#victon.fav

1 | OLD HABITS DIE HARD.

a new pairing for the company is the next business move—but what you didn’t plan for was your new partner to be top-star sejun. an alluring man with more charisma in one finger than anyone else you’ve ever worked with, the intense ploy of someone you never imaged you’d become attached to begins.

DETAILS — [ M | pornstar! au | 7k ] WARNINGS — mature content, detailed sexual content, dirty-talking, face-fucking, fingering, mirror sex, unprotected intercourse, jealousy POSTED ON — august 21st, 2020

2 | AN INQUIRY FOR YOUR TAKING.

a year passes after your fleeting affair with sejun, and a single phone call from your manager is enough to bring back every feeling and memory. with a promotional scheme in his hands, sejun requests that you join him to be his main partner in a series of films—and with every fiber of your being telling you to turn down the offer, you agree.

DETAILS — [ M | pornstar! au | outlining ] WARNINGS — updating... RELEASING ON — to be determined...

prologue.

The world had run still. Spinning on its axis, it was like every other person had vanished in the blink of your eyes. Cars parked sideways, tumbling trash down the streets, everything around read that life was inches away but only going farther and farther from you.

When the new world seeped into your life, you had grown so used to the silence. No common traffic meant no looking both ways to cross the street. Not a single soul around to take the last bag of your favorite food the grocery store had to offer. It was all peaches and cream until you realized just what the world had shifted into.

Lights cascading in the distance every night, you found yourself in constant dismay from the games meant to take or give you more life to live. Games where everyone could leave in one piece, some be dealt death by an unknown ruler, and others that were most horrid where only one was issued to leave, all alone in the world like it was that first day again.

You had lost your sense of courtesy for others. Forgotten what it was like to hold a door open for a stranger, wave at an old friend, even hug someone you found dearest. Up until now you believed the world to be against you.

Game long ended, and the vast night was ironically the scariest. Bad people seemed to hide in the shadows, one in particular catching you in their peripheral and tossing some sharp object directly towards your head. Outside of the games where living and death were just as uncertain, people were still going mad. No rest meant a build up of late night thoughts. No moral feelings left in anyone's bones meant the world was up for grabs, and lives came with it.

You had limped street after street, every dark space becoming closer and every block aching your cut thigh. Such a clean, deep gash, your hand covering it wouldn't suffice the bleeding until it was properly cared for. Aching and fatigued from a long day and even longer game, your body sought out for the cold hard cement only to land in a pair of two taut arms.

Han Seungwoo, the man that had pulled you onto his back and carried you four more blocks despite the blood soaking into his pants from your leg. Not a selfish bone in his body, even he had agreed his way of living could cost him everything.

But he survived off the same saying. "As long as I know we can make it until the next." A large grin on his face and sparkled eyes like the new, grim world hadn't destroyed him quite yet; you never knew what he was referring to. The next day, night, game, maybe even next time you're held within his arms.

"Until the next, we can make it." We.

one. 

Time flickers when you rest in the borderland. Hours can go by like seconds or years. Your eyes had peeled open three times that night, the cold air from outside sweeping in through the cracks of the glass. A once power-fueled factory now abandoned lies around you, the scent of a burning fire in your nose to make your tear ducts release the soft liquid.

Some parts of the city appeared clean like it was still that day everyone disappeared. But others were so abandoned, metals rusted, trash blowing across the ground, lights flickering when switched on. As if the world had become coated with omission, everything felt so empty.

The first time your eyes opened you couldn’t have even counted to ten if you had tried. Tall ceiling, the sound of rainfall dripping through the broken roofing, and the heat on one side of your body radiating so hot it kept your whole form warm. The second time you had more consciousness, but the night was too dark to see anything. Shadows surrounded you, the fire growing duller until a single log was tossed in. A long arm extended into your view, the inferno intaking the burning wood and swallowing it whole to release a pit of smoke into the air that made your nostrils burn. His face, side-profile almost chiseled from being out in the world for too long. Strenuous veins poking from his skin, he had offered you all the water he had on him to drink. Only two sips of the cold refreshment made it down your throat before exhaustion took over again.

You weren’t normally like this. Weeks had passed where you stood alone. You played games to have four visa days on tap if worse came to worse, weakness growing in your bones from trying to find other arenas. No plans to originally seek out life around you, shops locked or broken into, old motels and new hotels abandoned and stocked; you could have made it alone. But the borderland can’t stay so vacant, it was common sense. No people around means less people to go up against in a game, those of which cannot be played alone. The arenas move along with migrating others, and if you happen to be out of range for long enough, that’s just the world’s end for you.

Rounds of games within the large spaces would occur every night only to be illuminated brighter by the bright red lasers descending from the sky. Even the stars didn’t mean as much to those alive as the murderous lasers did, their only task to be sent down and skewer people for their souls until lifeless corpses were scattered in places no longer inhabited all because the games moved around and the people went with them.

Third and final rise from sleep, his face was finally fully in your view. Legs crouched beneath his figure, tucked to hold himself upright, a cloth ran across your temple so gently it felt like a cloud was embracing your face. His features were ardent, eyes filled with so much light and calmness that you could hardly divert your gaze to find anything else out about the man. A breath from your lungs thick enough to have him rocking on his heels, the words slipped from your lips in a swift way that only he could have ever heard what you said.

“Thank you.” Soft and able to go right to the man’s heart, the words seem to ring in his ears for a moment. His lashes batted in tandem with your own, but only you were dozing off.

“It’s no problem at all.”

Some things you’re meant to hear, others you’re never meant to. You overheard his bag zipping and his shoes scuff the ground. With the man once in arms reach quickly becoming inches, feet, and then oh-so-far away, you still couldn’t bring yourself to rise from the comfort of his extra sleeping bag and go after him.

A month since everything was at a loss, including your mind. Nothing felt better than hearing the chirping of birds singing from outside of the factory. Warming sun heating your limbs instead of the fire at your side, the first object you felt around you was the note written by the knight in shining armor that had not only kept your sleeping form company all night long but helped tend to your wound.

Pen marks scribbled onto the torn page from a miniature notebook, the words written brought you relief from the stranger now named. “See you soon, I hope.” But his name meant a thousand times more than his cherishable goodbye. Seungwoo, the one who had gone out of his way to help you, now meant more to you than any other person in reality or the borderland.

Life is funny in the way it changes. You make choices every day that can affect the rest of your life, no matter how simple they seem. You eat meals that could potentially make you sick or better for multiple reasons, create a relationship from speaking to a person, or even have your entire world redevelop from just walking out your door.

In the realm of all things moral, those options also can shift by the others involved. Things are always in your peripheral or mind whether you put them there on purpose. Any piece of a situation can be considered important or not. When you step out of your box—when you get placed into a world where few rules apply and acquaintances isn’t one of them, how do you know how to measure the significance of each and every move you make? And more than that, who do you know who to use your morals and common gestures for?

That was the game within the game. Arenas were only open for long, and you still had to survive the rest of the hours of the night and day. With Seungwoo now in your world, the one you believed to stay forever still and slim, do you make the effort to consider your decisions and future in order to meet more like him? The only answer was the one most moral, of course.

A twelve hour meeting with the man had brought you to use your time wisely. Give a hand to those reaching for one, watch all directions around you in and outside of games, and most importantly: survive.

One thing the man failed to mention or tell, he’s essentially a ghost. All arenas around, you never caught up with him. Didn’t find him in any buildings, walking to a new destination, moving in the direction of others—he had vanished into thin air. Hope is just a forum used to make it to the next day, hour, minute, and second of your life. Nothing as rough as the rug being pulled out from under you, that being the confrontation with someone you believed to no longer exist, who soon truly came to no longer exist. Your eyes would watered until tears broke, worry engulfing you each time you went to sleep not knowing if you’d see Seungwoo’s face again or even know if he made it.

A game of spades is crucial to the borderland. Focused on physical abilities, it was a make or break task every time. Whether or not you’re athletic isn’t the point, it’s your ability to be clever and mobile that brings the card and visa days to you.

The tallest building around, stories so high that lights of planes used to illuminate even the darkest rooms inside. You had seen the high tower so many times and still never thought to stare, to determine how hard it would be to ascend it. It never filled your mind before now, the red line closing off the game as figures surrounded you. Phone in your hand, your restful day had used one of your four visa days, the gut feeling that you still needed more always swirling constantly. If you can’t support yourself game after game in a repetitive way, you still had trust in knowing you had days to pillow yourself. But when that number decreases, even by one, it feels like your life flashes before your eyes each time. There was no preparation for this world, you were just winging it the entire way.

The ding of the devices in every person’s hand was always the most startling, such as a church bell sounding through a town to notify of a death. The vital understanding of every game was that no matter how many people stood around you, some might not make it out. It became so discouraging, so you stopped looking at faces and trying to learn names with those you played with.

Instructions are always as clear as they can be. This game was centered around a physical activity. And while most are usually meant for anyone, the task of the game made your stomach churn. Windows with ledges gave platforms to the building, each spaced out enough to get you to the next floor. The climbing was half the battle, anyone with the fear of heights being the rest.

Ten stories up, the second the phone chimed to signal ‘Game Start’ everyone was off. Your hands held tight to the platform of each window, eyes focused on your own reflection in the glass panes instead of the deep drop four floors down to the ground. Never one for climbing but muscles strong enough to manage the game, you were halfway up before you saw a figure moving at your left.

You didn’t look at faces. You stopped asking names. The pain of knowing the person next to you could live or die in this very moment or in the time remaining of the game was too much to bear for your cadence of survival. You can offer help to others without trying to fit into their place or keep them in line, it was simple to learn that. But his familiar scent caught your nose first, once balanced with the smell of smoke, it was now clear to you that the common musk of the man that you were in debt to was right beside you once again.

“Glad the rain moved out this morning.” His wide smile in your peripheral nearly caught you off guard. Seungwoo had moved across two different window platforms to be at the column next to yours. How he had the guts to swing from terrace to terrace, you didn’t understand.

The second time you did something for the first time in a while: you looked around at the people you were in the game with. An older man three stories above you, a woman to your far right, a younger boy below you struggling to climb, and Seungwoo by your side. You wanted to gift your palm to the one below you, ask for guidance from the man above, but as you felt the sweat increase in your palm just as you reached for the fifth platform and your grip loosen, Seungwoo’s unsaid message came into light. You can’t help them if you can’t help yourself, his hand wrapping around the duration of your wrist with enough room to connect his fingertips and pull your forward back to the window.

“Stay focused.”

Your feet paired together side by side as your phones dinged in tandem, ten minutes passing with ten minutes left and only five points won. You needed to reach the top to get ten; ten was your living number or else you may lose the chance to even leave the arena with your entire body. Death in all directions, the subtle laughter of your knight brought your brows to knit.

“Think we have a chance?” His eyes read lighthearted, but the weight of his question still frightened you without meaning to. “I think we do.”

One ding turned into two, and the seventh platform was pressed into the sole of your shoes before the game turned into what it secretly was from the beginning. The man reaching for the second to last platform didn’t have someone to catch him, fingers scraping against the smooth surface until his nails were left to cling to the edge. Tissues breaking, his voice croaking out a plea, and his body went barreling down. The woman in his line of fire, their phones sounded with rapid dings to notify their loss of points until the final sound of their bodies colliding with the ground shattered the devices and their lives.

Seungwoo’s hand enveloped your wrist again, not for protection but for comfort. In times like this, you forgot what it was like to have someone to grab onto when you feel fear or anguish. His head tilted upwards, voice soft as he tugged you to keep moving. Five minutes was claimed taken, the call of your phones only making Seungwoo look to his side at your panicking face more often.

“We’ve got this.” His reiterated words brought comfort to you for a third time, your hands holding securely onto each ledge until the ninth ding rang louder than the others. You were now higher than the man had gone, Seungwoo’s voice continuing to bring you assistance until your knees were hitting the edge of the last floor’s platform and the final ding chimed.

Your eyes blinked, you and Seungwoo now secure on the roof of the skyscraper-like building. Hardly able to bring yourself to look over, the younger boy had made it as far as the sixth platform before you could overhear his fist colliding with the window. His voice sharp and broken, the window opened for him to climb inside.

Moments like these, when someone takes an easier route within a game that is ultimately cheating, the only turn out was to sit back and watch. Seungwoo thought faster than you, moved faster than you, and his hand caught the collar of your shirt to bring you backwards. Falling down onto his front, his arms wrapped instinctively around your waist and held you tight to his body. His response was discarded by your mind, the red beam flashing from the sky much more urgent in the moment. The lazer broke inches from yours and his feet, the piercing line drilling through the building’s ceilings and floors like they were cardboard until the sound of the boy’s scream could be perceived. A wish for death is what he went with as soon as he slipped through the sill of the window, the third person out of the original five players now dead with only you and Seungwoo standing.

‘Game Clear’ The passive voice was deafening to anyone who heard it. Lifting from Seungwoo’s lap to offer him your hand to stand, the tall frame of the man made you feel safer than the five of spades on the adjacent table waiting to be picked up by one of you. Five more days added to your three, a sigh of relief was released from your lungs as you fell into Seungwoo’s chest and wrapped your arms around his torso.

“I told you we could do it.” Grin soft and skin smooth with sweat glistening off every limb, his hand opened for you to take his grasp and move towards the open staircase.

You had been waiting for him, the man returning to his original form and existence right before your eyes. So much to ask him, stars in the sky above, you almost spoke at the same time as your shoes hit the first steps to descend the building.

“Where have you been?”

two.

The extravagant feeling of physical contact when you believe you’ll never receive it again, Seungwoo didn’t release your hand for the extent of the walk to his apartment. His long fingers created heat in your cheeks each time he’d run a shape across your skin, the entirety of his palm cradling your hand alone. Skin on skin, the feeling of his laughter vibrating all the way from his throat down the limb to his hand to shake yours. Quickly but surely, Seungwoo was becoming the person you couldn’t bear to be without, and that was dangerous.

“Everything is open on this side of town. I’ve never seen anything like it.” His eyes wandered over the world around yourselves, captivated by the bright mid-morning sky filled with puffy white clouds.

Seungwoo was right, this side of town was most busy during the unknown hour you were walking through it. A place turned absent by those moving with the arenas, if anyone from the original world saw it like this, they’d be convinced this was the end. An apocalypse where the world functions on still having a vital community. In theory, a world like this can only last for so long. With each arena taking lives every night, the numbers of the population would decrease rapidly. But still, you found a handful of others playing games with you until now.

The game of spades was the first time you had played with less than ten people. And seeing as Seungwoo was one of them in such a big section of the town with multiple arenas going at once, that population number must be well below what could be considered exigent.

A meal heated by an electric stove, no bowls and only two spoons, you felt like college roommates eating alongside the man. Sat across from each other at the small dining table, your eyes would linger before shifting away. The building he had chosen as safest was a little more worn than the rest of the space, still liveable and lively with the walls painted colors of the seventies era.

The air thin and breathable but buoyant due to the strangeness of the scenario, your entire mindset was forged in breaking the awkward new-found part of the relationship between you and Seungwoo. Where you could look each other in the eyes without laughing and parting, keep a conversation going instead of it being small talk, but Seungwoo didn’t seem to mind any part of it.

“We’ve been here a while.” Ice breaker, but not the one you could have imagined he’d use.

“It feels like it’s been longer.” Your half smile masked that the sentence was hard to say, but even harder to admit that pieces of your life have been lost due to the odd shift.

“Almost three months. I’ve been alone this entire time.” His eyes blinked slowly, tracing the features of your face as he watched your reaction. Knitted brows, eyes moving to the table, fingers loosening their grip on the spoon at the same time your hands began to shake.

If you count the seconds, minutes, and hours of the day systematically and consider how much you can do or have happen to you in that frame of time, your brain may explode. It takes seconds for something in the world to settle into reality, minutes to become a bruise on someone’s body or life, and hours to make someone digress into insanity from everything changing so significantly.

Education can take place for up to twenty plus years. Marriages can last anywhere from a day to a lifetime. Friendships can be ephemeral or bountiful. You can physically move to a new place once a week. You can travel across countries in a month. And you had been stuck in this realm of fear and pain for three months with your original world, and all things in it, a mere memory.

But his statement caught you the most off guard. Seungwoo, too, had been alone through all of this. With the amount of cards from each arena, games able to be played multiple times, and the loss of the nameless people around you, Seungwoo had been fighting this entire time just like you. A place filled with nothing but greed, darkness, and death, and you still managed to find another person in your same shoes a block from where you had been living.

You already learned this, that the significant impact Seungwoo had on you was now lethal. Which is why the sun setting outside made your face fall pale, the conversation die down, and total silence take over. “You know I have to leave again tonight, don’t you?”

It had been written on his face the entire time. Even without asking, you knew Seungwoo had a similar thought process as you when it came to visa days. The time he spent with you was crucial to your meeting, but the previous hours were compelling. You had played a game that night he found you, but the real game was feeling the rush of the weapon piercing your skin and not knowing if the perpetrator had done it on purpose for a kill or maybe for fun. And, quite possibly, would want their sharp object back. For Seungwoo, his night had clearly been dismantled the second he saw you injured and he acted on his feet. It didn’t take you having a degree to know his crisis, the fact that the man had not played a game that night swallowing away extra days he could have started spending with you now.

“Will you at least be careful?”

Sorrow-filled eyes scared with your response, you seemed to trade places with him and be the one to put him at ease. A breath from moving into him, raking up past his Adam's apple and through his lips followed by his tight skin clinging to his chest—the man seemed more rested now knowing that you were on the same page instead of having to sugar coat it and tell you directly.

“For you, of course I’ll be careful.” A sentimental thing to say in the borderland. There was no going back from this. Seungwoo was rightfully important to you now, despite your debt needing to be paid back to him from saving you and tending to your wound. And even if he hadn’t admitted it, the energy around him assured you that he felt the same for you. “Just promise me you’ll be here when I get home in the morning.”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

Wide shoulders pressing through the doorframe of the apartment right at nightfall, two tear drops left your ducts. You had never had to experience the constricted feeling of your chest holding in a breath, much less a wish that everything would be okay, inside of the borderland. The world here was too grim, everything appearing just as your world had until darkness prevailed and life was meant to come together to choose who lives and who dies that night. Watching Seungwoo leave and not look back, it had your heart pumping blood through every vein like you’d feel something happen to him, if it does, the moment it takes him over. A safety net, your mind holding tight to your emotional connection with one another to now hopefully warn you if anything bad was to come to him tonight. Hard part is, you hardly believed yourself.

The apartment sat silent, your form still sat in the same chair you ate dinner at only with the table now cleared. The scent of lavender in the air from a nearby fragrance dispenser, the tears that left your eyes drew pale, wet lines down your face until the buoyancy of the salt water escaped your skin and fell to leave two drops on your pants.

It was hell not knowing if Seungwoo was still alive before you had the convenience of meeting him in the spades game, but now it was an eager death sentence for your own sanity awaiting his return for a single night. Until dawn takes over the horizon, you knew you didn’t have the chance of him returning to you, and that forced the air to accumulate into nothing but cold and bitterness.

Feet pressing into the old, tiled flooring after two hours of sitting in your own thoughts, the chair rubbed wrongly against the ground and squealed a sound that normally caused your palms to cover your ears. But here in the moment, shadows swallowing you away from the little yellow lamp turned on in the far corner, you couldn’t find yourself to care.

As soon as you felt other objects, life returned to you. Body fragmented but returning to one piece, you knew it was bad to snoop around, but the short, skinny book with a hardcover was displaced. Not aligned with the others, the book was too obvious to the naked eye while layered with the fiction and nonfiction books stacked on the bookshelf. Used as a nightstand by Seungwoo from him sleeping on the couch, it was useful. Cool touch to your fingertips, pulled into the extent of your hand and opened, Seungwoo’s handwriting gave a sense of familiarity. You had held the page from this same notebook for weeks, kept it safe to reread the kind note he left you to wake up to. Similar tone in the first sentence, there was no question that you had stumbled upon his personal diary.

Even with him at a distance, even though you had heard his voice on a few occasions, the way he spoke in the small journal was just as he talked to you. Like you could hear him reading it out to you, see his bright face creating visual emotions as his eyes met the letters forming his own words, feel his pain and contentment. Seungwoo’s connection to you here in the borderland was the same, but his original world was vastly different.

“Day Five: The world seems to have stopped turning. This was the day of my final exams. I was meant to be stuck behind a desk for at least four hours, leaving that building I always dreaded walking into with a smirk on my face and a ‘passed’ stamp on my form.”

His tone was overbearing in this part, like he was speaking on behalf of something he had been hoping for his entire life.

“Why couldn’t things have waited another week? What exactly would have changed? That day everyone vanished: I was standing in a fully packed ER, and I only stepped out for a second to grab that ladies purse from the ambulance. They were gone in a blink of an eye, all from me leaving for a moment. Why did I have such an impact on my surroundings, and why must I continue to bear that loneliness and frightening feeling now?”

He was vehement. Speaking with anger and passion like his shoes were too tight and his head throbbed with his heartbeat as he wrote. Seungwoo seemed so calm, but this was an insight that he too had been screwed over by this world.

“Seven years of cramming so much information into my head to pass that exam, and it was over before it even began. What was the purpose? If I had known what I know now, I would have ripped up my notes and left out with my friends on so many different occasions. I lost them all in that same second, and I have yet to know if they are unknowingly around me. Everyone here is off their rockers, some even like being here. My purpose was back home, meant to be saving lives in that same ambulance I touched before everything changed. So why am I here?”

Everything about what Seungwoo said shook your bones. You wanted to wrap your arms around him, tell him he means something to you and the world, but he was blocks away playing the very game that could fluctuate your worlds just as inexorably as when the world changed around him. You had your own, fair share of these thoughts by now. But reading Seungwoo’s own writing, like a memorial for what once was before it is now, the world grew even colder that someone with his head on his shoulders could still suffer like this.

“I was alone before now. My apartment was shallow and suffocating, but it was still my piece of the world that I could control. Here I have nothing permanent.”

He was speaking on behalf of this same apartment. It was hard to tell on site that this was originally his considering how the arenas shift, but it was his decision to make the longer trips to play and stay in his own safe zone. You hadn't taken Seungwoo as one for constant comfort, but this seemed like a precondition that traveled over with his personality from world to world.

“So many people around me. My shifts at the store on the corner were nothing now compared to the two or three people maximum I see night after night. Even people at the games have grown slim. Is this my doing? Have I done this? If I believed myself lonely at work, on shifts, studying my heart out, where does my purpose now lie?”

The optimistic man had been at his wits end. You didn’t need a visible calendar to know what was coming, your appearance bone chilling compared to the dark tone he had before the next entrance.

“I do still have my purpose. Sick or not, I am still meant to help others. A blade in someone’s thigh tonight showed me that. I’ve stopped to write this down, but I know I won’t forget the face of someone so tired yet so hopeful. Eyes opening and shutting, fighting to speak every chance. I hardly said anything, but I left a note. Maybe I’m not so alone as I thought, but I still fear what once happened around me will come again. I can’t lose someone else.”

The sparkles in his eyes were true. Seungwoo had chanced himself, placed himself into danger by getting you into that factory, and especially could have lost his life had the person that stabbed you come knocking. He cared for you like he knew you because that’s what he had been tailored to do in his original life. His sense of direction had been misguided by his actions from the empty world here in the borderlands. Seungwoo still has a heart of gold and magic fingertips to heal, and because of you he was no longer blind to himself.

“Is it a good read?”

Your mind rose from his voice reading the diary in your head to the real Seungwoo standing in your line of sight. Hands clasped behind his back, smile wide and skinny, the same sparkle you imagined perfectly in your head returned to your visual.

“You’re okay!” Book falling from your grasp down to the sofa you didn’t know you had sat down on in the first place, the smooth feeling of the four of clubs card was ignored by your hands running the length of his arms before wrapping around his neck. He no longer seemed stunned by you, his own arms finding place around your waist as he pulled you tighter into the hug. Wind leaving your lungs, his tall frame bent down to hug you even closer before releasing you and standing straight.

“Team effort. Although I’ve played a few clubs, I’m still not used to having to work with others here. All of us won the card together though,” His smile was grateful, mantled cheeks due to your hands holding onto his arms like he was only your imagination giving him nothing but happiness. His story seemed to stop, index finger tugging your chin to seek his level. “Hey, I’m right here.” Arms engulfing you a second time, it felt like you hadn’t known him to be so significant until you felt his warm skin pressed into the soft fabric of your shirt like it is now.

Even with the moment at hand, he continued with his story like two friends catching up over drinks after work. “Everyone got visa days. It was nice to see everyone relieved at once despite our differences for appearing in this world, but I still felt like I was missing something. There wasn’t any real danger to that game somehow, and it felt like a kiddy game just for more days. I think everyone felt that way. Like there was meant to be more, or more is coming.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to look up at him, hearing his voice with your own ears was all you needed right now.

“This world isn’t meant to be fun. You’re not supposed to feel true relief. But I don’t think anyone can help feeling relieved or satisfied with their own knowledge when a game ends and they’ve won. People may have died, possibly lived, and maybe you’re walking out of the arena alone. But you got another day to live, and that’s mostly what fills your head. That’s the only relief they will let us feel here. We need it. It’s human nature to want to continue on.”

“So let’s keep going until this ends.”

three.

Boxes surrounded you, four sections of small vaults within the bank—your contest. Diamond games were considered foxes of the borderland. One wrong move and you could lose everything, but the right move could open another passage to a second half of the game. You had been cornered before in a situation like this, your only escape being that you didn’t trust anyone else in the game.

Your eyes followed the pattern of the floor to his shoes, Seungwoo’s faded sneakers turning grimer every day from all of the action. His long legs, skinny waist, large shirt, and spatial eyes each stationed in the direction of two of the sections. He was focused on his gut, following with where the air took him. That was Seungwoo’s way of always winning, and it worked up until now.

Your partner has kept by your side for two weeks now. A hand to hold, a smile to return, a soft kiss to be placed on your temple before falling asleep beside one another. Every game before you met Seungwoo was considerably easy. You didn’t have a reason to keep going, lived off memories and what could be. He gave you a message, one irreplaceable: to not give up hope.

Hundreds of the small vaults, all unlocked and waiting to be opened—you knew better than to go searching one by one. Five tries, and your stomach twisting with the sight of the clock ticking down from two hours, you felt his warm touch clutch around your hand.

“It’s a diamond. The intimidation is part of the game.” Always the perfect approach to calming your nerves, he had a point.

“Five tries, four sections, two hours.” Numbers were a focus for each arena. Number of players, number of losses, number of chances, number of the card. But this arena laid open for twenty minutes only to welcome and enter in only you and Seungwoo.

Your apartment had grown scarier. Warmer weather during the day usually brings the sun out for longer, meanwhile the darkness at night was thicker. All arenas that had moved farther out now retaking their places. You counted the nights just as if it was a significance to a game before you came to the realization; old arenas had been revived with new games, and a new vision was upon the world. Higher numbered cards were now the tokens, lights would cascade through the streets surrounding your shared apartment to guide any and all around to the closest arena. It was a gratifying experience knowing you came this far, that the end was contiguous, but it also scared you more.

The games rejoining the abandoned section of the city meant that those left in the world had to travel with them. In a game where only you and Seungwoo were the players, an intelligence game originally meant for a team to fight and argue, you held a wonder for what was next.

“So much going on in your head.” Seungwoo bent forward to stare at your face evenly. Eloquence paired with instinct and intuitiveness, the triple threat made Seungwoo a light in a dark room. “And you’ve said nothing more than a sentence.”

Heat in your cheeks and eyes gazing at the floor, your heartbeat rapid while your brain took in every piece of information that you could see. Intelligence games didn’t just focus on being smart, being quick witted, or once having a degree. They are about perception, thinking outside of the box, and then getting back inside to perform the task in an outlandish way that is meant to single one person out in the group and make them appear delirious.

“What’s your shoe size?” Your gaze didn’t lift from the floor, your peripheral vision giving you enough of the image you were too distracted to witness.

The man’s long leg bent, his palm cupping the side of his worn sneaker to lift up his foot and read the number on the bottom. The shoes were too old now, in need of replacement. His head shot up, tongue ploying the words like a joke. “Large, but nothing specific about the number.”

“You could take it off and look.” Your head finally twisted, sight set on the man attempting to keep his balance like a flamingo in running water.

“Oh, right.” His follow up didn’t change his actions, Seungwoo’s comical grin as he placed his foot back down gearing you up to continue on your search. “What is it?”

“There’s a large scuff of a shoe in front of this vault tower. Like someone’s been here recently.”

“This game was just put in. No one’s been near our apartment since the games moved down six blocks.” By the look of the confused to conscious expression on his face, Seungwoo was moving back into the flow of the game. His eyes found the same mark on the smooth flooring you found moments before, lids falling over his brown irises until he was squinting down at the small pattern. “Hey, that looks close to my size.”

“Okay, if someone stood here and it wasn’t a player or their opponent.” But even without the need for extreme ingenuity, involvement with understanding patterns and what dismantles them is a necessity to the intelligence games. “Then this must have come from whoever set up the game.”

His tall body moved ahead of you, shadow from the yellow and orange lighting of the old-style bank leaving him to cover your sight. A step over before you moved up, and you already knew where he was leaning. The mark meant the third vault was the biggest clue, the holder of whatever was meant to be found, and was your next assignment of the game.

“Five rows, five columns, and five tries.” The man looked like the need to roll his eyes was killing him from within, his body falling slump until his head laid on your shoulder from the awkward sideways angle that he stood. A huff from his chest blowing out of his nose, Seungwoo’s late nights of not sleeping well, even beside you, was catching up with him.

Your sign evened out the tone of the little communication you always held with him. “This bank is old because it was one of the firsts built in the city. Which means we can’t look at the locks because they’re all going to be corroded from overuse and dull keys.” You wanted to keep your end of the bargain, each game giving you and Seungwoo more time to bond outside of eating together and sleeping in each other's arms. Time had ticked slowly for two weeks, the bright man holding together what kept you on your toes. But with a tricky game like this, hope was scarce.

“Same concept, different pattern.” By the way Seungwoo spoke during games, you knew his original world was abbreviated. He had worked as an EMT, all things said having to be quick and to the point—something he carried over with him to the borderlands.

He coiled down, knees at his chest as he took the first leap. Handle lifted and pulled, the first of five was opened and the vault laid empty.

Your fingers toyed with the cool metal before doing the same as he did, opening a vault directly in the middle of the section. Another dark space, and your heartbeat bumped to the sound of music you couldn’t hear.

Seungwoo’s toes lifted him higher, the man finding sight of the top row. Your eyes ran in tandem, his trailing over the second biggest clue of the game.

“Except this time it’s a fingerprint and not the mark of a shoe.” You rose to your own toes, balancing with your hand on his shoulder as your opposite pointed out the mark on the vault. Seungwoo followed your index finger, finding the small print of someone’s thumb on the surface. From first glance, it seemed so simple.

Seungwoo smiled at you like you had just won an award, his hand removing yours from his shoulder just to lean on your own form and reach for the top vault. The handle clicked louder, the room grew colder, and just as twice before—nothing was inside. A painful sigh came from the man, his furrowed brows making you stare harder at the clue you believed was an insight to the answer. A soft little pattern created like an arrow, your hand slapped against the open vault to shut it.

But the print that came from your sweating hand happened to be different. “Wait— look.” His body leaned in with attentive eyes and a sweating temple, Seungwoo’s stance once again awkward. “The marks from me closing it are too soft. If someone had touched the vault we just opened, then these should have shown up higher.” Point from point, eye for eye, and you had solved what you believed to be impossible from first glance at the four sections of small boxes.

“Then this is the right one?” Seungwoo’s fingers shook as they lifted towards the vault. Box the length of his hand and just a little wider, your only safety net was knowing you had one last try after this.

“It’s opening.” His voice low, eyes wide, and a sigh of relief leaving him just as the game of spades you gained each other as companions at. His fingers took it between two, smooth texture rewarding. Seven visa days and another game finished, “Diamond!”

‘Game Cleared’ sounded through the room, the ring of the phones allowing the doors to unseal and reopen. Red lasers once holding you hostage inside the vault room now disappeared before your eyes, you and Seungwoo leaving the bank hand in hand—as always. His palm clutching yours, fingers lacing together. Your breath intake concealed by your large shirt that was once his, the feeling of intimacy filled your mind with serotonin as your feet shuffled out the front door of the frequently busy domicile now emptied.

Smiles on your faces, eyes looking at each other from the sides as you walked, the night had dwelled in the realm of all things good. But most things good in this world didn’t last, the dark sky above holding puffy nimbus clouds. Small drops of rain grew larger, the cold water from above chilling your bones as Seungwoo lost his grip on you and swayed his coat over your heads to race back home.

Those few good things left in this world always brought you back to the one you considered best, Seungwoo’s smile even in a dim moment. Rain covered your forms despite the coat being over your bodies, the run causing more water to catch your heads and smooth your hair down to your skulls. Porcelain skin letting the liquid pour down his face, his large frame halted in the middle of the street. Face to the sky, hand reaching out to you through the blinding rain, and your fingers connected between one another as you both stood in awe of where you were in life.

“Would you have ever imagined this?” His voice was high pitched enough to reach your ears through the sound of the rainstorm, eyes sparkling similarly to his bright teeth through his lips. “Us being here together, doing okay?”

“I thought I was going to lose my life as soon as I was brought here, Seungwoo.” Admittedly, it was true. Some things in life shift perspectives so absentmindedly, you don’t even realize their significance until years later when you reminisce on the past. But Seungwoo was still your gift in this world, the one to show you not to fear what was around every corner. “I couldn’t be here without you.”

In all of two weeks, this was the first you had said his name. The syllables rang out through the mild storm, thunder overhead not at all clearing his ears of you speaking his name. Visually, the man looked like he prized your tongue releasing his name.

“May I kiss you?”

His question leered you forward, lips placed between his plump ones to take in his taste. Tongues dancing together, lips moving in sync, his hand holding you at your jawline; the bolt of lightning a block away didn’t startle either of you. An unknown lesson of this world, your good luck charm being the man currently in your arms. You both had learned that the true luck here was each other, and not everyone had that. Together you feared nothing abnormal: none of the games, the lasers that brought death, nor the other people that roamed the streets and brought more pain to an already cruel world. You were untouchable.

Rain water dripped down your bodies, falling into the crevices and cracks of your forms to make chills run up and down your spines. It only brought you to hold one another closer, the remaining blocks of the walk home a blur up until you felt your back pressed firmly against the door of your shared apartment and hear the knob click open from his key.

Your arms clamped around his neck, his face falling into the crook of your own to place a swift kiss. Each time you felt his soft lips on your skin you released a small sound, the arcane feeling something you believed couldn’t occur in the borderland. Back pressed into the sofa, Seungwoo sat up to pull his shirt over his head and pants down his legs, you working your own clothing off before uniting your bodies. His long frame over you, eyes shallow and gleaming continually. Your eyes shut as you felt his long fingers brush over your body, sensitive spots across your skin bringing more chills to break. His hiss as he felt the heat of your inner thighs before his fingers pressed patterns into you had your back arching against the soft couch. A whisper of his name and Seungwoo tampered with your underwear, pulling it down before gliding himself into you. Your walls clenched tight around him, legs shaking and head thrown back from the pleasure.

A growl from the back of his throat as you swallowed his cock whole, a whimper left your lips as you felt him throb from within you. Your eyes glazed over with lust, Seungwoo’s moans nearly overpowering yours as his head fell into the crook over your neck for another kiss and a resting place. His forehead ran warm, the heat of his own skin nothing like the friction as he pumped into you, your ankles connecting at his lower back to hold him in place. Beats and thumps, the sofa bouncing against the wall, and his fingers clenched the hair at the crown of your head in warning that he couldn’t form the words to tell you that his orgasm was close.

Thumb pressing into his chin, you caught his attention long enough to place a deep kiss on his lips. The man that had catered towards you, taught you how to enjoy life again, who you loved with every string of your heart, whispered your name just as he filled you and felt you quake around him with your own orgasm.

“Oh— fuck.” At a loss for words as he pulled out of you, your lips could only smile as you pressed back the hair sweated down to his forehead. Seungwoo, now sharing his second most vulnerable moment with you, seemed to find the words on the tip of his tongue. “I love you. I truly do love you. I couldn't walk away from you that night. You were so fragile, so scared. If only I had known how much you meant to me right then, things wouldn’t be as they are.”

The man fell down behind you between your body and the back of the sofa, the cushions supporting you just as they did every night. His lengthy arm over your waist, his soft-toned words in your ears, what he said didn’t make any sense. For the first time, Seungwoo seemed genuinely scared.

His voice hushed. “Everything here isn’t meant to last.”

“We know this already, Seungwoo.” Your eyes caught sight of him from behind you, his lids falling heavy and the ranting of his mouth falling faint.

“If only I had said no, we would be even. No difference in each other, no significance or detrimental states. We could go on, survive and maybe even leave together one day. But you’re just a player in the game.”

four.

There are days you wake up and know something is off. Human nature applies to instincts, including emotions and mental state. The borderland has a way of twisting nerves and bending rules until neither apply. You can look at an arena and know of the dangers that lie ahead and not feel a single ounce of fear. You can step into a resting area, one where you’re meant to feel safe, and have everything taken from you in under five minutes by someone you’ve never met. The borderland changes any and everything you knew from reality and turns them into something you’re unable to comprehend. And that was what caused the most threat.

Three weeks beside Seungwoo, the moon in the sky and street lamps guiding the way, the entirety of your mind was telling you to turn around. Every fiber of your being knew this was it, something was bound to happen. When you take a test and every answer is the same letter choice, you become suspicious. Things had run well for too long, and even Seungwoo wore a half smile instead of his normal goofy look like he didn’t have anything to fear.

Witnessing Seungwoo’s progression outside of your own was otherworldly. The man had gone from being just like you, not caring for most other people around him especially in games, to chancing his neck to hold your hand and get you through something together. His balance was good, but your eyes could only see so much. He was losing his equilibrium with every step.

Like an out of body experience, it’s not difficult to realize when someone is encountering a situation from within. His eyes read something that gave you chills, that he had been down this road before.

Seungwoo, the guy who threw a chance at everything and gave you even more, stopped in place right before the lasers read that you were inside the next arena. Bulged eyes suffering from tears he could hardly release, heavy pants of his breath bringing fog before his lips from the cool night air. It was your voice that pulled him from wherever he had gone.

“Something’s wrong.”

His slow blink, his hand reached out for you without looking. You had long ago gained a trust for Seungwoo, one hard to break. But taking his hand and stepping through the electronic doors for the game to read you in, you knew you were bound to get that second-hand screw over from doing well for so long. Seungwoo’s chances had counted up, he had used them all. But you still held onto yours.

Evolution taught humans to sense danger. Watch the hair on their arms rise, feel something change in the energy around them, use their five senses to detect what it is. Four more players entered without a word, strangers by chance. The phones rang and centered you into what the game is about, your hands growing shaky just from the sight of the card.

High numbers meant more danger, meant you may not make it out. But the heart symbol on the card was a death sentence more than any other, Seungwoo’s face falling and keeping his eyes on the ground. His fear was your first clue.

Seungwoo’s past life was considerably more purposeful, one you’d believe to be his reason for being in this world as it is. A trained EMT, someone who can save lives and keep more people playing. Therefore, those running the games could keep it up longer. He was the perfect target. And as he said that night, you were just a player.

The arena for the hearts game was a hospital, the very same that Seungwoo had been working at the day he was put into this new world. You didn’t want to make the connections, assume the worst about the man you had most faith in, but everything pointed to him.

A rectangle table gifted you your task, heart monitors to be placed on your wrists. Written directions read that the normal heart rate ran anywhere from eighty to one hundred beats per minute. But that was at a casual rate, not when your life could end any second. The anxiety of the game is meant to break ninety beats, giving you a yellow light as a warning sign. If you exceed the highest number, the light goes red and you’ll be visited by the friendly red laser to take you away. You had been fighting since the first game, one where you were against everyone else in an endurance game. You had felt dread and horror from the games before, but the sound of the chiming phone speaking ‘Game Start’ had your heart in your throat and your hand reaching for Seungwoo’s wrist.

His hand lifted before you could catch it, his own hand taking your wrist instead to pull you along to the game. heart games are meant for betrayal, they feed on it. Entertainment for those in control, you could only shake in wonder for what was about to bring you to fear or possibly despise Seungwoo.

Dummies laid on surgery tables in the middle of the ER, paired teams walking to the figures. Your eyes trailed the fake rubber, so thin and invasive. A tray of tools to use, a call from one of the other teams didn’t detour Seungwoo pulling a blade from the silver tray and gliding it across the heart of the dummy.

“Heart surgery. That’s why it’s only from the abdomen above.” His quick wit showed everyone that he was accurate to the game, the dummy’s lower half nonexistent. “Take this and cut a small line right here.” Seungwoo’s directions turned to you, his hand holding a skinnier blade to give to you as the blade in his opposite hand showed you where to cut. Moving aside, you felt the rubber separating with the little force you applied with the sharp knife. Your heartbeat was regular, a green light on your wristband the last of your worries as sudden squabbling came from behind you.

“I don’t know! I’ve never performed open heart surgery before!” Yellow, the small dot on the ladies wrist made your eyes shut to focus on your own heartbeat.

Her partner's rebuttal made your teeth clench, Seungwoo’s left hand placed on the small of your back to guide you to open your eyes and look at him. “Just us. It’s just us here.”

“Well then at least try!” The knife in her partners hand glided into the dummy just as yours had, only it went too deep. A small gash, a rushing fake artery, and the light ran red on their wristbands.

Seungwoo’s fingers clasped over your eyes, his hand lifting your knife close to the dummy away. You could only hear the laser sizzle through the building’s floors, feel the energy of the room shift, and hear the subtle thump of the bodies falling to the ground.

“Let’s keep going.” Focused, cutting at the dummy gently like it was a person, Seungwoo was far more cut out for this predicament than you. He had trained for years, studied night and day, and even had his world end and rebegin in this very building. It was all too systematic, your gut turning from thinking about what he had dealt with.

But those very thoughts brought something to your mind.

Open skin-like rubber showing the cavity of the dummies chest, Seungwoo turned on the small saw to cut at the fake bones and continue the surgery. The second pair babbled, their lights going yellow every few seconds before changing back to green. They watched him like he was teaching a lecture, eyeing in on his movements and repeating them on their own dummy.

Bones out and placed properly, heart intact and being repaired by Seungwoo’s soft hands, the second pair couldn’t see his actions from within the rubber body and could only eyeball what he was doing. A shift in the air, their tools moving too quickly, and the body of the dummy vibrated violently on their surgery table.

Halted, Seungwoo called to them with fear in his voice. “You did something wrong. It’s going into cardiac arrest.”

“You mean it’s having a heart attack? A dummy is having a heart attack? Something inanimate is in control of our lives right now?” Their argument was real, everything they said made sense. But hearts games are all about betrayal, whether emotional or legitimate. Their tension managed to keep their own heart rates at a yellow-lighted pace, but not their dummies. They had missed out on the point of the game, in which Seungwoo seemed to have outsmarted the second the first tool touched the fake heart of the fake person.

Their lights ran red, your eyes staying put on the back of Seungwoo’s head as you awaited more directions for your task. His voice didn’t speak instructions to you, only telling you what he knew from the game. “The heartbeat monitors-” His wrist rose for a second to show you his, the number reading on the small screen the exact same as yours. “It’s not ours. It’s the dummies.”

His actions, his knowledge, his training; although he had lost his original world where he was meant to use it all for twenty-four hour periods at a time, Seungwoo’s purpose held true. Your wristband’s lights stayed green, didn’t shift to yellow even once. “A simple artery in need of a stent.” Seungwoo claimed, but you knew better than to think it was so easy. Everything here was based around knowledge and luck, luck leading most situations. If he wasn’t your partner, you’d be as good as the people on the floor.

‘Game Clear.’

The gloves pulled from his wrists like he was ripping off a bandage, the tears finally falling from his eyes safely. Morality told you something was in him, bothering him to his core. Seungwoo seemed the type to bottle up until he exploded, but he only pulled you into his chest for comfort.

“It all began here for me.” He recalled his past that you read in his diary, but the thickness in the room was a separate feeling then what you read. “I walked out and back in, and suddenly I couldn’t leave.”

He had explained that hundreds of people disappeared in seconds all because he went out to retrieve a patient’s purse from the ambulance. A single second changed everything, your eyes catching sight of the same doors he had gone in and out of so many times now.

“After everything, I was still forced to come back here. If this is how things are—”

Riddled with confusion, this was how it is. Things Seungwoo said made sense or didn’t, the rambles of the man bringing your brows to rise. He spoke of you being a player as if he wasn’t, shook with fear like he couldn’t tell the difference between what was and what is. All of what he spoke of, they were just more clues.

His trouble with sleeping, the way he clings to you like he could lose you at any minute, how he fears nothing about the game or the world but mainly you and how you exist. You had mentally recycled the mark of a shoe print in the bank vault so similar to his own, watched him play it off. He knew the run around of the games so well, you had noticed it but decided to ignore it in order to feel close to someone else in this gruesome world.

“—then they can be beat.” His eyes still held light, hope in his veins keeping him talking like if he shut up he’d implode. “I know we can beat them. If we’re like everyone else still around, those few who are really good at the games, we can win.”

“Like us?”

‘We’re all here with a purpose, some more than others. Some of us did things in the original world that carried with them here. We’ve used those things in the games before, which means we know our purpose. We can figure things out together. But these games—they didn’t come out of thin air, did they?”

“People here, around us, helped create them.” Finally, things clicked. The man you had given yourself to, fallen in love with, and relied on so much: Seungwoo is a game moderator. The explanation almost hurt, he had known so many things because the creators trusted him. He built the game in the ER, that was why he shifted there. His original purpose fit too well. Your theory was correct, he was here to keep the game running.

“Which means we can beat them.”

Never fluctuating, never letting you down, never giving you real reason to be suspicious. Although Seungwoo was part of why you were here, part of the game—he was still a human being forced to survive off the same games he created, to live off the visa days he won, and make it to the finale.

You didn’t know what was ahead. Surviving like you had wasn’t ideal but it worked. Keeping from others, but taking the few chances to help someone in order to assure they will make it another day like you swore to do since you were once saved. If you even had a chance to make it out of this hell-like world and back to reality. But you knew one thing: if you got out of here, you surely wouldn’t lose a partner like Seungwoo in any form of reality, game or real.

“Then let’s win, Seungwoo.”

Lavender, mint, the smell of burning wood. All in your nose at once, the scents overwhelming to some, but a necessity to yourself. The bell jingled above the door, the array of smells that met you outside thicker when your shoes met the welcoming mat. Lines of short isles around the small shop, each mediated by lumbered shelves stained to fit the aesthetic. Glass jars held the wax that emitted the scents that made your body feel calm. The aroma of the store comforting as you paced up and down the aisles.

Light jazz playing over the speakers, your eyes scanned over the different sizes of candles, each categorized differently and organized by color. The entirety of the store looked professional for just having opened, the empty space in the building abandoned before the owner bought it and changed it into the masterful business. Following the colors from black to deep red, a shuffling sound echoed from the back of the store.

A struggling groan from a man sounded to where you stood, the sound of glass cracking against the tiled floor alerting. Ambling to the counter on the far left, you held your bag to your shoulder while leaning over the marbled table. A bright light exerting from the hallway off to the side, you couldn't see the man.

"Hello?" you called out, voice softer than you wanted it to be. "Are you alright?"

Voice louder the second time, a slight chuckle came from down the hallway. The man out of your sight sighed aimlessly, his footsteps moving closer as you heard him speak.

"I'm alright, just lost my grip. I'll be with you in a moment!" his voice deeper than you imagined, smooth yet graveled like when a car slips from a paved road down a dirt trail.

"Okay," you said even softer, letting your bag loosen from your hold on it.

With the sound of glass scraping across the flooring, your eyebrows creased together, eyes squinting from the irritable sound. Moving from the counter, you regained the area you originally stood. Following back along the lines of candles, every few seconds you picked one up to hold it near your nose. With the collection all around, you were wonderstruck by the artistic ability to provide so many choices, and feverish about coming across one in particular.

Behind one of the shelves, the figure of the man met your gaze. The vision of him altered by the line of candles and wooded border of the shelf, only his torso was in your view. Watching him move out from the yellow-lighted doorway, his buttoned shirt neatly cuffed at his elbows and tucked into his pants, he swayed with serenity. Lifting yourself onto your tip-toes, you noticed he had a large candle held against his chest, arm wrapped tightly around it as if he were carrying a child.

You gently placed your hand against the shelf, peering around to see his entire figure. Met with a man taller than you, his hair neatly placed on his head and focus set on the candle in his hold, you took in a sharp breath. With the sound of your sudden overtaken state concealed by the jazz music playing, your body whipped back around into the hidden space of the skinny aisle. Scents swimming about in the air, you took a few deep breaths to calm yourself. The man's appearance enthralling, and not what you had expected to walk out of the back. Standing before the green candles, you gripped the ends of your sweater in the palms of your hands, nails digging past the fabric leaving small crescents into the skin. Staring at the candles, you tried to distract yourself from the handsome man feet away, reading over the personalized titles on the labels of the glass candles. None of the names fit the one you wanted, the one you came into the store for originally. On the search for the particular scent, a voice startled you.

"Do you need help looking for anything?" the man asked, his arm letting the candle down against the marble counter-top.

Unaware that his eyes found your figure - similar to how you saw his through the filled shelves, though he was unable to see anything but your sweater in his view - you jumped. Quickly skimming over the rest of the green candles, you stepped around the corner of the shelf, taking in his entire appearance.

Eyes soft and inviting, stance collected and warming, he was clearly the only working employee in the shop. Holding your tongue in your mouth to keep from saying anything silly, his toothless smile lifted the strange air. Silently walking up to the counter, your eyes never left his. With a curious nose twitch, he continued to smile at you as your smaller frame set in front of the counter.

"Actually, I do need help," you said calmly, trying to keep your voice from rising in pitch out of sheer nervousness.

With his eyes placed on your lips as you spoke, you couldn't help but feel a bead of sweat threatening to fall from your hairline down your temple. Though it was cold outside and within the store, the fabric of the sweater you wore began to hold your body heat, causing your cheeks to redden from the temperature change and embarrassment.

"I'm looking for a specific scented candle," you stated, watching his lips curl upward more, eyes glittered as he laughed.

"I may or may not have it." he smiled, curiosity in the tone of his voice.

"Petrichor," you said quickly, the word slipping off your tongue like an expletive.

Watching his eyes dim in thought, he glanced over the stocked shelves, lips twisted. He swiveled, eyes still fixed on the candles around as he moved from behind the counter. Lips mouthing the word petrichor over and over again, he focused. Form bigger than yours, he moved past you at such a quick speed that the breeze from him made a shiver run up your spine. Following his pace, he stopped just in front of the blue candles, finger skimming over the labels as he read. With the candles in alphabetical order, it took him seconds to find the deep blue jar, lifting it out of the line to show it to you.

Your cheeks went from red to pink, the sight of the candle you had searched for directly in your range. Holding it tightly, the medium-sized candle slipped from his hand into yours. The cool glass jar made chills produce on your skin, the bumps unseen by the man as they were underneath your sweater. The light exchanging of his fingers caressing yours when the glass met your hold pulled a breath from you. Hands so warm compared to the coolness of the temperature around, you wanted to replay the moment in your head for hours.

You took a second to look him over in the daylight illuminating from the large windows in the front of the store, his charming smile making you blink rapidly. He looked as if he had walked out of a movie. You stared into his eyes, which were flashing between the candle in your hands and your face. Taking in an awkward breath, you rocked on your heels, mouth quivering.

"No one ever has this one." you laughed lightly. "The scent is so rare."

"I know." he grinned widely, smile so bright it made your heart skip a beat. "I had to really study in order to recreate it."

His words made you fall stiff, brows creased together as you looked back down at the blue candle. You browsed the rest of the candles, the shelves almost fully packed since he recently opened the shop not even a month ago.

"C-Create it?" you questioned, watching him carefully.

"Yes! I make all of these myself." His words were relaxed, body scanning over the small shop with a look of gratification.

"Wow," you exclaimed, holding the candle even tighter with the knowledge that he made it himself. "You must have a lot of patience."

His laugh was joyful, moving back towards the counter. Following him again, he maneuvered through the little, gaunt space between the counter and wall, shuffling through something within the bookshelf against the wall.

"No, actually," he said, stepping to the side to let you see past him to the cabinets of the bookshelf. "I just had a lot of free time."

A huge stack of books and booklets sat neatly within the cabinet of the bookshelf, each titled with something related to candle-making. In awe that he took the time to read and master the hobby enough to turn it into a career, you were practically speechless. Mouth falling open, his laugh erupted you from your shocked state as he shut the cabinet door.

"Crazy, I know," he stated, smile fading slightly as his hand ran up and down his left arm.

Seeing him in a sudden state of anxiousness was grounding, the man's aura so thick and engaging that you were entranced to belive he was flawless. He is only merely another human being in front of you. Clearing your throat, the optimism in the air etiolated when he spoke up again.

"Can I help you find anything else?" he moved up to the counter, hands pressed flat against the marble as he waited for you to respond.

"Ah, this is all I came in for actually," you said calmly, setting the candle onto the counter.

Smiling, his large hand moved and picked up the candle. Sliding the bottom of it over the scanner to ring it up, a beep sounded in the air during the transaction. You watched him lean over to grab something, standing up straight with a bag in his hold, putting the candle into it gently. With a candle and name of the shop printed on the front, he couldn't hold in another grin as he passed the bag over to you with your receipt.

"Complimentary recyclable bag for your kindness, patience, and care for me breaking glass in the back of the store earlier." he smiled.

Laughing, your fingers found his again when the handle passed to you, warm and soft just as the first touch. With the bag held at your side, you gave him another glance. Chuckling, he leaned over the counter, his arms holding up his body.

"My name's Seungsik, by the way. And if you ever need another specific scented candle, I'll be here to hand it to you." his words gentle, the glistening of his eyes making the chills go over your skin again.

With an amiable nod, you exited the store. The breeze of the cooler air freshening. His demeanor was etched into your mind, and although the petrichor candle had been the scent you searched months for, his scent was stuck in your nostrils with more meaning.

Two weeks passed, your days busy with work and home life before you found yourself stationed in front of the candle shop again. The sun now bright, the weather was nearly opposite of what it had been the day you first went in. Light breezes making the small heatwave cooler, the air was as clear as the blue sky above.

You stood, the thin but still long-sleeved shirt you wore swaying in the wind. Eyes reading the sign beside the door flashing "Open", a few people passed by before moving into the store. Peering in through the window, you noticed the small shop seemed entertained, a couple browsing the candles alongside an elderly lady flipping through one of the candle-making booklets. Seungsik had stocked another shelf with the booklets, a feature you didn't notice aside from his own, personal collection in the cabinet behind the check-out counter.

Stomach flipping, even the mention of his name in your head made butterflies flutter in your stomach. Immediately turning on your heels to head home, you decided to skip on trying to go in to see about another candle purchase. A sudden body before you made you halt to a stop, the taller person struggling to carry a cardboard box. Your eyes squinted in the blinding sunlight, hand flattening over them to get a better look at the person. As your hand rose to your face, a familiar laugh rang in your ears.

"Very bright today." Seungsik chuckled, holding the cardboard box in his arms, overstacked with the same booklets as the elderly lady skimmed through in the store, he lifted it up higher to keep from spilling the thin books out. "Could you do me a favor?"

"Of course," you said, not a single beat missed as you mentally slapped yourself.

"Mind spotting me while I carry these in? The last thing I want to do right now is drop them and look unprofessional."

The reoccurring sentences he sent towards you that made you realize he is just another person didn't fail to bring you back to reality. Gesturing for him to head for the store, he stopped as you pulled the door open for him. His smile at you widely. With the shade of the store cleared your vision better, you noticed how his eyes lingered on your lips a few extra beats before he stepped through the door.

Watching him set them down onto the counter, his smile didn't fade as he called out to the elderly woman, asking if she needed help. You stood awkwardly, rocking on your heels as you looked around. Taking the free time to walk around the store, you listened to him talk respectfully to the woman as he helped her find a large-printed book and check out. In awe of him again, you watched him race back around the counter, opening the door as she went to leave, gifting her a smile and nod.

"Your professionalism is quite elite," you stated behind him, watching him turn around with blushed cheeks.

The couple stood a few feet away, bickering about which candle to get as they argued. Seungsik took notice, stepping towards them to offer a sale on one in order to help solve their problem. You were fascinated, his charm now exceeding when you first met. With the exchange of "Thank you", the couple was out the door, happy and content with their candles.

"I'm so glad you stopped by when you did," he said, flashing you a gentle smile, cheeks rosy.

"I didn't do anything, really," you said, playing with the hem of your shirt, his eyes catching your timid movement.

"M-May I request another favor?" he stuttered, your eyes blinking up at him in confusion.

You mulled over his expression, the flustered state catching you by surprise. Nodding, you sent him a smile, watching his shoulders relax as he took in a deep breath. Watching his expression change from soft to curious, his lips twisted.

"Go on a date with me?" his tone soft, standing idle as he waited for your answer.

Lips pulling into a small pout, you thought for a second before speaking up. "Of course." you choked out, staring at him.

The rest of the day slipped by in a blur, standing before the same store hours later. The sun was nearly set, the sky a dark blue. The lights around the front window of the candle shop lightened the doorway, a soft glow on the sidewalk. Pulling the door open, Seungsik stood, white shirt and pants neatly ironed and tucked together. It was his turn to gesture you into the store.

Remembering what he said before you left the store again, a smile rose on your face. "I'll make it fun. I can teach you how I make my candles, and even make one especially for you since you love them so much. I'll order takeout, and we can eat while the wax sets." his eyes were so bright with enthusiasm when he spoke, you couldn't turn him down. You didn't want to.

Stepping into the candle shop for the third time, a line of candles trailed towards the check-out counter. You smiled, walking down the aisle made of the lit candles as Seungsik diligently followed you. Making your way into the back, you realized just how homely he was, the entire area made into a small living and dining room, along with a station for working. Your eyes followed the wide room made into different sections, the candles still lit about instead of a bright, over-head lamp. It was romantic.

"This place is beautiful," you spoke, taking notice of his pretty decor and discreet floorplan set out nice enough to be minimalistic.

"I live upstairs, but this is where I usually am," he said, hands clasped behind his back as he leaned over your shoulder, observing how you took in his home.

Another thing that brought you back to reality. You hadn't thought twice about how the store had an upper floor, or that he - as everyone - struggles financially with the bare minimum, such as meshing his home and work into one building. The idea of just how much he had to pay for what he had made you dizzy, laughing as you sat down at the round dining table. Slipping into the seat across from him, his chin fell into his palm, eyes watching you assiduously.

"Are you alright?" he asked with a small chuckle at the end of his sentence.

"Yes." you smiled, eyebrows creased at his laughter. "What's funny?"

"That was the first thing you said to me," he commented, reminiscing about the day you met when you had called out to him after hearing the commotion.

It was oblivious to you that this was the exact spot that he had smashed an empty jar, the glass splattering on the floor making him huff before he heard your soft voice in the distance. The way his eyes blinked at you was a tell that he saw the memory as special.

"Why don't we get started?" he smiled, standing and moving over to his candle-making station.

With the items already set out, he had an array of things to choose from. Scents, a holder for the candle, even had colored utensils for you to use. Moving to stand beside him, his side rubbed against your shoulder when he turned to look over at you, the short physical contact making your heart race.

"Which one would you like?" he asked, hand motioning towards the jars and ceramic flower pots set out to make the candle in. With a small smile, your finger connected with a flower pot, running the digit across the smooth surface. "Good choice." he grinned.

Pulling the rest of the options away, you lifted the small bottle of scent in your hand, the title blank. Looking at the label, you listened to him carefully set the other things in different places, clearing your workspace. Moving around you, he slowed down, the last glass jar in his hands.

"Interesting," he said calmly, placing the jar down to take his place back beside you. "I've never used that one before."

"It intrigued me," you said, shaking the bottle while holding it between your thumb and index finger.

"You're intriguing," he said, his stare sudden like he didn't mean to say that out loud.

Smiling away the awkwardly slipped compliment, he kept the process going. Pouring water into the flower pot, you both measured how much you'll need to make the candle before pouring it into a measuring cup for exact numbers. A beaming grin on his face, he placed the wick in for you, cutting it and hot gluing it to the bottom of the pot for later use. Putting a cooking pot onto a scale, he let it heat up enough for melting the soy flakes, pouring them and the water in as it began to simmer. Watching him gingerly work was fascinating to you, his hands going at a slower speed for you to learn the steps properly. Mixing your chosen scent into the wax, he poured it into your flower pot, letting the wax coat around the wick in the middle.

"That's about all. This is just one way to make them, but it like it. It'll be a few hours before the wax settles." 

Pulling out the takeout he ordered, he reheated it before making you both plates and setting the table. Taking your seats across from one another again, you learned a new chapter of Seungsik, the prodigious side.

"I moved here about a year ago, but I barely left the building and only used my days to make candles. It was a weird time, but I'm glad I experienced it."

"You moved in here when you first got here?" you asked him, waiting as he sipped from a glass of red wine.

"Yeah, the old tenant here had to move out earlier than expected, so I got the first two months free." he smiled graciously towards you, spoon digging around his food.

"Some would call that luck," you stated, sipping your own wine as you shot him a glance of placidity.

"It brought me to this moment, so I consider myself extra lucky."

You blushed, his right hand skimming over the small table to connect with your left one. Playing with your fingers in his grasp, he gently ran the pad of his thumb over your knuckles. Moving to clean up from the meal, he would sweep past you just to brush up against you again. Heart still racing, the last plate went into the sink, his hand lifting your wrist to his chest as his eyes met yours.

"I can feel your heartbeat," he said, his thumb pressed against the top line of your ring finger. "It's so fast. Do I make you nervous?"

"Not quite," you whispered to him, letting him bring you in closer. With his face inches from yours, you took the chance you had been waiting for. "Kiss me."

He didn't hesitate, pressing his lips gently against yours. Hand sliding from where he felt your heart racing, he met your waist. Pulling you against his body, the kiss continued deeper, passionate. Lifting you from the ground for a second to make you even in height, your arms wrapped around his neck. Tracing small circles at his hairline, a moan fell from him. Placing you back down, he walked you backward, your calves meeting the soft couch a few feet away. As you fell back against the cushions, you laughed against his mouth, a smile pulling from him too.

His touch was gentle, scent filling your nostrils strongly when his body laid against yours. Hands gently moving up and down your clothed body, the sensual aroma built like a mask when you pulled back to pull off your shirt. The rough pads of his fingertips on your skin made the chills return, now felt by him as he smirked into the kiss. Pulling back to discard his own shirt, he leaned against your body to feel your skin contact his, both of you in a hazed state from the glasses of wine mixed with the thick scents of his candles still burning throughout the bottom floor of his building. Elapsed by his touch, you wanted to savor the moment but found yourself almost naked underneath him in the blink of an eye.

Pressing his pants against your clothed crotch, a loud gasp came from you, the reaction he was looking for. Rutting against you, your arousal stained through the thin fabric of your underwear, soaking into his pants at the same time. Pressing himself against you harder, the friction to your lower half made your head fall back. A hickey being sucked against your neck, he took in a sharp breath. Sliding his pants down, you weren't the only one aroused. Distracted by the way his hand ran down his abdomen to his bulge in his boxers, the sight of him palming himself made your mouth water.

Eager to feel him, your hand replaced his own. The contact of your smaller hand on his member made him pant, tongue sliding across his bottom lip as he watched you peer up at him. Lost in his groans, he bent down to find your lips again, your index fingers hooking his boxers to slide them down. One knee on the sofa between your legs, he straightened himself out, his back muscles tense when your hand ran past them. With another moan, he left your mouth, kisses moving down your body. His teeth caught the fabric of your underwear, tugging them down your legs swiftly.

With light chuckles, you pulled him back between your legs, hand placed on the back of his neck. Pressing his forehead to yours, you breathed each other in. Aligning himself to you, he pushed in slowly, your body taking him in easily. Fingers dug into his skin, your eyes shut when he moved out and back in. Agonizingly slow, this was the one instance you wanted him to have full control of.

His hips kept a soft pace, rolling into you deeply as your legs clamped around his waist. Nails leaving crescents into his arm, your moans in his ear urged him to speed up, hips snapping up into you. His voice deep, he couldn't speak, only making subtle groans. Lips pressed against your skin, his pace was gaining. Lifting his hand from your hip, his fingers wrapped around one of the skinny containers of a heated candle, the excess wax melted on top slushing around. Holding the candle towards his chest, a drip of wax poured down his front and over his abs. Hissing and moaning at the pain, his eyes rolled back, pace slowing to feel you more.

The scene before you was enthralling, watching the white wax glide down between his breasts, leaving a trail of irritated skin. Running his fingers through the drips, he groaned at the heat of the wax, looking down at you staring up at him with half-lidded eyes.

"Let me try it," you said, voice just above a whisper.

Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to your stomach, keeping his hips moving slow. Tipping the candle, he lightly poured the wax onto your skin, the burn faint but there. Moaning, your hips lifted up into his, the ruts against him causing him to move faster. With the quicker pace forming, you felt a tug in the pit of your stomach. Another run of the hot wax between yours and his skin made you completely tighten up. Clenching around him, your orgasm hit, making him push into your deeper to find his own release. Stuttering, he pulled himself from you, his juices mixing on your stomach with the white wax.

Calming as you caught your breath, he sat against the couch for a second. Running his hand up and down your leg, he rose to find a cloth, cleaning both of you up. Pulling your underwear back up your legs, he did the same, settling down beside you as he placed your legs over his lap.

"I've never done that before, either." he chuckled, tilting his head to watch the smile form on your lips. "Oh!"

Gently moving around your legs, he retrieved the candle from earlier. Index finger pressing within the ceramic container, the coolness of his home helped the wax harden in a good amount of time.

"This is yours," he said, placing the ceramic pot into your hands. "Does it smell nice?"

Lifting the candle up to your face, the scent was stronger when it got closer to your nose. Taking in a long whiff, your eyes shut, the fragrance familiar.

"What is this, exactly?" you questioned, watching his teeth shine from behind his lips.

"It's a scent I worked on for a long time. It's based on personal psychology."

"You lost me."

"The scent is so faint, your mind has to fill in the blank with the scent you're most appeased with," he said, running his fingers over yours around the pot. "Usually it's a human-based scent the body naturally gives off. I call it Pheromones." his words soft, eyes staring at the white candle within the ceramic container. "What do you smell now?"

Taking one glance back down at the candle, your nose took another whiff. The scent was on the tip of your tongue before slipping through your lips. "It smells like you."