#sungho angst

FOUR YEARS EARLIER

The trophy case spans the entire wall of Lincoln Park High School's main corridor, and you notice it immediately because grief has taught you to seek out your own torture with the dedication of a penitent searching for splinters of the cross. Gold plaques catch the fluorescent lighting, each one engraved with achievements that should have been yours in another life, in the reality where your shoulder didn't explode at thirteen and leave you hollow. You stand there on the first day of high school, uniform still smelling like plastic packaging and new beginnings that feel like lies, and see his name repeated like a mantra, like a curse.

Park Sungho - Men's Singles Champion

Park Sungho - Regional Tournament Gold Medal

Park Sungho - Undefeated Season Record

On and on and on, an endless litany of everything you'll never be. Every trophy from the previous year belongs to him, this boy you've never met but already hate with an intensity that frightens you when you examine it in the dark hours before dawn. Your reflection in the glass shows a girl with hollow eyes and a chip on her shoulder the size of a tennis court, the size of all your dead dreams crystallized and mounted behind glass where you can't touch them, can't reclaim them, can only stare and remember and bleed internally.

"Impressive, right?"

The voice materializes beside you. A girl with a bright smile and a field hockey stick slung over her shoulder, oblivious to the violence of your silence. She follows your gaze to the trophy case with the easy admiration of someone who has never lost anything that mattered. "Park Sungho's a legend here. Apparently, scouts were already watching him in middle school. Can you imagine? He's probably going pro straight out of high school. My sister says he's the best player the school's ever produced."

Your throat closes. You manage a noncommittal hum and walk away before she can see your expression crumble into its component parts—rage, grief and envy so sharp it could draw blood. The old injury in your shoulder throbs. It always does when you're stressed, when you remember, when you see people achieving what you can't, a constant reminder of everything you lost at thirteen. You roll your shoulder absently, trying to ease the ache that no amount of physical therapy has ever truly fixed, that several different doctors have told you will never truly fix, that you'll carry until you die.

By lunchtime, you've heard his name fifteen times. By the end of the day, you've seen his face on four different posters congratulating him on last year's victories, his smile bright and uncomplicated in a manner yours hasn't been since before the injury. When you finally see him in person, surrounded by teammates in the cafeteria, laughing at someone's joke with an easy confidence that makes your chest constrict until you can't breathe, you understand this is going to be your life for the next four years.

Watching Park Sungho be everything you were supposed to be. Watching him breathe air that should have been yours.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

You avoid him religiously, with the fervor of someone avoiding the scene of their own death. It's not difficult at first, he's a year ahead, your schedules don't overlap except in the spaces between classes where you've learned to make yourself invisible, a ghost haunting the periphery of a life you should have lived. But Lincoln Park's campus is only so large, and he's everywhere. Walking to class, you pass posters advertising the tennis team's next match, his name at the top in bold letters. In the library, people whisper about his latest victory, their voices carrying across the silence, each word a small cut. Even your PE teacher mentions him once, talking about his dedication and athletic excellence while you sit on the sidelines, injury excuse note clutched in your fist until the paper goes damp with sweat and the ink starts to blur.

The worst part, the part that makes you want to claw at your own skin until you bleed : he's nice. He's genuinely and infuriatingly nice. He holds doors open for strangers who will never know his name. He helps underclassmen with their locker combinations, patient when they forget the numbers, never condescending. He volunteers to clean up after school events, stays late picking up trash when everyone else has gone home. You watch him from across rooms and hallways, this portrait of perfection rendered in flesh and bone, and the hatred festers like an infected wound, spreading poison through your veins until you can taste it.

It's not his fault. Logic tells you this during the long nights when sleep won't come and you lie in bed counting all the futures you'll never have. He didn't cause your injury, didn't steal your future directly from your hands. But logic has no place in grief this profound, in loss this totalizing, and every time you see him—laughing with his friends, effortlessly perfect, unbroken and whole—you're reminded of the girl you used to be. Confident, talented, destined for greatness. That girl died on a practice court at thirteen when she landed wrong after a serve, felt her shoulder pop, heard her coach scream her name, and spent the next year learning that some damage carves itself into bone and stays there, a permanent tenant in the house of your body.

Two months into your first year, he approaches you directly, and you feel your entire body go rigid with panic.

You're at your locker, shoving textbooks into your bag with more force than necessary, each movement sharp with barely contained rage at nothing and everything. His voice arrives from behind, friendly and uncertain. "Hey, you're in my calculus class, right?"

You freeze and turn slowly around, dread pooling in your stomach like cold water. Up close, Park Sungho stands taller than he looks from a distance, with kind eyes that haven't yet learned cruelty and an uncertain smile that makes you want to scream. He holds a textbook against his chest, and there's a small bandaid on his thumb—probably from tennis practice, from the sport that should have been yours, from blisters earned doing what you can't.

"No," you lie, and your voice emerges flat, affectless.

"Oh." He blinks innocently, confused that it makes your chest ache with misplaced guilt. "I could've sworn... you sit by the window, third row? You always take notes in blue ink."

He's noticed you. He's been paying attention, cataloging details about you while you've been nursing your hatred from across the room. The realization makes your skin crawl.

"You're mistaken."

"I'm pretty sure—"

"You're wrong." Your voice emerges harsh, sharp enough that he actually flinches, and you watch his expression shift from friendly to hurt. "I don't know you. Leave me alone."

You slam your locker shut, the metallic clang echoes down the hallway, and walk away, heart pounding violently against your ribs, each beat painful. Behind you, you hear his friend laugh nervously and say, "Well, that was brutal, man. What did you even do?" You don't hear Sungho's response, but you imagine it's confused, hurt, bewildered by your hostility. 

Good. 

Let him feel a fraction of the pain you carry every single day, the weight of it crushing your spine, making it hard to stand upright.

That night, you lie in bed staring at your ceiling where you used to have posters of your tennis idols, now bare and blank, and hate yourself for being cruel to someone who was only trying to be friendly. The guilt sits heavy on your chest, making it hard to breathe. However, you remember the trophy case, remember his name engraved on every award you once dreamed of winning, remember that he gets to play and you don't, and the guilt evaporates like water on summer concrete, leaving only the bitter residue of your resentment. He gets everything—the sport, the glory, the unbroken body, the future bright and certain. He doesn't get your kindness too. He doesn't get to collect you like another trophy.

SOPHOMORE YEAR - THE FIRST SET

The tennis courts are empty at 11pm on a Friday, which is exactly why you're here, why you've been coming here in the dead hours when no one else is around to witness your grief.

You've avoided this place for over a year, taking long detours between classes to keep from even glimpsing the green courts through the fence, the sight of them enough to make your chest constrict with phantom loss. But tonight, after a particularly brutal day, after watching Sungho accept another trophy at a school assembly, everyone applauding until your ears rang, the principal shaking his hand with paternal pride, your PE teacher beaming as if he'd created him himself, you found yourself walking here without conscious decision. Muscle memory leading you back to the scene of your death, the way trauma survivors return to the sites of their destruction, seeking closure that never comes.

Now you stand at the fence, fingers hooked through the chain-link until the metal bites into your skin, staring at the painted lines of the court that used to be your second home. Your old tennis ball sits heavy in your jacket pocket, worn smooth from years of anxious fidgeting, the felt matted and discoloured, a talisman of your dead dreams that you carry everywhere because letting it go would mean accepting that it's over, and you're not ready for that. You'll never be ready.

The court looks the same as it did that last day, before everything shattered. Same net bisecting the space, same service boxes with their clean white lines, same baseline where you used to practice your serves for hours until your shoulder ached in a good and productive way. The ache meaning that you were improving, getting stronger, becoming the player you were meant to be. Not like now, when your shoulder aches from simply existing, from the crime of waking up and having a body that betrayed you at such a young age and has been betraying you every day since.

"I thought you hated tennis."

You spin around, heart leaping into your throat, pulse suddenly frantic. Sungho stands a few feet away, tennis bag slung over his shoulder and racket in hand, still in practice clothes, slightly sweaty, regarding you with an expression you can't quite read, curious, concerned, cautious.

"I do," you say automatically, the lie smooth and practiced.

"Then why are you here?" He takes a step closer, and you resist the urge to back away, to run, to maintain the distance you've worked so hard to build. "It's eleven at night. The courts are locked. You're just... standing here."

"None of your business."

He takes another step closer, and you can see his face more clearly now in the dim glow of the parking lot lights bleeding through the fence. His eyes search your face like you're a complicated equation, one where all the variables keep changing and the solution remains frustratingly out of reach. "You've been avoiding me for over a year. You take different hallways when you see me coming. You sit in different sections of the library. You left a study group once when I showed up." He pauses, and there's hurt in his voice now, raw and unguarded. "Did I do something to you? Because if I did, I'm sorry, but I don't know what it was. I don't understand what I did wrong."

"You didn't do anything." The words taste bitter, like medicine you're forced to swallow, acrid on your tongue.

"Then why—"

"Because I hate that I can't play tennis!" The confession rips out of you before you can stop it, loud and raw in the quiet night, echoing across the empty courts. Your voice cracks, splinters. "I hate that you can and I can't. I hate that you're good at it. I hate watching you win. I hate your name on every trophy, in every conversation. I hate that everyone talks about you like you're some kind of god, like you invented the sport. I hate—"

Your voice breaks completely. Tears stream down your face now, hot and unstoppable, years of grief and rage spilling out like a wound finally opened after being left to fester. All the pain you've been carrying, compressing into a dense ball of misery in your chest, erupts with volcanic force, and Sungho stares at you with wide, shocked eyes that reflect the distant lights.

"I had a career-ending injury when I was thirteen," you continue, and now that you've started, the words won't stop coming, a hemorrhage of truth. "Middle school regional championships. I was the favourite to win. Everyone said so. My coach, the other players, even my opponents' parents. My serve was perfect that day, my footwork was flawless, and I was up in the first set. And then I landed wrong after a baseline return, and my shoulder just—it tore. Complete rotator cuff tear, plus nerve damage, plus complications they didn't find until months later. They did surgery, told my parents I'd recover, that I'd be back on the court within a year. But I never did. There's permanent damage. Chronic pain. Nerve impingement that flares up randomly. I can't play anymore. I can't serve, can't do overhead hits, I can barely lift my arm above my head on bad days. Some mornings I wake up and my shoulder is screaming and I haven't even moved yet."

You're gasping now, barely breathing between sobs that tear through your chest. "I was supposed to be you. Everyone said I'd go pro, that I had a real shot at being one of the best, that colleges were already watching me at thirteen. My coach called me a prodigy. My parents had started planning my future. Training schedules, tournament circuits, sponsorship deals. And then in one second, one wrong movement, it was all gone. Everything I worked for since I was six years old, everything I was, everything I thought I'd become—gone. Just... erased."

Sungho hasn't moved. His face has gone pale in the moonlight, his grip on his tennis bag slack. He looks stricken, gutted.

"So no, you didn't do anything wrong," you say, voice dropping to a whisper that carries more weight than a scream. "But you have everything I wanted. Everything I was supposed to have. You're living the life that was meant to be mine. And I know it's not your fault. I know that logically, rationally, but I can't look at you without feeling like I'm dying inside. It's like I'm watching someone wear my skin, live in my body, breathe my air. It's like I'm a ghost watching someone live my life."

Silence falls between you, broken only by your uneven breathing and the distant sound of traffic. The tennis ball in your pocket feels like a lead weight, an anchor dragging you down. You pull it out with shaking hands and stare at it. This artifact from another lifetime, physical evidence that you once existed as someone else.

"I'm sorry," Sungho finally says, and his voice sounds thick with emotion, wet. "I didn't know. I—God, I'm so sorry. That's—I can't even imagine—"

"Don't be." You wipe your face roughly with the back of your hand, but the tears keep coming. "Like I said, it's not your fault. You didn't injure me. You didn't steal my future. You're just... living yours. And I hate you for it even though I know I shouldn't. Even though it's irrational and unfair and you don't deserve my hatred. But it's there anyway, this poison I can't purge."

He sets his tennis bag down carefully, and moves closer until he stands right beside you at the fence, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body in the cool night air. "That's—I genuinely can't imagine losing tennis. If I couldn't play anymore, if someone told me tomorrow that I'd never hold a racket again, I don't know what I'd do. I don't know who I'd be."

"You'd survive," you say flatly, the truth stark and unadorned. "Because you'd have to. There's no other option. You either survive or you don't, and somehow your body keeps going even when you wish it wouldn't."

He looks at you, and you see understanding dawning in his eyes—not pity, thank god not pity, but genuine comprehension of the magnitude of your loss. Recognition that you've survived a death of sorts, that you're walking around with a corpse inside you. "Is that why you were so angry all those times I tried to talk to you, all those times you looked at me like you wanted me to disappear?"

"I wasn't angry." The distinction matters, needs to be understood. "I was grieving. I am grieving. Grief that looks like anger because anger is easier to hold than sorrow. Anger has teeth. Sorrow just hollows you out."

"I thought you just hated me. That I'd done something to offend you without realizing it."

"I did hate you. I do hate you." You pause, examining the truth, finding it more complicated than it was a year ago. "I don't know. It's all tangled up—the hate and the grief and the envy. I can't separate them anymore."

He's quiet for a long moment, both of you staring at the empty court bathed in moonlight, at the space where dreams go to die. "What position did you play?" 

You turn to stare at him, surprised by the question, by the genuine curiosity in his voice. "Why does it matter?"

"Because I want to know," he says simply, meeting your eyes. "Tell me about your tennis. Not the injury, the end, the surgery or the pain. Tell me about when you loved it. Tell me about who you were before."

You're hesitant at first, but out of instinct, you tell him about your first racket—bright pink, too big for your six year old hands, a birthday present you'd begged for after watching a Grand Slam on television. You tell him about learning to hit forehands in your backyard while your father fed you balls until sunset turned the sky orange, your mother calling you inside for dinner while you begged for just five more minutes, just one more shot. You tell him about your middle school coach who saw potential in you when you were just a clumsy eleven year old with decent hand-eye coordination and an obsessive need to improve. You tell him about the feeling of a perfect serve, that crystalline moment when the ball leaves your racket at exactly the right angle with exactly the right spin, when you know before it even crosses the net that it's going to be an ace, untouchable, yours.

You tell him about the competition nerves that made you throw up before matches, about the championship games where your hands shook so badly you could barely hold your racket, about the specific joy of winning a point off a shot you've practiced a thousand times, muscle memory transforming into art. You tell him about rivalries with girls whose names you've forgotten but whose playing styles you remember in vivid detail, about learning to read your opponents' body language, about the chess match that tennis becomes at higher levels.

He listens to every word, asks questions that show he understands the nuances, nods in recognition of feelings he's experienced himself. And for the first time in two years, talking about tennis doesn't feel like pressing on a bruise, doesn't feel like self-harm disguised as nostalgia. It feels like remembering someone you loved who died, honoring their memory instead of trying to forget they existed, speaking their name aloud instead of choking on the silence.

By the time you finish, it's past midnight. Sungho sits on the ground now, back against the fence, and you've somehow ended up beside him, close enough that your shoulders almost touch. Your face is probably a mess from crying, eyes swollen, nose red, cheeks splotchy, but he doesn't mention it, he doesn't look at you with pity or discomfort, just sits with you in your grief, bearing witness to it.

"You would've been incredible," he says quietly into the darkness.

"I was incredible." It's not arrogance, just a fact, a truth that deserves to be spoken. "For a thirteen years old, I was one of the best in the region. People knew my name. Coaches from prestigious academies had started calling my parents. I had a future."

"I wish I could've seen you play. I wish I could've competed against you."

"Yeah." You pull your knees to your chest, wrapping your arms around them, making yourself small. "Me too. I think about it sometimes. What would've happened if we'd met on opposite sides of a net instead of in a high school hallway. If you'd known me as a player instead of as... whatever I am now."

He doesn't try to offer comfort or false hope. He doesn't say it'll get better or that you'll find other passions or that everything happens for a reason, all the empty platitudes people have been feeding you for years that do nothing except make you want to scream. He just sits with you in your grief, letting it exist without trying to fix it, and somehow that's exactly what you need. To have your loss acknowledged without being minimized. To have someone say "that's terrible" instead of "but you're young, you have time to find something else."

When you finally stand to leave, joints stiff from sitting on cold concrete, he stands too. "Can I walk you home?"

You should say no. You should rebuild the walls you've just torn down, go back to hating him from a distance where it's safe, where he can't hurt you more than he already has by existing. But you're exhausted from crying, wrung out from confession, emptied of the rage that's been keeping you upright, and the thought of walking alone through dark streets while your shoulder throbs sounds unbearable.

"Okay."

The walk unfolds in comfortable quiet, the kind of silence that doesn't demand to be filled. When you reach your street, he stops at the corner, maintaining the boundary you haven't explicitly set but he seems to understand instinctively.

"Thanks for telling me," he says, hands shoved in his pockets, looking younger than usual. 

"Don't thank me. I basically unloaded two years of trauma on you without warning. I ambushed you with my grief."

"Still. I'm glad I know now. I'm glad I understand." He shifts his weight, nervous energy radiating off him. "I really am sorry that you lost it. That you have to watch other people play. That every match must be a reminder of what you can't have. That must be—I can't even imagine how you get through each day."

You nod, throat tight again with unshed tears that seem endless tonight, an inexhaustible supply. "Goodnight, Sungho."

"Goodnight."

You're halfway to your door when he calls out, voice carrying through the quiet suburban street. "Hey!"

You turn, finding him still standing under the streetlight, backlit and haloed.

"Your footwork." He's grinning slightly, nervous energy transmuting into tentative excitement. "You said your footwork was flawless. Mine isn't. Coach keeps telling me I'm sloppy when I move backwards, that I'm giving up too many easy points because my positioning is off. If you ever—I mean, you don't have to, obviously, but if you wanted to tell me how to fix it, I'd listen."

Your heart does a complicated flip in your chest, arrhythmic and painful, hope and terror tangled together until you can't distinguish one from the other. "You want tennis advice from me?"

"I want tennis advice from someone who was apparently one of the best at thirteen. Someone who understands the sport that it transcends just playing it." His smile is hopeful, genuine, unguarded that it makes your chest ache with feelings you don't want to examine. "So yeah. From you. If you're willing."

Again, you should say no. You should keep your distance, protect yourself from further pain, maintain the walls that have kept you safe. But there's a small, persistent part of you that misses talking about tennis more than it hates watching others play. A part that's been dormant for two years, smothered and suppressed, that's now stirring back to life with tentative, terrified hope. A part that remembers loving this sport before it broke you.

"Your footwork is sloppy when you're moving backwards because you're not pivoting on your outside foot," you say, and your voice is steadier than you expected. "You're trying to backpedal, which throws you off-balance and makes your return weaker. You need to turn your body, pivot, then move. Watch Federer's baseline defense if you don't believe me. Study how he never moves straight back. He's always turning, always maintaining his stance."

His grin widens into pure joy, unfiltered and bright enough to hurt. "So you have been watching my matches. I knew it."

"Shut up."

"You have! You know about my footwork, which means you've been paying attention to the specific mechanics of how I play, which means—"

"I said shut up, Park Sungho."

But you're smiling, just a little, the muscles in your face unfamiliar with the expression. And when you go inside, the grief feels less suffocating than it has in years. Not gone, it will never be gone, you understand that now, but bearable. For the first time in two years, the weight of it feels bearable, like perhaps you can carry it without being crushed. Like perhaps you can learn to live with this loss instead of just surviving it.

LATE SOPHOMORE YEAR - THE SECOND SET

It starts small, a comment after practice about his grip, offered when you happen to walk past the courts, not deliberately of course, you tell yourself, though you both know it's a lie. A suggestion about his serve toss, mentioned in passing in the hallway between classes, delivered quickly before you can second-guess yourself. He seeks you out in the library one afternoon, sliding into the seat across from you with his physics homework as a pretense, and asks about strategy for an upcoming match. You end up talking for forty minutes about court positioning and shot selection, about reading an opponent's patterns, about the mental game that separates good players from great ones, and when the librarian finally kicks you both out at closing, you realize you forgot to be miserable for almost an hour.

You don't mean for it to become a pattern, don't plan for these interactions to accumulate into regularity, but they do. Once a week becomes twice, then suddenly you're showing up to practices, standing at the fence, watching him play with a critical eye you haven't used since your own playing days, your analytical mind awakening from hibernation. At first, it hurts with the white-hot intensity of touching an open flame. Every swing he takes is a reminder of swings you can no longer make, every perfect serve is a ghost of serves you used to hit, every victorious point is a death you relive. But gradually, with the patience of ice melting in spring, the hurt transforms into engagement. Your brain, dormant for so long, awakens to the puzzle of tennis strategy again, finds satisfaction in problem-solving that doesn't require your broken body to cooperate.

You start to notice things others miss : his tendency to favor his forehand even when his backhand would be more effective, wasting energy with extra footwork instead of taking the simpler shot. His rushed serves when nervous, the toss getting faster and less consistent when the pressure mounts. How his concentration slips in the third set when fatigue sets in, when his body is tired and his mind starts wandering, leaving openings his opponent can exploit. You point these out with the clinical detachment of a doctor diagnosing symptoms, and he listens, he implements your suggestions with a dedication that surprises you, that makes you feel seen in a way you haven't since before the injury. His game improves noticeably, and you feel an unfamiliar pride that has nowhere to go, no outlet except the small smile you hide when he executes a shot exactly as you suggested.

"Your coach must love me," you tell him one afternoon, watching him practice serves that finally have consistent toss height.

"Probably." He bounces the ball, prepares his stance with the ritualistic precision of a player who's done this ten thousand times. "Or he's confused about why I'm suddenly better at things he's been trying to teach me for months. I think he suspects I have a secret weapon."

"You weren't listening to him. You listen to me."

"I listen to you," he agrees, and there's weight to the words that has nothing to do with tennis.

You ignore the flutter in your chest at those words, the dangerous warmth that spreads through your ribcage like water seeping through cracks. You can't afford to acknowledge what's building between you, can't afford to name it. "Again. Your toss is still too far forward. You're leaning into it instead of letting the toss work for you."

He adjusts, serves, and this time the ball hits exactly where he intended with satisfying precision, the sound of a clean ace distinct and clear. He turns to you with a triumphant smile that makes him look younger, less burdened, and you roll your eyes to hide your own satisfaction, fighting your own smile.

This is dangerous territory, and you know it. You're getting close to him, starting to see beyond the trophy winner you resented for so long, beyond the symbol he represented. He's funny, you discover—quick-witted that it catches you off guard, makes you laugh when you least expect it and thought you'd forgotten how. He does impressions of their physics teacher that are devastatingly accurate, makes puns that are terrible but still make you snort with laughter, finds absurdity in mundane situations. He's dedicated, spending hours on the court perfecting shots even after official practice ends, after everyone else has gone home, chasing perfection with an intensity you recognize in yourself, in who you used to be. He's thoughtful, remembering details about your life that you mention in passing.

And he's becoming your friend, which terrifies you more than anything else you've survived.

"Why are you helping me?" he asks one evening when you're walking home, another pattern that's developed without either of you acknowledging it, without agreeing it's something you do now. The question emerges out of nowhere, cutting through your comfortable conversation about his upcoming match against a notoriously defensive player.

"What do you mean?"

"You hated me for a year. You hated tennis, hated watching people play, hated everything about the sport. Now you're here almost every day, coaching me, spending hours analyzing my game." He glances at you sideways, vulnerability flickering across his features in the orange glow of streetlights. "Not that I'm complaining. I'm not. But... why? What changed?"

You're quiet for a long moment, trying to articulate feelings you don't fully understand yourself, emotions too complex to fit into easy explanations. "I missed it," you finally say, each word chosen carefully. “I missed talking about tennis and about the strategy. I missed being close to the sport, even if I can't play. I missed using my brain for what it was trained to do."

"Does it hurt watching me play?"

"Yes." You don't lie to him, have never lied to him about this. "Every single time."

He flinches like you've struck him, his steps faltering. "Then why—"

"But it also feels like I'm breathing again," you interrupt, needing him to understand this, to hear the whole truth. "I spent two years trying to cut tennis out of my life completely. I thought if I could just avoid it, stop caring about it, stop letting it define me, the grief would fade. I thought that I could starve it out through absence, but it didn't. The grief stayed just as sharp and constant, but I felt empty on top of it." You flex your shoulder absently, feeling the perpetual ache that never quite fades, your constant companion. "At least this way, I'm part of it again. Even if it's not how I planned. Even if it's through you instead of through me. At least I'm not completely cut off from something I love."

He's quiet, processing this, his footsteps slowing until you're both barely moving forward. "I mean this sincerely, but you're the best coach I've ever had, and I've had some good ones—people who played professionally, who trained other pros. But none of them see the game like you do."

"I'm not your coach."

"Whatever you want to call it, then. You're the best at it. You understand tennis in a way that goes beyond mechanics or strategy. You see the art in it."

You bump his shoulder with yours gently, always mindful of your injury, always conscious of your body's limitations. "Your actual coach might disagree. He's been doing this for twenty years."

"He can fight me. I'll defend your honor."

You laugh, surprised by how natural it feels, how easy, how the sound emerges without the weight of grief crushing it. When did this happen? When did Park Sungho become someone who makes you laugh instead of someone who makes you want to scream, to claw at your own skin, to rage at the universe for its unfairness?

The shift is gradual but undeniable, tectonic plates moving beneath the surface until the landscape is unrecognizable. You start sitting with his friends at lunch, people who've accepted your presence without question, who make space for you at their table, who include you in their jokes and their plans. You wear his team jacket once when it's cold and he offers it without thinking, and you don't miss how his eyes linger on you, how his gaze traces the lines of his jacket on your frame, or how his teammate elbows him with a knowing grin that makes his ears turn red. You attend matches officially now, not hiding in the back where you can slip away unnoticed, but sitting where he can see you, and you coach him through games with subtle hand signals you've developed together. A touch to your heart, a point to your temple, a specific gesture that means adjust your positioning. A language only the two of you speak, private and intimate in its specificity.

He plays better when you're there. Everyone notices. His coach mentions it, pulling you aside once to thank you for whatever you're doing because Sungho's game has improved dramatically. His teammates joke about it, calling you his lucky charm, his secret weapon, saying they should start a petition to make you official team staff. Sungho doesn't deny it, doesn't brush it off or laugh it away. He just looks at you with an expression that makes your stomach flip, that makes you understand you're in dangerous territory, that you're both walking towards a cliff edge neither of you can see clearly.

"You're my good luck charm," he tells you after a particularly close victory, still breathing hard from the match, sweat dampening his hair and making it stick to his forehead.

"That's superstitious nonsense."

"Maybe. But I play better when you're watching."

"That's psychological, not magical. Your brain associates my presence with positive reinforcement, so you perform better. Basic behavioural psychology."

"Does it matter? Either way, you're the reason." He grins, boyish and unguarded, and your heart does that complicated flip again where it forgets how to beat properly.

These moments pile up, building into tension neither of you acknowledges directly, a structure constructed from unspoken words and avoided eye contact. His hand brushing yours when he demonstrates a grip, his fingers lingering against your palm longer than necessary, warmth seeping between your skin. How he finds you in every crowd, eyes seeking yours before anyone else's, before his coach or his parents or his teammates. You're the first person he looks for, always. How he texts you late at night, conversations that start about tennis and drift into movies that made you cry, music that reminds you of childhood summers, dreams you've abandoned, fears you've never spoken aloud because giving them voice makes them more real. 

You learn that he's terrified of disappointing his parents, who've sacrificed so much for his tennis career, his mother's part-time job to pay for coaching, his father's weekend drives to tournaments hours away. That he wonders if tennis is what he wants or just what he's good at, whether he's chosen this path or if it's chosen him. That he thinks about quitting more often than anyone knows, that some mornings he wakes up and the thought of another practice makes him want to stay in bed, to pull the covers over his head and disappear. That the pressure of being "the best" feels like drowning slowly, water rising incrementally until he can barely breathe.

"You can't quit," you tell him firmly one evening, sitting on the bleachers after everyone else has left, the court lights casting long shadows. "You're too talented. You have too much potential."

"So were you."

"I didn't quit. I was forced to stop. There's a difference." The distinction matters, needs to be understood. "Quitting is a choice. Having your body fail you isn't."

"Is there though?" He's lying on the court now, staring up at the sky turning purple and gold with sunset, his racket beside him. "Either way, you're not playing anymore. The end result is the same—you're gone from the sport."

"But I would if I could." You sit beside him, close enough to feel the residual heat from his body, hugging your knees to your chest. "In a heartbeat without hesitation. If someone could fix my shoulder, make the pain stop, give me back what I lost—I'd be on a court tomorrow. You can play. You have this incredible gift, this opportunity that most people never get, that I'd give anything to have again. Don't waste it because you're tired or scared or unsure. Don't throw away what I'd kill to have back."

"Even if I'm miserable?"

"Are you miserable?"

He turns his head to look at you, and his expression is complicated, layered with emotions you can't quite parse, exhaustion, frustration and affection all tangled together. "Not when you're here. When you're watching, when we talk about tennis, when I execute a shot you suggested, I remember why I loved this. Before the pressure, before the expectations, before everyone started watching. You make it feel like mine again."

Your breath catches in your throat, stutters and stops. This is dangerous. This is crossing a line you've been carefully avoiding, staying on the safe side of feelings that could destroy you both. "Sungho—"

"I know." He sits up quickly, too quickly, motion sharp with panic. "Sorry. Forget I said that. I shouldn't have—"

"No, I—" You don't know how to finish the sentence. You don't know how to articulate the complicated tangle of feelings in your chest, gratitude, terror and affection that's growing into something larger, something you can't control. So you just sit there in the fading light, both of you carefully not looking at each other, carefully not acknowledging what's building between you, both pretending you don't notice how everything is shifting into territory neither of you knows how to navigate.

But you can't unknow what you've just learned. You can't unhear his confession, and you're both pretending you don't notice how everything between you is changing, crystallizing into something that demands to be named, but neither of you has the courage to speak it aloud.

JUNIOR YEAR - THE THIRD SET 

The unspoken thing between you grows teeth, grows claws, becomes something living and dangerous that prowls between you both.

It's in every touch that lasts a heartbeat too long. His hand on your lower back as he guides you through a crowd after a match, warm, possessive and careful. Your fingers adjusting his grip on the racket handle and lingering there, tracing the calluses on his palm that mirror the ones you used to have, the ones that have softened in the years since you stopped playing. The brush of his shoulder against yours when you sit too close in the library, studying at the same table, your physics homework forgotten as you both pretend to focus on anything except the electricity crackling in the air between you.

He watches you when he thinks you're not looking, you catch him sometimes in your peripheral vision, his gaze intense and unguarded, studying your profile like he's trying to memorize it, to commit every detail to memory. And you watch him right back, cataloging the details of his face when his attention is elsewhere : the concentration between his eyebrows when he's thinking through a problem, the curve of his mouth when he's trying not to smile, the way his hair falls into his eyes when he's been running his hands through it in frustration.

The late-night texts that make your heart race, messages that have nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with knowing someone, knowing them down to the vulnerable parts they don't show anyone else, the soft underbelly they keep hidden from the world.

“I can't sleep.” He texts at 2am on a random Tuesday, and your phone lights up your dark room like a beacon.

“I keep thinking about regionals next month. What if I choke? What if I've peaked and this is as good as I get?”

“You'll do fine.” you respond, already awake because sleep has been elusive lately, your mind too full of thoughts you can't quiet. “You're more than ready.”

“Will you be there?”

“Where else would I be?”

There's a long pause. You watch the typing indicator appear and disappear three times, each appearance making your pulse spike, before his message finally arrives : “Sometimes I worry you'll realize you don't need to do this anymore. That watching me play just hurts and doesn't help. That you're better off cutting tennis out of your life completely, including me.”

You type “It helps”, then delete it. Type “It hurts”, then delete that too. Finally, you type : “I'll be there. I promise. You're not getting rid of me that easily.”

His response is immediate : “Okay, good. I need you there. I need you.”

You stare at those words—I need you—and your chest feels too small for your heart, like your ribcage might crack open from the pressure, like your sternum might split down the middle and expose all the vulnerable parts you've been protecting. You don't know how to respond, don't know what to say that won't reveal too much, so you just send back a simple “I know”, and hope he understands everything you can't say.

At school, people have stopped asking what you are to each other. They've created their own narratives without needing your input : you're dating, you're "complicated," you're childhood friends (false, but whatever version of your story they've invented seems to satisfy their curiosity). His teammates have accepted you as a fixture, automatic and unquestioned, saving you a seat at team dinners, including you in group chats about weekend plans, texting you directly when Sungho is being stubborn about something and they need backup to convince him. Your friends are less subtle about their observations.

“So, you and Sungho,” your best friend says, giving you a look over her sandwich. Across the cafeteria, he’s laughing with his teammates, his eyes crinkling that it makes your chest tighten.

“We’re friends,” you say quickly.

“Friends,” she echoes, raising a brow. “Friends who look at each other like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re both trying to breathe underwater and the other person’s the only air you’ve got,” she says, leaning back. “Honestly, the rest of us could vanish and you wouldn’t even notice.”

You have no response to that, because she's right. She's devastatingly, terrifyingly right. You are drowning, in feelings you never meant to develop, in the impossibility of your situation, in the knowledge that caring about Sungho means caring about his tennis, which means watching him succeed at the sport you'll never play again, which means watching him achieve everything you wanted while you stand on the sidelines forever. A ghost haunting her own unlived life, bearing witness to someone else's dreams manifesting while yours rot underground.

The physical proximity increases with the recklessness of people who know they're playing with fire but can't seem to stop. You demonstrate footwork despite your injury, showing him how to pivot properly during a particularly stubborn coaching session, and he watches your feet with intense concentration. Your shoulder aches from the movement but worse now, pain radiating down your arm in hot waves, and you try to hide your wince, biting the inside of your cheek until you taste iron, until the pain in your mouth distracts from the pain in your shoulder. Unfortunately, he notices. Of course he notices. He's been learning to read you for months, cataloging your tells.

"Stop," he says immediately, hand coming to your bad shoulder with infinite gentleness, his palm warm through your shirt. "Don't hurt yourself for me. It's not worth it."

"I'm fine."

"You're not. You're in pain. I can see it in your face and how you're holding yourself."

"I'm always in pain." The admission slips out before you can stop it, raw and honest, a truth you've always tried to keep carefully hidden. "This is just how it is now. Constant ache, worse when I'm stressed or when the weather changes or when I do too much, which is pathetic, considering 'too much' is apparently demonstrating basic footwork for thirty seconds."

His hand is still on your shoulder, thumb rubbing small circles that somehow ease the tension coiled beneath your skin, that make the pain recede slightly. "I hate that. I hate that you hurt all the time and there's nothing I can do to fix it."

"Join the club. I've hated it for four years."

"No, I mean—" He stops, frustrated with his inability to articulate what he means, words failing him. "You shouldn't have to hurt just to help me. You shouldn't have to sacrifice your body's comfort for my improvement. It's not fair to you."

"This is the only way I get to play anymore," you say quietly, echoing words from months ago that feel even more true now, that have settled into your bones as truth. "Through you. Through coaching you, watching you, helping you improve. So yeah, it hurts, but it's worth it. It's the only way I get to stay connected to tennis, to the sport I loved before it broke me. You're my access point."

His eyes search yours, and there's a charged moment where neither of you breathes, where the air between you feels electric with possibility, heavy with all the things you're not saying. His hand slides from your shoulder to your neck, fingers curling against your skin with possession that should frighten you but doesn't, and you lean into the touch without thinking, without permission from your rational brain, your body betraying you by seeking comfort you shouldn't want, shouldn't need. His gaze drops to your mouth. You could close the distance so easily, just tilt forward slightly, eliminate the inches between you and finally, finally—

"Sungho! Coach wants you!" A teammate's shout shatters the moment like glass hitting concrete, sharp and irreversible.

You step back quickly, breaking contact, cold air rushing in where his warmth was. Sungho drops his hand, looking dazed, pupils blown wide, breathing uneven. "I should—"

"Yeah. Go."

He doesn't move immediately, just stands there staring at you like he's trying to memorize your face, like he's afraid you'll disappear if he looks away. "Later?"

"Later," you confirm, voice steadier than you feel, and he finally jogs away, glancing back twice, three times, four times, until you turn away first because you can't bear to keep looking, can't bear the weight of wanting him.

These almost-moments become your new pattern, your new normal, accumulating like snow building towards an avalanche. After a victory, he lifts you in a hug that lasts too long, face buried in your neck, breathing you in like you're oxygen and he's been suffocating. Walking home, your hands brush and he catches your pinky with his, the smallest form of holding hands, so subtle no one else would notice but it burns through you like wildfire, heat spreading up your arm and into your chest. Studying together in the library, he falls asleep on your shoulder and you let him stay there for an hour, barely breathing, savoring the weight of him and the trust implicit in the gesture, the vulnerability of sleep.

But neither of you crosses the final line. Neither says the words building in your throats, pressing against your teeth every time you're together, demanding to be spoken. Because saying them would make this real, would force you both to confront the impossibility of your situation, to acknowledge what you're both desperately trying to ignore.

He's going places. Scouts from universities are already contacting him, leaving voicemails for his parents, sending glossy brochures in the mail. Professional coaches expressing interest in taking him on after high school, people who've trained Grand Slam champions, who see in him the potential for greatness. His future is bright, certain and filled with tennis courts around the world, filled with championships, trophies and everything you once wanted for yourself. And you're—

You're the girl who lost tennis. You, who can barely lift her arm above her head without pain shooting down to your fingertips like lightning. Whose future is uncertain and small in comparison, bounded by the limitations of your injury, by the reality that you'll never be more than you are right now, that your body has imposed a ceiling on your potential that you'll never break through.

What could you possibly offer him except holding him back? Except being dead weight he has to carry?

So you continue to stay silent, and so does he. The unspoken thing between you grows and grows until it takes up all the air in every room you share, until you're both suffocating on words you can't say, drowning in feelings you can't acknowledge, dying slowly from the pressure of not speaking.

SENIOR YEAR - THE FOURTH SET 

The beginning of senior year brings college scouts to every match, and the tension around Sungho ratchets up to unbearable levels, pressure so intense you can see it crushing him.

He's on every recruiter's list, courted by multiple Division I schools competing for his commitment, coaches calling his house during dinner, his email inbox flooded with recruitment messages. Professional coaches attend his matches with clipboards and serious expressions, evaluating his potential for the tour, discussing him like he's a commodity, an investment, a product to be developed and marketed. The pressure is immense, a weight you can see crushing him physically, in the tightness around his eyes that never quite fades even when he smiles, in how he obsesses over every small mistake until you want to shake him, in how he practices until his hands bleed and you have to literally force him to stop before he injures himself, before he ruins his future through overtraining.

You're there for all of it. Every match, every practice, every moment of doubt that crashes over him like a wave trying to drag him under. The signals between you have evolved into a complete language now, sophisticated and subtle enough that even his coach doesn't catch them all : a touch to your heart means breathe, center yourself, you've got this. Hand on your temple means think, don't just react, use your brain not just your body. A pointed look at the court means focus, stop looking at me and play, this is your moment.

After he wins a crucial match that has four scouts in attendance, all taking notes, all watching him with calculating eyes, he finds you in the crowd and mouths something. It looks like I love you. Or maybe I need you. Or maybe I can't do this without you. Or maybe you're just seeing what you want to see, projecting your own feelings onto his lips, constructing meaning where there is none.

You can't be certain. You don't let yourself be certain. Because if he said it, even silently, even in the heat of victory when adrenaline makes people say things they don't mean, then you have to acknowledge what's been building between you for two years. And acknowledging it means confronting the inevitable end, means looking directly at the cliff you're both walking towards.

"We need to talk about next year," his teammate corners you one afternoon while Sungho is doing an interview with a sports reporter from the local paper, answering questions about his future with practiced diplomatic non-answers.

"What about it?"

"He's going to Stanford. Full ride, basically guaranteed. Their tennis program is one of the best in the country." He says this like you don't already know, like you haven't been tracking Sungho's opportunities with the same intensity you once tracked your own tournament rankings, monitoring his future with the attention of someone watching a train approach.

"I know."

"Stanford's in California. It's on the other side of the country."

"I'm aware of basic geography, thanks." Your voice comes out sharper than intended, defensive.

"I'm just saying—" The teammate looks at you meaningfully, with an expression that's half concern and half warning, his eyes too knowing. "Long distance is hard. Especially when one person is at a top athletic program with constant travel and the other is... wherever you'll be. Whatever you'll be doing, and he's going to have opportunities—other people, other options, a whole new life."

"We're not dating," you say automatically, the lie familiar on your tongue now, smooth and practiced from repetition.

"Right… and I'm the Pope." He shakes his head, clearly not buying it, his skepticism obvious. "Look, I like you. We all do. You're good for him, you make him better. But Sungho's got a real shot at going pro. He needs to focus, stay committed, keep his head in the game. A complicated relationship situation isn't going to help. Divided attention could ruin him."

"Then it's good we're not in a relationship."

"You're in something," he insists, and there's frustration in his voice now, urgency. "And when he has to choose between tennis and you, it's going to destroy him. So maybe... figure out what you're doing before it gets to that point. Before he has to make a choice that breaks him either way."

He walks away, leaving you with a gnawing anxiety that doesn't fade for days, that settles in your stomach like stones, weighing you down. You hate that he's right. You and Sungho exist in this undefined space that can't last forever, this liminal zone between friendship and more. Eventually, you'll have to name it or end it, and neither option feels survivable. Naming it means admitting you're in love with him, which means admitting you'll lose him. Ending it means cutting him out of your life, which means losing tennis again, losing the only connection you have to the sport you loved.

Either way, you lose. You've been losing since you were thirteen, and apparently, you haven't hit bottom yet.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

The week before Nationals is brutal that it transcends physical exhaustion, that moves into psychological territory where the mind starts cannibalizing itself.

Sungho is practicing constantly, barely sleeping. You know because he texts you at 3am or 4am, messages that are just streams of consciousness about his fears and doubts. He's running himself into the ground trying to be perfect, chasing an impossible standard that retreats further with every step he takes towards it. You're there as much as possible, but the tension between you is excruciating, a taut wire ready to snap at any moment, humming with dangerous frequency. Every moment feels borrowed, stolen from the inevitable future where he's gone and you're here, separated by distance, dreams and all the things you want but can't have.

Two days before the match, he misses five serves in a row and throws his racket across the court in frustration, the clatter of metal against concrete sharp and violent. You've never seen him do that before. He's always so controlled, so composed, keeping his emotions carefully contained even in defeat.

"What's wrong with you today?" you call from the fence, trying to keep your voice steady, trying to sound like a coach instead of someone who's terrified for him.

"Nothing. I just—" He stops, looks at you with exhausted eyes, dark circles prominent beneath them like bruises, like someone's beaten him. "I can't focus. My brain won't stop spinning."

"Then take a break. Your body needs rest."

"I can't. Nationals are in two days and I'm playing like garbage. It’s like I've never held a racket before."

You climb over the fence, not gracefully, your shoulder protests the movement with a sharp spike of pain that makes you gasp, and walk onto the court, each step deliberate. "You're playing like garbage because you're exhausted, stressed and you've been practicing for eight hours a day. Your body needs rest before it breaks down completely."

"I need to practice. I need to be perfect."

"You need to stop." You take the racket from his hands despite his weak protest, setting it down on the bench with finality. "Sungho, you're more than prepared. You're beyond prepared. You've been training for this your entire life. Two more days of obsessive practice won't make you better. It'll just burn you out before the match even starts. It'll destroy you before you step on the court."

He slumps onto the bench, head in his hands, shoulders hunched in defeat, his entire body curving inwards. "I keep thinking about everything that could go wrong. Every possible way I could fail."

You sit beside him, sharing warmth in the cooling evening air, the sun setting somewhere behind the trees. "What are you afraid of? Tell me."

"I’m afraid of choking in front of the scouts, losing and disappointing everyone who's believed in me, of proving I'm not as good as everyone thinks. I’m—" His voice trembles, almost lost to the air, so quiet you have to lean in to hear. "I’m afraid of winning and having to leave. I’m afraid of achieving everything I've worked for and losing you in the process. The victory would just taste like ash because you're not there to share it."

Your throat tightens, constricts until breathing becomes difficult, until each breath is a conscious effort. "You're not going to choke. You're too good for that, too prepared."

"How do you know? How can you possibly know that?"

"Because I've watched you play for three years. I've seen you under pressure that would break other players, seen you come back from impossible deficits when everyone else had written you off, seen you win matches you should have lost through sheer determination." You bump his shoulder gently with yours. "And I saw a lot of talented players before my injury, back when I was competing in regional circuits, back when I was studying the competition. You're one of the most talented players I've ever seen. You have something most players never develop, the ability to think strategically under pressure, to adapt in real-time, to see the game several shots ahead."

He turns to look at you, and the vulnerability in his expression makes your chest ache with the need to hold him, to promise him everything will be okay even though you know it won't, even though you both know nothing about this is okay. "I don't want to leave you. The thought of being in California while you're here makes me feel sick."

"I know."

"Every time I think about Stanford, about going pro, about any of it… all I can think is that you won't be there. That I'll be achieving my dreams alone. What's the point? What's the point of any of it if I can't share it with you?"

"The point is tennis," you say firmly, grabbing his hand and squeezing hard enough that it must hurt but he doesn't pull away. "The point is becoming the best player you can be. The point is living the dream that most people never get close to achieving, that I'll never achieve. The point is honoring the gift you've been given."

"But you—"

"I'll be fine." The lie tastes bitter, acrid on your tongue, corrosive, but you say it anyway because he needs to hear it, because he needs permission to leave. "We'll figure it out. We could do video calls, whatever we need to do. We'll make it work somehow."

"You really think we can make it work?" There's desperate hope in his voice, childlike in its naked need for reassurance.

You want to say yes. You want to promise him that distance won't matter, that your feelings are strong enough to survive the separation, time zones and the inevitable growing apart that happens when two people live completely different lives in completely different worlds. But you've never lied to him about tennis, never sugarcoated the truth when it comes to the sport, and you won't start lying about this either. You won't give him false hope that will make leaving harder.

"I think we have to try," you say instead, each word carefully chosen, honest in its uncertainty. "Because the alternative—you giving up tennis, you resenting me for the rest of your life—isn't an option. That path leads to you hating me, and I couldn't survive that."

He leans his head on your shoulder, and you rest your cheek against his hair, breathing in the familiar scent of his shampoo mixed with sweat. You sit like that for a long time, watching the sun set over the empty court, the sky turning shades of orange, purple and deep blue, painting the world in temporary beauty. Both of you trying to memorize this moment before everything changes forever, before the future arrives and splits you apart.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

You're at his house, ostensibly helping him do final preparations. Except he's not preparing, he's staring at you while you organize his tournament bag, watching you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle with awareness, checking that he has enough grips, water bottles and the specific brand of energy bars he likes, the ones that don't upset his stomach during long matches.

"You're not even paying attention," you say without looking up, feeling his gaze on you.

"I'm paying attention."

"To me, not to what I'm saying about your pre-match routine or the checklist we made."

"Same thing. You are my pre-match routine."

You finally look at him, exasperated, fond and terrified all at once. "Sungho—"

"Come with me tomorrow." The words tumble out in a rush, desperate and unplanned, breaking the careful script you've both been following. "Not just to watch. Come with me to Stanford. You could apply there. We could figure it out together. Or apply anywhere in California. Just... come with me. Please."

"Stop." You set down the tennis bag, heart breaking into sharp pieces that cut you from the inside, that pierce your lungs and make breathing agony. "You know I can't do that."

"Why not? Give me one good reason."

"Because I need to figure out my own life. My own future. My own identity separate from tennis." The words come out steadier than you feel. "I can't just follow you around the country, living vicariously through your tennis career. I'd lose myself completely. I'd become nothing but an appendage to you, defined entirely by your success."

"That's not what I meant—"

"Really?" You're not angry, just tired, so incredibly tired of this circular conversation you've been having in your head for months. "Sungho, I love—" You stop, the words catching in your throat like broken glass, like shards that will cut you if you speak them. You were about to say I love you, but you can't. Saying it would make leaving impossible, would make the future unbearable. "I care about you, so much it terrifies me. But I have to build a life that isn't defined by tennis or by what I lost. And if I follow you, if I spend every day watching you play, watching you achieve everything I wanted, I'll never heal. I'll just be that girl who lost her dream, desperately clinging to someone else's, living through you like a parasite."

His face crumples, and you watch the realization crash over him like a wave, cold and clarifying. "I didn't think about it like that. I was being selfish."

"I know you didn't. You're not trying to hurt me. You're trying to keep me and hold on to what we have." You move closer, take his hands in yours, feeling them tremble slightly. "But keeping me means letting me go. You need to let me build something that's mine."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't have to make sense." You squeeze his hands, trying to transfer strength you don't feel. "If you hold too tight, you'll crush what you're trying to protect. You have to open your hands and trust I'll stay."

He pulls you into a hug, crushing you against his chest hard enough that your ribs ache, hard enough that you can feel every rapid beat of his heart. "I don't know how to do this without you. I don't know how to be on a court without looking for you in the stands."

"Yes, you do. You were winning matches before me."

"But I wasn't happy. Tennis was just pressure, expectations and trying to meet everyone else's standards. It wasn't mine."

The confession breaks you, shatters whatever defenses you've been maintaining. You pull back to look at him, and his eyes are red-rimmed, shining with unshed tears that threaten to spill over. "Sungho—"

"These past few years, coaching with you, watching you fall back in love with tennis, spending every day with you, I've never been happier. Tennis doesn't mean anything without you there. The victories are hollow. The improvement is pointless. Without you watching, without you caring, what's the point?"

"That's not true—"

"It is for me." He cups your face with both hands, holding you like you might shatter if he lets go. "You made me fall in love with tennis again. Before you, it was just a checklist of achievements, just a path I was following because everyone expected it. But you reminded me why it's beautiful. Why it's worth the work. You gave me back the joy of it."

You're crying now, tears streaming down your face in hot tracks that you can't stop. "Then take that with you tomorrow. Take that love and play the best match of your life. And when you win—because you will win, I know you will—remember that you did it, not me. You. Your talent, your hard work, your dedication."

"We did it," he insists, stubborn even now, even when you're trying to give him permission to leave. "Everything I've become, you helped build too."

He leans forward, and for one heart-stopping moment, you think he's going to kiss you. His lips hover over yours that you can feel his breath on your skin, warm and unsteady, and you could close the gap so easily, just tilt forward a fraction of an inch. But you don't, and neither does he. Because kissing would be a promise you can't keep, a beginning that's actually an ending disguised, a moment of happiness that would make the separation unbearable.

Instead, he presses his forehead to yours, and you stand there breathing each other in, as close as you've ever been while remaining impossibly far apart, separated by futures that don't align, by dreams that pull in opposite directions, by the fundamental incompatibility of what you both need.

"I should go," you finally say, voice barely audible, scraped raw. "You need to rest before tomorrow. You need sleep."

"Stay." The word is soft, pleading.

"Sungho—"

"Just a little longer. Please. Just give me a little more time."

You let out a quiet sigh but stay where you are. You lie on his bed, fully clothed, while he curls around you like he's trying to memorize the shape of you, to imprint the feeling of your body against his into permanent memory. His hand finds yours, fingers intertwining, and you hold on like he's the only solid thing in a world that's crumbling beneath your feet, like he's an anchor in a storm that's about to sweep you away.

"I'm scared," he admits quietly into the darkness, his breath warm against your neck.

"Of the match?"

"Of losing you. Of winning and having to choose. Of everything changing tomorrow and never being able to go back." His voice cracks, breaks. "Of waking up in California in a few months and realizing this was all a dream, that you were never really mine."

"Change is terrifying," you agree, squeezing his hand tighter, until your fingers ache. "But you're going to be incredible. You're going to do things I only dreamed of. Things that will take you so far beyond this moment, beyond this town, beyond me. And I'm going to—" Your voice cracks. "I'm going to be so proud of you. So, so proud I won't have words for it."

"Will you be there tomorrow?"

Here it is. The question you've been dreading, the one that's been sitting heavy in your chest for weeks, pressing on your lungs until breathing hurts. Because you don't know if you can do it—sit in those stands and watch him win the match that will take him away from you. You don't know if you can survive watching him achieve everything you wanted while knowing you'll lose him in the process, watch the future arrive and destroy what you have.

"I don't know," you whisper into the darkness, honesty the only gift you can give him. "I want to be. I want to be strong enough. But I don't know if I can watch you leave."

He doesn't argue or try to convince you. He just holds you tighter, and you fall asleep in his arms, stealing a few more hours before everything falls apart, before the future crashes down and buries you both.

When you wake up at dawn, gray light filtering through the curtains like watercolour, you slip out quietly. He's still sleeping, face finally peaceful after weeks, the worry lines smoothed from his forehead, looking young and untroubled. You write a note—Good luck. You've got this. You're ready.—and leave it on his nightstand where he'll see it first thing, where it will be the first words he reads.

By the time you reach home, the weight settles in. You don’t know how to do this—how to watch him win, how to let him go, how to keep breathing through it all.

NATIONALS DAY - THE FIFTH SET

You don't go to the match. You can't. Instead, you're at the old tennis court where he found you two years ago, sitting on the ground with your back against the fence, phone clutched in your hand like a lifeline, like it's the only thing keeping you tethered to reality.

The match is being livestreamed. You told yourself you wouldn't watch, swore you'd stay away from your phone entirely, that you'd spend the day anywhere but here thinking about anything but tennis. But you can't help checking the score every few minutes, refreshing the page compulsively, watching the numbers change.

Sungho is losing badly. He's down two sets to none, his play is sloppy and unfocused, and according to the commentary you can't stop yourself from reading, he looks completely lost out there. Your phone buzzes with texts from his teammates :

Where are you?

He's falling apart.

He keeps looking for you in the stands.

Please come. He needs you.

Each message is a knife to your heart, sharp and precise, cutting deeper with each notification. You did this. Your absence is costing him the most important match of his life. Your cowardice is destroying his future. You're the reason he's losing, the reason his dream is slipping away.

But going would cost you everything. Watching him win means watching him leave, it means sitting there while he achieves his dream and simultaneously destroys yours by leaving you behind. You've spent four years trying to survive losing tennis. You don't know if you can survive losing him too. You don't know if there's enough of you left to lose.

Your phone rings, shattering the quiet. It's his best friend from the team.

"Where the hell are you?" he demands without preamble, voice sharp with panic and anger.

"I can't—"

"He's dying out there. I've never seen him play this badly. He's giving up. He keeps searching the crowd, and when he doesn't find you, he just—he's giving up. We're watching his future die."

"I can't watch him leave," you say, and your voice is wrecked, barely recognizable, scraped raw. "Don't you understand? If he wins, he's gone. He's going to Stanford, going pro, going everywhere I can't follow. And I'll be here, still broken, still unable to play, watching him live my dream from thousands of miles away while I rot in this town."

"So you're going to let him lose?" His voice is sharp, cutting through your defenses like a scalpel. "Let him throw away his future because you're too scared to show up? Let him fail because you can't handle watching him succeed?"

"That's not fair—"

"You told him once what it felt like to lose tennis,” he says, voice cutting through your silence. “It gutted you and left you empty, you didn’t know who you were without it.” His voice is relentless, refusing to let you hide. "And now you're going to let it destroy him too? Because that's what will happen if he loses this match. He'll blame himself, hate himself, and he'll never get this opportunity again. This is it. This is his one shot. And you're letting him blow it because you're too afraid of being hurt."

You're sobbing now, gripping the phone so hard your knuckles have gone white, bloodless. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to survive this."

"Yes, you do." His voice softens slightly, just enough to let kindness in. "You love him. I know you do, even if you won't say it. And if you love him, you let him have this. You let him win. You let him achieve his dream even if it costs you yours all over again. Whatever happens after, you’ll figure it out later. But right now, right this second, he needs you. So get to this stadium, or live with the fact that you're the reason he lost everything."

He hangs up. You sit there, phone pressed to your chest, crying so hard you can barely breathe, your whole body shaking with the force of it. The old tennis ball is in your pocket, and you pull it out, stare at it through blurred vision.

This ball represents everything you lost. Your dream, your future, your identity as a tennis player, the life you were supposed to live. For four years, you've carried it as a reminder of what was taken from you, a talisman of grief you couldn't let go of, physical proof that you once had something worth losing.

But Sungho gave you something back. Not your dream of course, that's gone forever, buried in the past where it belongs, dead and unmournable. But he gave you a connection to tennis again, a way back to the sport that doesn't require your body to cooperate. He made you remember why you loved it in the first place, before the injury, before the pain, before the loss carved a hole in your chest. Let you be part of it again, even if the role isn't what you planned, even if you're watching from the sidelines instead of playing.

Now you have to do the same for him. You have to let him have his dream, even if it means losing yours all over again. You have to let him achieve everything you wanted while you watch from the sidelines. You have to be strong enough to survive it.

You stand up, legs shaking, shoulder screaming from sitting on the cold ground for too long. The stadium is forty minutes away, but you run despite the pain that shoots through your shoulder with every jarring step, despite your body protesting this abuse, despite everything. You catch a bus, then another, pushing through crowds and ignoring the stares at your tear-stained face, pushing through the pain and the fear and the grief that threatens to swallow you whole.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

By the time you reach the stadium, it's the fourth set, and Sungho is about to lose the match. You push through crowds, heart hammering, ignoring protests and angry shouts, and finally find a spot in the stands, breathless and sweating despite the cold, your shoulder a constant scream of agony.

The court is far below, and he looks small from this distance, diminished that it breaks your heart. He's at changeover, sitting on the bench with his head in his hands, shoulders slumped in defeat, the picture of someone who's already given up. You've never seen him look so broken, so utterly defeated, and it's your fault. Your absence did this. Your cowardice destroyed him.

He looks up, scanning the crowd one more time with the desperate hope of someone who knows they're looking for a ghost, and his eyes find yours.

The change is instantaneous, electric. His entire body straightens, eyes widening in shock, relief and salvation. Even from this distance, you can see the transformation wash over him—defeat transmuting into determination, despair into hope. He stands up, never breaking eye contact, and you see him mouth your name.

You touch your chest, the signal that means I'm here, breathe, you've got this. He nods, jaw setting with new determination, his entire posture changing. The referee calls him back to the court, and he picks up his racket with renewed purpose, with the conviction of someone who's been drowning and finally found air.

The fourth set is brutal. He claws his way back from the edge of defeat, fighting for every point with desperate intensity. Your shoulder is aching from tension, your hands are gripping the railing so hard you're leaving marks in the metal, and you're coaching him with every signal you know, your entire body involved in the match, every muscle tense.

Point to your temple : Think, don't just react, use your strategic mind.

Flat palm pressed down : Stay calm, control the pace, dictate the rhythm.

Fist over your heart : You can do this, I believe in you, I've always believed in you.

He wins the fourth set, and the crowd erupts, but you barely hear them. All you can see is Sungho, the way he looks at you like you're the only person in the stadium, like you're the only thing that matters.

The fifth set is the most intense tennis you've ever witnessed. Every point is a battle, every game is agony that stretches your nerves to breaking. You're living and dying with each shot, your heart stopping with every close call, your breath catching with every rally. This is your coaching, your strategy, your understanding of tennis made manifest in his movements. Every perfect shot, every brilliant get, every impossible return, you can see your influence in all of it, can see the countless hours you've spent teaching him crystallized in each moment.

You should feel proud. You should feel vindicated, satisfied, fulfilled by this evidence of your impact.

Instead, you feel like you're dying. Because every brilliant shot, every impossible get, every point he wins brings him closer to victory. And victory means leaving. Victory means he’s leaving to Stanford, the professional tour and a future that doesn't include you except as a voice on the phone, a text message, a memory that fades with distance.

Match point. The entire stadium holds its breath, thousands of people silent and tense, suspended in this moment. Sungho bounces the ball at the baseline, preparing to serve, and he looks at you one last time.

You press your hand to your heart just once, and point at him. It’s a silent promise, a goodbye, a confession all at once. 

I love you, Now go. Win. Be everything you were meant to be. Be extraordinary.

He tosses the ball high, the world narrowing to the sound of his heartbeat and the weight of the moment. His arm arcs, the racket slicing through the air—a clean, sharp sound that cuts through the stadium’s silence.

The serve is fast, precise, devastatingly perfect. The ball rockets across the court, kisses the line, and skids out of reach before his opponent can even react.

A beat of silence, then the umpire’s call rings out, firm and final. “Game, set, match.”

The crowd explodes into chaos, a wave of sound that crashes over everything. His teammates rush the court, his coach is shouting in triumph, and media are already swarming with cameras and microphones, capturing this moment for posterity. But Sungho is searching for you, pushing through the chaos with single-minded determination, eyes wild and searching.

You're already moving, trying to slip away before he reaches you, feet carrying you towards the exit on autopilot. 

You can't do this. 

You can't congratulate him while feeling like your heart is being ripped out, can't smile and pretend you're okay when everything is falling apart, can't watch him celebrate achieving your dream while you die inside.

However, he's faster. He catches you at the edge of the stands, still holding his racket, breathing hard from the match and the sprint to reach you, sweat dampening his hair and his shirt clinging to his body.

"You came," he gasps, and there's wonder in his voice, disbelief and joy tangled together.

"You won." Your smile feels like it's cracking your face, like your skin might split from the effort, like you might shatter into pieces if you stop holding yourself together. "You were incredible. You're going to be extraordinary. You're going to achieve things I can only dream of."

"I need to tell you—"

"Sungho, you should go. Everyone's waiting, the press wants interviews, the scouts want to talk to you about your future—"

"I've been in love with you since sophomore year." The words explode out of him, raw and desperate.

The world stops. You stare at him—Sungho, your Sungho, your person—and he’s crying, tears cutting through the sweat on his cheeks. He’s still clutching his racket like a lifeline, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that he’s finally said it out loud.

You’d known, of course. You’d both known, but neither of you ever said it until now.

"That night at the tennis court, when you told me why you hated me?" His voice shakes, thick with everything he’s tried not to say. "I fell in love with you right there. With your pain, your passion, the way you loved tennis so much you couldn't stand to be near it. I fell in love with your anger, your grief, your refusal to give up even though you lost everything. I fell in love with how broken you were and how you kept surviving anyway."

"Don't—" You're crying too now, tears blurring your vision.

"Every match I won, I only wanted you to see it. Every trophy meant nothing if you weren't there to understand what it cost, to see the work behind it. I've been yours for two years, and you never let me tell you. You kept pushing me away, keeping me at arm's length, protecting yourself." He takes a shaking breath, tears streaming down his face unchecked. "So I need to tell you now. I love you. I'm in love with you. I have been for so long I don't remember what it felt like before. You're the reason I play. You're the reason any of this matters."

Tears are streaming down your face, and people are definitely staring, cameras are probably recording this, but you don't care anymore. "Why are you telling me this now? You're leaving—you're going to Stanford, going pro, going everywhere—"

"So come with me."

"What?"

"Whatever happens next—college, pro circuit, wherever tennis takes me—come with me, as mine. Come with me as the person I love, as my partner, as the person I want to share all of this with." His hands frame your face, thumbs brushing away tears. "I don't want any of this without you. The victories are meaningless if you're not there. Come with me."

You want to say yes so badly you can taste it, bitter and sweet on your tongue. You want to promise him forever, want to follow him anywhere, want to throw caution away and leap into this terrifying unknown. But reality crashes back in, cold and unforgiving and final.

“I can't follow you around the world watching you play tennis," you say, and each word is glass in your throat, cutting you as you speak, drawing blood with every syllable. "It'll kill me. I'll be happy for you, but I'll be dying inside. Watching you live my dream while I'm just... there. I'll just be watching and existing as an appendage to your success, hollowing out piece by piece until there's nothing left of me."

"Then I won't go."

"WHAT?" You almost shout it, drawing more stares, more attention. "No. Absolutely not. Sungho, you are not giving this up—"

"If it means losing you—"

"You can't choose me over tennis!" You grab his shirt with both hands, desperate for him to understand this one crucial thing, this truth that's more important than love or desire or any of the feelings tearing you apart. "Have I not said it enough? I know what it's like to lose tennis. It destroys you from the inside out, carves you hollow until you're not a person anymore, just a shell walking around pretending to be alive. You become a ghost, haunting your own life. And I won't—I will not be responsible for that. I won't be the reason you give up your dream. I won't be the thing you resent in five years when you're working some miserable job and wondering what could have been if you'd just chosen differently."

"You're my dream too—"

"Your dream is tennis. It always has been." You're sobbing now, words barely intelligible through the tears, your whole body shaking. "And that's okay. That's good. That's how it should be. Someone should get to live it. Someone should get to have the future I lost, the life I was meant to have. And I want it to be you. I want you to have everything."

"Not without you." His hands come up to frame your face, holding you like you might disappear. "I don't want any of it if you're not there. None of it means anything without you."

"You have to want it," you insist, holding his wrists to keep his hands on your face, needing this contact even as you push him away. "You have to want tennis for yourself, not for me. Because I can't be your reason. I can't be the thing you resent later when the pressure gets too much and you wish you'd made different choices. I can't be your excuse for why you didn't achieve everything you could have."

"I could never resent you."

"You don't know that." You take a shaking breath, trying to gather courage for what you need to say. "Go to Stanford. Go play tennis at the highest level. Chase every opportunity, win every match you can, become everything you're capable of becoming. And I'll... I'll be here. I'll be building something that's mine."

"That's not—"

"I'll watch your matches when I can," you continue quickly, before you lose your nerve entirely, before you change your mind. "I'll text you advice when you want it. I'll be so proud of you from wherever I am, so proud I could burst with it. We can try long distance, if you want. If you think we can survive it."

He's searching your face desperately, looking for something you're not sure you can give him. "Can we? Really? Can we survive you here and me there?"

"I've watched you grow into the player you are today," you say softly, every word chosen with care, honest in its uncertainty. "I've seen you at your worst and your best. I've been in love with you—" The admission finally breaks free, and it feels like bleeding out, like opening a vein. "I've been in love with you for longer than I want to admit. Probably since that night at the courts when you listened to me talk about my tennis, when you didn't try to fix me or offer platitudes. If long distance is how we stay together, then we'll try. We'll try as hard as we can."

"You love me?" His voice cracks on the words, breaks completely, and fresh tears spill down his face.

"Of course I love you, you idiot. How could I not? You're brilliant, dedicated and kind, you made me remember how to love tennis again when I thought that part of me was dead forever. You gave me back something I thought I'd lost permanently. You made me whole that I didn't think was ever possible again."

He just looks at you for a long moment, eyes searching, glistening. The noise of the crowd feels far away now, muffled, like the world has shrunk down to the space between you.

He steps closer, hesitating, like he’s giving you the chance to pull away. His hand lifts slowly, cupping your face with the lightest touch, thumbs brushing along your cheekbones. You’re trembling from adrenaline, from exhaustion, from the weight of everything between you, and you can’t pull back.

“Don’t do this to me, love,” he whispers, voice breaking, gaze locked on yours.

All that comes out is a quiet, broken sound, half a sob, half a laugh.

The space between you disappears. His hand finds the back of your neck, your breath catches, and before you can think, his mouth is on yours finally, desperate, messy and perfect, two years of wanting collapsing into one breathless, aching moment. His lips taste like salt from his tears, from the relief, from everything you’ve both held back. The kiss is fierce, tender and shattering all at once.

When you pull apart, you're both crying and smiling, and his teammates are definitely whooping in the background, cameras probably capturing all of it for posterity, but neither of you cares.

"I'll call you every day," he promises, breathless, foreheads pressed together. "I'll come home every break. I'll—"

"You'll focus on tennis," you interrupt gently, needing him to hear this, to understand. "You'll work hard and make the most of every opportunity. And yes, you'll call me. But Sungho—" You cup his face, making sure he hears this, that he truly understands. "Tennis comes first. It has to. Because if you sacrifice your future for me, you'll hate me eventually. Maybe not now or next year, but someday. And I can't live with that. I can't survive you hating me."

"I could never hate you."

"Just promise me you'll choose tennis when you have to. Promise me you won't let me hold you back."

He hesitates, and you see the war in his eyes, love versus ambition, staying versus going, you versus everything else. "I promise, but you have to promise me too."

"Promise what?"

"Promise me that you'll build your own life, your own dreams. Don't just wait around for me and exist in the spaces between my matches." His thumb traces your cheekbone with infinite tenderness. "You're not just my coach or my girlfriend or any role that's defined by me. You're you. You deserve a future that's yours, that you choose, that makes you happy."

The words hit you like a revelation, a truth you've been avoiding for two years. For two years, you've built your identity around coaching him, around being close to tennis through him, around existing in his orbit. But that's not sustainable. That's not healing. That's just replacing one form of grief with another, one form of loss with a different kind.

"I promise," you whisper, and mean it. "I'll figure out what I want, who I am without tennis, who I am separate from you."

"Good." He kisses you again, softer this time, sweet and lingering. "Because I'm in love with you, not tennis-coach-you or angry-at-the-world-you. Just you. Whoever you decide to be."

"Sungho!" His coach's voice cuts through the moment like a blade, sharp and insistent. "We need you for interviews! The media's waiting!"

He groans but doesn't let go of you immediately, holding on for a few more precious seconds. "I have to—"

"Go. This is your moment. You earned it."

"Our moment," he corrects, stubborn even now.

"Okay," you concede, smiling through tears that won't stop falling, that seem endless. "Our moment."

He kisses your forehead, your nose, your lips one more time, each kiss a promise and a prayer, then he's being pulled away by teammates and coaches, swept up in the chaos of victory, but he keeps looking back at you, grinning like he's won more than just a tennis match, like he's won something far more valuable.

You watch him go, and it hurts—God, it hurts with the intensity of a physical wound, but it's different now. It's not the aching grief of watching a stranger live your dream, but the bittersweet pain of loving someone enough to let them fly, even when it means losing them. Even when it means watching them soar while you stay grounded.

TWO YEARS LATER

The stadium is massive, cavernous that it makes you feel small, filled with thousands of people all chanting for their favourite players, the noise a physical force. You're in the stands, wearing Sungho's number on a shirt he sent you, a press credential hanging around your neck that grants you access most people would kill for.

You're not just his girlfriend anymore. You're a junior correspondent for a major sports network, covering tennis tournaments around the world, turning your knowledge into a career you built yourself. It turns out you have a gift for analyzing play, for explaining strategy to audiences who don't understand the intricacies of the sport, for breaking down matches that it makes tennis accessible without dumbing it down. Your injury gives you perspective that former players don't have. You understand loss that it makes your commentary richer, more empathetic. Your coaching experience gives you insight into the mental game, the psychological warfare that happens between points. And your love for tennis, which you've finally, finally reclaimed as your own instead of something stolen from you, gives you passion that translates through the screen, that makes viewers feel what you feel.

It's not the future you planned at thirteen. But it's built from the ashes of your broken dream into something entirely your own. You're not living vicariously through anyone. You're building your own legacy, making your own mark on the sport that broke you.

Sungho is on the court below, playing in a major professional tournament, his movements fluid and confident. He went pro after two years at Stanford, couldn't resist the pull of the tour any longer, and now he's ranked in the top fifty in the world and climbing. You've watched him rise, watched him struggle through injuries, losses and moments of doubt, watched him grow into the player you always knew he could be. You watched him become extraordinary.

The long distance has been brutal in ways neither of you anticipated. Months apart, different time zones that make phone calls a complicated negotiation, the constant pressure of his career weighing on both of you. You've had fights over crackling phone connections and tearful video calls and moments where you both wondered if loving each other from opposite sides of the world was sustainable, if you were just prolonging the inevitable breakup, if it would be kinder to just end it.

But somehow, you've made it work. Because he keeps his promises. He calls every day even when he's exhausted, visits when he can even when the travel destroys him, chooses tennis when he has to but always comes back to you. And you've kept yours. You built a career you love that exists independently of him, created an identity separate from his success, learned to watch tennis without it destroying you piece by piece. You learned to love the sport again on your own terms.

The match is close, intense that it has your heart pounding. The fifth set, tied at five games each. You're not coaching him anymore, he has a professional coach for that, someone with credentials and experience you don't have, but you're still watching with a critical eye, still mentally noting his footwork and shot selection, old habits impossible to break even after all this time.

He wins a brilliant point, a drop shot that catches his opponent completely off guard, perfectly executed with the kind of touch that can't be taught. When he looks up at the stands, his eyes find yours immediately, unerringly. Even in a crowd of thousands, he finds you, like you're the only fixed point in his universe, like you're magnetic north and he's a compass.

You touch your chest—the old signal, the one that means I love you, breathe, you've got this, and he grins, bright, beautiful and still capable of making your heart stutter after all this time.

He wins the match. Of course he does. When he's done with the mandatory interviews and handshakes and all the performative aspects of professional tennis, when he's finally free, he runs straight to you, ignoring protocol, ignoring his team's exasperated shouts.

You meet him at the edge of the court, and he lifts you in a crushing hug, spinning you around while you laugh into his neck, breathing him in, still the same shampoo after all this time.

"You were incredible," you say when he sets you down, slightly dizzy from the spinning and from him, from the intoxication of his presence after weeks apart.

"You always say that."

"Hey! It's true! That backhand down the line in the fourth set was perfection."

He kisses you, right there in front of cameras, fans and everyone, claiming you publicly like how he's claimed you privately for years, unashamed and unafraid. When he pulls back, his eyes are soft with love and exhaustion, dark circles under them from the travel and training.

"Come on," you say, taking his hand and lacing your fingers through his, the gesture automatic after years of practice. "You have more press to do. The post-match conference is in twenty minutes."

"Skip it. Come back to the hotel with me. I haven't seen you in three weeks."

"Sungho, you can't skip mandatory press. Your agent will murder you, and then murder me for enabling you."

"I'll risk it for five minutes alone with you. Just five minutes."

"Your definition of five minutes is highly suspect." You laugh, tugging him towards the press tent despite his protests, despite the way he drags his feet. "Besides, I'll be there tonight. We have the whole night."

"Promise?"

"Promise. Now go charm the reporters before they decide you're difficult."

He groans but goes, and you watch him transform into his public persona—charismatic, humble, gracious in victory. You've watched this transformation dozens of times, the way he puts on this mask for the media, and you're one of the few people who gets to see him without it, who knows the person beneath the performance.

Later that night, in a hotel room in a city you'll leave tomorrow, he pulls you close and whispers, "You would've beaten me, wouldn't you?"

It's become a ritual, this question. He asks it after every important match, and you always give the same answer, this truth that you've both made peace with.

"Every single time."

"I'm glad." He kisses your temple, gentle and reverent, full of affection that hasn't dimmed despite the distance and time. "That you still could. Even if it's just in theory."

For the first time in years, the words don't hurt. They're just a truth you can live with, one that acknowledges your past without letting it define your present or dictate your future. The ghost of the girl you were at thirteen finally rests in peace, her dream honored but no longer a source of grief. You've built a new dream, one that's entirely yours, one that exists independently of him even though you choose to share it with him.

"I love you," you tell him, and mean it with everything you are, with every broken and healed part of yourself, with all the pieces you've put back together in a different configuration.

"I love you too." He pulls you closer, and you fall asleep in his arms, not dreaming of tennis courts anymore but of futures you never planned but wouldn't trade for anything. Futures you chose. Futures that are yours.

Your shoulder still aches. It always will. Some losses are permanent, some doors stay closed forever, some dreams die and stay dead. You've made peace with that. But standing here, existing in this life you've built from ruins, you realize you've found something better than your original dream.

You've found a way to love tennis again on your own terms. You've built a career that's yours, that you earned through your own merit. And more importantly, you've found someone who loves you, not despite your brokenness, but with it, as part of the whole complicated person you are. Someone who sees your scars and stays. Someone who's willing to fight for you across any distance, who chooses you even when choosing you is hard.

The fifth set is over. You both won.

━━━━━━━━

END NOTE :

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the pub never felt fully alive in the way people expected it to be. it wasn’t the music or the laughter or even the warm taste of alcohol. it was something quieter, in the pauses between orders and the way time seemed to drag its feet whenever park sungho stood behind the bar. he learned your shifts before he even learned your name properly. learned the tune that you hum before he ever let himself look for too long. and every night as he poured drinks with steady hands and a blank expression, his eyes would still drift, betraying him, towards you. and always, without fail, there would be men who looked at you like you were part of the menu. hungry eyes that didn’t belong to hunger at all. lust. sungho would tighten his grip on the bottle of alcohol until it stopped feeling like glass.

after closing time, the pub emptied itself of strangers. sungho would wait outside, hands in his pockets, shoulders loose, acting as if he just happened to be leaving at the same time as you, every night. and every single night, he would walk you home. it became a quiet habit before it became a decision. the streets after 3am felt different, less loud. the world shrank into the space between your steps, with the soft glow of streetlights. you talked sometimes. other nights, you didn’t. but the silence between the two of you was never empty.

he learned the small details without asking for them. the way you hugged your coat tighter when the wind turned sharp. the way your apartment was too small for someone who carried so much of the night on their shoulders. somewhere along these walks, sungho stopped thinking of it as protection and started realising it was something worse. something much softer. something that stayed even after he told himself it shouldn’t. he didn’t notice the exact moment it changed. only that one night, when you reached your door and turned back to say goodbye, he found himself hoping, unreasonably hoping, that you would look at him longer. and when you did, he finally understood. he was already falling. too deep. too fast.

it happened on a night that looked no different from the others. same dim lights. same vinyl records. same people drinking their asses off. sungho noticed him the moment he walked in, the burly man who laughed too loudly, drank too fast, and looked at you like lust was the only thing he knew. at first, it was just another uneasy presence in the room, one of many. sungho told himself not to stare too long, he told himself it wasn't his place. 

but then he saw the way the man kept calling you over, the way his hand lingered a second too long when you handed him a drink, the way you smile tightened at the edges. and then, too suddenly, too wrong, sungho saw him cross a line. the man called you over again, and this time when you leaned in to place the drink down, his hand didnt stop where it should have, it slid up your thigh. then further. your breath caught so sharply it hurt, body freezing as if it had forgotten how to move. “hey–” you managed, barely. but it wasn’t loud enough. it never was in moments like this. across the room, sungho saw it. something in him snapped. 

a strange hollow stillness filled him like everything inside him had gone too quiet to function properly. then he was moving. out from behind the bar, through the noise, straight towards the table without thinking long enough to regret it. a punch landed before anyone could understand what was happening. the man stumbled back, chair crashing, shock snapping into rage almost instantly. “who the hell do you think you are?” he spat, already pushing forward again.  

“don’t touch her.” sungho said. his voice wasn’t loud and that was what made it worse. someone grabbed his arm, someone shouted his name. the pub erupted, chairs scraping, voices rising and security rushing. sungho didn’t step back, he hit him again. and again. not because he wanted to fight but because he couldn’t unsee what he had seen. and through it all, you finally found your voice, “sungho– stop!” 

he turned immediately. like you were the only sound he could still hear. he looked lost, breathing unevenly, knuckles red. “i’m sorry.” he said quickly, “i saw him touching you and i– i couldn’t just stand there–” your hands were trembling, you hated that they were. “you’re going to get fired..” you said. “i don’t care,” he answered instantly. 

something in your chest tightened, because that was exactly the problem. you stepped forward without thinking, grabbing his wrist and dragging him into the breakroom. “idiot,” you muttered, though your voice wasn’t sharp. it wasn’t an insult, it was something softer pretending to be one. 

sungho sat on the back chair near the storage room, still tense. you found the first aid kit and when you came back, he looked up at you like he wanted to say something but decided against it. “let me see.” you said simply. he hesitated. then, slowly, he held his hand out. you knelt in front of him, careful as you cleaned the cuts. the silence between you was heavy, full of everything neither of you knew how to put into words yet. he watched your face more than he watched your hands.

“you shouldn’t be here,” he said suddenly. your fingers paused, “what?” “this job,” he said, jaw tightening slightly. “this place.. you shouldn’t have to deal with people like that.. you deserve better than.. all of this.. you could leave, you could just– walk away.” he frowned. “and go where?” you asked softly. that made him stop. your hands moved carefully again, wrapping the bandage around his knuckles. your knee brushing his. sungho noticed, of course he did. the air between you shifted undeniably.

“you did it for me..” you said. his throat moved slightly as he swallowed, “i would do it again.” that broke the silence. or maybe deepened it. you didn’t realise you were leaning in until you were already too close to pretend it was accidental. sungho didn’t move away. he looked like he was waiting, like he had been waiting for too long to stop it now. when you kissed him, it wasn’t the usual gentle way people expect first kisses to be. it was full of everything unspoken, too careful and too desperate at the same time. his uninjured hand cupped your cheek as he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. for a moment, nothing else existed. 

then you pulled away first. breathing unevenly. eyes not quite steady. you stood up too quickly, “i should go,” you said. his brows furrowed slightly, “wait–” but you were already stepping back and avoiding his eyes. sungho didn’t stop you and just watched. like he knew you were leaving before you even stood up. and this time, the silence felt like something cracked open.

the next few days felt wrong in a way sungho couldn’t explain properly. at first, he told himself it was normal. people took time off, shifts change. but then a second day passed, then a third. and your name stopped appearing on the chart entirely. on the fourth day, he finally asked. the boss didn’t look at him for long before answering. just a tired glance, a shrug that carried too much meaning. “she resigned, didn’t say much,” he said flatly.

sungho didn’t remember leaving the pub after that conversation. only the feeling that his body had already started moving before his mind agreed to it. your apartment looked smaller than usual. he stood across the street for a long time before crossing over, like he was afraid the closer he got, the less real it would become. he peeked through your window, no light inside, no movement, no sign that anyone was home. he knocked anyway. ddok ddok ddok. nothing. then the door beside your apartment opened. an elderly woman peeked out, eyes narrowing slightly in cautious curiosity before softening when she saw him. “you looking for her? she asked. “ah– yeah.. is she home?” sungho asked. 

the woman hesitated. the she sighed, shaking her head. “oh dear.. she hasn’t been home for a while,” she said gently, “you must be someone from her work..” sungho’s throat tightened, “do you know where she is?” 

at that, her expression changed slightly, something quieter, more careful, “she’s in the hospital.. been there for a while now..” the word didn’t land properly at first. hospital. it stayed suspended between them, refusing to turn into meaning. sungho stared at her, unblinking. “...hospital?” he repeated. the woman nodded slowly, “yes.. i think they tried contacting family but–” she stopped when she saw his face but sungho was already moving before she could finish. 

sungho didn’t think. he just ran. the streets blurred into each other under the flicker of streetlights, each steps hitting harder than the last like his body was trying to outrun something it already knew was coming. he didn’t feel the pain in his lungs at first. didn’t feel the ache and burn in his legs. only the sharp, relentless urgency in his chest that refused to slow down. hospital. the word kept repeating in his head like a broken alarm. hospital. hospital. hospital. and with it came fragments he hadn’t asked for, memories that surfaced violently as he ran. you standing by the counter, like exhaustion sat heavier on your shoulders than you let on. the faint way your hand would tremble when you thought no one was looking. the nights you smiled anyway. the nights you didn’t. he pushed harder.

glass doors came into view, he stumbled inside, breath ragged, immediately approaching the front desk. “Y/n L/n..” he said, voice breaking before he control it. “I– I’m looking for her.. i’m one of her emergency contacts from work..” the receptionist checked the system then directed him upstairs. sungho didn’t remember the elevator ride, only the sound of his own heartbeat, too loud, too fast, like it was trying to warn him. a doctor met him in the corridor, not rushed, not confused, just still. too still. and sungho knew, even before a word was spoken, that something inside the world had already changed shape. “where is she? is she okay?” sungho said immediately.

the silence that followed was wrong. the kind of silence that doesn’t belong in conversations about living people. the doctor’s expression softened in a way that felt unbearable. “she was suffering from lupus..” he said gently, “it was diagnosed too late.. a month ago.. we did what we could but..”

the rest didn’t come out as words. it didn’t need to.sungho stared at him, uncomprehending at first, like the sentence had been spoken in a language he used to know but had forgotten how to translate. then it hit. all at once.

“no,” he said immediately, shaking his head once, then again, as if denial could undo it. “no, that’s not– she was just here.. she was–” his voice cracked, the world tilted slightly. the doctor’s mouth moved again, something softer this time but sungho couldn’t hear properly anymore. because the only thing that existed was the sudden, impossible absence of you. his legs gave out, he collapsed onto the floor, knees hitting the cold tile, hands trembling uselessly. 

“no..” he said again, but it wasn’t denial anymore. it was breaking. and for the first time, there was no anger left in him at all, only the unbearable realization that he had been running towards a moment he could never outrun.

too late.

too late.

too late.

a month later, the pub still opened at the same hour. the lights still flickered in the same tired music still spilled out into the street, and the same laughter still rose and fell like nothing had ever change. sungho still finished his shifts. still cleaned his station. still wiped down the bar until it shone under the light. still nodded at coworkers and customers who no longer asked where you were. time moved forward around him as if it had no memory of you at all.

but he did. every night, when the doors finally closed behind the last customer. sungho would step outside with the same habit he couldn’t break. same pause. same instinct. his hands would slips into his packers without thought, and his eyes would drift toward the street like he was looking for a shape the world had already erased. he would wait. not because he expected you to appear. but because some part of him still hadn’t learned how not to.

the air outside was always cooler after closing. quieter too. the kind of silence that used to belong to you both, walking side by side under streetlights that never quite reached the ground. 

he stood there longer each night. until the waiting stopped feeling like waiting and started feeling like remembering. one night, he took a step forward without realising why. then stopped. his gaze fell to the empty space beside him. and just like that, it came back all at once. the walk home, the sound of your voice, the way you used to look over at him like you were still deciding whether to trust the quiet between you. 

the absence hit him gently. not like the hospital. not like the floor. worse. like something that had always been there, and now wasn’t. sungho exhaled slowly. his hand tightened in his pocket then loosened again. like he couldn’t decide what to do with it.

and for a moment, he just stood there outside the pub, watching a street that no longer led anywhere he could follow. then he turned away, not because he had moved on but because there was nowhere left to wait.

he still stood outside the pub after every shift. waiting out of habit for someone who would never walk back to him again.

bunny gif divider by @kthice | network: @berrybittynetwork

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Just enough time for him to catch a glimpse of regret.

“I think the lilies look nice,” Lee Riwoo says to you, snapping you out of your trance and back into reality. The loud chattering in Myung Jaehyun’s living room begins to fill your ears again, your eyes focusing on a vase at the center of the dining table. You become painfully aware of how hard you’re squeezing the glass cup in your hand, your knuckles a shade of red and white as Riwoo continues saying something to you — something about a wedding and Jaehyun’s fiancée looking more stressed than ever. And it’s then that you realize exactly where you are and why you were even there to begin with.

Myung Jaehyun, a college friend of yours — a friend you met through him — was getting married in less than two months and he’d thrown a little get-together to help his future bride relax. However, it didn’t seem to be working very well, considering the vein so visibly popping out of her forehead.

You glanced at Riwoo, who seemed so entranced by the lilies on the table, inspecting every atom of the flower. “You think she’s nervous?” you asked the man. “Or maybe she needs more time?”

“Hm, I don’t know,” Riwoo replies, crossing his arms over his chest, glancing at Jaehyun’s fiancée and then at you. “She’s always been anxious. Honestly, I don’t know how they even ended up together. Jaehyun’s the most carefree person I know.” You nod, your eyes wandering a bit too far left, accidentally meeting Sungho’s again. Riwoo’s words fade into the background and as much as you’d like to look away — or look at him with something other than reminiscence in your eyes — you can’t.

You’re surprised he hasn’t tried talking to you yet, hasn’t even bothered to get a little closer to you since you walked through the door. And as much as you hated to say it, it wasn’t the first time you’d broken up with him.

You met Park Sungho six years ago, when you were seventeen and stupid and completely hopeless. He’d always described it as “love at first sight”, knowing your fates were entwined from the moment he laid eyes on you. But once again, you were an idiot and hopeless and so, so desperate to fall in love.

Petty arguments about anything and everything, differing views on certain situations, your short temper and his overly sensitive demeanor — perhaps a combination of all three? — were just some of the many reasons for your break-ups. Frequent, excessive, maybe a bit too much. You could never quite see eye to eye, and your pride would never allow you to meet him halfway, no. With you, it was always all or nothing. 100 or zero. Never in between. And the thing about Park Sungho?

He was always stuck in between. Always unsure, always hesitant, almost as if he was afraid of committing to you.

Well, at least in your eyes.

You’d been there for almost three hours before you decided you'd had enough of your ex-boyfriend practically drilling a hole into your back. It was already hard trying to pretend like you weren’t interested in him, trying to pretend like nothing was wrong in front of your friends when he just wouldn’t stop looking at you. So after saying goodbye to Jaehyun and his fiancée — and other people you’d chatted with that day — you left.

And Sungho followed.

He’d never been the type to lead, not when you were together. Riwoo had always joked that you were the “man” in the relationship simply because Sungho had always just let you do whatever you wanted without question. The word “no” didn’t seem to exist in his vocabulary, not with you. “Let me ask my girlfriend.” “I need to talk to my girlfriend about this.” “What do you think my girlfriend will say?”

If you were being completely honest, you hated that about him, how he’d never speak his mind, how he’d rather stay silent than defend himself. You didn’t want to be with someone like that.

But you couldn’t hide the look on your face when he’d finally caught up to you in the elevator of Jaehyun’s apartment building, the facade you’d put up in the apartment fading almost instantly, completely giving yourself away.

“You don’t have to be so mean.” Sungho’s the first to break the silence as he stood beside you, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his brown coat, staring at the steel elevator doors. You played with your fingers, rubbing your thumb against your nail to soothe you in a way, to stop you from saying something stupid. “You don’t have to ignore me all the time.”

“I didn’t feel like talking to you,” you said. The elevator ride was painfully slow, as if the universe was taunting you, forcing you to have to interact with your ex-boyfriend. “What would I have said anyway? ‘Come back like you always do’?”

“You’ve always been such an asshole, Y/N,” he starts. “Really. You’d think you’d have smoothed around the edges by now.”

“What do you need, Sungho?” you sighed, beginning to grow impatient. “I’m sure you have much more important things to be doing than telling your ex how much you hate her.”

“I need a ride home.” Plain and shameless. You finally turn to look at him, at the side of his face, half in disbelief that he’d ask you of all people. “My brakes are fucked and my car’s in the shop until next week because god forbid a mechanic’s ever hurried to do their job.” He rolled his eyes, glancing at you. “Look, I wouldn’t have asked you if it wasn’t an emergency.”

“How’d you get here?”

“I walked.”

“You walked thirty minutes from your place?”

“Had to get my steps in anyway.”

“Are you serious?”

“Why would I lie?”

The elevator doors opened and you stepped into the lobby. Sungho followed close behind, waiting for you to respond. But you didn’t say anything to him. Instead, you grabbed your keys from the pocket of your jeans and held them out, stopping in place. He stopped beside you, staring at you with furrowed brows, trying to figure out what you wanted from him. “You’re driving,” you said, dropping the keys in his hand when he finally reached out.

“You know where I live,” he said, staring at your back as you continued to walk towards the parking garage, eventually following.

“I don’t feel like driving right now.”

It had been too long since the last time Park Sungho drove your beat-up truck. He used to tell you how you should probably invest in a newer car, one that didn’t need to be taken into the shop every couple of months, something more reliable. But you refused — because you could never really agree with Sungho on anything, could you?

He slams the door to the driver’s seat closed and puts the key into the ignition, waiting a couple of seconds before turning it and starting the engine. You sit in the passenger’s seat, slouched as a yawn leaves your mouth. “I got my exhaust fixed, by the way,” you say as he puts his seatbelt on and puts the car in reverse, one hand on the head of your seat and the other on the steering wheel as he looks behind you to check for cars. “Too much money.”

“I think you’ve spent more money trying to fix the truck than you did when you bought it,” Sungho comments, his eyes on the road as he waits for cross traffic to clear before leaving the parking garage. “You should really consider selling.”

“I don’t want to.” You shake your head, crossing your arms over your chest, your eyelids suddenly becoming heavy. “He’s my son.”

His brow lifts, “The truck?”

“He’s our son.”

The air turns stiff the moment those words leave your mouth. You hadn’t even realized you’d said them, your brain fuzzy and tired, your eyes already closed despite your efforts to try and stay awake, to try and make conversation with your ex boyfriend. After a moment, Sungho speaks. “Put something,” he says, reaching a hand down towards the ground and throwing you your aux chord. “I wanna listen to something.”

“Listen to the wind,” you reply, connecting the chord to your phone regardless. “Listen to the thoughts in your head.”

He glances at you, “They’re telling me to crash your stupid truck, Y/N.”

“… Nevermind then.” You scroll through your playlist for a moment before choosing a song — something by some British rock band you were always listening to, something quiet that would help take your mind off the man sitting in the driver’s seat. You hear Sungho start to hit the steering wheel lightly to the beat of the song and suddenly, you remember how normal this was.

Being in the passenger’s seat, slowly falling asleep as he drove you home, the windows rolled down halfway as you both listened quietly to the song that either played from your phone or the radio. It was so normal, the silence between you, neither awkward or comfortable. Just plain silence as your brains ran at a thousand miles per second, a million thoughts passing your minds, a million regrets. Your eyes open as you stare out the window, letting out a deep breath, watching the buildings pass you by.

“Do you really not wanna talk about it?” you hear Sungho ask as the truck comes to a stop at a red light. His voice is quiet, vulnerable, sensitive. It reminded you of the last time you broke up with him, how the air had practically shifted the moment you let those words leave your mouth, how this time it really did feel like you were leaving him forever.

“What is there left to say, Sungho?” you ask quietly, sinking into your seat, avoiding looking in his direction. “I think I said everything I needed to.”

“So that’s just it then?” he asks. “It’s just over. We’re done. Just like that?”

“I don’t want to talk about this here,” you say. “Not right now.”

The light turns green and the truck starts to move. You fall silent again, your eyelids no longer heavy as you think back to what you’d said to him that day. In retrospect, perhaps you had overreacted a bit, gotten a little too serious over a matter that was never meant to be serious. And maybe, though your pride would never allow you to admit it aloud, you had gotten jealous.

“She was all over you!” you’d exclaimed, flailing your arm around, your face red in anger as you yelled at Sungho in your living room. “She was literally begging you to fuck her right there!”

Sungho let out a laugh, finding your reaction to a girl that had simply asked him for directions a bit too excessive. “She wanted to know where the nearest gas station was,” he said. “I think she was a tourist.”

“She couldn’t look it up on her phone?! She had to ask you?!”

“What, I can’t talk to people now?” His brows furrowed as he watched you roll your eyes and inhale deeply. “It’s not my fault you go and get all hot and bothered every time I talk to someone.”

“I’m not bothered!”

Sungho stared at you, his brow raising questioningly because you were bothered by it. You were upset about it and you had no idea why. You’d been with him for six years. Yes, you had your ups and downs, had broken up a couple of times along the way, but getting upset over something as stupid and childish as this?

Perhaps you’d reached a new low.

You argued back and forth for a while, bringing up past arguments you’d buried long ago, your voices so loud that even your neighbors had tuned in. And despite your greatest efforts to try and prove to him you weren’t in the wrong, you knew you were. You knew you were being dramatic and that you really didn’t have to resort to arguing over something as stupid as this. But you just couldn’t lose, not to him. Not to Park Sungho.

But that’s the thing about you, isn’t it? You’d rather lose him, the man you swore to love since you were seventeen, than an argument.

“I think we should see other people.”

Sungho’s expression changed, his eyes widening, completely taken aback by what you’d said. “Are you hearing yourself?” he asked, confused. “Why would you even say that?”

“Because I mean it!” you yelled, pinching the bridge of your nose. “I can’t keep doing this with you anymore. I can’t—“ You inhaled deeply, shaking your head. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

For a moment, Sungho thought you were kidding. He stared at you silently, trying to understand what it was that had led you to say that, retracing his steps. Before, you’d always just told him you needed space, to get away from him, to think. And that was fine — he’d give you all the space you needed and then eventually, you’d both crawl your way back to each other.

But to see other people? It implied you’d stop seeing each other completely, that after today, you’d really have nothing to do with each other anymore — and you’d never done that before. Neither of you had ever dated anyone outside of each other, and the thought of having to start over with someone else quite frankly terrified Park Sungho.

Because he already had you — you and your short temper and your constant bickering about anything and everything. And while most people would take the smallest opening to leave a relationship like that, he couldn’t. No, he wouldn’t. Because he loved you and he knew you loved him, in your own weird, twisted way.

“Did you mean it?”

Your eyes open, as you stare out the window, your surroundings familiar. You were nearing Sungho’s place, memories of your drives to and from his apartment suddenly passing by in your mind. “Mean what?” you asked tiredly..

“What you said,” he responded, tapping his fingers lightly against the steering wheel to the beat of the song that played. “About seeing other people.”

One of your most fatal flaws was your pettiness and your pride. You would allow yourself to get so caught up in winning an argument that you’d say anything just to have the upper hand, just to see your opponent show their weakness. But you don’t know why you could never set your ego aside when it came to Sungho. You don’t know why you’d even let the words “other people” leave your lips because truth be told, you hated the idea. You didn’t want to see anyone else, you didn’t even want to try — because no matter how many times you’d told yourself that it was desperation that led you to him, you knew deep down that you loved Sungho.

“No,” you said quietly, biting the inside of your cheek, feeling your eyes begin to water. “I didn’t.”

“Then why’d you say it?” Sungho doesn’t look at you, not even when he pulls into the parking garage of the apartment complex he lives in and parks in his spot. He just looks straight ahead, hoping to finally get past the walls you’d put up so long ago. “Why would you lie?”

There are some things about you that Park Sungho just can’t seem to wrap his head around, even after being with you for the past six years. And one of those things happened to be how easily you would throw away your six-year relationship. But the thing was, it wasn’t easy for you — not the slightest bit.

The first night after you’d broken up, the day he took all his things from your apartment and left without even saying a word to you, you felt like you’d reached rock bottom. You were miserable. The apartment felt emptier than it had when you’d first moved in and you missed him terribly, so much to the point where the mere mention of his name was enough to make your stomach churn. But for some reason, you couldn’t bring yourself to reach out to him. You couldn’t bring yourself to apologize.

“I don’t know.” You shook your head, thinking back on it, wondering why you’d ever resorted to such an extent. “It just–” You inhaled sharply, trying to find the right words to say to Sungho, who was staring at his hands. You’d always tried so hard to appear strong in front of him, always refusing to show your emotions — but perhaps that’s part of the reason why your relationship turned out the way it did. If you hadn’t pushed him away, constantly shut yourself out, maybe things would’ve been different. “It just fucking sucks.” You feel the tears that had been brewing up since the moment he started talking finally leave your eyes, and there’s nothing you could do about it. “This just sucks.”

Sungho doesn’t remember the last time he saw you cry. Perhaps never, if he really thought about it, because you’d never let yourself. So when he finally finds the courage to look at you and sees your head in your hands, crying like you’d never shed tears a day in your life, he doesn’t know how to react. He doesn’t know if he should look away from you, leave your truck and just go home, or if he should try and say something to comfort you. But he’s never been very good at comforting you, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he’d left you there alone, so he chooses to sit beside you in silence and gather his thoughts. But Park Sungho has never been fond of the silence between you, nor the space.

So when he kisses you for the first time in months, you feel like your problems disappear for a moment, like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders and nothing else mattered in the world besides you and him and this. And it hits you harder than ever — how terrible you’ve been to him, how much you’d missed him when he wasn’t around, how deeply you loved him. It hits you as you move your hands to touch him, one getting lost in his hair while the other rests on his cheek. His hands were on your waist, slowly making their way to your back as he gently pulled you closer, as close as he could get to you.

Maybe under your skin, his bones grazing your own, your veins becoming tangled with one another. Maybe to the deepest parts of your soul, where he could feel the center of your being with his own hands, feel the warmth radiating from you and feel dragged towards it, like a moth to a flame. Maybe until your atoms merged together and you became one, inseparable. As close as you’d let him. And even then, it wouldn’t be close enough.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper against his lips as you straddle his lap, cupping his face with your hands as you look into his eyes. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” Sungho stares at you silently, his lips slightly parted, his mind fogged with nothing but you, you, you. He wanted you — now, then, always. It was the only thing about him that hadn’t changed. It was the only thing about him he couldn’t change. Frankly, he didn’t want that part about him to change.

He leans in to kiss you again, hungry and desperate, his grip on your waist tightening. He’s never wanted anything as badly as he wanted you, even with all your flaws. He didn’t care if you were short-tempered, if it bothered you to see him talk to other people. He didn’t care if you wanted to pick a fight with him about the smallest of things. He wanted you the way you were. He chose this hell and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

As long as he got to be with you.

“I love you,” he tells you once he pulls away, his eyes glossing over, his lips bruised. “I do.” He knew there was probably some other language in the world that could more accurately describe what he felt for you. Maybe in some other language, he could tell you that he’d give you the world if you asked him to, that he’d hand-pick the stars in the sky just for you if he could, that he’d travel galaxies just to be with you. Maybe it’d be easier in another language, easier for you to understand that his feelings for you were never temporary. But Sungho doesn’t know any other languages, and neither do you, so he just has to hope saying those three words is enough to get his message across.

You lean back and look at him, your right hand moving from his face down to his chest, stopping right above his heart. You could feel his heartbeat, how fast it was beating. You felt you could reach your hand into his chest and hold it, just to feel it beat in the palm of your hand. “You do?” you asked quietly, meant more for yourself than for him, feeling a smile tug at the corners of your lips. You see him nod from your peripheral, your hands moving upwards again — to his collarbone, up his neck, tracing his jaw. You wonder how you’d ever let yourself be so mean to him. You wonder why you had always had trouble telling him you loved him, even when it was so obvious to you that you did. But it didn’t feel difficult anymore. “I do too,” you said, caressing his cheek with your thumb, feeling him subconsciously lean into your hand. “I love you, Sungho.”

And there’s something about finally saying it out loud that relieves you, that makes you regret not having said them as often before. It was always going to be him, no matter how much he angered you at times, no matter how different from each other you happened to be. You would always love Park Sungho, and he would always love you. Stupidly and undeniably so.

And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

2026 © bigsuki, all rights reserved.

𓍯 whenever he misses you, he doesn’t flood your inbox with desperate texts or try to insert himself back into your life. instead, he scrolls through your old messages, reading each line as if searching for something he missed, something that might tell him how it all fell apart. on nights when the ache in his chest feels unbearable, he logs into a spam account just to check your social media. he studies your posts in silence, wondering if the smile in your photos is real or just for show.  

𓍯 after the breakup, he developed a habit of overanalyzing everything. he reads and rereads your last messages, dissecting every word, every punctuation mark. he clicks on the names of people who like your posts and studies the profiles of those you’ve recently followed, crafting stories in his head that only fuel his misery.  

𓍯 and then there was that evening—when the sun was setting and the orange light softened everything but the weight of the moment. you’d agreed to meet him for closure, ready to draw the final line between you both. you thought it would be simple, clean. a goodbye. but when it came time to leave, he just couldn’t let go of your hand.  

𓍯 standing by the side of the street, his grip tightened as though letting go would mean losing the last piece of you forever. his lips quivered as he tried to keep it together, but the tears betrayed him, spilling down his cheeks before he could even form the words. his voice was low, trembling, and desperate. “i’ll be better…hm?” his swollen eyes searched for yours, his vulnerability raw and heartbreaking.  

𓍯 in that moment, it was as if he’d fall to his knees right there on the pavement if it meant convincing you to stay. he didn’t care who might be watching or how foolish he might look. his hand stayed firm around yours, a silent plea that screamed louder than any words he could manage. he was willing to beg, to promise, to do anything—if only you’d give him one more chance. 

riwoo

𓍯 in his latest post, he wore a bracelet you both shared during better days, casually wrapped around his wrist. he doesn’t mention it, but he hopes you’ll notice. it’s his silent way of saying he still thinks about you, even now, after everything fell apart.

𓍯 he blames himself for losing you, overanalyzing every fight, every word left unsaid. he tells himself it’s because he wasn’t enough or didn’t try hard enough. in his mind, if he had just loved you better or held on tighter, maybe he wouldn’t have lost you.

𓍯 your relationship with riwoo was a cycle of hope and heartbreak, on and off, again and again. each time you tried to fix it, the cracks seemed to deepen, but he refused to let go. he gave everything to keep you, even when it felt like the universe was against you both. and yet, despite his desperate efforts, he still lost you in the end, even though it was never truly his fault.

𓍯 riwoo is the type to drunk text you, and everyone knows it. his friends would drag him out for a karaoke night at the ktv, hoping to take his mind off you. but instead of grabbing the mic and singing along, he’d sit in the corner, nursing a drink as his friends’ voices echo through the room. one shot turns into two, then three, until the alcohol numbs his senses—but not his thoughts.

𓍯 eventually, he’d slip outside under the guise of needing fresh air. his friends would find him leaning against a wall, his phone screen glowing in the dark as he carefully types out a message for you.

𓍯  his words are raw, aching with vulnerability: "how are you so good at pretending i never meant anything to you, while i’m here thinking about you all day even at times when i should be happy? did you even love me? do you ever think of me too? why does it feel like this doesn’t kill you the way it’s killing me?”

jaehyun

𓍯 you have no idea what your absence does to jaehyun. one time when jaehyun couldn't stop himself from crossing your boundaries as exes, he dialed your number and called you. when he didn't expect you to answer, you could hear how his voice wavers when he talks to you, how it almost feels like he's choking in his own tears, asking you to come back, and telling you how much he's struggling to move on. 

𓍯 “y/n, i can’t do this. please.” jaehyun’s voice cracked, his grip on your hand trembling as he stared at you with eyes that brimmed with desperation. “i don’t want to throw away all the love i have for you. i can’t. i could never give this love to someone else. so please... let me love you again.”  

𓍯 your heart clenched at the raw pain in his voice, but you forced yourself to stay firm. swallowing back the lump in your throat, you reached down to pry his hand off yours, even as it broke both of you further. “jaehyun, you can.” your voice shook, but you kept going, fighting through the ache. “right now, you feel like you can’t because… we just broke up. but trust me, you’ll move past this. you’ll give that love to someone else—someone who deserves it.”  

𓍯 his breath hitched, and he shook his head fiercely, tears streaking down his cheeks. “but they’re not you.” he choked out, the words thick with frustration and heartbreak. “y/n, it’s not the same if it’s not you.”  

𓍯 the weight of his words hung heavy in the air, suffocating. for a moment, you faltered, the pain in his voice slicing through your resolve like a blade. but you knew—no matter how much it hurt—it was over. you had to let go, even if he wasn’t ready to.

taesan 

𓍯 taesan dodges every potential relationship that comes his way, like he’s running from something he can’t bear to face. and maybe he is—because no matter how hard he tries, no matter how much time passes, he can never get over you.  

𓍯 it’s impossible for him to be with someone else without you creeping into his mind, lingering like a ghost in every quiet moment. every laugh he hears feels dull compared to yours. every fleeting touch lacks the warmth he once knew. even though you couldn’t care less that he’s still breathing, you haunt him in ways you’ll never realize.  

𓍯 women approach him, some bold, others subtle, each one trying to capture his attention. but none of them could ever come close to you. he knows it’s unfair, knows he’s holding them to a standard they could never meet because they’re not you. and yet, he lets the comparisons swallow him whole, shutting out every chance at moving on. 

𓍯 late at night, when the weight of it becomes too much to bear, he’ll grab his phone and type out messages that he knows he shouldn’t send. but he does anyway, each word a quiet plea he can’t hold back: “i just feel like… we didn’t even try enough. don’t you think?”

𓍯 even then, he knows the answer. he knows you’ve moved on without looking back. but for taesan, forgetting you feels like forgetting a part of himself

𓍯 taesan might appear composed and nonchalant to the world, but when it comes to you, he’s a storm of emotions he can’t contain. the mere thought of you and the life you could’ve shared leaves him unraveling, tears spilling freely as he lets himself feel every ounce of the ache, no longer holding back what he’s been keeping buried inside.

leehan

𓍯 when you were together, he never failed to share every detail of his day with you—what he ate, the things he saw, even the random thoughts that crossed his mind. but after the breakup, he didn’t know where to put all those thoughts anymore. with no one else to confide in, he started typing them into the notes on his phone, just in case there was ever a chance to talk to you again. in his mind, he held onto the hope that one day, he could sit down with you and tell you about everything you’d missed.

𓍯 but when reality sank in, when he realized that chance might never come, he couldn’t stop the tears from falling. the weight of missing you crushed him in moments like these, and no matter how hard he tried to distract himself, he always came back to the same aching longing.

𓍯 of all the members, he’d be the one trapped in the cycle of longing the longest. he wouldn’t open up to others, keeping his feelings bottled up instead. he thought if he could just hold on quietly, it might hurt less, but that only made moving forward harder.

𓍯 for leehan, moving on felt like losing you all over again. so he never rushed the process, knowing deep down that forcing himself to let go would only make the pain worse. he took his time, letting himself grieve at his own pace.

𓍯 he was sentimental to a fault. every little thing that had been yours—the mug you left behind, the hoodie you forgot to take home—still sat where it had always been, as if they’d belonged there all along. he didn’t have the heart to pack them away. they were pieces of you, and even if they hurt to look at, he couldn’t bring himself to let them go.

woonhak

𓍯 woonhak would be the type to keep his distance, even when his heart ached to be near you. no matter how much he missed you, he’d choose to stay in the background, silently watching as you moved forward without him. he convinced himself it was for the best, he didn’t want to disturb the peace you’d found in his absence.

𓍯 every time he thought about reaching out, his fingers would hover over his phone, only to set it down again with a quiet sigh. he couldn’t bring himself to pull you back into the tangled mess of emotions he carried. so instead, he stayed silent, swallowing his longing even when it hurt the most.

𓍯 one thing about woonhak is when he cries, he doesn’t hold back. tears fall freely as if each one carries the weight of everything he’s been holding inside. he doesn’t hesitate to let it out because keeping it in feels unbearable. but reaching out to you? that’s a step he’s too afraid to take.

𓍯  so instead, he turns to his most trusted friends, the ones who know him better than he knows himself sometimes. with shaky breaths and tear-streaked cheeks, he crumbles in their presence. “what the hell did i do wrong?” he chokes out, his voice breaking under the weight of his heartbreak. “where did it all go wrong? all i did was love her.” the words spill from him like a flood, his sobs filling the silence as his older friends wrap him in their quiet understanding. 

And it doesn’t simply mark, it claims. Eating one is an exercise in both patience and surrender. Each seed is a burst of a tart sweetness that’s worth the mess, but it leaves you wondering how something so beautiful can also be so unruly.

That was exactly why you loved pomegranates. They were a little wild, a little untamed. It was in the way the juice stained your fingers, leaving behind traces of something alive and uncontainable. It’s how every seed is a burst of flavor: tangy, sweet, and unapologetically bold. For you, pomegranates were a reminder that the best things in life aren’t always neat or simple; they’re messy, vivid, and unforgettable.

Back in your adolescence, when you were still a hopeless romantic and believed in fate and soulmates and such, you had a theory: that anyone willing to peel a pomegranate for you was to be the one. The one the universe had assigned you—your soulmate. The person you’re meant to share the messiness and beauty of life with, because, let’s be honest, peeling a pomegranate isn’t just an act, it’s a labor. 

It’s tedious, requiring patience and precision to carefully break apart the tough skin without crushing the delicate seeds. The juice inevitably smears, the tiny ruby jewels scatter, and by the end, it looks like a small battlefield in the kitchen. 

You thought of it as a test of devotion. Who else would endure the sticky fingers, the risk of stains, and the painstaking effort, all for the sole purpose of handing over a bowl of gleaming seeds? Your theory wasn’t about the pomegranate itself, it was about what it represented: the willingness to take on something cumbersome and time-consuming just to bring joy to someone else.

In your teenage mind, peeling a pomegranate was love distilled into action. A quiet, unspoken declaration that said, ‘I see the things you cherish, even the messy, difficult ones, and I want to be a part of them.’

So you used to wait, watching the people in your life with a careful eye, jokingly tossing your theory at dinner tables and gatherings but secretly hoping and wondering if someone might one day sit down, pick up a pomegranate, and show you that love can be as simple, and as profound, as peeling fruit. 

But as you grew older, your pomegranate theory began to feel like a relic of a softer, more naive version of yourself. You used to imagine someone peeling away the tough, leathery rind, their hands stained red with love and effort, and thought to yourself, ‘that’s love.’ But with time, the weight of practicality started to take hold. 

Your theory about pomegranates, something you once held close with a spark of whimsical belief, soon became just another one of those silly little things that poets and hopeless romantics dreamed up.

So, you tucked your silly theory away in a dusty corner of your mind, dismissing it as an innocent fantasy of your youth. You searched for love that was grounded, sensible, and serious about the practicalities of life. You looked for someone who could handle the demands of life without the weight of romantic idealism like yours clouding their judgement. 

There was no room for mess or chaos anymore, certainly not for the kind of love that required peeling pomegranates, both literally and metaphorically.

A loud slam of your front door made your ears perk up and you heard the familiar rustling of your boyfriend’s clothes as he shuffled through the living room. You could almost envision the way he shrugged off his outer coat before neatly hanging it on the coat hanger by the entryway.

“Baby? I’m home!” 

“In here!” you called out. The bathwater lapped at your knees, forming small waves that crashed and fell against the porcelain wall of your bathtub. Sungho knocked on the bathroom door, but only out of courtesy, before he pushed it open and greeted you with a bright smile.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he knelt by the side of the bathtub to press a warm kiss to your forehead. 

“You’re home early.” you pointed out. A hand reached out to stroke your boyfriend’s cheek, a single droplet of water running down the slope of your arm and landing back in the bathtub with a small plop. 

“Mastered the choreography first so I could come home to you,” he replied, ever so gently leaning into the warmth of your palm. “Did you just start your bath?”

You nodded, the corners of your lips lifting at his sweet words. “Just a few minutes ago. You don’t have to keep kneeling like that, you know. Your knees are going to hurt.”

“I’m fine,” he said with a chuckle. His gaze softened as he noticed the way the water cradled your form, the steam rising in delicate swirls around you. “Want some help?”

You tilted your head, teasing. “Are you volunteering to join me?”

Sungho laughed softly, shaking his head. “Maybe next time, but I can still take care of you from here.”

Before you could respond, he reached for the loofah sitting on the edge of the tub and dipped it into the warm water before lathering it up with your favorite body wash. His movements were slow and deliberate, as though he wanted to savor every second of this small, intimate moment. 

“You don’t have to, you know,” you murmured as he started gently running the loofah along your shoulder. His featherlight touch sent a slight shiver down your spine.

“I know,” he said, his voice steady and warm. “But let me.”

His voice was so soft, so filled with love, that you couldn’t bring yourself to argue. You let out a small sigh of defeat and leaned back against the tub as he started gently running the loofah over your arms. 

Sungho’s touch was delicate, as though he was handling the most fragile thing in the world. The loofah glided over your arms, his hand following to rinse away the bubbles.

“You work so hard,” he murmured, almost to himself, as he moved to your legs. “You deserve this.”

The words made your chest tighten with emotion. “You’re too good to me,” you whispered.

“No such thing,” he said with a soft chuckle, his hand brushing the back of your calf. “Taking care of my partner is the easiest thing in the world.”

You let your head rest against the edge of the tub, closing your eyes as his hands continued their tender work. The care and love infused into every motion, the way he poured his entire being into making sure you felt safe, cherished, and adored made your heart squeeze tightly.

As he finished, Sungho pressed a soft kiss to your damp shoulder, his lips lingering for a moment. “All done,” he whispered, and you noticed a hint of pride in his voice.

“Thank you,” you said, meeting his gaze. 

Sungho smiled, brushing a strand of hair from your face. “Anything for you, gorgeous. Always.”

He stood up and grabbed the big, fluffy towel from the nearby rack, shaking it out to fluff it up. “Alright, come on, let me help you out.”

You shifted in the tub, the water sloshing as you moved to stand. Sungho reached out instinctively, steadying you with his strong, gentle hands. His fingers pressed lightly against your arm and waist as he guided you to step out of the tub.

“Careful,” he murmured, his brows furrowed in concentration. 

The moment your feet touched the bath mat, he draped the towel around you, cocooning you in its warmth. You couldn’t help but giggle as he adjusted the plush fabric, tucking the edges around your shoulders like a protective shield.

“There we go. Let’s go get you dried up, and then we can go see the present I got you.”

The kitchen table was a mess—juice stains spreading across its surface, pomegranate seeds scattered among paper towels and discarded bits of rind. Sungho sat across from you, elbows resting on the table as he carefully pried apart another piece of fruit. His fingers were stained a deep crimson, the juice clinging to his skin and pooling in the small creases of his knuckles. 

“You’re making such a mess,” you teased, watching as he plucked a cluster of seeds free and placed them in a bowl.

He grinned, unfazed. “Worth it.”

He picked up a few seeds between his stained fingers, flicking away the stubborn bits of membrane, and brought them to your lips. “Here.” 

You let him feed you, the tart sweetness bursting on your tongue as he watched you with unspoken fondness. It wasn’t until you noticed the way his brows furrowed in concentration, focusing on getting a particular seed unstuck from the membrane, that it struck you how absurdly thoughtful this was.

“When did I even mention that I like pomegranates?” you asked, your voice softened with wonder and adoration.

Sungho glanced up briefly, his lips quirking up into a sheepish grin. “You told me once, when we first started dating. You were talking about how much you loved them as a kid. Said they were your favorite fruit, even though they’re a pain to eat.” 

You blinked, stunned. The memory was hazy even to you—just a passing remark in some forgetful conversation. But he’d remembered.

“You didn’t have to go through all this trouble,” you murmured, feeling your chest tighten with an unfamiliar mix of emotions.

Sungho shrugged, returning his attention to the pomegranate in his crimson stained hands. “It’s no trouble. Besides, I like seeing you happy.”

You looked down at the table and took in the chaos of it all: the stains, the mess, his juice-streaked hands, and something deep inside you shifted.

Suddenly, you were seventeen again with your heart wrapped in whimsical theories about soulmates and love.

This was it. This was what you had been searching for back then but had long stopped believing in. This was the kind of love you’d once dreamed of but had dismissed as a silly, adolescent fantasy. Yet, here it was, sitting across from you with juice-stained hands and a soft smile, proving you wrong in the most beautiful way.

Your teenage self had been right: peeling a pomegranate wasn’t just about the fruit. It was a quiet act of devotion, a willingness to embrace the mess and the effort for the sake of someone else’s joy.

Sungho broke your reverie by holding up another handful of seeds, his smile so effortlessly warm that it sent a pang through your chest.

“You don’t have to feed me,” you said with a small laugh, though your voice wavered slightly.

“I know,” he replied. His tone was gentle but resolute. “But let me.”

And as you opened your mouth for the next bite, you realized that love didn’t have to be a grand, sweeping gesture.

Sometimes, it was sitting at a messy kitchen table with stained hands and sticky fingers, peeling pomegranates because someone mentioned, just once, that they liked them.

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Tonight it's while you're brushing your teeth.

The bathroom light is warm. The apartment is quiet. You can hear the TV playing faintly from the living room where Sungho is sprawled across the couch waiting for you to finish getting ready for bed.

Everything is normal, and somehow that's what does it.

You look at yourself in the mirror. You're alive. Your heart is beating. Your lungs are breathing.

You exist.

And then the thought slips into your head.

One day I won't.

Your hand freezes. The toothbrush hangs uselessly in your mouth.

The thought grows.

One day this will end. One day I'll die.

You stare at your reflection.

No matter what I do. No matter how healthy I am. No matter how happy I am. One day I'll stop existing.

The room suddenly feels smaller.

Your chest tightens.

You spit out the toothpaste.

The panic arrives so quickly it almost makes you dizzy.

Because the worst part is, it's unavoidable. You can't fix it. You can't solve it. You can't study harder or prepare better or work your way around it.

It's just there.

Waiting.

A truth every person on earth carries around.

And for some reason tonight your brain has decided to hold it directly in front of your face.

Your breathing becomes uneven. Your hands start shaking.

"No."

You grip the edge of the sink.

"No, no, no."

Your chest hurts.

The familiar terror starts crawling through your ribs. Not because you're dying. Because one day you will.

Eventually.

Inevitably.

The realization crashes into you over and over.

You sink onto the closed toilet lid. Trying to breathe. Trying not to cry. Trying not to think.

But that's impossible.

Because the more you try not to think about it, the louder it gets.

The bathroom door opens a few minutes later.

"Sweetheart?"

Sungho's voice is soft and careful.

When you don't answer, he steps inside and immediately his expression changes. Because he knows this look. He's seen it before.

The trembling hands. The glassy eyes. The way you're staring at absolutely nothing.

"Hey," he kneels in front of you.

Your eyes finally find him, and somehow that makes everything worse. Because suddenly tears spill down your cheeks.

"Sungho."

His face softens immediately.

"Oh."

He reaches for your hands.

They're freezing.

"It's happening again?"

You nod. Once. Then twice. Unable to speak properly.

The words eventually stumble out anyway.

"I'm scared."

His thumbs rub across your knuckles.

"I know."

"I'm really scared."

"I know."

Your breathing catches.

"No matter what I do—"

Your voice breaks.

"No matter how alive I am right now—"

More tears.

"One day I'm going to die."

The words sound ridiculous when spoken aloud. Yet they hurt just as much. Maybe more.

Because they're true.

You see it in Sungho's eyes. Not agreement. Not dismissal. Just understanding.

The kind that hurts. Because he knows he can't tell you you're wrong.

Instead he carefully pulls you forward. Until your forehead rests against his shoulder.

His arms wrap around you immediately.

Holding you together.

"I know."

You start crying harder. Because that's the problem. Everybody knows. Everybody just—

Lives anyway.

How? How does everyone keep going? How does nobody panic all the time?

"How are you okay with it?" you whisper.

Sungho is quiet for a moment. You feel his chest rise and fall beneath your cheek.

"I'm not."

You blink, "What?"

"I'm not okay with it."

You lift your head. His smile is small, sad, and honest.

"I don't think anybody completely is."

The answer surprises you.

You expected reassurance. A perfect speech. A magical sentence that would make the fear disappear.

Instead he just looks at you.

Human.

Real.

"I don't want to die either."

Your throat tightens.

Sungho continues, "I want more time."

His fingers lace through yours.

"I want to grow old."

A tiny smile.

"I want annoying wrinkles."

You let out a watery laugh.

He smiles a little wider.

"I want to keep eating good food."

"And?"

"And I want to keep loving you."

Your eyes burn.

"But that's exactly why it scares me."

"I know."

"Then how do you deal with it?"

Sungho thinks for a long moment.

Then he gently presses your joined hands against his chest.

Right over his heartbeat. "Like this."

You feel it. Steady, warm and alive.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

"I can't control someday," his voice is quiet, "but I can control right now."

Another heartbeat.

"I'm here right now."

Another.

"You're here right now."

Another.

"We're alive right now."

You stare at him. Trying to absorb every word. Trying to convince your terrified brain.

Sungho reaches up and wipes away a tear.

"I think that's why moments matter so much."

Your lips tremble.

"Because they end?"

He nods.

"Because they end."

The bathroom falls silent.

For a while neither of you speaks. You just sit there listening to his heartbeat. Feeling your own slowly calm down.

The fear doesn't disappear. It never completely does.

That's the frustrating part.

The thought will probably come back next month. Or next week. Or tomorrow.

It always does.

But eventually your breathing steadies. The panic loosens its grip and the world becomes real again.

Not the terrifying future. Not the endless unknown.

Just right now.

Just Sungho, his hand holding yours and the warmth of the apartment. The TV still playing in the other room. The fact that you're both here.

Alive.

When Sungho finally stands, he tugs gently on your hand.

"Come on."

"Where?"

"Bed."

You sniffle, "That's your solution?"

"Pretty much."

A small smile appears on his face.

"We'll watch something stupid."

"What if I start thinking about it again?"

He squeezes your hand. "Then I'll remind you again."

"Again?"

"Again."

"And again?"

"Again."

You finally laugh. A real one this time.

Sungho looks ridiculously pleased with himself. As if making you laugh was his entire goal.

Maybe it was.

He leads you toward the bedroom.

Your fear isn't gone. But it's quieter now. Not because you found the answer. Not because mortality suddenly makes sense.

But because for tonight, at least, you're not carrying it alone, and that makes the weight feel lighter.

© All rights reserved @gigisnextdoor 2026.

You only realize something is wrong when your creative director doesn’t look up from her computer screen right away. Normally she greets you with a distracted nod, fingers already flying across her keyboard, the faint smell of her citrus perfume cutting through the heavier scent of steam-pressed silk. Today, she lets the silence stretch just long enough for unease to creep up your spine before finally meeting your eyes.

“Can you step in here for a moment?”

Her office feels like a different world from the atelier. Out there, the air is thick with lint and heat and the soft, constant whir of sewing machines. In here, it’s sterile, perfectly arranged, every surface too clean for a place that claims to create beauty with its hands. She gestures for you to sit, then slides a pale blue folder across the desk as if it weighs nothing.

“These are the new pieces for the spring capsule. I need you to rework the bodices and have them ready for production by the end of the week.”

You open the folder expecting vague sketches or badly scanned mood boards. Instead, you’re met with designs that stop your breath mid-inhale — not because they’re extraordinary, but because they’re familiar in a way that makes your chest tighten. The asymmetrical lace panel. The floral embroidery crawling up the skirt like it’s alive. You’ve seen these before, late at night, when you were scrolling mindlessly through social media just to remind yourself that people still dreamed loudly somewhere.

“These aren’t ours,” you say slowly, eyes tracing lines you remember far too well.

Her mouth curves into something polite, but her eyes sharpen. “They are now.”

The folder feels heavier when you close it, like it’s pressing the weight of someone else’s stolen work into your palms. You think about the girl who posted shaky videos from her childhood bedroom, the captions filled with hope and too many exclamation points, and something hardens in your chest.

“I’m not doing this,” you tell her, voice steady in a way that surprises even you.

The room changes. The air thickens, the hum of the building suddenly too loud in your ears. She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t need to. By the time you’re escorted out of the building with your access card deactivated and HR murmuring about policy violations, you already know there’s no going back.

You walk home in a daze, the cardboard box cutting into your arms, the city rushing around you as if nothing monumental just cracked open inside your ribcage.

The days after you lose your job don’t arrive cleanly. They blur together, marked only by the stale taste of instant noodles and the growing pile of fabric scraps on your coffee table that you keep telling yourself you’ll organize later. You wake up at noon with your phone tangled in the sheets, stare at the ceiling until your eyes sting, then fall asleep again with the TV murmuring to an empty room. The dresses you once brought home to fix in secret remain draped over your sewing chair, half-finished, their seams waiting patiently for hands that no longer know where they belong.

Your bank app becomes something you check with a strange mix of fascination and dread. Numbers fall. Rent looms. The hum of the city outside your window — horns, laughter, the neighbor’s music bleeding through the wall — starts to feel like it’s mocking you for standing still while everything else moves on.

On the third night, when you’re sitting on the kitchen floor with your back against the cabinet, fingers smelling faintly of thread and cheap takeout, you open your contacts without thinking.

Sunghoon’s name sits there like it’s been waiting.

You type, erase, then type again.

hey. random question. are u serious abt the spare room thing from like… years ago?

You stare at the screen long enough for it to dim.

Three dots appear almost immediately.

I was serious then and I’m serious now. What’s wrong?

Your throat tightens, but the words finally spill.

i think i really messed everything up. can I call you?

The phone rings before the message even says read.

Your phone barely has time to buzz in your palm before it’s lighting up with his name.

You scramble to answer it, thumb slipping once across the screen because your hands are shaking too hard to behave.

“Hey,” Sunghoon says, his voice warm and steady in a way that makes the ache in your chest swell instead of ease. “Talk to me.”

For a few seconds, you don’t. You just sit there on the cold kitchen tile with your knees pulled to your chest, listening to the faint hum of your refrigerator and the muted traffic filtering through the cracked window. The world feels too loud and too quiet at the same time, as if everything is happening somewhere else while you’re stuck behind glass.

“I didn’t think it would feel like this,” you finally manage, staring at the frayed cuff of your sweater. “Everyone tells you to stand your ground, to protect your values, like it’s supposed to make you feel proud. But I just feel… stupid. Like I burned down the only bridge I had and now I’m standing in the smoke pretending I meant to.”

Sunghoon doesn’t interrupt. You can almost picture him, probably leaning against the counter in his kitchen, one hand in his pocket the way he always does when he’s listening hard.

“What happened?” he asks softly.

You tell him everything. About the folder. About the designs you recognized instantly. About closing it and pushing it back across the desk even though some part of you was already screaming that you couldn’t afford to be brave. The words come faster the longer you talk, unraveling until you’re telling him about HR’s polite smiles and the way your access card went dead in your hand, about carrying a cardboard box through a lobby that had once felt like the doorway to your future.

By the time you stop, your throat is raw.

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. Not the awkward kind, but the kind where you know someone is choosing their words carefully.

“You didn’t mess everything up,” Sunghoon says. “You did the right thing. It just… doesn’t feel like it yet.”

You press your forehead to your knees. “I don’t even know how I’m going to pay rent next month.”

“Then don’t,” he replies, so casually you almost laugh. “Come here. Stay with me for a bit. I’ve got a spare room collecting dust and more quiet than you probably want, but you won’t have to worry about bills while you figure out what’s next.”

The idea hits you harder than you expect. You picture his house the way it looked in the photos he used to post — wide porch, fields stretching behind it, nothing but sky above. It feels unreal compared to the narrow view from your kitchen window, hemmed in by brick and fire escapes.

“You live so far away,” you whisper.

“Distance is a solvable problem,” he says. “You falling apart alone isn’t.”

Silence settles between you again, this time heavy with possibility. You glance around your apartment, at the dresses slung over chairs, the fabric bins shoved under your table, the half-empty coffee mug you’ve been reheating for three days. It looks less like a home and more like a place you’re hiding in.

“If I come,” you say slowly, “I won’t know what I’m doing.”

“You haven’t known what you’re doing since freshman year,” Sunghoon chuckles. “You always figured it out anyway.”

The laugh you let out is shaky, but it’s real.

“Okay,” you breathe. “Okay. I’ll come.”

He exhales, relief audible even through the phone. “Good. I’ll pick you up at the station. Just text me when you’ve got your ticket.”

When the call ends, the apartment doesn’t feel quite as suffocating anymore. It still looks the same — cluttered, dim, heavy with the ghosts of plans that didn’t survive — but now there’s a thread leading out of it, something you can follow when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.

Your phone slips from your ear and lands face-down on the tile, the call still echoing in your head even though it’s ended. For a long moment you don’t move. You stay curled there on the kitchen floor, the refrigerator humming behind you like it’s trying to remind you that time is still passing, that you can’t just sit here forever with your life paused at a standstill.

Eventually you force yourself up. Your legs feel weak, like they’ve forgotten what they’re for, but you stand anyway, pushing open drawers you haven’t touched in days, shoving aside tangled measuring tapes and loose buttons until you find your passport wedged between old receipts. It feels heavier in your hands than it should, the edges worn soft from being pulled in and out of bags over the years. You open it and stare at your photo — a version of yourself with brighter eyes and a mouth that hadn’t yet learned how to hold disappointment.

The next morning bleeds in through your blinds far too early. You wake with your heart already racing, the decision sitting on your chest like a weight you can’t ignore. The ticket app loads slowly on your phone, each second stretching unbearably long while you wait for routes, times, prices. When you finally press confirm, your finger hovers over the screen, trembling. This isn’t a vacation. It isn’t a weekend away to clear your head. It’s running — from a job that collapsed, from a city that suddenly feels like it has nothing left for you.

You pack mechanically. Dresses go into garment bags, folded carefully even though you don’t know when you’ll need them again. You linger over your sewing kit, fingers tracing the familiar shapes of your tools — the seam ripper with the chipped handle, the tiny gold scissors you bought with your first real paycheck, the pin cushion worn bald in places. You slide them into your suitcase like you’re tucking in something alive.

When you finally zip the case shut, the sound is loud in your quiet apartment. Final.

The ride to the bus terminal feels unreal. The city passes by your window in fragments — coffee shops you used to frequent, the crosswalk where you once waited in your wedding shoes after a fitting ran late, the building that held the atelier you’re not brave enough to look at anymore. You keep your eyes on your lap, on the slight shake in your hands, on the way your thumb keeps brushing the corner of your ticket like it might vanish if you don’t anchor it.

The station smells like diesel and over-brewed coffee. You sit with your suitcase between your feet, listening to the announcements echo off the tiled walls, watching families hug and friends wave and couples argue softly over nothing. No one knows you’re about to change your entire life by getting on the wrong bus in the eyes of every plan you once had.

You text Sunghoon when they call your route.

boarding now.

His reply comes instantly.

I’ll be waiting.

The bus rumbles to life beneath you, vibrating through the soles of your shoes and into your bones. As the city slides away outside the window, glass towers giving way to smaller buildings, then open stretches of road, your reflection stares back at you in the darkened pane. You look tired. Hollowed. But there’s something else there too — a thin, fragile line of determination that wasn’t there three days ago when you were crying on your kitchen floor.

Hours later, when the bus finally pulls into a station that barely qualifies as one — a single low building surrounded by nothing but land and sky — you hesitate at the top of the steps. The air hits you first: clean, sharp, unfamiliar. It smells like grass and dust and something faintly sweet you can’t name.

A pickup truck idles at the curb.

The door swings open, and Sunghoon is there, waving like he’s been standing in that spot his entire life.

Your chest tightens as you step down onto the cracked pavement, your suitcase thudding after you. He closes the distance in three long strides and pulls you into a hug before you can say a word. His flannel is warm from the sun, his arms solid around your shoulders, grounding in a way you didn’t know you needed until this second.

“You made it,” he murmurs into your hair.

You nod against his chest, swallowing hard. The city feels impossibly far away now, like something you dreamed once rather than lived inside.

As he loads your suitcase into the back of the truck, you turn slowly, taking in the emptiness around you — the endless fields, the wide, open sky that makes you feel both small and strangely hopeful. You have no idea what you’re walking into, only that it’s nothing like the life you just left behind.

And that, terrifyingly, is exactly why you came.

The truck smells faintly of leather and sun-warmed metal, a scent so different from the city that you inhale it like oxygen. Dust clings to your jeans and shoes as you slide onto the bench seat, the vinyl stiff beneath your hands. Sunghoon starts the engine, the rumble filling the cab, vibrating through your chest in a way that’s unsettlingly grounding. Outside, the road stretches out like an unbroken promise — golden fields bending in the wind, fences marking the land with stubborn straight lines, and not a single building in sight except for the occasional barn you pass by. The sun drags shadows across the dirt, and you feel them pooling in your stomach with a strange mixture of apprehension and relief.

“It’s further than it looks on the map,” Sunghoon says casually, eyes fixed on the road, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. “But trust me. Worth it.”

You don’t answer. You’re too busy staring out the window, counting fences, trees, and the occasional lone horse grazing in a pasture that looks impossibly large and impossibly still. Everything is slower here. Everything is bigger. The air feels like it can hold more — more possibility, more mistakes, more quiet that actually isn’t empty.

When the truck finally pulls up to the house, it looks older than you imagined — wide porch sagging slightly in the middle, weathered wood softened to the color of sand. The paint is chipped, but in a way that makes it seem lived-in rather than neglected. Smoke curls lazily from the chimney, promising warmth. The yard isn’t manicured; it’s honest. A few scattered tools lie near the barn, a wheelbarrow leaning at a precarious angle, and the fence you glimpsed from the road leans gently, as though the wind itself has shaped it over decades.

Sunghoon jumps down first and grabs your suitcase before you can protest. His hands are warm, calloused at the edges, steady. You follow him inside.

The house smells of coffee, hay, and wood polished from years of use rather than products. It creaks beneath your shoes as you follow him down the narrow hallway. You’re caught between wanting to run back into the familiar chaos of your apartment and wanting to sink into the safety that radiates off him in waves.

“This is your room,” he says finally, opening a door at the end of the hall. The sunlight spilling in through the window is soft, golden, and dust motes dance in it like tiny, drifting stars. The room is small but comfortable — a bed with a neatly tucked quilt, a dresser, a simple wooden chair, and a window that frames the fields outside like a painting. It’s quiet. Quiet enough that your thoughts suddenly scream in contrast. You stare at the floor, at the walls, at the untouched dust on the windowsill, trying to process that for the first time in days, you’re not surrounded by noise, deadlines, and demands.

Then the sound of footsteps comes from the hallway, heavier than Sunghoon’s. The floor groans under them, the rhythm deliberate, measured.

“Hyung, where’d you put the—”

The voice stops.

You turn.

The man standing in the doorway looks like he belongs entirely to this world — boots worn and dusty, jeans faded at the knees, arms thick and strong, hands curled into loose fists at his sides. His hair is sun-bleached, falling carelessly into his eyes, shadowing the sharp line of his jaw. The sun hitting him from the window behind you makes him look almost unreal, like he stepped out of some old photograph of the land.

He doesn’t move closer, doesn’t smile. His gaze sweeps over you once, quick and precise, taking in everything like a measuring stick against some invisible standard.

“Why is there a city girl in my house?” His voice is low, even, with a rough edge that makes the floor feel suddenly harder beneath your feet.

Sunghoon doesn’t flinch. “She’s staying,” he says lightly, the easy calm in his voice only making the silence stretch longer.

The man crosses his arms. “For how long?”

“As long as she needs,” Sunghoon replies, and there’s a weight in that smile — protective, teasing, the kind of big-brother smile that somehow makes you both safe and nervous at the same time.

The man’s eyes flick back to you, sharp and unreadable. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak again, but the quiet that follows isn’t peaceful. It hums with tension, the kind of stillness that makes your pulse thrum and your stomach tighten. Somehow, you already know this man will change everything, though you have no idea how yet.

You take a slow step toward your room, suitcase trailing behind you, and feel the air shift. The house suddenly seems alive in a different way — creaking boards, faint drafts, the distant low whinny of a horse in the pasture. It all presses around you, and for the first time since losing your job, since standing on your kitchen floor staring at the wall, you feel like maybe — just maybe — this is where something begins again.

You wake the next morning not to an alarm, but to the soft gold of sunlight spilling across the floor, warming the dust motes that drift lazily in the air. Your body aches in places you didn’t know could ache — shoulders stiff from sleeping curled on your side, fingers sore from gripping the suitcase handle too tightly yesterday. The quilt wrapped around you smells faintly of fabric softener and pine, and for the first time in days, you feel like you can breathe without thinking about the city, the job, or the designs you refused to touch.

You stay in bed longer than you probably should, letting the world outside your window creep in slowly. The fence posts sway in the morning light, the grass shimmers with dew, and a distant horse lets out a low, throaty neigh. You wonder if it’s lonely out there in the pasture, or if it simply doesn’t notice the passing of time, the way everything seems to move slower here. You close your eyes again, thinking about nothing and everything all at once, until finally, your stomach reminds you that you should probably get up and eat something.

You go downstairs to the smell of bacon and something sweet baking in the oven — Sunghoon’s breakfast experiments, judging by the faint char on the edges of the pan. The house hums with life in a way you’re not used to; each creak of the floorboards and distant thump from the barn is like it’s announcing that you are here now, really here, and there’s no turning back.

When you walk into the kitchen, Sunghoon is bustling with a spatula in one hand, coffee steaming in the other, clearly pretending not to notice the awkward weight of your gaze.

“And this,” he says, pointing to a plate stacked with overcooked eggs and slightly blackened toast, “is breakfast. Don’t look too impressed. It’s edible. Mostly.”

You offer a small, grateful smile. “It smells… really good.”

He smirks. “Try it. You’re going to need the energy.”

Before you can ask why, Sungho appears in the doorway, boots thudding against the floor. He leans lazily against the frame, arms crossed, eyes narrowing like he’s both intrigued and skeptical at the same time. He doesn’t greet you properly — no hello, no smile — just stands there and measures you.

Sunghoon notices your tense posture and claps his hands once. “Okay, first order of business,” he says, voice light but pointed. “Sungho, you’re going to show our guest how things work around here. Step one: feeding the animals. Step two: everything else. She’s staying for a while, and it’s your job to make sure she doesn’t starve, break anything, or get herself hurt.”

Sungho tilts his head slightly, lips curling into a faint smirk. “So I’m babysitting a city girl,” he mutters, more to himself than to either of you.

“You’re not babysitting,” Sunghoon snaps, though not harshly. “You’re… training her. You’re her guide. Show her the ropes. And if she survives the first day without falling into the chicken coop or tipping over a bucket of feed, congratulations. You can relax then.”

And just like that, Sunghoon is gone, leaving you and Sungho alone.

The quiet stretches between you like a taut wire. You shift your weight, suddenly very aware of how out-of-place you are, the soft cotton of your pajamas clinging to your skin, hair tousled and messy from sleeping in unfamiliar sheets. Sungho watches you, silent, sharp, like he’s noting every detail: the way you hesitate on your feet, the way your eyes dart toward the door, the way your fingers fidget with the hem of your shirt.

Finally, he sighs. “You don’t even know where to start, do you?”

You open your mouth to protest, but no words come. Because he’s right. You have never fed livestock in your life. You don’t know what a pitchfork feels like, how to hold reins, how to balance on uneven dirt ground while a horse decides it’s suddenly had enough of you.

“Follow me,” he says finally, and turns toward the barn with a confident stride. The floorboards creak beneath his boots, and you follow, suitcase of uncertainty dragging behind you.

Outside, the sun hits full force, the smell of hay and earth mingling into something dizzying and alive. Chickens scatter at the sound of your footsteps, and one particularly bold rooster charges past, brushing the edge of your shoe. You stumble, arms flailing, and Sungho’s sharp laugh cuts through the morning air.

“Careful,” he says. “This isn’t a city park.”

“I… I know!” you squeak, blinking at him in disbelief as another chicken lunges at your other foot.

He watches for a moment longer, expression unreadable, then finally steps forward. “Okay. Bucket first. Fill it with feed. Watch your fingers.”

You try, spilling half of it on the ground. The chickens swarm immediately, pecking and squawking, and you shriek, trying to pull your hands away. Sungho grabs the edge of the bucket before it tips entirely, glaring down at you.

“Relax. You can’t fight them. Just… pour it slowly.”

You do. Slowly. Chickens peck in a frenzy. You flinch every time one comes too close. Sungho watches, arms crossed, occasionally muttering, “This is going to be a long day.”

You can’t tell if it’s a threat or a warning.

After an eternity with the chickens, he guides you toward the horses. “Next lesson,” he says, “saddling. You’ll need to know this if you plan to survive the property.”

You stare at the horse as if it might explode. Its hooves are bigger than your hand, its eyes dark and knowing, its tail flicking in irritation at your hesitation. You swallow hard, trying to steady your nerves. Sungho kneels briefly to check the saddle, then looks up at you.

“Your turn,” he says.

You mimic his movements, fumbling with the straps, tangling the reins, nearly dropping the saddle. Sungho corrects you silently, stepping close to adjust your grip, his hands brushing yours accidentally. Your chest leaps. You’re acutely aware of every detail about him — the sun-bleached hair falling into his eyes, the way his fingers are rough but precise, the faint scent of hay and leather and something else, something that makes your stomach twist in a way you don’t want to admit.

The horse shifts under your weight, nostrils flaring, and you jerk back, nearly falling into the dirt. Sungho catches you, steadying you with his arm around your waist, firm and grounding.

“Don’t panic,” he mutters, voice low, almost a growl. “It’s just a horse. You’ve got two feet, two hands. That’s enough.”

You nod, though your heartbeat is hammering in your ears. And as the horse moves beneath your touch and Sungho’s corrections guide your hands, you realize two things at once: one, surviving here is going to be far harder than you imagined. Two, somehow, it’s also going to be far more… compelling.

The morning drags on, each task more humiliating than the last. You think feeding the chickens was bad? Try carrying buckets of water across uneven ground without spilling half of it onto your shoes or into the dirt. Sungho stands nearby, arms crossed, eyes sharp, watching you like you’re a storm about to hit — which, honestly, in your clumsiness, you basically are.

“Slow down,” he says, voice flat, though there’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth that almost looks like amusement.

“I am going slow!” you protest, shifting the bucket in your hands like it’s a live grenade. A splash of water soaks your shoe. The chickens cluck with indignation, scattering in every direction.

“You’re panicking,” he states bluntly, stepping forward to adjust your grip. His fingers brush yours. Warm. Firm. Intentional? You don’t know, and the sudden heat pooling in your chest makes your hands shake even more.

By the time you reach the horses, you’re already drenched in sweat and dirt, the smell of hay sticking to your hair. Saddling the horse is worse than anything you’ve ever imagined. The straps twist in your fingers, the leather is stiff and unforgiving, and the horse seems to sense your hesitation, shifting impatiently under your hands. You drop the saddle once. Twice. By the third time, it’s a miracle it’s still attached at all.

Sungho doesn’t say much. He kneels, checks the straps, adjusts your grip, his movements precise and efficient. You mimic him, tangled and awkward, and he catches your wrist when you fumble, his hand lingering a fraction too long. You flush.

“Better,” he mutters. “For now.”

You grit your teeth. “For now? You’re not encouraging at all.”

“I don’t encourage failures,” he replies, voice low. “I correct them.”

By midday, you’ve moved onto fence repairs. You thought sewing delicate silk lace was hard? Try hammering thick wood posts together without smashing your fingers. Sungho shows you once, demonstrating the angle, the wrist motion, and the way to swing the hammer without killing yourself. You nod, try it, and miss the post completely, nearly smashing your thumb. Sungho catches your hand just in time, scowling, shaking his head.

“You’re hopeless,” he says, though the tension in his jaw hints at more amusement than anger.

You want to reply with a sarcastic quip, but you can’t — your pride has been thoroughly trampled by a barn full of animals and rustic tools you’ve never touched in your life.

By the time Sungho leaves to fetch the tool from the shed, muttering something about “city girls and wood,” you slump against the fence post, palms raw, shirt damp from sweat. Your arms shake from the constant lifting and swinging, and for a moment, you just let yourself breathe, eyes scanning the barn.

That’s when your gaze falls on the worn saddles stacked haphazardly against the wall. The leather is cracked, straps twisted and frayed, and Sungho had muttered earlier that they were probably beyond repair. Something inside you stirs — a combination of habit and stubbornness, the same way your fingers always itched when you saw a crooked seam or a misaligned hem.

You reach into the pocket of your jeans, the one you always keep your little stitch kit in — needles, waxed thread, a tiny pair of gold scissors, pins, even a spare thimble. It’s ridiculous, maybe, but in your world, you never go anywhere without it. Your fingers brush against the familiar items, and a calm sort of focus settles over you, like breathing.

Kneeling beside the first saddle, you pull out a spool of dark brown waxed thread, threading it through the needle with automatic precision. Your hands move before your brain can protest, looping the thread through the torn leather, tightening just enough without pulling the material too harshly. You stitch slowly at first, testing the tension, then faster as confidence grows. Each movement feels familiar — the tiny roll of the wrist, the steady pull, the way to knot it securely without leaving extra slack.

Before you know it, you’ve repaired the first strap. You step back, brushing sawdust from your knees, and inspect it: neat, even, the leather smooth under your touch. Encouraged, you move on to the second, then the third. The morning sun catches the waxed thread, making it gleam faintly as your needle slides through the old leather, and you feel that quiet thrill you only ever feel when a design comes together perfectly on the first try.

Sungho steps back into the barn, and for the first few seconds, he doesn’t speak. His eyes roam over the work you’ve done, scanning the repaired saddles like he can’t believe it’s real. You glance up, casual, pretending it’s nothing, though your chest swells with quiet pride.

“You… did all of these?” His voice is low, almost a growl, laced with disbelief.

You nod, shrugging as if sewing leather were a perfectly normal way to spend a morning. “I always carry a stitch kit. You never know when you’ll need one. Thread and needles are basically survival tools in my world.”

Sungho’s jaw tightens, and you can see his frustration waver between admiration and irritation. He mutters something under his breath about “city girls thinking they can do everything,” but his gaze lingers on your hands, the way you expertly knot the last strap, the subtle dexterity that even he can’t match.

“You actually did it. And without getting yourself killed,” he says finally, though the corner of his mouth twitches in a way that’s almost — almost — impressed.

You grin, letting a little victory slip through. “See? Not totally useless.”

For the first time since you arrived, the air between the two of you shifts. There’s no yelling, no criticism, just the unspoken acknowledgment that maybe — just maybe — you can handle more than he expected. And the way he looks at you now, careful and calculating, makes your heart pound in a way the barn, the heat, and the sun never could.

By late afternoon, the sunlight streams through the barn slats, cutting lines of gold across your sweaty, dirt-streaked arms. You flop back onto the hay bale, letting yourself sink into its scratchy comfort, the smell of straw and warm leather filling your senses. Chickens cluck and scratch at the dirt nearby, the horse shifting impatiently, but you barely notice. All your attention is on the man standing a few feet away — Sungho — whose posture is casual but so rigidly controlled it makes your stomach twist.

He doesn’t say anything at first. He just watches you, the way predators watch prey, like he’s trying to figure out whether you’re going to collapse, make a mistake, or just… survive. And in the quiet hum of the barn, your heart thrums audibly in your ears, so loud you’re certain he can hear it too.

Finally, he speaks. “You’re always fiddling with something, huh?” His voice is low, rough, tinged with curiosity and barely suppressed irritation. He steps closer, boots crunching softly against the dirt, and you feel the heat radiating from him.

“I… I like to be prepared,” you reply without looking up, fingers tracing the familiar needle in your hand, winding thread around it. “You never know what’s gonna break.”

His eyes narrow slightly, scanning the tiny kit in your hands. He tilts his head, jaw tight. “City girl surviving the countryside by sewing everything together,” he mutters, more to himself than to you. There’s a sharp edge to his tone — disbelief, judgment, maybe even admiration — and your chest warms at the thought that you’ve caught him off guard.

You look up at him, smirking just slightly, the adrenaline from the morning’s chaos still pulsing in your veins. “Exactly,” you say, voice teasing. “Some of us are resourceful.”

He steps closer, and suddenly the space between you shrinks, the heat from his body brushing against your arm, pressing into your awareness in a way that makes your fingers twitch nervously. “Resourceful,” he repeats, voice low, careful, like he’s tasting the word. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

You tilt your head, daring, letting a sly smile tug at your lips. A playful thought strikes you, and you spin slowly on the hay bale, pretending to tease him. Hair sways across your shoulder, chest leaning just slightly forward, hips shifting — the moment hangs between you, charged, electric, as if you’re both waiting to see who will make the first move.

He freezes, eyes widening, sharp gaze assessing, jaw tightening. And The second you pull the edge of your jean shorts down to reveal the tiny embroidered message — “Kiss my ass, cowboy” — the air between you snaps. Sungho freezes mid-step, boots half-raised on the dirt floor. His dark eyes widen, darting down, then snapping back to your face, and you catch a flicker of disbelief that almost makes you laugh out loud.

“You—” he starts, voice low, tight, like he’s trying to wrestle the words from his throat but they refuse to come out properly. “You actually—”

“Did it on purpose?” you interrupt, tilting your head and giving him the faintest, teasing smile. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

His jaw tightens, the muscles working as though he’s fighting a war inside his own head. His lips twitch, once, twice. You swear there’s a hint of a smirk trying to break through, though he hides it quickly, like he’s embarrassed to be reacting at all.

“You’re unbelievable,” he mutters finally, tone low and strained, like he’s trying to sound annoyed, but there’s no convincing heat in the words. His gaze flicks to your hands, then back to the stitching, then — unwillingly — back to your face. “I… I can’t even… how—”

“Confused?” you suggest lightly, rocking your hips just slightly as if to emphasize the message again, though your eyes stay locked on his. “Flustered? Embarrassed? Both?”

He steps closer, and suddenly you feel the heat radiating off him, like the sun has moved right behind him and is pressing its warmth straight into your chest. You notice the subtle tension in his shoulders, the way his hands curl into fists at his sides, the slight flush creeping across his jaw. He’s trying — desperately trying — to act unimpressed, and the sight is almost too much.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he says finally, voice low, a rough edge of warning beneath the controlled tone. But his eyes don’t leave yours, and the tremor in his jaw betrays him.

You grin, leaning back slightly on the hay bale, letting the message show a little more clearly as your fingers idly brush a stray strand of hair from your shoulder. “Like what?” you ask innocently. “Like you can’t believe a city girl outsmarted a cowboy?”

Sungho freezes, then lets out a low, frustrated growl, stepping closer until the space between you is just a breath. He smells faintly of leather, hay, and the sun beating down on him, and the heat pressing off his body makes your skin tingle.

“You’re going to regret that,” he mutters, voice low, dangerous, and amused all at once. But there’s no bite in it — not yet. Just the barest edge of warning, as if he’s trying to regain control of the moment.

“Oh, I doubt it,” you reply easily, letting the words hang, letting your grin widen. “I think I just… made your day a little more interesting.” You tilt your head, giving him the tiniest challenge in your eyes, the kind that says see what you can do about it.

He huffs, shaking his head slightly, like he’s trying to clear the cobwebs of flustered disbelief from his brain. “You—” he starts again, then stops, mouth opening, closing, muttering under his breath. “City girls are… impossible.”

“And cowboys are predictable,” you reply, smirk curling into something mischievous. “Except maybe when they’re flustered by a little stitching on someone’s shorts.”

That gets a reaction. His eyes narrow, and the tension between you thickens like the heat of the afternoon. For a long moment, neither of you speaks. He’s breathing slightly heavier, shoulders tense, and you can feel the calculated weight of his gaze, sharp and assessing. You lean back further, resting your hands lightly on the hay, letting your smirk linger, enjoying every second of the small, delicious power you hold over him right now.

Then he takes a slow, deliberate step closer, boots crunching against the dirt, closing the last inches of distance between you. The brush of his body sends a jolt through you, and his voice, low and almost a growl, breaks the silence:

“You’re… something else,” he says, the words rough and slightly unsteady, like he’s trying to regain composure but failing.

“Likewise,” you reply smoothly, tilting your head with an easy confidence, letting your smirk linger. “Just so we’re clear.”

He swallows, jaw tightening, hands flexing at his sides, and for a brief, delicious second, you catch the faintest flicker of exasperation.

He watches you for a long moment, silent, his chest rising slowly as if he’s trying to control himself. There’s tension in the barn now, thick and warm, that hums like electricity through the dust-filled air. You can feel it, smell it, taste it. And you realize — even exhausted, sweaty, dirt-streaked, and hopelessly out of place in the countryside — you’ve just started a game with him, and neither of you is willing to back down.

The next morning, the barn smells of hay and sunlight, warm and comforting in a way that almost makes you forget the disasters of yesterday. You stretch your arms over your head, muscles sore but alive, the ache a reminder that you’re learning… even if slowly.

Sungho is already there, leaning against the stable wall, arms crossed, boots scuffed, watching you like a hawk. The way his eyes track your movements makes you acutely aware of every step, every shift of weight, every breath you take.

“Good morning,” you say cautiously, voice hoarse from yesterday’s exertion.

He doesn’t answer right away. He just tilts his head, eyes narrowing, like he’s calculating how much patience he has for you today. “You survived yesterday,” he mutters finally, voice low, almost a growl. “Barely. Today… we’ll see if you can handle more than a bucket and a needle.”

You glance at him, smirk tugging at your lips. “Oh, you’re worried about me now?”

“Not worried,” he replies, stepping closer, boots crunching on the dirt. “Annoyed. Exasperated. Curious. Maybe all three.” His gaze lingers on your hands, your posture, the way your hair falls across your face. “And I don’t suffer fools lightly.”

“Lucky for you,” you reply smoothly, tilting your head. “I’m not a fool… mostly.”

He lets out a low, exasperated hum, shaking his head as if you’ve already broken the first rule of surviving here: don’t make the cowboy flustered.

He gestures toward the tools laid out neatly on the bench. “First lesson: using a hammer properly. And no, hitting your thumb doesn’t count as a skill.”

You pick up the hammer carefully, mimicking his stance, the weight unfamiliar and heavy in your hand. He steps behind you, adjusting your grip subtly. His hands brush yours, firm and warm, and you feel a jolt run through your body. You frown, trying to focus. “Okay, I think I’ve got it now.”

“Think,” he repeats, voice teasing, leaning just a fraction closer. “That’s a dangerous word around here.”

You swing, missing the nail slightly, and he groans. “City girl,” he mutters under his breath, though there’s a twitch of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.

By the time you’ve hammered in three nails successfully — barely — he steps back, arms crossed again, evaluating. “Better. Still hopeless,” he says finally, and you notice the faint trace of admiration in his tone.

Then it’s your turn. You watch him frown slightly as you pull out your little stitch kit. “Okay, your turn to learn,” you say, tilting your head. “See that strap? Needs some fixing.”

He freezes. “You… want me to sew leather?”

You nod, smirking. “Exactly. You’ve got strong hands. Surely you can handle a needle.”

He scoffs, taking the kit reluctantly. His fingers fumble at first, stiff against the leather, the needle slipping. You can’t help but laugh, the sound warm and teasing. “Not like that,” you say, stepping closer. “Here, let me show you.”

For the next ten minutes, your fingers brush against his repeatedly, adjusting his grip, guiding the thread. He mutters curses under his breath, flustered by both the difficulty and the closeness. You tilt your head, smirk widening. “Struggling, cowboy?”

“I am not struggling!” he snaps, though the flush creeping up his neck betrays him.

“You’re struggling,” you say, laughing softly. “Admit it. I’ll only help a little longer if you do.”

His jaw tightens. “Fine,” he mutters, voice low. “I’m struggling. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” you reply, stepping back, letting him fumble with the needle under your amused gaze. The barn feels warmer, smaller, more intimate. The horses shift quietly in the background, the dust in the air catching the morning sun. Everything feels alive — and charged.

By the time he finally manages a neat stitch, his arms tense, shoulders rigid, and lips pressed into a thin line of concentration, you can’t stop the grin spreading across your face. “Not bad,” you say lightly. “City girl approves.”

He glares at you, heat creeping up his neck. “I’m not… done,” he mutters, muttering again under his breath. “You’re… impossible.”

“And you like it,” you tease, tilting your head. “I can see it in your eyes.”

He steps closer, boots crunching in the hay-strewn floor. “Don’t push it,” he growls, voice low, threatening. “Or I’ll… fix that mouth of yours myself.”

Your smirk widens. “Oh, I like the sound of that,” you whisper, tilting your head with all the teasing confidence you can muster.

He freezes. For a moment, the air hangs thick and electric between you, the playful teasing transforming into something more, something dangerous.

By mid-afternoon, the sun hangs heavy in the sky, warming the barn in a way that makes sweat stick to your back and dirt cling stubbornly to your jeans. You’ve been at it for hours: carrying buckets, chasing chickens, trying not to drop feed, wrestling with a stubborn horse that seems determined to prove you’re hopeless. Your muscles ache, palms raw, and every time you look at Sungho, he’s standing there, arms crossed, observing like a hawk, expression sharp and unreadable.

“City girl,” he mutters as you trip over a loose plank while carrying a bucket. “How are you still standing?”

“I… don’t know!” you pant, dropping the bucket, which thankfully only spills a little feed. “I… I’m resourceful, remember?”

His eyes narrow. “Resourceful is not tripping over your own feet.”

“I prefer the term… ambitious,” you reply, smirking despite the dirt streaked across your face. He doesn’t answer — just tilts his head and mutters something under his breath, clearly flustered by your stubbornness.

After another hour of nearly catastrophic failures — including a horse almost tipping over a feed trough and you narrowly avoiding a face-full of hay — Sungho finally throws his hands up in frustration.

“Enough!” he says, voice low, dangerous. “You’re going to hurt yourself — or worse, one of the animals. Step back.”

You collapse onto a bale of hay, exhausted, sweat dripping down your temples. “I’m trying,” you mutter. “I really am!”

Sungho studies you, jaw tight, then steps closer. “Maybe… maybe you’re trying the wrong way.”

You blink up at him. “What do you mean?”

He leans slightly closer, boots brushing the hay-strewn floor, gaze sharp. “You’re failing at everything I’m showing you. Maybe it’s not the tools… maybe it’s the way you think. There has to be something you’re good at.”

You tilt your head, smirk tugging at your lips. “Something I’m good at? Oh, I can think of a few things…”

“Not that,” he mutters, exasperated. “I mean something useful. Something… practical. We need to… reset.”

“Reset?” you echo, wiping sweat from your forehead. “You mean like a break?”

“Not quite,” he says, stepping closer, boots crunching on the hay-strewn floor. “I mean… we both need to see what the other can actually do. You’ve got some weird… city skills, and I’ve got country skills. Maybe we swap for a bit, see who learns faster.”

You raise a brow, smirk tugging at your lips. “Oh? So now you’re admitting you might need help?”

“Not admitting anything,” he mutters, trying and failing to look serious. “Just… practical exercise.”

“Right,” you reply, grinning. “Practical exercise.” You tuck your hands into the pockets of your jeans, brushing against the tiny stitching kit you still carry, just out of habit. “Fine. What do you want me to teach you?”

He narrows his eyes, clearly not used to being in a position where he has to learn. “Something… simple,” he mutters. “City stuff. Think. Something you can actually do better than me.”

“Easy,” you say, smirking. You reach into your pocket and pull out a small, pocket-sized notebook and a pen. “Ever tried designing something? Planning efficiently? Drawing up a quick… system?”

He squints at you like you’ve grown a second head. “A system? For what?”

“For… anything,” you say, shrugging lightly. “Could be a chore schedule, a garden layout, how to herd chickens without losing a dozen at once…” You lean forward slightly, teasing. “Basically, strategy. Planning. Thinking ahead. Something tells me that’s not exactly your strength.”

His jaw tightens, but there’s a flash in his dark eyes — curiosity. “Alright,” he says finally, voice low, almost a growl. “Show me.”

You hand him the notebook, guiding his rough hands to hold the pen properly. “Okay, first rule: always visualize the steps before doing the work. See where the chickens go, where the feed goes, where the water will spill if you’re careless.”

He frowns, muttering as he tries to sketch a quick plan for feeding the animals without disaster. His lines are messy, impatient, but earnest. You hover nearby, pointing gently when he’s about to make a mistake, letting your fingers brush against his hand occasionally. His arm twitches at each touch, and you can feel the heat between you spike.

“Not like that,” you tease lightly. “See? You’re thinking too much with brute force. That’s why yesterday’s bucket ended up on your boots.”

He scowls at you, muttering, “City girls… always smug.” But he doesn’t move away. Instead, he leans closer, concentrating, listening as you guide him step by step. You point, draw, adjust, and each time your fingers touch his, the air seems to hum between you — tension, challenge, and something almost dangerously personal.

Finally, after a long stretch of sketching, erasing, and correcting, he leans back, hands on his hips, eyes sharp. “Okay… maybe I can do this,” he says, voice low, reluctant. “Not bad, city girl. You… make sense sometimes.”

You smirk, tilting your head. “Sometimes? I’ll take it. Don’t worry — I’ll make you more useful before the day’s over.”

His jaw tightens, his dark eyes flicking over you like he’s trying to measure your confidence against his patience. “Don’t get cocky,” he mutters. “Or I might make you regret it.”

“Promises, promises,” you say lightly, stepping back with a grin. But your heartbeat flutters anyway — you can feel the challenge in the air between you, thick and dangerous, and you love every second of it.

The afternoon sun is warm but not harsh, casting golden light through the gaps in the barn walls. You’re walking alongside one of the horses, trying not to slip on the damp patches of hay, when the animal suddenly snorts and jerks its head. You stumble, arms flailing, and before you can steady yourself, you feel strong hands catch your waist.

You freeze, breath hitching, pressed impossibly close to him. Sungho’s chest is solid beneath your cheek, his arms surprisingly warm. His dark eyes are sharp, scanning your face, jaw tight, lips slightly parted, like he’s trying not to react too strongly.

“You okay?” His voice is low, controlled, but there’s a rough edge that makes your stomach flutter.

“I—yeah!” you manage, heart hammering. You step back quickly, trying to regain composure, but your shoulder brushes against his again. “Just… the horse. It’s fine.”

He doesn’t move immediately, just lets his hands linger near your waist, the heat from his body making your skin tingle. “You almost fell,” he mutters, jaw working. “Could’ve hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine!” you insist, though your knees wobble slightly. You tilt your head, smirk tugging at your lips. “But thanks for… catching me.”

He exhales sharply, almost a growl, and for a second, the air between you is thick with unspoken tension. His gaze flicks to your lips, then back to your eyes, and you feel your chest tighten. “Don’t… get used to it,” he says finally, voice low.

“Oh, I’m not planning to,” you reply, tilting your head coyly. “But it does make me feel… safe, I guess.”

He stiffens at your words, jaw tightening. “Safe?” he echoes, almost incredulous, as if he didn’t expect your teasing to come layered with something soft.

You bite your lower lip lightly, just enough to make him notice, and glance at the horse shifting nervously nearby. “Yeah… safe. For now.”

He blinks, visibly flustered, clearing his throat. “Right. Safe. Don’t… rely on me too much.”

You grin, leaning back just slightly, letting the tension linger. The warmth of his chest still radiates toward you, the smell of leather and hay and sun pressing close. You can feel the silent pull — a tightrope stretched between teasing and desire — and for a heartbeat, you almost think he’s going to close the space between you entirely.

But then the horse fidgets again, and reality snaps him back. He steps aside abruptly, muttering something about “animals being impossible,” and suddenly the closeness vanishes. You shake off your nerves, pretending nonchalance, though your heartbeat is still racing.

As he walks back toward the barn doors, shoulders stiff, you can’t help but smirk. He might act unflustered now, but you know — you know that near-miss is going to linger in his mind. And frankly, it thrills you to imagine it.

Days later, you’re leaning against the fence, brushing stray hay from your hair, still thinking about the near-fall from the horse the other day, when Sunghoon’s voice cuts through the warm afternoon air.

“Sungho! You, city girl — get over here. Now.” You don't miss the way Sunghoon says 'city girl' in a teasing voice.

Your stomach twists. “Uh… what did we do this time?”

“Nothing,” Sunghoon calls back, calm but firm. “But there’s a fence down near the north pasture. If the horses get out, you’ll have chaos on your hands. You two are going to fix it. Together.”

Sungho groans, rubbing the back of his neck, dark eyes glinting at you. “Together? You heard that, right? I’m doing all the heavy lifting, you—”

“Hey!” you protest, stepping closer. “I can help! I’ve got hands too, you know. Strong city hands.”

He arches a brow, skeptical. “Strong city hands don’t wrestle fence posts into the ground.”

“Yet,” you counter, smirking.

Sunghoon gives a small, satisfied nod and walks off, leaving you two alone at the edge of the field. You glance at Sungho, who’s already stomping toward the pile of fence boards and posts, hands on his hips, clearly annoyed.

“Ready to show me how useless you really are?” he mutters, not looking at you.

“Oh, I’m going to surprise you,” you say, grabbing a post. It’s heavier than you expected, and you stumble slightly as you lift it. Sungho catches it for you, hands brushing yours — and the familiar jolt runs through you again.

“You really have no idea what you’re doing,” he says, voice low, a mixture of exasperation and… something else you can’t name.

“Maybe I do,” you reply, tilting your head with a grin. “Or maybe I just like watching you panic a little.”

He freezes, jaw tightening, then huffs. “City girl, if you even think about teasing me while we’re working, I—”

“—I’ll survive, right?” you finish for him, smirking. “Relax.”

The two of you start moving posts into place, hammering in nails and bracing boards. It’s awkward at first — your city instincts make you overthink placement while his experience makes him impatient with your “theoretical” methods. But gradually, a rhythm forms. You hand him nails; he steadies boards; your hands brush occasionally, lingering a moment too long, and you both ignore the tiny sparks of electricity it sends through your chest.

At one point, a board slips from your hands and Sungho lunges, catching it with one arm and steadying you with the other. You stumble, pressed against him for a heartbeat, and hear your own laugh escape despite yourself.

“You really are a menace,” he mutters, jaw tight, dark eyes flicking down at your face, then back to the board.

“Flattery?” you tease. “I’ll take it.”

By the time the fence is up and sturdy, both of you are sweaty, grimy, and breathing hard. Sungho leans on his hammer, eyes flicking toward you, chest rising and falling. There’s a brief silence, charged, before you grin, brushing your hands over your jeans.

“Not bad… for a city girl,” he admits reluctantly, voice low.

“Not bad… for a cowboy,” you counter, smirking.

He huffs, shaking his head, a tiny smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Too late,” you reply, grinning.

Later that evening, the barn is quiet. The sun has dipped behind the hills, leaving streaks of gold and pink across the sky. You’re sitting on the fence, brushing loose hay from your hair, still feeling the ache in your arms and legs from the fence repair earlier. The smell of the pasture mixes with the fading warmth of the day, and for a moment, everything feels calm.

Then Sunghoon’s voice calls from the farmhouse. “City girl! You’re not planning to sit there all evening, are you?”

You glance toward the house. “Uh… no, just… resting?”

“Good,” he replies, tone light but carrying that unmistakable older-brother authority. “Because I need you ready. We’re going to the bar tonight.”

You frown, surprised. “The bar? Why?”

“Sungho is already there waiting,” Sunghoon says casually, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. Your stomach twists. Sungho waiting? Alone? At a bar?

“Why?” you echo, more sharply this time.

“Because you two need to… socialize. Adjust to the town. Blend in,” Sunghoon says, shrugging. He pauses, then gives a knowing glance your way. “And besides, I thought it’d be fun to see you two in action outside the farm.”

Your heart skips a beat. “Outside the farm?” You glance at the hills, the fields, the quiet barn… and then back at him. “Do you mean… us?”

He smirks faintly. “Maybe. Maybe I just want to see if the cowboy behaves when someone else is around.” His tone is teasing, but there’s a subtle edge to it — a hint that he’s deliberately stirring the pot. “Anyway… you’ll see. Get ready. Sungho’s expecting you.”

You bite your lip, your thoughts spinning. Expecting you? Does he even realize what that could mean? The air feels suddenly heavy, charged with anticipation, and you can’t help noticing how your chest tightens at the idea of seeing him… with other people, in a place outside your little farm bubble.

“Fine,” you say finally, trying to sound casual, though your voice feels tight. “I’ll get ready.”

Sunghoon gives you a small nod, satisfied, before turning and walking back toward the house, leaving you alone in the fading light. You watch his retreating figure, then your gaze drifts to the pasture, imagining Sungho leaning against the bar counter, dark eyes flicking around, perhaps unaware of how much he makes your heart race.

You try to push the thoughts away, telling yourself you’re overthinking. But deep down, you know Sunghoon isn’t wrong — the night is going to be a test in more ways than one. A test of patience, of jealousy, of restraint. And you’re not sure if either of you is ready for what’s coming.

The sky darkens further, stars beginning to peek out one by one. Somewhere between the fading sunlight and the first glimmers of night, a knot of tension settles in your chest, tight and unavoidable. You know that by the time you step into that bar, the dynamic between you and Sungho will change — and nothing, not teasing, not playful rivalry, will be the same after tonight.

The night air hits you as soon as you step outside the farmhouse, crisp and tinged with the faint smell of wood smoke and wet grass. The sky is a deep navy, stars scattered like tiny pinpricks of silver, and the soft hum of the countryside at night wraps around you like a cloak. Your heart is pounding — not from the walk to the car, but from knowing what awaits you.

Sunghoon waits on the porch, arms crossed, expression unreadable. When he sees you, he gives a small nod. “Ready?”

You swallow hard, nodding in return. The car ride to the bar is silent except for the engine and the occasional croak of a distant frog. Every few seconds, you glance at Sunghoon, trying to gauge if he knows what you’re thinking — but his face is calm, composed, a fortress you can’t breach. And that only makes your nerves twist tighter.

When you finally arrive, the bar’s neon sign casts a warm, flickering glow over the dusty parking lot. Music and laughter spill out into the night, a mixture of country tunes and rowdy chatter. You step out of the car, heart in your throat, and see him immediately.

Sungho. Leaning casually against the bar, drink in hand, jacket slung over one shoulder. He’s laughing — the low, rich sound that sends shivers through you — with a girl you don’t recognize. Her hand rests on his arm; she leans in, brushing her lips against his cheek. The world seems to tilt.

You freeze. Time stretches. Your chest tightens as if someone is squeezing it from the inside. The air smells faintly of whiskey and the bar’s sawdust-strewn floor, and yet everything is centered on the sight in front of you.

It’s not that he’s kissing her exactly — but your mind twists the moment into something unbearable anyway. Your hands clench at your sides. You feel a hot sting behind your eyes, and before you can stop it, your bottom lip trembles.

“Don’t,” you whisper under your breath. But no sound escapes.

Sunghoon notices instantly. His hand brushes against yours, firm and grounding. “Hey,” he murmurs gently, voice low and soothing. “Look at me.”

You can’t stop the tears from threatening to spill as you stare at him — Sungho — leaning casually against the bar with that girl’s lips brushing his cheek. Your chest tightens painfully, and your voice comes out in a broken whisper.

“Don’t let what?” you choke out, voice trembling. “He… he’s… I can’t—”

Before you can finish, Sunghoon steps closer, his hand brushing yours in a grounding gesture. He crouches slightly, bringing his face closer to yours, his dark eyes steady and calm. “You can,” he says softly, voice low, certain. “You will. But not like this.”

Confused, you glance at him, and he tilts his head toward the bar, then back toward the shadows near the edge of the lot. The gesture is deliberate — silent but unmistakable. He’s telling you: don’t run, don’t cry, don’t give him the satisfaction of watching you break. Instead, do something. Take control. Show him you’re not the helpless city girl he thinks you are.

You blink, comprehension dawning, and a flicker of determination sparks in your chest. The hurt is still there, sharp and real, but it’s joined now by anger — righteous, biting anger — and the thrill of a plan forming in your mind. Sunghoon sees the shift in your expression, and the tiniest smirk curls at the corner of his mouth. You feel like he’s silently saying, I’ve got you. Let’s make him regret underestimating you.

“You ready?” he asks, voice calm but firm.

You straighten instinctively, brushing at your damp cheeks to hide the tears. Your heart is hammering, adrenaline surging. “Yeah,” you say, nodding, voice steady now. “Let’s do it.”

Sunghoon guides you carefully outside the bar, keeping close so you feel supported. You move toward the edge of the lot, where shadows stretch long across the ground, the dim glow of the neon sign painting the asphalt in streaks of pink and blue. Every step makes your pulse race — not from fear, but from a mix of anger, heartbreak, and excitement.

The morning sun paints the barn in gold, streaking through the gaps between the wooden planks. Dust floats lazily in the warm beams, catching your eye as you work with Sunghoon, muscles aching pleasantly from yesterday’s fence repair. There’s a rhythm to the motion — hauling, hammering, adjusting — and for a moment, you feel grounded, almost at peace.

Sunghoon is beside you, calm and precise, leaning slightly closer than necessary as he shows you how to tighten the rope just so. The warmth of his body brushes yours when he reaches over to adjust your grip, and you catch a faint whiff of his cologne mixed with the earthy scent of hay and leather. You blink rapidly, trying to focus on the work, but it’s impossible not to notice the subtle warmth radiating off him, the easy confidence in the way he moves.

Until the sound of boots crunching across the barn floor freezes you mid-motion.

Sungho.

You glance up, and your stomach twists. There he is, leaning against the doorway like he owns the world, arms crossed, dark eyes fixed on you. The sunlight catches his hair at just the right angle, giving him that golden halo effect you’re suddenly painfully aware of. His expression is unreadable, but the way his jaw is set, shoulders stiff, and eyes narrowed tells you everything: he’s jealous.

And suddenly, everything about the barn — the smell of hay, the warmth of the morning, the quiet rhythm of work — becomes charged, electric.

Sunghoon notices immediately, his eyes flicking to you and then Sungho, a subtle raising of his brow, a faint curve of a smirk that says, let’s see how this plays out. You feel the tension coil tight in your chest, a mix of exhilaration and fear, excitement and something dangerously close to desire.

Sungho takes a step forward. The sound of his boots on the dirt floor echoes in your ears, and your pulse spikes. Every instinct in your body tells you to step back, to avoid the heat radiating off him, but part of you — the part that’s been simmering since yesterday, since the bar, since every teasing glance and brush of skin — wants to stay. Wants him.

“What are you two doing?” His voice is low, tight, and unmistakably sharp. Every word lands like a weight on your chest.

“Working,” you reply quickly, keeping your tone casual, hiding the flutter of nerves in your stomach. “The fence needed fixing, and Sunghoon’s showing me how.”

His dark eyes sweep over Sunghoon, then snap back to you. There’s a flicker of something in his gaze — possessiveness, irritation, desire — and you feel it like fire in your veins. “Together,” he mutters, voice rough, barely above a growl.

You swallow, heat creeping up your neck. “Yeah… together,” you echo, trying to sound nonchalant, but your voice trembles slightly, betraying you.

He’s leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, dark eyes locked on you and Sunghoon. And oh, you can see it — that subtle edge in his gaze. Jealousy. Possessiveness. That dark heat that always makes your pulse spike.

Sunghoon notices too, but he doesn’t move. Arms crossed, smirk tugging at his lips, he leans casually against a post, enjoying the scene like a referee at a duel.

You straighten, suddenly very aware of every muscle in your body, every hint of sun-warmed skin showing beneath your sleeves. And then — on impulse — you tilt your head, grin just a little, and tease:

“Looks like someone’s watching me work… a little too closely.”

Sungho’s dark eyes snap to yours. “Watching?” he echoes, jaw tight. “Me? I’m not—”

“Oh, come on,” you interrupt, stepping closer, testing the space between you. “You’ve been glaring at me all morning. Admit it, cowboy. You can’t stand seeing me near Sunghoon.”

He blinks, and you know you’ve hit the right nerve. His hands twitch, his posture stiffens, and the heat radiating off him is almost unbearable. “You’re ridiculous,” he mutters, trying to sound calm — but his voice is low, rough, impossible to ignore.

You smirk, stepping even closer, just out of reach. “Am I? Or am I… irresistible?” you tease lightly, letting the words hang in the air.

The effect is instantaneous. His jaw tightens, and before you can react, he lunges forward, grabs you gently by the waist, and hoists you over his shoulder. Your laughter bursts out before you can stop it, half from shock, half from exhilaration.

“Sungho! Put me down!” you shout, wriggling, swinging your arms. “People are watching!”

“You want to make a scene?” he mutters, dark eyes glinting with something between frustration and thrill. “Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“Sungho! Wait —” you start, voice rising — until he grins, glancing back toward Sunghoon just long enough to make your heart stop.

Sunghoon watches from the barn doorway, smirk wide, arms crossed, clearly entertained by the whole spectacle. “This is… highly educational,” he says, voice casual. “Carry on.”

Finally, he stops near the stables. With a sharp motion, he spins you around, pressing you gently but firmly against the rough wood wall. His chest brushes yours, his hands on your arms, holding you close without being harsh.

“You,” he says, voice low and rough, “still don’t know who you belong to?”

Your pulse spikes, chest fluttering. You grin despite the heat curling up your neck. “Maybe I do,” you whisper, tilting your head, brushing your hands over his chest in a teasing, almost daring motion. “But maybe… I just like making you show me.”

The tension snaps like a live wire. His dark eyes flare with something unspoken — heat, frustration, desire — and for a heartbeat, all the barn, all the farm, fades away. You lean into him willingly, letting your lips brush his as he hesitates, catching your subtle invitation.

Then, finally, he presses his lips to yours, firm but patient at first, letting the kiss build slowly. Your hands tangle in his shirt, body pressing instinctively closer. The warmth of his chest against yours and the smell of hay and sunlight, it makes your head spin.

When he pulls back slightly, forehead resting against yours, chest rising and falling rapidly, he mutters, voice rough and low: “Still don’t know?”

You tilt your head, lips brushing his teasingly, heart hammering. “Yeah… why don’t you tell me one more time?”

His lips find yours again, harder, hungrier this time, and the stables — dim, quiet, fragrant with hay — become your private world. The playful teasing, the jealousy, the tension from the morning’s banter all explode into that kiss, and you know — firmly, unmistakably — that this is no longer just teasing. This is fire, desire, and something far deeper.

The first kiss lingers longer than either of you expect. Sungho’s hands are still on your arms, holding you close, but there’s no harshness — just the steady warmth of him, the tension of his muscles, the electricity in every inch of space between you. You pull back slightly, forehead resting against his, chest heaving, eyes fluttering open.

“You…” he breathes, dark eyes glinting, voice rough, low. “You’re insane.”

“Maybe,” you reply, smirking despite your flustered cheeks. “Or maybe… I just like seeing you like this.” Your hands trail up to his chest again, brushing over the curve of his pectoral, testing him. “Jealous, cowboy?”

He groans softly, almost a growl, pressing closer, tilting his head so your noses bump. “You’re pushing me too far.”

“Oh, am I?” you tease, letting your lips brush his jaw lightly. “I thought you liked it when I push you.”

He groans again, louder this time, tilting your chin up slightly with his fingers. His dark eyes bore into yours, fierce and smoldering. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me,” he mutters.

You bite your lip, heart hammering. You do have an idea. Every glance, every tease, every step closer in the barn — you know exactly what it’s doing to him, and the thought makes you grin. “Oh, I think I do,” you whisper, leaning just slightly into him again.

His hands slide up slightly, brushing along your sides, hesitant but commanding at the same time. You feel the pull in his gaze, the raw intensity, but also the restraint — like he’s letting you guide how far this goes. The control is mutual; the heat is shared.

You laugh softly, breath warm against his jaw. “You’re sweating, cowboy.”

He groans, low and frustrated, but there’s a glint of amusement in his eyes. “Shut up,” he mutters, voice ragged, “or I swear I’ll kiss you until you can’t laugh.”

You tilt your head, teasing, letting your hands linger against him, feeling the warmth, the strength, the desire. “Maybe I want you to,” you whisper.

For a long moment, the world outside the stables — the golden light, the dust, Sunghoon leaning against the post like an amused referee — disappears. It’s just the two of you, pressed together, heat radiating from every inch, teasing and testing, playful and flustered all at once.

Finally, he exhales sharply, forehead still resting against yours. “You’re impossible,” he mutters again, softer this time, almost admiringly.

“And yet,” you whisper, heart racing, lips brushing his lightly, “you love it.”

He smirks, dark eyes glinting. “Maybe I do,” he admits, voice low, dangerous, and you can feel it resonate through you, thrilling and grounding all at once.

The barn is quiet except for your breaths, the distant creak of the stable doors, and the faint rustle of hay. For the first time all morning, it feels like you belong here — tangled in this messy, flustered, electrifying moment with him, heat and tension radiating like wildfire between you.

The next morning, the countryside is drenched in sunlight, crisp and golden, the air scented with hay, earth, and the faint trace of the river nearby. You wake to the quiet hum of the farm — birds calling, the distant low of cows — but something feels different. There’s a knot in your chest you can’t shake, a tension that’s been simmering ever since last night in the stables.

You sit on the edge of the bed, tugging your knees close, staring at your phone. The message you received last night still blinks on the screen, refusing to let you forget: 

They want you back in the city. They want you to return.

You can feel your chest tighten as your fingers hover over the keyboard. Every instinct in you tells you to ignore it — stay here, in the chaos, in the quiet heat of the farm, in the aftermath of Sungho’s hands on you, the stolen kisses, the teasing, the fire. But the world you left behind is tugging at you, and the thought of leaving it all — him, this place, the tension, the warmth — makes your stomach churn.

Your heart pounds. You’re not ready. You don’t want to leave. Not here, not after Sungho, not after everything that’s been happening in the past few days. And yet… part of you wants to go. The life you left behind, the responsibilities, the pull of familiarity — it’s there, clawing at your chest, whispering that you belong somewhere else.

You hear the soft crunch of boots outside the door and tense.

“Pacing like a caged animal?” Sungho’s voice is dark, low, teasing — and utterly infuriating.

You spin to face him. “It’s none of your business,” you snap, though your voice betrays a tremor.

He steps inside, close, too close, heat radiating off him. “It is when you’re about to do something stupid,” he says, hands on his hips, eyes dark, smoldering. “Don’t even try to lie to me.”

“Stupid? Me?” you laugh bitterly, but it comes out shaky. “I’m just… I don’t know what to do!”

“You think I care about your excuses?” His voice drops low, dangerous. “I care about you. That’s why I’m here.”

Your chest tightens at the words, and you glance down, ashamed to feel your pulse spike at his proximity. “You… you can’t decide for me,” you whisper.

He takes a step closer, and suddenly you feel the heat of his presence wrap around you. “Oh, I don’t need to decide for you,” he mutters, voice rough, low. “I just… make it impossible for you to go.”

Before you can react, his hand grabs your wrist, firm, strong, and he pulls you toward the door. “Where are you—” you start, but he cuts you off.

“The stables,” he says, voice clipped. “We’re talking where no one else can eavesdrop.”

“Sunghoon could—”

“I don’t care,” he interrupts, dark eyes flashing. “Stop talking, come with me.”

The walk to the stables is tense, every step echoing your racing heartbeat. Your hands fidget, trying to pull free, trying to argue, but his grip is relentless, and you realize — he’s not giving you a choice.

As soon as you step inside the quiet, dim barn, he spins you around, pressing you firmly against the wooden wall as he questions you. Your back hits the rough wood, and your breath catches — not from pain, but from the sudden proximity, the heat, the intensity of his stare. You spill everything about the message.

“You’re ridiculous,” he mutters, voice rough, low. “Do you know what you do to me?”

“I… I—” you start, trying to get words out, but your voice falters.

He leans closer, dark eyes catching yours, every muscle taut. “I can’t stand the thought of you leaving,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to yours. “I can’t.”

Your chest flutters, cheeks heating, and in a burst of defiance mixed with something else — desire, frustration, adrenaline — you tilt your head, lips brushing his, just barely. “Maybe I want to leave,” you tease, voice trembling. “Maybe I don’t care what you think.”

For a heartbeat, the world stops. Then he groans, low and frustrated, one hand coming up to cup your cheek. “Don’t,” he mutters. “Don’t tease me like that. Not now.”

You smirk despite yourself, leaning slightly closer. “Oh, I think you like it,” you whisper, letting your hands wander over his chest just enough to make him shiver.

His jaw tightens. He presses a hand to your waist, pulling you flush against him. “I hate you,” he growls, voice rough, nearly strangled with emotion.

“And I like you,” you murmur back, heart pounding. “A lot.”

His lips capture yours suddenly, harsh at first, demanding, then softer as he responds to your choice to lean in. Every nerve in your body sparks, every heartbeat synchronized with his. You kiss back, a mixture of defiance and desire, teasing and surrender.

When you finally pull back, gasping, he rests his forehead against yours, dark eyes softening just slightly. “You’re mine,” he mutters, voice low. “Even if you think you can leave.”

And for a long moment, the barn is silent except for your breathing, hearts racing, the tension unbroken. Outside, the world can wait. Inside, it’s just you, him, and the impossible pull between you.

The farm feels quiet that evening. The golden sunlight has faded into soft amber, shadows stretching across the fields. You walk along the dirt path, boots crunching against the dry earth, chest tight with the weight of the decision you’ve been avoiding all week.

Sungho’s face flashes in your mind — dark eyes, that smoldering intensity, the way he pressed you against the barn wall, the slow, teasing kiss. You remember the warmth, the teasing, the thrill of it, and it twists painfully in your chest.

You stop at the edge of the pasture, hands gripping the railing, staring out at the rolling fields. Your life isn’t here. Your work, your responsibilities, the ties that pulled you to the countryside in the first place are still calling. And as much as it hurts, you know you can’t ignore them forever.

Every instinct tells you to tell him, to lean on him, to fight for another hour, another day. But the thought of his dark, intense gaze makes your throat tighten. You don’t want an argument. You don’t want him to make this decision for you. You need to do it on your own terms.

So you make a decision. Quiet, firm. You will leave.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur. You pack your things silently, careful to leave no trace of your departure. The suitcase is heavy, not just with clothes, but with memories, with the lingering heat of his touch, every teasing word and stolen glance.

You glance one last time at the barn, at the hay-strewn floor, at the shadows where he and Sunghoon’s laughter had once bounced. Your chest tightens. You whisper to yourself, almost as if speaking aloud could make it real:

“Goodbye, cowboy.”

The drive to the airport is silent. Every mile pushes you further from him, further from the warmth and the teasing, further from the fire you felt in his arms. You cry quietly at first, then your sobs come harder. No one can see, no one can stop you, but the pain is sharper because he will never know.

Back at the farm, Sungho waits. He paces the worn wooden floors of the barn, hands running through his hair, shoulders stiff. He checks his phone for the hundredth time, half-expecting a text, a message, even a missed call from you. Anything. A knock on the door would be enough. A single word, a whisper, a sigh — anything to break the silence.

But there is nothing. Only the soft creak of the barn doors in the evening breeze, the faint smell of hay, and the shadows growing longer in the amber glow of the setting sun.

When the truth finally hits, it lands on him like a physical blow. You are gone. Completely gone. His heart tightens in his chest, a sharp, twisting pain that leaves him breathless. His dark eyes, usually so controlled and precise, are stormy now, flitting toward Sunghoon, who leans against a post, arms crossed, smirk tugging at his lips.

“Thought she’d do something like this,” Sunghoon says lightly, voice calm, almost teasing. “Takes a little fire to figure out a cowboy. You should have known better.”

Sungho doesn’t respond. He only stands there, fists clenched at his sides, knuckles white, jaw tight. Anger, frustration, regret, longing — they churn in him, violent and raw. He wants to yell, to chase, to call, to throw the truck into gear and drive until he finds you. He wants to knock on your hotel door and drag you back himself, even though he knows he’d be arguing with you the whole time.

But deep down, he knows something else too. He knows he may have pushed too hard, teased too well, let his pride and stubbornness take over. He should have told you how he felt before it came to this. Should have slowed down, let you decide, instead of letting the tension build until it became unbearable.

Night falls over the farm, and the sky darkens into deep indigo, the first stars blinking faintly overhead. The barn feels emptier than it ever has before, the shadows stretching across the hay-strewn floor like long fingers of regret. He stands there, rooted, staring into the darkness where you should have been. His heart aches, every beat a jagged reminder of your absence.

The air grows colder as the evening deepens, carrying the faint scent of earth and hay, of the fields beyond, of everything that reminds him of you. His chest tightens with every breath. For a moment, he almost imagines you walking back through the barn doors, laughing, teasing, looking at him with that defiant spark in your eyes. The fantasy is so vivid that he nearly reaches for the door, ready to call your name, only to realize that it’s gone.

Meanwhile, somewhere high above the earth, you sit on the plane. The hum of the engines vibrates through the cabin, the lights of the city below flickering like distant stars. Your hands grip the armrest, knuckles pale, body trembling slightly. Tears stream silently down your cheeks, leaving warm tracks on your skin. Every part of you aches — not just your heart, but your chest, your limbs, your very stomach — for him.

You remember the feel of his hands on your waist, the heat of his chest against yours, the teasing glint in his eyes as he held you in the stables. You remember the barn, the smell of hay and sunlight, the quiet moments after the kiss where time had felt suspended. The memories press against you, sharp and intoxicating.

And yet, even as your heart breaks, your mind knows the choice you made is the right one — for now. You belong elsewhere, at least for the moment. The city, your responsibilities, your life calling you back — it is unavoidable. And so, even as your tears fall, you repeat it to yourself like a mantra, trying to steady your shaking body: this is your choice. This is your decision.

The plane lifts off, leaving the earth behind. The farm, the barn, the stables, the fields — all of it shrinks into the distance, the lights fading into tiny points like stars. The world outside your window is vast and indifferent, but inside you, your heart feels impossibly heavy.

And in the quiet hum of the cabin, with the city lights below and the dark sky above, one thought drifts through your mind again and again:

Maybe someday, you’ll come back.

The city has a rhythm all its own, and somehow, you’ve learned to move with it. The streets pulse with life, a constant tide of people, cars, and neon lights that flicker like distant stars. You weave through the crowd with practiced ease, coffee in hand, briefcase tucked under your arm, heels clicking against the sidewalk. The energy is electric — a hum that makes your heart beat faster, sharp and alive. You thrive in it, even as it overwhelms newcomers. Here, you are sharp, capable, in control.

Your apartment reflects the same energy. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch across one wall, offering a glittering view of the skyline. Lights from office towers, restaurants, and streetlamps paint a moving mosaic on the streets below. You’ve made this space yours: minimal furniture with clean lines, pops of color in the pillows and artwork, a small herb garden on the balcony that reminds you that life can grow anywhere. From here, the city feels endless and full of possibility — it feels like home, in its own way.

Work keeps you busy, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Meetings pile up one after another, presentations, client calls, deadlines that demand your full attention. Every day challenges you, pushing you to grow, to think bigger, to stretch further than you thought possible. You love it. You’ve built this life with your own hands, carved your space in the concrete jungle, and it feels exhilarating.

And yet, sometimes — in the quiet moments between emails, in the soft hum of the elevator, or when the city lights blur past your apartment window late at night — a small, unexpected pull tugs at you. The smell of leather on the subway, the faint whinny of a horse at a city farm, the sunlight glinting off the river like it used to off the barn floor — they remind you of him. Sungho. The teasing, smoldering cowboy whose dark eyes haunt your thoughts even now. The kiss in the stables. The warmth of his chest against yours.

You catch yourself doodling barns, horses, and the curve of his jaw in the margins of your notebooks, smiling at the faint heat creeping up your neck. It’s not regret, not really. You love this life. You love the city, the challenges, the independence, the pace. But those memories sit quietly in the corner of your heart, soft as hay dust, persistent as the pull of a distant horizon.

Even mundane things carry sparks of him. Leather gloves in the store remind you of his calloused hands. A cowboy hat in a boutique window makes your chest tighten unexpectedly. And sometimes, when the late evening traffic hums past your apartment, you imagine the barn doors creaking open, the golden sunlight spilling across the hay, and him — dark eyes smoldering, grin teasing — standing there like he owns the place, like he owns you.

Life in the city is vivid, intoxicating, everything you’ve worked toward. But the memories of the farm are vivid too, sneaking into your day like an echo of another life. You thrive here, yet a quiet part of you aches, not for what you left behind, but for the person who helped you feel alive in a way the city cannot replicate.

You push it aside when necessary. Deadlines don’t wait. Calls don’t pause. But at night, when the skyline stretches endlessly before you and the city hums beneath your apartment, you allow yourself to remember. You close your eyes and feel the sun on your face, the dust of the barn, the tension in his arms, the teasing of his voice.

And somewhere deep down, a quiet voice whispers — not demanding, not angry, just curious: maybe someday, you’ll go back. Maybe someday, you’ll return to the sunlit fields, the barn, and the cowboy who left a permanent mark on your heart.

Until then, you thrive. You work. You explore. You live fully in the city — but a corner of you remains quietly tethered to the countryside, to him, to the life you left behind but never truly forgot.

The Monday morning sunlight cuts through the blinds, streaking gold across your desk as you sip your coffee, half-awake and scrolling through your emails. Your inbox is flooded with the usual: meeting requests, project updates, client questions. You sigh, mentally bracing for the day, when a single subject line catches your eye:

“Urgent: Project Review – Rural Development Site Visit Needed.”

Your brow furrows as you click it open. The email is from one of your biggest clients, a nonprofit organization you’ve been consulting with on agricultural sustainability programs. They’re planning an extension of their pilot project — a farm revitalization program — and they want you to visit one of their countryside sites immediately.

Your heart stutters. The address is familiar, almost impossibly so: the small rural area where the farm is located, the one you left behind. Your stomach twists. You didn’t expect this — not now, not so soon. And yet, as you read further, excitement starts to bubble up under the surface. The project is important, high-profile, and it’s your expertise they want. This isn’t just a trip home — it’s a chance to show what you’ve built here in the city and apply it to a place that shaped part of who you are.

Your hands tighten around the coffee mug. You stare out the window at the bustling streets below, imagining the rolling fields, the barns, the stables… and him. Sungho. The image of his dark eyes, the curve of his jaw, the rough warmth of his hands in the barn flashes unbidden in your mind.

A part of you wants to ignore the email. Stay in the city. Keep building the life you’ve carved so carefully. The thought of seeing him again, of facing all the emotions you left behind, makes your chest tighten and your stomach flutter.

But another part — the part that thrives on challenges, that always seeks the next adventure — leans forward. The project is too good to pass up. The opportunity is rare. And maybe, just maybe, facing the countryside again will remind you of who you are and what you want — in the city, in life, and… maybe, just maybe, in matters of the heart.

You hit reply. Your fingers hover over the keyboard, tense.

“I can make the site visit next week,” you type, careful, professional. “Please confirm the schedule.”

You don’t mention anything else — not the flood of memories this is already stirring, not the way your pulse spikes at the thought of returning, not the cowboy whose teasing, smoldering presence haunts you. You keep it strictly professional, the only safe way to handle it for now.

As soon as the email sends, you lean back in your chair, breath shallow, heart hammering. The city is still alive, bustling, full of energy outside your window, but you feel an odd quiet in your chest, a mix of anticipation, fear, and excitement. You know the countryside awaits. And with it, the farm. And with it… him.

For the first time since leaving, you realize that returning isn’t just a work trip. It’s a collision with the past, with the life you left behind, and with the man who has never left your thoughts.

And somewhere deep in your chest, a small, stubborn voice whispers: maybe you’re not ready for what’s coming.

The farm greets you like it remembers you.

The gravel crunches under your shoes as you step out of the car, the sound sharp in the open air. The house stands exactly as it did before, wide and sun-worn, porch slats bleached pale from years of heat and dust. The sky feels bigger out here, stretching endlessly overhead, and the air carries the familiar mix of grass, earth, and something warm that settles deep in your chest.

Sunghoon opens the door before you even knock.

“Well,” he says, leaning casually against the frame, arms crossed, a grin already pulling at his mouth. “If it isn’t the city girl herself.”

You scoff. “Nice to see you too.”

He pulls you into a hug without warning, solid and grounding, the kind that makes your shoulders relax on instinct. When he steps back, his eyes flick over you, sharp and knowing. “You look… good,” he says. “Different. Not worse. Just… sharper.”

“High praise,” you say dryly.

Inside, the house hums with quiet life. The kitchen smells faintly of coffee and sugar, sunlight spilling across the wooden table in warm streaks. You sit together, catching up in easy fragments. He talks about the farm, about how nothing ever works the first time and somehow still gets done. You talk about the city, about work that moves too fast and days that blur together in meetings and deadlines.

Sunghoon listens more than he talks, nodding, humming, occasionally smirking when you downplay your accomplishments. “You always do that,” he says at one point. “Act like big things just sort of… happen to you.”

You shrug. “Guess I’m lucky.”

He gives you a look that says he doesn’t believe that for a second.

Eventually, he checks the time and stands. “I gotta head out. Supply run.”

You follow him to the door. “I might walk around a bit.”

His mouth twitches. “Try not to cause trouble.”

The way he says it makes your stomach flip.

Once he’s gone, the quiet settles in. Not the oppressive kind, but the open, breathing silence of the countryside. You step outside, drawn by instinct, and let your feet carry you down the familiar path. The fields stretch wide, fences cutting clean lines through the land, the wind tugging gently at your jacket.

You don’t realize how far you’ve walked until you hear it.

A sharp huff. A muttered curse. Something thudding hard against packed dirt.

You round the corner of the stables and stop short.

Sungho is mid-battle.

One boot is planted firmly in the ground, the other skidding slightly as he grips the reins of a horse that is very clearly unimpressed with his authority. The animal tosses its head, muscles rolling beneath its coat, while Sungho braces himself, jaw clenched, shoulders tense.

“Easy,” he mutters, breath rough. “You’re not funny.”

The horse responds by yanking harder.

Sungho stumbles forward, barely catching himself, and without thinking, you call out—

“Wow. I leave for a few months and this is what happens?”

The effect is immediate.

Sungho freezes.

Slowly, like he’s afraid sudden movement will break the moment, he turns his head.

For a second, he just stares at you.

His hands are still clenched around the reins. Dust clings to his shirt, sweat darkens the fabric at his collar, and his hair is a mess from the struggle. His expression shifts in real time, confusion giving way to disbelief, then something dangerously close to awe.

“You,” he says, voice low and incredulous. “No. You’re not—”

The horse jerks again, snapping him back to reality. He swears under his breath, nearly losing his footing.

You step forward immediately, reaching for the reins beside his. “You’re letting him think he’s winning.”

Sungho blinks at your hands, then at your face. “You always say that like you know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” you say calmly. “I watched you do this enough times.”

Together, you guide the horse back, your voice low and steady, movements careful and deliberate. The animal snorts, shifts, then finally settles, muscles relaxing as the tension drains out of the space.

Sungho exhales hard, leaning back against the fence. “Well,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face. “That was humbling.”

You grin. “Look at that. I just saved a cowboy.”

His head snaps up, eyes locking onto yours.

For a beat, the air between you feels charged, thick with things unsaid. Then that familiar glint returns, slow and dangerous.

“Careful,” he says, stepping closer. “You keep talking like that, and I might start thinking you came back just to rescue me.”

You tilt your head, deliberately slow. “Maybe I did.”

His laugh is quiet, breathless, like he’s still not sure you’re real. “You disappear without a word,” he says softly, “and now you show up like this?”

You shrug. “You looked like you needed help.”

He shakes his head, smiling despite himself. “Unbelievable.”

The horse snorts behind you, breaking the tension, and Sungho glances back at it with a sigh. “Of course you’d walk back into my life while I’m losing a fight with a horse.”

You smirk. “It’s a talent.”

He looks at you again, really looks, and something in his expression softens. The teasing fades just enough to let something real slip through.

“Guess I’m glad you came back,” he says.

The words hang between you, heavier than he probably meant them to be. The wind stirs, rustling through the grass, carrying the smell of dust and animals and sun-warmed earth. For a second, neither of you moves. He looks like he’s bracing himself, shoulders tight, eyes steady but cautious, like he’s not sure if stepping closer will get him burned.

You shift your weight, kicking lightly at the dirt. “You say that like I just… wandered back in.”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “Didn’t you?”

You glance at him. “I didn’t exactly vanish into thin air.”

“No,” he says, slow and deliberate, “you just disappeared without a word.”

There it is.

Not sharp. Not accusing. Just honest.

Your chest tightens, but you meet his gaze. “I didn’t know how to say it,” you admit. “And I knew if I did, you’d make it harder.”

His jaw works for a moment. “That’s not fair.”

“I know,” you say quickly. “But it’s true.”

He exhales, looking away toward the fence, fingers absently rubbing at the worn leather of the reins. “You could’ve texted,” he mutters. “Anything. A note. A warning. Hell, an emoji.”

Despite yourself, you snort. “What was I supposed to send? A little airplane emoji and a crying face?”

His mouth twitches, and for a moment you see it, that familiar almost-smile fighting its way through the tension. “Would’ve been something.”

Silence settles again, not uncomfortable, just… careful. The horse shifts behind you, bumping Sungho lightly with its shoulder, and he shoots it a look. “Don’t start,” he mutters, then glances back at you. “You left, and I figured that was it.”

You swallow. “It wasn’t.”

He studies you, eyes narrowing slightly. “Then what was it?”

You hesitate, choosing your words. “It was me choosing myself,” you say quietly. “Not running from you. Not punishing you. Just… not knowing how to stay without losing something else.”

That seems to land. He nods slowly, eyes dropping to the ground. “Figures,” he says. “You always were like that. Never halfway about anything.”

“Coming from the man who picks fights with horses?”

He lets out a breathy laugh. “Low blow.”

You step a little closer, close enough to feel the heat of him, the dust on his clothes, the steady presence that once felt too intense and now feels achingly familiar. “You didn’t exactly make it easy to leave,” you add softly.

He looks up at that. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m starting to realize that.”

Another pause. Not empty. Just full.

“So,” he says at last, voice lighter but eyes serious, “you here to save me again, or was that a one-time deal?”

You smile, small but genuine. “I’m here for work.”

“Sure you are.”

“But,” you add, glancing around the farm, the stables, the wide open sky, “I guess it doesn’t hurt that you still don’t know how to handle a stubborn horse.”

He scoffs. “I had it under control.”

“Sungho,” you say sweetly, “you were losing.”

He laughs then, real and unguarded, shaking his head. “Unbelievable. You disappear, come back, save my ass, and immediately start bullying me again.”

You meet his gaze, warmth blooming low in your chest. “Some things don’t change.”

He looks at you for a long moment, expression softening, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Some things don’t.”

And standing there in the dirt and sunlight, with the past finally spoken aloud instead of looming between you, you realize this isn’t a clean restart. It’s messier than that. Slower. But it’s real.

Maybe the story didn’t end when you left.

Maybe it was just waiting for you to come back and save a cowboy again.

creds: lace by @cursed-carmine, cowboy & please support by @dollywons ♡

tags: @tsanho ⸝⸝ @pupillary ⸝⸝ @taestulipss ⸝⸝ @leehanaholic ⸝⸝ @beomtomie ⸝⸝ @mwotgata ⸝⸝ @kaixlix ⸝⸝ @haede-shi ⸝⸝ @ivehan ⸝⸝ @angelwings-fly ⸝⸝ @kjunebuggie ⸝⸝ @niiqv ⸝⸝ @blossomnet @daydreamnet @k-records @fruiteronet [wanna be tagged in my next fic? comment on the reader registry!!]