#mysmerbb

“That’s me,” he says, giving her his best attempt at his usual sparkling smile. He wonders if she can sense how nervous she makes him.

“It’s okay,” she says, patting the space beside her. “You can sit next to me, silly.” She knows: he sees it written in the resplendent smile on her face. Zen feels his cheeks flush. It’s never been like this before: he has worked so hard to learn how to smile, and change the timbre of his voice, and angle his head just right so the light bounces off his jaw. He is not used to being caught off guard. Ah, but he finds it impossible to pretend when she’s around: he is rubbed raw, like she has stripped him of his skin, leaving him utterly exposed.

“If you want me to, babe,” he says—but he knows that his voice is stiff and he can feel the way his body tingles as he shifts closer to her.

“Hey,” she says. She peeks up at him from underneath her lashes and there is a determined look in her eyes. A moment passes in which the world outside the window could burn to the ground and Zen wouldn’t see. She takes his hand.

And this is it: this is the moment. Oh god, he thinks. I’m done for.

She’s smiling up at him, tilting her head to the side to draw his attention to their intertwined fingers—as though he needed a reminder.

“Is this okay?” she asks him. He realizes he’s staring at her—is afraid, for a moment, that he looks like a fool, that she’ll toss her head and laugh that heart-stirring laugh and take her hand back. She doesn’t, of course.

He squeezes her hand. Finds he can breathe underwater.

Zen always knows what to say. But here, on his too-small couch, in his too-small apartment, he doesn’t have the words—doesn’t know how to tell her that his heart, and his head, and his whole life belong to her; ah, but the sparkle in her eyes tells him that she already knows. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course it is.”

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two

Yoosung can’t sleep. It’s something about the way the stars are shining outside his window: too close, like he could stick out his hand and pull them from the sky. He’s never wanted to believe the adage that lost loved ones look down on us from the stars—it’s too sad, he thinks, to leave behind your friends on earth and exist forever in the night sky, all alone. He doesn’t want to end up stationed in the sky for living people to gaze at as they philosophize about life; he wants to be right here, where it’s warm and he’s real and he can hold the people he loves in his arms.

The people he loves.

Normally, he’d give up on sleep—throw a blanket over his shoulders and open his game, where there would be friends waiting for him: strangers who know him just well enough to ask how he’s doing but not well enough to really listen to the answer. He used to think this sort of relationship was safe—natural—ideal.

But he doesn’t think that way anymore.

He calls her, instead.

She answers right away, and she can’t have been sleeping, because her voice sounds too clear.

“You’re still awake?” he laughs, and she giggles. He wishes she were beside him, head on his shoulder as he looks out through the smudged glass window.

“So are you,” she says.

Yoosung tells her about the stars. He tells her that the stars he sees are really in the past—that they’re long gone—that the past and present live together in the sky. A voice in the back of his mind tells him that he’s being dramatic again—that he’s wasting her time, her precious sleep, with these thoughts.

But she doesn’t think so.

“I’m looking out my window now too,” she tells him. “I wonder if the stars will carry my message to you.”

Yoosung finds that he’s smiling. He tucks his knees up to his chest, wiggles closer to the window—puts a palm on the glass, thinks again that perhaps he could catch a star in his hand if he just reached far enough.

“What’s your message for me?” he asks. His heart races.

“I’m going to tell the stars,” she says. She whispers something, and he hears her exhale, like she’s blowing on a dandelion—scattering her words into the night sky.

“Not fair!” he says. “I wanted to hear the message, too!”

“You will,” she tells him. “Just wait.”

So he waits, hand on the glass, listening to the sound of her breathing through the phone. He counts her breaths: one, two, three… He wonders how it would feel to fall asleep to this beautiful sound; he hopes, with all his heart, that one day he will find out.

One of the stars seems to glimmer brighter, catching his eye. It’s getting bigger, he thinks—moving closer to him. And perhaps it’s his imagination (too active, he’s been told) or just a projection made by his desperate heart, but he feels a warmth wash over him—like stepping outside and lifting his face to the sky on a bright summer day.

“Did you get it?” she whispers. His heart feels shimmery, like she’s taken it in both her hands and sworn to keep it safe.

“Yes,” he whispers back. “I feel it.”

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three

Jaehee is never afraid—but today, she is terrified.

The key digs into her palm and she clutches it—too tight—in her sweaty, shaky hand. She can’t remember the last time she felt this way—like her stomach is tied in a knot. As a child, perhaps, squeezing her pencil, waiting for a test to start—never as an adult; never like this.

Oh, and she is every bit as beautiful as Jaehee had imagined. When she was just a voice over the phone, Jaehee felt so much safer to say what she felt (even if what she said was such a tiny bit of what she really meant). But now she has a body, and a face, and these perfect, confident eyes, and Jaehee is certain she is going to lose her nerve.

Do it, she tells herself. Do it now.

“Will you be my partner?” she asks—and her voice sounds so much quieter than it did in her imagination. And in spite of everything that’s been said, Jaehee half-expects her to shake her head, declining the offer with a perfect, polite smile. Why would she uproot her whole life, after all, for a woman she’s known for just a few days?

Jaehee hardly dares even think beyond this: about the question she’s really asking; about the answer she really wants.

“Yes,” she says. Ah, and she says it with such conviction: like she’s simply been waiting to be asked. Jaehee feels like a thousand tiny little fires have ignited inside her chest. She holds out the key with a trembling hand. This is it, she thinks: the moment to tell the truth. And by my partner, of course, I mean…

She opens her mouth but the words are stuck in her throat. She hates herself for it: she is strong, she thinks. She can go to work with clear eyes after a sleepless night; she can defend herself with her bare hands. But this—the you are my everything, the I want you, the please be mine—it is impossible.

The key is gone—she has slipped it from Jaehee’s hand with remarkable deftness—and she is moving closer, closer, and Jaehee is frozen in place as soft arms encircle her. She smells like the first buds of spring.

“I mean—” Jaehee tries to say, feeling that the world has turned sideways.

“I know,” she whispers. And there is an intimacy in her tone of voice that Jaehee has never heard before: the ballroom around them dissolves, and they could be in bed together, or on a plane carrying them thousands of miles away, or in a void consisting of nothing but their voices and breaths and bodies and hearts. “I know what you mean.”

“Do you?”

She doesn’t say anything, but she shifts in Jaehee’s arms, and Jaehee realizes what she’s going to do right before she does it. She tilts her head and—and—with almost unbearable tenderness, brushes her lips against the corner of Jaehee’s jaw.

The sideways world rights itself. The air hums. The stars fall from the heavens.

“Friends don’t kiss each other like that,” she whispers, and her breath on Jaehee’s ear sends sparks shooting down her spine. “Right?”

Jaehee gathers her breath, the fragmented shards of her courage.

“No,” she murmurs. “They don’t.”

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four

It is a cool April day, and the trees seem to sing a song of impending summer.

She gets home late that night. Her mother, who is seated beside her in the car, is telling her a story she can’t quite follow—some friend of the family got some score on some test, and apparently this means that her mother is now disappointed in her. She sighs heavily; her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she leaves it alone, reluctant to get in more trouble than she seems to be in already.

The car pulls into the driveway.

“You need to make sure you get some sleep tonight, okay?” her mother says—and her voice sounds far away, like it’s coming from underwater.

“I still have a lot of studying to do,” she says, feeling stubborn. And it’s true that she has studying to do, but it is true, too, that it is almost midnight—the right time to start over again tonight, if she wants to.

And she does: oh, to slip back into that world where she is beloved and everyone’s salvation is at her fingertips.

Her mother looks back, halfway to the door; she’s still sitting in the passenger seat, shoulders hunched, one hand unconsciously cupping the phone inside her pocket.

“Are you coming inside?” her mother asks. She opens the passenger side door; the night air is biting on her bare arms.

“Yeah,” she tells her. “Yeah, just a minute.”

And her mother is walking ahead; tugging open the front door (too forcefully), keys jangling in her hand (too loud). She pauses in the garden; tilts her face up to see the sky.

Her muscles feel stiff and sore from nights of poring over books, eyes aching as she tries to make out the letters that swim around on the page. She feels like she’s been running a marathon barefoot, gasping as she struggles to keep up.

In another universe, though, she is already at the finish line. In another universe, she has the power to mend broken hearts, soothe fears, save lives.

Are you out there? she asks the empty night sky.

A star falls.

Oh: and it feels like an answer. She pulls her phone out of her pocket: midnight exactly. Phone in one hand, she lays her other hand over her heart.

She makes a wish.

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five

It is when the car door shuts behind her that Jumin realizes he is no longer afraid.

For ages, he has been on the very edge of the abyss of solitude. It would have been so easy, he thinks, to bury himself in that gaping emptiness where no one could reach him—to fall deeper and deeper until he was untouchable.

But she wrapped a rope around his waist and said if you’re going, I’m going too. He knows that she felt it: the peril of standing on the edge; the understanding that one wrong move would have catapulted them both over the cliff—hidden them away together where no one could find them. She knew; she could have run away at any time. 

She didn’t.

And now he is alone in the garage, and the car that’s carrying her away from him is fading into the distance, and—for perhaps the very first time in his life—he has no doubt that she will come back.

He’s always believed that leaving means never returning—that once someone is gone, they are gone forever. But she has driven away, and he finds that he doesn’t feel scared.

He calls her, of course—almost without thinking, fingers pressing the buttons before he’s realizing what he’s doing. She laughs as she answers.

“Did you miss me already?” she asks. Her voice is weightless; he realizes that it’s been days since he’s heard her voice without actually standing beside her. She feels so much less tangible now that she is just a voice over a phone again—and still, he does not feel afraid.

“I did,” he tells her. “I miss you so much.”

Honesty: so bright it almost burns him.

He tells her that he wants to grow into a more mature man for her, and she listens—and it is this, perhaps, that he loves the most. She doesn’t offer him platitudes, as the people around him have done his whole life: she doesn’t say oh, but you’re fine the way you are; she doesn’t dismiss him or diminish him or paint him a false picture of the way his world should be.

She listens.

She tells him that she’s glad to have met him and he knows that she means it.

Her voice, Jumin thinks, is like crisp autumn air; he wonders if he’s ever been truly honest with anyone before.

“There’s something I want to say to you right now,” he says. He finds that he needs to know how the words will taste in his mouth—needs to know if he’s capable of saying them at all.

“What is it?” she asks, and he smiles because he can tell she already knows.

He’s not standing on a cliff anymore, staring down into the abyss. Before he realized what she was doing, she led him away—guided him to this new place, where he is warm and his feet are on solid ground.

“I love you,” he tells her. It tastes like sweet chocolate on his tongue; it is the truest thing he’s ever said.

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six

It is far too late to turn back by the time Saeyoung looks at her sleeping face and realizes the magnitude of what he has done.

He is driving on an empty road that seems to stretch ahead infinitely. It is the space between him and his other half—and the distance separating them is measurable for the first time in so many years. She has fallen asleep in the passenger seat, his jacket spread over her lap, her face perfectly serene. Her lips form a tiny, placid smile—as though she’s content to be walking into fire with him. As though she doesn’t have any doubts.

I am a monster, he thinks (not for the first time). What sort of despicable person lets a someone like her get entangled in their nightmare? She shines so bright that his heart aches.

She wakes (of course she does), and he drags his eyes from her face back to the road, pretending not to see. He wonders if there is still time to deposit her somewhere safe, to leave his heart in her care as he goes on alone.

If anything were to happen to her, that would be the end of him. He’s sure of it.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” he says, keeping his voice light. But she knows better, of course—sees through him the way she always has. She frowns and leans over to brush his arm with her fingers; his whole body shivers at her touch and he is ashamed, knowing she can tell.

“What’s wrong?” she asks him. He gives her his most convincing smile, but he knows it’s lopsided on his face. What has happened to him? She has shattered all his defenses; she has plunged headfirst into the dark pit of his fears.

“Nothing,” he says; and she makes that clicking noise with her tongue that always disarms him, almost like she’s saying shhhh, now tell the truth. “I shouldn’t have brought you,” he says (hating the way his voice sounds, like he might just burst into tears).

She sighs.

“Do I have to tell you again all the reasons why you’re wrong?” Her sternness makes him smile—he can’t help it. He glances at her and her eyes are hard, glittering like the afternoon sun on the windshield.

“Please do,” he says. His voice sounds hoarse. She shifts, sitting cross-legged, tucking her arms into the sleeves of his jacket. She’s so cute like this he’s afraid his heart will burst.

“I’m going to help you,” she tells him firmly. “You may be the smartest person in the whole world, but you’re no good at staying calm.”

She’s right, of course—he never has been.

“You’ll do your best work with me beside you,” she says. “You get us in and I’ll keep us safe. If you want to save him, you need me there, too.”

Saeyoung’s hands—normally so steady, because he’s trained them to be that way—shake as he grips the steering wheel.

“I’ve never really cared about staying safe,” he tells her. She huffs, frustrated, refusing to let him wallow. And then she reaches for him, brushing his hair off his forehead; though her fingers are cool, he feels that she’s set his whole body on fire.

“Too bad,” she says. “I care about keeping you safe, Seven.”

Oh, and that name feels hateful to him when she says it: he can hardly stand the thought of her believing, even for a moment, any of the hundreds of thousands of lies he’s told. He wants her to see him for who he really is.

“Thank you,” he murmurs; she smiles, a hand on his knee, and he feels that she is the brightest star in all the galaxies.

It’s time, he thinks.

When they make it out alive (and in that moment, he decides that they will)—whether it is today, or tomorrow, or the next day—he is going to tell her his real name. Because Seven is a conglomerate of pretense and brightly-colored lies; because Saeyoung is a version of himself that he’s hardly dared to dream about: a person who’s loving, and honest, and good. 

He can become that person, he thinks, for her. He wants to.

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seven

It is May. She counts on her fingers the number of exams she has left, feeling the shivering promise of time passing on her very skin. She can see to the end of the long, dark tunnel now: the delightful hollowness of summer afternoons, the wonder of falling asleep at night without a thousand anxieties dancing around on her pillow. She sees, too, the plane she will board in the fall—the one that will carry her far away from here.

She sits at her desk, notecards stacked perilously high around her. Her phone buzzes; she checks it. Her head pounds.

“You aren’t playing that game, are you?”

Her mother’s voice from the doorway is harsh and she jumps, upsetting a pile of papers covered in nearly incomprehensible scrawl. She feels tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she snaps, throwing her phone onto her unmade bed.

“Just checking,” her mother says stiffly. She buries her head in her arms.

I wish they could see me now, she thinks wildly. Her room is a mess; there are dark circles under her eyes; she hasn’t brushed her hair. This house is a pressure cooker: the looming stacks of notes, and her mother’s stern voice, and the calendar of exams taped above her desk. She can’t see straight anymore.

It is a sense of control, she thinks, that she needs. Here, she has none at all: every moment of her day is monitored, every ounce of her energy expended to prepare for these tests that feel meaningless—that will earn her numbers on a page and a ticket out of her hometown.

But in the other universe, she is strong, and she is confident. Perhaps most important of all: she is cherished.

And they are cherished, she thinks; she wishes she could tell them as much.

Do you know? she thinks at them—hard as she can, heart racing, knowing it is foolish (wanting to believe, anyway). Do you know how much you mean to me?

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eight

When Jihyun wakes in the small, sterile room, the moon has risen, and the first thing he thinks of is her face.

In his mind’s eye, he pictures her as he saw her last: slipping from the room with a determined smile, waving as if to reassure him that he’d see her soon. Groggily, he tries to think: this was hours ago, of course, and it must be evening now. His body feels heavy; he tries to open his eyes, and finds that he can’t.

He lifts a hand to his face, feeling like he’s moving through thick liquid. Ah: there is a bandage over his eyes. He can feel it now: stiff and scratchy against his closed eyelids. 

From somewhere in the room (which he can no longer picture clearly), he hears a quiet voice.

“V? Are you awake?

It’s her—and he is somewhat surprised by the way his heart races. He didn’t expect her to wait with him this whole time—he didn’t realize that she was nearby.

“I’m awake,” he says—and his voice sounds strange to him, like it’s coming from someone else. He hears a rustling—someone is moving closer to the bed. Oh, and he catches a whiff of her scent; he’s never been able to quite place it, but it is absolutely intoxicating: like a garden he walked through once, long ago—or perhaps a flower that only grows in another world.

“I’m going to call the nurse,” she says. She is so close that he can feel her breath on his face. He reaches out—catches her hand.

“Wait just a moment?” he asks. He wonders if she can hear his heart.

How strange, he thinks. He is barely awake, and yet his heart is racing as though he’s just run a hundred miles.

“They said it went really well,” she says. He doesn’t miss the anxiety in her voice; he wonders how many hours she’s been here, watching him sleep. 

“You didn’t have to wait with me,” he says. 

“Of course I did.”

Jihyun realizes that he is still holding her hand. His head feels so foggy from the medicine that made him sleep, but his body is waking up now, and he’s painfully conscious of how small her hand is in his—tiny and almost unbearably tender. He wishes he could kiss every one of her sweet fingertips; he wishes he could see her face.

“Thank you,” he says. He means thank you for staying here with me—here in this room that smells strongly of disinfectant—but he means so much more than that, too. She sighs in the way he’s often heard her sigh: like she wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. He wouldn’t mind if she did.

“How do you feel?” she asks instead. She’s being careful, tiptoeing around him; he’s not sure how to tell her that she doesn’t need to.

“A little tired,” he admits. “But otherwise I feel well.” He hesitates. “Better than usual, actually.”

She laughs quietly; he feels he might do anything—anything in the world—just to hear that laugh again.

“You’re so strong,” she tells him, squeezing his hand. She is the one who is strong, he thinks. 

There’s a noise in the distance: a gentle knock on the door. The doctor is coming back, he supposes; suddenly, he feels not at all strong. He holds her hand tighter—finds that he doesn’t want her to go.

“Will you wait for me?” he asks, despising the way his voice sounds. He does not sound like a man who is worthy of her attention—he knows he is not a man who deserves to be waited for.

But she holds his hand to her cheek, and her skin is so warm. Jihyun wonders if she understands what he is really asking: not stay with me now but wait until I become someone who can love you the way you deserve.

“Of course I’ll wait for you,” she says. She speaks slowly: each word seems to hold enormous weight.

She knows, he thinks, exactly what he means.

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nine

Hand-in-hand, they look up at the sky.

Saeran sees the endless expanse of freedom extending in all directions around him, and feels that she is the very center of it all.

“Are you nervous?” she asks. He laughs; just moments before, he had felt that way—when he was typing (fingers aching as they fell into their habitual pattern of worrying over the keys—eyes burning and throat itching as he tried to breathe the cabin’s stale air). But now that he is outside—and she is standing beside him—he feels that he has the power to do anything: to run till his feet give out; to see his brother again; to build a life for himself.

“Not anymore,” he says. She moves closer, her arm brushing against his, and he turns to press his lips to her hairline. She squirms at his side, making a delightful sort of purring sound; Saeran feels that he could hold onto her from now until forever and it wouldn’t be enough.

He breathes in the mountain air: it smells like pine and grass and wind. He’s never felt like this before—like he is as strong as the earth itself.

“I’m happy,” she tells him. He feels her eyes on him and turns; oh, and she’s more beautiful than the sky, he thinks, brighter and more expansive than any fantasy his fevered mind could have dreamed up.

“What are you happy about?” he asks. She takes his other hand; he wonders if she knows that he wants to scoop up the whole world in his arms and lay it at her feet.

“I’m happy you’re here with me,” she tells him. “I’m happy that you’re free. I’m happy that you’re smiling the way you are right now.”

He is smiling, he realizes; he feels almost as if he could levitate off the ground. As if he could become the wind. As if he could cross into another universe to hold onto her heart.

“I love you,” he tells her, because it’s all he can think about. She catapults herself into his arms and he laughs, holding her close.

“I love you so much,” she says. “I just want…”

He knows. He brushes through her hair with his fingers, thrilled by the way she sighs as she snuggles closer. This is it, he thinks: the feeling of freefall that he has been seeking (and running from) all his life. The rhythm of her breathing against his chest ties him to the earth; he feels an absolute certainty in the sublime power of the universe. 

Over her head, he looks at the sky. The clouds whisper to him: she’s here, they seem to say. She is. She is.

Her body feels so solid in his arms, so real; and her love for him shimmers in the air all around him.

“Thank you,” Saeran whispers into her soft, sweet skin, “for being under the same sky.”

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ten

Summer comes.

She finishes her tests—bids goodbye to her friends and family—is startled by how much she cries.

She boards the plane with her ticket crushed in her sweaty hand. She sits by the window, palm against the glass, staring hard into the clouds.

In the distance, she can see the city she’s leaving behind: the buildings blur into the mist, and she is crying again. For years, she’s waited to run away from this place—now, it feels so strange to be leaving it behind. She pictures her room in her old house: the books stacked in neat piles now, the clothes laundered and folded into her suitcase, the bed made. She wishes she could pull out her phone and open the door to the other world—the one that’s offered her greater clarity than anything she’s ever felt in her own.

But she can’t, of course—not here. And at the end of this long plane ride will be another airport—and a car ride—and then the university she worked so hard to get into: the promise of a future that’s shimmering and full.

She holds her phone—powered off—in both hands. Here in the sky, she feels she could be in any world at all: her past, or her future, or their world, which still shines in her heart (perhaps brightest of all).

I’m okay, she thinks—and she knows that she is. She has confidence in the future she’s building for herself—in the person she’s becoming—in her own little corner of the universe.

She hopes that they know this. Their world feels both far away and wonderfully, impossibly close: inside her and all around her. She hopes that they are okay, too; that they are eating; that they are taking care.

Oh, she thinks—realizes, in a moment of sky blue clarity. I’m not going back.

She is moving on—as she always knew she would. And they knew too, of course. They must have.

But…

I love you, she thinks—thinks it hard, phone in her hands, face pressed against the window, eyes reflecting the faces she thinks she sees in the clouds. I love you all.

From her universe to theirs—connected only by lines of code and fervent feelings and a wish made on a falling star—she hopes (wishes, prays) that her message reaches them.

The clouds shift: love, love, love, they seem to say. The plane carries her higher. The sky stretches around her in all directions: infinite. Expanding.

They feel her.

She knows it.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

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You were just… 

You. 

Not that, that was a bad thing. It was just that you weren’t as outgoing and bubbly as someone like Rika had been. She seemed to be the center of attention no matter what and you had always been more of a wallflower if anything. You didn’t go out of your way for people unless you had the feeling that they needed help. 

The need to help others overwhelmingly made you do things for others beyond your limitations. It meant that you ran yourself ragged without meaning to and by the time that you knew that you were overloaded, it was already too late. Your skin would crawl and you would feel sick to your stomach for quite a while. 

It was the same old song and dance every day of your life when you were thrown into something you weren’t sure you were prepared for. This party, for example, you barely had any time to be able to get the wind of what you were meant to do and somehow it came together. 

It didn’t seem like you made any mistakes. 

But, you were physically far too aware of every detail that you’d made and nobody else had touched. You had just made your rounds over the party to check on everyone, mingling with the guests and trying to keep a smile on your face the entire time. It wasn’t easy, but you were doing the best that you could. 

What you didn’t realize was that it was increasingly obvious to the one person that had been around you the most lately that noticed that something was wrong. The dread that coiled in your gut was far too strong to ignore but you were trying to hide it, trying to make sure that this party turned out the way that it was supposed to. 

Breathing in deeply, you tried to disregard that cracking noise that came underneath it. It was always there whenever your anxiety flared and sometimes, it would be a warning that would be okay, and other times it was a warning that you needed to get away from everything. All of the lights and all of the sounds were just too much. 

Your skin crawled and hissed at you to step away as the overstimulation of your senses grew stronger and stronger. It was one of those feelings where you could be perfectly fine to those around you who didn’t know any better, but on the inside, you were trembling and shaking like a leaf in the breeze. 

You felt pathetic and still overwhelmed by something as small as a party when you knew how to handle it. You knew how to control these feelings and ground yourself, but it was just so hard to think clearly with the thumping of the music and the chattering voices in the back of the room. 

That’s why it surprised you when you felt a hand grasp at your wrist. You lifted your head to meet dark eyes and a gentle look. Jumin had appeared to you seemingly out of nowhere and nudged you in the direction of outside. You weren’t in any condition to decline his offer but anything to get you away from the buzzing sound was fine by you. 

Jumin led you out onto the balcony that overlooked the city, the sounds of the party now simply a distant hum against the sounds of the evening breeze and the occasional sound of cars driving by the building. The party was in a secluded and quiet little area of town so there weren’t a lot of people clattering about outside. 

You had never been this high up before nor had you had a view of the city like this. You let the buzzing feeling in the back of your mind rest where it was as you tried to find a distraction. You took a step forward and leaning over the edge to peer down at the world below. As quiet as it was, you could see things you never saw before. 

Not just glimmering lights, not just people living their lives, but feeling like nobody else could exist at this moment apart from the two of you. It was peaceful. It was what you wanted. It was a moment to breathe and find yourself when it felt like the rest of the world was collapsing around you so quickly. 

“I imagine it’s overwhelming to be in charge of something like this for the first time,” he said, leaning against the ledge next to you. “Are you doing alright? You haven’t taken a moment to catch your breath since you arrived.” 

“That’s very… astute, Jumin,” you said. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him just yet. It felt like that foreign feeling of wanting to cry was still there. You didn’t want to worry him for anything. “I expect no less from you, though. I’m… I’ll be okay. I just needed a minute to cool down.” 

Jumin didn’t have to take a hint. 

People were always joking and saying that he wasn’t emotionally mature and he didn’t know how to read into others, but he did. You knew that he did. For someone that everyone called a robot, he had always been checking in with you and making sure that you felt welcomed. 

Sure, it had been strange how you felt, but Jumin didn’t treat you differently because of it. He was ready to talk and converse with you about just about anything. He had a range of interests that could’ve made your head spin with how easily he could shift a conversation and talk to a person about anything. 

Even things that he may have just started learning about. Jumin was always learning, and in a way, you wanted to be more like that. You wanted to see what it was like to handle the room instead of running away from it when it got tough. It was something that you had been working on all your life but it wasn’t moving as fast as you wanted it to be.

“Take as much time as you need, then,” Jumin’s voice drew you away from your thoughts once again. “You’ve done the hard work of coordinating this event. You don’t have to handle this all on your own. That’s why we’re an organization.” 

“Funny you say that,” you felt a laugh come to your lips as you thought about all that Jumin had been doing for the party. Not even for the party, for everyone that was in the RFA. He had been making sure that everyone was safe from not only the hacker but from outside threats that they couldn’t account for. 

He was doing that without being prompted. 

His compassion knew no bounds. 

Jumin Han, if anyone, was the one that needed to know how much he was appreciated. He was even trying to help you right now instead of doing his tasks for the party. He was always the one that put his loved ones first and you could relate to that. It was just hard to imagine the sheer weight of it given the length Jumin went to.

It was above and beyond what you felt capable of yourself. 

That was when you turned to look at him, “It seems like you’ve been taking care of everything yourself, too. I think if anyone needs a break, it’s you, Jumin.” 

Jumin chuckled. He gave you that rare smile that made you feel like you were on cloud nine all over again. “How about we both take a break, then? I imagine they can handle things for a few minutes if we’re away.”

“I think that’s fair,” you smiled. Sliding your hand across the balcony, you bumped your palm against his and he looked down at where your fingers interlocked. It was a simple gesture but he returned it, holding your hand tightly within his own as if it was meant to be. “Thank you for saving me back there. I usually can handle it when it gets bad, but…” 

“It’s your first party. You want things to run smoothly,” he replied as if he had pulled the answer right from your mind. “I understand. There are things that we can control and things that we can not control. Don’t worry too hard about it. Thanks to your delicate care, things are going to turn out wonderful.” 

“Give yourself some credit, we wouldn’t have the party right now if now for how much you’ve been looking out for everyone.” 

“I suppose we both have to be a bit less modest, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Jumin Han,  modest ?” 

“Preposterous, right? I imagine Zen would have an interesting response to that.” 

“Hahaha… Jumin, you always know how to make me feel safe again.” 

You watched as Jumin stared back at the city lights and the skyline. He was lost in his thoughts but you were lost in him. If nothing else, you knew that you always had a safe place with Jumin and there would be nothing that could ever take that away from you. It was just what felt right to you and all you wanted to be. 

With Jumin, you would have a peaceful place to hide away from the world, and you knew from the way he held your hand, that he felt the same way about you. Smiling, you looked back into the party hall and then back to Jumin as the faint music began to play once again. You figured it was a good time as any to have a dance. 

And, the first man you wanted to share that with happened to be right there with you. 

You looked at him and watched as his deep eyes returned to you, “If I could be so bold, could I have a dance with you, Jumin?”

Jumin held your hand so tenderly and nodded. Thus began a dance shared between the two of you that stayed so sweet underneath those stars.  “Of course, you can. I was going to ask you myself but it appears you’ve beaten me to the punch. I admire that. You keep surprising me, and I can’t wait to see what else you can do.”

And so, you swayed against him and felt that feeling of peace wash over you. During a busy night with everyone on their toes, you would enjoy this moment of serenity with Jumin as you intended. Even if the world was tumbling around you, there would always be Jumin to fall back on when you needed support.