#parallel lines

"Hello?"

Your manager's voice cut through the noise of the cafe, but you barely registered it. Your eyes were locked on your phone screen, watching the same ten-second clip for the fourth time in a row.

Martin's face filled the frame. He was sitting in one of those sterile interview rooms with the neutral backdrop and the overly bright ring lights that made everyone look slightly washed out. His hair was styled differently than usual—pushed back, more polished. He looked tired. Or maybe you were just projecting.

The interviewer's voice came through tinny and muffled: "So working with YVES on the 'No Signal' music video—what was that experience like for you and the group?"

Martin's expression didn't change. That same carefully neutral mask he wore during official schedules. Professional. Controlled.

"It was good," he said, and something in your chest tightened. "Very professional. We're both... we have our own careers to focus on, our own directions. It was a good collaboration but we're very different artists."

The interviewer laughed. "Right, of course. So no plans to work together again?"

Martin smiled. That polite, media-trained smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I think we both got what we needed from the project. We'll see what the future holds."

The clip ended. Looped back to the beginning.

You should've stopped watching. Should've put your phone down. Should've deleted the stupid clip from your saved videos and moved on with your life like a normal person who didn't care what Martin Edwards Park said in interviews.

But you weren't normal. And you did care. And that was the problem.

Very professional.

The words echoed in your head like a taunt. Like a slap. Like confirmation of every stupid insecurity you'd been trying to ignore for the past two weeks.

Because what had you expected? That he'd sit there and tell the interviewer about the very private moment in the car? About how you'd both admitted you were falling apart? About how he'd apologized with his eyes shut because being vulnerable physically hurt him? About how something had shifted between you that night, something fragile and new and terrifying?

Of course not. That would be insane. You knew that. Logically, you knew that.

But some pathetic part of you—the part you'd been trying so hard to bury, the part that had let its guard down for five seconds and immediately regretted it—had hoped for... something. Anything that acknowledged what had happened between you was real.

Instead: Very professional.

Like you were just another co-star. Another collaboration. Another checkbox on his career timeline that he could smile about politely and then forget.

Your hand jerked without your permission, and suddenly your iced americano was tipping, cascading across the table in a cold, dark wave.

"Oh—shit—" You grabbed for napkins, but your manager was faster, already lifting her planner and tablet out of the splash zone with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd dealt with your rare clumsiness before.

"Are you okay?" She was using that concerned-but-professional tone. The specific one that meant she'd noticed you weren't paying attention but was too polite (or detached) to call you out directly.

"I'm fine. Sorry. I just—" You pressed napkins against the spill, watching coffee soak through the thin paper like blood through gauze. Your phone sat in a small puddle. You grabbed it, wiped it frantically on your jacket. The screen was still playing that stupid clip on loop.

"We're both very different artists."

We. Like there was still a "we." Like you were still connected somehow even though he'd just spent thirty seconds on national television erasing any connection or semblance of friendship between you.

Stop it. Stop spiraling. It doesn't matter.

Except it did matter. It mattered so much your hands were shaking as you locked your phone, you'd just spilled coffee all over yourself like an idiot. It mattered so much you could feel your chest getting tight, your throat closing up, that familiar panic creeping in at the edges.

Why did you let yourself care? Why did you let him in? You knew better. You KNEW better. You'd spent your entire life building walls specifically to avoid this exact feeling—this horrible, crushing weight of disappointment that came from trusting someone and having them prove you were right not to.

Your parents had taught you that. Every time they'd praised you for an achievement but never for just being you. When they'd compared you to other trainees, other idols, other daughters who were doing better. Every time they'd made it clear that love was conditional, that acceptance was earned, that you were only valuable when you were perfect.

On top of that, the industry had reinforced it. Every article that pitted you against other female soloists. Every comment section that tore you apart for being too cold, too distant, too professional. Every time someone had tried to get close and you'd realized they just wanted something from you—a collaboration, a connection to your company, access to your success.

You'd learned and you'd adapted. You'd built walls so high and so thick that no one could hurt you because no one could reach you.

And then stupid, dumb Martin had looked at you in that car and said "me too" and somehow, impossibly, you'd started to believe that maybe—maybe—someone understood. That maybe you weren't as alone as you thought. That maybe you could let someone in without losing yourself completely.

Stupid. So incredibly stupid.

"You've been distracted all morning," your manager observed, flagging down a staff member for more napkins. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. Yes. I'm fine." You finally locked your phone, shoved it face-down on the dry part of the table like that would somehow stop it from playing that clip in your mind on an endless loop. "What were you saying? About next week's schedule?"

She studied you for a moment—that assessing look that made you feel like you were being X-rayed. Like she could see right through your carefully constructed facade to the mess underneath.

But she let it go. She always did. That was the thing about your manager—she was paid to manage your career, not your emotions. As long as you showed up on time and smiled for the cameras, she didn't need to know or care that you were slowly unraveling inside.

"Your Vogue Korea shoot is confirmed for Tuesday," she said, pulling up her tablet again. "Call time is 6 AM, so we'll need to leave by 4:30 to beat traffic. Wednesday you have that variety show recording—'Amazing Saturday', the one where you have to guess song lyrics. Thursday is the fitting for the Prada event, and Friday..." She paused, swiping through her calendar. "Friday is MAMA rehearsals."

Your stomach dropped so fast you felt dizzy. "MAMA?"

"Yes. You're presenting Best New Artist, remember?" Your manager looked up from her tablet. "The ceremony is Saturday. CORTIS is nominated for several awards, so they'll be there too. I already confirmed with their team that you won't have overlapping rehearsal times, but you might run into them backstage."

Of course. Of course CORTIS would be there. Of course Martin would be there.

Of fucking course you'd have to see him and smile at him. Pretend like everything was very professional between you while cameras flashed and fans screamed and the entire industry sat on the edge of their seats to see if the supposed "rivalry" was real.

"Very professional."

God, you wanted to throw your phone across the cafe. Wanted to scream. To call him and demand to know what the fuck that interview was supposed to mean, if the car scene had meant anything to him at all, if he'd thought about you even once in the past two weeks or if you'd just been another item on his to-do list.

But you didn't do any of that. Because you were YVES. And YVES didn't scream in cafes or throw phones or call boys who'd made it very clear they didn't want to be called.

YVES was professional. Controlled and perfect.

Even when she was falling apart inside.

"That's fine," you heard yourself say. Your voice sounded normal and steady. Like your heart wasn't suddenly racing. Acting as if you weren't already dreading Friday, dreading Saturday, dreading every single second you'd have to spend in the same building as him. "No problem."

Your manager's eyes lingered on you for a second too long. She knew you well enough to recognize when you were lying. But she also knew you well enough not to push.

"Are you sure you're okay? You seem..."

"I'm fine," you repeated. The words were starting to taste like ash in your mouth. How many times had you said that today? This week? This year? "Just tired. Lot of schedules lately."

It wasn't a lie. You were tired. Exhausted, actually. But that wasn't why your hands were shaking. That wasn't why you felt like you couldn't breathe.

"Well, try to get some rest this weekend." She closed her tablet with a soft click. "MAMA week is always exhausting, and I need you sharp for the red carpet. The press is going to be intense."

"I know."

You did know. You'd been through award show season enough times to understand exactly how it worked. The red carpet where every outfit choice would be scrutinized, every expression analyzed, every interaction dissected by fans and critics alike. The backstage area where you'd have to navigate running into people you'd rather avoid. The ceremony itself where you'd have to sit still and smile for three hours while cameras randomly cut to your face.

And this year, there was the added bonus of Martin being there. Martin, who'd be sitting somewhere in that audience with his group, accepting awards and giving speeches and being the industry's golden boy while you stood on stage and handed a trophy to someone else.

Martin, who you'd have to avoid looking at even though you knew—you knew—the cameras would be waiting for exactly that... to catch you glancing at him. Waiting for any hint of the "tension" between you.

Waiting to turn whatever fragile thing had existed between you into content.

The staff member arrived with a towel, helped clean up the remaining coffee. You mumbled an apology, avoided eye contact. When they left, you stared at the damp spot on the table where your drink used to be.

Your phone buzzed. You flipped it over instinctively, some stupid hopeful part of you expecting—what? A text from him? An apology? An explanation?

2 New Messages

Chaerin (Stylist) [10:23 AM] Hi YVES! Confirming your fitting for Thursday at 2 PM. Let me know if that still works!

Mom [10:31 AM] Did you see the article in Dispatch? They're speculating about you and that CORTIS boy again. We need to discuss how to handle this.

Your stomach turned over. Of course your mother had seen the article and had opinions about how to "handle this." As if there was anything to handle. As if you and Martin were actually something instead of just two people who'd shared a car for an hour and made the mistake of being honest with each other.

You locked your phone without responding to either message. You didn't have the energy.

Your manager stood, gathering her things with that brisk efficiency that meant the meeting was over, time to move on to the next thing. "Alright. I'll send you the updated calendar tonight. And remember—MAMA rehearsals Friday, ceremony Saturday. Block out the whole weekend."

"Okay."

You both walked out of the cafe into the Seoul afternoon. The sun was too bright, making you squint. Your jacket was damp from the spilled coffee, cold and uncomfortable against your skin. Your phone felt heavy in your pocket. Your chest felt tight.

As you got into the car, you caught your reflection in the window. You looked tired and hollowed out. Like someone who'd been holding themselves together for too long and was finally starting to crack.

But you'd looked like that before. You'd look like that again. This was nothing new.

The car pulled away from the curb, merging into Seoul traffic. Your manager was already on her phone, coordinating something for next week. Her voice was a low murmur in the background, white noise you'd learned to tune out.

You stared out the window at the city blurring past. People on sidewalks living their normal lives. Couples holding hands. Students in uniforms laughing at something on their phones. A mother pushing a stroller, her face soft with affection as she looked down at her child.

Normal people doing normal things. Not worrying about whether a thirty-second interview clip meant something or nothing. Not spiraling over a boy who'd made it very clear he didn't think about them the way they thought about him.

You tried very hard not to think about Martin's voice saying "very professional."

You tried very hard not to replay the car scene in your head. The way he'd looked at you when he'd admitted he was exhausted. The way his voice had cracked when he'd apologized. When he'd said "I misunderstood who you were" like it mattered, like you mattered.

Tried your best not to remember the convenience store at 3 AM. Standing outside in the cold while he'd told you that you did that thing where you shut down when you got too comfortable. That you acted like getting close to people was dangerous.

He'd been right. It was dangerous. And you knew it.

This—this feeling in your chest right now, this horrible ache that wouldn't go away no matter how hard you tried to ignore it—this was exactly why you kept your walls up. This was exactly why you didn't let people in.

Because when you did, when you made the mistake of trusting someone, of believing that maybe you weren't as alone as you thought—this is what happened. They reminded you that you were always alone. That you'd always been alone. That the walls weren't keeping people out; they were keeping you safe.

And you'd forgotten that. For a few weeks, in the back of a car and on a convenience store break and in stolen moments between takes, you'd forgotten. You'd let yourself believe that Martin was different. That he saw you—really saw you—and didn't look away.

So. Fucking. Stupid.

Your phone buzzed again. You ignored it. You didn't want to see another text from your mother about "handling" a situation that didn't exist. You didn't want to see your schedule filling up with obligations and appearances and performances of being someone you weren't sure you even recognized anymore.

Didn't want to accidentally see another clip of Martin saying the words "very professional" like they were true. Like that's all you'd ever been to each other.

The car stopped at a red light. An ad played on a building across the street—some new boy group you didn't recognize, all perfect smiles and synchronized choreography. The light turned green. The ad disappeared as you drove past.

You closed your eyes and leaned your head against the window. The glass was cold against your forehead. Your reflection ghosted across the surface—pale and blurred and barely there.

This is what you got for letting your guard down. This is what you got for thinking that maybe, just maybe, someone could understand what it was like to be you.

You'd rebuild the walls. You'd go to MAMA and smile for the cameras and present the award and not look at Martin even once. You'd be professional. Perfect. Everything everyone expected you to be.

And if it hurt—if seeing him hurt, if pretending you didn't know what his voice sounded like when he was being honest hurt, if going back to being strangers hurt—well.

You'd been hurting for a long time.

What was a little more?

The KSPO Dome was the kind of venue that made you feel small.

Not in a bad way, necessarily. More in the way that reminded you that you were one person in an industry built on spectacle—on lights so bright they erased shadows, on stages so large you could fit an entire neighborhood on them, on crowds so loud the sound turned physical. Something you felt in your sternum long before you heard it with your ears.

You'd been here before. MAMA wasn't new territory. But standing in the wings during Friday's rehearsal, watching staff members scramble with earpieces and clipboards, watching the lighting crew test color washes across the empty stage in slow sweeps of blue and white—you felt it anyway.

That particular brand of nervous energy that had nothing to do with the award show.

Your presenter rehearsal was scheduled for 2 PM. You'd arrived at 1:30 because you were always early, always prepared, bag over one shoulder and script already memorized even though they'd email you the teleprompter copy anyway. Your stylist had put you in rehearsal clothes—oversized cream sweater, straight-leg trousers, hair pulled back clean. Armor in a different form.

You were standing in a corridor backstage, pretending to review the presenter script your manager had forwarded that morning, when you heard it.

Music. Bleeding through the walls from the main stage.

No Signal.

The opening notes were unmistakable. That specific chord progression you'd heard so many times during the MV shoot it had become muscle memory, embedded somewhere deeper than thought. Your body recognized it before your brain did—shoulders pulling back slightly, jaw tightening, something in your chest contracting like a fist closing around nothing.

They were rehearsing their performance.

Of course they were. CORTIS had a stage tonight. Obviously they were here. Obviously you'd be in the same building as him for the next two days. You'd known that. Your manager had told you that. You'd had a whole week to prepare yourself for exactly this.

And yet...

You stared at your script without reading it. The words blurred—please welcome your nominees, the winner is, congratulations—and all you could hear was that song. His voice layered into the production, filling the hallway through walls and distance like it had no respect for the physical barriers you'd carefully constructed between yourself and everything that had happened over the past few weeks.

The paper crinkled slightly in your grip. You loosened your fingers deliberately. Smoothed it against your thigh.

A staff member rounded the corner. "Oh—YVES-sshi, sorry! We're ready for your rehearsal whenever you are."

"Sure," you greeted. "Let's go."

You followed her through the labyrinth of backstage corridors. Past dressing rooms with name placards on the doors. Past racks of stage outfits wrapped carefully in plastic. Past catering tables lined with water bottles and snack boxes that no one was touching yet. The sounds of the venue grew louder the closer you got to the main stage. You could hear No Signal clearly now, the bass line vibrating faintly through the floor under your feet.

Then the music cut off.

Voices. Choi PD's—crisp, directive. Then laughter, the specific chaotic frequency of CORTIS when they were comfortable somewhere. Juhoon saying something that made Keonho groan. James' quiet snort. Seonghyeon's calm response threading through the noise like it always did.

And then Martin's voice. His thoughtful tone he used when he was paying attention to something that mattered to him. Asking a question about the lighting rig, something technical, something specific. The production crew member responding in kind.

You turned the corner. And there he was.

Standing at the edge of the stage with one hand shading his eyes against the lighting test, talking to someone from the production crew. Rehearsal clothes—plain black sweats, no styling, hair pushed back with a headband that should've looked ridiculous on someone his height but didn't. He was nodding at whatever was being explained to him, expression focused and attentive in that way he had when he was genuinely listening instead of just performing engagement.

He hadn't seen you yet.

You had approximately three seconds before he did.

Your escort was still walking. You followed automatically, your feet moving before you made any conscious decision about what to do with your face. Your face morphed through three difference expressions until you settled for neutral and professional. The expression you'd been wearing since you were fifteen and learned that the camera was always watching even when you couldn't see it.

Martin turned.

His eyes found you immediately. Like he'd sensed you before he'd seen you, which wasn't possible, which was insane, which didn't stop it from feeling absolutely true.

For one second—just one—something crossed his face. Something unguarded that disappeared so fast you almost convinced yourself you'd imagined it.

Then the mask was back. He gave you a small nod. Professional. Appropriate.

You looked away first without acknowledgement and kept walking.

You focused on the teleprompter position. On the camera angles the director was explaining. On the exact number of steps from the wings to your mark. You did not look back at where CORTIS was clustered near the stage monitors. You did not try to figure out if he was watching you. You were YVES. You were presenting Best New Artist tomorrow night. You were a professional.

The rehearsal took twenty minutes. You hit your mark, read the copy clean, smiled at the right moments. The director said you were good to go. You said thank you and meant it.

You were almost back to your dressing room when your manager caught up with you, slightly breathless, phone clutched in both hands.

"Hey. So." She fell into step beside you. "BIGHIT just called."

Something in her tone made you slow down. "About what?"

"They want to add something to CORTIS's performance tonight." She paused. "They want you in it."

You stopped walking entirely.

"In the performance."

"Just for a moment," she recovered quickly after hearing your tone. "Nothing choreographed. You'd stand center stage during the bridge—you know the part where the song drops and goes quiet? You'd just... be there. While they perform around you. Then you walk off into the dark at the end. Like you disappear." She tilted her head. "Like the MV concept. Live."

You stared at her.

"It was Choi PD's idea," she continued. "He pitched it to BIGHIT this morning and they loved it. Said it would be the moment of the night. The visual callback to the MV. Fans would lose their minds."

"Of course they would," you said quietly.

"YVES—"

"What did CORTIS say?"

Your manager hesitated. "They agreed to it."

"All of them?"

"Yes."

You waited. "What did Martin say specifically?"

Another pause. Longer this time. "He said okay."

Just okay. Not reluctantly. Not after a long argument about artistic vision and concept integrity. Just—okay. Like it was nothing. Like having you stand in the center of his group's biggest performance of the year was a completely unremarkable development.

You didn't know what to do with that.

"YVES," your manager said carefully, "I know this is a lot. But it's a good opportunity. Visually it'll be stunning and the timing is perfect with the MV just having come out—"

"I know," you said. "I know it's a good opportunity."

"So you'll do it?"

You stared at the corridor wall for a moment. At the framed MAMA posters lined up in a row, years of performers immortalized in high-contrast black and white.

What was the alternative? Say no? Let everyone wonder why YVES had refused to participate in the most talked-about performance of the night? Let them speculate? Let Martin think you were scared?

"Yes," you said. "I'll do it."

Rehearsal for the performance addition happened at 5 PM.

The stage was fully set by then—CORTIS's concept rendered in real space. Dark and atmospheric. A raised center platform surrounded by low-lying fog that curled around your ankles when you stepped onto it. The lighting rig above cast everything in deep blue except for one single spotlight positioned directly above where you'd be standing. White and clean and isolating.

It was genuinely beautiful. You hated that it was genuinely beautiful.

The choreographer—Yunah, who you'd worked with during the MV blocking—walked you through it once with no music. Just the positions. Just the spacing. You'd enter from the left wing during the instrumental break, walk to the center platform, stop. Stand still while they moved around you. Then at the final chorus, when the music swelled and the lights changed, you'd turn and walk into the dark at the back of the stage.

Simple and somewhat devastating in concept.

"Okay," Yunah said when she'd finished explaining. "Let's run it with the group so everyone knows the spacing."

CORTIS was already on stage. Juhoon gave you a small wave when you walked out, easy and warm. Keonho was mid-stretch, nodded at you. Seonghyeon caught your eye and smiled. James raised his chin in quiet acknowledgment.

Martin was standing at the back of the stage talking to the lighting director. He glanced over when you walked out. Said nothing. Turned back to the lighting director.

Yunah called everyone to their opening positions. The music started.

No Signal filled the dome.

Even in rehearsal, even half-lit and without the crowd, it was something. The kind of song that had weight to it. That sat in the chest differently than other songs. You understood why it had connected the way it had. Why people kept playing it on loop.

You made your entrance on cue. Walked to the center platform. Stepped up.

And suddenly they were moving around you.

It was different from the MV. In the MV there'd been distance—separate scenes, separate spaces, never truly together. But here they were right there. Close enough to feel the displacement of air when they moved past. Juhoon swept by on your left, then Keonho on your right, then James behind you, then Seonghyeon circling wide.

And Martin.

Martin moved differently than the others. Slower and a little more deliberate. The choreography had him coming closest to you—not touching, but within arm's reach, his path curving around the platform like a moon in orbit. His expression was locked into the performance, jaw set, eyes forward.

But when he passed in front of you—when he was directly in your line of sight for approximately two seconds—he looked at you.

Not through you. Not past you. At you.

That same unguarded flicker from earlier in the corridor. There and then gone, swallowed back into the performance like he'd never broken at all.

Your chest felt tight. You kept your face neutral. Still. This is what the concept required. You were the what if. The missed connection. The girl who disappeared.

You were not affected by Martin Edwards Park looking at you like that.

You were absolutely not affected.

The music built toward the final chorus. Your cue was coming—the moment when the lighting shifted from blue to white and you turned and walked into the dark. You felt it before you heard it, that particular swell in the production that meant the end was close.

You turned. You walked.

The darkness at the back of the stage swallowed you whole.

Yunah called cut. "Good. Really good. That's the moment. We'll clean the spacing in the next run but the feeling is right."

You stood in the wings, out of sight, and tried to remember how to breathe normally. From the stage you could hear Keonho say something, heard a few of them laugh. Heard Martin's voice cut through, quieter, saying something to Yunah about the lighting transition.

It made you think back to those nights when you filmed with them and almost felt like you blended in. It made you feel nothing but pathetic at this point.

You pressed your knuckles against your sternum like you could physically push the feeling back down where it belonged.

This was going to be a long night.

The ceremony itself was everything MAMA always was—overwhelming and precise in equal measure, the kind of controlled chaos that looked effortless on camera and felt like organized mayhem from the inside.

You'd been through hair and makeup since 7 AM. Your stylist had put you in something that felt like armor—a deep midnight black gown, structured at the shoulders, clean lines that hit the floor. Your hair was pulled back tight, not a strand out of place. Everything intentional. Everything controlled.

Your manager had called it stunning. Your mother had texted a single word: Good. They were at some work conference in London, of course.

You'd stared at yourself in the mirror for a long moment before you left the dressing room. YVES stared back. Polished and perfect and untouchable.

You'd nodded at her like she was someone you recognized and walked out.

The red carpet was its own event. Camera flashes strobing in the late afternoon light, reporters lined up along the barrier, fans screaming from the designated viewing areas. You moved through it with practiced ease—turn here, tilt your chin, smile, hold it, turn again. Your manager walked slightly behind you, monitoring everything. A bodyguard ahead clearing the path.

"YVES! Can you comment on the No Signal MV?"

"YVES, are you and Martin close?"

"YVES, what's it like working with CORTIS?"

You smiled and kept moving. You'd learned a long time ago that eye contact with reporters was an invitation. You gave them your profile instead. Clean lines with no comment.

Inside the venue the scale of it hit differently than during rehearsal. The dome was filled now—every seat occupied, the air thick with anticipation and expensive perfume and the specific electric charge of thousands of people waiting for something to happen. The stage glowed at the far end of the arena, dark for now but humming with potential.

You were escorted to the presenter's waiting area—a cordoned section backstage where tonight's presenters cycled through before their segments. You'd go on in the third hour of the show. Plenty of time to sit with the anxiety.

The show opened. Performances. Awards. Speeches. The machine running exactly as designed.

You watched the first hour from the presenter's area on a monitor, half-listening, going through your script one more time even though you didn't need to. Your eyes kept drifting to the main camera feed. To the audience shots. To the wide angle that occasionally swept across the seated performers section.

You nodded politely at the big groups you were acquainted with and even greeted Keeho after you had lunch with his sister recently. You liked to know that even if you couldn't have friends, sometimes it felt nice to pretend that these acquaintances were your friends.

CORTIS was in the third row from the front. You could see them on the monitor—Juhoon leaning over to say something to James, Keonho's shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, Seonghyeon sitting straight and attentive to the surroundings.

Martin was at the end of the row. He was sitting still in a way that looked relaxed but wasn't. You knew the difference now. You knew the specific quality of his stillness when he was actually calm versus when he was holding himself together. His jaw was set slightly. His hands were folded in his lap. His eyes were on the stage.

You looked away from the monitor.

Your segment was approaching. You could feel it the way you felt most things—in your body before your brain caught up. Heart rate climbing. Shoulders squaring. The particular sharpening of focus that came before you had to perform.

A production assistant appeared at your elbow. "YVES-sshi, we're moving you to the stage wings in ten minutes."

"Okay." You stood, smoothed your gown, checked your earpiece. "Ready."

You weren't ready.

But you never were. That had never stopped you before. The wings of the KSPO Dome stage smelled like dry ice and anticipation.

You stood at your mark, out of sight of the audience, watching the current award presentation wrap up on the monitor beside you. The presenter was finishing their speech. The cameras were cutting to the audience. The orchestra was playing softly under the applause.

Next was you.

Best New Artist.

CORTIS is nominated for several awards. Your manager's voice from the cafe, a week ago that felt like a year ago. You might run into them backstage.

Might. You laughed internally. What a generous word. to use.

The production assistant touched your elbow. "Thirty seconds."

You nodded and ttraightened your spine. Found the expression you needed—warm, professional, excited on behalf of the nominees. The expression that said YVES was thrilled to be here, honored to present, grateful for the opportunity.

The expression that said absolutely nothing about what was happening underneath it.

"And now," the announcer's voice boomed through the arena, "please welcome to the stage—YVES."

The lights hit you the second you stepped out.

The crowd reacted immediately—that particular pitch of sound that meant recognition, that meant they'd been waiting for you specifically. You smiled and walked to the podium with the kind of unhurried confidence that took years to learn. Your heels were loud on the stage even through the noise. The teleprompter glowed softly at eye level.

"Thank you," you said into the mic. Your voice came out steady. Of course it did. "It's an honor to be here tonight to present one of the most exciting awards of the evening."

The teleprompter scrolled. You followed it. Talked about the nominees—four groups, four different sounds, four different paths to the same stage. You'd read the copy a hundred times. It came out clean and warm and exactly as written.

And then: "And the winner of Best New Artist is..."

You opened the envelope.

You already knew what it said. Your manager had been told the results this morning for scheduling purposes. The name on the card was not a surprise.

But seeing it in print, holding it in your hands, standing on this stage—

CORTIS.

"CORTIS," you said, grinning sweetly into the microphone.

The arena erupted.

You smiled and held your applause. You watched them rise from their seats in the third row—Juhoon throwing his head back, Keonho grabbing James by the shoulders, Seonghyeon pressing his hand to his chest, all of them moving toward the stage in a wave of disbelief and joy and that specific kind of overwhelm that came from working toward something for years and finally having it arrive.

Martin came last.

He was the leader. He always came last.

He was composed in a way the others weren't quite managing—not cold, but contained. Like he was feeling everything and choosing which parts to show. He climbed the stairs to the stage and the cameras loved him for it. The screens around the arena cut to his face and the crowd screamed louder.

You stood at the podium and held the trophy and waited.

He crossed the stage toward you.

You'd prepared for this. You'd run through it in your head a dozen times since yesterday—the handoff, the smile, the professional nod, the clean exit. You had it choreographed in your mind down to the exact angle of your expression.

Martin stopped in front of you.

He was close. Too close, the way he always seemed to occupy more space than his physical body accounted for. His stage outfit was dark—structured jacket, clean lines, nothing that competed with the performance he was about to give. His eyes were on the trophy first, then on you.

You held it out.

His hands closed around it.

And he didn't let go.

Not immediately. Definitely not in the smooth, practiced way this moment was supposed to go. His fingers wrapped around the base of the trophy and for one beat—one single second that lasted approximately a thousand years—he just held it. With your hands still on it. Both of you holding it together in the middle of this stage in front of this crowd with cameras pointed at your faces from every angle.

He stared at you. Fucking gawked almost.

And it wasn't the media-trained look. Not the carefully neutral leader expression. The other one. The one you'd only seen in the backseat of a car and convenience store parking lots and rehearsal studios at midnight. The one that meant he was actually there, actually present, actually looking at you instead of the version of you he'd decided existed.

Something in your chest cracked wide open.

It wasn't warm nor was it soft. It was something rawer than that—something that felt uncomfortably close to grief, weirdly. Because he was looking at you like that now, here, in front of everyone, when a week ago he'd sat in a studio chair and called you very professional with that polished smile that didn't reach his eyes.

You let go of the trophy.

The trance broke and you realized that instead of hours, the moment only lasted a good half a minute. Martin turned to the microphone and the arena screamed and you stepped back to your position at the edge of the podium and smiled and clapped and did everything you were supposed to do.

But your hands weren't steady.

And the cameras, because they were always watching, caught it.

Martin's speech was good. Of course it was. He thanked the company, thanked the members, thanked the fans in Korean and then in English because that's who he was—thorough, considered, leaving no one out.

He didn't look at you again. Not once during the speech. Not when the members hugged him. Not when the cameras panned across the stage.

You stood at the edge of the spotlight and felt the distance between you like a physical thing.

When the segment ended you walked off stage into the wings and didn't stop walking until you found a corridor that was empty. You pressed your back against the wall and tipped your head up and stared at the ceiling and breathed.

In. Out. In. Out.

He looked at you like that.

After everything. After very professional and we're both very different artists and two weeks of silence—he'd stood on that stage and looked at you like you were the only person he could see. And you hated him for it. You hated that it had cracked something in you. You hated that your hands were shaking and you hated that you cared and you hated most of all that some stupid, stubborn part of you had looked back.

Footsteps.

You straightened immediately, shoulders back, expression neutral. A production assistant appeared around the corner, clocked you and kept moving. You exhaled.

Than more footsteps. Different ones... heavier.

You knew before you looked.

Martin came around the corner and stopped.

You stared at each other.

He was still holding the trophy. His stage jacket was slightly disheveled from the members piling on him after the win. His expression was doing that thing where it was carefully neutral on the surface and completely unreadable underneath.

Neither of you said anything.

The sounds of the ceremony bled through the walls. Another performance starting, bass rattling the floor faintly. Somewhere behind you, staff were moving equipment. The corridor smelled like dry ice and whatever expensive cologne Martin was wearing that you'd been very carefully not noticing for the past three hours.

Say something, some part of you thought. Or don't. Walk away. You're really fucking good at walking away.

Martin opened his mouth.

"I—"

"Congratulations," you said. Smooth and clipped. The word landing like a door closing. "You deserved it."

You pushed off the wall and walked past him before he could respond. Your heels echoed in the corridor. You didn't look back.

But you heard him, just barely, just under the noise of everything else—

A breath. Like he'd been about to say something and thought better of it. Like he was standing there watching you walk away.

Again.

You were in the wings. Stage left. In the same gown, same heels, same everything—just standing there in the dark with a production assistant beside you and your heart somewhere up in your throat.

The performance was the last thing on the show.

They'd saved it for the finale slot—CORTIS closing out MAMA, which meant the entire arena was still full when the lights went down and the opening notes of No Signal began.

The stage was stunning. Fog rolling low across the floor, catching the blue light in slow curling waves. The boys were already in their opening positions, barely visible in the dark. The crowd was quiet in that particular held-breath way that meant everyone knew something was coming.

The music built.

They moved.

You watched them from the wings and felt it the way the audience felt it—that specific quality of CORTIS when they were performing something that mattered. Not just executing choreography but inhabiting it. Juhoon's lines clean and sharp, Keonho's energy contained and precise, James and Seonghyeon anchoring the formation, all of them moving through the same world in different directions.

And Martin at the center of it. Not because the choreography put him there but because he always was. That specific gravitational quality he had on stage that you'd noticed the first time you'd ever watched CORTIS perform and spent years trying to convince yourself wasn't remarkable.

Your cue was approaching. The bridge. The drop into silence before the final chorus.

The production assistant touched your elbow. "Now."

You walked out.

The spotlight found you before you reached the platform. A single white beam cutting through the blue dark, following you to the center of the stage. The crowd reacted—you heard it, that wave of recognition and surprise rolling through the arena—but it sounded far away. Muffled. Like everything outside the spotlight didn't quite exist.

You stepped onto the platform. And they began to move around you.

Juhoon first, then Keonho, then James, then Seonghyeon—their paths curving and intersecting around you like you were the fixed point in a system of moving parts. Like you were the thing they were all orbiting without being able to reach.

Then Martin.

His path brought him in front of you. Closer than the others. That was the choreography—the leader closest to the center, to you, to the almost-connection that the song was about. He moved through his sequence with that complete focus he had when he was performing, jaw set, eyes forward.

But when he hit the mark in front of you—when he was standing directly in front of you with approximately two feet of fog-covered stage between you—

He looked at you... and this time he didn't look away.

The music swelled. The final chorus was building. Around you the others moved through the last sequence, the choreography coming to its peak. The crowd was screaming, you could feel it in the floor. The lights were shifting from blue to white.

Your cue. You held his gaze for one more second.

Then you turned and walked into the dark.

The spotlight cut off the moment you crossed the line. You were in the wings again, in the dark, and behind you the stage erupted—lights blazing white, the music hitting its final peak, the crowd becoming something enormous and overwhelming and alive.

You stood very still in the dark. You could feel your own heartbeat in your palms.

From the stage, through the noise, you heard Martin's voice—his final vocal line, raw and sustained and real in a way that didn't sound like performance. It sounded like it came from somewhere deeper.

You closed your eyes.

Parallel lines, you thought. That's what they called you. Two lines running alongside each other, same direction, same pace, never touching.

Except...

Except tonight on that stage he'd looked at you and you'd looked back and something in the geometry of it had shifted. Something had bent. This weird epiphany that felt dangerously close to intersection.

The music ended. The arena lost its mind.

And you stood in the dark and tried to figure out what to do with that.

MAMA was over. Thankfully, you had done your job and the extra mile perfectly and now you could go home.

Awards over, performances done, the machine winding down in real time—staff dismantling equipment, idols cycling through congratulations and photographs and the specific exhausted relief of something finished. The corridors were full of it. People moving in every direction, noise bleeding from every room, the whole building exhaling after hours of held breath.

You were trying to find your manager.

That was all. That was the only thing you were doing—navigating the corridor with your phone out, reading her last text about meeting at the black van on the east side exit, trying to remember which way east was in a building you'd only been in twice before. Your gown was heavy because your clothes were getting cleaned after someone spilt something on them. You said it was fine, but your heels hurt. You wanted to get in the car and go home and sit in your apartment alone and process the fact that Martin Edwards Park had looked at you like that on a stage in front of forty thousand people and you had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

You turned a corner. And walked almost directly into the culprit himself.

You both stopped. A foot of space between you, maybe less. He was still in his stage outfit, jacket slightly open now, the trophy nowhere in sight—probably with his manager or back in the dressing room. His earpiece was gone. His hair was slightly less perfect than it had been on stage.

He looked exhausted. He looked like he'd been looking for something. Or someone.

He said your name.

"I'm looking for my manager," you said immediately. "Do you know which way the east exit is?"

A beat where his face scrunched up in confusion. "That's not—" He stopped and started again. "Can we just—"

"I really need to find my manager."

He said your name again. Lower this time. Some voice he used when he was done being careful. "Stop."

You stopped.

Not because he'd told you to. Because something in that single word had weight to it. This weight that came from someone who'd been holding something for too long and had finally run out of places to put it.

The corridor was quiet for a moment. Staff passing at the far end, not looking your way. The sounds of the venue muffled through the walls. Just the two of you standing in this hallway with the distance between you feeling both enormous and not nearly enough.

"You walked away," he cleared his throat. "In the corridor earlier. I was trying to talk to you."

"You said my name. That's not the same as having something to say."

"I had something to say."

"Then say it."

He looked at you. Something working behind his eyes—that specific quality of Martin when he was trying to figure out how to be honest without exposing too much. You recognized it because you did the same thing. Because you'd been doing it for weeks.

"The interview," he said finally.

Your jaw tightened as you resisted the urge to roll your eyes and turned your gaze to the ceiling. "I don't want to talk about the interview."

"I know you don't. That's why we need to."

"Martin—"

"I panicked." The words came out flat. Factual... almost like he'd rehearsed them somewhere between the stage and this corridor. "They asked about the MV and about working with you and I didn't—I didn't know what we were. I didn't know what I was allowed to say. So I said nothing instead." A beat. "I know that was wrong."

You stared at him.

"That's it?" you said. "You panicked so you went on television and acted like I was a stranger?"

"I didn't say you were a stranger—"

"Very professional." Your voice came out sharper than you meant it to. "'We're very different artists.' 'We both got what we needed.' Like none of it—" You stopped and caught yourself. Pulled back from the edge of saying too much. "Like it was nothing."

You almost said more but you realized that it made you look like you cared too much. BEcause you didn't.

"It wasn't nothing."

"Then why did it sound like nothing?"

"Because I didn't know how to say what it actually was!" His voice rose slightly—not quite a shout but close enough that you both glanced toward the far end of the corridor instinctively. No one there. He exhaled. Quieter: "I didn't know how to say what it actually was without making it real. If I said it out loud in an interview it would've become something the whole world had an opinion on. And I wasn't ready for that."

"So instead you made it nothing."

"I made a mistake."

"Yeah," you said. "You did."

Silence.

You were both breathing slightly harder than the conversation warranted. The corridor felt smaller than it had a minute ago. Or maybe he was closer. You weren't sure when that had happened.

"Tonight," he started. "The performance. When you walked out—"

"Don't."

He said your name.

"I said don't." Your voice came out unsteady and you hated it. Hated that he could do that. Hated that weeks of carefully rebuilt walls were already showing cracks just from standing in a corridor with him. "That was a performance. Choi PD's concept. Good staging. That's all it was."

"You know that's not all it was."

"I don't know anything about you," you said. "That's the whole point. I thought I was starting to and then you—" You stopped. This was too much. You were saying too much. "It doesn't matter."

"It clearly matters."

"What do you want me to say?" The words came out before you could stop them, raw and unguarded in a way that made your stomach drop. "That it hurt? Fine. It hurt."

Your voice cracked. And it never usually did that.

"Is that what you needed to hear?"

Some emotion moved across his face. Not satisfaction. Something closer to pain.

"No," he conceded quietly. "That's not what I needed to hear."

"Then what?"

He didn't answer immediately. He was looking at you the way he'd looked at you on that stage—like he was trying to memorize something before it disappeared. Like he was acutely aware that you were already halfway to leaving and was trying to figure out how to make you stay without asking.

"I've been thinking about the moment in the car," he said finally. "Every day since. About what you said. About what I said." A second. "About what it felt like to actually talk to someone without—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I don't do that. I don't just—talk. Not like that. Not to anyone."

"Martin—"

"And then I sat in that interview chair and they asked about you and I just—" He exhaled sharply. "I froze. And I said the wrong thing. The safe thing. And I've been trying to figure out how to fix it since the second the words came out of my mouth."

You looked at him.

The anger was still there—sitting hot and tight in your chest where it had been living for weeks. But underneath it something else was shifting. Something that felt uncomfortably like understanding.

Because you knew exactly what he meant. You knew what it was to reach for the safe thing when the real thing felt too dangerous. You'd been doing it your entire life.

That didn't make it okay at all. But it made it familiar in a way that was hard to stay furious about.

"You hurt me," you said. Simply and without armor. "I know that probably doesn't mean anything to you but—"

"It means everything to me."

The words landed in the corridor like it echoed even though you know it didn't.

You stared at him.

He was closer now. You weren't sure when that had happened either—the distance between you had been shrinking in increments small enough that neither of you had made a conscious decision about it. He was close enough that you could see the exhaustion around his eyes, the slight tension in his jaw, the way he was holding himself like he was bracing for something.

"Don't say things you don't mean," you sighed.

"I never say things I don't mean."

"You said we were very different artists."

"We are very different artists." A beat. "That doesn't mean none of it mattered."

"Then what does it mean?" Your voice came out smaller than you wanted it to. "Because I've been trying to figure that out for weeks and I can't—I keep going in circles and I can't—"

"I don't know," he admitted. And it came out honest in that way he had when he'd stopped performing and was just talking. "I don't have a clean answer. I don't know what this is or what it's supposed to be or how it's supposed to work. I just know that I can't keep pretending nothing happened. I can't keep pretending the convenience store didn't happen. I can't keep looking at you from across a room and acting like you're just—" He stopped. His voice had gotten rough somewhere in the middle of that. He cleared his throat. "You're not just anything."

Your chest hurt.

That was the only way to describe it. A deep specific ache that lived somewhere behind your sternum and had been there since the moment you'd watched that interview clip in the cafe. Since the moment you'd let yourself care about someone enough to be hurt by them.

"I hate that you can do that," you hummed quietly.

"Do what?"

"Say the exact right thing." Your voice cracked slightly on the last word. "I had everything under control. I had my walls back up and I was fine and then you just—"

"You weren't fine."

"I was managing."

"That's not the same thing."

He was very close now. Close enough that you had to tilt your chin up slightly to look at him properly. Close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating off him in the cool backstage air. His eyes were on your face with that focused, specific attention he gave to things that mattered to him.

You should step back. You knew that. Every self-preserving instinct you'd spent seventeen years developing was screaming at you to step back.

You didn't step back.

"What are we doing?" you asked. Your voice was barely above a whisper.

"I don't know," he said. Just as quiet.

"This is insane."

"Yeah."

"We don't even like each other."

His expression cracked. Not quite a smile but something more complicated than that. "I think that stopped being true a while ago."

"Martin—"

"I think it stopped being true," he chuckled (the audacity of him), "somewhere around the second time you fell asleep in the van on the way back from location and your manager made me ride in the other car so I couldn't—" He stopped. Like he'd said more than he meant to.

You stared at him. "You noticed that?"

"I notice everything about you." He said it like it was obvious. Like it had always been obvious. Like he was confused it wasn't something you already knew. "That's been the problem from the start."

The corridor was very quiet.

Somewhere distant the post-show sounds of the venue continued—staff, equipment, the muffled roar of fans still outside. But in this hallway it was just the two of you and the small charged space between you and the fact that neither of you had moved in a very long time.

"I'm angry at you," you said with a huff.

"I know."

"I'm still angry at you."

"I know."

"Just so that's clear."

"Understood."

You looked at him. He looked at you. The air between you felt like the moment before a storm breaks—that particular pressure that meant something was about to shift in a way that couldn't be undone.

"This is such a bad idea," you said.

"The worst idea," he agreed and looked all over your face. You felt more exposed than you ever felt in front of him.

Neither of you moved for one more second.

And then you did.

You weren't sure who moved first. That was the thing you'd think about later, lying awake at 2AM in your apartment—you'd turn it over and over looking for the answer and you'd never be able to find it. Whether you'd stepped forward or he'd leaned down or whether it had just happened the way gravity happened, the way tides happened, the way things that had been building for months finally arrived.

His mouth was on yours and yours was on his and it was—

It wasn't soft. It wasn't sweet. Well, why would it be? Nothing between you had ever been either of those things.

So it made sense that it was angry and desperate and honest in a way that nothing between you had ever been, all the things you'd been refusing to say for months compressed into something wordless and immediate. His hand came up to your jaw, tilting your face up, and you grabbed the front of his jacket with both fists because you needed something to hold onto and he was the only solid thing in the room.

Initially, he kissed you like he was angry about it. One hand came up to your jaw, firm and certain, tilting your face up toward his, and the other found your waist and pulled—not gently, not tentatively, but like he'd made a decision and was done second guessing it. You grabbed the front of his jacket with both fists because your knees had done something alarming and he was the only solid thing in the room and you needed something to hold onto that wasn't yourself.

He was warm. That was the thing that broke through everything else—the sheer warmth of him, his hand against your face, his chest against yours when he pulled you in, his breath against your lips in the fraction of a second before the kiss deepened into something that stopped being angry and started being something else entirely. Something that had no name yet. Something that felt like the thing you'd been refusing to call what it was for weeks.

And then... he kissed you like he was apologizing. Like he was asking a question. Like he'd been waiting for something to be true and had finally stopped pretending it wasn't.

You kissed him back like you were furious about it. Like you were trying to prove something. Like if you could just get through this one moment and come out the other side unchanged then maybe you'd survive it. Your fingers twisted tighter in his jacket. His hand slid from your waist to your back, pressing between your shoulder blades, closing the last inch of distance between you like even that was too much. Like he'd been waiting for exactly this long enough that now that it was happening he wasn't leaving any room for it to stop.

Because you were. You were furious and terrified and something else underneath both of those things, something that had been sitting in your chest since the car and maybe longer than that, something you'd been calling hatred because hatred was a shape you recognized and this—this didn't have a shape yet.

And you felt it in your chest—god, you felt it—that horrible, devastating warmth spreading outward from somewhere behind your sternum. Not butterflies. Not nerves. A feeling that was bolder and quieter and more permanent than either of those things. This feeling that didn't go away when you looked away. The kind that had been living in you for weeks disguised as something safer.

And then it hit you.

Both things at once. Simultaneous. Like two frequencies landing at the same moment.

He kissed you like he meant it. And you felt it like you meant it.

And you had absolutely no idea what was on his face right now because you were too scared to look. Too scared to pull back and find him already recalibrating, already building the distance back, already reaching for the safe thing the way he always did. Too scared that you'd see his expression and it would be unreadable and you'd have to stand here in this corridor and not know and not knowing was the thing that had been destroying you for weeks.

And underneath that—worse than that—was the other thing.

The thing that had nothing to do with him.

The realization that you'd kissed him back. That you'd grabbed his jacket and kissed him back and meant it completely and that you hadn't felt that way—hadn't felt anything that real—in longer than you could remember. Maybe ever.

You'd spent your entire life keeping people at a careful, survivable distance.

And Martin Edwards Park had just walked through every wall you had like they were made of paper.

You pulled back like it pained you.

He made a sound—barely anything, just a breath—when you broke the kiss. His hand was still on your jaw. His eyes were closed.

You stepped back. His hand fell.

He opened his eyes.

You looked at him for one second. One single second where you took in his expression—open and unguarded and completely unreadable in the way that scared you most—and felt something crack completely open in your chest.

Then you turned and walked away.

Your heels were loud in the corridor. Way too loud. Announcing every step, every second of distance you were putting between yourself and whatever had just happened. You didn't run—you were YVES, you didn't run—but you walked fast. Fast enough that the corridor blurred slightly at the edges.

Behind you, silence. He didn't call after you. Didn't say your name. Didn't follow. And you took that as a hint.

He just stood there, you imagined, the way he'd stood in that parking lot after the car scene. Watching you go—letting you.

You turned the corner and kept walking and didn't stop until you found a bathroom that was empty and locked the door behind you and stood with your back against it and pressed both hands flat against your sternum like you could physically hold yourself together.

Your reflection stared back at you from the mirror across the room. The darkest shade of black gown. Hair still perfect. Eyes bright in a way that had nothing to do with the lighting.

You looked like someone who had just made a very significant mistake. You looked like someone who had just realized the mistake wasn't the kiss.

The mistake was everything that came before it. Every wall, every cold shoulder, every I'm fine and very professional and it doesn't matter. Every time you'd looked at him and looked away. Every time you'd felt something and buried it so fast you'd almost convinced yourself it wasn't there.

The mistake was thinking that the walls were keeping you safe.

When really all they'd ever done was keep you alone.

You stood there for a long time. Then you fixed your expression, unlocked the door, and went to find your manager.

You'd been at the HYBE building since noon.

The KiiiKiii collaboration had been your company's idea—a feature on their upcoming project, something that would be fun and low pressure before your own comeback prep began in earnest. You'd listened to their discography before agreeing. They were good. Genuinely, surprisingly good in the way that newer groups sometimes were before the industry had a chance to sand down their edges. I Do Me had been in your head for a week before you'd even known you'd be working with them.

The session had gone well. Sui's tone complemented yours in a way that felt accidental and perfect—that specific kind of vocal chemistry you couldn't engineer no matter how hard you tried, the kind that either existed or didn't. You'd spent three hours recording, adjusting, running the bridge until it sat exactly right, and by the time your producer called it you were tired in the specific satisfying way that only came from making something genuinely good.

Now you were done. Bag over your shoulder, face bare under the fluorescent corridor lights, heading for the elevator bank that would take you to the lobby and then to your car and then home.

You pressed the button and waited.

The elevator arrived with a soft chime. You stepped in, pressed L for lobby, and were already reaching for your phone when a hand caught the door just before it closed.

Seonghyeon stepped in.

He was in practice clothes—plain grey sweats, a jacket half-zipped, hair unstyled and slightly messy in the way that meant he'd been in a practice room for hours. He stepped inside and then immediately did a small double take when he saw you, like he'd been moving on autopilot and your presence had interrupted the signal.

"Oh—" He blinked. Then smiled. That slightly awkward, genuine smile he had that made him look younger than he was. "Hey. Hi."

"Hi," you said.

He pressed the button for the third floor and settled back against the wall of the elevator with his hands in his pockets. He glanced at you. Glanced at the doors. Glanced at you again.

"How'd the session go?" he asked. Like he was making conversation. Like he hadn't clearly just decided something the moment he'd stepped in.

"Good. KiiiKiii is really talented."

"Right? Sui's insane." He nodded, genuinely enthusiastic about it in the way that was very Seonghyeon—never performative, always real. "We run into them sometimes on this floor. They work really hard." A small pause. "She's been nervous about this collab. Like really nervous. It'll mean a lot that you said that."

You glanced at him. "You know them well?"

"Not super well. But you know how it is in this building. You end up knowing people." He shrugged. Smiled again, slightly sheepish this time, like he was aware he was rambling a little. "Sorry. That's not really—" He stopped and cleared his throat. "Anyway."

The elevator slowed at the third floor. The doors opened. Seonghyeon stared at them and breathed in. Didn't move.

You watched him... not move.

The doors stayed open for a moment. Then began to close. He let them.

You looked at his face and a part of you remembered the fact that you initially found him the most attractive in the group. Before whatever the hell happened with Martin.

He was looking very intently at the floor display above the doors, jaw working slightly, like he was having an internal debate and one side was winning by a narrow margin. His hands had gone from relaxed in his pockets to slightly less relaxed. He was very clearly someone who had decided to do something and was now in the process of figuring out how to actually do it.

It was, despite everything, a little endearing.

"Seonghyeon," you said carefully.

"He doesn't sleep," he said. Not looking at you. The words coming out slightly rushed, like if he started he had to keep going before he lost his nerve. "Like—when something's bothering him. He just stops. Goes to the studio at midnight and stays until the sun comes up and then acts completely normal the next day like that's not insane." A small, helpless laugh. "He thinks no one notices but we all notice. You just learn not to say anything because he gets this look—" He made a face that was half fond and half exasperated. "Anyway. He's been doing that. Since the MV wrapped."

You said nothing.

The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened. Neither of you moved. After a moment Seonghyeon reached out and pressed 3 again. The doors closed. You were going back up.

"You don't have to tell me this," you said quietly.

"I know." He glanced at you sideways, a little awkward about it. "I'm not—I'm not trying to be weird. I just." He exhaled. Looked back at the doors. "He's my friend. And he's really bad at this stuff. Like genuinely terrible. Worse than you'd think for someone who's good at literally everything else." He said it with the specific fond exasperation of someone who'd been dealing with this for years. "And he's not going to say any of this himself so."

"So you are," you said.

"So I am." He laughed slightly, a little embarrassed. "Yeah."

The elevator hummed between floors. You stared at the doors and waited.

"He talks about you," Seonghyeon said. More quietly now. "Not obviously. Not like—" He made a vague gesture. "Not like he's trying to. It's more like you just keep coming up. In the middle of completely unrelated things. We were working on a track a few weeks back, totally different vibe, nothing to do with the MV, and he just stops and goes—" He paused, clearly trying to get the impression right, his voice dropping slightly. "'Do you think people can tell when someone's being real versus when they're performing? Like can you actually tell or do you just think you can?'" Seonghyeon shook his head, smiling despite himself. "And then just went straight back to the track. Like he hadn't said anything."

You were quiet.

"He asked me some version of that question like three times that week," Seonghyeon added. "Different conversations. Different contexts." He glanced at you with that sideways look again. "Same question underneath."

The elevator reached the third floor. Opened. Closed again.

He pressed L.

"He's—" Seonghyeon paused. Like he was choosing the next part carefully. "He grew up being the most capable person everywhere he went. You do that long enough it stops being a choice and just becomes how you exist. So when something confuses him—" Another small helpless laugh. "Especially a person. He doesn't know what to do with that. It comes out weird. Or it doesn't come out at all."

You thought about the interview. That polished, media-trained smile. Very professional.

"So he just shuts it down," you concluded.

"He tries to." Seonghyeon's mouth curved slightly. "Doesn't always work."

The lobby again. He stepped forward this time, like he was actually going to leave. You stood very still, staring at the doors.

"Oh—" He said it like something had just occurred to him. Easy. Offhand. The tone of someone remembering a small unremarkable detail. "He mentioned the other day he was missing a jacket. Been trying to figure out where he left it." A beat. Barely a pause at all. "White puffer thing. You know how stuff just ends up places."

He stepped out.

"Take care of yourself," he said, with that slightly awkward smile, like he knew he'd said too much and was okay with it. Then paused, laughing slightly to himself like something had just occurred to him.

"You know what's funny—" He shook his head. "He's like. The most hopeless romantic person I've ever met in my life. Which you'd think would make him better at—" He gestured vaguely at the air between you. At whatever this conversation had been. Then caught himself, cleared his throat, looked slightly embarrassed. "Anyway."

The doors closed. Seonghyeon was gone and you were alone going back down to the lobby.

You stood very still.

The jacket.

The one from the rooftop shoot, the one you'd told yourself meant nothing, the one you'd folded carefully and put on the chair by your desk because you kept meaning to return it and just hadn't. The one that was still there. That you had definitely not worn once on a night when you couldn't sleep and your apartment felt too quiet and you needed something that felt like—

He'd noticed it was gone.

He hadn't asked for it back.

He'd just noticed. And said nothing. Kept it to himself the same way he'd kept everything apparently—quietly, without making it mean anything out loud, without giving you the chance to take it away.

The elevator doors opened on the lobby.

You walked out into the afternoon and stood there for a moment, blinking in the pale winter light.

Seonghyeon was awkward and smiley and had clearly been nervous the entire elevator ride and had done it anyway. For his friend. Because his friend was too stubborn and too scared to do it himself.

Martin Edwards Park, who you had kissed in a corridor two nights ago and run from immediately after, had been carrying all of this the whole time. Quietly. Without asking for anything.

The same way you had.

You stood on the pavement outside the HYBE building and felt a gear shift in your chest. It wasn't dramatically. Not like a crack or a collapse. More like something that had been held at a wrong angle for a very long time finally settling into the position it was always supposed to be in.

Your phone buzzed at 7:43 AM.

You were in the middle of getting your hair done for the morning music show—sitting in the makeup chair, eyes closed while your stylist worked, trying to exist in that quiet space between sleep and full consciousness that early call times sometimes allowed if you were lucky.

The buzz pulled you out of it.

You reached for your phone without opening your eyes. Felt around the counter until your fingers found it. Lifted it.

You opened your eyes.

Unknown Number  [7:43 AM]  the stairwell by the b2 green rooms after ur mc segment if u want

You stared at it and almost gasped. Because you knew who it was.

Your stylist said something about holding still. You'd moved without realizing.

You looked at the message for a long moment. The number was unknown but the voice behind it wasn't. You knew exactly how those words sounded in his specific cadence—low and careful and leaving the door open without pushing you through it. If you want. Like he was giving you the choice. Like he already knew you'd bolt if it felt like a demand.

Your stylist was still talking. Something about the curling iron temperature.

You locked your phone.

Then unlocked it. Then locked it again.

"You okay?" your stylist asked.

"Fine," you hummed. "Sorry. Hold on."

You stared at the ceiling for a moment. At the harsh white light of the dressing room, the kind that showed every flaw and left nowhere to hide. You thought about the elevator. About Seonghyeon's awkward smile and the jacket and he's a hopeless romantic. You thought about the corridor at MAMA, about his hand on your jaw, about walking away and the sound of your own heels getting louder and louder until you couldn't hear anything else.

You thought about how you'd been running from things your entire life and how you'd always told yourself it was self-preservation and how lately that was starting to feel like a lie you'd told yourself so many times you'd forgotten it was one.

You picked up your phone.

You  [7:46 AM]  okay

You put it face down on the counter.

"Okay," you said to your stylist. "Sorry. You can keep going."

The music show was one of those mornings where everything ran simultaneously smooth and chaotic—segments running long, the floor director counting down in your earpiece every thirty seconds, your co-MC Jiyeon cracking jokes between takes to keep the energy up while the production team scrambled behind the cameras. You'd done enough of these to move through it on autopilot. Smile here, introduce the next act here, hit your mark, look at camera two, transition.

You were good at this. You'd always been good at this.

But underneath the autopilot your chest was doing something specific and uncomfortable that had nothing to do with camera angles.

stairwell by the b2 green rooms after ur mc segment

You introduced three acts. Read two ments of the teleprompter. You laughed at something Jiyeon said that was actually funny. Did a brief interview segment with a rookie group who were so nervous they forgot their own fandom name and you covered for them smoothly enough that the floor director gave you a thumbs up from behind the camera.

And then your segment was done.

Your co-MC was carrying the next transition. The floor director pointed you toward the wings. You walked off stage into the controlled chaos of backstage—staff moving in every direction, idols in various states of performance readiness, the particular smell of hairspray and stage makeup and nervous energy that lived in every music show building you'd ever been in.

Your manager appeared at your elbow. "You've got forty minutes before the closing segment. Do you want to go to the green room or—"

"I need to make a call," you said. "I'll be back in thirty."

She nodded, already looking at her phone, already moving on to the next thing. You pulled your earpiece out, handed it to a staff member, and walked.

The b2 level was quieter than the floors above it. Further from the stage, further from the controlled chaos, the sounds of the show becoming distant and muffled the further down you went. Your heels were loud on the stairwell steps. You were aware of every single one.

You pushed open the door to the b2 corridor.

It was empty except for him.

Martin was sitting on the bottom step of the secondary stairwell at the far end of the corridor, elbows on his knees, phone in his hands. Still in street clothes—he wasn't performing today, just here, which meant he'd come specifically for this. That thought landed somewhere in your chest and sat there.

He looked up when he heard the door.

For a moment neither of you said anything. You stood at the end of the corridor and he sat at the end of the corridor and the distance between you was maybe fifteen feet and felt like considerably more.

Then he stood up. Pocketed his phone. Ran a hand through his hair in that way he did when he was trying to look less nervous than he was.

You walked toward him.

You stopped a few feet away. Close enough to talk quietly. Far enough that you weren't committing to anything yet.

"Hey," he greeted.

"Hi."

Silence. The distant sound of the show bleeding through the ceiling above you. A PA system announcing something two floors up. Down here just the hum of the building and the two of you and all the things that had been sitting unsaid since a corridor at MAMA.

"I didn't know if you'd come," he said.

"I almost didn't."

"I know." A moment. "Thank you. For coming."

You looked at him. He looked back. There was something different about him down here away from stages and cameras and the version of himself he performed for everyone else. Something quieter. More actual.

"Seonghyeon talked to me," you tried.

Something crossed his face. Not quite surprise. "I figured he might."

"You knew?"

"I know Seonghyeon." The corner of his mouth moved slightly. Not quite a smile. "He thinks he's a slick guy."

"He's not subtle."

"No," Martin agreed. "He's really not."

The almost-smile faded. He was looking at you with that careful, focused attention he had when something mattered to him. Like he was trying to read something in your face and wasn't sure he was getting it right.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For the interview. I know I said that already but I—" He stopped and started again. "I keep thinking about what you said. That it hurt more than if I'd just said nothing. And you were right. I took the easy way out and it cost you something and I'm sorry."

You looked at him for a long moment.

"Why did you text me?" you asked. "This morning. Why now?"

He thought about it. Genuinely, actually thought about it, in the way he did when he wasn't going to give you the rehearsed answer.

"Because you keep leaving," he said quietly. "And I keep letting you. And I'm tired of both of those things."

Your stomach flipped over. Whether it was positive or negative, you had no clue.

You looked down at the floor. At the scuffed concrete of the b2 stairwell, the fluorescent light casting everything in that particular flat white that made nowhere look glamorous. You thought about the rooftop shoot. The convenience store at 3AM. The car scene. All these places that should've been unremarkable and weren't.

"I'm scared," you confessed.

Your voice came out smaller than you meant it to. More honest than you'd planned. But you were so tired of planning every word before it left your mouth.

He didn't say anything. Just waited and gave you the space to finish.

"Of what?" he asked, when you didn't continue.

"I've never done this before," you said.

He paused. "What—" A beat. The corner of his mouth moved slightly. "You've never had a boyfriend?"

"That." You looked at him. "And... um..."

"Yeah," he said softly. Just yeah. Keep going.

"I've never really had friends either," you said. "Or anyone. Like—actually anyone." You said it to the floor because saying it to his face felt like too much. "I've had managers and stylists and collaborators and people who were useful to know. But not—not people who just... wanted to know me." You laughed slightly, a short humorless sound. "I don't even know if I know how to let that happen. I don't know if I know how to be that for someone else."

The corridor was very quiet.

"I kept thinking these walls were protecting me," you continued. "And maybe they were. But I've been so protected for so long that I don't—" You finally looked up at him. "I don't know who I am without them. And that terrifies me more than anything you could do or say."

Martin looked at you for a long moment.

Then he sat down on the stairwell step. He just—sat down. Like the weight of the conversation had made standing feel like too much effort. He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor for a moment.

"Sit down," he said calmly.

You looked at the step. At your outfit—you were still in your MC look, a school girl outfit that made you feel younger than you were mentally. How old were you even really at this point? And sitting down and listening to him like he was about to give you some speech honestgly made you feel like you were about to get lectured.

You sat down anyway.

Not right next to him. One step up, slightly to the side. Close enough that your voices didn't have to carry.

"I don't know how to do this either," he admitted. To the floor. "I've been—" He exhaled slowly. "I've spent my whole life being the person who has it together. Who knows what to do next. Who doesn't need anything from anyone because needing things means you can be let down." He turned his head slightly, not quite looking at you. "I'm really good at being capable. I'm really bad at being—" He paused. "Human, I guess. In front of people."

"You were human in that car," you said quietly.

"Yeah." Something in his voice shifted. "That scared the hell out of me."

"Me too."

He looked at you then. Deeply. That unguarded thing again that you'd only ever seen in specific unguarded moments. The version of him that existed when he'd stopped performing entirely.

"I don't want to be careful with you anymore," he said. "I've been careful since the second I met you and it keeps—" He stopped. "It keeps going wrong in the same direction. I say the safe thing instead of the real thing and you put your walls up and we're back to the beginning."

"I don't want to be careful either," you admitted. "I'm just—" You searched for the words. "I'm not sure I know how not to be."

"Neither do I," he said. "But I think—" He paused. "I think that's maybe the point. Like we figure it out. Together. Without either of us having to have it all figured out first."

You looked at him.

"That's terrifying," you exhaled.

"I know."

"I'm serious. That actually terrifies me."

"Me too," he said. And then, quieter: "But I'm more scared of the alternative."

You sat with that for a moment. With the weight of it. With the specific quality of this stairwell at this hour—the fluorescent light and the distant sound of the show and the two of you sitting on concrete steps like none of the rest of it existed.

"If I'm bad at this—" you started.

"Then we're both bad at it," he said simply. "That's fine."

"I'm going to put my walls up sometimes."

"I know."

"Not because I want to. Just because I—it's automatic. I don't always catch it in time."

"I know." He said it without hesitation. Without making it a bigger deal than it needed to be. "I'll tell you when you do it. You can tell me when I'm being an idiot."

"That'll be often."

"Probably," he agreed.

You laughed. A real one, surprised out of you. Small and quiet in the empty corridor but real.

He smiled. Not the media-trained one. The other one—the one that did something specific to his whole face, that made him look his actual age, that you'd only seen a handful of times and had been trying very hard not to think about.

"Okay," you said.

He looked at you. "Okay?"

"Okay." You said it again, steadier this time. Like you were making a decision out loud so you couldn't take it back. "We try. Whatever that means. We try."

He nodded slowly. Something settling in his expression. Something that looked, cautiously, like relief.

"Okay," he said.

Neither of you said anything for a moment. But it was different now—the silence had a different quality to it. Not loaded or tense. Something closer to the silence in that car after you'd both said everything and found out the world didn't end and that it could actually fit both of you in it.

"For what it's worth," he said eventually, "I'm scared too."

"I know," you said. "Seonghyeon told me you watched Pretty Woman three—"

"He told you WHAT—"

"He said you're a hopeless romantic—"

"I'm going to actually kill him—"

"Which you'd think would make you better at this—"

"That is so—I can't believe he—" Martin put his face in his hands and you laughed again, properly this time, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls of the b2 stairwell. When he looked up his ears were red and he was trying very hard not to smile and failing completely. "That's not—that's not relevant information—"

"It's very relevant—"

"It's a good movie—"

"I didn't say it wasn't—"

"Can we just—" He was laughing now too, helpless and embarrassed and real. "Can we just move on from this?"

"Absolutely not," you said.

He looked at you. You looked at him. Both of you slightly breathless from laughing in a stairwell at the bottom of a music show building like none of the rest of it—the industry, the cameras, the carefully constructed versions of yourselves you performed for everyone else—existed up there.

His expression softened and went quiet again. But warm this time. Not heavy.

"For what it's actually worth," he hummed. "You're not going to be bad at this. You're going to be—" He paused. Like he was choosing the words carefully for a different reason than usual. Not because he was being safe. Because he meant it. "You're going to be exactly who you are. And that's enough for me. That's more than enough."

You looked at him for a long moment.

"You're going to make me cry in a music show stairwell," you sniffed and stared down at him.

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize."

"Okay."

You both sat there for another moment. Comfortable in a way that felt new and familiar at the same time. Then your earpiece crackled from where you'd clipped it to your lapel. Your manager's voice: "YVES-sshi, ten minutes to closing segment."

You both looked up at the ceiling like you'd forgotten the building existed.

"I have to go," you said reluctantly.

"I know."

You stood and smoothed your blazer. Looked down at him still sitting on the step, looking up at you with that quiet, warm expression.

"Martin," you called.

"Yeah."

"For what it's worth." You paused. "You were never just a collaboration to me either."

He didn't say anything. But something moved across his face that was worth more than anything he could've said.

You walked back down the corridor toward the stairwell. At the door you stopped and turned back.

"Also," you said, "I'm keeping the puffer."

He stared at you.

Then he laughed. That real and unguarded laugh that did something completely unreasonable to your chest.

"Yeah," he said. "I figured."

You smiled and pushed through the door. You walked back up toward the lights and the cameras and the version of yourself the world expected.

But something was different now.

Something that felt, quietly and terrifyingly, like a beginning.

A week later, Martin Edwards Park picked you up at 10 PM in a car that wasn't his usual one—something older and less recognizable, a dark navy sedan that looked like it belonged to someone's dad. You were waiting outside your building in a baseball cap pulled low, a mask over your face, the most oversized hoodie you owned swallowing your frame whole.

He rolled down the window when he pulled up.

He was wearing a bucket hat.

You stared at him.

"Get in," he coaxed.

"That hat," you said in a giggle.

"Get in the car."

"You look like you're going fishing."

"I look unrecognizable."

"You look like a very tall fisherman." You opened the door and got in anyway. The car smelled like convenience store bags—two of them, stuffed and sitting on the back seat. He'd gone shopping before picking you up. Something about that detail, the image of Martin Edwards Park wandering a convenience store at 9PM filling bags with snacks for a secret date, made your chest do something you weren't ready to name. "Nice car."

"It's Juhoon's dad's."

"You borrowed Juhoon's dad's car."

"Juhoon's manager's cousin's car technically." He pulled away from the curb, eyes on the road. "There are three degrees of separation between this vehicle and anyone who could recognize it."

"That's insane."

"That's practical."

You looked at him. He was focused on the road, jaw set in that way that meant he was either concentrating or trying not to smile. The bucket hat sat slightly crooked on his head. You decided not to tell him.

He drove north of the city, up into the hills, to a small pull-off you'd never been to. It was the kind of place that probably had a name but felt like a secret anyway. Seoul spread out below you in every direction—the Han River cutting through the middle of it, the city lights blurring soft at the edges in the cold night air. This view that made everything feel manageable in a way it never did from inside it.

He parked and cut the engine.

You both looked out the dash for a moment.

"Okay," you said quietly.

"I know a few spots," he said. Trying to sound casual and almost succeeding.

You smiled at the windshield so he wouldn't see it.

You reached into the back seat for the convenience store bags before he could say anything else. Dumped them in the space between you and started going through them. Honey butter chips, pepero, a container of tteokbokki that was still faintly warm, two cans of soda, a triangle kimbap, some chewing gum, and at the very bottom—

"Holy shit, did you buy the whole store?" The bag felt never ending.

"Ha ha, I didn't know what you wanted and you weren't texting me back," he fake laughed and pretended to go on his phone.

You reached the end of the other bag and...

"Did you buy a whole choco pie box?"

"They come in boxes."

"There are twelve in here Martin."

"Like I said, I didn't know what you wanted." He said it simply, eyes still on the skyline.

You looked at him for a moment. At the side of his face, the bucket hat still crooked, his hands relaxed in his lap now that the car was stopped. Something in your chest did that thing it kept doing lately—that quiet, warm, slightly terrifying thing you'd stopped trying to talk yourself out of.

"Okay," you responded, just as simply.

You opened the honey butter chips.

He reached over without looking and took one. You moved the bag slightly further from him. He moved it back without breaking his gaze from the window. You looked at each other.

"These are mine," you claimed.

"I bought them."

"For me."

"I bought everything."

"Then buy your own."

He took another one with complete serenity. You opened the tteokbokki instead, nudging the container into the space between you without saying anything about it. He picked up a piece without saying anything either.

This felt, you thought, dangerously close to comfortable.

It settled into something easy the way the best things did—without you noticing exactly when the shift happened. One minute you were maintaining careful distance and the next you were both leaning slightly toward the center console without either of you acknowledging it, the bags pushed to the back seat, the city doing its thing below you like it had no idea what was happening up here.

He put music on low and it was something slow and instrumental.

"What the fuck is this?" you asked.

"Zack Villere."

"It sounds like studying."

"It's good background music."

"Put something else on."

"You pick then."

He handed you his phone without hesitation. You took it, and something about that—the ease of it, the fact that he'd just handed it over—made you feel oddly trusted. You scrolled through his library with your legs tucked under you on the seat, your cap pushed back slightly, mask pulled down around your chin.

"Your Spotify actually is insane," you said.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't one." You kept scrolling because you were genuinely curious now. "Okay but why—" You stopped and sat up slightly. "Why do people think FaSHioN sounds like Praise the Lord."

The silence that followed was very specific.

You looked up from his phone.

He was looking very intently out the windshield with an expression of profound sufferance.

"It doesn't," he said.

"It kind of does though."

"It really doesn't."

"The beat—"

"Is completely different—"

"The vibe though—"

"The vibe," he said, turning to look at you with an expression that was trying very hard to be serious, "is not the same. At all. Praise the Lord is—the production is completely different, the tempo is different, the vocal processing is—"

"Okay but if I played both of them right now—"

"You would hear that they are not the same song—"

"I would hear that they are very similar songs—"

"They're in the same genre—"

"Martin."

"That's like saying all pasta tastes the same because it's made of flour—"

You burst out laughing. The sound filled the small space of the car, bigger than you expected, and you clapped a hand over your mouth instinctively—that reflex you had, the one that tried to make you smaller AND quieter, more contained. But Martin was already smiling at the sound of it, that real one, and something about that made you drop your hand.

Let it be loud.

"Okay fine," he said, like he was making a massive concession. "I will admit that there is a superficial sonic similarity that an untrained ear might—"

"An untrained ear."

"—might perceive as—"

"I have a very trained ear, I'm literally a musician—"

"Then you should know better," he spoke seriously, and you laughed again, leaning back against the seat, and he was watching you laugh with that quiet expression that you'd stopped pretending you didn't notice.

You put his phone down. Let the study music play.

"Okay but his production work," Martin started to gesture with his hands.

"Here we go."

"I'm serious. The way he layers—"

"You have three separate playlists—"

"Because they're three distinct eras—"

"They're not—"

"LiveLoveA$AP is completely different from Testing—"

"How?"

"How—" He turned to face you more fully, like this required his whole body. "Okay so LiveLoveA$AP is rawer, less produced, more street—"

"Mhm."

"And then Long Live A$AP is where he starts developing the aesthetic vocabulary that becomes the foundation for—"

"You're doing the three distinct eras thing again."

"Because it's accurate."

"Because you're obsessed."

"Because he's genuinely one of the most interesting—" He stopped. Narrowed his eyes at you slightly. "You're ragebaiting me."

"I'm absolutely ragebaiting you," you agreed cheerfully and nudged his knee with your fluffy sock covered foot.

He shook his head, but he was smiling. The city lights caught the angle of his face and you looked at him for just a second longer than you meant to before looking back at the windshield.

"Fine. He was actually in the studio with us," Martin said. He said it casual. Offhand. Like it was nothing.

The car went very still. You turned to look at him slowly.

"What."

He reached for a pepero and looked out the window. His stupid eyes roamed like he didn't know what he was doing.

"What did you just say?"

"Hm?"

"Martin." You grabbed his arm with both hands. He was very carefully not looking at you. "Are you serious? You're not serious. You're lying."

"Am I?"

"You're one hundred percent lying—"

"How would you know—"

"Because you have that face—"

"I don't have a face—"

"You have a FACE, you're doing it right now—" You tightened your grip on his arm without thinking about it, leaning toward him, and he finally looked at you and the face he had was absolutely the face of someone who knew exactly what he was doing. "TELL ME."

"Maybe," he boasted, with complete and infuriating composure, "if you kissed me I'd tell you the truth."

You stared at him.

He waited. Patient and unbothered. That almost-smile sitting at the corner of his mouth like it lived there.

"That's blackmail," you scoffed with a smile on your face.

"It's negotiation."

"It is literally blackmail."

"Those are your only options." He tilted his head slightly. The bucket hat shifted. Still crooked. Still completely endearing in a way you refused to say out loud. "The information or the alternative. Your call."

You looked at him.

At the bucket hat and the choco pie box and the three A$AP Rocky playlists and the way he'd handed you his phone without hesitating and the way he'd laughed when you laughed and the way he was looking at you right now like he had all the time in the world and nowhere else he'd rather be.

You leaned forward and kissed him.

It was nothing like the corridor at MAMA. No anger, no desperation, none of that desperate compressed energy finally breaking surface. Just soft and sweet, finally. His hand finding your face like it already knew the way, your fingers curling into the front of his hoodie, the guitar playing low on the speakers and Seoul glittering below like it had always been waiting for exactly this.

You pulled back just enough to look at him.

"Well?" you said.

His smile was slow as he made to grab for you again. "He was not in the studio with us."

You shoved his shoulder. He caught your hand before you could pull it back, laughing, warm fingers closing around yours, and didn't let go.

And sitting in Juhoon's manager's cousin's navy sedan overlooking the lights of Seoul, your hand in Martin's, the choco pie box open between you and an A$AP Rocky deep cut playing on speakers that were slightly too quiet—you didn't feel the need to have any walls up.

Not a single one.

You thought vaguely, distantly, about what the press would say if they could see you right now. About all the headlines that had called you rivals, opposing forces, two lines running endlessly alongside each other with no hope of intersection.

Parallel lines, the internet had declared with complete certainty, do not meet.

But geometry, you were starting to think, had never accounted for Martin Edwards Park.

And as it turned out...

Neither had you.

***

“You two were like planets, orbiting around each other,” Mrs Hudson says afterwards.

“Don’t think so, Mrs H. More like parallel lines, never meant to cross, but fade away from each other after Moriarty’s scheme.”

John doesn’t say this aloud. In fact, he doesn’t say a word to anyone. He’s just trying to put one foot in front of the other, which honestly is a task he barely manages. His limp is back, more persistent than ever before. He finds his old cane in the back corner of his closet, and he hates every minute, hell, every second he has to lean on it. But needs must or he’ll stumble and fall to the ground. It doesn’t matter that it’s psychosomatic. To John, it feels utterly real. 

***

The only place anyone can hear his voice, is at Sherlock’s grave, but no one is listening. No matter the hour, the premises are vacated as if someone (probably Mycroft) has herded other mourners away to give John his privacy.

“You always said that I didn’t observe, only saw. Did you ever observe my true nature, Sherlock? That I loved you above all and everyone else? I’d say my actions at the pool should have given the game away – when I grabbed Moriarty and asked you to run. I would have died for you, then. To keep that remarkable brain of yours intact. And your beautiful self to boot.”

John’s voice is thick from the effort of holding back the tears that get more insistent for every passing minute. It’s painful to stay composed, but he deserves the pain after what he said to Sherlock the last time they were in the same room together. 

“How could I call you a machine, Sherlock? I meant it at the time, but I should’ve observedmore closely. That it was all a ruse to get me out. Don’t think I didn’t hear the devastation in your voice when you called me from the roof. You didn’t want to jump, did you? But you thought you needed to for some unfathomable reason. I wish you’d told me, asked me for advice. Or Mycroft. He would’ve gotten you out of whatever game this was. Did you really resent him that much? Were you willing to die before seeking guidance from him?”

John reaches out for the black stone, pats it, and says the same thing he says every time he’s here.

“Please, Sherlock. Stop this, whatever it is. Say it was some magic trick. Don’t. Be. Dead. For me.”

Tears are obscuring his vision and if he’d been a weaker man, he’d fallen to his knees, and hugged the imperious stone with the gilded words Sherlock Holmes carved into its polished front. 

But John is a soldier, so he straightens, barely leaning on his cane when he delivers his final words.

“I love you, Sherlock. More than life itself.”

He nods at the stone, turns, and limps away. In the taxi - on his way back to Baker Street - he wonders for the umpteenth time where his gun is.

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