#heevan

Please not Jake. Please not Heeseung. Please not literally anyone who would think I’m weird.

“Sunghoon… You’re with Y/N.”

You looked up like a startled deer. Mouth parting just slightly. Eyes wide. Pen frozen in your grip. No... you weren’t ready for this either.

You’d spent the past month of class quietly trying not to be noticed. Perfecting invisibility. Sitting near the door. Not raising your hand. Not catching anyone’s eye. And definitely not talking to Park Sunghoon, the boy who mumbled to himself during lunch and once tripped over air in the cafeteria.

Now he was walking toward your desk like it was a death sentence.

He stood there awkwardly, rocking back on his heels. “Uh… hi.”

“Hi,” you whispered.

A pause.

“So… chemistry,” he said.

You nodded.

Another pause.

“…Right,” he added.

It wasn’t that either of you didn’t want to talk. You both just… didn’t know how. But somehow, in that weird way, it made it easier. The silence wasn’t bad. Just mutual. Tentative.

“Do you wanna, um…” he cleared his throat, “…work on it after school?”

Your heart stopped. After school. With him. Alone. Possibly at the library. Possibly within a foot of each other.

“Sure,” you said quickly, too quickly. “Yeah. Okay. Um. Cool.”

You sat across from each other at the corner table in the library, textbooks out, laptops open, but not a word had been spoken in twenty minutes.

Sunghoon peeked up at you and looked away when your eyes met.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t really know how to start.”

You smiled, barely, nervously. “Me neither.”

“I thought you were smart,” he blurted.

You blinked.

“I mean... you’re quiet. Like, in a smart way. Not like me. I’m just… quiet because I’m, uh…” he trailed off.

“A loser?” you finished, with a little laugh. It shocked both of you.

His eyes widened and then, shyly, he grinned. “Yeah. That.”

“I’m quiet because I’m a loser too.”

Sunghoon looked at you like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Wait. Really? But you’re like…” He trailed off again. “You’re cute.”

You stared at him.

He blinked, and his face turned red immediately. “I mean... not like-! Not that I was saying that out loud. I mean I did say it out loud, but I didn’t mean to. Or, like, I did? But-”

You were giggling. Hands over your mouth, eyes crinkled.

Sunghoon stopped. Watched you laugh. Something in his chest cracked a little.

“I think you’re cute too,” you said, softly, behind your hands.

Now it was your turn to flush. But the moment was real. Awkward, yes. Mortifying, maybe. But sweet. Gently tragic in a way that made it feel like neither of you had to be anything you weren’t.

The library clock ticked quietly above them, soft and persistent like a heartbeat, as the two of you sat hunched over a single open textbook.

It had been thirty minutes now. You’d made progress, sort of. The assignment was slowly taking shape, mostly because you’d stopped overthinking every sentence you wrote and had started to trust that Sunghoon’s awkward jokes weren’t jokes at all, just gentle attempts at speaking.

“So... if sodium and water react explosively,” he said, tilting his head, “does that mean we’re technically doing a dangerous experiment on paper?”

You raised a brow. “Only if we read it too fast.”

Sunghoon blinked, then laughed under his breath, surprised. You’d made a joke. A small one. But still.

“I knew it,” he murmured.

“Knew what?”

“That you were secretly funny.” He tapped the page with the back of his pen, eyes flicking to yours. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

You looked down quickly. “Says the guy who tripped on air and blamed it on ‘invisible wind.’”

His mouth dropped open. “You saw that?”

You tried not to grin. “Everyone did.”

Sunghoon groaned and buried his face in the crook of his arm. “I should’ve transferred schools. Or faked an injury. You weren’t supposed to witness that.”

“You looked like you were in slow motion,” you said, unable to stop giggling now. “Like gravity personally targeted you.”

“I felt personally targeted,” he muttered into the table. “I still do.”

There was something about the way he slumped dramatically, cheek squished to the wood, that made him look... oddly endearing. And when he peeked up at you through his bangs, just a little... like he was checking if you were laughing with him or at him, it made your chest squeeze a little.

You nudged the eraser on his pencil with yours. A tiny bump. He looked at it. Then at you.

“I’m glad we got partnered,” you said, so quietly you didn’t even know if he heard.

But he did.

He sat up slowly, straightening the corner of the worksheet like he needed to do something with his hands. “Me too.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward anymore. It was the kind of silence that asked nothing of either of you. It just was. Soft. Easy.

“Hey,” he said suddenly, “do you wanna split the project? Like... not just work separately and combine it, but actually do it together? brainstorm and stuff.”

You tilted your head. “Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”

“Yeah, but... I mean outside of school. Like, over the weekend maybe? At my place? I can make ramen. Badly.”

Your stomach twisted with nerves, but the good kind. The kind that felt like you were on the edge of something. “Okay,” you said.

Sunghoon blinked again. “Wait, really?”

You nodded.

He smiled. And it was a real one this time. Full, crooked, unfiltered.

He’d cleaned. Not well, but he’d tried. A mountain of clean-ish laundry had been shoved into the closet, and he’d lit a cinnamon candle like he thought that made it romantic. Mostly it just smelled like toast. Burnt toast.

You sat cross-legged on the floor beside his bed, your laptop propped against your knees. Sunghoon was on his stomach, sprawled out beside you, head resting on a pillow that looked suspiciously like it had a penguin face on it.

“I have a theory,” he said, voice muffled.

“Oh?”

“That the real reason I suck at chemistry is because I keep thinking about penguins instead of electrons.”

You snorted. “Penguins?”

“They’re funny little guys. Like, they just waddle around and fall over. But no one bullies them.”

“Do you... want to be a penguin, Sunghoon?”

“I want to be respected, Y/N.”

You laughed, head tilting to the side as you looked at him. “I think penguins are kind of loser-coded too.”

“Exactly!” He pointed at you. “And yet they’re beloved. It’s the blueprint.”

You smiled, shaking your head. “You’re so weird.”

“I get that a lot,” he said, mock-dramatically, rolling onto his back with a groan. “Usually by people who then proceed to ignore me forever.”

You were quiet for a moment.

“I’m not going to ignore you,” you said, carefully.

His eyes met yours, half surprised, half something softer. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You both stared for a second too long. The air between you was suddenly still—not tense, not electric, just quietly full of possibility. The laptop screen dimmed beside you. Neither of you moved to touch it.

Sunghoon sat up, slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re... really cool, you know that?”

You flushed. “I’m literally the shyest person in class.”

“That’s what makes you cool,” he said. “Like... you’re not trying. You’re just... you.”

You didn’t know what to say to that.

So instead, you nudged your shoulder against his.

A quiet little nudge.

And he nudged back.

The penguin pillow had somehow ended up between you, squished slightly as you sat side by side on the floor. It was getting late, the sun had dipped low outside Sunghoon’s window, casting slanted golden shadows across his messy room. The air was still cinnamon-sweet from the candle, though it was flickering weakly now, nearly out.

You’d stopped working on the project twenty minutes ago. The chemistry worksheet was abandoned somewhere behind you, and your laptops had long gone to sleep. But neither of you had moved to do anything about it.

It wasn’t laziness. It was just… comfort.

Sunghoon glanced over at you again. He kept doing that, like he couldn’t help it. And each time, it made your chest flutter a little more, a little higher.

“I, uh…” he started, then faltered, rubbing at the corner of his mouth. “This is gonna sound dumb, but... I’ve never really hung out with someone like this. Just... talking. Sitting. Not being weird on purpose.”

You looked at him. Really looked this time.

His hair was a little messy from flopping around on the floor earlier. There was a red imprint of the carpet on his cheek, fading slowly. He looked soft. Honest in a way that made you want to say something equally unfiltered.

“I like this,” you said quietly.

Sunghoon looked at you. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

His eyes searched yours, gently, not pressing, but you could feel the question forming behind them. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it. He shifted slightly closer. His leg brushed yours, barely.

You didn’t move away.

“Y/N,” he murmured.

You turned your face toward him, heart drumming louder now. “Yeah?”

He blinked slowly, then laughed, just once—a breathy sound, half nerves, half disbelief. “I really want to kiss you right now, but I’m terrified I’m gonna mess it up.”

You let out a small breath of a laugh, too. “What if we mess it up together?”

That made him freeze.

Then slowly, he leaned in.

It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t practiced. He paused right in front of you, lips hovering just a breath away, his eyes flicking from your mouth to your eyes, like asking permission in a language he didn’t quite know how to speak.

You nodded. Barely.

And he closed the gap.

His lips were warm. Hesitant. He didn’t try to move too fast or tilt your head or do anything dramatic. He just pressed. Gently. A soft connection. A quiet question.

And you answered by kissing him back.

Just once. Just enough.

When he pulled away, you were both pink in the face, blinking like you’d stepped into sunlight.

“…That wasn’t a mess,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper.

“No,” you whispered back. “That was... nice.”

A silence settled again, but this time it hummed.

Then Sunghoon, without looking at you, reached out and gently took your hand in his.

“Y/N?”

“Mm?”

“Do you wanna maybe, like... not be project partners anymore?”

You blinked. “What?”

“I do want to finish the project. But, like... after that. Do you want to maybe be... something else?”

You squeezed his hand.

And smiled.