sun went down--you had learnt that people’s inhibitions tended to lower in the darkness of the night. 

And in the cover of that night, you unbuttoned your top more than you should and zoomed in on your cleavage with your phone and took a picture.

‘Is it my business now?’ you sent.

The motherfucker left you on seen.

The thing with people with dicks is that they seldom use their brain. The moment they start using their minds, one could hypothetically grab them by the balls and make the blood rush to their cocks rather than their skull. That would usually set them right. You were blessed that the TA was a person with a dick. Because a quick handjob in the office was all that was required for him to rearrange the seating plan and situate you right next to Lee Haechan. 

You couldn’t help but smile wide as you entered the lecture hall that day, much earlier than you needed to, and made your way to your new seat. You put your things on Haechan’s seat and waited for the drama to unroll. You saw him entering with that girl and you scoffed when you saw that he was carrying her things. He’d only known her, what? Three days? And he already wanted in her pants. Why else would he be carrying her shit?

Then again, you wanted in his pants, and people often did strange things when their sexual desires and pants were at stake.

“Y/N, this isn’t your seat,” Haechan said impatiently, not even sparing a full look your way. But you looked at him by the eyeful. He was wearing the college hoodie and his legs looked longer than usual. You had two full hours to ogle at him. You could easily take a couple of minutes to revel in the unfolding of your scheme,  just to see the pair of them seethe first.

“Um, yeah it is?” you rolled your eyes at him, because your last interaction had been annoying you more than necessary and you needed to return the gesture.

You heard him let out an exhale. “This is Yeri’s assigned seat. You can keep sitting here but the TA is going to have you move when class begins, anyway,” you could tell he was trying to keep his voice even, exasperated as he sounded.

“Oh, but haven’t you seen? There’s a new seating plan. The TA just posted it!” you held your phone out and showed them the class portal. 

Haechan took your phone and held it closer to see and you saw the slightly sheepish moment of realization when he realized he was wrong. He gave that girl an apologetic look and she shrugged and walked away all the way to the opposite corner of the hall where you had the TA banish her. Having people by the balls was always an advantage. 

You put on your best fake smile as you looked at them and moved your stuff from Haechan’s chair. It felt sweet to be this petty. And begrudgingly, he sat next to you, his body language agitated and his gaze locked straight ahead like he had blinders on. Like he wanted to pretend you didn’t even exist.

But you made your presence known wherever you went. That was something you took pride in. So what if this arrogant fucker wanted to pretend you didn’t exist. You had promised yourself to be a thorn on his side and you were nothing if not consistent. 

“I’ve been trying this new perfume. The one I used to wear got discontinued, which is a travesty,” you began to speak. But the fucker didn’t even hum in response. So you stuck your wrist at him.

“Do you like it?” you waved your wrist under his nose and got the pleasure of getting a reaction out of him, even if it were one of pure annoyance.

“Smells a little like desperation,” he muttered. 

Rude fucking asshole. 

You pulled your wrist back in and straightened in your chair. Why the fuck did he have to be so rude? 

“Now, now, Lee Haechan. All of NCTIT knows you’re not one to turn down a girl in need.”

“And all of NCTIT knows that you’ve got plenty of ways to satisfy that need,” he spoke in an annoyed tone and still didn’t look at you.

“Don’t be rude. I’m just trying to have a little fun,” you lightly tugged on the sleeve of his hoodie but he moved away from your grip.

“Do whatever you want, but get off my back.”

“I haven’t even begun to get on your back, Lee Haechan.”

“What do you want from me?” he suddenly turned to look at your face. He didn’t look angry or annoyed anymore. He just looked cold. You smirked. Some fuckboys were served hot and some were best enjoyed cold. You like them both ways.

“Unblock me on Snapchat.” you smiled at him.

“That’s what’s going to get you to leave me alone?” he cocked an eyebrow.

“Mhmm,” you nodded, smiling wider. You saw that the more you smiled, the more he tried to void himself of a reaction. It was amazing to see him struggle. He pushed his phone to your face just before class began, to show you the proof in the Snapchat pudding.

That night, you sat in nothing but your cutest set of bra and panties and got carried away. Your body looked amazing. You had curves and dips in all the right places and a face to match. Your skin was glowing, your hair looked perfect, and no one wore underwear as well as you did. It wasn’t a secret to you that boys wanted you. What you were seeing in the mirror was proof enough. It wasn’t illegal to flaunt what you already have. So what was meant to be a quick selfie turned into a 30-minute photoshoot. You took so many pictures of yourself that you had enough thirst traps to last you weeks. But these days, you only had one person to trap.

You picked out the cutest picture from the reel, one where the light hit your tits and ass just right and opened Snapchat and sent it to your victim.

‘one before bed x’ 

You didn’t expect a reply back, at least not yet. You didn’t expect that he’d take a screenshot, either. You smirked, even in your sleep because Lee Haechan had taken the bait.

This would’ve been the lamest Halloween party in the world, even if Lee Haechan wasn’t sucking face with that girl. 

He wasn’t even dressed that special. He had put together the laziest Dracula costume that existed, and in a world where you weren’t hellbent on chasing him, you wouldn’t even have noticed him. You had been invited to so many other parties. You could’ve gone to any of them and had a better time. But the 127 party was where you would find him and that’s where you had to be. Now that you were here though, you wondered what good it did to put in all that effort to dress up. This was a perfect waste of your favorite black lingerie. You could’ve saved it for a better party, one where you had more eyes on you. The boys in here were drunk out of their fucking minds to notice you much. You hated being here more than you hated Lee Haechan.

“That is quite the tail you’ve got there,” you heard a voice behind you. 

The voice came from behind a Squid Game Triangle Masked Man, so it wasn’t totally rude to give the rest of the body a once over… you couldn’t exactly see the eyes behind the mask now, could you? You didn’t hate what you could see.

“That’s quite the… pink overall you’ve got there yourself,” you smiled and stood up straighter and pushed your shoulders back. Your lingerie top put plenty of tit on display and it had been irking you all night that not one man had tried to hit on you yet. 

The man unmasked himself and you actually felt the heat grow between your legs when you discovered it was none other than Lee Jeno himself. You had gotten so lost in your schemes, that you had forgotten Lee Jeno was the reason you’d been going through all that bother with Lee Haechan. How strange that he came to you all by himself, without you having to put in any effort at all.

“Oh, what a pity. I thought it'd be Na Jaemin under all of that,” you fake lamented. You knew these two had come together in couple-costumes. You earned a pout and a smolder in return.

“Bold of you to assume Na Jaemin would stay at a party this long,” he said and you actually laughed.

“Hmm. But you’re not meant to unmask yourself. Guess I’ll have to kill you now,” you angled your body towards him, just enough for him to keep flirting.

“Don’t I get a last wish?” he said and this time, he let his gaze travel along your body, too. You had him, hook, line and sinker.

“Lee Jeno has a catgirl fetish. Who would’ve thought?” you said when his gaze finally travelled up to your eyes. You held it.

“Who says it's my catgirl fetish that’s acting up?” he replied and if you were being honest with yourself, you were caught a little off guard. Because you’d been with enough fuckboys to know how they worked. You knew the weight of their words. You understood if they wanted a one-off or something more. And this boy seemed to be leaning on the side of something more. 

“Pity. Here I thought I’d find out what’s hiding behind those pink overalls,” you raised your eyebrows. You saw his eyes darken.

“I could show you,” he grumbled and took you by the wrist and began to move you away. But Lee Haechan had started to walk up to the DJ and the lights were starting to dim. Maybe the party was finally getting started. So you held him back.

“What’s the rush? Let’s dance first,” you said, because you needed to keep Lee Haechan in your sight.

Jeno smiled and led you the opposite way instead. And when the music and the flashing lights and the darkness began to engulf your bodies, he made quick work of his hands. They grabbed at the full flesh of your ass and pulled you into his hard body. He was built, but that much you had seen when you’d ogle at him in the pool. But his hands were thirsty and they grabbed at you with the exact type of want you needed from men. You pressed your chest against him and you danced and the lights flashed and made it hard to think much. He smelled good, too. He was tall and he was handsome and he was into you. The lights were blinding and your mind was slowing. He was a good dancer. He took control of your movements and the heat between your legs grew. You’re sure he was grinding against everything that was right. But the flashing lights lowered your inhibitions and heightened your senses and you could’ve sworn you saw Lee Haechan’s eyes on you. 

But soon, it felt too good. Soon, it was as if all sweaty bodies in the room were merging into one. Soon, it felt like everyone was grinding on everyone because you’re pretty sure you lost Lee Jeno in the crowd. It felt good to just dance in the darkness of the flashing lights. It felt good to feel random hands on your body and just let go. You closed your eyes and you smiled as the euphoria took over. You moved your body and your hips and your ass against everything that came close enough. And then you felt a pair of hands on your waist that only made your smile grow. Somehow, you didn’t need to open your eyes to know who they belonged to.

You took your chance. You easily looped your arms around his neck and pulled him into you. And he didn’t move away. Maybe the blinding lights protected him, too. If just for these moments, he forgot all about his ego. Because he grabbed at the hair at the base of your neck and tilted your head back. And he captured your lips in a hungry kiss. 

You moaned into his mouth and moved your hands under his cape and over his belly. You felt the planes of his abs through the fabric, but your curiosity burnt hotter. His lips tasted like strawberry jam, but you wanted to taste more of him. You tugged at his top and made it untuck from his pants. You travelled your hands up and felt his stomach, skin on skin. He hissed and flipped you around so your back would be to his front and your ass right against his crotch. He held you into him with an arm around your waist. You felt the hardness of him on your back. You felt his breath hot on your neck. You heard the grunt from his mouth as he rolled back and thrusted against you. And standing right here in the thick of this party where everyone was drunk out of their minds and dancing in the dark into oblivion... standing right fucking here and getting dry humped by Lee Haechan was the hottest thing that had ever happened to you. 

The music changed and the lights changed with it and the moment was stolen from you way too soon. You felt him turn and blend into the crowd before you’d even had a chance to look at him. The ache between your legs was wanton and identifiable, but the unease in your chest was what you couldn’t place.

“There you are,” Lee Jeno appeared by your side, “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Here I am,” you replied, though you weren’t. You weren’t really there.

By the time you got home, you had pretty much made up your mind on what you wanted to do next. You slipped out of your panties and stood ass first in front of the mirror once more.

‘this what u wanted?’ you sent, and before you had put yourself to bed, you finally earned your first real reply. You opened the message and your mouth watered at what you saw. Haechan stood in his bathroom with this shirt pulled up to expose his abs and your eyes finally saw what your hands had felt. 

‘and this is what you wanted,’ his message read. You couldn’t argue with that. Though only his jaw was visible in the image, you could tell he had a smug expression on his face.

You rode your vibrator that night as the sensory image of Lee Haechan rolling his crotch into your ass played in your mind over and over. You knew it was game on.

Any normal person could see that it was getting out of hand.

Your pictures to him were getting way out of control but you loved every moment of it. It made every cell in your body come alight. In some ways, the thrill of sending naughty pictures to Lee Haechan felt better than getting fucked in a stranger’s bed. You don’t know what it was.

On Monday, you decided he needed to see how well your back arched. So you put on your favorite bodysuit and kneeled on all fours and took what you thought was a really inviting picture.

‘i know this how you like it x’

You were rewarded with a picture of him laying in bed, even if he still had his clothes on.

‘almost but not really tho’

On Tuesday, you decided to get a little bolder. You took a picture of your bottom half laying in bed with your hand tugging onto your panties.

‘wanna lick my cameltoe?’

You got a Snap of his face wearing a cocked brow and feigned disapproval.

‘unsolicited pussy pics are not it, l/n’

So you put a hand inside your underwear so he’d see the gesture but not the offense.

‘why don’t you tell me to stop then?’

Motherfucker left you on seen that night.

The rest of the week went by in exactly the same fashion. You sending him risque photos and him replying just enough to keep you going without losing faith. It took you a while to realize that suddenly, you were the one being played. Yet, your instinct couldn’t have been totally wrong. Because every night, you’d rile him up with something more shocking than before and every morning you'd sit next to him in class and feel the heat coming off of him. You knew he was more interested than he let on. He hadn’t really been seen with that girl much anymore.

So you decided to amp things up.

On Wednesday, you contemplated going fully topless and just giving him an eyeful of your front. But at the last moment, you turned on the LED lights in your room and decided to cover your nipples with your forearm as you sent him a clip of you swaying to sensual music.

‘wanna dance with you again’

‘careful l/n,’ he sent back a Snap of himself, still too clothed for your liking.

‘don’t i get to see those abs again👅’ you demanded shamelessly.

He had waited a few moments before he sent back an ominous ‘Maybe.’

An ominous maybe was just a yes in waiting and it gave you enough information to know that you were moving in the right direction, but maybe it was time to do something more outrageous. You really needed this to get a reaction out of him.

Because although your nights were spent trying to seduce Haechan, Lee Jeno had been giving you a lot of attention during the days. As it turned out, he hadn’t really thought much of being blue balled that night at the Halloween party because on Tuesday, you found him waiting outside your lecture hall.

“I found you,” he said, smiling. He smiled with his eyes more so than his mouth, and a part of you had to admit that that shit was endearing. It was the kind of shit you could fall for, if you ever became that bitch. You ate lunch with him that day and you sat so incredibly close to him that you smelled like his cologne by the time you made it to your next class.

On Wednesday, Lee Jeno invited you to come see him at his swimming event. He won the competition and you found yourself furiously making out with him in the boys locker room while he wore his medal around his neck, his naked torso pressing into your clothed tits as he pinned you against the wall.

On Thursday, you felt your pussy throbbing for him as you walked past him working out at the campus gym. His sweat ran down the curve of his neck and you wondered what it tasted like. His veins popped angry in his forearms and you wondered how he'd respond if you asked him to choke you with them. He was a sexy beast and you needed to be in his bed. 

But your fucked up brain still needed to go through that darned pattern. 

There were other ways to have fun, you had thought; one that wouldn’t mess with your mental patterns or black book rosters. So, on Friday, it so happened that Lee Jeno invited himself over to your place and you finally decided to throw all your chips on the table.

While Jeno slipped into your bathroom, you stripped yourself of all your clothes and you sat at your vanity. You put your phone against it and you spread your legs and you masturbated on camera. You moaned and you grinded on your fingers and you made your pussy glisten and you hit send on your phone. You didn’t write a caption, not this time. The content was pretty self-explanatory, and if he wasn’t going to reply, you’re sure that at the very least, it would make him hard. You put your phone down and returned to rubbing yourself on the chair because fuck, the idea of Lee Haechan seeing you in heat was driving you crazy, and that’s how Lee Jeno found you.

So, before he could make a move, you kneeled and you took him in your mouth and you blew the living daylights out of him. You didn’t stop to ask how he liked it. You blew his cock and you blew his mind because the grunts that came out of the boy were as sexy as the rest of him and not once did he ask you to stop. You looked up at him even when you took him all the way down your throat and made a show of gagging on him. Guys liked thinking they had a bigger cock than any you’d taken, and you liked him well enough to inflate his ego that way. But by the end of it, you’re not sure whether it was his ego you had inflated or something else. Because most fuckboys would’ve walked out the door the moment they nutted in your mouth. You hadn’t expected that this one would help you with the clean up and keep kissing your mouth and make you hot tea to soothe your aching throat before he left. 

It was a brainfuck in every sense of the world. Lee Jeno had fucked your skull and your brain and by the time he was kissing you at the doorstep, you had no idea what to make of any of it. You hadn’t really planned any pit stops in your black book. Then again, Lee Jeno was the last cock in your roster. You didn’t have any other men after him you wanted to pursue--at least not yet. Unless you added more names to that book, you wouldn’t really know what to do when you finally got to Lee Jeno. Would he really become your final destination in the true way? 

It was a bizarre feeling going to bed that night and wondering how it came to you this easy. Lee Jeno didn’t give you the satisfaction of a chase, neither the gratification that came with the realization that the cock you were fucking belonged to an asshole. He was neither a fuckboy, nor a good guy. He had enough adventure in his stride to be one, but enough decency in his actions to be the other. It was the strangest moment of your life, realizing that a man you wanted between your legs was a good person. Nothing in your life was ever easy. Then how come Lee Jeno was basically yours for the taking?

That night you laid in bed and went through your notifications. You finally had a reply from Haechan, and what you saw confirmed to you that throwing all your chips in really had done the trick. Because Lee Haechan had finally rewarded you with a dick pic. 

You didn’t even give it an eyeful before you closed it. For the first time in your little scheme, it was you that left him on seen. You don’t know what made you cry into your pillow that night.

“It’s literally a cabin in the woods. Depending on how much it snows, we can do a couple of fun things,” Jeno told you as he walked you to class.

“Okay, but how many people will be there?” you asked. That made him stop walking; you only realized as much when you had left him a few steps behind. You turned around, “What?”

“I… I was hoping it would just be the two of us,” Jeno said slowly, watching your face for a reaction.

“Oh…” was all you could say for a while. This request came out of nowhere. You hadn’t really known him that long--a couple of weeks at best. You didn’t know what to say. 

Jeno smiled and stepped forward to close the gap between you two and took your face in his palms. “You don’t have to answer right away. But we’re not getting any other long weekends this semester. It could be fun.”

It felt easy to smile back at him as he held you, even if you didn’t know what to tell him. “I’ll think about it,” you said, because you assumed that this is what normal people said in situations like these. You saw the sparkle in his eye at your words and you felt that unease in your chest once again. A normal reaction from men you’d receive was a stiffening in their pants. A sparkle in their eye was new and unusual, though you weren’t sure you much enjoyed the sensation it brought to your gut. It was almost a relief when he ended the conversation with a kiss to your lips and walked away with a farewell. Because you needed to start thinking straight before you made it to your next class.

But no amount of mental prep made sitting next to Lee Haechan any easier. You had no idea what was happening to you. But the heat you used to feel between the two of you was replaced by an awkward, dark energy. Because ever since you had masturbated for him on camera and ever since he had revealed his cock to you, there had been nothing but radio silence.

You didn’t talk to each other. You didn’t acknowledge one another. When the night would fall and you’d find yourself alone, you didn’t model for him. Lee Jeno had been on the receiving end of your camera skills these days. You had hoped it would be enough to keep him occupied and happy whilst you untied your mental knots. But they were tugged on tight. No matter how much you told yourself that patterns didn’t matter, that black books didn’t matter, that not everything in this world had to be sense and order… those knots in your mind had taken years to form. There was no untangling them any time soon. You’d sooner get Lee Haechan in your bed than detangle your mind.

But you had stopped chasing Lee Haechan, too. What the fuck was it that you wanted? You had no idea. Why were you stuck in this limbo? You hadn’t a clue. Lee Haechan didn’t want you and Lee Jeno wanted you and you couldn’t have one without the other. You were fucked up. That much you had always known; but you don’t remember the last time you’d been this fucked up. Fuck Lee Jeno for waltzing into your life before you had invited him. Fuck him for fucking up the perfect plan in your head--one where you’d fuck Haechan before him. Fuck him for coming to your first and not even making you work for it. Fuck him for being kind and treating you right and not expecting too much. Because look what he fucking did your brain. 

And now he wanted to take you away to a cabin in the woods in the snow. Like you were someone he could wine and dine and treat right and she’d be his in all her faith. What a fucking mess. You had no idea what to do.

Perhaps the universe took pity on you because before the end of the class, you learnt that for this course, you’d all have to visit the field site and the only time they were willing to accommodate so many college students at the same time was during the long weekend. 

You finally had an out. And an opportunity. You didn’t know if you wanted either of it.

Pulling yourself together and putting your mind back in the scheme turned out to be a much easier task than you thought it would be. 

Your dry spell ended when you learnt that for the field site visit, you had to work in groups of three. Manipulating group assignments was your forte, because you’re pretty sure you still had the TA by the balls. It was good to feel like you finally had control over something. So even if the TA didn’t want just a handjob this time, you sank to your knees and took him in your mouth and by the end of it all, the entire class had been divided into groups of three except for you and Haechan who would work as a twosome. It was only later in bed that you realized that you had sucked a man you didn’t really want to suck. You could only go to sleep when you had rinsed your mouth with a whole bottle of Listerine and your tongue seemed raw and blistered. So what? You were back in control. And in the morning, you finally sent Haechan a picture after a week and a half of silence. 

‘heard we were partners,’ the caption read over a selfie that was tame by your standards. Just a regular top with too much cleavage. He had definitely seen more.

‘you heard right,’ you got in return a picture of him presumably just out of the shower, still too many clothes on.

You needed to get a move on or you’d never be able to move on. You needed to pull yourself together and remind yourself that you were a desirable fucking bitch whose heat men couldn’t resist. Lee Haechan was just a man. You needed to treat him like more of a man and less as a roadblock with too much control over you.

So during the trip to the field site, you fucked with his head. Before that girl could even daydream of finding herself next to him, you’d manipulated everyone on this bus to make it so that only you could sit next to him in the back and he couldn’t switch seats no matter what he did. He sulked and stared out the window for the first few minutes, keeping up his tradition of pretending you don’t exist when the two of you were in broad daylight. But this was the man that had dry humped you in the darkness of the dancefloor. So when everyone had settled in their seats and the excitement about being on a trip over a long weekend had died down, you put your hand on his thigh. And you rubbed. Motherfucker didn’t move, even when you saw his jaw clench. You moved your hand higher up between his legs, feeling around for what you needed and that’s when he caught your wrist and silently, but roughly jerked it away. You smiled. You wanted him riled up. You liked him riled up. It gave you so much control.

You fucked with him throughout the time you were meant to be working together. When the coordinator presented you with something to observe under the microscope, you pressed into Haechan’s side till you felt the leather of his belt cutting into your hip. You saw him gritting his teeth but not saying a word as he worked. You put your hand over his when he reached to grab something. You held his bicep to get out of your seat. Later, you made quite a show of bending over to pick something from the ground and grazing your ass against his crotch. Maybe he needed to relive a memory to act on his instinct. But he was colder than you realized.

Or maybe, he really did hate you.

Because you had been chasing him for weeks. You had done everything you could. You had stripped down naked for him and fucking masturbated for him. And he still didn’t want you.

It had to be you. Because Lee Haechan was fine with just about everyone else. When he hung with his friends, he smiled the brightest. When he spoke to that girl, he spoke with kindness. When he was in bigger groups, he’d become the life of the party and the de facto leader. When he was with older students, he had no trouble playing the mischievous little brother. But when you’d walk in, it was as if you sucked his energy like a blackhole. He’d shut off. He’d turn cold. He’d lose his words and he'd avert his gaze. He hated you, but not in a passionate way. He hated you where he didn’t want to spare any emotion for you, because he thought you were that undeserving.

You felt that uneasiness in your chest again, only this time, it travelled up to your throat. Lee Haechan was going to be a thorn in your side in more ways than you could’ve imagined. He loved his friends and his family, he did well in college, he had talent and beauty, he was God’s favorite and you weren’t. His apathy hit you like a dagger and you snuck away, disappearing from the rest of the group and spending the rest of the trip in hiding. It wasn’t going to work. You’d gotten naked for him. You’d gotten to your knees and taken a man in your mouth you didn’t want to take. All for him. But none of it worked. You stole a bottle of liquor from the coordinator’s office and you drank from it till you passed out in your hiding spot. And on the night before you had to leave, you took your chances and sent him a message.

‘I’m out in the woods,’ you wrote, no picture this time.

It was in the dark of the night and in the thick of the trees. And Haechan liked you in secret. That was a hypothesis you had to test. The gentle rustling of the leaves and the soft crunching in the grass confirmed to you as much.

He wore a scowl as he often wore whenever he was around you. He approached you like he was being cautious.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, “I had to complete all the requirements myself.”

“It’s our last night together, Haechan. Don’t you want to have some fun?” you stuck your tongue out. And in the sharp fluorescence of the moonlight, he saw the heart shaped pill sitting pretty in your mouth. 

He leaned in and sucked it from you, his lips closing around your tongue and taking what he needed. His hands roamed down your waist and onto your ass and once again, Lee Haechan wrapped himself around you in the darkness of the night and in the blindness of the moonlight. You were right. This was the only way he liked you.

But his touch kept growing, like his hands were multiplying till they were touching you deep in your skin and you held onto him impossibly tight and moaned into his mouth. His touch was everywhere you had heat on your body like there were many of him and only one of you and he was surrounding you in every raise of the hair that prickled your skin. He was moaning, too. You felt the reverberations of him in your throat, right in your jugular and right in your ribs that were threatening to split open. You wanted to split open for him. 

You were one with the earth. He was you and you were him and you were the earth and the earth was in you. You were suffocating in the scent of him and your breaths were the same. He was breathing in your mouth and taking the life of you. You wanted him to take it all and end it. You were gripping into him and your fingers were sinking into his flesh and bones. You were feeling all of him. You were calling out his name and now he was behind you and you were drowning into the dirt. You felt him in waves and you felt his voice singing in your ear. What was this melody? You felt like you had heard it before. You didn’t know many songs. But you sang his name in return. There was so much pleasure in calling out his name. You felt it in your being and in your insides and you called it out till it felt like you were extorting it out of your body. Like his name was a shard of glass that shredded you from the inside as it came out of you. And you sang it again. And again. And again. You sang it till your throat was bleeding. You sang it till you felt rakes scratching down your skin. You sang it till you felt him on top of you, suffocating you once more and immobilizing you. Haechan, Haechan, Haechan.

Haechan. He could take the life of you and you’d die happy. Haechan. He lived inside of you but never outside. Haechan. He needed you in the dark but never in the light.

You were ripped open for him and he’d seen your insides. Your breaths were gone and your heart was flying. You gripped at him. You wanted everything back. How dare he take so much from you? ‘Give it back to me! Set me free!’ you screamed. 

Haechan, Haechan, Haechan. You were drowning in him and he in you. Haechan, Haechan, Haechan. You could taste the blood and euphoria on your tongue. Haechan, Haechan, Haechan. You never existed and you never could. Haechan, Haechan, Haechan. Nothing was light and everything was dark and you had never mattered to anyone. 

Haechan. 

Haechan. 

Haechan.

You were stumbling even as you laid and that girl was pressing a palm to your head. Was she trying to kill you?

“I checked your temperature because I thought you had a fever. Do you feel anything?” she asked.

Do you feel anything. 

What a strange thing to ask.

Did you feel anything?

You didn’t feel anything.

Nothing at all.

“I think you may have caught a cold out there. Do you want me to get you something?” she asked. You snatched away.

“I’m fine,” you snapped though your throat felt like sand. Had you been looking, you would’ve seen her face look taken aback.

“Okay. The bus is leaving in an hour. Thought you should know,” she said and left you alone.

What happened out there? How did you catch a cold? You’d been hiding and he’d been hiding with you. You’d been laughing and you’d been running. What happened?

You needed to shower.

You rid yourself of your clothes and jumped at the sight of the smooth planes of your skin. He had cut you open. That much you remembered. He had cut you open and felt your insides. But how could he have done it? You weren’t even scratched. You felt the memory of him in every inch of your skin. Had you fucked? Did you finally get what you wanted from him? 

You didn’t remember.

And that thought had you emptying your stomach into the toilet.

You climbed into the bus and he looked up, like he’d been waiting. He wordlessly moved the jacket from the seat next to his. Like he’d been keeping it for you. And you sat because where else would you go? This was your doing. You had nowhere else to go. And when the bus started moving and everyone settled in, he held your hand and he intertwined your fingers.

You just wanted to go home.

You turned a corner when you caught sight of Lee Jeno. He’d been looking for you the whole day and you’d been avoiding him the whole day. You’re not sure what it was: did you not want to see him or did you not want to face him?

‘free now?’ you read part of his message in the pop up notification but not all. You didn’t want to open the text and have him see that you had read it.

‘should I pick you up after class?’ he messaged again and you felt like you were suffocating. You walked around campus, trying to avoid all the places you’d run into him.

‘Is it okay if i come over tonight? I miss you,’ his last message read and you switched your phone off. This was too much. You were suffocating and you wanted to hide. You turned and almost ran head first into the TA’s chest. He held you by the shoulders to steady you and you flinched away. Why were people touching you?

“Trying to skip class, Ms. L/N?” he said in a tone you didn’t quite like.

“No, I’m just getting my things…” you looked away to walk away, but he didn’t let you. Your alarm bells rang hot in your ears. Nothing about this situation seemed right. 

“Hold on, Ms. L/N. I’ve been meaning to discuss something,” he said with a smile on his face. You looked around and maneuvered yourself so you’d be in a spot where people could see you. And who else was going to catch you in your lowest moments but Lee Haechan? You felt his eyes on you and you weren’t sure you felt any safer.

“I know you're failing your classes,” he began. Still smiling. You saw Haechan scowling your way from the corner of your eye.

“I guess I am,” you replied shortly. Perhaps he didn’t like the sudden ice in your stature toward him.

“You don’t have to, you know. I’ve told Professor Lin what a talented girl you are,” he reached in to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear and you felt your skin crawl. 

“Oh? Did you tell him how you knew?” you replied. You couldn’t see Haechan in your periphery anymore. You felt the danger deep in your belly. You didn’t like where this was going. 

His eyes darkened. “I’ve been helping you a lot, Ms. L/N. Sometimes, you need to help me, too.”

“Is there a problem?” you heard Haechan’s voice behind you. But you didn’t stop to hear the rest of the conversation. You turned on your heel and you ran away.

You were good at running away.

But how could you feel suffocated in your own home? 

Lee Jeno kept knocking on your door and ringing up your phone as you sat on the floor with your hands pressed to your ears. That’s how. 

You wanted to scream. You wanted everyone to leave you the fuck alone. Who did he think he was, trying to check up on you? For what? He hadn’t really known you that long. Who was he to think he had any right to check up on you? Who gave him the right to knock on your door and fuck with your head like this? All he had done since the moment he had met you was fuck with your head. 

Why did everyone keep messaging you? Why did you reopen your phone? What did everyone want from you? You felt like you were caged. You needed Lee Jeno to get the fuck away from your door so you could run and hide. You weren’t safe, not even in your own home. 

Eventually, he did, and you shot out. You were losing control, that much you could sense. Everyone wanted something from you. Everyone wanted to fuck you and use you and blame you and shame you. You couldn’t breathe. Your chest was so tight that you pounded on it with your fist as you ran. You needed help. 

You don’t know how you found yourself in the living room of your professor’s house, sipping onto the mulled wine he gave you. But it did good to numb your mind. The fireplace you sat in front of made you feel like you were sinking into a hot bath. Maybe you were finally coming down with the cold you had caught on the trip. But your mind was foggy and that’s how you liked it. Everything was finally slowing. It felt nice to sit in Professor Hwang’s company, in the luxury of his comfortable townhouse. It felt soothing to listen to his voice take over your senses. It felt almost relieving feeling his large hand smoothen over the skin of your shoulder. It felt inevitable to find his lips on yours. 

And when he disrobed and walked into his room, you followed.

The legs you were using to walk didn’t feel like your own. It was far too cold and your dress was far too short. But there was too much alcohol in your veins to really make you feel a difference, let alone have you know your elbow from your ass. How much more could you run? Where else could you hide? You had exhausted all your safe harbors and running grounds. So you walked back home, though by the time you climbed the first flight of steps, you were stumbling. And a figure stood waiting outside your door. But it wasn’t Lee Jeno.

“What are you doing here?” you snapped at it.

He wore the same scowl he always wore when he saw you, but you didn’t have to be totally drunk to know that tonight’s expression was a cocktail of not just disapproval, but also concern. “Where have you been? Everyone’s looking all over for you,” he said.

“Why is everyone looking for me?” maybe they wanted to shame you.

“You told them you’d come to dinner. Why didn’t you come?” his eyebrows were slightly lifted and his head slightly tilted, like he was trying to search your face in the dim light of the street lamp. That’s how he liked you. In the darkness, where the lights could blind.

“Didn’t feel like it,” you said and stumbled on the step. But he strode ahead and caught you. You flinched away.

“Are you drunk?” he asked, and his voice wore only concern. How dispensable.

“What are you doing here?” you angered again and hurried to your door. You fumbled with your key and felt the burning behind your eyes when you couldn’t get it right.

He took it from your hands and unlocked the door. “Why have you been avoiding me?” he returned your question with one of his own and he followed you in. You didn’t want him here.

“What happened between us that night?” you replied in yet another question.

“Nothing,” he said, almost too quickly, like he’d been expecting you’d ask that as soon as you saw him. His head was shaking and his face was solemn. His eyes were round. Fearful.

“It couldn’t have been nothing. You…” he what? What could he have done that night that was more sickening than what you did?

“Y/N… nothing happened…” he inched towards you, shoulders hunched, arms stretched forward, approaching you with caution.

“How can you know?” you asked and you felt you would choke on your tears.

“I didn’t take as much as you, Y/N… I remember everything that happened. I got you back to your room that night…” he stood affront you and placed his hands on your forearms. You felt your chest reverberating from sniffles of tears that couldn’t fall.

“Why don’t you want me?” you croaked yet another accusation at him, much different to what you’d been accusing him of a moment ago. Did he fuck you? He didn’t fuck you. Why didn’t he fuck you? 

You were crazy.

“Y/N…” he whispered and his hands moved to the back of your shoulders, pulling you in. You resisted.

“Fuck me now,” you whispered back suddenly and you grabbed at his shirt and began to unbutton it. He held your wrists.

“Y/N, you’re burning up. You’ve got a fever. Just sit down--”

“Why won’t you fuck me, Donghyuck?” you gripped at his shirt because he didn’t allow your hands to do much else.

“Y/N, just sit down--”

“Why won’t you fuck me? Is it because I disgust you? Is it because you find me deplorable?” 

“Come here--”

“Is it because I deserve everything I get? Is it because not even my family spared my body?” you pushed against him. But he held you in a stronghold. Not letting you go.

“Shh…” he hushed and you felt hot, fat tears on your face. You gripped at him once more.

“Why won’t you fuck me?” he had messed up your pattern and now look what you did. “Please, fuck me,” so you begged.

“Y/N. Come here,” he pushed your face into his chest and held you tight.

“Please, fuck me,” you sobbed and you begged into him. He held you tighter till you felt you were suffocating again. But this was a different kind of suffocation.

“Please fuck me,” your sobs grew more desperate and your pleas more pathetic. But he held you so tight that you almost felt your blood cut off. You found yourself sinking into him and your eyes closing and your head spinning. Maybe you were still begging him. Maybe you were sinking once more. Maybe it was the room that was spinning. Maybe that’s why you were on top of him instead of against him. Maybe that’s why your head was heavy and your eyes still hot and his shirt still wet and his lips still warm. They were so warm on your head. You wanted to drink in the scent of him. But he moved much too soon.

“Don’t go,” you pleaded.

“I’m not. We need to bring your fever down,” he said gently. This boy hated you. Perhaps he pitied you more than he hated you in this moment. “Do you have any medicine?”

You shook your head. 

“I’ll go get some,” he replied and you took his hand and repeated,

“Don’t go.” You didn’t know what you’d do if he went.

He looked torn. Like he didn’t know whether to help your body or your mind. He held your gaze and sank to the floor, sitting cross-legged by your bed as you laid, searching your face.

“Have you eaten?”

You shook your head, “I don’t want to.”

He nodded and when he had concluded his internal battle, he took your hand in both of his and kissed the back of it.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said gently. And you knew what he meant, though he couldn’t possibly have known.

You felt the tears hot on your cheeks once more. Maybe the fever was boiling them in your eyes. 

But how could it not be your fault? Everything happened because you willed it so. Everything that happened was your own doing. You looked away. But he whispered once more.

“None of it. None of it was your fault, okay?”

You intertwined your fingers with his. It didn’t matter if he pitied you or spoke those words from the kindness of his heart. It was nice to hear them as you slept.

You didn’t want to go for any of your classes. You wanted to stay in bed where you were comfortable and hidden. You were already failing everything. You’d probably have to repeat, anyway. What did it matter if you missed a few days?

But you had to get up. Staying in bed would mean that you’d have too much time to think about what you did. So you got up and dressed yourself and you went to campus. There weren’t very many places you could go.

Jeno found you and this time, you didn’t have it in you to hide away. He took one look at your face and he held you in his arms. You leaned into him because you couldn’t really fight it. And when it seemed you were going to break, he shielded you with his jacket and walked you away from a place where there would be too many seeing eyes to the safety of his training room where it was just the two of you. He didn’t ask you why you cried into his chest. He just held you till you cried from being undeserving of him. He was light and you were darkness. You didn’t want to dim him.

“I knew something was up,” he said as he pulled back and wiped your tears with his thumbs.

You looked into his kind eyes. The eyes that you had told yourself you could fall for. You leaned in and you kissed his lips. You didn’t deserve him. But you wanted to know what it felt like to be kissed from love and not lust. To be treated with tenderness rather than irk. Jeno kissed you slow and gave you everything your heart had been yearning for. 

Why?

Why did he give you your heart’s desire? 

You hadn’t really done much for him. 

You hadn’t even known him that long.

But he had decided that he wanted to give you his affection and his actions had mirrored his heart. 

You placed your cheek on the hard planes of his chest and you closed your eyes till you felt you were drifting. Why did you leave your bed? You had no energy left. You were too cold and your head was too light. 

Why did you feel undeserving of Jeno’s kindness? Why did being vulnerable to him feel like you were breaking a rule? What good were rules and patterns when all they had done was fuck with your head and make you…

You couldn’t finish the thought. You just held onto him tighter.

“Let’s get out of here,” he spoke in your ear.

“I don’t have the energy,” you said and it made you feel broken. Your eyes burned. 

He kissed your cheek and made you rest your head on his shoulder. “You’re sick. You should be in bed.”

You nodded.

Patterns, rules, rosters, black books.

It was all fucked up. You had fucked it all up. You hated what you had become. You hated your skin and your body and your very being. You cried in Jeno’s car and all he could do was hold your hand as he drove you. He didn’t know you much. He was playing the boyfriend to a girl he had met at a party just a few weeks ago. One he hardly even knew. Would he still be kind to you once he figured out how fucked up you were? Would he still want to chase you and dote on you once he found out what you had done?

It didn’t matter that Lee Haechan didn’t fuck you.

You had broken the pattern.

You had freed yourself.

Was the price of freedom always this gruesome? 

Jeno kept smiling patiently as you let him in. He sat you on the edge of your bed and crouched to take your shoes off for you.

Were you really so weak that people had to take care of you like this? First Haechan and now him? But Jeno wasn’t people, was he? What else could you have felt when you hadn’t really known the benevolence he was giving you?

Your world was divided into good guys and fuckboys. You’d never give good guys the time of day. Your nights would usually end when the fuckboy would nut. Jeno wasn’t a good guy. Jeno wasn’t a fuckboy, either. He was just a decent fucking human being. 

Could you have him?

What would you do once you had him?

You didn’t know how to keep a person. You enjoyed your solitude. 

He was so pure and you were so vile. He was so gentle and you were so brazen. He was so kind and you were so cruel. He was good and you were evil.

But it felt good to be cared for by an angel. You were going to destroy him. But you didn’t have the energy in you to warn him. So you sat and accepted everything he was giving you. But your lips spoke of their own accord.

“Why are you so nice to me?”

He looked up from your feet and stroked the side of your cheek. “I like you.”

“Why? Why do you like me?”

He shrugged, though the kind smile didn’t leave his face. “I don’t know. Why does anyone like anyone?”

“But you don’t know anything about me.”

He nodded like he agreed but wanted you to see something else. “True. We don’t know each other that well yet. But I still like you, and we can get to know each other.”

You could get to know each other. What a strange proposition. No one had really wanted to know you. And you weren’t sure they’d like you much when they did.

“You don’t know the things I’ve done,” more tears fell from your eyes. He didn’t wipe them this time. He studied your face, like he was choosing his next words.

“We all make mistakes, Y/N. I’ve made mistakes, too. But I still like you.”

He was an innocent. He had no idea what he was talking about. What good would it do him to find out?

“I want to tell you someday,” you whispered and surprised yourself. Would you ever tell him like you said you would? He had no clue what would hit him. He didn’t know you. His idea of you was so different from your idea of yourself. 

“Take all the time you need,” he held your hands.

Maybe you could have this. Maybe it really was this easy sometimes. Maybe love was as easy to give as Jeno made it seem. How difficult could it be to receive it?

“Let’s go to your cabin someday,” you said softly. He smiled the widest smile so far, one that made his eyes disappear into crescents atop his cheeks. It made you smile in return. Your mind slowed and your heart swelled. 

You didn’t know him. 

He didn’t know you, either. Maybe that was a blessing. Because the way he treated you made you hate yourself just a little less.

Patterns were like shackles. Getting up meant brushing your teeth thrice and going out meant scrubbing till your skin burned raw. Eating meant precise calculations and not eating meant having to start all over again. Reds came before blues and yellows before purples and you could fuck the same fuckboy twice but only if it maintained the harmony of your roster. Patterns shackled your wrists and your ankles but kept you from destruction. 

But you had broken your pattern. Maybe you had freed yourself of your shackles. 

Walking to campus didn’t feel numbing anymore. Putting on a pretty dress this morning felt soothing. Brushing your hair without counting your strokes felt comfortable. Stepping on grass and smelling the flowers in the air felt relaxing. You were here. You were present. You were alive. You were okay. You were well.

Your blood had only known how to burn hot in your veins. You didn’t know you had the ability to feel the warmth that you felt as you walked towards Jeno’s training room. Was this the difference between love and lust? One burnt you in a fire and the other slowed the flames to a warmth? You couldn’t be in love with Lee Jeno. You hadn’t known him long. You didn’t even know what love was.

But your heart was full and your mind calm. You were walking to see him. So why couldn’t you find him?

Why did you suddenly feel the eyes of many boring into the back of your head?

Why did the warmth in your blood turn to ice on your skin?

Why did the sweet melody of birds around you turn to murmurs in your ears?

Why was everyone sneaking glances at you?

Why was everyone talking about you?

“There she is.”

“Can’t believe she’s showing her face.”

“The campus slut.”

“What a whore.”

“I knew she was a slut. Didn’t think she was a full on homewrecker.”

“Homewrecker.”

“Homewrecker.”

“Homewrecker.”

“Is it true?” a voice broke through the murmurs, like it was speaking to you, not about you. Lee Haechan stood in your way.

“What’s going on?” you asked.

Lee Haechan pushed his phone to your face. And you saw it clear as day.

You bent over in front of your camera. And Professor Hwang right behind you.

You didn’t say a word.

You didn’t move an inch.

The murmurs grew louder in your ears like they were trying to drown you.

“Let’s go,” Haechan grabbed at your wrist.

“Where?”

“Somewhere else.”

“I have nowhere to go.”

“Come.”

You couldn’t go home. And you couldn’t stay here. So you followed him all the way to his car while the gazes of everyone in your path hit you like daggers. 

You left it all behind, but not before you saw Jeno’s face of betrayal as he saw you ride away with Lee Haechan. 

He kept driving and you kept sticking to your phone like a vice. The videos kept coming. The pictures kept coming. The vitriol kept coming. You had earned it all.

‘She’s always been a homewrecker. She tried to seduce my boyfriend. Here’s proof.’

‘we been knew she a slut, i’ve got a whole library of her nudes lol’

‘weird tits’

‘why is she moaning like she’s dying i'm not even hard’

‘i’ve fucked her she’s boring and kinda loose’

‘lmao has everyone seen her naked? Y’all have receipts’

‘Woobin ur pictures look fake asf’

“yeah ngl, that doesn’t even look like her’

‘are her tits fake?’

‘anyone got pics of her puss?’

‘i do brb posting’

‘Guys, revenge porn is not it’

‘yeah, you can go to jail asshole’

‘shut up slut she sent it to us’

‘yeah but your posting it without her permission sooooo’

‘It’s the criminal act for me’

‘You idiots need to take it down or I'm reporting’

‘who wants pussy pics?’

‘she fucked my uncle’ 

‘fuck off no one believes u’

‘is she even on this?’

‘hi y/n i’m dtf and my dick isn’t as wrinkly’

The vitriol kept coming and you kept reading. You read and you read and you saw yourself in every picture you remembered you took and even the ones you didn’t remember taking. People got it right and people got it wrong. They mostly got it right. Everything they were saying was true. You read on and you felt you could’ve read forever. But Haechan’s hand came in and took the phone from you.

You didn’t realize you had stopped travelling. You didn’t realize you were sitting on the hood of his car. You didn’t realize how far he must have driven to take you here. Away from the city where the river was as clean as nature had intended it to be and the manmade landscape looked like a distant picture behind it. 

“Why did you do it?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” you whispered back. He nodded.

“Did you know he was married?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know he has a daughter our age?”

“Yes.”

He nodded once and looked away. Like he was organizing his questions.

“Why did you film it?” he asked. Not as an accusation. Just a question.

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember filming it,” you spoke barely above a whisper.

“Do you remember posting it?”

“No.”

“Did he know you were filming him?”

“I don’t know.”

“He could lose his job, Y/N.”

You looked up towards the river, unconvinced with your own next words, “We’re both adults.”

“Yes. But you’re a student. And he’s a teacher. You filmed him.”

“Yes.”

He looked down to think. Then he looked ahead with you.

“You could get in trouble, too.”

“Yes.”

“Do you… you really don’t remember filming it? Or posting it?”

“No.”

“Do you often have gaps in your memory?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you do it?” he asked again.

Your breath came out in between a scoff and a dry sob. You turned your head to look at him. “Because I’m fucked up.”

“Because you’re fucked up,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” you said in the same broken voice. And perhaps he could see that you were about to wallow in your self pity. Because his tone grew colder.

“That’s going to be your free pass for everything? That you’re fucked up?”

You looked away, ashamed. You shook your head. A long pause stretched between the two of you. Like he didn’t know what to say anymore. So you reached in your bag and handed him a pocket sized, leather bound diary.

“What’s this?” He took it.

“My black book,” you couldn’t speak up.

“Black book?”

You nodded. “A list of all the people I’ve fucked. All the people I want to fuck.”

Haechan’s face didn’t betray any notable reaction. He flipped through the pages and paused only when he saw his name. He didn’t say anything. So you talked.

“It has to be in order. All these names. I need to go through them in order. I’ve had this since the first semester. If I don’t do things in order, it…” you looked away. You sounded crazy even to your ears. But Haechan’s face was unchanged.

“It stresses you?” he tried to understand.

“I spiral.”

“Are you spiraling now?” he asked. 

You nodded. What else would explain any of this?

“Is it because of me?” he traced his name on your book.

You looked at him. Was it because of him? Was it because of Jeno? Was it because of Professor Hwang? Who broke your pattern first? 

What did it matter? What did it matter who broke your pattern? Patterns were fucked up and you were fucked up and all of this was because of no one but yourself.

“This isn’t right, Y/N.”

“Yeah.”

“You need help.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know.”

You looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“This,” he lifted the black book, “This has been going on since freshman year? The first semester? And you didn’t get the help you needed then?”

You looked at the ground and your eyes burned once more.

“What you told me that night… was it true?” he asked. And it made your heart hurt more than anything you had read on your phone. His question cut you open and made your tears fall and your shoulder shake. Who would believe a mentally unstable girl? Of course he thought you lied. He probably thought you were a pathological liar amongst all the other things.

But you nodded. You didn’t lie to him and he didn’t lie to you. That’s not how you worked. He could hate you and you could hate him. But you didn’t lie to each other. He saw you for what you were and you saw him.

His pupils lifted like he was thinking and he swallowed.

“Who did this to you?” he asked.

You couldn’t answer. You never had an answer. What did it matter who did it? It’s what you deserved. 

Haechan sighed. Like he had thought better of his question. “You need help, Y/N,” he repeated.

“I know,” you agreed, though your voice was hoarse.

“I know some people.”

“Okay.”

“I could take you there right now.”

Your heart dropped. This was soon. This was much too soon. You couldn’t do it. You didn’t have it in you.

“Just let me die,” you whispered.

You saw the clenching of his jaw and the pressing of his lips. And without warning, he flung your black book towards the river with as much strength as his body could muster.

“Face your fucking problems, Y/N,” he said.

You cried. He was right. How could he be wrong? You needed help and no one had ever given it to you. You hadn’t given it to yourself. You had an opportunity to be better. He was giving it to you. Were you really that far gone that you weren’t accepting it? You trusted him. You hated him and you trusted him.

“Take me,” you cried.

He didn’t need telling twice. He got in the car and drove you where he promised.

Clarity is a strange phenomenon. You think you have it in moments you absolutely don’t. Where things feel so real you almost believe them. But when you open your eyes, and really open them, you start to lose faith in everything there ever was.

You lost everything. You failed your classes. You lost the few friends you had. You were put on probation. And your videos and pictures lived in everyone’s phones forevermore. You couldn’t run. You couldn’t hide. You couldn’t even escape. 

But you felt free. For the first time in your life, you felt like you could see. You finally felt regret. You finally started to reflect. You felt the pain you had caused everyone you knew. But most of all, you finally felt the pain you had been causing to yourself.

Haechan was right. It wasn’t your fault.

Yet all these years, you’d lived with the burden that it was. You had punished your body for it. You had punished your mind for it. The food you would eat was to harm or ornate your body. The patterns you built were to enslave or protect your mind. You looked for control in places you couldn’t find it. Because all that control had been taken from you all those years. Your body didn’t belong to you. Your mind didn’t belong to you. You numbed your soul thinking that if you thought any less of yourself, that it would make it all okay. That if everyone hated you altogether, you’d finally be seen the way you saw yourself. You kept punishing yourself. For something you didn’t even do.

You’d been living in the past. Because you never healed from it. Because you had never given yourself the opportunity to heal. Because you thought punishing yourself was how you could fix everything that happened. Because never once did it occur to you that you could’ve helped yourself without waiting for someone to help you. 

You’re not really sure you had clarity. 

All you know is that for the first time ever, you remembered all the things that happened to you. All the things you had done. You had fallen to your knees and confessed like you were begging to a deity. Every day you fell to your knees and cried and remembered and each confession brought with it a new suppressed memory. You cried for all the years you had lost and all the times you had punished yourself for things you couldn’t possibly have controlled. You cried for little Y/N and all the burden she had been carrying for you. She was so innocent. So vulnerable. So young. And you blamed her till she was tainted in your memories. You cried when you told her it wasn’t her fault. How could it have been? She was a child. You cried when you begged for her forgiveness. For not believing her. For punishing her. For hating her. You cried when you forgave her. And when you cried so hard that you couldn’t move, not an inch, not a hair, not a speck, so hard that you felt you’d never breath, never stand, never function, so hard that you felt the life of you weakening beneath your knees, you set her free. You let her go. Little Y/N was free.

And in the darkness of the night when your tears drowned you but didn’t suffocate you anymore, you thanked Y/N as she was now. For being her own savior. 

Maybe you didn’t have all the clarity in the world. But you knew your eyes were wider open than before as you sat in the rose garden of the center and took in the wide expanse of grass around you. You could smell every bit of it. And you could see the boy sitting in front of you on the lawn chair. You looked at the roses and he looked at you.

“Are you sure you don’t want to have this?” he asked, pointing to the vanilla frap he’d gotten you along with other goodies.

“I’m actually not allowed sugar. Or caffeine,” you smiled at him.

“Wow. This place don’t mess around,” his lips pressed into an impressed expression and he took a healthy sip from your glass. “Noted for next time.”

Next time? After everything, Jeno wanted there to be a next time?

“Tell me how you feel,” he asked softly.

“I feel okay,” you nodded and you smiled. His face didn’t change, so you reached for his hand. “Really, I am.”

“When do you get out?” he asked, stroking his thumb on the back of your hand.

“I’m not sure. I like it here,” you leaned back in your chair and inhaled the sweet smell of roses all around you. How nice it felt to smell them. Almost as good as it felt to plant them.

“Y/N…” Jeno trailed away as he looked at his feet. Contemplating. Wondering what he could say and what he could not.

“You can say it,” you smiled at him, though you weren’t sure what he wanted to bring up first. There was too much in the tangles you had left behind.

“The pictures… they’ve… they’ve been taken down. The feminist society filed a report against everyone sharing your pictures without your consent,” he kept stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. You realized he was worried. 

You weren’t. The pictures and videos were the least of your concern. They didn’t bother you.

But Jeno was worried. And he didn’t hate you. And that took you by surprise.

“I heard you hit Woobin,” you said, amused.

“He was asking for it,” he pouted. He looked so cute when he pouted. So you reached in to pull his cheek.

“Jeno, you can’t hit every boy that has been an asshole after having sex with me. You’ll have to go through the entire campus.”

He flinched and brooded cutely for a while while you grinned and stroked his frown with the backs of your fingers. But then, he asked you what you’d been expecting.

“Lee Haechan…” he looked at you. You looked back into his warm eyes. They were confused. Of course they were. You hadn’t done much to reassure them.

“Go on,” you encouraged so he'd know it was alright to talk about this.

“Are you… did you ever…” he didn’t know how to put this. You had told him about your compulsions and your rosters and your black books. You told him all the things you did, even while you were with him. Maybe the information was too much to absorb at one time.

“No,” you shook your head for him.

“Do you… do you… like him?” he asked.

“No,” you shook your head and took his hand again. You liked holding it.

“Then… what’s your relationship… to him?”

“Hmm…” you turned your head up to think. You didn’t have to think much. You knew. “He understands me.”

Jeno was a smart guy. Perhaps in some ways, he felt you, too. Because he didn’t need an explanation beyond what you said. He just squeezed your hand and said,

“I’d like to understand you too, someday.”

It took you by surprise once again. 

“You still want to try being with me? After everything I’ve done?” you asked him without masking it.

“We all make mistakes, Y/N,” he told you what he had told you all that time before, “And everyone deserves a second chance.”

You felt your heart melt. You had been right. Even though you'd been out of your mind, your heart had seen Lee Jeno for what he was. Kind-hearted. Pure. Gentle in his judgments. Sweet with his words. Innocent in his heart. 

You took a deep inhale, like his words were healing you and you needed to breathe them into the deepest pits of your lungs and burn them into your heart. 

“I’m going to get better for you,” you promised him. And his lips met your forehead.

“You need to get better for yourself. And when you do, I’ll be waiting.”

Those were the kindest words anyone had ever told you.

You held onto them in the hours and days and weeks to come till you finally walked down the path of the green grass and left the rose garden behind.

A second chance and a new life. 

You were you and you were reborn and old you and new you could coexist within you. 

This body was yours and it was a gift. You started loving it for all the things it did for you, rather than all the things it could do for everyone else.

Your mind was yours and yours alone. No one could own it or enslave it. Not even you.

Life had second chances, and you had taken it. You gave yourself a second chance. You were deserving of a second chance. You were deserving of all that was good and pure and true in this world.

You smiled bright as you held onto the acceptance letter of your new college. It felt nice to have poured out your story to them and have it be validated in this way. You had new things and kept some old things. Some things were better left in the past, and with some you had to learn to make peace that this was so. You couldn’t change people’s minds about you. But their murmurs would have followed till you could hear no more. So you left them behind. And you smiled at your new opportunity. You had heard that it knocked at the door but once. You welcomed it with open arms.

You decided you needed to share in your joy. So you picked the roses from the garden you tended and tied them together with a ribbon. You didn’t lament that you had never received flowers before. You felt joy that you were about to give flowers to someone for the first time. 

You smiled as you walked, smelling the roses every so often and simmering in the sweet smell of them. Jeno would like them and you were going to be okay. He would see you and he’d smile the smile that made his eyes disappear and you’d be okay. You were okay. You were going to be okay. 

As you walked to Jeno, you could’ve sworn that you saw Lee Haechan drive past you and meet your eyes, if only for a second. Out in the sun, in broad daylight, where no darkness shielded you and no lights blinded you.

And in your heart, you wished him well.

ii. two years and a crush

You think that hate might have been a strong word to describe how Mark felt about you. Dislike or maybe he felt too awkward around you. The song of hate is one too strong to pinpoint on any set person with no valuable excuse. It is the border between hate and care that is often blurred between two people that have yet to know each other or often already do. The beauty of music, the fluidity of it that is said to have strict rules to follow in order for chords to harmonize with one another can be changed and modified through the course of time. Change that a year or two can prolong, where donghyuck guarantees you that Mark does indeed not hate you but thinks the opposite that you hate him.

It is the shock, sprawled all over your face when your best friend informs of you this news that has you take a step back. Mind reeling at the possibilities that could have made the boy you wished to be friends with from afar - only for his awkward but adorable demeanor and knowledge in the language of music that had you slightly grown fond off - that had you set on walking up to the brown haired boy black sharpie in hand as you scrawled a message on his ninth grade yearbook.

The book feels heavy in your hands, the turn of pages not balanced evenly as you picked it up from one of the many grey speckled lunch tables in your school's lunchroom. Mark’s signature - a bold star on the center of the page - marking it as his. In the time between seventh and ninth grade the number of markings on his pages have expanded. Each corner filled with some note or another about having a good summer, the most common being “hags” a term very much detested on your part. Though some would thank him for his help in English class or talk about the way his laugh would always be heard echoing down the halls of the school making anyone who heard it smile even for just a second. You are stuck on what to write in the boy’s yearbook, where “hags” was most definitely out of the way but how else to express that you in fact did not hate the boy before you, but felt something else entirely.

Your fine line pen - you had switched out the marker ( though a mark and marker joke had been tempted to be made on your side ) for a pen to donghyuck who had insisted the writing utensil he used had to match his loud personality - had just begun to write the initial entry to the yearbook when a cough sounded from behind you. Pen smearing to the side at the abrupt noise that had broken you from your thoughts as you turned your head around, to find Mark cheeks slightly pink and a confused look on his face as he looked down to the book in your hands and then back to you. The question written on his face, what were you doing with his yearbook?

The brown haired boy had sworn he had left it on one of the many desks littered around though that wasn’t too say much when all the tables had at one point clumped together in the center of the room and mark had been dragged from one person to another - because after two years in a music program it seems people begin to want to talk to you - to sign books. What he hadn’t expected was to find you, crouched in the corner next to the pile of yearbooks, eyebrows drawn in concentration as you stared down at his yearbook.

Mark knows that you are not a person of hate. He knows this because Donghyuck talks enough about you that if Mark was to be given a trivia on who your favorite band was and what subject you hated the most he would have aced it ( you would never be able to choose just one band and obviously music but not because you didn’t like the class but because of its teacher ). It is evident from when you speak to Donghyuck, a smile grazing your features even when you scold hyuck for not getting enough sleep that you care deeply for others. He knows this yet he thinks that there is something wrong with him for when you look at him he only ever sees confusion written in your features.

The same confusion that you look at him with now, but this time what seems to be the ghost of a nervous smile grazes your lips as your eyes dart from him to the book on your hands before you are scrambling up yearbook flopping slightly to the side and before mark can greet you, you’re off towards another pile of yearbooks and people with only a “oh...um...hi! I'm gonna go.”

When he picks up his yearbook, only the beginnings of a scribble before the pen smudged read “I don’t hate you” which has mark now copying your face of confusion at the rest of the words that have smaread and he can’t seem to make out but wishes he could because the small little smiley face you’ve drawn at the top has butterflies tumbling around in his stomach.

It is people who do not have music, people who do not have a song that we should fear. This is something to be believed in because with no song whether audible or not people become less of self and more of one. Dips and staccatos in one’s song that create variety are what then allow us to match with other harmonies and rhythms between each other. So when a boy presented you with the opportunity to learn how these dips worked, how they would bounce from one end to another trailing behind a note or holding it for a note longer harmonies between these two people become more insync with each other.

- -

By the time that the end of tenth grade rolls sound you know for a fact that Mark doesn’t hate you, because if he did you don’t think the poor boy would have helped you in music class. Mark Lee most definitely doesn’t hate you or he wouldn’t have helped you write a whole song for a class that everyone - except the musical prodigy himself - hated.

It is said that music in syncopation will at one point catch up to each other in order to create a beautiful rhythm. When one beat is off the next, it will become the foundation to that song, as one beat chases the other and they dance around each other never quite crashing into each other but grazing one another to fill in each other’s missing beat.

The idea of what syncopation is has been drilled into your brain for the fifth time this week in music class. One of those many music theories that you understand in exactly what they are but when put into practice you’re left looking into space with a hopeless look. Which left Mark looking at you a mix of emotions coursing through him as you bit your lip in worry as the teacher went on about what the end of the trimester’s project would be.

The assignment was simple, in theory of course. Simple if your music teacher had bothered to teach you how to play the keyboard that lay on top of your desk, the computer plugged into the weird conversion device that you had yet to understand its function, with the holy Sibelius software open. Its purple background and paper-like overlay with a single music staff only managed to meddle with what you knew of music. It wasn’t that you were a complete music disaster. You knew how to play the guitar - or at least the intro to Blink-182’s I Miss You - and had begun to learn the bass because your favorite member of a band you followed played the bass. Basic understanding of music theory was also stored in your brain, you knew how notes worked, just not how to place them. You understood what each note was, just not how they fit well together, just like you knew what chords were just not how to play them on the piano. So when given the task to compose a full original song in the span of a month, it wasn’t looking great.

Not great until Mark, sitting next to you, saw how your eyebrows had drawn in together as you tried clicking away at the screen only to get half notes instead of whole notes. The boy wanted nothing more than to remain by his chair, as he happily played the piano keys. Their loud thunk thunk a soothing melody to him as the melody in his head was played out in front of him. When the music teacher, purple tie with too many dots for anyone to count, had announced the assignment he had been beyond excited, that is until the teacher had also announced they would be sharing their songs by the end of the month.

Mark loved music. He loved the melodies and rhythms that would play in his head, as he hummed along to whatever jazz or new radio station he had found earlier that day played through his headset. Music was a translation for the way his heart felt or brain was thinking, when he got too awkward or shy to the people around him. The lyrics that he was constantly jotting down on his beat up notebook were words and thoughts that would flit back and forth through his head, different ideas or butterflies that would create a turmoil in his stomach. Mark however did not like performing in front of people, the blame was on the way his heart would alter its constant path when there was someone in front of him to listen to his music or see his notebook. It was too personal the scribbles on the notebook that had gone with him through one move and then another a whirlwind of houses and unknown people through each new city.

He had tried once to perform in front of people, the audience consisted of his mother and father and the church group he had been going to in their small living room back in toronto. When he looked back at it, the performance shouldn’t have gone awry, it should have been one happy moment in his life that had helped him express himself and be more out there. Except when he got on the small DIY stage his parents had prepared for him for the annual church talent show, guitar ready in his arms and he started to strum the first couple of chords to the song he had just written all he could see was the world laid before him as they saw him raw without any protection. Nothing to grab onto except all his secrets - though a song about how much he liked chicken was truly not that deep - that he had run out of the stage, and into the city street notebook in hand.

It’s been too long since he’s tried again to perform in front of anyone, but he tries to convince himself that if he could help you write a song then you would be able to help him with his anxiety about his own work. He most definitely tries to convince himself that he doesn’t want to help you because he knows you think he hates you and wants to prove otherwise. Mark definitely doesn’t want to help you, because he thinks you’re cute. He definitely doesn’t want to help you because he heard you laugh once - when he had lunch by your table - and heard you laugh so hard that tears had started to spring in your eyes as you smacked donghyuck in the arm and he wished he had been the one to make you laugh. By the time Mark has convinced himself of all this, class is almost over and he’s only able to mumble a “do you need any help?” to you, as you stare at him blankly, confusion drawn across your features.

“Are you talking to me?” you ask, head turning from side to side as you look at other classmates around you, even renjun a fellow friend of donghyuck shrugs before walking out the door.

“Yep” is the only thing Mark can manage saying, as he aggressively nods towards your computer screen, only slightly catching the smile that blooms across your face.

“I’d love that. I seriously have no idea what any of these buttons do” you sigh, waving dramatically towards the keyboard that sits on your desk, the computer screen blinking as the random notes you have placed create a jumbled picture.

Mark can feel his anxiety ease away when he gets near the keyboard. The way the keys work makes perfect sense to him bringing comfort, but the bubble you two have created as you start talking about the piece you’re trying to make. A piece you had first suggested that should be about your love for pizza which Mark had laughed at - a sound you had found to be equally adorable and contagious - but the look your teacher gave you made you rethink that. Though singing about how good cheese and pizza dough was would always be a dream of yours.

It is through music that your friendship blooms. Where a syncopated song has managed to catch up to each other even if it’s only for a small time, in order to greet each other.

When you two begin to hang out more often, at times at his place or maybe yours. At first the idea is to help each other on the song, Mark tells you about his fear, or more so the panic he gets when people listen to his work live. It’s strange to think that someone that talented had anything to fear really, he always looked so at ease whenever he was playing music that it had never fathomed that it might scare him to show it to the rest of the world.

Music you and Mark have both determined is the universal language. Music allows you both to express yourselves when the world seems to only grab at your words and throw them in the other direction so that no one else can see or hear.

iii. scribbles on the yearbook

The black marker is stark against the red page of your yearbook, as you flip through the pages. The room’s ac flipping the pages, landing on where Mark had signed your yearbook. A small note that has you slightly smiling at the boy’s visible awkwardness on the pages. Most of the signatures insignificant with the typical “hags” that you have seen over the years, you almost yelled at donghyuck who had written hags on your yearbook as a joke. Mark has it scribbled on the margins of the paper, surrounded by different colors of scribbles from the rest of your classmates until his comes along, reading “this is mark, and i approve of this message” only for it to be followed by another message right next to it “this is mark - and oh wait i already wrote something! I hope we make that pizza song one day :)”

It’s the small detail to the pizza song that has you staring at the message, a small smile on your face as donghyuck barges into the room you're in - that though technically his room has you yelling at him for walking in without any warning.

“Who has you smiling like an idiot?” the brown haired boy jokes, the rainbow highlights he just recently added into his hair catching in the light.

“No one” you force your voice to become an octave lower, trying to wipe the smile from your face with no actual success because donghyuck has taken your yearbook from his bed and is laughing. You start to speak, trying to explain to your friend that it was just that you two had finally started talking to each other and maybe he didn’t hate you.

“No way you like Jaemin?” He exclaims already picking up his phone and because you know he has Jaemin on speed dial you lunge across the room into him.

“What?! No!!” Though you’re both on the floor donghyuck is still grinning like an idiot, the brightness in his phone almost blinding you.

“Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!” The phone has been forgotten, and he’s clinging onto you as you try to sit up heck grabbing you by the arm, “come on, I’m your best friend you gotta tell me these things”

“I don’t like anyone dude” your words are accentuated as you unwrap hyucks hands from your arm before standing up, leaving a pouting donghyuck on the bedroom floor.

“Then who the fuck has you smiley?” You almost gasp at the curse word that leaves Donghyuck’s lips, he’d been saying them more often, and you stare at him trying to convey through it that it was none of his business. It is only because the doorbell rings that Donghyuck gets up, giving you a glare before he heads out to the door, yelling at his brother that it’s his turn to get the door.

You’re more than happy for the distraction, picking up the yearbook from the ground, the pages now slightly crumpled from the movement. The music that plays through your iPod has you bopping along, a dance move or two escaping your body at irregular intervals when the chorus hits or you attempt to lip-sync to the melodies of the cab.

The music has you too distracted to hear Mark as he walks into Donghyuck’s house, his laugh echoing around the house at something that Donghyuck said, clapping along until they enter the room you’re in.

Mark is happy that you don’t see him. He’s happy that you aren’t aware how concentrated you look as you look down at the yearbook finger tracing images or words he can’t see. words seem to fail him when he looks at you, smile present on your face and though the music you're listening to is strange to his ears he makes a slight effort to see what appeals to it - he doesn’t get very far but he tries. It’s a different expression from what he’s used to. Your music is heavier, the lyrics tend to be sadder than the music he listens to, John Mayer being a classic and the reason he picked up a guitar years ago, but he doesn’t mind it when he sees the way your face brightens up at it.

“Earth to Mark!” a snap in front of him shakes him from his thoughts as Donghyuck looks at him, a puzzled look on his face that is quickly replaced by a knowing grin. As if he knew something that had recently become very obvious to him and only him, a secret he would keep close to his chest until he decided the card was to be dealt. But then you’re looking up, yearbook discarded on the bed as you rush over to him and donghyuck asking him how practice was, and if he was staying over for japchae - a classic at the lee’s house that mark could never truly turn down - donghyuks grin only widening before mark had a chance to say anything about it.

iv. a catapult of zooms

The five words you’ve written down for your English paper on The Catcher in the Rye stares at you from the blinding white screen. Cursor blinking in and out to let you know that your computer is ready to type next, a constant reminder that you have only made it a sentence in for a paper due tomorrow. You type out another sentence hoping this one fits before deleting it, a cycle of movements you have been doing for the last thirty minutes you notice when you glance up at the time 11:30 pm.

An incomprehensible noise between a sigh and a scream comes out of your mouth before you look back at the book to your side, the annotations on the side of the pages mocking you with their information on the loss of innocence and youth. Looking back at your screen you switch tabs the current music playing through your headphones distracting you more than actually helping you as you sing along to most of the songs giving a small dance routine when you feel like it all to not write the damn paper in front of you.

It takes a small second for your eyes to adjust, the white screen of the google docs pages in stark contrast to the black grey of the spotify app as it shows you all the different playlist you have accumulated over the years. You can see on the top right corner what donghyuck and you had been listening to for the better part of the afternoon at his place when you’d both claimed having a dance party would have helped your inspiration for the english paper - spoiler alert if very much had not. Right below it you see mark’s profile the username “besquaremusic” making you slightly laugh, before seeing that he’d stopped listening to music twenty minutes ago but it’s the music that the boy was listening to that has your heart rate pick up a beat and your mouth split into a smile. Right under his username the song Free Love by Honne plays, from the playlist PIZZA SONG <3 a playlist you’d made for him a couple months ago during one of your hang out sessions.

You can’t seem to shake the smile of your face as you go over to your account, scrolling until you find your study playlist hope it never fades out and click play. The melody of i believe in you starting to play only to be immediately disrupted by the blaring sound of a call coming in. The Justin Bieber song playing too loudly on your headphones indicating mark’s call before you press the answer icon smile never leaves your face because though you had a paper to get too Mark did too and suffering together was better than suffering alone.

“Yo!” is Mark’s introduction, a smile present on both of your lips as he grabs his guitar playing random chords.

“Ayo! What’s up?” you ask, eyes only leaving your facetime call for a second in order to write the theme to your essay because you had finally found the quotes you’d been looking for in your overly annotated book.

“Wanted to show you a new song i learned and if you could tell me if it sounds too similar to the original or not” the proposal makes you perk up from the sentence you were writing, giving you full attention to mark who had begun to strum the intro chords to John Mayer’s Dancing in a Burning Room.

The moment Mark starts to sing you are lost. Just like you become lost in the music that plays through your earbuds most of the day, Mark's voice is able to capture you and lose you.

It is when the right melody finds itself paired up with a harmony that matches it. When that moment feels so right that the music can be seen when you close your eyes and you can imagine the world that the piece creates if only for the four minutes and two seconds that the song lasts.

There is a world that is solely music. A world where the only thing that exists are the chords and riffs as they are paired together with melodies and lyrics in order to ground one to that world.

You feel transported anytime you hear Mark play music. Taken to a place that is only yours, with Mark and his guitar - glasses usually on the tip of his nose as he strums the strings - and you as you nod your head along to the music listening to every note that Mark plays or sings. It is not often that you join in but when you are too giddy you mouth along the lyrics with him.

The last note of the song plays and you are already clapping, the slapping of skin against each other causing a yell from your younger brother to stop making so much noise. Your clapping stops but you are now whispering, yelling to mark, telling him how much you loved the cover, marks ears reddening at the compliments as they always do.

“There has yet to be a time i have no been impressed by your musical talent, i’m pretty sure haechan would agree”

“Haechan would only agree if you told him that he has the voice of angel”

You can’t help but laugh, though contradicting him slightly in which “but you better feature haechan in your first original, and i say your number one fan can’t help but agree”

Mark only laughs, hands clapping almost hitting his guitar before telling you he wants to show you some new music he’s found through “tiny desk” which has got to be the only youtube channel you think Mark knows if you don’t count Justin Birber’s or Bruno Mars’ music accounts.

The soft music plays in the background as you two talk about the week you’ve had, the world always seems to stop when you talk to each other. Zoom backgrounds change in order for the mood of the conversation. Where you had begun to discuss if Mark were to ever write an original song what it would be on and as a joke had given himself the bright yellow genius background.

The random lyrics to Honne’s Free Love in the background as mark presented them to you laughing after every sentence.

You’d stopped paying attention to the music, or the paper that was halfway done time marking almost one am, sole focus on the boy with brown hair and doe eyes in the pixelated screen of your beat up school laptop. It had been weeks since you two had called, and yet the moment the ring ring of the facetime call had been answered it was as if the world had just skipped over the last weeks that you hadn’t spoek as much. The world just waited to click play until you two would find yourselves with each other, laughing at dumb jokes or commentary at mark’s music as you helped each other with the english homework. Though homework mostly consisted of you writing and every couple of minutes reminding a distracted mark - who was riffing with his guitar, scales played up and down one chord to the next - to start his homework.

The last sentence to your paper finally ends as you click the period button on your keyboard. You are sure that the grade isn’t going to be the best, but you put it through grammarly so at least your periods and commas are placed in the correct places before you submit the document. When you look up at your screen the time reads 3AM and Mark is jotting down something you can’t read in his notebook. The doodles on the cover make you smile, from when you had gifted him the watermelon themed notebook for his birthday before entering senior year. His old one had been beaten down and you would often see him look for empty spaces every corner crammed with writing.

The question had popped up once, what was in the notebook he carried around everywhere but Mark had only turned red before changing the topic of conversation. He had told you once - though you are sure it was unconsciously - that his form of escape was writing and music. It took little for you to assume that he wrote his own songs in that notebook, that you wished you could hear. Attached by the USB he carried everywhere, a gift you’d gotten him for a birthday when you’d found out about his love for music. Maybe you’d thought that if he could have a place to store it he would be able to record it and share it with the rest of the world.

“What are you thinking about?” The soft voice interrupts your thoughts as your eyes focus on the screen. The light bouncing off his eyes, green hoodie making him look overwhelmingly soft. The pixelated mark on your screen, a smile on his face as he begins to strum his guitar again while looking down at the notebook has your stomach swarming. And all of a sudden you can’t think of anything else except how it would feel to hold Mark’s hand and kiss him just to make him giddy. The second the thought crosses your head you are avoiding it at all costs, shaking your head aggressively.

“Just how adorable you look and that i’m gonna have to hear that song you’re writing one day” you say the first part too quickly before you can stop yourself, and mark shrinks into himself and you can feel blood rush to your face.

“I-” there is stuttering on his side as he tries to compose himself, one hand covering his face as the other tries to hide the pages of his notebook.

“No song...um...i’m not writing anything,” Mark whispers, and your glad for you headphones that allow you to hear him say that so that you could let him know that it didn’t have to be now or even in a while but that you hoped one day you’d be able to listen to his music.

Mark knows his ears are red. Just like he knows that you can most definitely not read his journal that he cherished, because then you would find out how he felt about you. It was one thing he thought for you to hear him sing covers, his escape from the world and that he had slowly become more used to other people hearing him perform, but something completely different for the person the words written on the paper for to hear them.

Haechan had heard some of it, the lyrics had yet to be refined from a jumble of messy thoughts that streamed out of his consciousness anytime you would smile at him or remind him of something he liked and would bring it up. Haechan’s only feedback apart from that he had to be part of the vocal takes and a couple of jokes at mark’s inability to talk to you about his feelings was that he actually thought it was sweet.

It was the notes, one after the other that they could both hear in Mark's small apartment room that seemed to create a love sick melody. Haechan almost thinks it’s laughable if he didn’t feel bad that two love sick idiots weren’t able to confess to each other. A series of missed opportunities, where stolen glances were never seen by each other, and excuses to be closer were pushed off as acts of the friendship that had been blooming throughout years. The notes never quite reached the other and yet when they looked at each other and the notes were in sync the whole world knew of their song.

v. one song in a room full of notes

The room smells of cheap liquor and even cheaper perfume to try and mask the scent of the weed that had been smoked outside. It comes as a shock, the hiding and sneaking of alcohol that was most likely bought off from your school’s dealer Tony, a bottle of Japanese whiskey that Mark claims is not easy to come by. No one in the room has the heart to tell him that that’s the exact liquor that Tony sells to absolutely everyone, well Haechan does but you're able to stop him from saying anything when you tell him there’s a brownie buffet bar.

Maybe it’s because you’ve all just graduated, the room’s atmosphere is celebratory, everyone's had at least a couple of drinks, or the fact that in three weeks the chances you’ll all see each other again or so slim that if you do something today any repercussions might not last. It’s these thoughts that don’t stop your mind from wandering over to Mark who's sitting next you.

You’re a couple of drinks in, every point in your body that is touching mark arm to arm is alive. The music isn’t loud but the voices from your friends create a melody of their own as they tell stories of the past years. You wonder if maybe that’s why it feels like you and him are in your own bubble, chairs touching arms close together, fingertips only a breath from holding onto each other.

Maybe it’s the way you feel light and the world seems to end if you don’t let the boy next to you know how everytime you are near hear him your heart is in your throat, and you feel warm all over butterflies flapping their wings all around your body. Migrating from stomach to your heart to a constant beat of love. It’s seconds like these when your eyes meet and you can appreciate the way his hair curls at the back of his hair, and his eyes distant when watching the crowd in front of him turn to yours focusing. Lips tugging slightly upwards and he smells of the perfume used to cover the smell of alcohol that lingers in his breath only slightly when he speaks to you. Voice so low that you are leaning in slightly so that you share breath as you hear him ask you the single question that sends your heart into a paradiddle on on off on on off, faster and faster.

“Who do you think I wrote A Ring For No One for?” The question has you pulling back eyes searching across the room as your heart beats faster. You can feel the rush of blood in your ears, a dizzying effect, the single thought repeating over and over in your mind maybe it’s me. But you look around not realizing that Mark has kept his eyes on you and only you hoping you get the hint.

You want to ask if it’s you. Want to know if there was some way that he might have felt the same way you had since that day in your free period when the world had crumbled around you and he had been there, your favorite song playing through his precious headphones the same easy smile on his lips. When he’d offered you the headphone so that you would each be listening and you were able to calm down because though the world seemed to be spinning out of control, Mark had been there to keep you grounded.

Instead you say the name of a friend who’s standing a couple of feet in front of you as she talks to someone else. Mark’s eyes slightly shift to your friend before he says “no”. For every no you get you can feel your heart beat louder, hands get clammy as the possibility that the only person you haven’t said is you.

You’re close to giving up, as you look at Mark he eyes looking everywhere but you and he wishes you had just said your name from the first second because now he was doubting you ever felt the same. No longer did he have the liquid courage that had prompted him to ask you the question in the first place. All he had left was a bundle of nerves that made his hands hot and clammy, fingers tapping on his leg over and over again, and zero confidence. He’d promised himself that today was the day he’d tell you, but when you were done listing the names of everyone, as if you couldn’t possibly be the one he’d been in love with, your eyes were full of light.

The room felt too small, too warm.

You could feel the shortness of your breath, the way air wouldn’t fully reach your lungs catching at your lips. No sense of stillness, just pure chaos raging on in your mind, your body as your hands - always cold now blazing - until the boy in front of you opened his mouth.

In three short words, constituent of less than a couple seconds before the world turns cold. His mouth forms a name, it slips from his lips, voice slightly pitched as he talks about the girl from theater he met only a couple months ago.

You wish you’d taken a hit of the joint. Wish you’d had a bit more of the sweet liquid that would burn down the back of your throat, maybe burning away the sickly feeling you felt. Replace it with liquor and fake sweetness from the overly sugary cocktails instead of the acid building up in the back of your throat.

One word, a name. Not yours on his lips that you’d tried one too many times to not think about. Eyes dazed, bright with the alcohol that still burned in his system when he looked at you that if you’d had more liquid you could have fooled yourself to believe that the admiration in his eyes was meant for you not the girl behind you who was fixated on what her friend was saying.

The world revolves around notes, you’d believed that if you were patient enough those notes would arrange themselves for you. Black and white keys playing a melody that only you and him would understand, crescendoing into confessions under cold nights, hands held together.

Not every song is a hit, because not all notes work together, cohesively to create a melody for your ears. This time the notes reach crescendo, as the burn at the back of your eyes threaten to yell, scream burst at their sockets. These notes don’t align, they don’t reach their conclusion, they rip your heart out with quick breaths, warm hands that wrap around yours in the middle of the night as you drag the other part of the melody across the city at night.

vi. one too many times to say goodbye

The breath in front of you curls around the night, wrapping itself around the sole lamppost that hasn’t flickered out in the street. A boy with brown hair stands in front of you, usb in hand the yellow neon post it wrapped around the stick and you can make out a couple of the letters.

The ring in your finger spins around and around your finger. Breath soft, almost not visible except for the way that it makes you squint your eyes slightly to catch onto the face of the boy you loved, love in front of you.

Two notes. Two opposing melodies on a cycle of crescendos and diminuendos never reach each other, only just half a beat, a quarter of a beat away from each other. Catching up, slowing down until the world moved by, continued to create new beats and rhythms around you for years until moment.

You can hear the constant click click as the boy in front of you opens and closes the stick in his hand, eyes looking everywhere except at you, the melody he keeps missing, the one note he can’t seem to figure out and doesn’t think he ever will.

It's almost as if for the first time since you two have met, the world is able to syncopate itself to your own rhythms, an eight note of a pause as you both take a shivering breath and breathe the cold air of the New York night catching up to you both.

A hand reaches out, always so warm against yours, the metal of the hard drive cold against your palm, and he mumbles words you’ve heard before. You’ve heard the word before, coming from haechans lips almost everyday since you graduated, the word from partners you’ve had each saying the word with different connotations. But this time you hear the word fall from his lips, as if he’s holding on to it.

A musician through and through, trying to convey a history of feelings and memories with just the melody that he says your name. But you whisper his name too, as paper crumbles slightly in your hand, eyes flickering slightly to the post it note, and you can mostly make out the words before his hand covers yours with a small shake of his head, a small smile grazing his features. Not now, it tells you, later it urges you.

The issue with later is that it is never specific, later was what you’d told yourself over and over when he broke your heart. Later was when you reminded yourself to not cry out against the world when you’d realized you’d fallen in love with your best friend but your world would never align. Later is what remains, when later becomes years down the line and you play back the usb. The engravings on the side bring a flash of memories, two kids in love sprawled on rocks as they talked about the way their hearts would only feel alive when next to each other. Later quickly becomes now, and the almost faded note on the post it note mark gave you years ago, the pizza song I never gave you but wished to show you only visible if you stretch your imagination and trace the dents on the faded sticky note, the tiny journal drawing you’d seen him carry around endless times a brown spot of the page.

“what is that supposed to mean?” he glowers. 

you didn’t mean to blurt it out.

“you, painting, what if it’s over? have you ever thought about maybe that’s why?” your tone seems articulated, but you’re shaking and you know that renjun knows too.

“so what you’re suggesting is that i was like some sort of one shot wonder?” he argued furiously.

“maybe your creative juices ran out. your time is up.”

you’re bluffing. 

you know what renjun is capable of, his beautiful paintings, strokes delicately caressed the canvas, depicting vast emotions and things you’d never think of. 

but you’re just so pent up, you can’t stop.

“never thought the person who was behind me, the one who always supported me, could ever say this to me.” he scowls. you want to take everything back, but your brain and lips don’t coordinate.

“that was before you made me wait a year until you were ‘financially stable’ enough for us.” you reminded him. “now when is that?”

that struck a nerve.

“i-, i don’t know.” renjun stutters out, seemingly demoralized by your reminder.

“renjun, how can you say that, and think that this is all fair to me? i’ve been waiting for you for so long, and you’re holding me back from so many things and opportunities. so if this is how this conversation is going to go, there’s no use in me being here anymore.” you say, making renjun freeze. 

what is that supposed to mean?

“i’m putting the ring on the table and i’m going to walk out the front door.” 

no no no no.

“if you follow me out, it means that we’re going to continue on, like we were before,” you start. renjun’s emotions are all over the place. “however, you’re going to get an actual job, and our wedding will go as planned in august.”

you should stop.

this isn’t what you wanted either, but why does your mouth have a mind of its own?

“if you don’t follow me out, that means you chose painting. and i’ll be going, living my own life, and we won’t meet again.”

and you walk out.

hoping that renjun will follow you out, putting the ring back on your finger. the finger that feels extremely empty.

but while walking towards your own apartment, you don’t look back.

until you reach the front of the museum that renjun had his first painting displayed at. oh how you remember the excitement you had, and the joy on his face while walking around the exhibit, admiring the other artists’ creations.

you waited for a few minutes, thinking maybe renjun was just slow, and will come soon.

but he never did.

the realization that hits you feels cold.

you never meant to blow up at renjun like that, but it happened. and you don’t think you can go back to him after hurting him so much. so that’s what you did. you left.

2   Y E A R S   L A T E R

another tinder man, another tinder date.

it took you a while to move on from renjun. as expected, since the two of your dated for 6 years. you didn’t look him up, you didn’t stalk him, because you knew that you needed to move on.

the first year and a half was agony, but you couldn’t tell anyone that. 

you felt incomplete when you woke up. the warmth that he provided, never showed up again.

but you still had a life, you needed to move on. 

your work life is going pretty smoothly, but the same can’t be said for your love life.

so you’ve resorted to tinder.

you’ve had many failed dates, many failed talking stages, you get the gist. but after months of talking to dejun, you think you’ve hit it off. (and yes, it really was a coincidence, you swear)

planning the date, he said it was going to be a surprise, so this was like the make or break for you. if he takes you to a sketchy bar, you’re going to break it off (known from past experience), but anything that is similar to what a normal date is, you really think it’s going to work out.

“surprise!” dejun says, handing you tickets to what seems like an art exhibit when you two walk into the museum nearby. “i saw a few of huang renjun’s early paintings on your walls. i’m a fan too, and it was so nice seeing someone appreciate his older works. coincidence that he was doing an exhibit this weekend, so i snatched some tickets.” he smiles.

you try to smile back, but you’re speechless, you feel numb and you can’t move your limbs anymore.

he notices the change in your mood and is immediately worried.

“are you feeling alright? oh maybe it’s the exhibit, we don’t have to go if you don’t want to, i totally get it if you don’t, sorry if i pushed this onto you.” he tries to reassure you.

“oh, haha, no it’s fine, i was just surprised! yeah i’m a big fan of renjun too so that’s why i was so shocked.” you tried to brush it off, and hopefully your act is convincing enough to get through the showing.

“okay great! it seems like renjun is here today to present his latest collection since he’s giving it to the gallery.” dejun exclaimed, obviously very excited.

but your stomach drops.

renjun is going to be here today?

there’s a lot of people here today, maybe he won’t see you in the crowd.

just your luck.

for your birthdays, anniversaries, pretty much everything worth celebrating over, renjun painted you a canvas of what he was working on recently. they were the start to final products, and you took pride in having the creative process, and kept them all. you never took down those mockups of renjun’s paintings because they felt so homely, and you had forgotten about them. it was a wonder that dejun didn’t notice how they were slightly different from the final products.

but your thoughts are interrupted as you’re escorted into a room with a stage and chairs.

you and dejun get seated as all of the other chairs get filled.

the atmosphere goes quiet suddenly, and you look up to see renjun, and a girl on his arm, walking into the room.

a familiar cold fills the room. 

you zone out during his thank you speech, as he thanks his agent, his mother, his new fiance, and the museum. but you don’t want to hear it.

“and i’d like to thank a special someone, who will not be named, who helped me start this collection.” you look up, and renjun is staring right at you.

“they helped me get out of a nasty painting block, and provided me with so much more inspiration and growth. so thank you.” he finishes with a smile, all while still looking at you.

everything blurs to the showing of his pieces in the collection.

and for some reason, it feels familiar.

the yellows on the canvas danced freely in the first work, it looked so beautiful and comfortable; but when you got to the second one, blues and blacks and reds intruded the painting, and you felt yourself getting teared up.

maybe because you’ve known renjun for so long and seen his paintings so much, that you understand what the painting meant, and it will probably haunt you for the rest of your life. 

but while moving onto the next few paintings, the blues and blacks and reds slowly faded, and a new colour abruptly pops up and the yellow disappears.

pink.

this is the first time you’ve seen renjun work with pink, and that must be something since you’ve known him since high school art class.

and you understand.

you follow dejun around to see the works closer, and you try to sink everything in, without getting visibly emotional. that would be something hard to get yourself out of.

you can’t hold yourself back from glancing at renjun, and his fiance.

she smiles happily as renjun shakes the hand of the museum director.

you’re not sure if renjun was actually looking at you while he said his speech, or even recognized you at all in the crowd, but it was impossible to not be selfish.

the progression of his works, discretely telling you that he’s moved on and that you should too.

but you can’t help but think, that should have been you, standing next to him happily wrapped around his finger as he talks about his paintings.

it would have all happened, if only you had waited.

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: huang renjun x f!reader

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: artist!renjun

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: angst

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬): one swear word

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1.6k (wow :0)

𝐚/𝐧: out of my own artist slump, i missed writing angst, i feel a bit musty. hope u enjoyed :)

i’d really like some feedback so feel free to reblog or comment anything about this one :D

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