#jonghyeon

You had worked with Jong-hyeon for just under a year in the inspection division of the auditor’s office - long enough to know he preferred actions to words, silence to sympathy, logic over anything that could be considered as warmth. You joked around him anyway, prodded him with sarcastic comments just to see if he would twitch. He rarely did. 

You had heard of his lost golden medal, the eye injury, the breakup between him and officer Ji Han-na. You once saw that he still had a picture of her in his wallet - smiling, radiant, the photograph worn in the edges. Such a heart-throb, you thought, breathing out loudly through your aching throat as you moved to your side, shivering even beneath the blankets. 

One thing that you could say about Kim Jong-Hyeon was that he was observant - which was probably the most dangerous thing about him. He noticed everything. 

Which is why, at exactly 2:13 p.m. on your second sick day - the second one you didn’t tell anyone about, didn’t put in the system, just disappeared without a word - someone rang your doorbell. Wearing socks that didn’t match and sweatpants that had become a second skin, you crawled out of the comfort of your living room, fully prepared to yell at a delivery guy for waking you up from your fever nap. 

Except when you had cracked the door open, it was not a delivery guy. It was Jong-hyeon. 

In plain clothes, black hoodie, hands in his pockets like he had every right to be there and none of the intention to explain why. 

You blinked once, stupidly. 

He blinked back, then lifted a small white plastic bag in one hand and said, “You didn’t answer your phone.” 

You didn’t remember your phone ringing. 

You blinked again, slower this time, like your brain was buffering under fever and disbelief.

“You called me?” you rasped, voice barely hanging together, every syllable like gravel scraping your throat.

“I called twice,” he said, calm as ever. “And messaged. You read them but didn’t respond.”

You stared. Not because of what he said, but because he was here - on your doorstep, in casual clothes, carrying the plastic bag like it was just another checklist item. Like tracking down your half-dead, flu-ridden body on a Tuesday afternoon was standard procedure.

“You tracked me down,” you said slowly, your fingers tightening around the edge of the door. “Like I’m some kind of fugitive.”

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he repeated flatly.

“Maybe I didn’t want to be found.”

His eyes narrowed behind his glasses - just slightly. A flicker, gone before it settled. “You didn’t want to be found,” he echoed, dryly. “While shivering, with a fever, probably half-delirious, and definitely stupid enough to skip three meals.”

“I had two oranges.”

“That’s not food.”

You sighed, gave up. Stepped aside.

He walked in without another word.

Your apartment wasn’t messy, just… uninhabited. Like you’d curled up in one corner of it and abandoned the rest. Jong-hyeon’s footsteps were quiet, but your awareness of them was loud, like your body remembered the sound of him even when your mind was still sluggish.

He made himself at home - not comfortably, not with ease, but with precision. Shoes by the door, hoodie sleeves rolled up, bag unpacked in a neat row on your kitchen counter. Medicine. Sports drink. Rice porridge in a sealed takeout bowl. A digital thermometer still in its box. A packet of heat patches. Your go-to coffee order with the right amount of milk, syrup and sugar. You had no idea how he had picked up on that. 

You watched him from the couch, cocooned in two blankets. Your throat ached, your joints ached, but your pride ached the most.

“So you just showed up. Because of a missed text?”

“Because you don’t miss texts,” he said, glancing up just once. “And you don’t skip work. And you don’t disappear for two days without a single complaint, unless something’s wrong.”

He placed the porridge on your coffee table. Didn’t look at you. “And because I told you not to wear that damn coat.”

You opened your mouth to respond - something cutting, probably, something to match the heat crawling up the back of your neck - but then he turned to you with a plastic spoon and said, “Eat while it’s still warm.”

You did.

You hated that it tasted good. That it soothed your throat. That your stomach, traitor that it was, grumbled in appreciation. You hated even more that he sat across from you in the armchair and didn’t speak, didn’t comment, didn’t pry. He just watched, calm and unreadable, and somehow it was that silence that cracked you open.

“Do you… do this for everyone?” you asked, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.

“No.”

“Right,” you croaked. “Just the sick, stupid ones who ignore dress code warnings.”

He didn’t look up from the notes he had started scribbling in the margins of a folded case file. “You make it very difficult to ignore you.”

There it was. Almost a compliment. Delivered like a reprimand. Wrapped in that clinical tone that tried so hard to be impersonal, and failed so spectacularly when he looked at you - really looked - and you felt it.

Noticed.

Registered.

Held in the kind of gaze that always made you feel a little like you were under a microscope and a little like you were falling.

You dozed off at some point. Fever dragged you under like a tide, and when you woke, the light had changed. Dimmed. Shadows stretched longer across the ceiling. The bowl was gone. Your blanket had been tucked higher over your shoulders and there was an unfamiliar hoodie in your lap. 

Jonghyeon was sitting on the floor, back against the couch, legs stretched out in front of him, now only in his t-shirt, typing on his phone with one hand and sipping something from your mug with the other.

“My cup,” you said hoarsely.

“I washed it,” he replied.

“You don’t drink tea.”

“I do when there’s nothing else.”

You stared at the back of his head. His hair was still slightly damp from the rain - the fine strands curling at the nape of his neck. You could smell the faint, clean scent of whatever he used: something herbal, practical, expensive. You hated how well you knew it. Hated how you pulled the hoodie closer.

“You can go,” you said after a beat. “I’m alive. Crisis averted.”

“I know.”

But he didn’t move. Didn’t glance at his watch. Didn’t sigh in annoyance or reach for the hoodie you were now clutching like it belonged to you. He just sat there, on your floor, absurdly calm for someone who broke into your sick day like a one-man intervention.

“I put a new bulb in your lamp, it was flickering.” he finally said, unbothered.

“Oh.” Oh. “Thank you.”

The silence stretched - long enough for you to feel it settle between your ribs, heavy and real.

“You’re staying?” you asked, quieter this time.

“For a while.”

You should’ve rolled your eyes. Thrown a pillow. Said something cutting and clever about how he was hovering like a ghost with control issues. But your head was too heavy, and the fever had softened your edges. You didn’t want him to go. Not when his presence was the only thing in your apartment not swaying with the fever.

“You’ll get sick,” you murmured, turning on your side to face him more fully.

“I won’t.”

“How do you know?”

He tapped his phone screen once, checking something - maybe his schedule, maybe a case, maybe the exact second he planned to return to pretending he didn’t care.

“I don’t get sick from people like you.”

You furrowed your brows. “What the hell does that mean?”

He looked up. Finally. His gaze was level, unreadable.

“You run yourself into the ground before asking for help. You’ll skip meals before asking anyone to check on you. If I didn’t come, you’d still be lying here with two oranges and a mild death wish. That’s not contagious. It’s just infuriating. And stupid.”

You blinked. And blinked again. “Is that… supposed to be concern?”

He stared at you for a beat. Then:

“Don’t fish for sentiment. I brought medicine, not flowers.”

You let out a broken laugh, too hoarse to be pretty. “Thank god. I’d be really worried if you showed up with tulips.”

Another silence. Softer this time.

You didn’t remember closing your eyes. Didn’t remember your hand moving, either - until your fingers were brushing the back of his head. Just a light touch. Unthinking. Fever-drunken instinct. His hair was soft, softer than you expected, still faintly damp, curling slightly at the ends.

He froze - not sharply, but like a system processing something unexpected. He didn’t stop you.

You carded your fingers through once, twice, and felt the muscles in his shoulders tighten fractionally. It was a small thing, a private betrayal of a man who prided himself on control. You smiled into the pillow.

“You really do smell nice,” you murmured.

He exhaled through his nose. “You’re delirious.”

“Mm,” you hummed, letting your hand drop. “Maybe.”

And still, he didn’t move. Even when your hand slipped off his shoulder and back into the folds of the blanket. Even when your breath slowed again and your body curled back into itself, comforted.

He stayed. Sitting on your floor, staring straight ahead.

You drifted again, half-asleep, but not quite gone. Somewhere between the heat of the room and the weight of the blankets and the quiet company of a man who refused to name the way he cared, you felt it. That subtle shift. Like gravity had pulled him closer.

“Why her?” you asked, voice rough, barely audible, unable to stifle your curiosity and maybe something else. “Why Ji Han-na?”

Another long pause.

Then, low: “She made sense. We were in the same place.”

You waited.

“But?” you prompted, eyes still closed.

“We just are not anymore. There’s nothing more to it.”

Your lips parted, but nothing came out.

“I thought I wanted quiet,” he added. “Turns out I needed someone stubborn enough to ignore me. And sharp enough to know when I’m lying.”

You didn’t speak. Couldn’t. The ache in your chest wasn’t from the virus anymore.

“Do you still carry her photo?” you asked, almost childishly.

“No.”

A beat.

“I got rid of it last month.”

You opened your eyes.

“Why?”

He looked over his shoulder at you then - finally, fully - and for the first time all day, something in his expression cracked. The edges softened. The wall dropped an inch.

“I met someone more difficult.”

You let out a sound - half-scoff, half-wheeze. “That’s your type now? ‘Difficult’?”

He tilted his head. “Apparently.”

You turned your face into the pillow, cheeks hot for a reason that had nothing to do with fever. The hoodie he’d left on you still smelled like him.

“You can sleep,” he said, standing now, walking to the kitchen without ceremony.

“I already did.”

“Then sleep again. I’ll still be here.”

You blinked at the ceiling, voice low. “Why?”

He didn’t turn around.

But he said, simply:

“Because you didn’t ask me to stay.”

And then, in the quiet, you heard it - the sound of your kettle starting to boil.

You smiled.