#knj ff

Your relationship with Seungcheol is just fine, thanks. Great, even. It’s been almost four years since your father—a colleague of Seungcheol’s father—introduced you, and not once have you gotten into a real argument or considered breaking up. He’s handsome and smart and well-mannered, and bought the right kind of fruit when he visited your parents’ home for the first time. He even treats your little sister to dinner, whenever she deigns to fly in from Boston. He’s never left you wanting for anything. Sure, the thoughtless things he says spike your blood pressure now and then. But this is, you’re well aware, what all long-term relationships are like. What all men are like. Actually liking your partner all the time, you think, comes second to loving them, and you do love Seungcheol. Can’t really imagine a life in which you don’t have him waiting for you in the parking lot after a Saturday shift, or calling you on his way home from work, or draping an arm over your waist and falling asleep with his legs tangled in yours.

You’re comfortable. You know him well and know he’ll always do right by you, and that’s more than you’ve ever expected to have.

One, sloping up from the bottom left corner, starting at zero and ending at (100, 100). His career—what he hoped it would be, how high he hoped to go. What he spent achingly long days working toward.

The other starting at (0, 100), plummeting downward. Your relationship.

If he’d been just an ounce more intelligent, if he’d had the slightest bit of foresight, he would have realized that the stresses and headaches of loving you were growing pains, not death knells. That the line wasn’t diving, but climbing. That it hadn’t started at 100, but that the beginning had just been a preview of the love to come.

At the point where the two lines intersected, he felt he had to make a choice. When the band began exploding in overseas popularity, growing their fanbase and making plans to expand their reach into the American market, he saw his life imploding. His future shrinking, narrowing, instead of growing. His options flickering out like dying stars.

He had to streamline his life, he decided. He had to choose himself, bet on himself. Bet on his future, and pray like hell that they would get somewhere, even if it tore him apart in the process.

No one warned him that trying to summit that hill alone would make it that much harder.

—

“Namjoon?”

He looks up at you, and instinctively swipes his forearm across his face. He’s flushed from the effort of running, and he imagines the sheen of moisture sitting on his skin is anything but attractive. He hasn’t shaved, his hair’s a little too long.

There was a time he didn’t fuss about what he looked like in front of you, because he knew you’d love and accept him as he was. Now, it dawns on him that there is nothing tying you to him anymore. No promises or obligations. No jeong—no affection. The invisible string snipped in two.

You can walk away at any time, just like he once did.

He manages a smile. “Y/N.”

“I thought that was you. The baseball cap.” You point to it, flash an uncertain smile. How many times has Namjoon imagined seeing that smile again? “Dodgers.” 

He laughs uneasily, lifting the cap off his head and running a hand through his tamped-down hair. “Yeah. You were always a big fan.”

It aches, to stand in front of you and have a million thoughts run through his mind that he can’t verbalize. That he can’t ask for answers to. He’s always known what to say, but for the first time, he’s drawing a blank. He takes in what you’re wearing—a cream pantsuit, business formal. Clothes he hasn’t seen before, but that you look good in nonetheless.

“Um,” you say after a moment. “I was just… headed to work, saw you standing here. How have you been?”

This isn’t right. This isn’t us, he wants to shout. If the world were just, if it were right, you’d be running out here together—you always hated exercise, but he would have convinced you, and you would have come along just because. You’d get all the way here before he'd shamefully confess that he forgot his keys at home. You’d laugh and act annoyed with him, before revealing that you’d spotted the keys on the kitchen counter and brought them with you. Just in case.

You’ve always been good at picking up after him like that. Correction: You were always good at picking up after him.

“I’m good,” he lies, shifting nervously. Every time he imagined this moment, every time he imagined seeing you again, he never accounted for this—the stagnant feeling in the air, his words landing like bumbling footfalls. “Just… doing my own thing now. Collecting art, making music, running. How are you?”

“Fine. Still working.” You give him a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

The expression is so familiar, so irreversibly branded into his memories, that Namjoon’s suddenly flung backwards in time to the night of your first fight. The night you first gave him that watery, meaningless smile.

“What is it?”

You won’t look at him—your eyes are trained on the ground, your hands curled into small fists by your lap, your shoulders all the way up by your ears. Tense, like a tightly wound spring. “It’s nothing, Namjoon.”

He feels the heat rising in his ears, rising in his throat. “Y/N, I don’t have time for this. Please, just tell me. I can tell you’re upset.”

You whip your head up to look at him, the pain in your eyes barely disguised by the fire. He knows, immediately, that he’s said something wrong. “You don’t have time. Isn’t that the problem? You never have time.” 

The apology already forming in his head evaporates, almost instantaneously. “I told you. It’s just this one comeback. And then I’ll get a week off, and we’ll have all the time in the world.”

“A week.” You still can’t look him in the eye. “And what about after that?”

“I told you it might be like this.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to stop trying.”

It’s like you’ve punched him in the gut. It hasn’t been a good day for him—his lyric drafts being rejected twenty-seven times throughout the day, an ache in his knee that won’t subside, an argument with one of the members over whose turn it was to clean the common room. And now, the second he has a reprieve, the second he can escape the madness of his studio or the dorm, this is all that greets him. Another slap in the face—another person confronting him with his failures.

“What the hell do you mean, stop trying?” He fights to keep his voice calm—he’s exploded with anger before, but never has that rage been directed at you. “I come over three times a week, I text you all the damn day. I’m doing my best. This is my best.”

You finally meet his eyes. That empty, halfhearted smile. It’s so unexpected, so out of place in the swirl of frustration flooding his mind, that Namjoon has to scramble to process it. “Maybe your best isn’t enough.”

He blinks, bringing himself back to the present. That smile. How many times has it haunted him? It’s a cry for help, a defense mechanism, a cheap disguise. All at once.

But it’s not his place to question it. Not anymore.

“Still at the same place?” he asks. 

“Yeah.” You hike the strap of your bag up your shoulder.

“It’s early.”

“Yeah, I work long hours.”

Silence. You’re wearing makeup, but Namjoon knows—knew—you well enough to tell that you’re exhausted. There’s a slump in your shoulders, gray rings under your eyes. He’d bet anything that under your sleeve, you still have the angry, pink stress rash on your forearm. 

What did he think he’d feel when he saw you again? Certainly not this, the odd mix of resentment and anger and concern roiling in his gut. The anxiety of not knowing what to do next. Being thrown into the deep end without a single swimming lesson. Being thrust on stage and hearing the band play a song he’s never heard before.

What does he say? What does he do?

“We should catch up sometime,” you say, finally. You tuck your hair behind your ear—it’s much shorter now, he realizes distantly, and perhaps a different color. “Is your number the same?”

“Uh, no.” He pulls out his phone from his pocket. “The company had me change it. What’s your number?”

You recite it to him, he takes it down. Punches in each digit deliberately while you watch.

“Okay. Um, call me sometime. I’d love to talk, if you have the time.” You smile, wave, don’t wait for a reply. Walk away, back turned, not looking over your shoulder. Leave him standing there, watching you disappear from view. Again.

If you have the time. He looks down at his still-lit phone screen, at the black digits etched in sharp relief. The number he deleted long ago, back at his disposal.

But he already knows he won’t be using it.

There’s a difference, he realizes, between regretting what he’s done and wishing that things were different. What’s been haunting him is regret. Nostalgia. The idea of turning back time to four years ago—before life got so goddamn complicated. 

What he hasn’t been doing is wishing that you were still his.

What's the point of trying to return to a house that's been torn down? Of trying to exhume and revive a long-dead corpse?