#evan angst

For a second, your brain refused to connect the boy who used to split a single five hundred won ice pop with you on the very same curb to the boy who had his hair slicked back into an immaculate style, on what used to be the messy, soft hair with faded bleached hair ends out of DIY sessions with you.

As he stood up straight, adjusting the cuffs of his white shirt, his eyes swept over the familiar brick walls of his childhood home. They were the same deep, dark eyes, but the warmth had been filed away, it was already replaced by the dull glare of someone who has adapted Gangnam.

And before the ache in your chest could even settle, she stepped out.

She looked like a watercolor painting dropped into a dusty charcoal sketch. She wore a light, flowy silk dress that seemed completely immune to the oppressive provincial humidity, and as she stood up, the clean scent of her expensive perfume drifted lightly all the way up to your open window. Her skin was porcelain, almost as if untouched by the harsh sun.

She didn’t look snobbish or cruel. Not at all. In fact, as she looked around the modest neighborhood, her eyes held nothing but a gentle, curious warmth. She looked perfect. The embodiment of the life he was supposed to want.

Upstairs, behind the mesh screen of your window, your cheap red ballpoint pen felt heavy and ink-stained in your hand. You pulled back slightly into the shadows of your room, your heart hammering against your ribs as you watched Heeseung walk around the trunk to retrieve their pristine leather luggage. 

He didn't look up at your window. Not once.

You watched from the shadows of your room as he guided her through the stainless steel gate. The heavy iron shrieked slightly on its tracks, a sound that used to signal his arrival for your late-night walks, but now simply closed the door on a world you no longer belonged to.

The following days, you tried your best not to run into them.

In the morning, where you would usually do a morning walk to clear your thoughts before your revision, you changed the route. Instead of taking the paved path that cut right past his stainless steel gate, you took the narrow, unpaved dirt path behind the warehouses. 

It was a longer walk, and while it did do you good in numbers, the ground was uneven and dusty. And the morning sun hit it earlier, making the heat rise from the soil before seven o’clock. 

Around one in the afternoon, the stifling heat inside the house became too heavy to bear. The plastic fan was doing nothing but circulate the humid air when your mother called out from the kitchen mid-revision, asking you to run an errand. She would scold you for frowning as she hands you a faded nylon market bag and a few wrinkled ten thousand won bills to send you down to the traditional open-air market to buy some fresh summer radishes and perilla leaves for dinner.

You welcomed the excuse to step away from the suffocating mountain of lesson plans.

By dinner, you waited for your parents to mention anything about Heeseung. But it seemed they were too caught up in the seasonal decline of their restaurant. With the summer heat turning everyone away from hot stews, they had spent the entire day figuring out how to market naengmyeon to the local factory workers just to go by, their faces lined with exhaustion that always seemed to fill the kitchen. 

Your parents would eat their rice in heavy, preoccupied silence, their minds clearly calculating the cost of ingredients rather than who was parking next door. You kept your mouth shut, quietly chewing on your food, keeping the secret of his return tucked away under your tongue.

The next morning, you woke up before the sun could fully mask the town.

Following your new, exhausting routine, you slipped out of the house to take the dusty, unpaved path behind the warehouses, the rough earth biting into the soles of your shoes as the heat began to bleed into the morning air. It was a miserable walk, but it kept you safe.

At least, until late afternoon.

The restaurant was small. It was tucked beneath a low roof that trapped the thick summer heat despite the best efforts of two wall-mounted plastic fans. Before Heeseung had left for Seoul five years ago, this place hadn’t even existed. Back then, your parents were drowning under the weight of a failing hardware shop, constantly borrowing small sums just to keep the lights on.

For the last two hours, you had spent it by helping your mother wipe down the sticky oilcloth tables, your fingers smelling faintly of vinegar and radish broth. Surprisingly, the naengmyeon strategy had worked. A few local factory workers from the nearby textile plant had flooded the place during shift-change, leaving behind a mountain of stainless steel bowls and sticky condensation rings.

You were in the middle of clearing the farthest corner table, your oversized t-shirt damp at the small of your back, when the old glass door rattled on its frame.

The small brass bell chimed.

"Wow, it really smells like authentic naengmyeon!"

The melodic, crisp Seoul dialect made you freeze mid-motion, a stack of dirty bowls heavy in your hands. You slowly turned around. The familiar girl was stepping into the humid dining room, looking entirely like a refreshing breeze in a pale linen sun dress. She was fanning herself softly as her bright eyes eagerly took in the humble handwritten menu taped to the wall.

“Heeseung-ah, look,” she says as she turns back toward the door to pull him inside by his wrist, “their food sure does look and sound amazing. I feel like the cold noodles here are different than in Seoul. We have to try it!”

And there he was.

Heeseung let himself be dragged into the cramped, low-ceilinged restaurant, stepping over the threshold with a heavy, hesitant stride. He was wearing a simple slate-gray shirt, his hair soft and loose around his forehead from the heat. He looked smaller under the harsh fluorescent lights of your parents' shop, stripped of the grand Gangnam backdrop.

Then, his eyes scanned the room and locked right onto you.

The sudden stillness that washed over him was deafening. His arm went rigid in her grip. His eyes dropped to the dirty stainless steel bowls in your hands, to the damp fabric of your shirt, and finally to your face, flushed from the kitchen's steam. A raw, piercing flash of recognition shattered his facade.

“Hi!” The beautiful woman says as she walks toward you, a warm smile on her face, “how do we order?”

You felt your throat tighten, the weight of the dirty stainless steel bowls suddenly heavy in your hands. You looked at her pristine, porcelain face, and then past her shoulder, straight at Heeseung.

“Ah…” you swallowed hard, the word catching on a throat gone dry. You gripped the tray with the bowls, your knuckles white, forcing your gaze away from his searching eyes and onto her bright, expectant face, “you can just take any open table. We only serve two things during the summer… mul-naengmyeon and bibim-naengmyeon. You can just tell me what you’d like.”

“Oh, perfect! One of each, please,” she replied, her voice chiming with a cheerfulness that felt jarringly out of place in the stifling, low-ceilinged room. She turned, her linen dress swishing against the floor, and headed toward a small table directly beneath the oscillating wall-fan, "Heeseung-ah, come sit down. It's so cool right here."

Heeseung didn't answer. He didn't even blink. He stayed rooted to the worn linoleum floor, his gaze fixed on you with such a raw, hungry intensity that for a split second, the background noise of the refrigerator’s hum and the distant traffic seemed to vanish entirely.

“Heeseung-ah?" she called again, glancing back with a playful pout.

He snapped out of it, though his movements were jagged, stripped of the graceful, practiced ease he’d displayed when he first exited the car. He dragged his feet forward, his shoulders hunched in a way that suggested the very air in the room was crushing him. As he slid into the plastic chair opposite the girl, he kept his back angled toward the kitchen, but his profile remained sharply, painfully etched against the fluorescent lights.

He didn't look at the menu. He didn't look at her. He kept his eyes locked firmly onto the grain of the sticky oilcloth table, his jaw clenched so tightly that a small, pulsing muscle twitched in his cheek.

The girl, blissfully unaware of the tectonic plates shifting between you, reached for the stainless steel chopstick cylinder. She caught your eye and smiled again, a kind, pitying, yet genuinely friendly that made your stomach churn.

"I'll..." Your voice cracked, and you cleared your throat, terrified that if you stayed a second longer, you might say something unforgivable, "I'll go tell the kitchen. It’ll be out in a moment."

You turned, the heavy bowls clattering slightly as you moved, and practically fled through the swinging plastic strips that led to the kitchen. Behind you, you heard her voice, light and airy, continuing to fill the space you had just vacated.

You reached the sanctuary of the stainless steel counter, your lungs burning, and leaned against it. Your mother was at the stove, the massive pot of broth sending plumes of steam into the air, her back turned to you. She didn't see your face, didn't see the way your hands were shaking as you set the dirty dishes down with a deafening thud.

"Y/N?" your mother asked, not turning around, her voice weary, “what was their order?”

You stared at the small pad in your hand. You didn't answer. You couldn't. Through the small, greasy window that looked out into the dining area, you saw Heeseung reach up and finally, finally look toward the kitchen.

When she wasn’t looking at him.

His eyes were bloodshot. And for the first time in years, he wasn't looking at you with the hollow glare of a city man. He was looking at you with the terrified, drowning eyes of the boy who had never really left.

The next time you were acquainted with her, it happened while you were feeding Byeol, the neighborhood cat, just outside your house.

The plastic bag of dry kibble crinkled loudly in the quiet alleyway. You were crouched in the shadow of the low stone wall, your fingers lingering on Byeol’s soft, striped fur as he purred, a low, rhythmic sound that was the only thing keeping you grounded within the relentless cycle of senior year preparations and the suffocating, broth-scented labor of the restaurant.

It was well past midnight, where the neighborhood was silent, save for the distant, rhythmic chirping of crickets and the occasional hum of a stray insect. The only light came from a flickering, yellowed streetlamp at the corner of the alley, casting long, wavering shadows that made the familiar brick walls of your neighborhood look like a stage set.

“What’s his name?”

The question hung in the humid air, sudden and sharp, cutting through the rhythmic chirping of the crickets.

You froze. Your hand, still buried in the soft fur of Byeol’s neck, went rigid. You hadn’t heard her approach, perhaps because the expensive heels she wore weren't meant for the cracked asphalt of a countryside alleyway, or perhaps because you had been so deeply lost in the mimicry of a life that wasn't yours.

For a heartbeat, you didn’t breathe. You felt a wave of suffocation wash over you. You stared at the cat, his ears twitching at the sound of her voice, and for a second, you desperately wanted to just keep staring at him, to stay in the shadow of the stone wall until she simply dissolved into the darkness.

But the habit of a lifetime, the habit of "keeping your head down" and being the polite, invisible girl, prevailed.

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, your fingers trembling slightly as you finished smoothing Byeol’s fur. You forced your face into a neutral, polite mask before turning your head just enough to acknowledge her.

"His name is Byeol," you said, your voice sounding thin and foreign to your own ears. You kept your tone steady, carefully polite, "he’s a stray. He hangs around the kitchen when my parents are cooking."

“Oh, Byeol? Oh! He’s the cat Heeseung has been looking for awhile ago!”

Your heart stuttered, "I see," you managed, your voice barely rising above the chirping of the crickets. You stood up, brushing the dust from your knees, a performative movement to hide the fact that your hands were shaking, “Byeol is a charmer here.”

"He said he remembered the cat used to sleep on his porch," she continued, her voice light, shimmering with that effortless, Seoul-bred grace. She didn't seem to notice the way you were pulling yourself back, inch by inch, into the shadows, “Oh, wait, sorry, do you even know Heeseung? It’s the man I was with a while ago in your restaurant!”

Oh, I know him very well, you thought.

You paused, well, knew.

The silence that followed her question stretched, pulled taut by the weight of everything you couldn't say. The crickets seemed to have stopped their chirping, leaving only the distant, heavy hum of the refrigerator from your parents' kitchen and the frantic thrumming in your own ears.

“I…” You started, all memories felt like boiling up in your throat. You looked at her, at the way she stood, so open and unburdened, how the irony of it all was a bitter, cold ache in your stomach.

It was as if you were brought back to all the years before. How Heeseung would wait for your class to end because his class ended earlier than yours. You remembered how Heeseung would carry your bag and try to vow to help you in maths and sciences, in return for your English tutoring. You remembered the way his hair used to look, tangled and soft from the humidity, the ends almost covering his eyes. How his cardigans seem bigger than his frame, the sleeves past his fists.

“I know him,” you finally said, choosing your words to keep them small, safe, and distant, “we were neighbors, schoolmates, even. Before he moved to Seoul. Everyone knows him around here.”

The girl’s face lit up, a genuine, radiant warmth that felt almost like a taunt, "Oh! So you grew up together? That’s so sweet. He hasn't told me many stories about his time here, just that it was... quiet."

Quiet.

You could laugh.

You wanted to, but it would have sounded like a sob. It hadn't been quiet. It had been loud, and messy, and filled with the terrifying, beautiful certainty of being each other’s entire world.

"Yeah," you murmured, keeping your gaze fixed on Byeol, who was now weaving between her ankles, his tail flicking with a traitorous familiarity, "it was very quiet."

“What’s your name?” she asks, smiling at you.

The question felt like an anchor dropped into a shallow sea, simple and grounding, yet it threatened to drag you under.

You hesitated. In this town, your name was a fixed point. It was the name written on the honor roll in the town hall, the name your parents called when the restaurant was overflowing with orders, the name Heeseung used to call out when he wanted to share a joke or a secret.

But here, standing in the dark alleyway under the flickering streetlamp, it felt like an intrusion. To tell her your name was to officially introduce yourself to the life he had built without you.

“Y/N, Y/L/N Y/N.” you whispered.

The name felt fragile on your tongue, a relic of a version of yourself that still held onto the idea that some promises were meant to be kept.

“Hello, Y/N,” she smiled so irritatingly warmly, as if she wasn’t looking at her lover’s past, “I’m Minju, Choi Minju!”

Minju. That is her name.

Goddamn it. Could she get any more perfect?

You forced a smile, though it felt like you were pulling at skin that had been sun-scorched and raw. You could imagine her saying it in a Seoul cafe, the sound of it likely gracing the guest lists of charity galas or high-end openings. It was a name that belonged to a life of curated experiences, not one earned in the humid, grease-stained trenches of a failing hardware store turned noodle shop.

"Nice to meet you, Minju," you said. The words tasted like dry crackers, brittle and flavorless.

“I’m really excited to stay here for the summer, Y/N-ssi!” Minju says, “I decided to bring Heeseung back to his hometown because he looks so gloomy. And given the vibe of this neighborhood, I know I’m also going to fall in love with this place!”

Gloomy.

You couldn’t even believe your own ears. Heeseung, the boy who promised he would never leave the town, and if he did, he would forever hold the town in his heart because you were in it, the boy who used to laugh out loud whenever he caught up with you on his bike, the boy who wore his heart on the sleeves of his oversized cardigans.

Who willingly left you without a proper goodbye, felt gloomy in the city.

You think it was because this town had already broken him before he could welcome the city. But Minju thinks the other way around. She thought the cure was to bring him back to the very place that had effectively broken him.

You almost think Minju was offensive. She wasn’t just being nice, she was being patronizing in a way that made your skin crawl. She spoke about the town you desperately wanted to escape from – your suffocating reality – as if it were a vintage spot in the hopes of fixing her boyfriend.

And that boyfriend happens to be Heeseung.

Your Heeseung.

Or…he was your Heeseung.

“It’s definitely…different from the city,”  you tried to say, your voice tighter than before. You kept your gaze low, focused on the way Byeol was now weaving between her ankles, his tail flicking with a friendly lilt as if insinuating that whoever you talked to was immediately his friend.

“Different is good!” Minju chirped, her eyes dancing as she looked around at the paint of the brick walls and the flickering streetlamp, “Everything is so authentic, you’re so lucky to experience life like this in a soulful place, Y/N-ssi.”

Oh, you wanted to scream.

You wanted to pull your hair out.

You wanted to tell her about the monthly utility bills that made your mother’s hand shake. You wanted to tell her about the rusted blades of the fan that did nothing to stop the heat of your panic when you thought about exams. You wanted to tell her that this soulful place was where you were learning how to bury your dreams just to survive the next day.

The very soulful place Heeseung needed to escape from.

“Yeah,” you breathed, “it has its own rhythm.”

She looked at you, her smile softening into something that almost looked like genuine interest, “Well, I hope to see you around, Y/N-ssi! It was so lovely meeting you. We’ll definitely stop by the shop again for more of that cold noodles. It’s truly a hidden gem.”

Please don’t, you thought. Please, just stay in your pristine world and leave the dust to us.

“Sure,” you said anyway, “enjoy your stay.”

She waved a small, manicured hand and began to walk back toward the main road, the rhythmic click of her heels echoing against the alley walls like a countdown. You stayed rooted to the spot, watching her silhouette shrink until she disappeared around the corner, heading back toward that sturdy stainless steel gate.

Once she was gone, the silence of the alleyway rushed back in, heavier and colder than before. You were alone, but the space where she had stood felt contaminated.

You looked toward the house next door. The windows were dark, but the silence from within felt loud, heavy with the absence of the boy who used to belong to this street. He wasn't out here to check on you, or to explain why he was back, or to apologize for the life he’d chosen.

He was just there, behind those walls, and for the first time, you realized that the "quiet" he’d described to her was actually a barricade. He hadn't just moved to Seoul; he had built a wall, and you were standing on the wrong side of it, holding a bag of cat food and the wreckage of a summer you never asked for.

The first encounter with him happened during your caffeine run in the nearby convenience store.

It was one of those days that reading through pamphlets and the sheer monotony of lesson plans had left your brain feeling static. You needed caffeine, or at the very least, the cold, artificial hum of the neighborhood convenience store to reset your system.

A change of scenery, if you will.

You were standing by the refrigerated section, your eyes scanning the rows of energy drinks, when the automatic sliding door gave a familiar, screeching whoosh.

You didn't look up. You were too busy trying to decide between a cheap coffee pouch and an iced tea. But then, the air in the aisle changed. It shifted, suddenly permeated by the sharp, expensive scent of leather and something citrusy, a stark, sterile contrast to the smell of dust and stagnant heat that usually defined this place. You heard the rhythmic, crisp footsteps of someone wearing expensive soles. They stopped right beside you.

As you watched through your peripherals, he reached into the fridge. You braced yourself to see his hand wrap around a cheap, sugary coffee pouch, the kind he used to chug before your study sessions. But instead, his fingers bypassed the row of cheap drinks entirely. He pulled out a bottle of cold brew, a minimalist glass bottle with a label in an elegant, modern font.

A cold, sharp twist of dread coiled in your stomach. It wasn't just that he was buying something different; it was the way he did it: with a precise, unhurried grace that felt entirely foreign to the boy who used to struggle to fish out enough coins for a two-for-one snack deal.

He didn't acknowledge you. He began to step away, his posture rigid, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

"Heeseung?"

The name felt heavy on your tongue, rusty from five years of disuse.

He stopped. He didn't turn around immediately, but his shoulders squared, the fabric of his shirt pulling tight. When he finally shifted, he didn't look at you with the soft, crinkling-eyed recognition you’d spent years dreaming about. He looked at you with a polite, vacant neutrality. 

The kind of look you’d give a stranger asking for directions.

“Oh,” he starts, his voice clipped and devoid of the melodic provincial lilt that used to make his sentences sound like a song, “Hello, I didn’t recognize you for a second. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

You wanted to grimace. 

“It has,” you managed, your heart hammering against your ribs, “I saw you yesterday. At the shop.”

“Right,” he says without a blink, “My friend – Minju, she says really enjoyed them.”

Before you could respond, the automatic doors hissed again, and Minju appeared, her presence as vibrant and light as his was dark and heavy. 

She walked into the aisle, her eyes brightening the moment they landed on you. "Oh! It's Y/N-ssi! We meet again!"

She stepped into your space, completely oblivious to the fact that the man standing beside her had just gone statue-still. She didn't notice the way Heeseung’s jaw was locked, or the way his hand was white-knuckling that expensive glass bottle. She just saw two people who "knew" each other.

"I was just telling Heeseung we should explore more around town," Minju chirped, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, completely bypassing the tension radiating off him, "We’re going to the old reservoir later for the sunset. You should come with us! It’s so much more fun with a local guide, right Heeseung-ah?"

She looked up at him, her smile wide and expectant.

Heeseung didn't look at her. He kept his eyes locked on a point just above your shoulder, his face a mask of practiced indifference. "Y/N-ssi is probably busy," he said, his voice flat, "she has to help in the restaurant."

Y/N-ssi.

Damn. It hurt more than you realized.

Fuck you, Heeseung, you wanted to say. But you didn’t. Even the thought of cussing him out hurt you more than you thought.

"Oh, nonsense!" Minju dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand, her bangles chiming, a sharp, expensive sound in the stale air of the shop. She turned her bright, searching gaze back to you, completely blind to the static electricity crackling between you and Heeseung, "Everyone needs a break, especially when you're working so hard. It’s barely a two-hour drive to the reservoir, and the sunset there is supposed to be breath-taking. Surely you can spare an hour for some fresh air?"

She spoke with the easy, unburdened confidence of someone who had never had to count change for a meal or sweat over a boiling pot of broth for twelve hours straight. To her, an afternoon at the reservoir was a simple, charming item on a travel itinerary.

You looked at Heeseung.

He was staring at the refrigerated display case, his reflection caught in the glass: a stranger wearing your first love's face. His hand, gripping the neck of that imported cold-brew, was so tight his knuckles had turned the color of bone. He was waiting for you to decline. He was praying you would say no, so he could preserve the fragile, carefully curated reality he’d constructed in Seoul and keep his two worlds from colliding.

"Actually," you said, your voice cutting through the hum of the store, steady and cold, "I think a bit of fresh air would be good. The restaurant has been so busy lately, I haven't seen a sunset in weeks."

You didn't look at Minju when you said it. You kept your gaze locked on Heeseung. You wanted him to see the challenge in your eyes, the quiet declaration that you weren't going to just fade into the background of his tour.

The change in him was instantaneous. The clinical, detached mask he’d been wearing didn't break, but it cracked. For a heartbeat, his eyes flickered. A dark, raw flash of recognition that bypassed five years of silence and landed squarely on the girl he used to share dreams with on this very floor.

"See? I knew you’d say yes!" Minju chirped, oblivious to the atmosphere that had turned razor-sharp. She reached out and tugged Heeseung’s arm, her movements fluid and careless, "It’ll be so much better with a local. It’s too quiet with just us, and honestly, Heeseung-ah, you need to loosen up. You've been so tense since we crossed the provincial border."

Heeseung finally looked away from you, his gaze snapping back to Minju. He forced a smile: a thin, brittle thing that didn't reach his eyes, and nodded, though his movements were jagged, stripped of the grace he’d been projecting.

“Would five be okay, Y/N-ssi?” Minju asked.

“Yeah, five is okay…” You muttered, starting to regret your impulsivity.

"Perfect!" Minju beamed, entirely content, "I'll see you at five, Y/N-ssi!"

They turned and walked toward the register, Minju’s heels clicking rhythmically, Heeseung’s heavy, expensive loafers trailing behind her. You stood in the aisle, clutching your cheap coffee pouch, and watched him go. As he passed the glass door, he didn't look back, but he didn't have to. You could see the way his shoulders were hunched, the way he walked with the heavy, uneven gait of a man carrying a secret that was slowly eating him alive.

The door hissed shut behind them.

You were left in the suffocating quiet of the convenience store. You felt the cold sting of that Y/N-ssi still humming in the air, a reminder of the chasm he’d put between you. You had just invited yourself to an impending doom. And as you walked to the counter to pay, your heart was hammering against your ribs.

Now, other than the grease of stainless bowls, you now had to survive the sunset.

The air had been thick with the smell of scorched grass and the faint, sweet perfume of cheap lilies. You had sat in the back of the school gym, hands trembling inside your sleeves, watching him walk across the stage in that stiff, charcoal-black polyester toga. A gold medal was hanging around his neck as he looked like a stranger even then. 

Heeseung met your eyes from the stage, and he nodded, his smile turning bright, delighted to see you at his graduation.

“Hey, hoobae,” Heeseung calls you out in the midst of the chaotic noise of clicking camera shutters and congratulatory shouting like a blade. It was a term of endearment that felt heavy with the weight of the years you’d spent trailing behind him, always one grade level behind, always watching him prepare to leave for a world you weren't yet part of.

He excused himself from his mother, who was busy smoothing the lapel of his toga, and walked toward you. In the harsh fluorescent lights of the gym, the gold medal against his chest caught the light, a gleaming testament to his departure. He looked radiant, polished, and terrifyingly ready to go.

"You actually came," he said, his voice softer now, dropping the playful hoobae for something quieter, more intimate. He smelled of laundry detergent and that specific, sharp scent of nervous excitement.

You stood there, clutching the small, modest bouquet you’d bought from the market, nothing like the expensive, imported flowers his parents had brought, but it was all you could afford. "I told you I would," you replied, your voice sounding thin to your own ears.

"I know," he smiled. It was the same smile he’d worn since you were children, but there was a flicker of something else in the corners of his eyes, a desperation he was trying to hide behind his graduation glow. He reached out, his hand hovering near your shoulder before he dropped it, as if afraid to break the fragile, perfect image of the day, “Can we…go somewhere for a second? The air in here is suffocating.”

“How about your parents?”

“They know I always escape from their gaze, and they know I’m with you. Come on, I’ll drive.”

You followed him out, the transition from the humid gym to the cooling evening air feeling like a shift in reality. The sky was turning that bruised, violent purple, and the cicadas had started their rhythmic, frantic pulse in the trees surrounding the school.

He didn't take you far, just to the edge of the school's parking lot, where his father’s old sedan sat under the flickering light of a streetlamp. He opened the door for you, his head tilting, motioning for you to get in.

The car ride to the reservoir was filled with a brittle, humming silence. Heeseung drove with a jagged focus, his knuckles white against the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the darkening road ahead. You sat in the passenger seat, the modest bouquet resting on your lap, the cheap plastic wrap crinkling with every bump in the road.

When he finally cut the engine near the embankment, the silence of the countryside rushed in. Heeseung stepped out, still in his toga, and you followed, the thin fabric of your dress doing little to shield you from the sudden drop in temperature.

You shivered, the cool evening air clinging to your skin like a damp sheet. Heeseung noticed instantly. Without a word, he reached into the back seat, pulling out a thick, oversized, cardigan, the one he’d been wearing for weeks, the one that smelled permanently of old books and his specific, warm cologne.

He draped it over your shoulders. The fabric was heavy and oversized, swallowing you whole, its sleeves hanging past your fingertips. As he settled it around you, his hands lingered on your shoulders for a second longer than necessary.

It was a long beat of silence. Heeseung sat on the hood of his sedan with you. His eyes immediately fixed on the water, a mirror of the dying light of the sunset.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said suddenly, not turning to look at you, “what the fuck, I’m leaving tomorrow.”

You laughed, a breathless, startled sound. A laugh that was meant to dispel the sudden, suffocating weight of his words. You leaned back against the windshield, hooking your fingers into the oversized, frayed cuffs of his cardigan.

“Yeah, what the fuck,” you echoed, your voice light and mocking, a playful smirk tugging at your lips to hide the way your chest suddenly ached, “I really thought you’d be stuck in this town forever with me, trying to navigate through here and hope we’d get in Seoul for some job.”

You missed the way Heeseung paused to look at you. The kind of look that felt like he was memorizing your features for a long, indefinite absence. His eyes flickered down to the way you were wrapped in his cardigan, then back up to your face, his jaw tight.

“You think I’m not cut out for Seoul, Y/N-ah?” he asked, his voice playful, “you think low of the batch valedictorian.” He says with a proud lilt, immediately bringing the gold medal in between his teeth in an attempt to look arrogant.

“Cut it out, it doesn’t suit you,” you say, pushing his shoulder.

Heeseung let out a soft, huffed laugh, the gold medal clinking slightly against his teeth before he dropped it, letting it swing back against the polyester of his toga. He didn't move away when you pushed him; instead, he leaned into the touch, his shoulder bumping yours with a familiar, easy weight.

"Suit me or not, it's mine," he teased, his eyes crinkling in that way that usually signaled he was about to get under your skin. He reached up, casually untangling a stray lock of hair that the evening wind had whipped across your forehead, his fingers lingering near your temple.

“I have credit in that, oppa, I helped you ace your English. Don't go to Seoul acting like a genius when half of your vocabulary came from my study guides.”

Heeseung let out a soft, huffed laugh, "Oh, my bad," he murmured, his tone shifting from teasing to something softer, more deliberate. "How could I forget? You’re right. You’re the reason I’m even standing here."

Before you could retort, he reached up, his fingers steady as he removed the medal from his neck. The movement was slow, almost solemn. He leaned in, the scent of laundry detergent and nervous energy surrounding you, and slipped the heavy gold medal over your head.

The weight of it hit your chest. The cold metal against your skin, surprising and heavy. It felt like a promise, or maybe a confession.

He didn't pull back immediately. He stayed close, his hands resting on your shoulders, his thumbs tracing the collarbone where the ribbon now sat. The playful, arrogant "batch valedictorian" was gone, replaced by a gaze so intense it felt like he was trying to commit your face to memory.

"There," he said, his voice dropping to a low, rough hum. "Now it’s yours, too. Consider it my down payment."

"Down payment for what?" you whispered, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs.

Heeseung didn't answer right away. He just looked at you, really looked at you, as if he were weighing the cost of everything he was about to lose.

"For when I come back," he finally said.

“I’m gonna follow you to Yonsei, just watch,” you teased, leaning back on the hood of the sedan, your feet swinging in the cool night air as your hand traced the medal. You laughed, a light, airy sound that felt like it belonged to a completely different version of you, “I’ll be the annoying freshman who hangs around your locker, just to ruin your reputation.”

Heeseung chuckled, a low, rumbling sound in his chest. He turned to face you, his knees brushing against your hip, “Yeah? You think you’ll be able to find me? I’ll hide from you, Y/N. I’ll be the most elusive student on campus.”

“You couldn't hide from me if you tried,” you countered, your voice dropping to a whisper. The playful banter died, replaced by the heavy, suffocating reality of the next morning.

The air grew still. He leaned in, the distance between you vanishing until you could see the flecks of gold in his irises, the way his breath hitched as he stared at your lips. The world felt like it was tilting on its axis, a terrifying, beautiful precipice. His hand came up, his thumb brushing your jawline, his touch searing and soft all at once.

Then, the sharp, shrill vibration of his phone cut through the dark like a knife.

The screen lit up his face, the harsh white light revealing the tension and the panic in his eyes. Mom.

Heeseung froze. The spell shattered. He looked at you, then at the phone, his face crumpling in a moment of raw, unmasked agony before he shoved the device back into his pocket without answering. But the moment was gone. The distance returned, wider than it had been before.

"I have to go," he said, his voice ragged, "dinner. They're waiting."

You arrived first at the reservoir. 

The place where his sedan was parked five years ago now had a wooden bench, a small sign of the slow improvement of the town. 

The wooden bench was new, polished and sturdy, standing in the exact spot where he had once sat on the hood of his car, shivering in his toga. You walked over to it, running a hand over the smooth, sanded wood. It felt sterile, impersonal. A "tourist" addition to a place that held the most jagged memories of your life.

You turned to face the water. The sunset was already beginning to bleed across the horizon, turning the sky into that same bruised, violent purple that had haunted your dreams for five years.

You heard the sound before you saw them. 

The low, sophisticated purr of a luxury car engine, a sound so entirely out of place in this valley that it made the very air seem to vibrate. The car pulled up, and the contrast was jarring. They looked like an advertisement for a life you hadn't chosen, polished and pristine, pulling up to a backdrop of crumbling embankments and wild, untamed grass.

The doors opened.

Minju stepped out first, her dress fluttering in the breeze like a white petal. She looked effortless, her hair caught in a perfect, windswept style that you knew would take you hours of effort to replicate.

And then, Heeseung emerged.

He was wearing a light, linen shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the forearms you used to watch over textbooks. He looked good. He looked like a man who had successfully left the valley behind, a man who had traded his old cardigans for clean, expensive silhouettes. But as he scanned the area and his gaze landed on you, his shoulders locked.

"Y/N-ssi!" Minju called out, her voice bright and unbothered by the sudden shift in the atmospheric pressure. She trotted over, her heels clicking against the earth, "We made it! Is the sunset as beautiful as I heard?"

Yeah, the same sunset where I let him go, you thought.

"It’s not bad," you said instead, your voice steady. Though you could almost feel yourself being sucked back five years ago, when you could feel the cold metal of his medal pressing against your skin.

Minju sat beside you on the bench, and Heeseung took the spot beside her, leaving a palpable gap between you and him.

“So, Y/N-ssi,” Minju started, smoothing the fabric of her skirt, her eyes bright with the kind of curiosity that only people who have never had to struggle possess, “how long have you been in town?”

The question hung in the air, deceptively simple, like a stone dropped into a deep, dark well. You didn’t need to look at Heeseung to know he was holding his breath. You could feel the weight of his attention, even though he kept his gaze pointedly toward the horizon, where the violet light was beginning to bruise into black.

“My whole life,” you replied, your voice cool and level. You kept your hands tucked into the oversized sleeves of the cardigan you were wearing, a different one, though the phantom memory of the one he once gave you made your fingers twitch. "I’ve never had a reason to leave. It’s a quiet place, but it’s consistent. It doesn't ask much of you."

“But there are a lot of opportunities in Seoul! Have you tried getting in SKY?”

Minju’s question hung there. SKY. The prestigious trinity of Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei. The very word was a gilded cage of expectations, a social gatekeeper that separated the people who belonged in the city from the people who were meant to stay behind.

You didn't have to look at Heeseung to know exactly what that name did to him. Yonsei. The school he had worked himself to the bone to reach. The place that had required him to shed the boy who sat on that sedan hood in favor of the man sitting beside Minju right now.

“I did,” you whispered, “I didn’t get in.”

Minju’s expression shifts from polite curiosity to a sudden, flustered apology, "Oh! I... I’m so sorry, Y/N-ssi. I didn't mean to - I just thought..." She trails off, her hand moving instinctively toward her throat, her face flushing a deep, embarrassed pink. She is suddenly aware that she has touched a nerve, though she has no idea just how deeply it cuts.

Heeseung, however, remains deathly silent.

He doesn't look at Minju to tell her to stop. He doesn't offer a platitude to make you feel better. He is staring at the water with a terrifying intensity, his hands buried so deep in his pockets that his knuckles are straining the fabric. You can see the tremor in his shoulder, the way he is vibrating with the effort of not turning to look at you.

For the first time since they arrived, he looks small. The prestige of his Yonsei degree, his linen shirt, his "Seoul" aura…it all seems to dissolve in the face of your honesty. He knows you’re lying, or perhaps he doesn't know, but the pain in your voice is real enough.

"It's alright," you say, your voice smooth and hollow, cutting through Minju’s awkward apology like glass, “it probably wasn’t meant for me. I realized pretty quickly that I was better suited for the life I have here.”

You turn your head then, just a fraction, catching Heeseung’s profile. You see his throat bob as he swallows, a slow, painful movement.

"If you don’t mind me asking," Minju starts, tilting her head with that practiced, gentle empathy of someone who has never been told 'no' in her life, "you clearly have the intellect for it, you’re so articulate! You must have had some bad luck that year, surely? Everyone knows SKY is just a crapshoot anyway."

“Maybe,” you say, your voice soft, almost kind, “it happens, Minju-ssi. Don’t be sorry about it.”

As the night passed, you found yourself in a rhythm with Minju. She would ask questions about you, then Heeseung, then about the town. It was her attempt to get to know a part of Heeseung that he desperately wanted to keep hidden. 

You found out Minju was a Fine Arts student. Honors. And she met Heeseung while he was hunched over the school computer for God knows how long. You found out how she forced her way in Heeseung’s routine. How she always happens to find him in the campus café and how she would try to pick up his spirits when he looked too lost and undetermined.

It took a lot of Minju’s stories for you to realize that you lost parts of Heeseung – more parts than you could ever think about. At some point, you feel defeated and buried in the background, as the man who sports the face of the boy you greatly loved, wasn’t even the same person you fell in love with.

On the walk home, you felt a hole in your chest. It was as if you were grieving a person that was still alive. It was the kind of ache you feel deep in your bones, but there were no tears that formed in the rim of your eyes, and while you desperately wanted to cry, the best you could muster was a choked sob that could sum up the lump in your throat.

You blamed yourself for not getting in Yonsei. It was as if you were sucked back in five years ago, the moment you found the rejection letter, seeing your grades glaring at you with everything Remarkable, Exemplary. And the only thing that did not meet the cut-off scores for the scholarship admission were your English test scores. 

To you, it felt like a slap in the face.

Your parents didn’t even know you didn’t pass Yonsei. They lived with the lie that you chose to stay with them to help them in the restaurant that they were planning that time. You even tried for a reconsideration, writing the deans for reconsideration, annoyingly writing off all of your achievements – as well as Batch Salutatorian in the write-up. And while they did reconsider you, they couldn’t reconsider giving you a scholarship, saying they have already filled their roster, saying how it’s unfortunate, but they cannot make up another slot. They would give you a place in Education, majoring in English, but with a discounted 10% tuition fee. 

You didn’t risk it.

Like how you didn’t risk telling Heeseung how you felt before he left for the Seoul bus. Like how you didn’t risk trying harder to get into Yonsei to keep the promise of annoying Heeseung in the pristine walls of the university. 

Because you think the rewards that come after it did not have the same intensity as your risks. You laugh to yourself. Bitterly. Because for someone who was so brave in loving Heeseung, you think you are definitely a coward.

The moment you reach your room, you turn on the lights and immediately lay on the bed. The night was too heavy for you. 

The silence of your room is not a sanctuary; it is a cage.

You lie there, limbs splayed against the stiff, thin mattress, watching the dust motes dance in the harsh, yellowed light of the ceiling bulb. Your pulse has finally settled into a dull, rhythmic ache. The kind of tiredness that reaches deep in your bones.

You stare at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the paint until they look like the map of a city you were never allowed to enter.

Somewhere, on the other side of that thin brick wall, Heeseung is breathing the same air as you. Perhaps he is laughing at something Minju said, or perhaps he is standing on his porch, looking at the same stars that feel so much further away than they did five years ago. The proximity is agonizing. It’s like being tethered to a ghost; you can feel the pull, you can sense the chill of his presence, but every time you reach out, your hand finds only the cold, empty air of your own life.

You reach into the pocket of your coat and pull out your phone. The screen is dark, a black mirror reflecting a face that looks older, harder, and perpetually exhausted.

You think of the 10% discount. You think of the red ballpoint pen. You think of the English test scores that determined the geography of your entire existence. If you had just one more correct answer, would you be in Seoul right now? Would you be the one with the silk dress, the one with the Honors, the one who held his wrist and pulled him into a life that made sense?

You close your eyes, and for a fleeting, dangerous second, you let yourself imagine it.

You imagine walking into a classroom in Yonsei, the scent of expensive paper and polished wood replacing the smell of vinegar and broth. You imagine Heeseung looking up from a desk, his eyes not filled with the terrified look he gave you at the restaurant, but with the uncomplicated, vibrant recognition of a boy who was still yours.

But then the hum of the refrigerator from the restaurant downstairs cuts through the silence. The reality of the monthly utility bills, the exhaustion lining your mother’s face, and the impending dread of the teacher’s appointment exam pulls you back under.

The dream dissolves, leaving behind only the bitter aftertaste of a life you’ve been forced to curate. You roll onto your side, pulling your knees to your chest, hugging the emptiness as if it were a physical thing.

You are a coward who stayed. You are a coward who settled. And the worst part is, you are the only one who knows the truth of it, that you aren't waiting for a miracle. You are just waiting for the day you finally stop caring that you threw your own life away for a boy who stopped looking back.

The air in the restaurant felt heavier than usual, smelling of vinegar and the metallic tang of the stainless steel bowls you’d been scrubbing all afternoon. When Minju walked in, she looked like an illustration from a magazine: clean, crisp, and hopelessly detached from the grime of the lunch rush.

She didn’t come alone. She carried a stack of heavy, thick booklets. The official Teacher’s Appointment Exam review materials. 

"Y/N-ssi!" she called out, her voice a bright contrast to the low, tired hum of the local workers eating in the corner. She slid into the booth you had just cleaned, dropping the books onto the table with a soft, expensive thud, "I went to the city bookstore this morning. I remember you saying you were preparing for the exams, and I know how hard it is to find the right materials in the province, so..."

She pushed the books toward you. The spines were pristine, the covers devoid of the wear and tear of a library copy. They were beautiful, authoritative, and utterly humiliating.

"I hope these help," she beamed, her eyes crinkling with a kindness that felt like a serrated edge, "I’m an Art major, so this is all ancient Greek to me, but I know you’ll be a fantastic teacher. You have that... quiet, steady patience about you."

You stared at the books. You thought of your own annotated copies, the ones held together by scotch tape and sheer, frantic willpower, covered in your nervous, looping handwriting.

"Thank you," you managed, your voice sounding thin, even to yourself, "You shouldn't have."

“Nonsense! Consider it as my gratitude for being one of the people that made Heeseung who he is, for being a part of this town,” she smiles, “speaking of Heeseung, I figured I’d let him cool off in the car and I come here to say hello. Honestly, I think he just needs a nap.”

The conversation drifted, as it always did, back to him. You found yourself trapped in the rhythm of it, the supportive local friend role you had inadvertently auditioned for.

By the time the restaurant slowed down for dinner, Minju had invited you to join her for a quick bite at the small cafe near the park. You went, mostly because you were a coward who didn't know how to say no to someone who was actively trying to be your friend.

The cafe was quiet, the warm lighting masking the tired lines on your face. Minju had her chin in her hands, her expression finally turning dim. She looked tired. Young, cheerful, but with confusion and dread on her face.

“Y/N, how long have you known Heeseung?”

The question hung in the air, suspended between the clinking of porcelain cups and the low, muffled hum of the cafe’s refrigerator. You stared down at the foam of your latte, the intricate heart pattern beginning to dissolve into a muddy, shapeless swirl.

How long have you known Heeseung?

Long enough. Long enough that you could trace the map of his insecurities without ever looking at him. Long enough that you knew the exact rhythm of his breathing when he was lying, and the specific way he gripped a pen when he was terrified of failing.

Minju, be more specific, you wanted to say, the Heeseung then, or the Heeseung now?

Because clearly, Heeseung now felt like a different person. He was a sleek, polished version of the boy who once smelled of old books and laundry detergent. The version you loved and had let go of against your will.

"We grew up on the same street," you said instead, "we were... neighbors. For a long time."

Minju nodded, her fingers tracing the rim of her saucer. Her movements were elegant, practiced, the kind of poise that came from never having to rush through a meal or worry about closing times.

"Neighbors," she mused, a small, sad smile playing on her lips. "He never talks about it. He talks about Seoul like it’s the only place that ever mattered, but sometimes, when he’s sleeping, he murmurs things. Things about the rain. About a bike. About... someone who helped him with his English."

Your breath hitched, a sharp, jagged intake of air that you quickly masked by taking a sip of the tepid coffee. The taste was bitter, clinging to the back of your throat.

Minju searched your eyes, in search of a piece of a puzzle that she couldn’t quite fit together, “Heeseung’s brilliant, Y/N. He’s the most capable person I know, but there’s a part of him that’s just... hollowed out. I keep trying to fill it with gallery openings, with my plans for our future, with everything I think he should want. But he just looks through me."

You looked at her, at the genuine, desperate hope in her eyes. She wanted a backstory, a reason. Anything she could fix. Anything she could hold against the hollowed-out parts of him. She had no idea that the someone he was grieving was sitting right across from her, wearing a faded t-shirt and smelling of dish soap, holding a spoon that felt heavier than a lead weight.

Minju let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping, “I just wish I knew how to reach him.”

You stared at her. The looming fact that she harbors the same feelings that you have for Heeseung. You feel desperation reeking off her. The worry etched on her face, despite her picture-perfect aura and stance. In the middle of her organization and beauty, you can feel the slight tilt of her uncertainty caused by Heeseung.

"Maybe," you said, forcing your lips into a gentle, pitying curve, "you should stop trying to reach him. Maybe you should just let him be wherever he is."

Minju looked at you, startled, her eyes wide. "But I love him, Y/N. How can I just let him be?"

It hit you just like that. It was a silent confirmation that she does love him. You don’t even know if she loves him as much as you do – or maybe more, you didn’t dare to compare. The words hung between you, a fragile, glass-like truth that shimmered with the heat of her confession. I love him.

It wasn't just a statement; it was a surrender. As she stared at you, waiting for some nugget of wisdom or a secret key to unlock his heart, you felt a cold, jagged realization pierce through your ribs. You had spent five years believing that your love was a unique, solitary burden. A private monument you tended to in the dark. But looking at the raw, undisguised terror in Minju’s eyes, you realized that love wasn't a singular experience at all. 

You wanted to laugh, a dry, hollow sound that died in your throat before it could even reach your lips. It was almost absurd, the way the world seemed to orbit around a man who had spent five years trying to convince himself he was anchored to nothing.

He was lovable. That was the cruelest, simplest fact of all.

Even now, stripped of his old, oversized cardigans and his boyish hum, he carried a gravity that pulled people into his wake. You had known it back when he was just a boy shivering on a sedan hood, and Minju clearly knew it now, as she sat across from you, offering her entire soul to a man who kept his folded tightly in his pockets.

Regardless of the distance, regardless of the silence, regardless of the fact that he was actively trying to rewrite his own existence to exclude you, he was still the same boy who had made you feel like the center of the universe. The realization was a bitter pill. You realized that even if he never spoke to you again, even if he lived a thousand years in a city you couldn't reach, there would always be someone, somewhere, trying to love him.

You didn't answer. You couldn't. Because the answer, the only honest thing left in the world, was that sometimes, love isn't a bridge. Sometimes, love is just the act of standing back and watching someone walk away until they aren't even a speck on the horizon anymore.

"I don't know," you whispered, finally looking up to meet her gaze, "I really don't know."

The following days, it felt as if Minju forced you into their orbit.

She became the curator of your shared time, crafting deliberate, suffocating opportunities for the three of you to exist in the same space. It was as if she was match-making two ex-friends who didn’t want to be around each other anymore. She moved through the local landscape with a frantic, bright-eyed energy, attempting to weave the tapestry of your history into the glossy fabric of her own relationship, blissfully unaware that the thread she was pulling was the one holding the entire structure together.

You became a permanent fixture in the passenger seat of that luxury car, a silent, unwilling passenger in a life that wasn't yours to inhabit.

The interior of the vehicle always held the same stifling atmosphere. Minju occupied the space with an air of manic hospitality, constantly checking her phone, adjusting the navigation, and reaching back to touch your arm with a familiarity that made your skin crawl. She treated you like a talisman, a lucky charm she needed to hold close to coax the "best" out of Heeseung.

Heeseung, for his part, retreated into a stillness that bordered on the inanimate. He drove with a mechanical, rigid posture, his eyes fixed on the asphalt as if the road itself were the only thing keeping him from disintegrating. He didn't speak. He didn't look at you in the rearview mirror. He was a master of erasure, performing a quiet erasure on his own memories every time the tires crunched over the gravel of the valley roads.

Yet, the cracks were inevitable. They manifested in the small, involuntary things.

When a familiar song played on the radio, a track you and he had obsessed over during those long, rainy study sessions, you would see his hands tighten on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

When Minju, in her relentless pursuit of a "healing" narrative, would bring up a local landmark or a shared memory he had tried to bury, the air in the car would thicken, becoming unbreathable. You would watch his jaw pulse, a rhythmic, frantic movement that signaled a storm he was barely containing.

Minju watched too.

Unfortunately, it also meant she watched how Heeseung unconsciously slipped into old habits with you.

The shifts were unnoticeable, almost imperceptible to anyone who hadn't spent their formative years memorizing the geometry of his movements. It wasn’t even betrayal. No, it was a series of reflexes that bypassed his conscious mind entirely.

When they stopped for coffee, Heeseung would order his drink with a splash of hazelnut syrup. A preference he had adopted five years ago specifically because you had once complained that plain black coffee tasted like dirt one time in your high school field trip in the nearest city. He would place the cup on the table, and without even glancing toward you, he would automatically slide the sugar packets to the left side of your coaster, exactly where you used to stash them during those marathon library sessions.

Minju would be mid-sentence, talking about an upcoming exhibition in Seoul, but her voice would trail off as she tracked his hand. She saw the way his fingers lingered on the edge of your table for a fraction of a second too long. The gesture was so intimate, so reflexive, that it felt like an intrusion of a private language she had no right to hear.

Then there were the silences. In the car, if the GPS glitched or they took a wrong turn down one of the winding roads outside the city, the old Heeseung would surface like an apex predator. Before Minju could even reach for her phone to re-calculate, Heeseung would instinctively turn onto the narrow path that bypassed the traffic, a shortcut you and he had discovered on that rusted bike years ago.

He didn't stop there. When a stray dog barked in the distance, a sharp, aggressive sound, he didn't just flinch; he instinctively leaned toward you, his shoulder angling as if to shield you from the noise, a physical habit born from protecting you from the neighborhood dogs when you were sixteen.

You were invited by Minju days after in a café downtown. The café was a study in clinical perfection. Chrome, glass, and the sterile, pressurized hum of an upscale espresso machine. It was a world away from the provincial dust of the life you and Heeseung were currently trapped in.

Minju sat across from you, her hands wrapped around a porcelain cup as if it were the only thing anchoring her to the earth. She looked immaculate, as always, but there was a fragility in the set of her shoulders.

A quiet, terrifying resignation.

She smiles at you when she sees you, inviting you to sit across from her and immediately telling you to order anything you want. You got the cheapest out of the options, too wary not to take her kindness for granted.

“Y/N,” Minju began, her finger tracing the delicate rim of her cup after a beat of silence. Her composure was poised, but you could see how she’s trying her best to hold everything in.

“I’ve always been so sure about everything in my life,” she added, her voice barely a ripple in the quiet, sterile space, “my career, my pace, the trajectory of the people I choose to keep in my orbit. I believed if I worked hard enough, if I was patient enough, I could map out a future where nothing was left to chance.”

She finally looked up, and the raw, unguarded depth in her eyes made your chest ache. There was no sharpness there, no defensive fire. Just a hollow, aching clarity.

“I look at my life in Seoul,” she continued, a sad smile touching her lips, “and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. It’s vibrant, it’s loud, it’s successful. I’ve always wanted color. But five years ago, I met a man who looked void of it. And since then, I spent every day trying to fill in the color, trying to make him feel real. I told myself his silences were just a sign of a complex mind. I told myself his distance was just the weight of his ambition.”

She paused, the silence stretching between you, the hiss of the espresso machine behind the counter, the chatter of the people – these were all filled with the heavy silence, too faint, but too much that it felt like a mockery. So mechanical, so precise. It felt as if life dared to mock the reality of your shared history.

“Minju–”

“I was so arrogant,” she cut you off, her voice dropping into that soft register, “I thought, with my persistence, with how I curated his schedule, how I managed his expectations, I thought I was helping him build a future. I didn’t realize I was just…hiding the key to a room he had already locked himself inside…a room he had never actually left.”

Minju looked at you, her glossy eyes taking in your figure and she wanted to laugh at the irony of it. All her life, she thought that by being smart enough, driven enough, beautiful enough, she thought she might have at least deserved him in the end. However, it dawned on her that she treated love like a transaction, a deal where she was the closer.

But looking at you now, she realized love isn’t conditional. 

It wasn’t a prize to be earned through accolades or a status to be maintained through sheer force of will. It was just…love. The simple, terrifying, unearned pull of one soul toward another, something that couldn’t be negotiated, or forced to conform to one’s wants.

“All these years, I thought I was the one who could be his salvation, his next and final chapter,” she whispered, her voice cracking for the first time, a sharp, jagged sound that she seemed unable to suppress, “I spent five years of playing the role of his muse, his partner. I was busy patting myself on the back for fixing him that I never realized he was just performing for me. He was wearing the clothes I picked, walking the path I paved, and all the while, he was just…waiting for everything to end.”

Minju looked down at her hands, her knuckles pale against the dark wood of the table, "You know what’s the most painful part? It’s not that he was lying to me. It’s that I was so convinced of my own importance that I didn't even notice I was holding him hostage."

“I look at you, and I see why he never truly arrived in Seoul. He couldn’t. His heart was still beating somewhere in the quiet of this province. His heart was buried under the weight of things left unsaid.”

She leaned back, her shoulders slumping just the slightest bit, the weight of the realisation finally settling into her bones.

“Y/N, I didn’t know about you. Not really. I thought you were just a girl from the province, his neighbor, someone who had to watch him grow up. If I had known, if I had understood that I was competing against someone…someone who loved him – or loves him – maybe I would have fought. Maybe I would have tried to be a villain.”

Minju laughed, “But I didn’t, because I saw the reason why Heeseung fell in love with you. Because I liked you enough to consider you my friend.”

Minju’s laugh was brittle, a sudden sound that seemed to shatter the polished silence of the café. It was devoid of joy, filled instead with a poignant, self-deprecating irony. 

“I spent months trying to understand him, trying to parse through his moods and his silence like they were code I needed to crack. And all the while, you were right there. And somehow, I realized that I loved the man that came out of your love.”

She smiled at you, “I looked at you when we met and I didn’t see a rival. I saw someone who lived in a quiet life I was struggling so hard to mimic. I liked you. I truly did. I found myself wanting to tell you about my conveniences, my inconveniences, because you were the only one who seemed to understand everything I was so unsure about.”

She let out a shaky breath, her gaze dropping to the table, “It was the most honest part of this whole charade, Y/N. Befriending you.”

Minju looked up at you again, her expression softening into something devastatingly tender. The mask of the high-achieving, city-bound artist was completely gone, leaving behind only a woman who had been hollowed out by her own realization.

“If I had known you were the one he was running toward, I would have hated you with every ounce of my being. I would have made you the villain, I would have made myself the victim, and I would have fought to keep him because that’s what I do. I always win.”

She shook her head slowly, a sad, knowing smile touching her lips, “But I couldn't hate you. Because every time I looked at you, I saw the version of him he was so desperate to protect. I saw the reason he was worth saving. And I couldn't destroy the very thing he loved most in this world, even if it meant my own heart was the one that had to be sacrificed to keep it intact.”

Her hand reached out, not to touch you, but to hover over the table, a testament to her restraint.

“I saw it the other night, Y/N. I watched him look at you, and for the first time, I didn't see the man who lives in my apartment in Seoul. I saw a man who had been holding his breath for a thousand days and had finally, terrifyingly, been allowed to exhale. It wasn't just longing. It was recognition. It was the look of a soul realizing it had been standing in the wrong life for the past years.”

She sighed, a long, ragged sound that she instantly checked, smoothing her expression back into that mask of calm, now reaching out to hold your tensed, clasped hands, “I lost this fight the moment I met him, Y/N. I lost it five years ago, and I’ve just been too stubborn to notice. I fell in love with a man who was already halfway home, and I spent five years trying to convince him that home wasn't worth returning to. That’s not love. That’s just… a very expensive, very beautiful kind of selfishness.”

Minju stood up then, the movement fluid and final, as if she were stepping out of a role she’d been cast in for too long. She didn’t look at the check she had already paid; she didn't look at the cafe that now felt like a stage from which the actors had all departed. She simply stood there, a woman who had meticulously dismantled her own heart to see what lay underneath.

“I’m leaving for Seoul tomorrow,” she said, her voice reclaiming its steady, melodic line, though the vulnerability remained in her eyes, “I’ll be returning to Seoul with the relief that I have made two people who are important to me…happy.”

She reached out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind your ear, a gesture so sisterly, so kind, that it made the grief in your throat sharpen into a physical ache.

“Don’t mourn for me, Y/N-nie,” she whispered, her smile soft and devoid of any lingering bitterness, “I’m going to be fine. I’m going to go back to my color. But make sure, for both our sakes, that he finally finds his way back to the only place he ever actually lived. Don’t let him drift, he’s been starving for the sound of his own name from your lips for five years.”

She gave you her sweetest smile as she leaned down to hug you. But it was quick enough for you not to see the tears falling down her eyes. She bowed and turned, her stride as immaculate as it had been the day you met her, and began to walk toward the door. She didn’t look back to see the tears you were finally letting fall, and she didn’t look back to see the empty space where her future had been.

She walked out into the harsh, indifferent light of the afternoon. A woman who had traded her heart for the truth, choosing to lose the man she loved so that he could finally be free to be who he was. 

And for you, that was a beautiful kind of love.

When Heeseung dropped you off at your house, the rain started to pour.

It wasn't a gentle, summer drizzle; it was a violent, lashing downpour that turned the gravel path into a slurry of mud. Heeseung had hesitated, his hand lingering on the gear shift, his jaw tight as he stared at the blurred windshield. He looked like he wanted to say something, but then his phone buzzed again. A sharp, insistent vibration that made him flinch.

“Hoobae,” he called out instead, “follow me in Yonsei, hm?”

“I hope you don’t get tired of me,” you promised, your voice barely audible over the relentless drumming of the rain against the roof. You reached out, your fingers brushing his hand on the gear shift. A fleeting, desperate contact before you pushed the door open.

The moment you stepped out, the world turned into a gray, suffocating blur. The rain hit you with the force of a physical blow, cold and stinging, instantly soaking through the cardigan he’d draped over your shoulders. It felt like a shroud. You hurried toward the porch, the mud clutching at your heels, your heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against your ribs.

You were reaching into your pocket, your movements clumsy and frantic, desperate to find your phone. You needed to check the time, you needed to plan if you were getting a wink of sleep from the uncertainty of tomorrow.

But as your foot hit the bottom step of the porch, the slick wood betrayed you.

The world tilted violently. You went down hard, your shoulder slamming into the porch post with a dull, sickening thud. You heard the clack of plastic against concrete before your phone skittered into the pooling water of the driveway.

“Shit,” you scrambled for it, your hands trembling as you clawed at the mud, your fingers fumbling until they closed around the device.

The screen was a web of jagged fractures, the backlight flickering once, twice, like a dying star, before it succumbed to the dark. You pressed the power button, shaking it, whispering, “No, no, no, please.”

You stumbled inside the house, soaked to the bone, the gold medal heavy and freezing against your collarbone. You ran to the kitchen, clutching the dead phone to your chest, and stared at the wall-mounted landline. You stood there, shivering, water pooling around your feet, waiting.

He’ll call the house phone, you told yourself, panic rising in your throat like bile. He’ll find a way.

The house was a hollow shell, echoing with the sound of your own ragged breathing. You paced the kitchen, the linoleum cold beneath your bare, muddy feet, the silence of the landline becoming a physical weight that pressed against your eardrums. Every time the wind lashed a branch against the siding, you jumped, convinced it was a knock, a call, a sign.

But the minutes bled into hours, and the house remained stagnant. You clutched the gold medal around your neck, the metal no longer a promise but an anchor, heavy and cold. You didn't dare take off the cardigan, even though it was soaked through, as if removing it would be an admission that the connection had already been severed.

Only a few miles away, Heeseung was pacing his own room, a space already gutted of its personality. Boxes were stacked like monuments to his departure, and the only thing left on his bed was the empty space where the cardigan had been.

He remembered how he gripped his pen that night. How he had tucked a letter into the pocket of that cardigan, hidden in the frayed seam where he knew you’d eventually find it. He was terrified of the words he’d written. His confessions of how he felt he was being torn in two, how he’d planned to tell his parents he was staying behind for a year, his attempt to enter university with you, how he was waiting for you to tell him to stay. 

And most of all, how much he loved you. How he wanted to ruin the friendship.

He kept looking at the window, expecting to see your silhouette in the rain, expecting you to show up at his door because you always did. She’ll find the letter, he told himself, his pride warring with a growing, cold dread. She’ll see that I was waiting for her to say the word.

But you were houses away, shivering in a dark kitchen, never checking the pockets of a sweater that was currently draped over a chair, pooling water onto the floor.

At 4:00 AM, the house was plunged into a pre-dawn blue. Heeseung sat on his luggage in the hallway, his face gaunt. His parents were asleep, and the house was silent.

The family landline had been disconnected weeks ago, the wire hanging limp and dead against the baseboard, a casualty of the family's transition to mobile life. He didn't think to try it. He only thought of the phone in his hand.

By 4:30 AM, after he was dropped off by his parents who woke up minutes before he left alone, with a thumb that trembled against the glass, he typed the message he had been drafting and deleting since midnight.

I’m at the station. I’m leaving on the first bus. I don’t want to go without saying the rest of what I didn't say tonight. Please, Y/N. Come find me.

He hit send.

He stared at the screen, waiting for the ‘Delivered’ icon to be followed by the familiar bubble of your reply. He sat on his suitcase, his heart hammering against his ribs, convinced that if you loved him, if you felt at least the same way, you would be at the station before the engine started.

He didn’t know that houses away, your phone lay on the kitchen table, a dark shattered memoir. He didn’t know that the signal was hitting nothing but air, trapped in the digital ether.

Heeseung watched the station clock tick forward, each second a hammer blow against his resolve. By 5:00 AM, the bus pulled into the bay, a massive, idling beast of steel. He stood up, his eyes darting to the entrance one last time. He waited until the last possible second, his chest aching with a mixture of hope and resentment.

You didn’t come.

He boarded the bus, the air inside smelling of diesel and dust, and pressed his forehead against the glass. He didn't look back at the town, and he didn't look at the phone in his hand, which remained stubbornly, cruelly silent. He convinced himself that your silence was an answer. He convinced himself that he was only the one willing to ruin the friendship, the one who felt love. 

In the process, he solidified the walls around his own heart, ready to become the man who would never let anyone hurt him like this again.

And you, at home, finally drifted into a fitful sleep on the kitchen floor, waking up at sunrise to the sight of your dead phone, never knowing that you had spent your final night together waiting for an invitation that was already buried in a pocket you hadn't thought to check.

The clock on your desk glowed with a harsh, neon red 3:00 AM, its light casting long, skeletal shadows across the room. You had been at it for hours, your brain buzzing with the residual static of a marathon study session. The room was a chaotic mosaic of your life: the stacks of review education books, the new books Minju had given you, the colorful highlighters, and the mounting pressure of senior year. 

All shoved into half-filled cardboard boxes. Packing felt like shedding skin. You were moving on, leaving behind the provincial life to finally choose yourself this time.

You were sorting through the keep pile, tossing old notebooks into a recycling bin, when your hand brushed against the wool of the moth-eaten cardigan draped over the back of your desk chair.

Even after five years, you still hadn't managed to get rid of it. It was a relic, a soft, decaying reminder of the night the sky turned purple and everything you knew about the world shifted. You meant to wash it one last time, to finally pack it away into the bottom of a box you wouldn't open for years.

You picked it up, intending to fold it, but as you shook it to straighten the sleeves, something heavy thudded against the fabric.

It caught on the frayed hem, snagging on the loose weave of the inner pocket. You frowned, pulling at the fabric, thinking it was a loose button or a stray coin. Instead, you felt the crisp, sharp edge of folded paper.

Your heart gave a strange, sickening lurch.

You reached inside, your fingers trembling as you pulled out a small, rectangular envelope that had clearly been wedged into the lining. It wasn't an envelope, actually. It was just a piece of notebook paper folded over and over until it was a thick, flat square, the edges softened by time.

You knew that handwriting. Even after five years of trying to scrub the memory of it from your mind, you recognized the sharp, precise tilt of the letters.

Heeseung.

You sat down on the edge of your bed, the boxes forgotten. The room felt suddenly too small, the air thick with the smell of old wool, rain, and the ghost of his laundry detergent. Your hands shook so violently you almost dropped it. You unfolded the paper, the creases brittle, threatening to tear.

The ink was faded, but the words were stark, screaming at you from the page.

The letter was written on a sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper, the kind you both used during your endless study sessions in the local library. The handwriting was his. Sharp, slanted, and hurried, as if he were trying to outrun his own courage before the ink dried.

Y/N,

I don’t know if you’ll ever find this. Maybe it’ll stay hidden in this pocket until the wool rots away, and that would probably be for the best. It’s safer that way. For both of us, maybe.

I remember the first time I noticed you. You were just in seventh grade, wandering the halls like you were lost, clutching your bag that was too heavy for your small frame. I was your sunbae. The one everyone expected to be perfect, the one who was supposed to go to Seoul and change the world. I thought I was just being kind when I offered to tutor you because I saw potential in you. I thought I was just being a good senior.

I was so wrong.

I remember the hours we spent in the library, trading secrets disguised as schoolwork. You would tell me how you used your earphones to ignore the world. I would tell you how I intentionally charmed my way to pass English in the best way I can. I’d try to explain the complexities of biology, the mechanics of physics, all while you were busy correcting and laughing at me for my grammar, because in your words: “How can a running batch valedictorian sound like a fool?”

And a fool I was.

Because I’d be pretending to look at the textbook, but I was really just memorizing you. I know the way your brow furrows when a math problem frustrates you, like the whole world is at stake. I know you hum that same soft melody when you’re finally close to a solution, a sound so quiet it feels like a secret meant only for me. I know the way your eyes brighten when you talk about your dreams, and how your nose crinkles when you laugh at my terrible, forced jokes. You have this way of existing that makes the rest of the world look grey, like you’re carrying your own private sunlight that spills onto everything you touch. 

I didn’t realize I was falling in love with you until it was already too late. Until my entire world had shrunk down to the space between our chairs, our shared earphone buds, and I realized that I didn’t want to live in any other reality but yours only.

God, there were so many times. Do you remember the night before the finals? You had fallen asleep on your desk, and I sat there for an hour, just looking at you. I leaned in. I was an inch away from your lips. I could smell the vanilla in your shampoo, and I wanted to ruin everything. I wanted to risk the friendship, the prestige, the 'perfect sunbae' title, just to see if you’d wake up and kiss me back.

Or that afternoon by the reservoir, that time you were laughing at my pronunciation and you leaned against me. I turned my head so fast, ready to press my mouth to yours, but you looked at me with those wide, trusting eyes, and I froze. I backed out. I did it at the bus stop, I did it in your driveway, I did it every single time the distance between us felt thin enough to bridge. I was a coward then, and I’m a coward now.

Everyone talks about Seoul like it’s heaven. They talk about my scholarship like it’s a golden ticket. But Y/N, I would trade every sky in that city, every opportunity, every ounce of 'success' just to stay here in this town and work a dead-end job if it meant I could see you every morning. I want to curse every expectation my parents ever laid on me. I want to burn the acceptance letters. None of it matters. The only thing that matters is you.

I’m leaving tomorrow, Y/N. And it feels like I’m walking into a grave everyone and I dug for myself. But, Y/N, I’ll be at the bus station at 4:45 AM. If you come, if you show up before the engine starts, I will throw my bags into the dirt and never look back at Seoul again. I will stay, and I will be yours, and I will live in this town for the rest of my life.

But if you don’t come, I’ll know. I’ll know that we were just a dream, and that it’s time to wake up. It’s the cruelest test I could ever invent, isn't it? Leaving my entire future in your hands while I hide in the dark, waiting.

I’m sorry, Y/N. 

I love you, with all my heart.

Yours, always,Heeseung.

The sob didn’t start in your chest; it began as a sharp, hitching tremor in your throat, a jagged intake of air that felt like swallowing shards of ice. When it finally broke, it wasn’t loud. It was a hollow, desolate sound that scraped against the quiet of your room.

You collapsed forward, your forehead resting against the cool, splintered wood of the floorboards. You stared down at the grain of the wood, the lines blurring as your vision filled with hot, blinding tears. 

You looked down at your own hands and saw how they were trembling with the sheer, unrelenting force of your grief. You weren't just crying; you were disintegrating.

A sob finally broke free, but it wasn't a release. It was a shuddering, violent convulsion that doubled you over.

You reached out, your fingers shaking uncontrollably, and touched the handwriting on the page. Yours, always.

The lie of it ripped through you. He hadn't been "always" yours; he had been a man constructing a cage out of his own pride, and he had invited you to be the one to lock it. You remembered how you had spent that morning of his departure, how you had woken up, looked at your broken phone, and cried because you thought he hadn't cared enough to say goodbye. You had mourned a rejection that was actually a desperate, hidden plea for salvation.

You looked around your room, at the boxes labeled for your senior year, at the life you had carefully built out of the wreckage he left behind. Everything you had done: every late-night study session, every push to be better, every quiet moment where you tried to fill the Heeseung-shaped hole in your chest, was built on the foundation of a misunderstanding.

The anger hit you like a heavy, physical weight. It settled deep in your gut. It was a sharp, searing heat, the kind that made you want to claw at the walls of your own bedroom. You looked at the cardboard boxes all around you, and you felt a sudden, violent urge to sweep them all off.

You idiot, you thought, your teeth gritting so hard your jaw ached, you absolute, prideful, infuriating idiot.

You looked at the empty spaces in your room, the quiet corners where you’d once imagined him sitting, and the fury gave way to a hollow, echoing resentment. He had held your heart in his hands and decided to use it as a weight to anchor his own fear.

But then, just as quickly, the anger fractured.

Beneath the white-hot rage, that old, stubborn warmth flared up. The one that had never truly been extinguished. You thought of the way he would absentmindedly tap his pen against his chin, the way he’d let you correct his grammar just to hear the sound of your voice.

He hadn't been cruel or malicious. He had been a boy suffocating under the weight of a life he never asked for, terrified that if he reached for the only thing he wanted, he’d drag you down into his own misery. He was a coward, yes. He was a masterpiece of self-destruction.

But, fuck, he was Heeseung. Your Heeseung.

And you are not the same coward as you were five years ago when you wanted to bare out your heart for Heeseung before he graduated. No, you were not going to let this be the end of a story that desperately wanted to start five years ago.

You looked at the letter again. I’ll be at the bus station at 4:45 AM.

You were five years past the deadline, but the challenge still burned in your mind like a promise. You realized then that you didn't need to chase a bus that had left years ago. You needed to chase the boy who had never really stopped waiting for you to find him.

The fear you had carried for five years was replaced by clarity. If he wanted a test, you would give him one. 

You stood up, your movements sharp and decisive. You didn't care about the packing anymore. You didn't care about your senior year, the application tests, the expectations of everyone else. You only cared about him. You only cared about the fact that there was a bridge between you and him, and for the first time in your life, you weren't going to wait for him to build it.

You were going to walk across it yourself.

You arrived at the station at 4:40 AM.

The station was cold, but the air between you hummed with the electricity of five years ago. This wasn't just a meeting; it was a superposition of two timelines. The girl who stood here now, five years older, was rewriting the failure of the girl who didn’t get to catch the sight of him leaving.

The bus engine idled, a heavy, rhythmic thrum that vibrated through the soles of your shoes. In every sense, the test was the same: the departure time, the platform, the man waiting in the dark. But the variables had shifted.

Five years ago, you had been the passive variable. You had been the consequence of his decision, a silent factor waiting to be solved. You had trusted that the universe, or perhaps Heeseung, would provide the answer.

You stepped out of the car, your legs feeling like they belonged to someone else. Heavy, trembling, and terrified. You clutched the letter in your hand, the paper damp with the sweat of your palm. You walked toward the platform, your boots clicking sharply against the cracked pavement.

Every shadow looked like him. Every rustle of the wind sounded like his voice.

And then, you saw him.

The clock above the platform read 4:41 AM.

Your throat tightened, a physical constriction that made it hard to breathe. He looked so small in the vast, empty terminal. The "perfect sunbae," the boy who was supposed to change the world, was just a person sitting on a cold bench, destroyed by his own fear.

He didn't see you yet. He was looking at his watch, his expression a mask of hollow resignation.

You stopped, two rows of benches away, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You looked at the clock again: 4:42 AM.

One minute left. One minute to decide if the last three years were just a mistake, or if they were the necessary, painful crucible that brought you to this exact, terrifying moment.

4:43 AM. You lost him in the sudden rush of crowds as the bus neared. You tried on your tiptoes to see the familiar build. The station had suddenly transformed from a graveyard of memories into a frantic, chaotic obstacle course. The early morning bus had drawn a swarm of passengers. Commuters with heavy backpacks, travelers clutching coffee cups, and hurried people blending into a blur of jackets, trenches, and muted murmurs.

You were shoved aside by a mother carrying her child, her family following close by with lots of bags. You stumbled, your boot scraping against the floor, and immediately tried to right yourself, your eyes scanning the shifting sea of people.

He was not there at the place where he was sitting a while ago. Where was he?

You rose onto your tiptoes, your calves aching with the strain. You desperately scanned for that specific posture, the way his shoulders hunched when he was anxious, the precise, sharp tilt of his head. You saw a jacket that looked like his, but it belonged to an older man with silvering hair. You saw a silhouette with his height, but the stride was too confident, too careless.

Your heart was a trapped bird, beating against your ribs with such force that it dizzied you. The bus engine roared, a guttural, final sound that felt like it was swallowing the air in the terminal.

"Heeseung?" you called out, your voice thin and brittle, immediately lost in the scrape of luggage wheels and the overhead announcement drone.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded your chest. You pushed through a group of students, your hands brushing against rough wool and synthetic fabrics, desperate to find the one person who mattered. Your eyes darted everywhere, to the ticket kiosk, the rows of empty benches he’d occupied just moments ago, the closing doors of the bus.

You caught a glimpse of a familiar dark jacket, the back of a head turned toward the boarding line. Your breath hitched. There.

Without thinking, you darted toward him, your heart hammering a rhythm of pure terror. You reached out, but the bus conductor stopped you, asking you for a ticket. Your eyes snapped from the conductor’s hand to his retreating figure.

“I don’t have a ticket!” you snapped, your voice cracking with the frantic, jagged edges of panic. You tried to shove past the conductor, your eyes locked on the dark jacket just a few steps ahead in the queue, “I have to talk to someone, please!”

The conductor, a man with a tired, weathered face, didn't budge. He planted a heavy hand on your shoulder, his grip firm and immovable, "No ticket, no boarding, miss. Step back, you're blocking the line."

"You don't understand!" you screamed, though the roar of the idling engine began to drown out your desperation. You looked toward the queue, but the crowd surged forward in a sudden, impatient wave, obscuring your view. The person in the dark jacket stepped onto the bus steps. You couldn't see his face. Not yet.

You even assumed he had earphones in his ears.

"Heeseung!" you shrieked, the name tearing from your throat.

The figure on the stairs paused. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to hold its breath. The man’s shoulders tensed, a familiar, involuntary reaction to the sound of your voice. He started to turn, but the conductor beside you gave a sharp whistle, and the bus doors hissed shut with a violent, final metallic thud.

The engine surged, a deafening, guttural vibration that shook the ground beneath your boots.

"No!" You lunged toward the glass, your palms slapping against the cold, vibrating surface. Through the tinted window, you saw a blurred shape in the third row, a head of hair that caught the dim terminal light. He was looking out the window, his expression obscured by the reflection of the station lights.

The bus lurched forward. 4:49 AM.

You tried to even chase it. And what’s ironic is the sudden downpour of rain.

The rain didn’t start as a drizzle. It fell in a sudden, violent curtain, as if the sky had been holding its breath for five years just to mock you at the exact moment of your defeat. It lashed against your skin, cold and stinging, soaking through your clothes in seconds. You didn’t stop running. You sprinted alongside the concrete barrier, your boots slipping on the pavement, your lungs burning with the sharp crawl of exhaustion and panic.

You chased the bus until the terminal gave way to the open road, until the red glow of its taillights became two tiny, indifferent sparks fading into the gray, weeping horizon.

You slowed, then stopped, your chest heaving in ragged, desperate gasps. The rain turned your hair into a heavy shroud against your face. You were standing in the middle of the bus lane, drenched to the bone, staring at nothing but the wet, empty asphalt. The irony of it hit you with a force that made your knees buckle.

Five years ago, the sky had wept where he left. And here you were. Five years older, five years wiser, and still standing where he left. Watching the same exact ghost disappear.

You let out a laugh, a dry, broken sound that was immediately swallowed by the downpour. You were a fool. You had thought things were going to change this time; but at the end of the day, you were just a spectator to your own heartbreak, and it was right on schedule.

You squeezed your eyes shut, letting the rain wash the salt of your tears away. You didn't even notice when the biting sting of the deluge on your shoulders suddenly vanished.

As you waited for the thunder to roll, for the world to continue its indifferent assault, but the heavy drumming sound against your coat stopped. The air around you grew strangely still, protected by an invisible perimeter.

You opened your eyes.

A black umbrella hovered over you, its canopy wide and sturdy, shielding you from the storm. You frowned, your breath hitching as you looked up, expecting a stranger, a kind commuter, or perhaps just another cruel trick of your own fraying mind.

The hand holding the umbrella was pale, the knuckles slightly bruised, and the sleeve was dark with rainwater. You followed the line of the arm, up past a damp shoulder, until your gaze met his.

He was soaked to the bone. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his shirt clung to him, and he was shivering, but his eyes were fixed on you with a terrifying, absolute clarity. He wasn't on the bus. He hadn't left.

“Heeseung?” you whispered, your voice barely a thread.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said, his voice raw, looking at the ground where his ticket lay on the wet pavement, “I got on that bus. I sat in the third row, just like I did five years ago. But fuck, Y/N, I don’t want to lose you all over again.”

The confession hung in the air, heavier and more suffocating than the humidity of the downpour. He stood there, a man stripped of his "perfect" facade, shivering and drenched, anchored only by the desperate, frantic grip he had on the umbrella.

"I sat there," he continued, his voice cracking as he gestured vaguely toward the road where the bus had vanished, "I watched the city lights blur, and I kept telling myself that this was the right choice. That you’d be better off if I just became the person I was supposed to be. But all I could hear was the way you sounded when you screamed my name – not five years ago, not today, but every single day in my head."

He took a jagged, stuttering breath, his eyes searching yours with such raw vulnerability that it felt like looking directly into a wound.

Suddenly, it felt as if you were brought back five years ago, hours after his graduation, the way you overlooked the reservoir on the hood of his car. 

It was all there. The same suffocating weight in your chest, the same damp chill, the same boy. Back then, you had sat on the hood of his car, the engine ticking as it cooled, the stars hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds that mirrored the uncertainty in your hearts. You had been seventeen, brimming with the naive belief that love was an equation that could be balanced if you just worked hard enough.

“I’m sorry,” Heeseung said out of nowhere, making you stand up.

The two words were small, stripped of the grandiosity he had spent years crafting, but they hit you with the force of an avalanche. He wasn't looking at the horizon anymore; he was looking at you, his gaze anchored, stripped of the performative burden of his perfect future.

He shifted, the umbrella tilting so that the edge of it brushed against your damp hair. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, his voice deepening, vibrating against the frantic percussion of the rain, “For being a coward. For not telling you that I loved you all this time. For leaving you because I thought the man who I am now is the best man you could ever deserve.”

You stood there, the rain still lashing at your legs, but his presence was a heat that defied the storm. You looked at him. This man who had been a ghost in your peripheral vision for half a decade, and you realized he wasn't asking for a clean slate. He was asking for something much harder: to be seen in the wreckage.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me, or to love me back. I just wanted you to know that I’ve loved you all this time and I would choose to love you, whether you love me back or not.” Heeseung adds.

A beat passed.

“You’re standing in the rain, Heeseung,” you said, your voice trembling with the terrifying, beautiful realization that the cycle had finally broken, “you’re going to get sick. You’re going to be miserable. You’re going to have to explain to everyone why you didn’t get on that bus.”

Heeseung gave a dry, jagged laugh. Then he reached out, his hand sliding behind your neck, his fingers tangling into your damp hair, pulling you an inch closer until the space between you was practically non-existent.

“Let them,” he breathed, his eyes searching yours with a hunger that made your breath hitch, “let them wonder, let them ask. For the first time since I was fifteen, I don’t care about being the man who changes the world. I just want to be the man who makes it back to you.”

He leaned in, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm and shallow, cutting through the freezing air, “I’m not sorry for leaving because I’m back. I’m sorry because I spent my life convincing myself that the world was bigger than us when it’s not. It’s just us, Y/N.”

“Just us?” you echoed.

“It’s just been us.” He confirmed.

The storm seemed to mute, the roar of the city fading into a distant, inconsequential hum. In the silence of the terminal’s edge, he didn't wait for your permission or your forgiveness.

He simply closed the distance, his lips meeting yours with a desperation that tasted like the reservoir, like lost time, and like the terrifying, wonderful promise of a future that neither of you had dared to write until this exact, rain-drenched second.

The kiss was not gentle at all. It was a desperate, starving crash of teeth and salt-drenched skin that had nothing to do with grace, but everything to do with survival.

His mouth was cold, shivering against yours, but the moment he realized that you were fighting back, that you were holding him just as tightly as he was holding you, he made a sound, a low, guttural noise that vibrated in his chest and straight to yours.

Heeseung’s hands were the most overwhelming part. They were frantic, tracing the line of your jaw, sliding down to your nape, and then bunching in the fabric of your coat as if he was afraid you might dissolve into the mist if he didn’t anchor you to him. His touch was erratic, a desperate attempt to memorize the reality of you. He wasn’t just kissing you, he was trying to devour you – his mouth moving over yours with a clumsy, bruising intensity that spoke of five years of what-ifs and if-onlys.

You could taste the rain mixing with the warmth of his breath. A sharp contrast that made your skin prickle with goosebumps. His stubble grazed your cheek, a rough sensation that felt painfully real, a reminder that he wasn’t a ghost anymore.

He tilted his head, his lips softening, searching for a rhythm that had been lost for half a decade. Every time he pulled back a fraction of an inch, just to let out a ragged, shaking breath against your mouth, he’d pull you back in again, deeper, more possessive, as if he were trying to physically pull you into him.

His heart was hammering against your ribs, a frantic, irregular rhythm that mirrored your own, and for a moment, the world narrowed down to nothing but the friction of your bodies, the heat rising beneath the layers of damp clothing, and the way his tongue finally mapped the territory he had spent so long denying himself. It was a kiss that tasted like apology, like ache, and like the sudden, terrifying realization that you were finally, impossibly, home.

One year later.

“Y/L/N Y/N, Valedictorian and recipient of the university’s Highest Honors, Department of English Language Education.”

The announcement echoed through the grand hall, formal and crisp. As you walked across the stage, the heavy hood of your academic regalia, the blue and white velvet of the Education department, felt like a mantle of finality. The audience’s applause was a roar, a sea of sound that washed away the last four years of endless lesson planning, the grueling practice teaching, and the long, quiet nights spent studying linguistics and pedagogy.

You accepted the gold-leafed certificate, the weight of it in your hands a physical manifestation of every sacrifice. You were the top of your class. You had mastered the theory of education, but the lessons you’d learned outside the lecture halls: the lessons of patience, of trauma, and of wait times – these were the ones that truly defined you.

As you stepped down from the dais, your eyes instinctively swept the crowded, noisy gym. Your parents were there, cheering in the third row, their faces luminous with pride. But your gaze bypassed them. You were searching for a silhouette, a posture, a gaze that had been your compass for the last twelve months.

He’s not here.

A familiar, sharp ache pricked at your chest. He couldn't make it, you told yourself, the thought a practiced shield against the heat and the noise. Seoul is three hours away. He’s closing that deal today. It’s okay. I’m top of the class; I can handle a little disappointment.

You moved with the throng of graduates into the bright, humid air of the school courtyard. The air was thick with the scent of cheap bouquets and the frantic, chaotic buzz of celebration. You felt momentarily adrift, a solitary figure in a sea of caps and gowns, until the crowd shifted, parting like a curtain.

You were quickly swarmed by your parents, their faces flushed with a pride so intense it felt like a physical weight. Your mother pulled you into a crushing embrace, her tears dampening your shoulder, while your father clapped a heavy, trembling hand on your back, his voice thick as he told you how proud he was of his daughter.

“Can I go outside for some air, please?”

They looked concerned, but the sight of your gold medal, glinting fiercely in the afternoon sun, seemed to reassure them. You walked away, your heels clicking against the pavement, the sound growing lonelier as you retreated from the crowd and toward the old reservoir trail.

By the time you reached the edge of the water, it was just past 3:10 PM. The reservoir was a mirror of still, dark glass, undisturbed by the chaotic energy of the campus. You stopped on the grass, the hem of your gown trailing in the dirt. You reached up, your fingers brushing the cool, heavy gold of your own medal, the metal smooth and comforting.

Then, your hand drifted to the deep pocket of your robe.

You pulled out a smaller, older medal. The one Heeseung had won back in high school, the one he had pressed into your palm before he walked out of your life five years ago. It was scratched, the ribbon slightly frayed, but it was warmer than your own, as if it had been waiting for this exact intersection of time and space.

“Now, you didn’t say anything about beating my title of the town’s valedictorian,” a voice said, low and steady, from the shade of the willow tree behind you.

Your heart stuttered, a wild, frantic bird against your ribs. You spun around, the medals clinking together in your hand.

Heeseung was leaning against the trunk of the willow tree, his posture relaxed, his charcoal suit jacket discarded somewhere on the grass nearby. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that were lean and steady. He looked older, the sharp angles of his face had softened with the weight of his own experiences, but his eyes, fixed on yours, held the same devastating familiarity that had haunted your dreams for half a decade.

He wasn’t a vision, and he wasn’t a trick of the light. He was standing in the dappled shade, his gaze dropping to the medals in your hands before rising to meet yours.

“Y/N Y/L/N, top of her class, highest honors,” he said as he reached for a bouquet by the passenger seat, his voice dropping into a register that felt like a secret meant only for you. He took a slow, deliberate step forward, his shoes silent on the grass, “you really didn’t leave any room for anyone else, did you?”

You couldn't move. Your breath was caught in your throat, a jagged, painful thing, while the water behind you rippled in the quiet wind. The distance between you felt like a chasm that had finally, impossibly, closed.

"What are you doing here? I thought you had a deal to close?" you whispered, your voice trembling. You were terrified that if you blinked, he would dissolve back into the haze of the last five years.

He stopped just a few feet away, close enough that you could smell the faint, clean scent of rain and cedar that always clung to him. His expression shifted from a proud look to a playful tease.

“Yeah, I have a deal to close,” he said softly as he reached out, his fingers hovering for a second before he gently took the old, frayed medal from your trembling hand. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, his own eyes tracing the scratches on the surface, “I have a deal to close with a valedictorian.”

He gave you a bouquet of white lilies, the smile on his face mimicking the boyish grin he always gave you whenever you met, “Congratulations, hoobae. You did it.”

You lunged on him, crying and not minding about the flowers, the lilies were crushed between you, their crisp, green stems snapping and their sweet, heavy scent filling the air as you collided with him. You didn't care. You buried your face into the solid, warm wall of his chest, your tears soaking through the expensive cotton of his dress shirt, the dam finally breaking. You were sobbing, not out of sadness, but out of a year’s worth of held-back breath, five years of longing, and the sheer, dizzying relief of finally being held by him again.

Heeseung didn't move for a long moment, simply absorbing the impact. Then, his arms locked around you, tight enough to bruise, his hands splayed across your back as if he were trying to pull you into his own skin to make sure you were real. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his breath hitching, a jagged, broken sound that told you he was just as undone as you were.

“I have a surprise for you, hoobae,” he whispered in your ear, “do you trust me?”

You pulled back just enough to look at him, your vision blurred by the remnants of your tears. His eyes were glassy, dark and dilated, searching your face as if he were trying to memorize every contour he’d been denied for so long. He didn’t wait for an answer. He took your hand, his grip firm and grounding, and led you toward the sleek, black car idling near the park exit.

The drive to Seoul was a blur of golden hour light and the low, steady hum of the engine. He didn't let go of your hand for the entire journey. His fingers were laced through yours, his thumb soothing the back of your hand.

He drove with a quiet, focused intensity, his eyes darting to you every few minutes, as if he needed to check that you hadn't vanished. You watched his profile, the sharp slope of his nose, the focus in his gaze as he navigated the highway, the way his jaw worked when he was lost in thought. He wasn't the boy who used to hide in the library; he was a man who had forged a path through the dark just to find you.

As the city lights of Seoul began to puncture the twilight, the atmosphere in the car shifted. The frantic, desperate energy of the afternoon had settled into a low, smoldering heat. The air between you felt charged, thick with the weight of everything you hadn't been able to say over the phone for the last year.

He pulled the car into the quiet, tree-lined driveway of a neighborhood that felt a world away from the city's chaotic core. The house was modest but beautiful, glowing with warm, golden light from within.

He turned off the engine, but he didn't move. The silence that filled the car wasn't empty; it was heavy, expectant, and electric. He turned toward you, his dark eyes searching yours, stripped of all the bravado and the "perfect" professional mask he wore for the world. In the dim light of the dashboard, he looked raw, his gaze dropping to your lips before locking back onto your eyes with a terrifying, absolute clarity.

“We’re home,” he whispered, his voice vibrating through the space between you, low and dangerous.

“What?”

He didn’t wait for you to understand. He reached out, his hand cupping your jaw, his thumb brushing over your lower lip. The touch was possessive, agonizingly slow, and it sent a jolt of fire straight through your core. He leaned in, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with your own.

“I have spent the whole year after the kiss by the bus station,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your mouth, “imagining exactly how this would feel. But nothing I ever dreamed of compares to the reality of having you here.”

He pulled away just enough to look at you, his eyes dark, burning with a hunger that he had been starving himself of for years. He reached for the doorknob, but before he stepped out, he looked at you one last time, a challenge and a promise in his expression.

“Everything I worked hard for,” he said, his voice dropping to an intimate register, “it was all for the moment I could finally show you how much I’ve missed you. And I have a feeling,” he paused, the corner of his mouth curling into a smirk, “that we have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

He stepped out, his tall frame cutting through the night air, and circled the car. As he opened your door, the city lights reflected in his eyes, bright and unrelenting. He offered you his hand, his fingers steady, his intent clear.

You held his hand, and you were suddenly carried to the house. 

Heeseung was in such a hurry that he almost knocked off a lot of furniture in his way, desperate to have you in your shared room. The front door clicked shut behind you, the lock engaging with a heavy, final sound that seemed to seal out the rest of the world. You barely had time to register the minimalist, warm aesthetic of the entryway, the scent of cedar and expensive candles, before Heeseung carried you to the room with a frantic, uncharacteristic lack of grace.

He was a man possessed, his usual composed, professional demeanor shattered by the raw, pent-up electricity of the last year. He stumbled slightly as he navigated around a sleek console table, his shoulder brushing the wall as he turned the corner, but he didn't apologize. He didn't even slow down. His breathing was heavy, ragged, and impatient, and every time you faltered, he tugged you closer, his fingers digging into your palm with a possessive, grounding grip.

“Heeseung,” you breathed, his name coming out as a breathless laugh, but he just shook his head, his eyes fixed ahead with a tunnel-vision intensity.

“Not yet,” he rasped, his voice rough.

He steered you through the darkened living room, his long strides forcing you to hurry to keep pace. At one point, he nearly knocked a stack of books off a side table with his hip, the sharp thwack of the impact echoing through the quiet house, but he didn't even flinch. He wasn't looking at the furniture; he was looking at the bedroom door at the end of the hall, which stood slightly ajar, spilling a slice of soft, amber light across the hardwood floor.

He reached the threshold and didn't bother to turn on the main light. He carried you inside, the door swinging shut behind you with a muffled thud.

The room was cool, a sharp contrast to the feverish heat radiating off his skin. He stopped, brought you down, and crowded you back until you hit the foot of the bed, the mattress giving way beneath you as he leaned in his hands coming up to frame your face. His fingers were trembling. A stark, vulnerable betrayal of the calm he had tried to project all day.

He studied you in the dim light, his gaze tracing the path of your hairline, the curve of your jaw, and the pulse fluttering rapidly at your throat. The silence was deafening, amplified by the frantic thrum of your own heart.

“Fuck, you’re finally here…” he whispered, his voice vibrating against your skin, “I’ve spent every night for five years staring at the ceiling and imagining this exact moment.”

His hands slid down to your shoulders, his thumbs tracing the line of your collarbone, his touch agonizingly slow, as if he were afraid you might evaporate if he moved too quickly. He looked at you, his eyes dark, drowning, and full of a desperate, terrifying adoration.

“I don’t want to waste another second,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips, his intention as clear and heavy as the dark air around you, “tell me you’re mine, hoobae, tell me you’re mine, Y/N. Tell me this is real.”

All the breath left your lungs in a ragged rush. The room seemed to tilt, the golden light of the bedside lamp blurring into a soft, hazy halo around him. You felt the weight of his cheek against your palm, the friction of his stubble, the warmth of his skin, and the raw, unvarnished ache of a man who had finally come home.

“I’m yours,” you whispered, your voice cracking under the sheer intensity of the moment, “Heeseung, I am yours. Everything, all of me. Forever and always.”

His eyes squeezed shut for a fleeting second, as if your words were a lifeline he had been grasping for in the dark. When he opened them, the desperation had shifted into something deeper. He pulled away just enough to reach for the silver chain resting against his throat. His fingers were steady now, a stark contrast to the frantic energy that had carried him through the door, as he carefully unclasped it.

The chain slid away, and he held it up. Hanging from the silver links was a ring, gleaming with a quiet, persistent fire. He didn't put it on you yet. Instead, he took your left hand, his grip gentle but absolute, and pressed a lingering, reverent kiss to your knuckles, then your wrist, then the pulse point that was beating a frantic rhythm against his lips.

He leaned in then, his mouth hovering inches from yours, his breath hot and ragged. He took the ring from the chain and slid it onto your finger, the cool metal feeling like a brand, a permanent mark of the promise you’d both been waiting a lifetime to make.

“I love you, Heeseung,” you whispered, your heart hammering against your ribs.

“Fuck, I love you…more than you think.”

Heeseung surged forward, his hands sliding from your palms to the small of your back, pulling you flush against him until there wasn’t any space in between your bodies. His mouth crushed onto yours, not with the hesitant caution of the past, but with the hunger of a man who had finally been granted permission to consume. It was a kiss that tasted of salt, of desperation, and of the absolute, terrifying relief of no longer being apart.

His lips were hard and demanding, moving against yours with a frantic rhythm that mirrored the pounding of your heart. He lifted you easily, your heels kicking out as he pressed you back onto the mattress, his weight settling over you like a heavy, welcome shroud. 

The world outside the room dissolved completely. There was only the friction of his clothes against yours, the clink of your medals, the scent of him drowning out everything else, and the way he groaned your name into your mouth, a sound of pure, unadulterated surrender that told you exactly where this night was headed.

Heeseung stripped you entirely of your clothes, leaving you bare underneath him. He kissed you one more time before kissing you down from your lips down to your jaw, to your neck. His tongue licked in between the valley of your breasts as he moaned, taking in the gasps that you leave whenever he does something. 

He left open-mouthed kisses as he switched on sucking alternate nipples. His hand playing with the unattended breast by his mouth. His fingers pinching, flicking, rubbing the hardened nub. 

“Heeseung, p-please,” you whimpered.

“Please what?”

“Touch me,”

“I am?”

You held his hand to hover near where you wanted him to touch you, and he chuckled and happily obliged, running his middle finger running in between your folds, making you gasp. His middle finger then reached your clit, rubbing circles lightly on it before pressing on it.

He then crawled downwards, his mouth hovering over your core. He ran the tip of his nose on your thighs before prodding his nose around your clit, teasing you as he inhaled your scent, before pushing out his tongue to run across your folds, humming at your taste.

It didn’t take him a while before he folded your legs against you, his mouth immediately lapping your folds, one hand rubbing on your clit, his eyes closed as he devoured you as if he was a man starved of food for the past years.

Teeth, lips, tongue – it was everything and everywhere at the same time. The sound of wet tongue against your pussy was enough to make you moan his name out loud and hold his messy, floppy hair. He was inexperienced at best, but it was everything you needed all the same.

Soon enough, his finger poked around the rim of your hole. He looked at you, looking for the go signal before entering almost half of his finger. He was watching your reaction like a hawk, making sure everything he did was perfect – as if he was performing to become the best today, now that he’s officially yours, and you are officially his.

One finger soon turned into two, until he finally had enough room to curl his fingers against the spongy flesh that is your g-spot. He was basking in your moans every time he curled his fingers against it, straightening his body a bit so he could push your lower belly a bit to heighten the sensation.

Your reaction was immediate, your legs thrashed and wrapped around his frame as you pulled him closer, whines and chants of his name over and over again as if he’s some sort of god that you are compelled to worship because of how good he makes you feel.

“Fuck this, I wanna feel you,” he says as he pulls his fingers out and pushing it in his mouth, sucking on your juices as he keeps eye contact with you. He stripped himself off his clothes, looking into your eyes every time he removed an article.

He reached for your hand and kissed the back of it before intertwining his right hand with your left. Heeseung held his dick, trying to even tease you by tapping his tip against your clit. He leaned down to kiss you before kissing your forehead as he aligned his tip to your entrance, muttering praises and affirmations as he eased you into taking him.

“This is going to hurt,” he whispers, “but hold my hand and trust me, okay?”

“Okay,” you managed to say through your nerves.

You gasped and shut your eyes immediately at the feeling of his tip entering you, and with this, Heeseung kept on peppering your face with kisses again, “Breathe, Y/N, I’m here,” he squeezed your hand.

And you tried to calm yourself down, breathing through your nose to calm yourself down, feeling yourself loosen as Heeseung takes this as the opportunity to push inside. Heeseung groaned as he felt the tightness around him, pausing as he pushed his face to the crook of your neck, peppering kisses on your shoulder, “Shit, you’re so tight, jagiya,”

You blushed as you immediately hugged him, your nails racking his back as you whispered, “Y-you can move, Heeseung,”

Heeseung nodded and started moving slowly, gasping at how you’re throbbing around him. He groaned as he pulled out halfway to push in again until he started a rhythm. His tip hitting your g-spot every time he shifts the angle of his hips.

The first few times were slow, as if he was memorizing every part of you around him. He traced the line of your jaw with his thumb, his gaze heavy and reverent, searching your face as if to confirm that the person beneath him wasn't just a figment of his long-starved imagination. His movements were deliberate, an agonizingly tender exploration of territory he had only ever been able to visit in his dreams.

He seemed terrified that if he moved too quickly, the reality of the moment would shatter. He let his touch linger, a silent language of apologies for the time he’d lost and promises for the years ahead. Each breath he drew was jagged, his chest rising and falling against yours in a rhythm that grew deeper, more desperate, and increasingly synchronized with your own.

When he finally allowed himself to shed the restraint he’d carried all day, the room felt charged with a sudden, searing intensity. The air became thick, weighted by the heat of skin against skin and the friction of your bodies finally finding their cadence. He pinned your body down as he picked his pace up, his touch and thrusts transitioning from worship to a raw, consuming demand, as if he was trying to weave himself into the very fabric of your existence.

Every shift was a conversation of surrender. The distance that had defined your lives for five years was dismantled in the space of a heartbeat, replaced by the crushing weight of his devotion and the feverish need to be closer than was even physically possible. He whispered your name into the hollow of your neck, his voice a gravelly, broken plea that signaled he had finally stopped running.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he pressed his forehead on yours, panting as he felt his body stiffening at his impending orgasm, “I love y – shit, are you close? Y-you’re throbbing…” 

“Yeah, s-shit, Heeseung, r-right there!” you whined, trying to meet his thrusts as you grind upwards, eyes closed at the overwhelming sensation of him inside you, “Fuck, more, I want m-more, I wanna come!”

He let out a moan as he stilled inside you, coming undone. His body doing minor jolts as he held you tight, his hips shifting slightly to help you reach your orgasm too. Curses and his name were all left to say from you, and you immediately pulled him down to hug him as you came undone around him, your cum coming in heavy. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, holy shit – Heeseung, I’m –”

“I’m here, I’m here…let go for me, jagiya.”

The silence that followed was heavy and soft, a stark contrast to the storm that had just swept through the room. Save for the synchronized, frantic rhythm of your breathing, slowly beginning to level out as the adrenaline faded into a languid, exhausted haze.

Heeseung didn’t pull away nor pull out. He collapsed against you, his forehead resting in the crook of your neck, his weight grounding and absolute. His skin was slick, radiating a lingering, feverish heat, and his arms remained locked around you, as if he were still guarding you against the possibility of disappearing. Every few seconds, he would press a small, lingering kiss to your collarbone, his lips grazing your pulse, which was finally slowing to a steady, quiet beat.

You lay there, watching the way the moonlight filtered through the window to catch the sharp, handsome slope of his shoulders. The room felt transformed, the lingering tension replaced by a profound peace.

Heeseung shifted, his hand moving to trail languidly down your arm, his thumb brushing over the ring he had placed on your finger, the silver band catching the dim light, a permanent anchor in the quiet dark.

He finally pulled back just enough to look at you, his hair damp and tousled, his dark eyes softer than you had ever seen them. All the pretentious act of the Seoul boy – it was all gone. There was only the boy you’d known, and the man who had come back to finish what you’d started.

"I’m never leaving," he whispered, the words not a vow, but a simple statement of fact, as natural as breathing. 

You traced the line of his jaw, his stubble grazing your fingertips, “You’re really here,” you murmured, the realization finally settling deep in your bones, “No more waiting.”

He pulled you flush against his chest again, his arms tightening in a protective, final embrace. As you drifted into the kind of deep, dreamless sleep you hadn't known in years, his heartbeat was the last thing you felt. A steady, unyielding rhythm that promised, for the first time in your life, that tomorrow was already secured. You were no longer the girl waiting at the station.

You were finally home.