#ive fluff

You roll over on the mattress, staring at the wall like maybe the paint will start peeling out money instead of flakes.

And then your phone vibrates. Ding.

The group chat you muted weeks ago lights up your screen again.

“Party tonight. Big one. Come through.”

“No excuses, man. We’re dragging you if you don’t.”

“You need to stop being depressed and live a little.”

You sigh, tossing your phone onto the bed like it personally wronged you. These obnoxious fucker again. The “friends” you managed to cling onto through sheer luck and timing, the rich kids with wallets heavier than your entire life savings. The kind who use champagne bottles as water guns and laugh about failing a class because they can just retake it next semester with their daddy’s money.

You know how this goes. They’ll invite you, claim it’s all in good fun, then spend the night poking at you like you’re their charity case. The “ordinary” one. Whatever their favourite punchline is.

But before you can type out the usual excuse—work, studying, not feeling well—another message drops. “Relax. We’ll cover your entry. Drinks too.”

Your thumb hovers over the keyboard.

They’ll pay. Free food. Free drink.

For a second, you imagine staying as you are: laying down, maybe getting up to your desk, staring at the blinking cursor on your half-finished assignment, pretending the instant noodles taste better than cardboard. Then you imagine an open bar, food that isn’t from the clearance aisle, and a night where you don’t have to think about overdue notices in exchange for ridicule.

You exhale, a bitter laugh slipping past your lips. “Screw it.”

Your phone buzzes again, like it’s mocking your surrender. “Knew you’d cave, dumbass. Don’t embarrass us too much.”

You mutter to yourself as you pull the least-wrinkled shirt from your closet, “Yeah, because I’m just here to make you fuckers look good, right?”

Still, you iron it. You button it up. You force your hair with the last spurt of your hair spray into something presentable. Downing that canned coffee you forced yourself to like to stay awake. Because at the end of the day, you don’t have the luxury of saying no.

Not when everything around you is crumbling, and a free night out will at least make you forget about your reality.

-

…maybe rotting at home was better whatever this grand party was.

The moment you step through the grand hotel doors, you feel like you should be working at the back of the kitchen instead. Marble floors, chandeliers dripping crystals, a string quartet in the corner—it’s the kind of environment where even the air feels expensive. Everyone is dressed like they’re either nepo babies or they actually are nepo babies, and you… you’re praying no one notices that your shirt has a frayed cuff or that little stain you couldn’t get rid of.

Your "friends", meanwhile, are already in their element. They throw their jackets at the coat check like it’s a sport, grab champagne flutes from silver trays like it’s water, and slide into the crowd with ease.

“Yo, relax, man,” one of them claps you on the back, nearly knocking the glass out of your hand. “We told you already, tonight’s on us. Just… don’t brood in a corner, alright?”

Remember, free food.

You force a smile and give them an uninterested "sure". But it’s hard to smile when your head keeps on doing mental math the whole time. Rent: $740. Utilities: another $120. Tuition deposit: looming like an execution date. Your brain is buzzing louder than the music, and every time your friends laugh, it feels like you’re sinking deeper into water you can’t swim out of. But you hover beside them anyway, because then you can get it out of the way as soon as this parade is done and bolt straight home.

Although, that’s when you notice her. Damn it, was her name again?

Oh right. Jang Wonyoung.

The room reacts instantly at the clacking of her heels. Heads turn. Voices lower.  You’ve heard the name tossed around campus like it’s some kind of brand. The Jang Corporation heiress. Top royalty. Samsung-level of wealth (or probably more). People whisper about her the way they whisper about exam leaks—rare, untouchable, never meant for the likes of you.

And seeing her in person? Yeah, it makes sense.

She’s radiant in a way that makes the room tilt. Every step, every glance, it’s like she was choreographed for perfection. Diamond earrings brush her jawline, her silk dress flows like liquid, and the casual flick of her hair has more grace than your entire existence. Heads turn. Conversations falter. She’s that girl, the one who doesn’t have to try.

Not that it matters. She’s definitely not your type. Too polished, too arrogant, too unreachable. You’ve got bigger problems than pretty girls with a last name that can open multiple estates.

So you stand there, nodding when your friends introduce her in passing. “Ah, Miss Jang, hey! It's been a long time. This is our guy, don’t mind him, he’s shy.” She gives you the briefest glance, a polite nod, then goes back to sipping her wine. Perfect. Easy.

Until it isn’t.

Because suddenly, a crowd of suitors descends on her like moths to a flame.

“Miss Jang, I’ve been meaning to ask, would you care for a drive in my father’s new Maybach?”

“Your dress is stunning tonight. Did you have it tailored in Paris? I could recommend —”

“You know, my family’s hosting a gala next week. You should come. We’d be honoured.”

The voices overlap, desperate, performative. Funny enough, you can see it in her expression: the strain behind her perfect smile, the boredom hiding in her eyes. She doesn’t want this. But they don’t care.

And then she looked at you, as if you two shared the same distaste towards this obnoxious crowd…then moved slowly towards you. Wait, towards you?

You freeze as she closes in, perfume wrapping around you like invisible silk. Her arm slips through yours, firm, warm, and terrifyingly deliberate.

“Babe,” she says smoothly, loud enough for the whole group to hear. Her smile blooms, but now it’s sharp, purposeful. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

Babe? Who's babe now? Did she forget that she just dismissed you with her eyes only just then?

You blink, brain scrambling for words, but nothing makes it past your throat. The suitors stop mid-sentence, their faces contorting in disbelief.

“Him?” one of them sneers.

Her grip tightens on you, nails grazing your sleeve. She tilts her head, still smiling, but her voice dips just enough to sting. “Yes. Problem?”

No one answers. No one dares. They scatter, muttering half-hearted excuses, their pride leaking out of them like popped balloons.

You, meanwhile, are still processing the fact that her arms are still wrapped around yours. Before you can speak, she tugs you away, heels clicking across the marble. Past the champagne, past the murmur, through a velvet curtain and into a quieter, dimly lit VIP lounge. She finally releases you, her expression cool and unreadable, like nothing just happened.

You blink at her. “What the actual fuck was that?”

“Quiet.” She doesn’t flinch. Too busy to check her black nails than to look at you. “Six months. Pretend to be my boyfriend. I’ll pay you.”

You furrowed your brow. “...What bull shit is this?”

Finally, her eyes flick to yours. They’re sharp, clear, cutting right through you. “Don’t make me repeat myself. Six months. You play the boyfriend role, and you’ll never have to worry about money again.”

You laugh, bitter. “Ok, I don’t know who the hell you think I am, but I’m not some fucking— ”

“Do it or else.” She cuts you off, her tone flat, dismissive. Like you’re already signed, sealed, delivered.

“Or else what?” you snap, more from panic than pride.

Her lips curl into something that isn’t quite a smile. “Or else I tell everyone here that you threatened me to call you babe. And trust me… they’ll believe me.”

Your blood runs cold. “Y-yeah fuck n—“

“What are you gonna do then, broke boy? Waggling your tail behind those three guys? You think I didn't notice?”

You want to cuss her out, walk out, reclaim the last scrap of dignity you have left. But the image of your unpaid rent flashes in your head. The tuition deadline. The electricity bill threatens to snap your life in half. The measly amount of money you have left imprinted in your mind.

$31.08.

This whole thing is a mistake. One big, humiliating, insane mistake. Yet.

“…How much?” you mutter, hating yourself already.

-

The café was too bright for your mood. Floor-to-ceiling windows let the morning light pour in, catching every imperfection of your slouched posture, every shadow under your tired eyes. You picked the corner seat, the one closest to the exit. If this went south, and it already felt like it would, you wanted the fastest escape route.

Because who would believe that event a few nights earlier actually happened?

Wonyoung entered like she owned the place. Not in the cliché way of a girl walking in with confidence, but in the literal sense that everyone working there seemed to straighten the second she stepped in. She wasn’t dressed like the heiress you’d overheard your friends gushing about that night— just jeans and a tucked-in shirt—but the air around her bent differently, like she was gravity and everyone else was debris.

“You’re late,” you muttered when she slid into the seat across from you.

“You’re poor,” she shot back with the sweetest smile. “But we can’t have everything we want, can we?”

You blinked, thrown off, before scowling. “Was that really fucking necessary?”

“It's amusing.” She smoothed the cuff of her sleeve, barely glancing at you. “Now, let’s talk business.”

The way she said business made your stomach twist. Like you weren’t sitting in some café near the subway station, but at the negotiating table of a multi-million-dollar merger.

“I already told you—”

“You already told me nothing,” she interrupted, plucking the coffee menu from the stand and flipping through it like she was at a salon. “You mumbled, cursed, and sulked. That’s not communication.”

Your jaw clenched. “I didn’t agree to anything.”

Her eyes flicked up then, sharp enough to slice. “You did, actually. The second you stayed in that room and asked how much. That is consent, sweetheart. Don’t you know your contract law?”

You leaned back in your chair, muttering under your breath. “What bullshit...”

“Anyway, let’s not waste my time.” She set the menu down and folded her hands neatly. “Let’s establish terms again.”

“Terms?”

“As I said, six months,” she cut in again. “You’re my boyfriend in public, in front of suitors, family, business associates. No exceptions.”

“And private?” you asked flatly.

“Private?” She let the word hang in the air like she was savouring it. Then she smiled, mocking, victorious. “You don’t know me. I don’t know you. Separate lives.”

You laughed, bitter. “Great, so I’m just an act.”

“Congratulations, you caught on quick.” She tilted her head, studying you like a lab rat who’d done a trick. “But don’t worry. You won't have to work at Starbucks for cash. You work for me.”

“I don’t like being owned.”

“You’re not owned,” she corrected, sweet as poison. “You’re hired. Big difference.”

That one stung, but you swallowed it down. The rent. The bills. The constant choking fear of falling behind. Those words kept your mouth shut when every bone in your body wanted to stand and leave.

“Anything else?” you muttered.

“Yes. Next, not falling for each other.” She said it so casually, like she was warning you not to step on wet paint.

“Tsk.” You scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not my type.”

“Good,” she replied instantly. “And you’re definitely not mine even in my next life. So we agree.”

There was silence for a beat, filled only by the hiss of the espresso machine and the low hum of chatter. You thought maybe that was it until she slid a crisp folder across the table.

You froze. “…What’s this?”

“Your new role.”

You opened it and almost choked. Resumes. Certificates. Company IDs. Bank statements. All meticulously crafted. You weren’t just anyone anymore. According to this file, you were a bright young intern at Samsung, on the path to middle management glory.

“This…” Your voice cracked. “You forged all this?”

“Such an ugly word.” She sipped her iced Americano, perfectly calm. “I prefer… curated.”

“Are you fucked in the head? If anyone finds out —”

“They won’t. I won't get caught.” She leaned forward, propping her chin on her hand, her gaze locking onto yours. “And neither will you, if you’re smart enough to play your part.”

Your hands tightened around the folder. “This is blackmail.”

“This is survival…well for you, I suppose.” She corrected it smoothly. “Unless, of course, you want to go back to your dignity and struggle with rent while I find someone else for the role.”

You opened your mouth to retort, but nothing came out. The images of unpaid bills, of your landlord’s cold eyes, of the suffocating weight of reality… they were louder than your pride.

“Thought so,” she said, victorious, before pulling a sleek pen from her bag and sliding it across to you. “Sign it.”

You stared at the pen like it was a blade pressed against your throat. “You really think you can just…do shits like this?”

Her smile widened, serene and smug. “Oh no. I don’t think. I know.”

Your lips curled into a snarl, but your hand still reached out, almost on its own. You signed. The sound of the pen scratching against paper felt like shackles clamping onto your wrists.

“Good boy,” she said softly, leaning back in her chair as if the deal were sealed with your dignity.

You wanted to argue, to flip the table, to tell her you weren’t anyone’s dog. But all you could do was sit there, staring at the ink drying on the contract, knowing you’d just sold yourself into the most humiliating role of your life.

You leaned back, exhaling through your nose. “…Great. Can’t wait to meet the in-laws.”

Her smirk deepened. “Oh, don’t worry. That’s next week.”

You nearly choked on your own spit. “WHAT THE F—”

-

You had been told to “dress nicely” for tonight, but Wonyoung’s definition of nice was apparently closer to a corporate gala than what you pulled together. A shirt that had seen too many washes, a blazer with one loose thread, and shoes that squeaked if you pressed too hard on the heel.

When you arrived at her family’s mansion, the difference between your world and hers slapped you in the face before you even touched the brass knocker. The gate alone was taller than your apartment building, the hedges trimmed like soldiers in formation. It literally looked like it had been pulled straight out of one of those glossy real estate magazines that you ripped the pages off to cover the mold on your wall.

She opened the door herself, arms crossed, eyes scanning you in a slow, judgmental sweep. “Hm. Passable,” she said flatly, before leaning in close enough for her perfume to brush your skin. “Don’t speak unless spoken to. Smile. And remember, you’re a Samsung intern, not… whatever you usually are.”

“I know,” you muttered, tugging on your sleeves. “You already drilled it into my fucking head five times.”

“Six,” she corrected with a faint smirk. “And it’s still not enough. Also get rid of your foul mouth.”

Inside, her parents sat in a living room large enough to host a wedding reception. Her mother rose first, elegant and poised, while her father looked up from the leather armchair, his expression somewhere between curiosity and suspicion.

“This must be him,” her mother said warmly, extending a hand. “The young man you told us about.”

“Yes, Mom,” Wonyoung replied smoothly, her tone dripping with the practiced sweetness you had never once been privy to in private. She squeezed your arm just hard enough to remind you of your role. “This is my lovely boyfriend. He’s an intern at Samsung’s headquarters.”

That single lie rolled off her tongue like silk, and you had to nod quickly before her parents’ eyes bored through you.

“Yes, ma'am. It’s… an honour,” you said, fumbling slightly, but catching yourself at the last second. You forced a polite smile, praying it didn’t look too strained.

Her father stood behind, brow raised. “Samsung? Which department?”

You froze for a beat, but Wonyoung slipped her hand over yours on the couch, nails biting into your skin under the guise of affection.

“R&D,” you said quickly, voice steady only because you knew she’d dig deeper into your hand if you faltered.

Her father leaned back, studying you. “Impressive. Competitive to get in. You must be very capable.”

You nodded again, feeling your stomach churn. “I… do my best, sir.”

Throughout the dinner, you spoke only when asked, each word carefully filtered through the silent threats in Wonyoung’s sharp glances. She filled in the gaps flawlessly, weaving a story around you as though she had rehearsed every lie for weeks. She laughed at your forced anecdotes, painted you as ambitious, dedicated, dependable—the kind of son-in-law any parent would be proud of. You wanted to sink into the floor. Every compliment was another stone on your chest. But when her father finally nodded in approval, you felt her hand relax ever so slightly over yours.

As soon as the front door closed behind her parents, she let go of you like you were nothing but a used prop. “Not bad,” she said, already beginning to head inside without a glance back. “You didn’t embarrass me. You might actually be useful.”

“Glad to be of the fucking service,” you muttered under your breath.

She paused, half-turning with a smile. “Careful. Props don’t talk back.”

The days that followed turned into a routine, or rather, a performance. Hand in hand, you walked across campus with her, her fingers laced with yours in a grip that felt more like possession than affection. Cameras, phones, whispers, all part of her stage. She leaned close enough to make hearts flutter around you, her laughter spilling like honey into the ears of every spectator.

“Baby” she’d say loudly, brushing her hair back with exaggerated fondness, “walk me to class, please?”

The crowd would melt. You’d play along, smile like a fool, even squeeze her hand. And when the crowd dispersed, when the attention shifted elsewhere, she’d drop your hand like it burned her.

“That’ll be $3000 for you.” she’d say casually, slipping a bill into your pocket like she was tipping a waiter.

"Wow." You clenched your teeth, forcing yourself to swallow your pride. “A fine example of humility, Jang Wonyoung.”

“So what?” she cut in sharply, eyes gleaming. “You agreed to this. Don’t start acting like you’re the victim.”

Another day, she leaned into your shoulder at the campus café, sighing dramatically loud enough for the group at the next table to hear. “You’re so sweet, paying for my coffee again. How did I get so lucky?”

You grinned through your teeth, sliding your own card across the counter, your stomach twisting at the price (even you got paid handsomely). When the last witness turned their head away, she straightened up and shoved a stack of folded bills at you beneath the table.

“Reimbursement,” she whispered, tone dripping with mock kindness. “For being so obedient.”

You wanted to throw it back at her. To stand up, tell everyone it was all bullshit. But then you thought of your empty fridge, the rent overdue notice peeking from under your door. You kept the money, like you always did. Eating away your shame was better than eating nothing.

And she knew it. Every smirk, every command, every choreographed laugh reminded you that she wasn’t your girlfriend—she was your leash-holder. And you were the dog that agreed to wear the collar.

At least your wallet is happier now. But were you?

Were you really?

-

Her room was too clean.

That was your first thought when she waved you in with the laziest flick of her wrist. It was supposed to be another “home date” arranged to keep up appearances for her parents, but tonight was different. For the first time, you properly took in her space.

The desk was ridiculously enormous, covered in a thin stack of papers, a sleek MacBook, and one of those Montblanc pens you’d only ever seen locked behind glass in department stores. But the strangest thing? Despite the money on display, the open workbook in front of her was smeared with pink highlighter and frantic chicken-scratch notes stood out.

Wonyoung was slouched in her chair, hair tied back messily, staring at an Excel sheet like it had personally insulted her.

“Corporate Finance. Week five.” She groaned, stabbing her pen at the screen. “Why is this shit so hard? Discounted cash flow? Net present value? IRR? What the fuck is this...”

So even the glamourous princess could be foul with her tongue. Huh.

You leaned against the desk, peering down at her assignment. The Excel sheet was a disaster: columns misaligned, formulas broken, random cells filled with “???”.

“…Why don’t you just, you know, pay someone to do it?” you asked flatly, because honestly, wasn’t that her whole way of life? Throw money at problems until they disappear.

Her head snapped up, eyes narrowing. “If I could, don’t you think I would’ve already? Daddy said if he catches me outsourcing work again, he’s cutting off my platinum card. No Amex, no driver, no weekend spa trips.” She said this as if it were the cruellest punishment imaginable.

You raised a brow. “So basically… your entire ecosystem of survival. What a fucking cheat.”

She clicked her tongue. “Don’t act like you don’t get it. You’d die without money too. The difference is, you’d just starve. I’d lose my whole lifestyle.”

You wanted to argue, but she wasn’t wrong. Still, you glanced back at her sheet and sighed. “Alright, move over. Let me see this shit.”

Wonyoung blinked. “You? What are you gonna do? Throw some sad, broken-man wisdom at my work?”

“Broke-man wisdom probably has more accuracy than… whatever the fuck this is.” You gestured to her file. “Look, this assignment isn’t that hard. You’re just overcomplicating it.”

She gave you a dubious look but shifted over, chair squeaking as you pulled it toward the desk.

“Okay, so.” You pointed at the problem statement. “They’re asking you to evaluate a project—figure out if it’s worth investing in. First step: you take the projected cash flows—”

"Wait. Cash flow is just… money in and money out, right?”

“Basically. But you need to think in terms of time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Because of opportunity cost. You could invest that dollar today, earn returns, so by next year it’d be worth more. That’s why you discount future cash flows back to present value.”

“…Okay, fine, professor.” She rolled her eyes but leaned forward anyway, watching as you typed out the formula.

"Not a professor but whatever." You sighed, but continued anyway. "See this? NPV equals the sum of all future cash flows divided by (1 + discount rate)^t. If it’s positive, you take the project. Negative, you reject it."

Her brow furrowed, lips pursing slightly. She scribbled it down on her notebook in messy handwriting.

“And IRR?” she asked quietly.

“Urm…Internal Rate of Return. It’s basically the discount rate that makes your NPV equal zero. Companies like to compare it to their hurdle rate—if IRR’s higher, the investment’s good.”

She actually nodded this time, no sarcasm. “…Okay. That kind of makes sense. Wait, so the discount rate… what even is that?”

“Think of it like…uh…the required rate of return. Usually, it’s tied to the cost of capital. You know, like WACC—Weighted Average Cost of Capital.”

Her nose wrinkled. “That sounds awful.”

“It is…but it matters. A company’s not gonna put money in something unless the return’s higher than the cost of funding it.”

You kept explaining, fingers flying over her Excel sheet on the screen, fixing formulas and formatting. She leaned closer, chin resting on her palm, quietly absorbing.

“See? Clean. NPV is positive, IRR is twelve percent. The project's viable.”

“…You make it look easy,” she muttered, almost grudgingly.

“Shit's not easy. You just panic instead of thinking.”

She gave you a side-eye. “Don’t act all superior. You probably learned this to survive, huh? Counting pennies on your grocery runs.”

“Better than not knowing what the fuck an interest rate is.”

Her mouth fell open. “I do know! It’s… it’s that number the bank slaps on your credit card!”

"Fuck, damn." You snorted. “Revolutionary insight. Harvard Business School is fucking shaking.”

She shoved your shoulder lightly, cheeks puffed. “…Shut up. I’m trying.”

For once, the edge in her voice wasn’t mocking. She was actually… frustrated. Vulnerable, even. You caught yourself staring at the way her brows furrowed as she chewed on the end of her pen, scribbling half-legible notes.

“You’re not that damn bad at this, you know,” you muttered.

Her head tilted. “Don’t fucking lie.”

“Well, I fucking not. You just…” you tapped her notes “…don’t trust yourself enough to think through the steps.”

Silence lingered between you, broken only by the clacking of keys. Finally, she leaned back with a sigh. “…Thanks. I guess.”

-

At first, earning your new role as her impromptu tutor was like dragging a cat into a bathtub. She’d slump back on the leather couch with her legs crossed, diamond earrings swinging, staring at her phone while you were trying to explain the difference between gross margin and net margin.

“Wonyoung, you can’t just—” you sighed, tapping the whiteboard app on your tablet. “Revenue minus cost of goods sold. That's a gross margin. But if you subtract operating expenses, then you get net. Write it down.”

She didn’t even look up, lazily twirling her straw in a pink cocktail. “Mhm. So… if I spend 50k on a Chanel bag showcase and sell it to my friends for 70k, the gross margin is… twenty, right?”

“Not… exactly.” You pinched your nose. “One, you don’t ‘sell’ bag showcases. Two, you’re missing fixed costs. Venue rental, staff, lighting, the security guard who looks like he eats diamonds for breakfast—”

Finally, she looked at you, pouting. “Ugh. Why do you make it sound so boring? Just say yes.”

“Fuck no. Because your professor won’t.”

It was the only time you could afford to be blunt with her, the only arena where her usual intimidation lost ground (it's most likely because she wanted to get her black cards back). She’d glare at you like she was two seconds away from firing you, but instead of snapping back, she’d lower her eyes and quietly jot something down in her notebook.

The sessions became so frequent that you started to notice her picking up your habits without even realizing it. Her notes were no longer scattered scrawls but tidy bullet points, structured exactly like yours. Her readings, once untouched, were now highlighted in the same rhythm you used. And every so often, you’d hear her mutter your exact words under her breath, “...you fucking serious?” in that clipped, annoyed tone that used to be yours alone. Basically, she swore more often just like you.

But it didn’t stop there. One night, around 2 AM, your phone lit up. You groaned, rolled over, and saw her name.

You picked up, voice rough. “What.”

“Explain elasticity again.”

“…You fucking serious?”

“Yes, I am fucking serious. If demand is elastic, price goes down, sales go up, right? But then why did Apple make their phones more expensive and still sell more?”

"You fucking…" You sat up, rubbing your temples. “….Because not everything is elastic. Luxury goods, like the stuff you waste your allowance on, are often inelastic. The higher the price, the more it screams status. People buy it because it’s expensive.”

There was a pause on the other end. Then a quiet laugh. “So I’m a walking case study?”

“Glad you’re self-aware, Jang Wonyoung” you muttered, collapsing back onto your pillow. “Now let me sleep, will you?”

“Mm. Fine. Thanks, babe. Sleep tight.”

You hung up, staring at the ceiling. Wonyoung, of all people, studying at 2 AM? You didn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed.

Other times, she’d drag you out against your will.

You once had to storm into the VIP lounge of a Gangnam club because she wouldn’t stop spamming your phone. She was waiting with a notebook open among champagne bottles and expensive fruits.

“Sit.” She patted the seat beside her, like you were some kind of dog.

You groaned. “You’re seriously making me teach you here?”

“Yes. I already skipped three classes. You said I was wasting time.” She slid her notebook closer, eyes uncharacteristically big and expectant. “Don’t let me waste it, my shitty boyfriend.”

Her tone was bossy, but her hand was already clutching a pen like she was actually ready to listen. Against your better judgment, you sat and explained how Porter’s Five Forces worked while bass shook the glass walls. She nodded, tapping her nails on the page, lips moving as she whispered the concepts back to herself.

And somewhere along the way, you picked up her habits too.

She had that habit of twirling her pen when she thought, and you caught yourself doing the same when trying to find the right word to explain to her. She'd waved her hand dismissively whenever she rejected an idea, a gesture so effortlessly elegant you slap yourself for accidentally mirroring it when the waiter offered drinks. Worst of all, you just start drinking whatever overpriced she always brought.

But then…her grades began to climb, not spectacularly, but enough to make her happy. Her first decent midterm came back with a solid B+. She shoved the paper into your face before you even stepped into her place.

“Look! I passed!” she beamed. “Do you know how many people thought I was going to fail out? Hah!”

You gave her a once-over. “Not bad. Still not an A though.”

“Excuse you?” She smacked your arm with the rolled-up paper. “This is basically an A for me. You should be honoured. My dad didn’t even believe I wrote the essay myself.”

“…Did you?”

“Yes!” She puffed out her cheeks, glaring at you. “I stayed up all night, typing and deleting. And don’t give me that shitty grin, I only cried twice.”

You chuckled despite telling yourself not to. “Fine. Good job.”

Her eyes widened, then she smiled a little too brightly. “Y-you actually mean that?”

“Why would I waste my damn energy lying to you?”

For a moment, she froze, lips twitching. Then she turned away, suddenly shy. “…Well. Keep complimenting me like that, and maybe I’ll even aim for an A next time.”

-

You thought it was a phase.

Maybe something she did when she was bored, the same way she bought limited-edition heels and forgot about them a week later. But three months in and the pattern stayed.

One evening, you were hunched over your laptop at your tiny dining table, Excel open, cells glowing with endless columns of projected revenue and sponsorship figures. Your wrist ached from typing, but your pen spun absentmindedly between your fingers (three twirls, catch, three twirls, catch) the same nervous tic you’d noticed she’d been doing with her Montblanc pen for weeks now.

The door opened without so much as a knock.

“Again?” you muttered, not even looking up.

Of course, the Jang Wonyoung barged in without asking, as always, a plastic bag of snacks in her hand. She always did that annoying twirl, showing off her favourite Tommy Jeans black dress that hugs her tightly (you never see her wear that outside, though.) Instead of sitting across, she dragged the chair and sat beside you, throwing the bag on the table like she owned the whole room.

“Ya, did you hear the latest about the Han family?” she said, words muffled slightly as she chewed. “Their eldest son got caught cheating in his MBA program. Total fucking scandal. The dean over there is trying to keep it quiet, but everyone knows.”

You didn’t look up. “You sound way too damn happy about someone else’s shit.”

Her grin widened, sharp and satisfied. “Of course I am. He once told me I ‘lacked the work ethic for graduate school’ when we first met. Look how that fucker turned out.” She leaned closer, tilting her head toward your screen. “What are you even doing this time? Looks like hell.”

“Quarterly projections,” you muttered. “Not that you’d care.”

“True,” she said airily, throwing a piece of Haribo into her mouth. “But if you run out of numbers to stare at, I can tell you about which department store CEO just got blacklisted by LVMH for faking luxury collaborations.”

You finally looked at her, brow furrowed. “Why…do you even know these things, Wonyoung?”

She smirked, popping another into her mouth. “Because gossip travels faster in penthouses than it does in classrooms. You wouldn’t understand.”

You shook your head, returning to your spreadsheet, but she didn’t leave. Instead, she slouched in her chair, one elbow propped against the table, scrolling through her phone with idle taps. The silence wasn’t heavy anymore. Just… there.

Another night, you were sprawled in the lounge, a half-warm can of cheap coffee on the table, a documentary murmuring from the TV. She slid onto the couch beside you, close enough that your shoulders brushed, dropping her bag onto the floor without a care. You didn’t even flinch anymore. She’d been barging into your place too often for it to feel foreign.

“Hye, want to know which dumb rich guys are secretly dating a B-list actress?” she asked suddenly, eyes glittering with mischief.

You gave her a deadpan look. “Not particularly.”

She leaned in anyway, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I won’t tell anyone else. Just you.”

You exhaled, exasperated. “Why me?”

She blinked once, then smirked. “Because you’re boring enough to keep secrets.”

"Rude.”

“Accurate,” she shot back without missing a beat. Then, as if remembering something, she reached over, plucked your can of coffee from the table, and took a swig.

You frowned. “That’s mine.”

“Mhm, fuck that. Your shit, my shit.” she hummed, ignoring you, her long fingers wrapped around the dented aluminum. She tilted her head back, swallowed, then lowered the can with an approving look. “Ugh. I hate that I like this now.”

Your brow arched. “Didn’t you once call it—what was it—‘recycled battery acid’?”

“My point still stands.” She smirked, setting the can back down but keeping it close to her side of the table, as if it was hers now. “But it’s…addictive. And way cheaper than the syrupy shit I used to waste thirty bucks on.”

“Welcome to the commoner’s economy, princess.” you muttered.

“Don’t use that tone on me, mister.” She tapped her nails against the aluminum, a habit that mirrored the way you always fidgeted with your pen. “It’s just… practical. Convenient. Doesn’t come in an obnoxious cup with my name spelled wrong.” She shot you a sideways glance, her grin playful. “Happy? You’ve fucked me up.”

You kept your face straight. “Finally, some good shit I’ve taught you.”

She laughed, leaning into you, the sound bubbling up without her usual effort to control it. “Wow. You’re actually proud. Cute.”

“I do not remember saying that” you dismissed, unknowingly did her usual gesture like it was natural.

“Sure, sure.” She settled more comfortably against your shoulder, like she’d done it a hundred times before. Her hair tickled your arm, her perfume faint but familiar. She lifted the can again, took another sip, then sighed contentedly, her lips quaking into a softer smile this time.

“And because…I guess…urm…” She paused, eyes still on the screen but voice low. “…you actually listen.”

The documentary droned on in the background. Outside, neon lights bled through the blinds, painting the room in shifting pinks and blues. You were itching to push her off. To tell her you weren’t her diary, weren’t her late-night therapist, weren’t her safe little vault for secrets. But you didn’t.

You sat still, feeling the slight weight of her head, the warmth of her shoulder against yours, the soft clink of her nails against the can she stole.

And you realized, somewhere between each impromptu session and whispered gossip under neon lights like this, that the spoiled heiress who once saw you as nothing more than a background actor had started to…warm up.

And maybe you are too…

-

By the fifth month, something had shifted.

You noticed it in the smallest ways. Wonyoung no longer clutched her iced lattes from high-end cafés with gold-leaf foam; instead, you always see her with a dented can of black coffee—the kind you’d been forcing down for years because it was cheap and everywhere. She still wrinkled her nose at the taste, but she drank it anyway. She’d even pick up an extra can for you sometimes, sliding it across the table like it was nothing.

And you, without realizing, had started tapping your pen against notebooks in the same unorthodox rhythm she tapped her nails against glasses. Your head tilted the same way hers did when listening. Sometimes when you walked away from her driver waiting at the curb, you caught yourself dragging your feet just like she did—stretching out those last few seconds like you didn’t want the evening to end either.

At first, you dismissed it as habit, camouflage, a side effect of spending too much time together. But you couldn’t deny the pattern.

She laughed harder at your blunt, unpolished jokes than at any half-hearted punchline from the hordes that kept licking her boots. She didn’t argue back as much during case studies, even when you yelled at her for the fifth time in a week about mixing up fixed costs and variable costs. And sometimes, in the silence after your scolding, while she typed notes furiously into her laptop, her gaze would wander back to you. Not to her “fake boyfriend.” Not to her impromptu tutor. But to something else, something she herself couldn’t seem to name.

And against your better judgment, against all the bitterness you’d buried toward her kind of world, something cracked inside you.

Maybe you were wrong about her. Somehow.

And just as quickly as it appeared, the thought crumbled. Because she pulled away.

No messages.

No heads up.

Nothing.

Then one night you stumbled upon her again online, flashing lights bouncing off champagne towers, her name trending on Instagram stories full of sequins and afterparties. She fit there too perfectly, sliding back into the neon world of heirs and heiresses like the late nights of canned coffee and whispered gossip had been nothing but a detour.

She had vanished from your life like it was nothing. And you felt stupid for letting yourself think otherwise but just a contract.

You dropped whatever flicker of hope had sparked inside you. Snuffed it out before it could grow. Of course she wasn’t different. Of course she was just like the rest of them - throwing you away when you're out of use. You should’ve never expected anything more. It was over for you.

To her however…it wasn’t.

She hated how much she thought about you even after another Long Island. She hated how fake her laugh sounded when another rich kid told a joke, because she could only remember the way hers spilled out wholeheartedly at you, uncaring of your judgement. She hated how she heard your crude voice every time she glanced back at her Macbook.

And she hated most of all that she missed you.

She tried to drown it in neon lights, in alcohol and shallow conversation. But nothing worked. Not for a second.

So when you finally confronted her, it wasn't anything dramatic nor passionate. It was worse.

It was straight up a void.

She came back to the usual café you two had been visiting for months, the starting place of the whole contract, the “set piece” of your little arrangement, the one place that had always seen you both smiling a little too brightly for the sake of appearances.  

“You’re late,” you said flatly.

Her lips twitched. “That’s what you’re starting with?”

“You came. I came. Now sit.”

It wasn’t a request. And she hated how obediently she sat down anyway.

For minutes, neither of you bothered with the old charade. No leaning close for show. No playful act for the regulars to whisper about. Just silence, broken only by the clink of your spoon against the espresso cup. The same rhythm you had picked up from her.

Wonyoung hated every second of it. She could see the indifference in your face, the way your eyes wandered off as if you had other things on your mind. And she hated the fact that she could recognise that particular rhythm from the tapping. The hollow laughter or the unfiltered curse would be far better than that constant noise right now.

“So that’s it?” she snapped suddenly. “You don’t care where I’ve been?”

“You’ve been at parties,” you replied, eyes fixed on your drink and stopping the spoon. “Congratulations. Want me to clap?”

Her chest tightened. “You’re heartless. I disappear for fucking weeks and that’s all you have to say?”

“So fucking what?” At last, you looked at her, your gaze sharp enough to cut. “People come and go, Wonyoung. You signed me for six months. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Her throat closed. “So that’s all I am to you? A contract?”

“I was a contract to you too. Mutual transaction, Wonyoung.”

The bluntness hit harder than a slap.

Her nails dug into her palms. “Why do you always do this shit? Pretend you don’t care, like you’re above everything, like nothing fucking touches you—”

“Because none of this shit touches me.” Your tone was steady, too steady. “You don’t get it. You’re spoiled, Wonyoung. You run to me when it’s convenient, then crawl back to your perfect little world the second it scares you. Don’t act like this is more than what it is.”

Her breath hitched, tears threatening, but her pride held. “You really think that’s all I’ve been doing? Using you? Playing with you?”

“Yes,” you said without hesitation.”What else?”

Her chest rose and fell sharply, like she was trying to keep herself from drowning. She bit down on her lip, eyes flashing with something raw. “You think I wanted this? You think I fucking planned to—” she stopped herself, words catching.

You didn’t move.

“I cannot change my feelings for you,” she blurted out. The tremor broke into rawness, eyes wet, hands trembling on the table. “Believe me, I fucking tried.”

Silence fell heavy, the café fading out around you both. For the first time, her mask was gone. No perfect smile, no practiced tone. Just Wonyoung, stripped raw, vulnerable, begging without saying the word. Begging that you would see her properly.

And a part of you wanted to forgive her. Ached to. Because she enjoyed your bitter canned coffee. Because you caught yourself chewing at straws the way she used to. Because she laughed for real with you and let herself listen without pretending she already knew. You wanted to reach across the table. You wanted to tell her you could try, just try.

But you didn’t. You smothered it down, buried it under the weight of everything you knew about her world. You couldn’t afford to believe it. Not from her. 

Anymore.

“Well,” you began, soft yet merciless, “I can’t change my despise for you either.”

Her head jerked back as if you’d struck her. “What…?”

“Wonyoung.” You breathed, exhaling all the thoughts that you were bottling up. “I already don’t…like your kind of people, especially those who whine and play around. Being…friends with you was the furthest I could go, and that’s me being generous.

You swallowed, unsure if the word ”friend” rolled off your tongue was sweet or bitter. "But this?” You pushed the expensive coffee cup aside like it was trash. “This was a contract. And you broke it. It’s over.”

Like you were clocking out of a shift.

Her body trembled as the tears finally fell, one after another, slipping down her flawless face. Her voice cracked as she screamed, “You’re really ending it like this?! Just like that?!”

You stood, hands sliding into your pockets. “…Thank you for the past six months, Jang Wonyoung.”

And you got up from your seat.

On the table, beside her untouched latte, you placed a small, neatly wrapped box. Inside was a silver pen — unbranded, practical, the one you’d once caught her admiring when you were scribbling notes beside her. Her birthday was only a few days away. It was the only kindness you allowed yourself.

You didn’t wait to see her reaction. Didn’t dare.

The bell chimed as you walked out, dragging your feet unconsciously — just like her.

Wonyoung could only crumble back into her seat, face buried in her hands, her sobs muffled against the perfect silence of the café. For the first time in her carefully curated life, her heart felt like it had been ripped apart. The first affection she thought might be real, the first person who didn’t look at her like a brand, a name, nor an heiress, was gone.

And you?

You walked into the street, your thumb already scrolling through job postings, your teeth chewing at your fingernail the way she used to chew straws.

A barista gig near the university. A bookstore clerk position. A part-time teaching assistant role if you got lucky. Anything to keep moving. Anything to keep the light on your head and food on the table. Anything to not get back to the time where you only had $31.08 on you. Anything but thinking about the girl crying her heart out behind you.

Because for her, it was never just a contract.

But for you, it had to be. Even if you’d already betrayed yourself by leaving her that gift.

——————————————————————

Prompt masterlist here !

Pls check all of them, they are great

“It's age-appropriate. Cute. Safe. Fans like cute.”

She stomps her foot, flats squeaking on the polished floor as she turns to face you.

“Safe? Cute? I'm not cute anymore!” Leeseo whines, pitching up into that familiar babyish tone she uses when she wants attention. She tugs her skirt hem higher, exposing an inch of thigh above her jet black stockings.

Yujin’s sprawled across the black leather couch in the corner with her long legs stretched out, phone in hand. She laughs without looking up, “She's right, oppa. Let the maknae show some skin. She's all grown up now.”

Wonyoung, who's sitting beside Yujin with her legs elegantly crossed, smiles softly as she scrolls through photos of Dubai chocolate on her phone. She flicks her eyes between you and Leeseo.

“She’s been 20 for months. Let her try.”

Leeseo beams at her two favorite unnies, then turns back to you with triumphant, sparkling eyes.

“See? Even they agree!”

You transform into a wall. “The concept is youthful. Not sexy. You want to risk Dispatch headlines on your first solo teaser?”

Her smile falters for a second, then she sticks her tongue out at you childishly.

“You’re no fun.”

“Fun? We're not here for ‘Fun’,” you raise your voice. “Having ‘Leeseo from IVE Transforms Into A Vixen’ plastered all over every media outlet and forum is not ‘Fun’.”

She ignores you and flounces over to the rack, fingers dancing across hangers until she yanks out a sheer black mesh top. It's practically see-through with delicate straps, designed to be layered under something else.

She holds it against her chest, turning to the mirror again. “What about this? With the skirt? Super chic.”

You step forward and reach past her shoulder, taking the hanger from her hand.

“No.” You hang it back on the rack with a cutting force. “You stick to the concept.”

She gasps dramatically and shoves your chest lightly with both palms.

“You’re so mean! I’m literally an adult!”

Yujin snorts from the couch. “Adult tantrum in 3… 2…”

Leeseo spins on her heel, pigtails whipping across the air and points at you accusingly.

“Fine. Tomorrow’s my solo photoshoot. If you won’t pick something hotter, I’ll just do it myself.”

She snatches her bag — leopard-print, of course (she switched out her pink cutesy purse the day she turned twenty) — from the chair and storms toward the elevator.

Halfway there she “accidentally” knocks over a clothing rack. The metal clatters and garments of “cute clothes” that she rejected avalanches onto the floor in a colorful heap.

She freezes and squeaks with a purposeful (?) “Oops!”. She bolts off even faster with flaming cheeks, nearly tripping over the mess she made.

She pauses right at the elevator doors and glances back at you. She looks just the way she used to when she was twelve, waiting for you to tell her it’s okay to cry.

You don’t call her name.

You haven’t in three years.

Not since the first time Dispatch posted blurry photos of you two leaving a convenience store at 2 a.m. and the comments called her “the trainee with the staff boyfriend”.

It was just to buy some late night snack, but that snack was the appetiser to learning how fast a rumor can spread, and how fast it can burn everything down.

She snaps her head back and leaves.

The makeup artist in the corner stifles a laugh.

Her manager that's leaning against the doorframe shakes his head fondly. “Same old Leeseo,” he mutters, loud enough for you to hear.

You walk towards the mess and bend to pick up the fallen clothes, folding them methodically, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket.

You pull it out habitually.

<Tiger Cub, 18:29> This was taken in the changing room earlier. Look at this outfit! Too baby right? 😣

[photo attached: mirror selfie, skirt tugged high, pouty lips, peace sign]

You stare at the photo but your three fingers move automatically, swiping them down — screenshot taken. The instant the screen capture happens, everything disappears.

She unsent it.

You open the folder labeled “L” and move it into the sub-folder “Pouts”.

The counter ticks up: 248 items.

A small, subtle smile tugs at the corner of your mouth, and it's gone before anyone sees.

Well, someone saw it.

“You just smiled at your phone. That was her, wasn’t it?” Yujin raises an eyebrow.

You school your face back to Unbreakable Wall Mode and pocket the phone.

“Work.”

Wonyoung laughs softly. “She’s going to keep pushing until you crack, you know.”

The makeup artist glances over with a grin as she touches up Wonyoung’s highlighter.

“We’re all rooting for you two, oppa. Just say the word and we’ll help.”

The manager chuckles from the doorway. “Been saying that for years. Kid’s too stubborn to listen.”

You finish folding the last top and set it back on the rack.

Your phone buzzes again.

<Tiger Cub, 18:32> I’m sorry for being dramatic… Don’t hate me okay?

<Tiger Cub, 18:33> …You still there?

You swipe your fingers again, and with a few taps, you archive it into “Cries”.

Then type back a curt reply.

<You, 18:33> I’m here. Go home. Rest for tomorrow.

She replies instantly.

<Tiger Cub, 18:33> Promise you’ll be at my shoot?

You stare at the screen, thumb hovering over the send button after typing out the message in a flash. But you decide to delete every letter and wait for five minutes.

<Tiger Cub, 18:35> Hello? Are you mad? I'm sorry for messing up the clothes.

<Tiger Cub, 18:36> Those cute dresses probably deserved to be on the floor anyway~

<Tiger Cub, 18:37> I saw you typing earlier. Why aren't you replying!

<Tiger Cub, 18:38> Fine! I’ll just wear whatever I want tomorrow if you don’t reply!

<Tiger Cub, 18:39> Alright alright I'm sorry!

You save another screenshot again, tucking it into the “Tantrum” folder.

Then your fingers move again, tapping a short and curt reply.

<You, 18:39> I’ll be there.

She sends a single heart emoji, then nothing.

You open the “L” folder again, yes again, and drag the heart emoji screenshot into “Soft”.

Silence settles over the studio again.

“She likes you, you know,” Wonyoung looks up from her phone, a gentle smile curving her lips.

You exhale through your nose.

“I know.”

Yujin grins, finally looking up from her screen. “And you like her back. So why do you keep freezing her out?”

Wonyoung quips in, “Don’t keep her waiting too long. She’s been waiting for years already.”

You don’t answer.

But deep down, you already know she’s right.

Leeseo never stops pushing.

And part of you — the part you keep locked away — hopes she never does.

***

“JANG WONYOUNG!”

“WONYOUNGAHHHHHH”

“LUCKY VICKYYY!”

The fashion event is a glittering cage: crystal chandeliers overhead, velvet ropes corralling the savage crowd, photographers shouting names like battle cries, champagne flutes clinking like tiny warnings.

Wonyoung moves through it like she was born under spotlights. A black strapless velvet mini-dress hugs her slender frame with massive silk roses blooming at her hip like a dark flower. The dress is short and daring, the hem barely skimming mid-thigh, and the way the velvet clings to her skin makes every step a quiet statement. Nothing like how you would dress Leeseo.

Her hair is swept into a loose, glossy wave, and priceless diamonds glint at her ears and throat.

But the real diamond of the event is the lady who’s parting crowds with every step.

You’re here as her stylist — officially.

Unofficially, you’re here because she asked, and because saying no to Wonyoung has never been easy.

She links her arm through yours as you step onto the red carpet. It's natural, practiced, and it's Jang Wonyoung. She doesn't say, but she always does this with people she trusts.

Cameras explode with blinding lights.

She laughs at something you murmur about the rose detail → leans in close → whispers in your ear, hand resting lightly on your chest for the photographers.

Your other hand settles instinctively at her lower back, just above the swell of her ass, steadying her as she turns for a profile shot.

The placement is professional.

Necessary for balance on the uneven carpet.

But from the angle of the cameras — and from the phone screens Leeseo is probably staring at right now — it looks intimate.

Possessive.

Your fingers rest there with no intention while Wonyoung poses with her hip cocked, rose blooming dramatically against the black velvet. She winks and blows a kiss at the camera.

Perfect shot for the cameras.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket.

Not a perfect shot for her.

You glance down at your phone.

<Tiger Cub, 19:35> Have fun with Wonyoung-unnie~ 😒

[photo attached: a forehead shot with a frown so pronounced she aged her cute youthful self by fifty years.]

You chuckle and swipe the three fingers down again. She looks beautiful, beautifully chaotic and impossible to ignore. But before you can reply, she unsent the photo.

Too bad you’re the God of Speed (only for screenshots). You open the folder labeled “L”, adding the new collection to "Dissatisfaction".

You wipe the grin off your face once the archiving is complete, but Wonyoung sees it anyway.

“She’s texting you again?”

You pocket the phone and give the same answer you always give.

“Work.”

“Work's really tough to handle huh?” Wonyoung laughs softly. “She’s jealous again.”

“She thinks there’s something between us,” you mumble.

Wonyoung tilts her head, hair catching the light as she poses for another camera — this time with a heart pose on her two rosy cheeks.

“She’s not wrong that we’re close. Just… not in the way she thinks.”

She squeezes your arm gently.

“Tell her the truth when you’re ready. She deserves to know you only have eyes for her.”

Your phone buzzes again, but this time it’s Yujin.

<AHN Yujin, 19:37> Yah oppa, Leeseo’s been staring at her phone like it owes her money 😂

She keeps refreshing her Instagram. Tell her to chill before she breaks the app

<AHN Yujin, 19:38> Or better yet, stop being so cold to her, she’s gonna combust!

You read the texts and screenshot it, sending it to the “Tantrum” folder before typing back:

<You, 19:38> She’s fine. Just tell her to behave.

<AHN Yujin, 19:39> She’s NOT fine. She just asked me if you and Wonyoung look good together in photos 🤦‍♀️

<AHN Yujin, 19:39> I told her “they look like siblings who fight over the last fry”, but she didn’t laugh.

<You, 19:40> I'm not laughing either. That wasn't even funny…

<AHN Yujin, 19:40> Seriously? I'm tryna help you here. Fix your maknae before she cries into her pillow tonight. She looks like she's gonna cry any moment.

You exhale and pocket the phone again.

“Yujin texting you too?” Wonyoung asks.

You nod.

“She says Leeseo’s spiraling.”

Wonyoung’s smile softens with a hint of sadness. “She’s scared you’ll pick someone else. She thinks she’s not enough.”

“I know. But I can't pick her now,” you say. “Not when she's peaking with her career.”

Wonyoung opens to reply, but your phone buzzes again. It's a voice note from Leeseo.

You save it before you tap play, placing your ear close to the speaker. Her voice comes through, and it's rushed, shaky and higher-pitched than usual:

“Oppa I didn’t mean to be weird I just saw the photos and you two looked so close and I—wait no I’m being stupid, forget it, sorry sorry—”

She stops mid-sentence.

You tap the transcripting function and screenshot her message before she deletes it, archiving it into “Cries” with satisfaction.

Another buzz.

<AHN Yujin, 19:43> She just unsent her voice note to you. I saw her face when she did it — pure panic.

<AHN Yujin, 19:43> Oppa… she thinks you hate her now.

<AHN Yujin, 19:44> Fix it before tomorrow’s shoot or she’s gonna be a mess.

<You, 10:44> I don’t hate her.

<AHN Yujin, 19:45> Then TELL HER THAT. Or better yet, show her. We both know you’ve been screenshotting her chaos for years.

<AHN Yujin, 19:46> Maybe let her see the folder someday. She’d melt. Please don't make me clean your mess…

<AHN Yujin, 19:46> …

<AHN Yujin, 19:47> Forget I suggested that. But seriously. She’s our baby tiger. Don’t let her think she’s not wanted.

You pocket the phone again, heart pounding a little harder than it should.

Wonyoung finishes another interview and walks back, noticing your expression.

“She sent a voice note?”

You nod, showing her the screenshots and your texts with Yujin.

Wonyoung squeezes your arm gently. “She’s scared. She thinks she has to compete with us. She doesn’t know me and Yujin are… together.”

“Then why don't you both tell her?” you ask Wonyoung.

“We will. When she’s ready to hear it,” Wonyoung giggles. “Right now she's still… acting like a child. Too dense. We shouldn't spoonfeed her. She needs to look at the bigger picture rather than just at you. Me and Yujin are always flirting with each other right in front of her, but she only has her eyes on you.”

“And also,” Wonyoung says, tapping on your chest with her pointy fingernail. “That's your tigress to tame. So maybe give her some hope to hold onto.”

You look at Wonyoung with a frown.

“Also, Oppa,” Wonyoung asks, turning back to look at you before walking off to meet another interviewer. “Are you still not going to change how you saved Yujin’s name? I'm gonna tell her you know~”

“...” You look at her dumbfounded. “Everyone calls her by her full name…”

She chuckles and struts away.

The event drags on endlessly: interviews, photo ops, small talk with designers. Wonyoung is flawlessly charming, touching your arm whenever she wants to emphasize a point. And every time she does, your phone buzzes again and again.

Leeseo’s texts come in waves:

<Tiger Cub, 20:06> You’re taking so many photos with her…

She unsends it.

<Tiger Cub, 20:09> Sorry I’m being clingy

Unsends.

<Tiger Cub, 20:11> Do you like her more because she’s prettier?

Unsends.

<Tiger Cub, 20:15> I hate myself rn

Unsends.

You screenshot every single one, every deleted message, every panicked retraction, adding all of them to the growing folders. You sigh and pocket your phone, focusing back on the event.

After a long arduous hour of man-made sun-tanning, the event finally winds down. Wonyoung slips her arm through yours again, this time for real comfort as you both leave for the limousine.

“She’s going to push harder tomorrow at her shoot,” she murmurs. “Be careful. She’s scared, not angry.”

“I know.”

“You should just tell her already. I know that incident has scarred you badly, but have you ever thought about facing it head on rather than pulling the plug right off the bat?” Wonyoung asks. “Sometimes being ready isn't a matter of when. You can't be ready for everything.”

You don’t answer.

But as you leave the venue, your phone lights up one last time.

<Tiger Cub, 21:58> I’m sorry for being weird tonight. Don’t hate me okay?

<Tiger Cub, 21:59> …You still there?

You screenshot it and type back.

<You, 22:00> Yes. Go to sleep. Photoshoot tomorrow. Your curfew’s up.

<Tiger Cub, 22:00> Promise you’ll be there?

<You, 22:01> I’m always there.

<Tiger Cub, 22:01> I’m 20 btw, don't forget. No more curfews.

<Tiger Cub, 22:01> Seeya tmr ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

You screenshot everything.

And when the car finally stops outside the dorm building, you allow yourself one small, private moment, opening the folder labeled “L” to scroll through years of her deleted messages, letting the smallest, softest smile cross your face.

You never delete anything she sends.

Because even when she tries to erase herself, you keep every piece.

“I’ll head in first, Oppa~” Wonyoung says, pecking you on the cheek before leaving.

The rain starts to speckle the windshield like sprinkles of reminiscence.

You lean back in the seat with your phone in hand, thumb swiping open the folder labeled “L.”

Thousands of files.

Years of her chaotic selfies, pouty voice notes, flirty texts, angry rants, deleted confessions.

Everything she regretted the second she hit send.

You scroll absently with your unwavering eyes, zooming past the streaking gallery until you stop on an old photo buried near the bottom.

Your eyes quiver as you tap on the picture. It's a blurry middle-school snapshot of Leeseo, soaked to the bone, grinning like she just won a war, holding your broken umbrella like a trophy.

***

“Sheesh, it's pouring…” you mumble, packing your bag. “I should have left an hour ago.” You zip everything up, grab your umbrella and prepare to leave the library.

“Oppa! My hero!”

Leeseo is standing under the school awning (again) with her arms crossed, scowling at the downpour. She’s already wet, probably trying to brave the light drizzle until it got unnecessarily heavy.

“Where's your umbrella?” You say, walking up holding your cheap plastic umbrella, tilting it over her head without any instruction.

She blinks up at you, then grins so wide her cheeks dimpled, eyes sparkling with mischief.

There it is… that damn grin again.

Before you can even blink, she grabs your hand and yanks you into the storm.

“Come on! Let’s splash!”

“We’ll get soaked!” you protest, but she was already running, laughing wildly, dragging you through puddles, jumping in every one she saw like the rain is her personal playground.

She slips on a slick patch, arms windmilling in exaggeration — okay well maybe not an exaggeration — and almost face-plants into concrete. But you lunge forward and catch her around the waist.

She lands against your chest, rain streaming down her face, soaking your well, already soaked uniform, plastering her hair to her cheeks. For a heartbeat she just stares up at you, eyes wide, cheeks pink from cold and adrenaline. Then she burst out laughing again, throwing her arms around your neck, hugging so tight it hurt.

“You always catch me, oppa.”

You stand there, heart slamming against your ribs, arms locked around her, umbrella forgotten on the ground as the rain pours over both of you.

She pulls back — still grinning mischievously — then looks at the umbrella. Her smile sinks.

“Oops… sorry. It's… broken.”

You shrug and pick it up, handing it to her anyway.

“Keep it. It’s yours now. It will still cover you until you get home.”

She takes the umbrella and twirls it like a professional gunspinner, before swishing it around like she's practicing the Heavenly Demonic Sword Art, Form Eleven, only for the handle to break.

You walk forward and take a picture of her, before picking up the fallen umbrella again and flick her forehead. “Go home you cheeky girl. Before you get a cold.”

Leeseo sticks her tongue out and bleps at you before leaning in to hug you again, face burying in your shoulder.

“Promise you won’t ever leave me alone in the rain?”

You swallow with your throat tight, feeling the warmth of her against you despite the cold. Her heartbeat thumps against yours.

“I promise.”

***

You tap the back button and the picture minimises.

She never noticed how long you hold on.

Never noticed the way your hands shake slightly when you finally let go.

Never noticed that you walk home drenched, smiling the whole way because she’d been safe, because she’d laughed, and because she’d trusted you enough to fall into your arms.

She just skipped ahead, still laughing, still chaotic, still completely unaware that you’d already fallen for her so hard it hurts to breathe.

You scroll again, landing on another old photo that was taken in elementary school. This time it's a crumpled lunchbox with spilled rice and side dishes splayed on the schoolyard grass. Leeseo is crouched beside it, teary-eyed as she looks up into the camera.

***

“Hyunseo-ah, that's mine!”

Leeseo giggles as she runs away with your lunchbox — again, it's now her favourite game — daring you to chase her.

You chase, of course you do, because that's your lunch. You run around the playground, past the swings, through the flower beds.

She swerves left and right, darting up and down like a tiger in the wild — maybe a tiger cub for now — avoiding and juking your every attempt to catch her.

Then it finally happens.

Leeseo trips over her own feet, and your lunchbox is sent flying, rice and kimchi scattering everywhere.

She lands hard with a small shriek, scraping her knee. But she doesn't cry, not until she stares and looks at the mess, finally bursting into tears.

“I ruined your lunch… I’m sorry… I’m so stupid…”

Her voice cracks and something inside you cracks too. But you don't forget — you take out your phone and snap a picture.

“Why did you take a picture of me crying…” she wails even louder.

“I need to show your Mom how you hurt yourself,” you lie, pocketing your phone before kneeling beside her. You brush the dirt off her knee. “No bleeding. Anywhere else hurt?”

She shakes her head. “But the food…”

“It’s just food,” you say, picking up the spilled food with your hands.

“But it was your favorite…” She sniffles, looking up at you with big, wet eyes.

You shrug and pull out the extra rice ball you always packed (because you knew she’d steal half of yours anyway).

“Here. Eat this.”

She stares at you and lunges forward, hugging you so tight that you almost fall over. “You’re the best oppa ever.”

You let her cling, hand patting her back awkwardly. Your heart pounds so hard that you’re sure she can feel it.

She never knew you packed the extra rice ball every single day.

Just in case.

***

Back then, she cried into your shoulder and you held her until she stopped shaking. But now she cries alone in her dorm after unsending messages — Gaeul and Rei, her roommates told you — hoping you still yearn for her.

She never knew you kept the empty lunchbox in your drawer for months and years. You can't tell her. It's a stupid, sentimental thing that's still there, displayed on your collection shelf.

But every day you look at it, hoping that she’ll just see you as the reliable friend who never gets mad. Nothing good will probably come out if your relationship with her goes public.

You sigh and close the folder, thumb brushing the faded cat keychain on your wrist (her thank-you gift from the lunchbox day).

You kept every promise.

Every mess.

Every tear.

Every laugh.

Even when it means staying quiet.

Even when it means watching her grow up without ever telling her how much you love the girl who makes your world louder, brighter, messier.

***

Leeseo is at the center, wearing the approved concept outfit you pulled together. It's a pink-and-white baseball jersey with bold playful words lettering across the chest, loose enough to look effortlessly sporty but fitted at the waist. The hem hits mid-thigh over black bike shorts, paired with a white cap (pink bow on the back), pink baseball glove dangling from her hand, and white sneakers with pink accents. It’s youthful, energetic, and marketable. Cute with a tomboy edge.

But she hates it.

“Leeseo, hands on your hips with your glove raised,” the photographer calls for a pose. “Give me a playful V-sign with a wink!”

Leeseo does it, but her eyes keep flicking to you.

You’re standing off to the side with your arms crossed and phone in hand, reviewing the shot list with the creative director.

Every time her gaze lands on you, she adjusts, tugging the jersey higher to expose a sliver of midriff, shifting her weight to push her hip out further. You pretend not to see, but she tilts her cap back a little more, bites her lip harder, and lets her lashes drop slower.

Anything to grab your attention.

But she got the wrong target.

The photographer notices and chuckles.

“Leeseo, you’re giving extra spice today. New energy?”

She giggles and glances at you again, purposefully raising her voice to say: “Just trying to look like an adult for once.”

You keep your signature poker face on and keep scrolling on the phone, but your thumb pauses on a screenshot in your gallery.

It's her text from this morning (sent during hair & makeup).

<Tiger Cub, 07:32> Oppa the makeup is too soft… I look like a doll again 😣

[photo attached: close-up selfie of her bare face with barely any make-up, accentuating her youthful vibe.]

And to no surprise, she unsent it 20 seconds later, which you managed to screenshot before it's gone.

The photographer calls for a wardrobe adjustment, and Leeseo disappears behind the partition.

You hear rustling, then her sharp voice pierces through the air: “Oppa! Come here a second!”

You ignore her cries, admiring the screenshot for a moment more before sighing and closing the gallery app.

You walk over and she pokes her head out. Her hair is slightly mussed, cheeks flushed. “I changed my mind. I’m wearing the mesh top. I need to feel like me today.”

She holds up the sheer black mesh top from the day earlier, the one you rejected.

You stare at it, and then back at her.

“No.”

She bleps at you again and hides back into the changing room. The next thing you know, she steps out fully, already wearing it over her jersey. The mesh clings, sheer enough to show the pink-and-white baseball print underneath.

She spins around defiantly.

“See? Super chic. Fans will love it.”

You step inside and growl at her low so the crew doesn't hear.

“Take it off. Now.”

Her eyes flash with hurt from your words, then instantly switch to anger.

“Why? Because it’s too sexy? Because I’m not allowed to be hot? Because you think I’m still just a baby?”

Her voice cracks on the last word.

Your blood boils. You whip out your phone and take a picture of her. You tap on your phone and send it to her.

<You, 14:38> Lee Hyunseo. Image first. You know why. You look atrocious.

You attach the photo you took along with the message.

“Why are you texting me when you're right here!” she growls at you. “ And no. I don’t know why. You always say that. ‘Image first.’ ‘Safe first.’ ‘Fans first.’ What about me first? What about what I want?”

You raise your phone to type another message again, but she pushes you back against the partition wall, body flush with yours.

“You're always on that god damn phone, smiling at it. You think I didn't notice? Am I that unattractive that you're ignoring me?”

Her breath is warm on your neck as her hands fist your shirt. “Give it to me. Let me see what you're always looking at.”

She yanks it from you with an unfounded monstrous strength, trying to open your past launched apps. In a panic, you scuffle with her, trying to stop her, both your fingers clambering over the screen. You manage to snatch it back for a moment, but the gallery app has already been launched. You try to bolt out of the changing room, but she yanks the phone back, hiding in the corner, blocking your advances with her back to you as she crouches.

You can't even attempt to snatch it back now without using force. But you couldn't even think about laying a finger on her — let alone hurting her— just to get it back.

“Hyunseo… give it back.”

Your voice is low, almost pleading, but she doesn't care.

“If you won’t treat me like an adult, I’ll find someone who will,” she growls with her teeth grinding against each other, swiping through your gallery. “What's this? Wonyoung, Yujin, Wonyoung, Liz, Liz, Rei, Gaeul, Wonyoung, Gaeul, Yujin? No pictures of me?”

“No Hyunseo—that’s not what it looks—”

“You really hate me huh?” Her voice trembles with hurt and anger, cracking into something raw as she stands up and shoves you to the wall.

“Not here. Not like this,” you murmur urgently. “I’ll explain it to you later. Not now.”

She searches your face with her eyes wet and pupils blown.

“If not now then when? When I’m not cute anymore? When I’m not your baby maknae? Will you finally look at me then? Am I not even worthy of your gallery?”

Her lower lip quivers.

You feel the crack in your restraint.

You want to tell her.

Your jaw clenches so hard it aches.

Your breathing hitches.

You grab her hands, fingers tightening around her wrists. It's not bruising, but enough that she feels the tension in every tendon.

She notices and leans in closer, lips inches from yours. “See? You do want me. You just won’t admit it.”

You hold her gaze, looking into her deep, wanting eyes. Your head dips, mouth hovering over hers. It's close enough that you can taste the cherry gloss on her breath, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin.

She closes her eyes, waiting for you to move, lashes trembling as her eyelids shiver. The air between you crackles with anticipation, thick with years of unspoken want.

Every molecule is cheering you on.

Your grip on her wrists tightens, thumbs brushing the inside of her pulse points, feeling her heart race.

She shivers, thighs pressing together instinctively.

You lean just a little more, nose brushing against hers..

Her lips part as she exhales softly against your mouth, blowing the cheering air particles away.

And then you stop.

You freeze and pull back abruptly, releasing her wrists as if burned.

“Go finish the shoot. In the approved outfit.”

She stares at you with tears brimming in her eyes.

“You always do this… get close then leave. Am I that hard to want?”

Her voice cracks on the last word. “You used to stay. You used to hold on longer. When did you start letting go?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. She already knows you won’t give one anyway. She turns away with her shoulders shaking. The same way they shook as the day you first pulled back three years ago. The very same day where the articles of her rumored boyfriend came out and the manager quietly told you “no more late-night convenience runs together".

The rest of the shoot goes smoothly on the surface.

She smiles for the camera as if nothing had happened, but every time the photographer calls “break,” she glances at you to check if you’re still watching.

You are.

Always.

Every break between takes she sneaks behind the partition again and you feel your phone buzz every single time.

<Tiger Cub, 15:20> I’m sorry for pushing you earlier

<Tiger Cub, 15:20> I just get so scared you don’t want me

She doesn’t send anything else.

You screenshot it and drag it into “Cries.”

But during the next break, your phone buzzes again.

<Tiger Cub, 15:40> You really mean it? You’ll talk later?

<You, 15:40> Yes.

<Tiger Cub, 15:40> Because I can’t keep pretending I don’t feel this way. It hurts too much.

<You, 15:40> I know.

<Tiger Cub, 15:41> Then why do you keep acting like I’m nothing?

You don't reply.

The photographer calls her back.

The shoot continues.

Later, during a lighting adjustment, Leeseo’s posing on a raised platform. She steps back too quickly and her foot catches a cable. She stumbles backward.

You move before you think, lunging forward from the sides to catch her elbow, steadying her against your chest.

She gasps with the same sharp inhale as all the falls she had in the past.

And her body freezes in your grip the exact same way it did back then.

Her hand instinctively curls around your forearm — muscle memory.

And your sleeve rides up, showing the faded cat keychain on your wrist that glints under the lights.

She sees it and freezes again. Yes, you already know by now: Lee Hyunseo is synonymous with freezing.

Her fingers brush it unconsciously and she whispers, “You still… have this…?”

You don’t answer, thumb brushing her elbow the same way you used to steady her scraped knee. You release her slowly. She steps back with her cheeks burning, but the look in her eyes has changed.

The photographer yells at the crew to tidy up the place, to make sure that hazards are minimised. Then he calls her name.

The shoot wraps at 5 p.m.

She disappears into the changing room without a word. You wait outside, leaning against the wall, phone in hand, waiting until it buzzes.

<Tiger Cub, 17:10> I’m sorry for being weird today. Don’t hate me okay?

<Tiger Cub, 17:10> …You still there?

You type back.

<You, 17:11> I’m always here. Good job today.

<Tiger Cub, 17:12> Promise you’ll come to the group dinner tomorrow? I need to talk. For real.

You stare at the screen.

<You, 17:12> I’ll be there.

<Tiger Cub, 15:13> ❤️

You screenshot it and save it, before finally leaving the studio.

You open the folder labelled “L” as you take the cab back, scrolling through years of her deleted messages again.

You let the smallest, softest smile cross your face.

***

The long table is crowded with the team: IVE members laughing too loud, makeup artists stealing bites of dessert, the manager pouring soju with practiced ease, the CEO at the head raising his glass every few minutes to toast “our rising stars.”

Leeseo sits across from you, pink-cheeked from two shots too many, pigtails slightly loose, eyes bright but restless.

She’s been watching you all night.

Yujin is on your left — arm slung casually over your shoulders, laughing at the manager’s bad joke, fingers occasionally tapping your collarbone when she talks.

Wonyoung is on your right — leaning into your side when she’s tired, head resting briefly on your shoulder, hand brushing your sleeve as she reaches for a drink.

It’s normal.

It’s always been normal.

But tonight it isn’t.

Every time when Yujin ruffles your hair or when Wonyoung leans close to whisper something, Leeseo’s smile tightens.

Her chopsticks stab at her food a little harder.

Her foot bounces under the table.

Her eyes flick between you and her two favourite unnies over and over, like she’s trying to solve a puzzle that keeps changing shape.

The makeup artist next to her notices — nudges her gently.

“You okay, Leeseo-ya?”

Leeseo forces a laugh.

“Totally fine! Just… happy!”

She downs another shot and grimaces at the bitterness — she clearly doesn't like the taste — then reaches across the table, snatching a piece of fried chicken from your plate.

“Mine now,” she declares playfully, but her eyes stay locked on Yujin’s arm around your shoulders.

You don’t react. You just push the plate closer so she can take more.

The manager chuckles at her. “Still stealing his food, huh? Some things never change.”

The CEO smiles knowingly.

“We’ve all watched you two grow up together. It’s nice to see.”

Leeseo freezes mid-bite, cheeks flushing.

The table goes quiet for a beat with everyone smiling, exchanging glances.

Yujin ruffles your hair casually again, mumbling tipsily, “Our oppa’s too stubborn to admit anything, though.”

Wonyoung giggles, clearly lighthead from the beer, head still on your shoulder. “He’s always been like that. Protecting her from everything, even herself.”

Leeseo’s chopsticks clatter against her plate.

She stares at everyone.

“You all know… don’t you?”

The makeup artist nods softly. “Everyone knows you two like each other. We’ve known for years.”

The manager adds gently, “He’s just scared of what will happen if the world finds out. That’s all.”

Leeseo looks at Yujin — then Wonyoung — then back at you.

“Then why won’t you ever just… say it?”

You meet her trembling eyes, and as usual, you don’t speak.

Her face crumples.

She stands up in a fit, chair scraping loudly. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of watching you let them touch you like that. I’m tired of being the baby everyone protects. I’m tired of pretending I don’t feel this way every single day!”

Tears spill from her eyes.

“You used to catch me every time I fell. You used to stay even when I was a mess. When did I become the mess you’re afraid to touch?”

She bites her lower lips and grabs her bag, bolting out of the restaurant.

The table falls silent.

“Alright, I think we went too far with the teasing,” the CEO sighs fondly. “Go after her, kid. It's raining heavily. Before she catches a cold.”

You stand immediately, tipping the chair over as you run out into the rain.

Yujin and Wonyoung follow close behind.

Right outside, the rain is pouring in sheets.

Leeseo is crouched under an awning again, entirely soaked, arms wrapped around her knees, face buried as her shoulders shake. You run up, take your jacket off and drape it over her back, lifting the hood up to shield her face.

She flinches and looks up at you.

Rain streams down her cheeks, mixing with tears. Her eyes are red, mascara smudged in dark streaks as her lips tremble. “Why did you follow?” she chokes out. “Just leave me alone!”

You kneel, onto the ground as the rain soaks you both. You cup her face with both hands, thumbs brushing the rain and her tears away under your hood.

“I can’t,” you say. “I never could.”

Yujin and Wonyoung appear at the doorway with umbrellas open, but they stop there, watching silently, giving you space.

Leeseo cries even louder.

“I’m tired… I’m so tired of watching you with them. Of feeling like I’m not enough. Of pretending I don’t feel this way every single day.”

She tries to pull away, but your hold steadies her.

“Did I ever say you’re not? You’re enough,” you say. “You’ve always been enough.”

She shakes her head, tears falling faster. “Then why won’t you ever just… say it? Why do you keep acting like I’m invisible?”

She looks down at her hands.

“I used to think… if I was good enough, you’d never leave. Now I’m scared that even if I’m perfect, you’ll still leave.”

You inch closer, rain dripping from your hair onto her face.

“Because I’m terrified. One photo. One rumor. One wrong look from the wrong person and your career could end. I can’t risk that.”

Her eyes widen.

“But I’m done hiding it,” you say.

She stares at you.

You cup her face again, thumbs tracing her cheekbones. “Did you think I didn’t want you? I’ve wanted you since we were kids. The girl who dragged me into every puddle, who laughed too loud when she was scared, who cried when she thought no one was looking. I don’t care about perfect. I care about you. Every chaotic, beautiful, messy part.”

“Just show her your damn phone already, you idiot,” Wonyoung shouts at you from the door.

You nod and pull out your phone with one hand, shielding it from the rain with your body. You launch the gallery app and open the “L” folder. “What you saw that day wasn't because I didn't keep any photo of you,” you explain. You tap into the sub-folders: “Pouts,” “Cries,” “Sparks,” “Laughs,” “Old.”

You tilt it toward her, showing her everything that you kept as the rain blurring the edges.

“I kept every piece. Because I love every piece.”

A sob breaks from her throat.

Leeseo throws herself into your arms, face buried in your neck, fingers clutching your shirt.

“You… kept all my stupid messages. All my chaos…”

You wrap around her tightly, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other on her waist.

“I'm sorry if I made you feel unwanted…”

She pulls back from you, eyes searching yours as the rain streams down both your faces.

Then she surges up.

She kisses you.

Heavily.

Passionately.

Years of tension crashing together in the downpour.

Her lips are cold from the rain but warm underneath, tasting like salt and soju and everything you’ve wanted since you were old enough to understand what wanting felt like.

You kiss back hard, one hand sliding into her wet hair, the other pulling her closer by the waist. She makes a small, broken sound against your mouth, fingers digging into your shoulders. You tilt her head and deepen the kiss as the rain drips from your lashes onto her cheeks. She melts entirely in the cold shower, body molding to yours.

When you finally pull back, you're both gasping, foreheads pressed together.

“I love you too… I’ve loved you forever,” she whispers.

Yujin and Wonyoung watch from the doorway, smiling softly. “Just so you know, everyone inside is looking at you two,” Yujin teases, before quietly stepping back inside.

You pull back and brush wet hair from her face.

“We’ll figure it out. Slowly. Safely.”

She nods, smiling through tears.

“Together?”

“Together.”

“Guess I’m still a mess,” she grins at you.

“My favorite mess.”

***

The rooftop smells the same.

That shouldn't matter. It's concrete and cigarette butts and rust stains that nobody's cleaned since the building was built, and the ventilation unit in the corner still rattles like it's considering retirement. Fourteen floors up, the wind cuts in from the east and carries exhaust fumes and somebody's takeout and the general hum of a city that doesn't know you're here.

You light your cigarette. Marlboro Red. Same brand as three months ago, same rooftop, same spot against the railing where the concrete is worn smooth from your elbows.

Six-oh-three.

You're not waiting for anyone. You're just here, the way you're here every evening after the last email clears your outbox and the office empties out and there's nothing left to audit. It's a habit. Habits don't owe anyone an explanation.

The city does its thing below. Traffic. Crosswalks. People in suits moving with the kind of purposeful speed that suggests they have somewhere to be. You don't. You have a cigarette and forty-five minutes before the convenience store near your apartment closes, and that's the full extent of your evening plans.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

Three months since the last time that door opened and it meant something.

Not that it meant something. It was a pattern. Patterns don't mean things — they just repeat until they don't, and then your body keeps showing up out of habit because nobody told your legs the schedule changed.

Her father got sick — the kind of sick that money can delay but not fix, the kind that moves a family across an ocean to a hospital in Houston because the director of a company like hers doesn't wait. They left in a week. The wedding happened before the plane tickets were booked — fast, practical, a consolidation wrapped in a ceremony. She married the fiancé because that's what dutiful daughters do when the world is falling apart and the only thing left to hold onto is the structure your family built for you.

She didn't text. Didn't say goodbye. The rooftop just went quiet one day, the way a frequency goes dead — no static, no final signal, just absence where a pattern used to be.

You heard about it the way you hear most things: passively, from a colleague who mentioned something about the director's daughter relocating stateside, and you nodded and said "huh" and went back to your spreadsheets.

That was three months ago. You stopped thinking about it around the three-week mark. Which is faster than you expected, honestly. But then again, you were never the one with something to lose.

You take another drag. The cigarette's burning unevenly — the filter's slightly damp from the mist that rolled in around five — and the smoke tastes harsher than usual. Everything up here tastes harsh. That was always the point.

The door opens.

You don't turn around.

It's reflex. Same reflex from before, the one that trained itself over weeks of heels on concrete at six o'clock. You already know who it isn't, and you don't care who it is. Probably maintenance. Probably HR. Probably someone who took a wrong turn and will apologize and leave.

Sneakers on concrete.

That's wrong. Heels click. These are soft. Maintenance? No — maintenance wears boots and swears under their breath. HR? HR would've knocked first. Intern who got lost? Maybe. The step is too confident for someone lost, though. Whoever this is moves through spaces without announcing themselves, and that's unusual enough to make you look.

You glance over your shoulder.

She's carrying a camera bag. Big one — the kind that's too heavy for her frame but she's managing it without complaint, strap digging into her shoulder like it lives there. She's tall. Not model-tall in the performative way, but athlete-tall — long legs in jeans, sneakers, a cropped windbreaker over a plain t-shirt. Hair pulled back. No makeup, or whatever version of no makeup actually means no makeup, because you've learned the difference and she looks like she genuinely just washed her face and walked out the door.

She's looking at the rooftop like it's a gallery.

Not at you. At the rooftop. The ugly concrete, the rusted railing, the way the six o'clock light is catching the ventilation unit and turning the metal from gray to copper. She's scanning the space with a specific kind of attention — not the idle curiosity of someone who wandered into the wrong place, but the focused sweep of someone assessing angles.

She pulls the camera out of the bag. It's a Nikon FM2 — you can tell by the retro-looking body, the physical dials on top, the kind of camera that people who care about cameras use and respect. She doesn't notice you yet, or she does and doesn't care, because she's already lifting it to her eye and framing the skyline.

"Oh, this light is insane," she says, to no one. To the air. To whatever part of her brain runs on aperture settings and golden ratios.

Then she lowers the camera and sees you.

"Oh." A blink. Not startled — more like she's recalibrating the composition now that there's a person in it. "Hi. Is this the terrace?"

"Does this look like a terrace?"

She looks around. Takes it in. A grin spreads across her face, slow and genuine and entirely too comfortable for someone standing on the ugliest surface in the building.

"No," she says. "But the light up here is way better than whatever terrace they were talking about." She turns back to the skyline and keeps shooting.

You watch her for a moment. You shouldn't — watching people is what you do professionally, and doing it off the clock feels like unpaid overtime. But she's odd. Not in a bad way. In the way that a data point that doesn't fit the trend line is odd. She doesn't belong here, but she doesn't seem lost either. She seems like she found exactly what she was looking for, even though she was looking for something else.

The camera strap pulls the windbreaker tight across her shoulder when she lifts the viewfinder. The hem rides up an inch at her waist — a strip of skin, the suggestion of a toned midriff, gone again when she lowers the camera.

You go back to your cigarette.

For a few minutes, neither of you speaks. She moves around the rooftop, framing things you've never noticed — the shadow the railing casts on the concrete, the way the city lights start to flicker on in the distance as the sun drops, the peeling paint on the utility door. Click. Click. Click. The shutter sound is softer than you expected. Deliberate.

Then she turns the camera toward you.

Not sneakily. Openly. Like it's the most natural thing in the world to point a lens at a stranger.

"No."

"You look good in this light, though."

"No."

She laughs. It's short, bright, and completely unbothered by your refusal. She lowers the camera without argument.

"Fair enough." She sets the camera bag down and sits on the concrete ledge near you, close but not too close, like she's been sitting on strangers' rooftops her whole life. She reaches into the bag and pulls out a canned drink. Cracks it open.

The wind shifts. Your smoke drifts her direction and something crosses her face — fast, barely there, gone before it fully forms. Not disgust. Something older. She takes a sip of the drink and the expression is already replaced by the easy warmth she walked in with.

"Those smell terrible, by the way," she says, nodding at your cigarette.

"Yeah."

"Like, genuinely awful."

"I've been told."

"And you just... keep going?"

"Seems that way."

She considers this. Takes another sip. The can sweats in the warm evening air.

"Respect, honestly," she says.

You almost smile. You catch it early enough that your face doesn't actually move, but something shifts in your jaw, and she clocks it. You can tell because her eyes narrow slightly — not suspicious, more like amused. Like she found the thing she was looking for.

She doesn't comment on it. Just drinks and looks at the city.

"I'm supposed to be on the terrace," she says after a minute. "Some company shoot. Annual report, headshots, the whole boring thing. They said fourteenth floor, turn right. I turned right. Ended up here."

"Terrace is on twelve."

"That explains a lot."

"Left out of the elevator, not right."

"Okay, now you're just rubbing it in."

You take a drag. "Just telling you where it is."

"I'll go in a minute. The light's too good up here." She lifts the camera one more time — not at you, at the skyline — and takes three quick shots. Checks the screen. The corner of her mouth tucks in — the quiet version of a smile, the one people make when they know they got it right.

"What do you shoot?" you hear yourself ask. You didn't plan the question. It just came out, the way things come out when your guard drops a fraction of a degree.

"Everything." She's scrolling through her shots on the camera's screen. "Mostly street. People, food, places. Vibes, I guess? Not in the Instagram way. More like — I don't know. Moments that people walk past without seeing them."

She shows you the screen. A shot she took seconds ago: the rusted railing with the city blurred behind it, and the light turning everything gold.

It's your rooftop. The place you've been coming to for a year, the ugliest spot in the building, the concrete graveyard where you've burned through more packs than you can count. And she made it look like somewhere you'd actually want to be.

"Huh," you say.

"'Huh' good or 'huh' bad?"

"'Huh' I've been standing here for a year and never thought it looked like that."

She smiles. Not the bright one from before — something quieter. "Most people don't. That's kind of the whole thing."

She stands up, slings the camera bag over her shoulder. The can sits on the ledge, half-finished. She doesn't pick it up.

"I should go find the actual terrace before they fire me." She's already heading for the door. "Thanks for the view."

"I didn't do anything."

"You let me stay. Some people get weird about their spots."

She opens the door and pauses.

Her eyes do a quick sweep — not of the rooftop this time. Of you. The same angle-accessing look she gave the skyline, except now it's aimed at your jawline, your shoulders, the way you're leaning against the railing with the cigarette between your fingers.

"You really do look good in this light," she says. Not flirtatious. Just factual. The way she'd say it about a building or a street corner. "If you ever change your mind about the photo, you know where to find me."

"I won't."

"People always say that." She grins. "See you, rooftop guy."

The door shuts behind her. Sneakers on concrete, fading down the stairwell.

You finish your cigarette. Light another one. Look at the skyline and think about the fact that she found beauty in the ugliest place you know.

The can sits on the ledge. You stare at it for a while.

You pick it up, toss it in the bin by the door.

You don't examine why you bothered.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

The corporate shoot starts the next morning.

You learn this because HR sends a building-wide email with the subject line "Headshot Day — Updated Schedule!" which is exactly the kind of email you delete without reading. Except today you don't. You skim it. Note your time slot: 2:15 PM, fourteenth floor conference room B.

You go back to your audit.

The quarterly variance report for the Seoul division is a mess. Not a fraudulent mess — you've seen those, and they have a different texture, a too-clean quality that trips your instincts like a wire. This is just a sloppy mess. Misclassified expenses, depreciation schedules that don't align with the asset register, a travel reimbursement that someone accidentally submitted twice and nobody caught because nobody reads their own reports.

You catch everything. That's the job. That's why they keep you, despite the fact that you take four smoke breaks a day and have been described in no fewer than three performance reviews as "technically excellent but interpersonally challenging." Which is HR for asshole, but an asshole who saves the company money, and the math on that always works out in your favor.

The audit committee loves you. The board trusts your findings. Everyone else in the building would rather walk into traffic than see you near their department.

You're fine with that.

At 2:12 you take the elevator to fourteen. The conference room has been transformed into a makeshift studio — a backdrop, two softbox lights, and a woman behind a camera that you recognize before you recognize her.

The camera. The same retro-looking body with the physical dials, the same strap.

She's adjusting a light stand when she sees you. Her face goes from professional focus to genuine recognition in about half a second.

"Rooftop guy."

"That's not my name."

"Well, you didn't give me one, so." She smiles — not the bright one, the slow one, the one that starts in her eyes and takes its time reaching her mouth. "Sit."

You sit. The backdrop is some shade of gray that probably has a name in photography you don't know. The lights are bright. You immediately hate everything about this.

"Chin up slightly," she says, eyeing the viewfinder. "And stop looking like you're being held at gunpoint."

"This is my face."

"Your face is doing a thing. The thing where it's trying to leave the room without the rest of your body." She lowers the camera, steps forward, and puts two fingers on your shoulder. Pushes it back gently. "Drop your shoulders. You carry all your tension here."

Her fingers press once — brief, diagnostic, the way a physiotherapist would — and then she's back behind the camera.

"Better. You have good bone structure when you're not clenching everything."

You don't know what to do with that sentence, so you do nothing.

She takes a shot. Checks. Shakes her head slightly.

"Okay. Different approach." She lowers the camera. "What did you have for lunch?"

"What?"

"Lunch. Today. What did you eat?"

"Convenience store kimbap."

"Which kind?"

"Tuna."

"Was it good?"

"It was half-off at the counter."

"So no."

"It was adequate."

"God, you're grim." She's almost laughing. "Okay. Do you actually like working here?"

"No."

Click. She takes the shot right as the word leaves your mouth, while your expression is still in the half-second between guarded and honest. You can see in the way her shoulder relaxes that she got what she wanted.

"Got it," she says. And that's it. She's already looking past you, gesturing for the next person. "Thanks, rooftop guy."

"My name is—"

"I know. I have the schedule." She taps the clipboard beside her. "But the rooftop guy is funnier."

Behind you, someone from accounting sits down on the stool. You hear her say "chin up slightly" and you leave.

At your desk, you pull up the internal directory and find the photographer's details in the vendor section of the HR email.

An Yujin. Freelance. Yujin An Photography.

Her portfolio link is in the email signature. You click it, skim the site. Street photography, mostly. Markets, alleyways, faces in crowds, light falling through windows. The kind of work that makes ordinary things look deliberate, like they were always meant to be seen and just needed someone to notice.

You close the tab.

Later that afternoon, the headshots are distributed through internal email. You click yours without enthusiasm.

You look like a person.

Not the polished, professional mask you've worn in every headshot for the last five years — the one where you look vaguely competent and entirely forgettable. In this one, you look like you're about to say something honest. The expression is unguarded in a way that makes you uncomfortable, because it's accurate. It's you, caught in the half-breath between a dry answer and the flicker of something underneath.

She did that. In one question about a convenience store kimbap, she found whatever was behind the mask and pressed the shutter.

You're not sure how you feel about someone being that good at seeing things.

You close the email.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

The shoot takes four days.

You learn this against your will, the way you learn most things about the office — through proximity and the inability of coworkers to shut up. The photographer is everywhere. Conference rooms, hallways, the lobby, the courtyard out back where nobody goes except the smokers and the woman from legal who eats lunch alone because she's going through a divorce and doesn't want to talk about it.

You see the photographer in passing. Day two, she's in the elevator when you step in. Camera around her neck, scrolling through her phone, bag slung over one shoulder. She glances up.

"Rooftop guy."

"You know my name."

"Yeah. But I like getting reactions too."

The elevator dings. She gets off on ten. You ride to fourteen in silence and think about the fact that she's keeping track of your expressions.

Day three, you go to the break room at lunch.

You don't eat in the break room. You eat at your desk, or you don't eat, depending on how deep the audit goes. But the Seoul variance report is giving you a headache and you need coffee, and the machine on your floor has been broken since Tuesday, and the one on twelve still works.

She's already there.

Her lunch is a disaster. Not in the bad way — in the way that suggests a person who treats eating as an event rather than a task. She's got kimbap from the place across the street, a container of tteokbokki that's still steaming, a random pastry that gave more aesthetic value than it did nutritional, and some bottled juice she's already halfway through. All of it spread across the table like she's hosting a party for one.

She waves you over. Not asks — waves. Like refusing isn't an option she's considered.

You sit down. Not because she waved. Because the only other available seat is next to the guy from IT who always wants to talk about his fantasy baseball league.

"Coffee?" she says, eyeing your mug.

"Yeah."

"Just black?"

"Yeah."

"No sugar, no cream, no nothing?"

"That's what black means."

"God." She pokes a rice cake with her chopstick. "You're committed to misery across the board."

"I like the taste."

"You like the taste of hot bitterness with no redeeming qualities. That says a lot about a person."

"Does it."

"It says you think enjoying things is suspicious."

You take a sip of your coffee and don't respond. She picks up a piece of tteokbokki, blows on it, puts it in her mouth, and her eyes close for a half-second. Not on purpose. Just the way her face moves when she likes something.

"This place across the street," she says, chewing. "Have you been? The tteokbokki is insane. Like, criminally good. I don't understand how it's this good for four thousand won."

"I've walked past it."

"Walking past it is a crime. A literal crime."

"It's not a crime. It's just what it is."

"Treason. Highest order. You're walking past the best tteokbokki in this district every single day and going back to your sad desk with your sad coffee." She pushes the container toward you. "Try it."

"I'm fine."

"Fine doesn't drink coffee that's more bitter than it looks. Try the tteokbokki."

"I don't—"

She picks up a piece with her chopsticks and holds it across the table with an expression that suggests this standoff will last longer than your patience.

You take it. Put it in your mouth.

It's good. Not transcendently good, not life-changing, but good in the honest, unfussy way that street food is good when the person making it has been doing it for thirty years and doesn't need to prove anything.

"Well?" she says.

"It's fine."

"Your left eyebrow twitched."

"It didn't."

"It did. That's your 'this is good but I'd rather die than admit it' face. I've seen it exactly once before, when I told you the light was good on the rooftop."

"You're reading too much into an eyebrow."

"I'm a photographer. Eyebrows are like, forty percent of my job."

She grins. You look down at your coffee. Something in your chest does a small, inconvenient thing that you file under ignore.

She eats the rest of her lunch with full-body commitment. Her shoulders move when she chews something good. Her eyes widen at the pastry, which turns out to be a custard-filled thing she picked up from a bakery she found by accident yesterday. Her tongue catches a flake of pastry at the corner of her mouth — quick, unselfconscious, the kind of small motion that shouldn't register but does. She tells you about the bakery — she found it while scouting a location for the courtyard shots and followed the smell of butter for two blocks.

"You're staring," she says, not looking up from the pastry.

"No I'm not."

"You were staring at my mouth."

"I was looking at the pastry."

"Uh-huh." She takes another bite. Chews. Swallows. Looks up at you with zero urgency. "The pastry. Sure."

She goes right back to eating like she didn't just rearrange the air in the room. You take a sip of your coffee. It's gone lukewarm. You drink it anyway because looking at the mug is easier than looking at her.

"The ahjumma who runs it let me take photos of her hands while she was shaping dough," she says. "Best shot I've taken all week, and I've been here four days."

"Better than the headshots?"

"The headshots are work. That was—" She pauses, searching for the word. "That was the thing."

For a second, her face does something you haven't seen from her. The brightness doesn't drop — it thins. Like a light that's still on but the wattage flickered. She's looking at the empty tteokbokki container and she's somewhere else. Somewhere the thing and the work don't coexist as easily as she makes them sound.

Then she's back. Full beam. You almost missed it.

You understand what she means. The distinction between what pays and what matters. You deal in the same split, except yours is reversed — the work is the thing, and there's nothing on the other side. The audit is the audit. There's no equivalent of an ahjumma's hands in dough waiting for you outside company hours.

You don't say that. You just nod.

"Anyway." She stands, starts packing up her spread. The movement is all legs — she unfolds from the chair the way tall people do, hip cocking slightly as she reaches across the table for the empty container, her t-shirt pulling taut for a moment across her shoulders. She catches you tracking the movement and doesn't look away. "Back to the boring stuff. I've got marketing and accounting this afternoon. Any advice?"

"For what?"

"Dealing with them? Still not used to shooting corporate."

"You managed it with me."

She stops. Looks at you. And for a moment her expression isn't playful or bright or any of the things you've filed under her — it's just warm. Quietly, genuinely warm, in a way that doesn't need a response or a reaction. Like the statement itself was enough.

"Yeah. Not too bad, huh?"

She's almost at the door when she turns back.

"Hey." She's leaning against the frame, camera bag already on her shoulder. "You smell way better when you haven't been up there." She says it lightly — the same breezy tone she uses for everything. But her eyes don't land on yours when she says it. They land somewhere around your collar, your jacket, the places where the smoke settles. "Just an observation. From a professional observer."

She leaves. You sit there with your coffee and the lingering smell of tteokbokki and the specific silence of a room that just lost its warmest body. You bring your sleeve to your nose without thinking. Smoke and wool. The kind of smell you've stopped noticing because it's always there.

You didn't used to think about what you smelled like.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Day four. Last day of the shoot.

You find her in the stairwell between twelve and thirteen, crouched on the landing with her camera pressed to her face, shooting the light.

It takes you a second to see what she's seeing. The afternoon sun is coming through the narrow window and cutting across the stairs in clean geometric slabs — sharp parallelograms of gold on gray concrete, the shadow of the window frame bisecting the landing into light and dark. It's the kind of thing you walk past twice a day and never look at.

She's been looking at it for a while, based on her position. Knees on the concrete, weight on her heels, completely absorbed. The light from the window cuts across her too — gold along her forearms, shadow in the hollow of her collarbones where her shirt dips. Her jeans are pulled tight across her thighs from the crouch. She doesn't notice, or she doesn't care.

You stand on the landing above her, coffee in hand, and watch her work. She doesn't know you're there — or she does and doesn't care. The shutter clicks. She adjusts something on the dial. Clicks again. Shifts her weight, changes the angle. Clicks.

"You're blocking my light," she says without looking up.

"I'm three feet behind you."

"Your shadow is in the frame." A beat. "Also, you could've just said hi instead of standing there watching me."

"I wasn't watching."

"Your coffee's getting cold. That means you've been standing there a while." She still hasn't looked up. "It's fine. I don't mind being watched. I just mind when people pretend they weren't."

You step to the left. She takes two more shots.

"There." She straightens up, checks the screen, and turns it toward you. "Look."

The photo is the stairwell. Your stairwell. The one you climb every day because the elevator is slow and you're impatient. Except in the photo, it doesn't look like a fire escape route with bad ventilation. It looks designed. Intentional. The light falls like it was placed there by someone who knew what they were doing.

"Most people walk past this every day," she says. "Never look up."

"I walk past this every day."

"I know. That's what I mean."

You look at the photo again. Then at the actual stairwell. The light is already shifting — the angle's moved a degree or two, and the parallelograms on the concrete are stretching, distorting. In ten minutes it'll just be a stairwell again.

"You do this a lot?" you ask. "Find things in ugly places?"

She lowers the camera. Looks at you with that direct, unguarded gaze she does — the one that isn't flirtatious or challenging, just present. Like she's here, fully, and she expects you to be here too.

"Everything's ugly if you don't bother looking properly."

She looks at the photo on her screen one more time. The expression isn't pride. It's closer to relief — like she needed the beauty to be there and it was, and that matters more than it should for a photo of a stairwell.

The sentence lands somewhere in your chest and stays there. You don't have a response for it — not one that matches it in weight, anyway. So you don't say anything.

She shoulders her bag and heads down the stairs, and you head up. That's it. Nothing happened. A woman showed you a photograph of a stairwell and said something true, and you stood there like an idiot holding coffee.

You climb the remaining two flights. Sit at your desk. Open the Seoul variance report.

The numbers swim for a minute before they settle.

Everything's ugly if you don't bother looking properly.

You don't know what to do with that. So you do what you always do with things you don't know what to do with: you ignore it, and you work.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

She finishes the shoot that afternoon.

You know because you hear the team thanking her in the hallway. Polite corporate voices, the kind that sound the same whether they're praising your work or asking you to clear out your desk. She says something back — bright, easy, you can hear the smile in it even through the wall — and then footsteps down the hallway toward the elevator.

You should let it end there. The shoot's done. She's a vendor. She'll submit her invoice, deliver the files, and you'll never see her again. That's how professional engagements work. Clean entry, clean exit, no residue.

You go to the rooftop.

You're not going to see her. You're going because it's six o'clock and you have a cigarette to smoke, same as any other day. That's the story, and you're sticking with it.

You open the door.

She's already there.

She's sitting on the ledge where she sat the first day, a cold drink in hand, camera on her lap. The golden hour light is doing its thing — painting everything amber and copper, making even the rust stains look intentional. She's not shooting. She's just sitting, looking at the city, her legs swinging slightly over the edge.

She hears the door and looks over. No surprise.

"Took you long enough," she says.

"I didn't know you were here."

"Sure you didn't."

You stand at the railing. Light your cigarette. The routine of it — the click of the lighter, the first drag, the smoke curling out slow — is so familiar it barely registers anymore. Three months of doing this alone, and the motions have worn grooves into your muscle memory.

The wind shifts the smoke toward her. She turns her head — slight, instinctive, like someone moving out of the path of a draft they've been sitting in too long. She doesn't comment on it. Doesn't wave it away. Just turns, takes a sip of her cider, and looks at the city.

She doesn't fill the silence. That's the thing about her that keeps catching you off guard. She's warm, she's loud when she wants to be, but she knows when to just sit. Most people can't do that. Most people treat silence like a problem to solve.

You smoke. She drinks her cider. The city hums below.

"Last day?" you say finally.

"Last day. All done. Just have to deliver the edits next week."

"And then?"

"And then the next gig. There's always a next gig."

"Always freelance?"

"Always. I tried the office thing for about three months after school. Wanted to walk into traffic every single day." She takes a sip. "No offense."

The sentence is delivered like a joke. The sentence is not a joke. You file this under the small but growing list of things she says lightly that land heavy, and you move on because that's what she's doing and matching her pace feels like the right call.

"None taken."

"How do you stomach this every day? Same building, same desk, same spreadsheets. Makes me start to sympathize with your coffee preferences."

"Same rooftop."

"See, that's the only part that makes sense." She gestures at the skyline. "The rest of it, I'd lose my mind."

"Maybe I have."

She looks at you. Reads something in your face. Decides not to push it.

"Can I ask you something?" she says instead.

"Can I stop you?"

"Why do you come up here? She pauses. "Give me something real this time."

You take a drag. The smoke sits in your lungs for a long beat.

There are a lot of answers to that question. Some of them are true. The simplest one is that you come up here because it's the one place in this building where nobody expects anything from you. No reports, no findings, no performance review. Up here you're just a man with a cigarette, and the city below doesn't give a shit about your variance analysis.

Instead, you settle with: "Force of habit,"

She considers that. "Must've been a hell of a habit."

Yeah. It was, but you don't say that. You just smoke, and she just sits, and the light shifts from gold to amber to the first bruise of evening blue.

She stands up. Slings the camera bag over her shoulder. Picks up her can this time — she catches your glance and grins.

"I'm learning," she says.

"Only took you four days."

"See you, rooftop guy."

She walks to the door. Opens it. Looks back.

There's a moment — just a half-beat, less than a second — where she's backlit by the warm light from the stairwell, camera bag on her shoulder, and the expression on her face isn't bright or playful. It's something else. Something that looks like it wants to be said but hasn't found the words yet.

"See you," she says. And means it the casual way, the way she means everything — fully and without pretension.

The door closes.

You finish your cigarette. The rooftop is quiet again. The ventilation unit rattles.

The ledge where she sat is empty except for a small water ring from the can.

You stand there longer than you need to.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Five days pass.

You don't think about her. The Seoul audit wraps up, a new one starts (procurement irregularities in the Busan branch, which means travel next month, which means hotels you won't enjoy and meetings you'll dominate), and the machinery of your life turns the way it always turns. Coffee. Spreadsheets. Smoke break. Repeat.

Your phone buzzes on a Tuesday afternoon.

Unknown number. A photo. The rooftop at sunset — your rooftop, the ugly one, except the light is doing something absurd and the whole frame is drenched in orange and pink like the sky decided to show off. No caption.

You stare at it for longer than the photo warrants.

You: You left another can up there.

Three dots appear immediately. Then:

Unknown: Marking my territory 😊

You lock your phone. Put it face-down on the desk. Open the Busan procurement file.

Read the same line four times.

Pick the phone back up. Save the photo. Don't examine why.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Saturday. 4:47 PM.

Your phone buzzes again. This time it's just an address and two words:

Yujin: Trust me.

You look at the address. It's a neighborhood you've been to maybe twice — one of those areas south of the river that's all narrow streets and old buildings being slowly eaten by redevelopment. Not your territory. Not anywhere you'd go by choice.

You go.

The subway takes thirty minutes. You spend them not thinking about why you're going, which takes more effort than it should. You're a man who doesn't do things without reason. Every action has a corresponding justification, filed and cross-referenced in the audit trail of your own behavior. Going somewhere because a woman you've known for a week texted trust me doesn't fit into any category you recognize.

The station lets you out into noise.

It's a night market. Or the beginning of one — vendors still setting up, the early crowd already thick enough to make your shoulders tense. String lights stretch between buildings like a net. The smell is immediate: grilled meat, tteokbokki, fish cake broth, something sweet and fried. Music from somewhere — a speaker propped on a cart, tinny pop that gets swallowed by the voices and the sizzle of oil.

You hate it. You hate crowds, you hate noise, you hate the specific claustrophobia of bodies moving at different speeds in the same narrow space.

You see her before she sees you.

She's standing near a hotteok cart, camera around her neck, eating something on a stick that's dripping sauce onto her fingers. She's in a denim jacket over a white t-shirt, hair down tonight — the first time you've seen it down, and it changes the geometry of her face in a way you don't expect. Softer. Less photographer, more person. The white t-shirt is thin enough that the string lights catch the line of her collarbones, the shadow at the base of her throat. She's talking to the vendor, and whatever she's saying makes the old man laugh and wave his tongs at her.

Then she turns, scanning the crowd, and finds you.

Her whole face lights up. Not a performance — just the unfiltered reaction of someone who's happy to see you. Eyes first, mouth catching up, everything else following. She doesn't know how to hide it. Hasn't learned, or hasn't bothered.

Nobody's looked at you like that in a while. Maybe nobody's looked at you like that ever, because the only person who came close kept her expressions on a leash, and even her best smiles had a handler.

"You came!" she says, like there was a real possibility you wouldn't. Which there was. She should know that.

"You didn't give me much information."

That would ruin the surprise." She grabs your arm — casual, automatic, like touching people is her factory setting — and pulls you into the market. "Come on. I need to show you seven things and we only have until the fishcake guy closes at nine."

"Seven things."

"Minimum."

The next two hours are the loudest two hours of your life.

She takes you through the market like a tour guide who lost the script and decided to improvise. There's no plan. Or there is a plan, but the plan is everything, and she keeps getting distracted — by a stall selling handmade earrings, by an ajumma grilling corn with a torch, by a cat sleeping on a stack of blankets at a fabric vendor who definitely doesn't sell blankets but apparently can't say no to strays.

She photographs everything. The corn ajumma's face lit by the blue flame. The cat's paw hanging over the edge of the blanket stack. A child running between stalls with a sparkler, the light trailing behind him in the long exposure. She shoots the way she talks — fast, instinctive, responding to whatever catches her attention in the moment.

She buys you hotteok.

"I didn't ask for this."

"It's not about what you asked for. It's about what you need. You need hotteok."

"I don't—"

"Eat."

You eat. It's too hot. The sugar filling burns the roof of your mouth and you make a sound you didn't authorize — something between a hiss and a grunt that is, objectively, undignified.

She laughs so hard she has to bend forward, one hand on her knee, the camera swinging against her chest. It's the kind of laugh that makes people around you look over and smile even though they don't know what's funny.

"Your face," she says, wiping her eyes.

"It's molten sugar. That's a safety hazard."

"You sound like a compliance report."

"I write compliance reports."

"And it shows. Eat the rest, it's better once you stop being dramatic about it."

She's right. It is.

"I liked that sound, though," she says, still grinning.

"What sound?"

"The little—" She makes a noise, something between a hiss and a yelp, a terrible impression of whatever came out of your mouth. "That one. You should do it more often."

"I'm not making sounds for your entertainment."

"Too late. Already up here." She taps her temple. "You can't delete things from my brain. I've tried."

She says it lightly. The way she says everything. But her eyes hold yours a beat longer than the joke requires, and something in the look isn't light at all.

At some point, she grabs your sleeve to pull you toward a pojangmacha selling odeng. Not your hand. Your sleeve. It's the kind of contact that children make — thoughtless, presumptuous, the grab of someone who assumes you'll follow because why wouldn't you?

The contact lasts maybe two seconds. Her fingers close around the fabric of your jacket and tug, and you let yourself be tugged, and then she lets go and you're standing in front of a steaming pot of fish cake broth while she orders two cups from the vendor.

You feel it longer than it lasts.

Not in any way you can name. It's not electricity or butterflies or whatever metaphor people use for attraction. It's more like a recalibration. Like a number in a spreadsheet that was off by one decimal point, and you didn't notice until someone shifted it, and now the whole column looks different.

She hands you the broth. Your fingers touch on the paper cup.

"Careful," she says. "It's hot. And before you make another compliance report face — just blow on it."

You blow on it.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

The edge of the market is quieter.

You end up sitting on a low concrete wall behind the last row of stalls, where the string lights thin out and the noise drops to a murmur. She's next to you, reviewing photos on her camera screen, scrolling through the night's takes with a critical eye that reminds you of yourself going through audit findings.

"This one," she says, tilting the screen toward you. The corn ajumma, lit blue and orange, face creased with concentration. "She's been doing this for forty years."

"How do you get strangers to let you photograph them?"

"I ask. And if they say no, I don't." She shrugs. "Most people don't know what they look like when no one's watching. That's usually the best version."

She scrolls to another. The cat on the blankets. Then the kid with the sparkler, a blur of light and motion.

"You know," she says, still scrolling, "you'd be a really good portrait subject if you stopped trying to disappear."

"I'm not trying to disappear."

"You are, though." She lowers the camera. Looks at you directly — not through a lens, not with the photographer's assessing gaze, just with her own eyes. "You do this thing where you pull back right when a conversation gets real. Like you're allergic to being known."

The accuracy of that lands like an audit finding you didn't see coming. Clean hit, well-documented, no room for dispute.

"I get told I'm difficult. Not news to me," you hear yourself say.

"Were they wrong?"

"No."

"Then what's the problem?"

You look at her. She's not challenging you. She's not trying to fix you or psychoanalyze you or get beneath whatever surface you've been living behind for the last however many years. She's asking because she wants to understand, the same way she asked the corn ajumma how long she'd been doing this — with genuine, uncomplicated curiosity.

"I don't know," you say. And you mean it. You actually don't know, and that's more honest than anything you've said in months.

She nods. Accepts it. Moves on in a way that doesn't feel like moving on — more like letting it sit, giving it room.

She talks about her week. Gigs she's done. A product shoot for a skincare brand that paid well but bored her senseless. A wedding she shot last month that was so extravagant she could've funded her next year of rent on the flower budget alone.

"The bride was gorgeous," she says, almost as an aside. "Rei something? She used to be some kind of executive here in Seoul. Married this finance guy — quick ceremony, from what I heard. The family was relocating to the States. Houston, I think? Something medical with her father. Anyway, I got called in last minute when the lead photographer got food poisoning, so I barely had time to prep."

She keeps talking. Something about the venue, or the lighting, or how the bride looked like she was holding herself together with willpower and hairpins. She's animated about it the way she's animated about everything — hands moving, voice lilting, treating the story like something worth telling.

You hear all of it and none of it.

Rei something. Director's daughter. Got married. Finance guy. Quick ceremony. Houston. Something medical.

Your Rei. Except she wasn't. You shared a rooftop and cigarettes and something that looked like sex and felt like — you're not sure what it felt like. You never defined it. She never asked you to. It was easy in the way things are easy when nobody names them, and then it was over in the way things are over when there was nothing to end.

She wasn't yours. You just stood in the same smoke for a while.

Every word arrives individually and settles into a place that shouldn't still exist. You thought you'd closed that account. Wrote it off. Moved the entry to a completed ledger and filed it under things that happened to someone who felt like you but wasn't, not really, not in any way that counted.

She got married. You already knew that.

She moved to Houston. You didn't know that part. Didn't need to. Didn't want to. She's in a different country now, in a hospital waiting room or a rented house in a suburb you'll never see, and the life she's living has nothing to do with a rooftop in Seoul.

Your cigarette burns long without you taking a drag. The ash grows and holds, trembling slightly in the evening air.

Yujin is still talking. You're aware of that. Her voice is there, present, the same warm frequency it's been all night. But there's a membrane between you and the moment, thin and transparent, the kind of distance that nobody else would notice.

She notices.

She stops mid-sentence. Not abruptly — she just lets the story trail off, the way a song fades out instead of ending.

You can feel her looking at you. Reading. Then her gaze drops to the cigarette in your hand — the long ash, the thin line of smoke curling upward — and her mouth presses shut. A small thing. The kind of stillness that doesn't come from calm.

She looks away before you look up.

She doesn't say anything for a minute. You appreciate that more than you can articulate.

Then, later — ten minutes, maybe fifteen, after you've smoked the rest of the cigarette and the silence has settled into something that doesn't need to be broken:

"You got quiet back there," she says. "When I mentioned the wedding."

"I'm always quiet."

"Not like that."

You could deflect. You're good at it. You've built an entire professional career on assessing information and choosing what to disclose and what to keep in the file. Deflection isn't a defense mechanism for you — it's a core competency.

But she's looking at you the way she looked at the stairwell light. Like she found something worth seeing and she's just waiting for the frame to settle.

"I knew her," you say.

Yujin waits. No follow-up question. No widened eyes. Just patience.

"It doesn't matter."

"Okay."

That's it. She doesn't push. Doesn't ask how, or when, or what happened, or whether you're fine. She takes "it doesn't matter" at face value and lets you have it, even though you both know it's not true.

Then, after a beat — quiet enough that you could miss it if you weren't paying attention, and you are, you're paying more attention to her than you've paid to anything in months:

"She looked happy, if that helps."

It doesn't.

And also — in some way you'll probably never be able to explain to yourself, in some rearrangement of numbers that doesn't make mathematical sense — it does.

You sit with that. The night market is winding down behind you. Vendors packing up, lights going off one by one. The noise contracting, folding in on itself, the city getting quieter the way cities do when the evening tips over into night.

Her knee is touching yours. Not pressing — just resting against it, the way it settled when she pulled her legs up, casual and unintentional and warm through two layers of denim. She hasn't moved it. You haven't moved yours.

"Can I tell you something?" she says.

"Can I stop you?"

"You keep asking that. The answer's always no." She pulls her knees up, rests her chin on them. "People call me easy to like. You know what that actually means?"

"That you're likeable?"

"It means they think I'm simple. Like that's all there is. Like I'm not allowed to be more than just what I am on the surface. Like I'm not allowed to have some sort of depth. Like the moment I have an opinion, set a boundary, or stop reacting the way they expect me to — the way they want me to — they think I'm acting up. They think something's wrong. They think I'm not ... me."

She's not bitter about it. That's what gets you. She's saying this the way she says everything — directly, without resentment, like she's describing the weather.

"But that's not all that I am. Not completely, at least. I've got stuff underneath too. Everyone's got stuff underneath. I just prefer showing the good parts first. Not because I'm hiding the rest — just because the good parts are the ones I actually like being."

"Yeah."

"You've got a lot of underneath."

"So I've been told."

"I'm not saying it like it's a problem." She turns her head on her knees and looks at you. "I'm saying — deep water doesn't apologize, you know? It's just deep. People can learn to swim or they can stay on the shore. That's their choice. Not yours."

The sentence settles over you like weather.

Deep water doesn't apologize.

You think about every person who called you difficult. Colleagues. Exes. The one person who didn't call you anything at all, who just stopped coming to a rooftop and let the absence speak for itself. You think about the way you've worn difficult like a job title — Senior Internal Auditor, interpersonally challenging, technically excellent, alone by design.

And you think about the woman sitting next to you, who is easy to like and deep enough to drown in, who walked onto your ugly rooftop and found good light, who shows you photographs of stairwells and calls them beautiful, who grabbed your sleeve in a night market like it was nothing.

She's not simple. She never was.

Neither are you.

"The tteokbokki was good," you say, because that's what you can manage. It's not the right response. It's not proportional to what she just gave you. But it's real, and it's yours, and she takes it the way she takes everything — fully, without needing it to be more than it is.

"Told you," she says. And smiles.

You reach for the Marlboros. Habit. Your fingers find the pack, pull one out, bring the lighter up.

Her hand closes around your wrist.

Not gentle. Not playful. Her grip is firm and sudden and her fingers are pressing into the tendons below your palm, and when you look at her, her face is different. The warmth is still there — it's always there — but underneath it, something is cracked open. A fissure in the foundation that she's been mortaring over all week.

"Sorry." She lets go. Fast, like she touched something hot. Her hand retreats to her lap. "Sorry. That was — I shouldn't have."

"Yujin."

"It's nothing. I just—" She stops. Breathes. Looks at the market lights instead of at you. "I had a mentor. When I was starting out — a photographer, not that much older than me. Thirty-something when I met him, maybe ten years ahead. Taught me everything about light and composition and how to see a frame before it exists. He smoked like you. Same brand, actually. Marlboros. It was part of who he was — the cigarette behind the ear, the breaks between shoots. His voice went before anything else. Got this rasp to it that he joked made him sound like a jazz singer. It didn't."

She's quiet for a beat. When she speaks again, her voice is the same — steady, warm, direct — but there's a weight in it that wasn't there before.

"He was thirty-nine. Lung cancer. They caught it late because he kept saying the cough was from the darkroom chemicals. Because who thinks about lung cancer at thirty-nine? He was supposed to have decades left. Everyone kept saying that. He had time. He had so much time."

The night market hums around you. A vendor across the path is packing the last of his skewers into a cooler. A stray cat watches from underneath a folding table. Normal things, continuing.

"Seven months," she says. "From the appointment to the funeral. I held his camera for him at the end because his hands shook too much to hold it himself, and he still tried to shoot from the hospital bed. The last photo he took was of the window. Just the light coming through. I have it on my wall at home."

She looks at you. Her eyes are bright and dry. She's not going to cry. She's past crying about this — it lives in a different place now, somewhere below the grief and above the scar, a thing she carries the way she carries her camera bag. Always there. Always heavy. You just never saw the weight before.

"I'm not asking you to stop," she says. "It's your life. Your lungs. I know that." She picks at a thread on her jeans. "But every time you light one in front of me, there's a part of my brain that starts counting. How many today. How many this week. Whether that cough you had last Tuesday meant anything. I can't turn it off. I've tried."

She shakes her head. Forces a smile. It's the first fake smile you've seen from her, and it looks wrong on her face — like a photo that's been edited past the point of honesty.

"Anyway. That's my stuff underneath." She bumps your shoulder with hers. Trying to put the brightness back. "See? Not simple."

You look at the cigarette in your hand. Unlit. Her grip stopped it before the lighter reached the tip.

You put it back in the pack.

She watches you do it. Doesn't comment. Doesn't thank you. Just watches, and something in her expression shifts — not relief, exactly. Something quieter. Like a held breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Come on," she says, standing up and brushing off her jeans. "I'll walk you to the subway."

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

She walks you to the subway.

Not because you need walking — you're a grown man who can find a train station. But she does it anyway, falling into step beside you like it's been choreographed, her camera bag bumping against her hip with each stride. The market is mostly dark behind you now, just a few holdout vendors packing the last of their inventory into vans.

"I had fun," she says. Simple. No subtext.

"Yeah."

"You say 'yeah' to everything."

"Yeah."

She shoves your shoulder. Light, playful, the way you'd shove a friend. Your body processes the contact in real-time — the brief pressure, the warmth of her palm through your jacket, the fact that she did it without thinking.

The station entrance glows ahead.

"Same time next week?" she says.

"I didn't agree to a next week."

"And yet."

Two words. Tossed off like nothing. And yet. They used to belong to someone else, on a different rooftop, about a different cigarette. Rei said them leaning against a railing with smoke in her hair, and they meant I shouldn't be here but I am. Yujin says them under a streetlight with sugar on her jacket, and they mean something entirely different. They mean of course there's a next week. Why wouldn't there be.

Same words. No weight.

"Goodnight, rooftop guy."

She steps forward and hugs you.

It's a real one. Arms around your torso, face pressed into your shoulder, and she holds on. Three seconds. Four. Five. Your arms come up before you've decided to move them — one across her back, one at the base of her neck.

She's warm. She smells like grilled food and citrus shampoo and cold night air. Her camera bag digs into your side and neither of you adjusts it.

She pulls back. Smiles. Doesn't make it a thing.

"Get home safe," she says. Then she's turning, heading the other direction, and you're standing at the  top of the subway stairs with the ghost of her warmth still pressed against your chest.

She doesn't look back. Not because she's playing it cool. Because it doesn't occur to her that this needs to be anything other than what it is.

You go home. The Marlboros are in your jacket pocket. You can feel the pack against your ribs — the weight, the shape, the familiar pressure that's been there every evening for longer than you've known her.

You don't reach for them.

You notice that around the third block. And you keep walking.

← Previous Part | End | Next Part →

If you enjoyed the fic, feel free to drop a comment or send an ask. Hearing your thoughts genuinely helps me improve and shape what I write next. And if you’ve made it to this message, I’m guessing you finished the story, so thank you so much for reading.

Rows of cars sat in front of you endlessly, horns blaring like a funeral march for your punctuality. You leaned back in the seat and stared up at the beautiful ceiling of the Rolls-Royce Ghost. Not just any Ghost, it was her Ghost. Black diamond, fully loaded with every last option ticked off. The starry headliner stared back at you, and her initials, JWY, were stitched elegantly into the leather. Everything about this car was tailored to her taste: expensive but fashionable, maybe even a tad bit excessive. Well, that described her just perfectly. Looking at the clock, you pinched the bridge of your nose and cursed again.

9:54 AM

“That mean princess is gonna kill me.”

You were punctual by nature. In the three years you’d worked for her, you had been late fewer than five times. But every single time it happened, she made sure you knew you had committed a capital offense. Lectures, jabs, drawn out sighs and those dramatic guilt trips that stuck with you for weeks. Suddenly, your phone vibrated. Of course, it was her. You swallowed hard before picking up the phone and put it to your ear.

“Good morning~” 

Her voice was honey dripping sweet the moment you slid your thumb to answer the call. That syrupy and dangerously sweet tone that you knew she only ever used it on you.

“Uhm, good morning, miss.”

“My, my…” she cooed, the smile audible in her voice. “Clearing your throat like that when you talk to me? You’ve been so weird lately.”

“Sorry, miss. I’ll be there soon. There’s sudden construction ahead, traffic’s at a s-”

“Oh? Construction? What a tragedy for you.”

That pressed your nerves even more.

“I’ll get there as fast as I can.” you said calmly while still keeping the apology in your tone, even as you pressed your foot harder on the gas.

“Mm~ You do that.”

She hung up without waiting for a reply. The line went dead and you exhaled softly, swerving the car down a side street the moment you spotted a gap. The car roared smoothly ahead, weaving past cars as you tried to make up for lost time. Still, it wasn’t enough. By the time you pulled up to her shop in Apgujeong, the clock had already turned 10:01. One minute late. Gripping the wheel, you muttered under your breath.

“I’m dead…”

The princess herself was already outside.

Jang Wonyoung leaned casually on the pale wall outside her fancy shop, dressed in a cute white sundress under the late sunlight. She held a cup of matcha in her hand, straw between her lips while sipping leisurely. The other hand dangled her small designer bag, a fluffy Skullpanda swaying with it. She’d been obsessed with those little creatures lately, so much that she once had you drive her to the other side of Seoul to haul a bunch of them for her growing collections. You hurried out of the car, snapping open the umbrella with one hand while the other smoothed over your suit. Jogging to her, you angled the shade above her head then gave a respectful bow.

“I’m sorry, miss.”

Wonyoung drew another slow sip of her match, the ice rattling in the cup before holding it out to your lips. The straw hovered millimeters from your mouth, her lipstick stain still fresh on it.

“Uhm…”

“Drink.” she ordered simply, lips pouting ever so slightly. “It’s delicious.”

Hesitating two seconds, you leaned forward and took a small sip. Right after, her other hand moved up to brush across your forehead to wipe away the sweat that had gathered from your sprint over. The coolness of her fingers on your overheated skin sent a ripple of surprise down your spine. Wonyoung watched you closely, then broke into a soft smile.

“Hehe, indirect kiss.”

You swallowed.

“Was there really construction on the road?”

“Yes.” you answered honestly, forcing your voice to stay calm. “The whole lane was blocked. I came as fast as I could.”

She studied your eyes for a moment before tapping your cheek, not quite a slap but enough to make your eyelid twitch.

“I’ll forgive you.” she smiled. “I’m feeling nice today.”

Seeing the gears grinding in your head, Wonyoung grinned and lifted her eyebrows at you.

“Don’t you know it’s rude not to thank someone after that?”

“Thank you, miss.”

Satisfied with it, Wonyoung hummed and adjusted her bag on her arm. The matter was now dismissed. You knew it was time to step in close, umbrella angled perfectly over her head and guided her toward the car. You opened the back door, waiting until she slid gracefully inside before closing it. Turning your head back, you caught sight of her staff inside her store. They weren’t exactly subtle with their hands over their mouths, giggling as they whispered to each other. Their eyes switched from you to the tinted window where Wonyoung now sat, sipping her matcha without a single worry in the world.

Their sweet boss, and her personal assistant. 

Acting… suspicious.

Whatever.

Sighing quietly, you quickly circled to the driver’s seat. Driving out of Apgujeong, you choose the longer route back home to avoid traffic. The air in the Ghost was thick with silence, broken only by the rattle of ice in her matcha cup. You just focused on the road, letting her earlier “forgiveness” sit uncomfortably on your shoulders. Without you even noticing, Wonyoung leaned forward. Her perfume hit you first before she gripped your headrest. Her head peeked over your shoulder so close you could feel her hair brushing your ear.

“How has your day been, my favorite personal assistant?”

You didn’t miss her emphasis on “my”. And you weren’t even sure if that was exactly your title. Working for Jang Wonyoung wasn’t a job you could easily label. It was everything: bodyguard, bag handler, assistant, driver… Some days you handled her paperwork, other days you hauled racks of clothing or played middleman with suppliers. You’d done it all. 

But then again, you never complained. Her family was crazy rich. That meant the pay was too good to complain, far too good. More than executives of small and some medium companies could ever dream of, not even counting bonuses yet. On top of that, she’d provided you with a duplex in Gangnam. You could never afford that luxurious place on your own. The catch? It sat directly underneath her penthouse. Which meant whenever she beeped your phone, no matter day or night, you had to be there with no excuses. Something about being punctual and productive, she said.

“I’ve been okay, miss.”

Wonyoung sighed, chin now on your shoulder.

“Didn’t I tell you to just call me by my name?”

Her fingers tapped on the expensive leather of the headrest, the soft tap tap sound ringing in your ears like a warning.

“Doesn’t it seem weird to-”

“Call me by my name from now on, and you’ll see an instant bonus in your bank account.”

You didn’t hesitate, couldn't say no to easy money.

“Yes, Wonyoung-ssi.”

Her laughter came instantly, soft and sweet next to your ear. Then, she ran her hand through your hair, so suddenly you almost jolted in your seat.

“I like it when you fold like this.”

With her other hand, she picked up her phone and tapped on the screen in silent. Thirty seconds later, your banking app confirmed it with a ding. A generous bonus just for a single word. Her chin pressed a little harder into your shoulder.

“Say it again.”

“Wonyoung-ssi.”

“Again.”

“Wonyoung-ssi.”

Her laughter spilled out again, quiet and pleased as her finger traced through your hair. Savoring the moment for a few seconds longer, Wonyoung said.

“Now drop the honorific, only my name. I like it much more that way.”

The fuck?

You cursed in your head. Using honorific this level was one thing. It still felt professional, a bit formal, easy to defend. But just her name with nothing after it felt… stupidly dangerous. Still, the young woman wouldn’t let it go when she wanted something. You knew it too clearly.

“Wonyoung.”

She ruffled your hair as a satisfied giggle bubbled out of her. Then came the nuke, dropped with that deceptively sweet tone.

“Should I start calling you oppa too? It’s only appropriate now, right? You’re just a few years older than me.”

For some reason, you laughed. Maybe the absurdity of it, or the way she asked. 

“Please.” you shook your head, still laughing. “Do whatever you want, Wonyoung.”

“Okay, oppa.” Then she slapped your shoulder, giggling. “I wanna show you something.”

She tapped on her phone, chin still on your shoulder as she showed you the screen. A familiar document popped up, cleanly formatted but you recognized it instantly. Your stomach sank. 

Isn’t it that file she asked me to sort out last week…?

“Ahh…”

“You messed this file up, didn’t you? And I embarrassed myself in the meeting with the supplier just an hour ago…” Wonyoung pouted, dragging the final word out to finish you off. “Oppa.”

You felt a little brave after the whole name calling mess. Maybe it was the adrenaline or just the way Wonyoung giggled every time you folded for her.

“Or… maybe it was the formatting. Your phone and laptop might show things a little differently sometimes.”

Her pout didn’t fade. If anything, her chin pressed even harder on your shoulder as she murmured.

“Mm~ Excuses, oppa?” she tilted the phone back to herself. “It’s definitely not that. Do you know how ridiculous I must’ve looked? All because of your one little mistake.”

She pressed the screen shut with a little click and leaned back into the seat, sighing dramatically.

“I should dock your pay instead of giving you bonuses.”

Crossing one long leg over the other elegantly, she folded her arm and turned her eyes to the window like a queen dismissing a subject.

“But it’s fun watching you squirm.”

Okay?

“You’ll fix it. Before 6 PM. And send it to me directly.”

“Eight?”

You tried to bargain, glancing at her reflection in the tinted glass. Her head turned just enough so that you could catch her smirk in the mirror.

“Nope. I said what I said. Six. And if it’s not on my desk by six…”

Her fingers tapped on her arm as she considered all the punishments to a rhythm of mischief. Then she leaned her head back, exhaling softly with her eyes closed.

“You can personally carry all the boxes of new stock from the basement to the third floor next Monday. Without help. Consider it… exercise.”

“Got it.” you smiled in defeat, already resigned.

Wonyoung didn’t reply and slowed her breathing, relaxed as she slipped into a nap. The rest of the drive home, you kept your focus on the road but your thoughts wandered.

What’s wrong with her lately?

Wonyoung had always been difficult, bratty, playful, even mean to you at times. But recently? She’d been dangerously sweet, almost affectionate even when she was still torturing you in her own way. Working for her had its perk, of course. That much was undeniable. The pay, the luxury, the status… all unmatched. But the downsides were… let’s just say, unique.

In the contract, buried under all those pages of standard legal jargon were the ridiculous clauses. The one that still made you sigh was the “No Dating” rule. You hadn’t understood why back then, but the paycheck had been fat enough to keep your mouth shut and just sighed the damn contract. Then there was the dress code. Another one of her whims. Monday: suit. Tuesday: smart casual. Wednesday: suit again. And so on, back and forth, like your wardrobe was a branch of her clothing label. You didn’t get it but hey, you followed it.

By the time you pulled into the underground garage underneath the glamorous building, Wonyoung was sleeping. Parking the car, you opened the driver’s side door and rounded to the back to carefully open hers.

“Mi-” you caught yourself before the words could even come out. “Wonyoung-ah.”

No response, so you leaned in and poked her shoulder. Finally, she blinked slowly before scowling, her voice gravelly and mean. Freshly awake Wonyoung was a different breed, even worse when she didn’t have enough sleep.

“What’s wrong with you?” she grumbled, pushing her hair back with one hand. Irritation was practically radiating from her.

“We’re home.”

She got out of the car, rubbing her eyes before shoving you aside and knocking you off balance with a lazy force. You stumbled, let out a quiet sigh and then crouched back into the seat to grab her designer bag. When shut the door and turned back, she was already waiting. Arms crossed, lips pursed, eyes glaring at you.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

When the fuck did I do that?

Here we go. Mean Wonyoung had made her come back.

“No, I didn’t.” 

“Liar.”

“No, Wonyoung-ah. Why would I do that?”

As Wonyoung closed the distance between you, you backed up until the cool metal of the expensive car hit your back. Each of her steps made your heart thud even faster. 

“I’m giving you one last chance, oppa. Did you roll your eyes at me?”

You shook your head firmly, refusing to break.

Smack

Her palm connected hard with your cheek, the sharp pain quickly spread all over your face. Your head instantly snapped to the side from the impact, ears ringing.

“Did you roll your eyes at me?”

“No, I didn’t…”

You forced yourself to look back at her. Silence took over for a moment. Then she cupped your stinging cheek, her cool palm pressing into the heat she’d just left behind. Her eyes locked into yours as she smirked.

“You know how to fight back now. That’s cute.”

The warmth of her touch blur with the sting of her slap, a strange blend of twisted comfort and a reminder of who’d put the pain there. Then she tapped your cheek twice, mocking before letting go entirely and striding inside toward the elevator. 

“Wipe that look off your face before you follow me. I don’t want the neighbors seeing you sulking.”

You said nothing back. Swallowing the humiliation like you had countless times before, you clutched her bag tight and followed. Wonyoung just stood tall in front of the elevator doors, arms crossed and all composed like she’d done nothing wrong at all. When you got near her, you pressed the button without a word. The doors slid open, you stepped aside to let her enter first before following in behind her. The mirrored walls showed both your reflections, complete opposite from each other. Her, pristine in her sundress and calm smile; you, dead inside in a suit, her mark still on your cheek. You stood awkwardly for a moment before she suddenly leaned her head to rest on your arm, voice sweet again.

“Why so grumpy~?”

She always used to that tone charm staff and strangers. Still, you kept your jaw locked, refusing to give her the satisfaction. Wonyoung then pouted and tilted her face up at you, her eyes big and deceptively sweet, fingers brushed along your arm.

“If you keep sulking like that, people will think I’m bullying you. And I’d hate for them to think my favorite person is too weak to handle me.”

Then she looked at the mirrored wall, catching your reflection, tone playful but it was more a command.

“Smile, oppa. Come on, just a little. For me.”

It took everything in you to force your lips into the fakest smile. Pleased, Wonyoung giggled and tightened her grip on your arm. Finally, the elevator dinged to release you from the cage. You walked her quietly down the hall to her penthouse, keeping a step behind until she got to her door. She turned, one hand already on the knob. You held out her designer bag, bowing your head lightly.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

No excuses, no deflection. Just the truth. She smiled and took the bag from your hand but didn’t step inside yet. Instead, she leaned against the doorway, asking sweetly.

“Do you know why I did that?”

You stayed silent, not knowing if this was a trick.

“It’s because you look so cute when you’re hurt. That helpless face of yours…” she dragged her eyes across your cheek, to your lips then back to your eyes. “I can’t help myself.”

Sliding her bag onto her shoulder, Wonyoung stepped closer to you. Both hands rose to press on your chest before tugging at your tie, fixing it with care.

“But... You’ve been doing so great lately. You make things easier for me, oppa.”

Then, she gave you a playful tap on your chest.

“Keep up the good work, my lovely PA.”

Wonyoung turned and stepped gracefully into her penthouse. But not without one last flourish, she glanced back over her shoulder to pucker her lips and blow you a kiss.

“Don’t forget your deadline~”

And just like that, she left you alone in the hallway with the echo of her perfume and your racing heart. Your cheek still burned a little where her hand had landed, but your chest was pounding for a reason you knew too well. You knew it was… fucked up. Pressing your back to the wall, you sat down to take a breather. Every bruise she left, every word that cut sharp but melted sweet right after should’ve been unbearable. And any sane man would’ve chosen to walk away a long time ago.

But you hadn’t. Because despite all the bratty cruelty, the twisted games and the suffocating control, you knew you had feelings for her. Impossible feelings for the one woman you should never have. 

And yet, you were still here.

The phone rang twice before Gaeul answered.

“Hey,” you said, trying to keep your voice light. “It’s a beautiful day today. Thought I’d come by and drag you out for a walk.”

There was a pause on the other end, long enough that you thought the call had dropped. Then came a thin laugh. “Drag me out? That sounds dangerous.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not today,” she said quickly.

“You’ve said that every night this week.”

Static filled the silence, and you heard a faint shuffle—like she was pacing, or maybe just fidgeting. Her voice dropped when she spoke again. “I’m just… tired.”

“You’ve been tired for months now.”

Her reply came sharper this time. “So? Maybe I’m allowed to be tired.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “Of course you are. I just… I’m worried, Gaeul. You never want to leave the house anymore. You skip classes, cancel plans. That’s not you.”

“People change,” she muttered.

“You used to call me at midnight just to drag me out for ice cream. That wasn’t so long ago.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said flatly.

“It was a few months ago.”

“I like being home. That’s all. I don’t need to explain it.”

“No,” you said gently, “you don’t. But… it feels like you’re hiding from something.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

This time her voice trembled, just enough to seep through the static. “Because it’s not true. I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine. You could hear it.

“If you were fine,” you said softly, “you wouldn’t sound like this every time I ask you to step outside. You sound…“ Afraid. You didn’t say it. She would have hung up on you.

On the other end, a long silence. Then, barely above a whisper: “Please… just let it go.”

The line stayed open a few moments longer, the only sound her uneven breathing, before she muttered a rushed goodnight and hung up.

You sat there with the phone still pressed to your ear.

Gaeul hasn’t been herself for months now. You didn’t know why. She just changed, almost like a switch flipped inside of her. You had a hunch it was her boyfriend. There really wasn’t any other reason: she was doing well in college, her friends didn’t do anything, and her parents were doing just fine.

Fuck. Why was it him anyway? Why not you?

Gaeul was still rotting in that apartment. He clearly didn’t do a good job. 

You had to take a stronger approach; otherwise, she’d never come out. While you were thinking about it, a movie was scheduled to air today. It was a re-run of something older, but it was horror, and you remembered how much Gaeul liked those. Maybe it would knock her back into her senses. 

Thirty minutes later, your car was already sitting in front of her house. You didn’t ask if she wanted to go; if you had, she probably would’ve said no. So you just rang at her doorbell with two crumpled tickets in your hand, and said, “Come on. Starts in half an hour.”

She came out in a hurry after recognizing your voice. Hair a little messy, sweater sleeves rolled over her elbows, and big glasses rested on her small nose. “What is it?”

“Horror movie,” you grinned, showing your tickets. “I heard it’s pretty good. Pretty scary. The ones you like, right?”

That earned you a tiny huff, but you saw the corners of her mouth rising up.

“What’s the plot?” she asked.

“Don’t remember,” you replied. “Hop on and come find out.”

“Wait a sec,” she said, going back into her place to slip on some shoes and some more appropriate clothes.

She didn’t take long. She didn’t really bother with how she presented herself in front of you. After about ten minutes, she was already outside.

“I’m here,” she announced. She put a hand on the handle and looked around.

“You’re supposed to look left and right when crossing the street, not when entering a car.”

“Shut up.”

“Alright,” you said as she stepped inside. You turned on the engine and left her house behind. 

“So? Did anything good this week?” you asked. You didn’t like the silence.

Gaeul stayed quiet for a moment, even though she didn’t really need to think about it. “You know, studied and—”

“—reviewed for the future exams, yep,” you interrupted her. “Well, at least did you eat? The food I brought you yesterday.”

“Yeah, yeah, I ate it, it was really good. You know I always like chicken.”

“That’s good,” you said and smiled.

You found parking very easily. The theater was half-empty, and the air already smelled like butter and sugar. You bought the largest bucket of popcorn they offered and filled it with butter and sugar. You could probably bury half of your arm inside it. 

She rolled her eyes but stole a handful as soon as you sat down. It was for her after all.

When the lights dimmed and the screen lit up, you leaned back, pretending you weren’t watching her out of the corner of your eye. The first jump scare landed exactly where you knew it would, and she flinched hard, shoulders jerking.

You bit back a laugh.

“Silence in the theater,” she hissed at you. From there on, she was completely immersed in the motion picture.

The first jump scare got her—she jerked hard, then laughed at herself. After that, every flinch only seemed to amuse her more. You couldn’t understand why, but it was honestly kind of intimidating. Maybe she was secretly a serial killer in the making.

Gaeul was alive in a way you hadn’t seen in months. She leaned forward during tense scenes, muttered little predictions under her breath, and when the monster appeared, she laughed like a kid. It was like watching her slip back into a forgotten version of herself.

You found yourself watching her more than the screen. This was the girl you’d been missing, the one who was bright, free, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

When the credits rolled, she sat back with a grin, clapping as if the cast could hear her. “That was terrible,” she said, beaming. “I loved it.”

“You’re so weird,” you said while going down the stairs.

“What? You didn’t like it? You bought the tickets.” She turned to you mockingly, but there was still laughter in her eyes.

“I bought them for you, not me,” you admitted. “Honestly? I probably looked away half the time.”

She snorted. “Scaredy-cat.”

You held a hand to your chest. “Excuse me, I was protecting my brain. Those jumpscares wear down your reflexes, you know.”

She rolled her eyes, tugging her sleeves down as the two of you stepped into the cool night air. 

“Alright, alright,” you said. “Let’s get some food. Where do you want to go?”

“Something casual,” she murmured, sliding into the passenger seat. “I haven’t really dressed up. If we go somewhere nice, they’ll think I look weird and stare at me.”

You glanced at her, catching the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her sweater a little too big for her frame. “They’ll stare, yeah,” you said, voice softer now. “Because you’ll be the prettiest girl in the room.”

She swatted at you lightly, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, shut up.”

The burger place wasn’t anything fancy—fluorescent lights, sticky tables, a fryer that hissed constantly in the back. Just smelled like grease and bleach.

She followed you in, tugging at her sleeves, still a bit out of her comfort zone. A couple of kids were noisily sharing fries at one table, and a guy in a hoodie ate alone in the corner. Nobody paid her any mind.

You ordered at the counter and came back with a red plastic tray stacked with food—two burgers wrapped in paper, fries spilling out of their carton, and two of the biggest milkshakes you could find.

“Hey,” you said as you slid the tray onto the table. “Special delivery.”

Her eyes flicked to the pile, and she gave you the tiniest smirk. “That’s a lot of food.”

“Yeah,” you said. “Good thing I’m starving. You’ll just have to keep up.”

She peeled open her burger and took a small bite, then another. You noticed the way her shoulders loosened a little. She used to be so tense.

You popped a fry into your mouth and leaned back. “Better than the popcorn?”

She glanced at you over her glasses. “What.”

You grinned. “I saw you almost finish half the bucket by yourself.”

She kicked you lightly under the table. “Shut up. You know it’s rude to talk about a lady’s eating habits.”

“It wasn’t negative, though.”

“Certainly didn’t sound like it, mister.”

The conversation didn’t need to be heavy. You let her talk about the movie, her favorite kills, and how the special effects were both awful and amazing. She gestured more than usual, waving a fry around like a pointer, grease staining her napkin.

And you just sat there, chewing slowly, smiling at the way her voice filled the space.

You’ve noticed that the only way to really get her talking was to make her talk about something else. Something far away from herself. She hated talking about herself. She wasn’t always like that. That was just the last few months, but you just had to keep up with her if you truly cared for her.

“So what, you didn’t have anything better to do today?” she asked, plucking another fry from the carton.

“What do you mean?”

“The movie. Why did you… want to watch it?”

You shrugged. “Honestly? I just wanted to hang out with you. Catch you smiling again. Is that bad?”

“You’re gonna regret it,” she said, taking another handful. “When—when I finish the whole basket.”

“I ordered them for you,” you said easily

She almost smiled, but her eyes dropped to the table. “For you,” she whispered. “Yeah, but… people don’t usually mean it… it’s fine at first, but then it’s too much.”

You tilted your head. “Too much?”

She froze for half a second, then laughed quickly. She waved her hand like she could erase it. “I mean, too many fries. That’s all.”

You nudged the carton toward her, pretending not to notice. “Well, they’re all yours anyway. I’ve had enough.”

She gave you a small smile, but her hands betrayed her, shredding the paper wrapper into neat little strips.

“You always do that,” you said.

“Do what?”

“Fidget with things. Wrappers, napkins, straws. You’ve destroyed more paper than a shredder.”

She chuckled softly, but her shoulders had drawn in tighter. “Old habit. Keeps my hands busy.”

“Busy from what?” you asked gently.

Her eyes flicked to the fries, then away. A beat passed before she shrugged. “I don’t know… from saying the wrong thing, maybe?” She said it quickly, like tossing a pebble in water, then shoved another fry in her mouth before you could answer.

“Anyways, how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, squinting at you. “How much was it?”

“As I said—nothing. I threatened the worker with a gun, and they handed it over for free.”

Gaeul laughed, nearly snorting into her shake. “You’re insane. I hope they catch you and lock you up.”

“Wow. So mean.”

“You deserve it.” She grinned, stealing one last fry before pushing the empty carton toward you like evidence.

You leaned back in the booth with a dramatic sigh. “Alright, partner in crime, before the cops show up, should we get going?”

She rolled her eyes, but you caught the smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, let’s go.”

You gathered up the papers and boxes, dumped them in the trash, and the two of you slipped back out into the night.

The drive back was quiet: her forehead against the passenger window, your playlist humming low through the speakers. She looked calm. You figured tonight was a success after all.

When you pulled up in front of her building, before coming out, she straightened and sat quietly for a moment. She reached for the door handle, then paused. “Do you… want to come up?” 

You turned to her. “Are you sure?”

She gave a little shrug, trying to be casual. “It’s not a big deal. Just… for tea or something. You don’t have to.” But she didn’t look at you when she said it. 

You smiled gently. “Sure, why not?”

You followed her up the narrow stairwell, the sound of your footsteps echoing against the concrete. Neither of you talked.

At the top, she fished her keys from her pocket and unlocked the door. The apartment was dim, blinds pulled halfway shut. She slipped her shoes off by the door and set her bag down.

“I’ll make tea,” she said, already moving toward the kitchen. The switch clicked, and the weak light overhead flickered once before holding steady.

You walked around a bit in the living room, awkwardly looking around and acting like you hadn’t seen this place thousands of times. The colors were dim. The walls were white and grey, and her furniture wasn’t really flashy either. So the yellow in the corner of your eyes stood out brightly.

The folder sat on the corner of her coffee table, half-buried under a stack of fashion magazines. They were old. To think that she had always talked about new trends and designers with you, but she hadn’t renewed her subscription in a long time.

You simply wanted to tidy up while she was making tea in the kitchen, but the bold letters caught your eye: session notes.

You told yourself not to cross the line. That was her stuff, and you shouldn’t look. However, the wear in the corners and the torn edges of the paper folder itched at you, and you moved your fingers before your conscience could catch up.

Gaeul’s name was right at the top of the paper. It seemed to have been written a couple of months ago, as described by the date, but she hadn’t been the one who wrote it.

Presenting Concerns:Client processing effects of prior intimate partner relationship. Reports anxiety, difficulty trusting, intrusive memories.

You read the words carefully, but in a hurry. Client? Partner? Anxiety? It must have been her therapist, but who was the partner?

Session Content / Client Report:Client describes repeated emotional degradation from ex-partner. Notes of verbal belittling, accusations of dishonesty, and surveillance of personal interactions. Client states ex often monitored phone, restricted contact with friends.

The words on the page felt like a punch in the chest. You went over the words again and again. Surely, you must have read the wrong things. You were just tired. It happened to everyone, but then you went on to the second section.

The letters blurred. You stared at the lines—“forceful arm-grabbing,” “blocking doorways,” “self-blame”—and they stopped being sentences on a page. They became shapes, images, scenes, playing vividly in your mind.

You started to feel sick. Something turned inside your stomach, and it made you grip the paper harder. From the kitchen, you heard her humming, the sound of a kettle being set down, her footsteps soft against the floor.

You wanted to shove the folder back under the magazines, to rewind time and unsee the words, but it was too late.

When she returned, two mugs in her hands, you couldn’t look at her the same. Gaeul had half a smile on her face. You had worked so hard to gift back even a hint of joy on her lips, but as soon as she saw what you were holding, it faded away.

Gaeul immediately looked down at the floor. She set down the mugs and slowly looked back up at you.

“Hey—” you choked. There was an ache in your throat that felt impossible to swallow. You did your best not to lash out, but all of a sudden, you felt a lot of shame.

“Did you read it?” she asked.

You couldn’t dodge it. You owed her honesty.

“Oh well, I… I saw the notes,” you said and laughed awkwardly. “It has the same name as you, funny, I didn’t know you had a friend with the same name as you.”

She didn’t laugh.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, I…”

“How much did you read?” she asked firmly.

You didn’t answer, but your silence was enough for her to understand. You saw her shoulders tense, the tiniest flinch as though she were bracing for your judgment.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you whispered. “Is that why… that’s why you’ve been acting this way, right?”

Her phone. She never let it out of her sight, and yet she never knew what was going on in the world. She didn’t follow the news, she didn’t know any memes—sure, she would laugh at them, but you had to show them to her—and she didn’t watch any shows. You remembered how quickly she checked her phone whenever she got a text.

Her apologies. God, she said, sorry for everything, and they weren’t even her fault. When she bumped into something, when she said something wrong, when she wore something a bit bright. Now that you thought about it…

Her clothes. She had been afraid to shine, to be beautiful.

Her silences. Her shoulders tightened whenever the topic of relationships came up. Her eyes flicked down, and she dodged all questions.

And the way she flinched. Once, you slammed your car door too hard, and she jumped. Another time, someone dropped a tray in a café, and she stiffened so sharply, like she was in another world completely.

Every sign had been there. You had been there the whole time. You had watched her flinch, fold, apologize—and you had smiled at her without asking why. And now, staring at the neat black letters on the page—blocking exits during arguments… forceful grabbing… monitoring phone—you hated yourself for not piecing it together sooner.

You were a fool.

You tried to keep your voice steady. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked. But I know now. I know what he did.”

You inhaled deeply. It burned. You should’ve noticed sooner.

“This… all of this had been happening while…” You started and stopped. “And you never told anybody. God, you shouldn’t have had to.”

Her eyes glistened, but she looked away, forcing a shaky laugh. It was brittle, fragile. You had heard it before, whenever things got too personal. She shook her head, too quickly.

“It’s nothing. Old stuff. Doesn’t matter anymore.” Her fingers worked the edge of her sleeve, twisting the fabric, tearing the threads.

“It does matter,” you said softly. “You don’t have to keep pretending.”

You watched her shrink in on herself, curling small in the chair, and the worry inside you swelled until it ached. You could hear her therapist’s words in your head: self-blame… minimization… hypervigilance. You recognized them now, written in the slump of her shoulders, in the way she wouldn’t meet your gaze.

Your chest tightened. You wanted to hold her hand, take her into your arms, tell her everything was okay—but you knew she was afraid. This wasn’t about what you wanted. Pushing too hard might only drive her deeper into silence.

“Please,” she said softly, almost pleading. “Can we not do this right now? I don’t want to… fuck up this evening. It’s the first time I’ve felt a little normal in months.”

The words knocked the air out of you. She had been buried under so much weight, and here you were, dragging the past into the one night she let herself breathe. But at the same time, it tore you apart. How could she think she was the one who would ruin this? How could she not see that it was already broken long before tonight, and not because of her?

You swallowed, trying to keep your voice gentle, steady. Every part of you screamed to keep pushing, to tell her you would never leave, but you didn’t. What if the wrong word shattered her? What if your love only hurt her more?

“You’re not fucking anything up. You never could. What happened to you—that’s not on you. And you don’t have to keep pretending for my sake.”

She ducked her gaze, twisting the mug in her hands, and for a second, you thought she was going to shut down completely. But then her lip trembled, and she whispered, “I just wanted one night where I didn’t have to be… this version of me.”

You leaned forward, meeting her eyes until she couldn’t look away.

“Please, don’t say that, Gaeul. There’s no version of you you’d have to hide.”

That sentence scared her. Because now she knew that you cared more than she thought, but she didn’t want to give herself like this. She didn’t think she was enough for you. She thought she was broken.

You sat down right next to her. You looked straight into her eyes. “Please don’t think that after I discovered these things, I think of you any differently. It wasn’t your fault after all.”

Her eyes flicked away instantly, glancing at the corner of the room.

“I’m sorry if I didn’t catch it earlier. I saw it. I saw the signs, but I didn’t understand. But it doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t make you weaker in my eyes. If anything, it shows how strong you’ve been, pushing through all of this alone.”

She shook her head, tears threatening again. “Strong? No, you don’t understand. I’m… broken. I’m scared all the time. I don’t want to drag you into this mess.”

“I want to be here. With you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Her lip trembled, and for a moment she tried to laugh, but it came out as a shaky, humorless gasp. “You’ll regret it,” she said. “You’ll see the worst of me, and you’ll leave, just like everyone else.”

You let the silence settle around her turmoil. You never looked away. She had to understand you were serious about it. The more you swore she was enough, the more you felt like a liar, because no promise could undo what had been done to her.

Her breathing hitched. “Please.” When she finally spoke, her voice was unsteady. She trembled at every word. It was a great effort just to pronounce them; she didn’t bother thinking it through; they just came out.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like you love me.”

Gaeul’s words gutted you. The old pain was still there in her eyes, lingering like a scar that never healed right. Her heart was scarred, and every time she thought she could love again, it came back to haunt her.

“Don’t… don’t give me false hope.” Her voice cracked, sharp with anger, “play with me.” And then sadness: “You’re all I have.”

You took a deep breath. Seeing her tear up again hurt you as much as it did her. “I mean it. I’ve never lied to you.”

“I know…” Her voice was barely audible.

“I love you, Gaeul.”

She flinched, like the word itself had struck her, her body recoiling before her mind could catch up. “No, don’t—” Gaeul choked out.

“I love you,” you repeated, firmer this time.

Her eyes darted away, but you reached out, holding her shoulders until she faced you. “Gaeul. Look at me.”

Gaeul was a trembling mess. Even her eyes twitched, red with fear, spilling tears down her cheeks.

“You deserve to be loved,” you whispered.

“Even—even after—”

“No matter what.”

“Why?” Gaeul sobbed. Her tears run down to the corner of her mouth, leaving a salty taste on her tongue, mixed with her everlasting bitterness. “Why would you ever love me?”

“I don’t need a reason. I just do,” you said. “Gaeul. I love you. That’s the truth.”

She shook her head, hands trembling against her lap. “You’ve seen it all. What happened to me. I- I- I’m just… ruined. Leftover.”

“You’re the woman I love,” you said, almost pleading now. “And maybe I’m an idiot for saying it, but I’d rather stay here in your wreckage than be anywhere else without you.”

Gaeul shook her head violently, her tears scattering across her cheeks.

Her whole body shuddered. She pressed her hands to her eyes, shaking her head. “Stop saying that,” she whispered, her voice breaking mid-word. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“I’m not asking for anything,” you said softly. “I just don’t want you to be alone.”

She tried to argue, but the words dissolved before they left her lips. With a sudden, desperate movement, she lurched forward, burying herself in your chest. Her arms clung to you as if she let go, she’d fall apart completely.

You froze, startled by the suddenness of it—but she didn’t release you. Her face pressed into your chest, and the sobs came hard, raw, like they had been trapped inside her for years.

Her body completely betrayed her. She needed you. She needed someone to trust her and help her put her pieces back together.

The cries tore out of her in broken gasps, each one stripping away a little more of the armor she had carried for so long.

You held her gently, carefully, as though she might break. 

“I’ve got you,” you whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her grip only tightened. She didn’t believe it—not fully. She was afraid you’d vanish if she let go.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.”

Her sobs gradually softened. She stayed pressed against you, her forehead damp against your shirt. You stroked her back slowly.

“It’s okay,” you murmured. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”

Her breath hitched again. A long silence passed before she whispered, so quietly you almost missed it: “Say it again.”

You tilted your head down toward her hair. “Say what?”

“That you love me.”

Your lips pressed gently against the crown of her head, your eyes closing as you held her tighter. “I love you, Gaeul. I’ve always loved you.”

“I needed to hear it,” she breathed. “To know you meant it. That I wasn’t… imagining it.”

“I meant every word,” you said softly. “You don’t ever have to doubt that.”

She lifted her head just enough to meet your eyes. They were swollen and rimmed with red, but softer now, no longer heavy with despair. Her lips parted, closed, then parted again before she finally found the words. 

“I should have been with you,” she confessed, her voice breaking around the words. “All this time. Instead I—” She swallowed hard. “Instead, I went to him. And I’m so sorry. You deserved better.”

You cupped her face gently, brushing your thumb across the damp trail of her tears. “Hey. Don’t apologize for that. You don’t owe me anything. I just… I’m glad you’re here now. That’s all I want.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“No,” you said gently. “That’s what you deserve.”

Her eyes fluttered shut, and she leaned back into your chest, her weight settling against you. For the first time in months, she let herself believe it—she wasn’t alone anymore.

Her head stayed tucked against your chest, small and fragile, but calmer now. You stroked her hair, letting the silence stretch comfortably around you.

“…Do you… want to stay?” Her voice was barely audible, hesitant. “Tonight. Just… here, with me?”

You gave her a gentle squeeze. “Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”

She exhaled softly, a tiny shiver running through her. “Good. I… I just… I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

When the lights were off and the quiet settled in, you slid under the blanket beside her. She lay stiffly on her side at first, hands curled close to her chest.

You stayed still, careful not to press. The silence stretched, broken only by her uneven breaths. Then, slowly, she shifted closer—an inch, then another—until her arm brushed against yours. She hesitated again, trembling, but finally she gave in, slipping both arms around your middle and burying her face against your chest.

Her grip was tight, almost desperate, and her voice came muffled against your shirt. “I’m sorry… if I’m so needy.”

You rested your chin gently on her hair. “Don’t apologize. You don’t need to. I want to be here.”

She held her breath for a moment, then let it out in a shaky sigh, hugging you tighter as if your words unlocked something in her. The tension in her body slowly eased, her breathing steadied, and little by little, she grew heavier on you.

You smoothed your hand through her hair, listening to the rhythm of her breath. She had let herself cling to you, and in your arms, she finally found peace.

THE END

Written,

Sticking her head out of the sliding window, Gaeul stuck her tongue out and raised her hands in the air, feeling the rushing wind against her face. “Hell yeah! We are alive. WE ARE ALIVE!”

Meanwhile, Yujin is laughing right next to her, holding her by the waist, bent over your lap, elbows digging into your skin. “Ya, unnie! She’s fucking drunk, I’m telling you.”

“Ya think?” Rei groaned before she could burp, smashing her last can of beer against her soft cheek only to toss it out the window on the passenger’s seat. “Ya, Hyunseo-ah, are you sure you’re still ok? Better not be driving tipsy.”

“Unnnnnie~! I’m fine, I’m—HRK—fineeee~,” she hummed, eyes darting anywhere but towards the road as she addressed the chaos unfolding behind her in the back rows. “You should be asking, Wonyoung-unnie. She looks like she might pass out at any second now.”

“Not funny, Leeseo. If I had known—AHHH!” Wonyoung screamed as the car began to wobble left and right from their maknae hitting the stirring wheel with the back of her and the wrong way. “Jesus, Leeseo, focus on the road at least. I knew it was a bad idea giving you my card for all those drinks earlier.”

“Y-You’re only realizing this now?” Liz squeaked as she ducked behind Gaeul’s backrest, shuddering in place. “I-I-I told you drinking on our trip was a bad idea. The others are already a mess when they get tipsy at the dorms—what more now on our roadtrip?”

But you? You remained calm. A smile pulls up against the corners of your mouth as you let out the scene unfolding before you play out as it would—hands behind your back, elbows flared, sighing deeply. This was one hell of a summer vacation alright, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Just you and these girls chasing after the setting sun without a lick of fear on your backs.

That is, until Leeseo loses control of the wheel.

That is, until you slam into one of the guardrails that sends the van spiraling like a merry-go-round.

That is, until you find yourselves flying off the edge of the cliff, diving right towards the rocky bluffs beneath you, careening towards the horizon previously adjacent to you.

In this moment, time seemed to almost slow down to a stop.

The opened bag of chips ripped fully and sprays you in the face. The candy pouch someone had tucked away now bursted into the air like confetti. Your heart’s both fluttering and sinking at the same time. And so are your torso, arms, and legs.

As the van hurtles forwards towards your final destination, you have but a millisecond—an opportunity that wrinkled in time—to take one last look at your companions, at these girls.

In your final moments before death, who do you turn to?

The One That Got Away

The First

The One From Afar

The One In Silence

The One You Turn To

The Everything

She blinks up at you, bleary yet beautiful, and her mouth curves into that little puppy-smile she forces for the crowds, and you force out of her.

“Yujin,” you say to her, quietly.

She mumbles something that isn’t quite words.

“Yujin,” you say again.

One eye cracks open proper. Then the other. “Hi,” she whispers, voice shot to hell from sleep.

“If you’re about to ask me to get on top, the answer is no. I’m still recovering.”

You laugh. “That’s not—”

“Because technically,” she continues, already warming up, “what you did last night counts as a war crime in at least twelve countries. I looked it up.”

You smile, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, let your thumb trace the arc of her cheekbone. “Happy anniversary.”

“Mmm.” She shifts, rolls her hips just enough to make her point, and her smile widens when you inhale sharply. “Happy anniversary to you, too.”

You smile again.

“On second thought—”, she goes to palm your hardness, devious smile to boot, “—maybe I would like to stick to tradition. You get me?”

You do. It’s a good tradition—reliable, mutually beneficial, leaves you both breathless and sweaty and weirdly wanting to hydrate. But this morning, watching her yawn and squint against the light and press her cold feet against your calves, you find yourself hesitating.

“Actually,” you say, and she raises an eyebrow. “Can we—can I just look at you for a second?”

Suspicion flickers across her face. “That’s weird.”

“It’s romantic.”

“It’s suspicious,” she decides, stretching. The sheet slips, and you get an eyeful of everything in your periphery. “What did you do? Did you forget to get me something? 

“No.”

“Did you forget to book dinner?”

“No.”

“Did you—” She props herself up on one elbow, and the sheet falls further. You’re a gentleman but you’re not a saint. You’re gonna ogle. “Did you cheat on me with Wonyoung?”

“That was one time,” you deadpan, “and you let me.”

“Okay, then—”

“I love you.”

The words land differently on her than they usually do. Usually they’re punctuation—dropped between gasps as you fuck her, murmured against her cunt while you worship her. This time, though, they’re the whole sentence, standing on its own, and it makes her go oh-so very still.

Who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend?”

You laugh, and she relaxes incrementally. “I just thought maybe we could try something different.” You trace the line of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, the jut of her hip. “I wanted to tell you things. The stuff I don’t say when we’re—”

“Fucking?”

“Being busy,” you amend, and she snorts. “I love the way you laugh at your own shitty jokes. I love that you still get embarrassed when I catch you singing in the kitchen. I love that you leave your books facedown on the nightstand even though it drives me crazy up the wall.”

Yujin stares at you like you’ve grown a second head. Then, slowly, something softens behind her eyes.

“Your turn,” you encourage.

“You’re really good with your mouth.”

You roll your eyes. “Is that your final answer?”

She goes quiet for a long moment. Then, her fingers find yours under the sheet, lace together, squeeze.

“When you pick me up at the airport.”

“The airport?”

“Mhm.” She shifts closer. “Because no matter what time I fly in—whether it’s the afternoon when you’re supposed to be at work or when you’re tired at the dead of night—after a long schedule, an even longer flight, what feels like even longer dealing with paparazzi, cameras blinding me, and all I want to do is go home…” She tilts her chin up, meets your eyes. “The first thing I see when I get out of there is you, waiting for me. And I feel like I’m there already.”

Your throat feels tight. Your chest feels tighter. 

She laughs and kisses the corner of your mouth. Then the other corner. Then your nose, jaw, forehead.

“I love that you remember my coffee order,” she kisses back down into your lips. “I love that you let me steal your clothes. I love your little butt that’s just perfect for some therapeutic squeezing.

“I love that you drool in your sleep,” you declare back. “I love that you leave your hair ties everywhere. I love that you trust me enough to fall apart.”

Your hand slides lower, cups the curve of her hip, thumb tracing circles into the bone. She’s so warm. Her thigh hooks over your waist and suddenly her cunt is pressed against you, slick and ready and—God this is perfect.

“I love you,” you say again.

“I love you too,” she says, pressing another kiss to you. “Now, are we done being sentimental? Or are we going to fuck?” 

“That might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I’m a romantic person.”

“You’ve called our anniversary a reminder that you tolerate me.”

“I stand by that.”

You roll on top of her in faux anger, settle between her thighs, watch her eyes go dark and focused. Her nails dig into your shoulders. Her hips lift, searching.

“Happy anniversary,” you tell her.

She pulls you by the back of the neck, bites your bottom lip, smiles against your mouth.