A Wandering Mind

When you were eleven years old, his parents divorced, and Sieun moved out to live with his father in another part of Seoul. Meanwhile, your father announced that he had received a promotion and that you would be moving to the United States. 

There was no dramatic farewell scene. No promises of reaching out to each other. After all, to each other, you and Sieun were just the children of your mother’s friend. 

Seven years later, you were moving back to Seoul for your senior year of high school. Your parents had enrolled you in Buil Girls’ High School.

“Honey, you remember Aunt Hyejin, right?” Your mother eagerly told you. “It turns out we’re going to be living right next door to her and her son. You used to play with him all the time.”

“Because we were the only kids there.” You thought. Clearly, your mother still favoured Yeon Sieun.

“I heard he’s ranked first in his school. You should ask him to tutor you.”

You tried to refute her, “My grades are fine.”

“She got that award back in New York.” Your father chipped in. 

“The standards are different here in Seoul.” She argued back. “She could always do better.”

You didn’t try to defend yourself. It was always like this with her. When other parents would praise their kids for scoring over 90%, your mother asked why you didn’t get the rest of the questions right. Maybe that was why you weren’t keen on being friends with Yeon Sieun. You didn’t like how easily he received her praise when you had to fight for it.

Later that night, you found yourself looking at a framed photo of you and Sieun. You were both only eight years old at the time, and your mothers practically forced you to pose together. Both of you had permanent scowls on, and you faintly remembered your mother scolding you afterwards for your rude behaviour.

Looking back, you admitted that Sieun was a cute kid. If he didn’t have such an antisocial personality, the neighbourhood aunties would have adored him. You were faintly reminded of your younger brother who was nine years younger than you, although he certainly wasn’t as studious as your childhood playmate.

You admitted the made-up rivalry was rather one-sided, but you were just a kid back then. It was just easier to think of him as the enemy rather than admitting that your mother didn’t see your worth.

You shook your head. There was no use lamenting over your childhood rival. You have matured since then. Well, at least you hoped so.

You put the framed photo down and flopped down on your bed. There were still a couple of boxes left unpacked, but you will get to them later. You had more important business to do.

You pulled out your phone and logged into your Tumblr account through the app. You scrolled through your For You page, where various fanfics of your favourite idols and drama characters filled the screen. You clicked on a Yeonjun fic that piqued your interest.

trope: childhood friends to lovers

warning(s): 18+, explicit content, oral sex…

The list of kinks went on as you blushed at how extreme they became, even though you had encountered all kinds of fanfics on Tumblr. One might say that most of your sexual knowledge came from the app, even though you were a virgin who hadn’t even seen a cock outside of porn.  However, it didn’t mean you weren’t curious about sex. You just didn’t have the chance to explore when most of your time was dedicated towards your academics and extracurricular activities.

As you read about Yeonjun fingering the reader, you slipped your hand underneath your pants and started slowly mimicking his actions. You played with your clit for a few moments before finally pushing a finger inside yourself when you felt a familiar slick lubricating your vaginal walls. As the reader was reaching her climax, you felt yourself nearly achieving the same peak, and you were going to insert another finger to finish the deal when suddenly, you heard rapid raps against your bedroom door.

“___! Hurry and get ready!” Your mother knocked a few more times. “Aunt Hyejin invited us to dinner in thirty minutes.”

“Why is your door always locked?” You heard her mutter as she walked away to inform your little brother.

You let out a heavy, unsatisfied groan. You pulled your hand out from your pants, the once euphoric sensation long gone by your mother’s squawking. You really couldn’t wait until you were in college and living on your own, where you didn’t have to worry about nosy family members ruining your orgasms.

You stripped off your shirt and shorts, and even changed your underwear as they were sticky and clinging to your core. You changed into a sensible dress that reached down to your knees. You quickly got your makeup done, opting for a simple look so that you didn’t look like a raccoon with your dark circles.

Like always, you and family were early as your mother insisted on departing early despite living next door to Aunt Hyejin. Sieun’s mother didn’t seem to mind as she warmly greeted you.

“You’ve really grown up, ___!” She marvelled at the sight of you. “It feels just like yesterday, you and Sieun were playing on the swings.”

“I’m sure Sieun has grown up, too!” Your mother chuckled. “Where is your son, by the way?”

“He was hanging out with his friends, but he should be home anytime soon.”

Your parents started chatting with Aunt Hyejin about your childhood while you retreated to the living room with your brother.

“Noona, who’s Sieun?” He asked while you were helping him beat a particularly difficult level of Super Mario Party. You suddenly remembered that he was only two years old when you moved to the US, and probably didn’t have many memories of Seoul, much less Yeon Sieun.

“He’s Aunt Hyejin’s son. He and I used to play together.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” 

“Absolutely not.” You immediately answered. The last time you saw Sieun, he was thin with wobbly knees. He looked like a breeze could blow him over. Man, he was a total nerd.

“Eomma, I’m home.” You heard a deep voice call out.

“Sieun-ah, welcome home!” His mother greeted him, blocking your view of him from the couch. “You remember Aunt Minsook, right? ___’s here, too!”

She moved out of the way, and your brain promptly stopped working when you first saw Yeon Sieun in seven years.

He was no longer the gangly kid you remembered him as. While he wasn’t tall, he was still a few inches taller than you. His skin was a light tan, not the smooth alabaster desired by society, but it suited him. He didn’t look as pale and sickly as he used to. He was as handsome as any idol, with a flawless complexion and a sharp jawline people would kill for. His lips, although slightly chapped, were plump and, for a second, you imagined what they would feel like trailing every inch of your body. 

Only a single thought ran through your mind. 

“Yeon Sieun, when did you get hot?”

You never really understood why the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope was so popular. Kids never hide anything from each other, including their gross and embarrassing habits. You shuddered at the idea of falling for one of the neighbourhood boys who used to eat their boogers.

Granted, Sieun never did any of that stuff, but still.

After you got over your brain fart, you stammered out a mumbled greeting while hiding behind a curtain of hair, trying to hide your flushed face.

It was ridiculous. It wasn’t like this was the first time you ever saw a handsome boy face-to-face.

Well, you’ve never actually faced someone with idol-like visuals, but still. You were more mature than this. More evolved than this. Yes, Yeon Sieun was a very attractive man, but he is still a man.

So why haven’t you been able to meet his eyes when he was conveniently sitting across from you at dinner? Why couldn’t you let out anything more than a mousey squeak when he asked you to pass the potatoes?

Your mother looked at you, disapproving of your quiet demeanour. She cleared her throat before asking Sieun a question.

“Sieun-ah, I’ve heard that you’re the top student of your school. Is that right?”

He didn’t answer her verbally, only gave her a brief but confident nod.

She turned to Sieun’s mother. “You must be very proud. I wish my daughter studied as much as he does. She has a lot of potential, but she always squanders it.”

You were then hit with a harsh reminder of why you disliked Sieun so much. Your mother used to compare the two of you, and you hated the fact that you could never measure up to his prodigal levels. You used to think that your mother would trade you for Sieun in a heartbeat if she ever got the chance.

Any attraction you had to him was stomped down until not even a single ember remained.

“Mom, I was first in my year,” You mumbled, wanting to speak up even though you knew your struggles often weren’t heard by selective ears.

Your mother let out a heavy sigh, a pointedly annoyed expression on her face. “What was that? How many times do I have to tell you to speak up? You know my hearing is not as good as it used to be.”

Your father looked like he wanted to speak up for you, but you already knew he wouldn’t. She was too domineering. Anything you would say would just be labelled as unimportant.

Sieun’s mother must have noticed the awkward atmosphere as she quickly cut in to defuse the tension. “I’m pretty sure ___ has her own talents too. Your father told me you were thinking of applying to law school?”

You quickly answered her, anything to get out of the chilling environment. “Yes, I have always been more interested in humanities.”

“Have you thought of which schools you’re going to apply to?”

“Yonsei,” You smiled at her. “I want to study Criminal Law.”

“What a coincidence!” She smiled at her son, patting him on the shoulder. “Sieun’s planning to study Physics at Yonsei.”

Your smile faltered slightly at the prospect of being stuck with Yeon Sieun throughout your college life. You hid it quickly, but you had the feeling Sieun noticed you.

“Physics, huh?” You finally looked him in the eye. “You must be really good at it. I never really liked it.”

That was an understatement. You abhorred the subject as it didn’t click naturally with you. Potential force? Gravity? Magnetic fields? The only reason you studied it so much was so you could scrape a B, the highest grade you achieved in the damn science.

Sieun gave a short answer. “It’s not so bad.”

And with that flash of dislike came a wave of guilt. It was hard to dislike someone who didn’t really do anything to deserve it. Sure, he wasn’t the most social person, but he wasn’t a bad guy. 

The emotions you experienced about Yeon Sieun were dramatic and complex, and you really didn’t need to add lust and teenage hormones on top of all that.

“If you’re not so bad at it, I would hate to think what it’s like for ___.” Your mother probably meant that as a joke, and you smiled even though you didn’t find anything funny about it.

Unbeknownst to you, Sieun noticed how uncomfortable you were. He was more observant than you thought he was. He had always known that even though your relationship with your mother was vastly different from his relationship with his mother, there was still that same distance.

Suddenly, your mother clapped her hands. She had a smile on her face that usually meant that something troublesome was coming.

“Sieun-ah, why don’t you tutor ___?” She requested, and you felt like a little kid all over again. “It’ll be just like when you were kids!”

“Mom, he doesn’t need to do that-”

“I know that, but you need his help,” She told you as if you were being stupid for not considering Sieun as a tutor. She sent apologetic looks towards him and his mother. “She’s always like this. She never thinks about her future.”

With every word, she made you feel smaller, as if your own efforts were never going to be enough for her. You bit your lip, wanting to say more, but you knew that when it came to her, you were on your own. Your brother was too young to understand your plight, and as much as you loved your father, you knew he would never stand up to her.

“I’m okay with tutoring her, but I think you should ask your daughter first,” He interrupted your mother, and you finally looked up from your lap to see him. You didn’t even notice that your mother was silenced. “After all, ___ knows her own capabilities better than anyone else.”

How did Sieun know the simple words you always wanted to say?

Your mother shook off her stunned silence after a moment, awkwardly chuckling, “O-of course. ___, do you want Sieun to tutor you?”

As much as you wanted to defy his help, to finally prove to her that you were more than enough, you also knew you needed top grades to get into Yonsei, and a B in physics wasn’t going to cut it.

Even though you didn’t want to, you needed Sieun.

“I would appreciate it,” You smiled at him, the first sign you showed of acknowledging him. “Thank you, Sieun.”

At that moment, you weren’t aware that you and he would flip each other’s worlds upside down.

Despite transferring into Buil relatively late compared to the other students, you adapted quickly, finding friends with a couple of girls, Hari and Youngseo. Although you were distinctly different from them, preferring to spend most of your free time studying and revising for the suneung, you found that they didn’t mind that. They often would try to get you to join them whenever they went cafe hopping, and today was one of those days.

“Come on, ___!” Hari laughed, linking arms with you while Youngseo took your other arm. “You know what they say. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You deserve to have some fun!”

“I have to meet my tutor later!” You protested.

“Yeah, in two hours,” Youngseo argued. “Eating cake and drinking lattes doesn’t make you incapable of absorbing information.”

You couldn’t tell them that you wanted to revise physics just so you didn’t appear as a complete dolt in front of Yeon Sieun. You weren’t dumb; it’s just that physics wasn’t your strongest subject compared to biology, which you excelled at.

Your insecurity had always been high, especially when your mother compared you to every child genius and prodigy out there, always saying that you could achieve those same things if you just applied yourself. Yeon Sieun was a major source of your insecurities since he was the first genius she compared you to. You knew that it wasn’t his fault, but seeing him every day when you walk to school just made all of your hidden insecurities bubble up again. 

It was extremely hard to hate him since he was the one who defended you just a few nights ago.

Yeon Sieun should have been an asshole. At least, you wouldn’t feel guilty about resenting him.

You shook your head, trying to get him out of your head.

“Girl, are you okay?” Hari asked, concerned about you.

“I’m okay,” You then grinned, pulling them along to the cafe. “Let’s eat some delicious food! I’m going to get matcha!”

“Again?” Youngseo groaned. “You might as well be drinking grass!”

“Matcha is NOT grass-” You argued back, but Youngseo, who was the one who wanted to go to the cafe, suddenly pulled you and Hari away from the entrance.

“Shit,” She looked back into the cafe before groaning. “Why is he here?”

You and Hari joined in, looking through the window. There was a group of boys in uniforms from another school you didn’t recognise. One of the taller boys was wearing a red basketball jersey under his blazer.

Hari suddenly guffawed, prompting Youngseo to tell her to shut up.

“Who is he?” You asked them.

Youngseo sharply replied, “He’s nobody.”

“That’s Baku. He’s the top dog of Eunjang,” Hari explained before grinning. “He’s also Youngseo’s ex.”

“We never dated!” Youngseo denied her. “We just …used to hook up, until he got too involved with the Union.”

You tilted your head, this being the first time you ever heard of it. “The Union?”

“They were like this high school mafia group, but they sort of dissolved last year,” Hari punched Youngseo’s shoulder lightly. “Yah, you guys were good together. Why not give him another chance?”

“Absolutely no fucking way. I don’t want any mafia drama this year,” Youngseo looked like she would rather go to hell than give her and Baku’s relationship another chance. “Come on, let’s bounce. This isn’t the only cafe in the area.”

“Just so you won’t bump into your ex?”

“You would be saying the same thing if your ex was in there.”

In the midst of Hari and Youngseo’s bickering, one of the taller boys stepped aside, and lo and behold, Yeon Sieun was with them, and suddenly, you were inclined with Youngseo’s suggestion.

“I agree with you,” You said to Youngseo. “Let’s go.”

“What’s with the two of you?” Hari followed your gaze, seeing Sieun. “Yeon Sieun? Do you know him?”

“Our mothers were friends,” You explained briefly. “How do you know him?”

“Rumors say he was the mastermind behind the Union’s downfall. They call him the  White Mamba.”

“Who cares what people call them!” Youngseo snapped. “Let’s just get out-”

“YOUNGSEO!”

She froze at hearing that loud, booming voice, before the three of you turned around to see the aforementioned Baku excitedly waving at her. You avoided Sieun’s stare as the other people in the cafe were startled by Baku’s sudden bellow.

“Yah, Youngseo! Come over here!” Baku clearly didn’t care about how loud he was, even when the other tall boy next to him told him to shut up. “What are you doing here?”

Hari snorted, “You know he’s not going to let up until you go over there.”

“Oh, fuck me.” Youngseo groaned.

You jokingly quipped, “No, thank you, but I think he would like to volunteer himself.”

She glared at you half-heartedly before the three of you marched over to the four boys sitting at a booth near the window. Baku pushed the tall boy sitting next to him, making space for Youngseo. Somehow, you were sitting right across from Sieun, and you found his gaze harder to avoid. Ever since you were little, even when you found his doe eyes to be unfairly beautiful, they were also intimidating in their own way. His gaze always made you feel like he knew every little nook and cranny of yourself.

“Hari-yah, it’s good to see you,” Baku bumped fists with her before directing his eyes at you. “I see you have a new friend. I’m Baku, and that’s Gotak, Juntae, and Sieun. Nice to meet you!”

You shyly nodded, offering a small smile to each and every one of them. “I’m ___.”

However, you froze when Sieun held his gaze at you, not bothering to spare a glance at Hari and Youngseo. 

Luckily, Hyuntak noticed your discomfort, “The staring thing again? Come on, buddy, we talked about this…”

Only when Sieun stopped staring at you did you finally feel like you could breathe easily again. Even with how insecure he made you feel, you couldn’t help but think about how his unwavering stare turned you on.

The first few tutoring sessions between you and Sieun passed by quickly. You didn’t say much nor did he, just like how you used to when you were kids. You fell back in the comfortable rhythm of putting up a friendly act just so you and he could please your respective mothers.

Reluctantly, you had to admit that Yeon Sieun was a good tutor. He didn’t go easy on you, but he didn’t expect you to know the answer to every question. After all, why would you get tutored by him if you knew everything? Slowly, you saw your physics grade improving at a steady rate.

However, you ended up regretting being so comfortable with Sieun during your fifth tutoring session. 

You were brushing up on high energy particle collisions when his laptop ran out of battery. Being a responsible student, you absentmindedly let him borrow yours, giving him your password, while you worked on a practice exam question.

“___, I think you forgot to close this?”

You looked up from your paper, and-

SHIT.

Right there, on your screen, full-brightness and misleading pastel colours, was your Tumblr page. It wasn’t even your SFW account you used to interact with your MOA moots. No, it was your very 18+, MDNI, blog you used to write your deepest, dirtiest and smuttiest fantasies about your biases and bias-wreckers.

You almost tripped over your bag when you ran up to him to slam your laptop shut. 

“S-Sieun-ah, this is just a hobby,” you stammered, stumbling over your words. “It’s getting late, so I’m gonna go home now.”

You rushed out the door, face red and wanting to evaporate out of sheer embarrassment right then and there.

What do you do when your former one-sided rival and childhood friend stumbles onto your smut blog? 

The answer is that you avoid him at every turn.

You weren't ashamed to admit to running away when you and your friends bumped into Sieun and the rest of the guys at the arcade.

“It’s okay. I don’t need to get tutored by him anymore. I’ve been getting the top spot in physics for weeks now,” You thought, reasoning with yourself when you were walking back home after you were done with cram school. “When I get to college, I won’t live next door to Yeon Sieun anymore.”

You swore when you saw Sieun outside his apartment, about to unlock the door with his keys. You put your hood on, trying to hide as much of your face as possible, and sprinted to your door, trying to unlock it as fast as you could.

“___,” You froze, key just outside the door lock, upon hearing his deep voice. “Can we talk?”

That was how you found yourself sitting next to Sieun on the couch in his living room.

“Where’s your mom?” You asked him, trying to break the tension. Now that you thought about it, she was rarely around. She placed too much faith in letting her teenage son be alone with a girl in her apartment.

“She’s on some business trip. She won’t be back until next week,” He answered casually, handing a mug of hot tea to you, which you gratefully accepted. “But we’re not here to talk about her.”

You awkwardly placed the mug on the coffee table, making sure a coaster was beneath it, knowing how particular his mother was with condensation stains.

“You’re …not going to tell my mom?”

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Why would I do that? What you do in your spare time is none of my business. Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

You nodded slightly. “What was I supposed to do? The last time we really knew each other was when we were kids, and the stuff I wrote wasn’t really- well-”

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“I saw your username and read some of your writings.” Your jaw dropped at his confession.

“Why the hell would you do that?” You asked him, gobsmacked. You couldn’t imagine Sieun willingly reading smut. 

“You made a few grammar mistakes, but the plots were interesting,” Sieun then turned to look at you. There was something in his eyes, something you have never seen before, but heard of it described in the many works you have read before. “The last one you wrote. The male character… he sounds like me.”

You knew exactly which fic he was talking about. It was a Taehyun fic, where he and the reader were childhood friends who reunited years later. 10k+ words where roughly two-thirds of it was pure, unadulterated smut. You practically wrote it overnight. Despite how easy it was to write it, it was your most successful fic. Taehyun’s characterisation in your fic was most definitely based on Sieun, but you weren’t going to admit that.

“No, he’s not,” You immediately denied his allegation. “The childhood friends-to-lovers trope is very common. I’m pretty sure half of all K-dramas have some variation of this trope.”

“You wrote about the time where I accidentally pushed you too far off the swings.”

“Coincidence.”

“You wrote that she used to hate him because her mother always praised him over her.”

Somehow, Sieun had gotten close to you, and you were a breath away from him. If it were any other guy, you would have shoved them away, but this was Sieun. The little boy who read books with you because you both preferred silence. The same boy who had grown into the young and very attractive man in front of you.

“I …did write that.”

“You haven’t updated the second part,” Was his voice always so melodic? It felt like he was luring you into a trance. “Does she still hate him now?”

“No,” You breathed out heavily. His whispers felt like they were kissing your lips. “She never hated him. She just- she was just jealous that he was seen, and she wasn’t.”

You had never been this close with a boy- no, a man, before. His jawline looked like it was sharp enough to cut glass. There were no signs of acne or blemish marks on his face. He had to be using some sort of skincare routine. If it turned out he used some sort of 20-in-1 soap for his whole body, you would riot and declare that life was unfairly biased towards men.

“That’s not true,” He looked you in the eyes. How did they convey so much emotion when his lips didn’t say much? “I didn’t like you either, but I have always seen you.”

Time stood still as your eyes flickered down to his lips. His own eyes were searching for your lips as well.

“You wrote consent was the key. ___,” Sieun breathed out, his voice too low and quiet to be heard by anyone but you. “May I kiss you?”

You didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes.”

Sieun didn’t waste any time, stealing your breath away when he pressed his lips against yours in a clumsy yet heated motion. His approach to kissing you was exactly like how he approached his studies. He made a hypothesis, tested it, and then experimented from there. He found that you rather liked it when he nudged your lips with his tongue, silently asking permission for entry, which you gladly gave him.

When you moaned, a verbal response to his hands brushing through your hair, angling your head to kiss you deeper, he added another step to his experiment. His hands travelled down to your waist, and his leanly-muscled arms pulled you into his lap, your plush thighs straddling his strong ones.

You let out an embarrassingly high-pitched moan when Sieun trailed his lips down your neck, focusing on the soft, hollow area where your pulse was the strongest. He helped you out of your blazer, leaving you in your white, long-sleeved school shirt. You grabbed his hands and led them under your shirt, where they rested against the warm skin of your waist.  

“Come here,” you panted as you looked down at him, kissing him as if it was as natural as breathing in oxygen. You usually weren’t impulsive like this. You never saw your first kiss culminating in grinding Sieun on his lap. Hell, he wasn’t even in the scenario back when you were twelve and imagining what your first kiss would be like. 

It was only when you felt Sieun’s erection straining through his trousers that you finally snapped out of your hormone-addled haze.

“Wait. Wait a second,” Your hand pushed him back by his shoulder. His dark eyes, usually apathetic and unfeeling, were full of unbridled lust and confusion, and you desperately wanted to comfort him by kissing all his doubts away, but you still had to make sense of what this was. “I just- Sieun, what exactly are we?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, one second, we were tutor and tutee, and the next, we’re making out on your mom’s couch.” When you said it out loud, you realised how much it sounded like the plotline of a low-quality pornographic video. “We’re ___ and Sieun. We don’t like each other like that.”

“What makes you think I don’t like you?”

You laughed softly. “Okay, if you say that you’ve been in love with me since we were kids, I’m going to hit you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sieun, who started drawing absentless circles on your back, sending chills down your spine. “I wasn’t really fond of you too back then.”

You frowned. “Okay, offence very much taken.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that-” Sieun cut himself off, biting his lip before continuing to explain himself. “Your mom was always there, and mine wasn’t. I know how she really is now, but back then-”

“I get it,” You interrupted him. It was like your mothers were a reverse of each other. While your mother was always around, she was controlling, always making you doubt yourself. Meanwhile, you found that Sieun’s mom always had confidence in him, but she certainly kept her distance. Both of you wanted what the other had. “It still doesn’t explain why you suddenly like me.”

“I’m not sure about it, myself,” answered Sieun. “It was more like, I just realised how much I enjoyed having you around when I saw you again. You reminded me that I hadn’t always been lonely all my life.”

“What are you talking about?” You asked, puzzled on why he would think that of himself. “You have your friends.”

“They were a recent development, and it didn’t come easy.”

“Are you talking about the Union?” You questioned, remembering what Hari had told you.

“So they told you.” Sieun sighed. He looked like he didn’t want to recount the things that happened last year.

“You don’t have to tell me,” You held his cheek with your hand. Somehow, he looked more vulnerable than you ever saw him. “I can tell by your face. It must have been a difficult time for you.”

Sieun’s eyes softened. He slowly brought you closer, hugging you as he leaned his face into the crook of your neck. You weren’t sure of what kind of relationship you had with him, but what you learned was that he needed you somehow, and you welcomed him.

From a young age, you always had a life plan. It was nurtured into you by your mother. It was a simple, linear plan. Get good grades, get into a top university, and graduate with first class. Your mother didn’t include dating into the life plan.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Yeon Sieun was supposed to stay that awkward and geeky kid.

He was supposed to be a skinny nerd with no game.

He wasn't supposed to have clear skin and soft, supple lips. He wasn't supposed to be devastatingly handsome with Bambi eyes and a sharp jawline.

He wasn't supposed to grow out of the one-sided childhood rivalry you had with him.

He was supposed to tutor you like your mother asked him to, even though you never agreed to it.

He wasn't supposed to be pressing you down on his bed while invading your mouth with his tongue.

Sieun certainly wasn't supposed to be pushing your soaked panties aside and demonstrating the many ways he could make you come undone with his fingers alone.

Yeon Sieun wasn't supposed to be hot.

It had been a few nights since you made out with Sieun while grinding him wantonly on his lap. Since then, you have found your libido uncontrollable since your childhood friend found the switch and turned it on. Suddenly, every smut fic you read on Tumblr, Wattpad, AO3, etc, all involve his stupid face and his equally dumb, messy hair, instead of the idols you fangirled over. 

Now, his unfairly long fingers were stripping you of your cotton panties. Even though you were still wearing your skirt, your hands went down to cover your heated pussy. 

Sieun, who was between his usual careless self and the oddly passionate self he displayed whenever he was with you, asked you, “Do you want to stop? You know what to say.”

He had read another one of your one-shots, a BDSM V fic you wrote for Kinktober, which wasn’t really as rough as the ones you have read before, but did contain the proper usage of safe words. Proper etiquette was a yes with you.

Of course, you had no intentions of committing any sadomasochistic acts; you mainly read them because of the smut, but you agreed with Sieun that a safe word was a good idea.

You shook your head. “No, I’m good.”

“Then, get your hands away.” With his strong grip, Sieun wrenched your hands away. He then proceeded to bunch your skirt up around your waist, fully exposing your wet nether lips to him. “You’re already wet.”

His left hand grabbed your wrists and pinned them above your head onto the headboard of his bed. “How do you usually finger yourself?”

You gulped, fully aware that you were the only one who had ever witnessed the Sieun you were with now. “My clit. Just start there, and then work your way from there.”

He nodded, focusing his attention on the throbbing clump of nerves. He traced your nether lips with his index finger before pressing your clit with his thumb. You struggled to keep still, not wanting to show him how out of control he made you feel with just a simple touch.

“T-that’s it,” You stammered, trying to keep your voice low. “Just circle around it a few times to stimulate it.”

You thought Sieun would have added his own flair, but he diligently followed your instructions. Your breathing became quicker. Even though his touches were simple and minimal, his fingers were very different from yours, his calluses rougher, making the sensation different.

You gripped his sheets. “Y-you can put a finger inside now.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” You let out a heavy breath when his middle finger finally penetrated you. He started with shallow pumps before slowly building up his speed. You firmly shut your eyes, holding your tongue back from letting out the many moans threatening to spill out of you.

“Why are you quiet?” Sieun questioned you casually as if he wasn’t fucking you with his finger right now. He pulled out of you, and somehow, your aching heat missed him. “You didn’t like it?”

“No!” You raised your voice, emotions still high from the peak you were seconds away from reaching. “It’s just that- I’m never alone at home, so I always have to be quiet-”

“Well, you’re on my bed, in my room,” Sieun reasoned with you. His finger penetrated you a second time without warning, causing you to yelp at the sudden but certainly welcome intrusion. “Be as loud as you want.”

He slipped a second finger inside when you were practically drenching him, scissoring and stretching you out, making your thighs shake as he made sure to let each and every one of your moans escape from your mouth. The warm slick lubricating the spongy walls of your cunt coated his fingers, making each push and pull easier as you got wetter.

“Sieun-ah!” You wailed loudly. His hand stopped gripping your wrists to the headboard, instead choosing to hold your hand, his large hand encompassing yours as he interlocked your fingers together. You involuntarily kicked at his sheets when he reached your g-spot. Methodically, he repeated the same motion, making you climb higher and higher to your peak. “I’m going to cum!”

The familiar feeling of waves crashing over occurred when he somehow managed to press his thumb to your clit at the exact time his fingers reached your g-spot, something you have never been able to do on your own. You thanked your lucky stars that his mom was never around, because the scream you let out was embarrassingly loud and unmistakable.

You were still climbing down from your high when you felt Sieun brush your sweaty bangs back. You stifled a chuckle, pushing your upper body arm with your arms before reaching up to kiss him, before sneakily lowering your hand to unzip his trousers and cup his noticeable erection.

You weren’t sure what kind of relationship you had with your former childhood friend, but right now, you were in a state of bliss, experiencing all of your firsts together.

A couple of months passed by since you and Sieun progressed your relationship from awkward former childhood playmates to friends who play with each other in bed. 

Well, it wasn’t always necessarily in bed.

There was that one time when you blew him under his desk when he didn’t pay you enough attention. Sieun repaid you when he pinned you to the desk, using his pretty lips and tongue to eat you out.

Of course, you would always remember the time you and Sieun finally did the deed. 

You had just gotten your mock exam results, and lo and behold, you had gotten an A+ on your physics exam, something you thought impossible. You remembered proudly showing off to Sieun, who congratulated you with a small smile. You hung out with your friends, where Youngseo and Baku were still somehow figuring out their situationship, and you mischievously played footsie with Sieun when you were all celebrating the end of finals at a pizza place.

That culminated in a long night when you finally asked Sieun to make love to you, despite you still being ‘friends’. Somehow, you felt truly loved by him, with how he eased you into it when he finally penetrated you, and how he whispered sweet nothings into your ear as you got used to him. 

Even though you were at a stalemate with Sieun, both of you knew that you were no longer just friends, not with the lazy lovemaking sessions, the shared journey together to and from the cram school, or how he shared his AirPods with you every time you rode the bus.

Somehow, love had bloomed between the childhood acquaintances who used to be so envious of each other.

However, the suneung was coming up, and just like Sieun, your grades were too important for you. 

“Let’s wait for our university letters,” you told him one day. He was tracing absent-minded circles on your back as you lay in bed together. “Then, we’ll go from there.”

Even though he used to make you feel insecure, somehow, you felt safe with him. You weren’t afraid to loosen the reins on your life. He always made you feel as though he would always accept you, no matter your flaws.

For the first time in a while, you and Sieun still had all of your clothes on as you sat in front of your laptops in his room, impatiently waiting for the long-awaited email to arrive.

“Where is it? It should be here by now,” You rapped your fist lightly against your mouth. “Damn it, I know I messed up on that last question, and they’re taking so long because they know it too-”

“Calm down,” Sieun rubbed your back up and down, trying to ease your nerves. “It’s a mass email, so it’s going to take a while to send to everyone.”

At that moment, both of your accounts received emails from Yonsei, each headlined with the department you applied to.

“Sieun-ah, it’s here,” You whispered before nervously tugging on the sleeve of his hoodie. “It’s here!”

“I know,” he acknowledged. “On three?”

You smiled at him, hovering your finger above the touchpad. “On three.”

You counted down, opening the email at the count of three, and gasped when you saw the first line starting with, ‘Congratulations, Miss ___, you have been accepted…’

You couldn’t help the wide grin on your face. “Sieun-ah, I got in! What about you?”

While his smile wasn’t as obvious as yours, it was obvious that he received good news as well. “Me too.”

Unable to contain your happiness anymore, you threw your arms around him. Your feet were lifted off the ground as he wrapped your arms around your waist, hugging you back earnestly. You didn’t need to explain what you felt. Sieun knew what it felt like to have years of studying finally pay off.

When he finally stopped spinning you around and set you down, you leaned up and pulled him into a kiss. Unlike the many heated kisses you shared that led to even hotter encounters, this kiss was soft, gentle, and comforting. You realised that ever since Sieun first defended you during that dinner, you readily started giving your heart, little by little, until he had it whole.

“___,” he whispered, just a breath away from your lips when you finally separated. “I really like you. I think I love you. Do you want to give us a chance?”

What else could you say other than yes?

author’s notes: Finally, I've finished writing this. I wanted to write more sm*tty parts, but it sounded so awkward and weird, so I ended up scraping it. I hope you enjoyed reading it!

⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔

The meeting is scheduled for ten o'clock. By nine fifty-eight you are already seated in the conference room on the fourteenth floor with a paper cup of coffee going cold between your palms, watching the door.

You’re nervous.

Eight months ago, the other four members of Blossom terminated their contracts and walked out of this building with their personal items in paper bags. You watched them go from the window of this exact floor. The label had offered a restructured deal and they had declined it, collectively and without much deliberation, and then they had looked at you in the hallway outside the legal team's office with an expression you have spent eight months trying not to think about too precisely.

You did not leave with them. The label's restructured deal had your name on a separate clause, and the penalties attached to that clause were a number that made your vision go briefly white when you read it. So you stayed, and now you are a solo artist with eight months of rejected concept submissions and a debut that the label needs to happen before the end of the fiscal quarter.

The concept submissions are not bad. You know they are not bad. Sunshine, Sunshine has a key change in the bridge that your vocal coach called exciting, which is the most enthusiastic thing your vocal coach has said about anything in three years. The production team said it was charming.

Chansung, the label's head of A&R, is at the head of the table rearranging his papers. Your manager Jisoo is beside you reviewing something on her tablet. Two junior A&R staff sit at the far end of the table with their laptops open, speaking quietly to each other about something that stops the moment you glance at them.

Everyone in this room knows something you don't know yet. You can feel it in the particular quality of their helpfulness this morning, the way Chansung offered you coffee twice and then apologized for the cups being paper.

"He's particular about punctuality," Chansung says, to no one specifically.

"It's ten oh four," you say.

The door opens.

Keum Seongje is not what the industry photographs suggest. The photographs present him as angular and composed, all sharp jaw and expensive neutrals. In person he takes up more space than his frame should allow. He’s wearing a grey hoodie with the cuffs pushed up and glasses that cost more than your monthly vocal coaching sessions. He has a coffee cup from the place two blocks over, which means he stopped somewhere on the way here and did not hurry.

He sits down without greeting anyone. He opens his laptop and reads something on the screen. He does not apologize for the time.

Chansung clears his throat. "Seongje, thank you for making the trip. We're very glad to have you on board for this project. As I mentioned in the brief, we're looking at a solo debut for our artist here, building on the fanbase she established with Blossom, and we thought given your track record with image repositioning that you might have some interesting-“

"Play it," Seongje says.

Chansung stops mid-sentence. "Sorry?"

"The submission." He sets his phone face-down on the table. "Play it."

Chansung looks at you. You pull out your own phone, connect it to the room speaker, and press play. Sunshine, Sunshine fills the conference room. The opening is bright and synth-driven. Your vocal sits high in the mix, clean and controlled. The key change arrives at two minutes and twelve seconds, right on schedule.

Seongje listens with his elbow on the table and two fingers pressed against his mouth. He stares at a fixed point slightly above the speaker like the music is a document he is reading rather than something meant to be felt.

The track ends. Thirty-two seconds of silence follow it.

"No," he says.

Chansung shifts in his seat. "The key change in the bridge was something we were particularly excited about, the production team felt it added a real sense of-“

"It's not bad. It’s just not right,” Seongje says. He finally looks at you. "Sing something for me."

You blink. "The track is right there."

"I heard the track." He gestures vaguely at the speaker. "Sing something. Anything. Whatever you were singing this morning."

Your manager Jisoo makes a small sound beside you.

"I wasn't singing this morning," you say.

"Then yesterday. Whenever you last sang something because you wanted to, not because someone was recording it."

You think of the voice memo you recorded at two in the morning three weeks ago, sitting on your bathroom floor because the acoustics were good and you couldn't sleep and there was a melody circling your head that wouldn't resolve. Then you look at this room full of people and you sing four bars of Sunshine, Sunshine instead, a cappella, just to give him something to work with.

"Lower," he says.

"It's written for my range."

"I'm not asking about the song. Drop it an octave and do it again."

The melody transforms into something your chest has to work for, something that sits in the back of your throat rather than the front of it. Four bars. Twelve seconds, maybe.

Seongje is very still.

Then he picks up his pen, writes two words on the notepad in front of him, and turns it to face Chansung.

"What does it say?” you ask.

Neither of them answers immediately, which is its own answer.

"What does it say?" you repeat.

Chansung turns the notepad toward you.

Sexy concept.

The silence that follows is the loudest thing that has happened in this room all morning.

"No," you immediately refuse.

"Yes," Seongje says, already writing something else.

"That is not what we discussed. You can’t just-“

"Your submission was written for a group," Seongje says, without looking up. "Four other voices, a concept that only works as a unit. What I just heard from you in that octave has nothing to do with Blossom. That belongs to you."

"I can't pull off sexy." The words come out before you can arrange them better.

"I didn't ask if you could pull it off."

"Because you are not the one who has to."

"Chansung." He caps his pen and looks straight at you. "Play me her fancam from the Inkigayo performance last March."

Chansung pulls it up on his laptop and turns the screen. You know the one. You know every frame of it. You were in the center, the camera finding you every eight counts, and you were doing exactly what the choreographer told you to do, which was be bright and accessible and pleasing.

Seongje watches twelve seconds of it and stops the video.

"That part." He points at the frozen frame. "Right there. You dropped the smile for exactly two seconds because you were listening to the bass line change." He taps the screen. "That is not a cute concept face. You made that face because the music did something to you and you forgot to perform for a second."

Your throat tightens.

"Oh," says one of the junior A&R staff at the end of the table, very quietly, like something has clicked into place for him.

"Oh my god," says the other one, slightly louder.

Chansung is nodding the way he nods when he is already composing the press release in his head.

"It suits her perfectly," the first staff member says. "Why didn't we ever-“

"Because you were looking at what she was doing instead of what she was about to do.” Seongje picks up his coffee. “I will take the full project."

"I am in the room," you say.

"I know," he says.

I haven't agreed to anything." The words come out sharper than you intended but you can’t help it. This stranger showed up four minutes late and now he thinks he can dissect your entire career in one sentence. You have been doing this for five years. Your image has been carefully constructed and maintained through comeback after comeback. No producer who couldn’t even arrive on time should be able to unravel it this quickly.

The protest sits on your tongue ready to be spoken. Except the bass line change from the Inkigayo stage is still lodged somewhere in your chest like a physical object. The way your voice sounded in that lower octave has not stopped replaying in your head since you heard the recording. A terrible suspicion creeps in that he knows exactly what both of those things are doing to you right now, that he can see the curiosity you are trying to bury under professional skepticism.

Your gaze shifts to Chansung for backup or at least solidarity.

Chansung’s posture has relaxed. One hand rests on the table near the portfolio like he is already planning which photos to use for the concept shoot. The betrayal of it makes your jaw tighten.

"Fine," you say. The word tastes like defeat. "But I want approval rights on the final direction."

Seongje has already turned back to his notepad before you finish speaking. His pen moves across the page in quick efficient strokes. Notes get added to whatever framework he has been building this entire meeting.

"Sure," he says without looking up. The tone carries the easy agreement of someone who has no intention of honoring what they just promised, like he is humoring a child who thinks they have negotiating power.

Your fingers curl against your thigh under the table where no one can see.

────୨ৎ────

The second meeting is in the same conference room, which you are beginning to resent on principle.

Seongje arrives on time. The punctuality gives you nothing to be quietly annoyed about before things officially begin. He sets his laptop on the table and pulls a small portable drive from his jacket pocket. The drive slides across the table toward you.

"Reference tracks," he says. "Listen to all of them before you say anything."

You don’t even bother reaching for the drive. "Good morning to you too."

He opens his laptop without acknowledging the comment.

Chansung has developed a new habit of sitting precisely between the two of you like a human buffer. He clears his throat now and attempts to restore some semblance of professional courtesy. "Today we are narrowing down the creative direction. Seongje has prepared some references, and we thought it would be useful to-"

"I have references too," you say. Your own laptop opens and the screen turns toward Seongje. A mood board you spent four hours building last night fills the display. Clean lines and soft lighting create something that walks the border between the image you have and the image they want. It’s a version of the concept that does not require you to become someone unrecognizable. "This is what I think we could be working toward."

Seongje glances at it for approximately three seconds.

"No," he says.

"You looked at it for three seconds."

"I didn't need longer." He nods at the drive still sitting in front of you. "Listen to the references."

The drive gets picked up. You put it in your laptop and open the first file with more force than necessary.

The track is nothing like what you expected. Slow and low, it builds around a bass line that takes up more space than the melody does. The vocal sample sitting on top is not pretty in any conventional sense. The voice sounds like it has been somewhere and came back changed.

You close the file after ninety seconds.

"That is not my style," you say.

"Not yet," Seongje clarifies.

"Not ever. My fanbase is not going to follow me into whatever that is." The gesture you make toward the laptop encompasses the entire concept he seems to be building.

"Your fanbase followed Blossom. Blossom doesn't exist anymore. You are building a new fanbase. The old one is a bonus if it comes along, not a blueprint."

The junior A&R staff are very still at the end of the table. Nobody seems to be breathing.

"I have two hundred thousand people who have followed my career for five years," you huff, suddenly angry. "That’s the foundation of everything the label has invested in, and if we alienate them with a complete image overhaul then we’re gambling with the only one I have."

Seongje glances at Chansung. "She's not wrong about the risk."

You blink, surprised he even had the ability to agree with you.

"She's wrong about the solution," he continues. You sigh. You knew it was too good to be true.

His hands pull the laptop toward himself and open the second reference file. "The answer isn’t to stay inside the old image to keep the old audience. The answer is a transition that gives the existing audience somewhere to go."

He turns the screen toward you. A chart fills the display with streaming numbers across a three-year period. The artist whose name you recognize stares back from a thumbnail photo. "She had a cute concept for four years before doing a full pivot at twenty-three. She lost thirty percent of her casual listeners in the first month but gained them back within a quarter, plus the new audience on top. The music was good enough that people followed it."

"She isn’t me," you argue.

"Correct. Her voice is less interesting than yours."

The room goes quiet in a different way than it has before. The junior A&R staff exchange glances.

"You don't know my voice well enough to say that. You heard me sing for twelve seconds in this room last week." The compliment feels fake coming from him.

"Fourteen seconds," he says. "And yes, I do."

"That is exactly my point. You don’t know me. You walked in here with a decision already made based on fourteen seconds and a fancam.”

"Then what do you actually want?" He closes the laptop. His full attention lands on you and it carries an uncomfortable weight. "Not what's safe or what keeps the label happy. What do you want the music to do when someone hears it?"

"I want people to feel something," you say. The answer is true but also a lie at the same time.

He looks at you for a long moment while his expression remains unchanged. "That's not an answer. That's what everyone wants. Try again."

"I don't have a better answer for you right now." Your hands flatten against the table on either side of your laptop.

"Then we have a problem," he says as his coffee cup lifts to his mouth without him drinking from it yet. "I can't build a direction around an artist who doesn't know what she wants the music to be."

"I know what I want it to be. I want it to be..." The words trail off as you stop yourself mid-sentence. The mood board is still open on your laptop and your eyes drop to it. "I want it to feel like me."

"The mood board doesn't feel like you." He sets the cup down.

"You don't know what feels like me." The defensiveness in your voice has become obvious now. "What do you even want from me?"

Seongje leans back in his chair and the leather creaks under his weight. "For you to stop performing in the studio."

"I am a performer. That is literally what I do for a living." Your spine straightens in response.

"That’s it. You perform for the crowd, not for yourself," he corrects. "The music I'm building will not work if the person singing it is managing everyone else's reaction to her the whole time.”

“That’s a very easy thing to say to someone whose entire career was built on being likable," you scoff.

"I’m not asking you to change your identity. I am asking you to separate your music from it,” he continues. "The problem is that you think your music has to be your identity and that every song you release has to represent the totality of who you are as a person. The music is part of you, not all of you.”

You have no idea what to say to him or how to argue against something that makes this much sense. Every meeting with him goes like this. You walk in prepared for one conversation and he tilts the entire axis of it before you realize what is happening. The ground keeps shifting beneath you and you keep losing your footing.

His laptop opens and the sound of keys clicking fills the quiet as he types something. A few seconds pass before a soft chime indicates an email being sent.

"I just sent you the rest of the references," he says while his eyes stay on his screen. "Listen to all of them before our next session. Pay attention to how the music makes you feel.”

You pull out your phone once everyone leaves and open the email to find six audio files attached. The subject line reads simply: "Listen with headphones."

You download the first file.

────୨ৎ────

The references he sends are forty-three minutes of music you would never have found yourself.

You listen to all of them sitting cross-legged on your studio apartment floor with your laptop open and the lights off because somehow the dark makes it easier to hear things properly. Track after track, the same aesthetic running through all of them like a thread pulled tight. Low tempos, with negative space in the production where most music would fill in the gaps.

You listen to the whole thing twice. Then you sit in the dark for a while.

The problem is not that the music is bad. The problem, the one you cannot say out loud in a conference room, is that it makes sense. Not for the image you have built and maintained for five years or for the fanbase that knows your name because of synchronized choreography and matching pastel outfits, but for something inside you that you have carefully buried inside you when the label first told you to do a cute concept.

You open a new browser tab and sit there for a moment. Then you type: clubs in Mapo idols frequent.

It takes you twenty minutes to get ready. You tell yourself this is a reasonable and professional thing to do, gathering information, field-testing a concept before committing to it in a studio with Geum Seongje watching you through the glass. If you walk into a room dressed the way his references suggest and nobody looks at you, then you will have concrete evidence that the concept does not work. Concrete evidence is something even he cannot argue with.

The cab drops you outside at eleven-fifteen. Inside, the music is bass-heavy and continuous, and the lighting is dark enough that your eyes take a moment to adjust.

You find a spot at the bar and order something without tasting it.

This is the part where you did not think far enough ahead. In the version of this plan that existed in your apartment with the lights off, you walked in and either things happened or they didn't and you had your answer. You didn’t account for the specific loneliness of standing alone at a bar in a club at eleven-fifteen on a Wednesday, nursing a drink you don't want, performing casualness for an audience of nobody.

Blossom used to come to places like this together. All five of you in a corner booth, Jiyeon ordering for everyone, Haerin stealing fries from the platter, the particular noise of four other people who knew your face without the stage makeup on. You hadn’t thought about that in a while. You think about it now, standing here alone. You finish your drink and order another one.

The second drink is when he sits down.

He’s attractive in a generic, well-maintained way, wearing a shirt that costs money. He smiles at you with the confidence of someone who does not often hear no.

"You've been standing here alone for twenty minutes," he says, leaning slightly toward you to clear the music.

"I'm aware," you say.

"That seems like a waste." He flags the bartender. "Let me get you something."

"I have something." You hold up your glass.

"Then let me get you something better." His smile doesn't shift. "I feel like you could use the company."

You’re deciding how to handle this when a hand settles at the small of your back.

"She's good," says a voice beside your ear.

You go completely still.

Seongje is looking at the man on the stool with the mild, unhurried attention he gives everything, glasses catching the bar light, one hand still at your back and the other wrapped around what appears to be his own drink. He looks like he belongs here in a way, the complete opposite image of how out of place you feel.

The man on the stool reads the situation in about four seconds. His smile stays but the confidence behind it drains out. "My bad," he says, and picks up his drink and leaves.

Seongje's hand drops from your back and leaves the space where it was feeling suddenly cold.

You turn to look at him but he is already facing forward with his elbow on the bar. His attention focuses on the middle distance like none of the last thirty seconds happened.

"What are you doing here?" you say.

"Having a drink." He takes a sip of whatever he's drinking and the ice clinks against the glass.

"Here specifically."

"It's a bar. They have drinks here." His tone suggests this should be obvious. He turns his head and looks at you with an expression that differs from the conference room version of him. The club lighting does something to the sharp lines of his face and softens the edges just enough that he reads like a different person standing in the same body.

"Go home," he says.

"I was here first." Your grip tightens on your glass.

"I know." He looks at you for one more moment that lasts long enough for you to feel it in your sternum before he looks away again. "Go home. This place isn’t for you."

You set your glass down on the bar with more force than necessary. The sound of it hitting the wood makes the bartender glance over. "This place doesn't suit me? You picked a sexy concept for me."

"I know." He swirls the liquid in his glass and watches it move.

"Both those things can’t be true," you say slowly in the way you speak when you are trying very hard not to raise your voice.

"They are. You just don't understand how yet." His fingers tap once against his glass in a rhythm that matches the bass line bleeding through the speakers.

The laugh that comes out of you is not polite. Several people at the bar nearby glance over in your direction. Seongje closes two fingers lightly around your wrist. He pulls you away from the bar without any particular urgency but with clear purpose.

"What are you doing?" You pull back against his grip but he is already moving. "I’m not going anywhere with you."

"You're making a scene." He navigates through the crowd like he knows exactly where he is going.

"I’m whispering."

"You're whispering loudly." He steers you down a short corridor off the main floor before stopping at a door marked Private which he opens without knocking.

The room inside is small and dim, with a lounge arrangement that sits empty. The door closes behind you both and the bass from outside drops to a low thrum through the walls. The sudden quiet makes your ears ring.

"You brought me into a private room in a club." Your arms cross over your chest defensively.

"You were about to get loud." He leans against the wall like he has all the time in the world.

You point at him with one hand while the other stays wrapped around your elbow. "Pervert."

"You came here to prove you couldn't pull it off," he says, seeing right through your plan.

"I was trying to understand the concept," you argue.

"The concept isn't about being in a place like this," he says. "It's not a club concept. What I sent you, those references, did any of them feel like this?"

He gestures vaguely at the walls, the muffled thump of the music outside.

"No," you admit, quietly and with great reluctance.

"You were trying to test the wrong thing." He pushes off the wall. "You can't field-test this in a club. It doesn't live here."

"You are still a pervert for bringing me in here,” you turn to leave, because suddenly all of the exhaustion from the night hits you all at once.

"There was a bouncer twelve feet away the entire time."

"A pervert with backup," you say, and push open the door before he can respond.

The bass hits you immediately, full volume, and you walk back through the club and out the front door into the cold without looking back. The cab you call takes four minutes and you spend all four of them standing on the pavement in the black dress telling yourself the heat in your face is from the noise inside and not from anything else.

────୨ৎ────

Three more concept meetings happen in the following two weeks, each one shorter than the last. The direction is set. The aesthetic is what it is.

His studio is in Mapo, on the fourth floor of a building that looks like it should contain a dental practice or a mid-tier accounting firm. There is no label signage anywhere. The directory in the lobby lists the fourth floor as a private recording space with no company name attached, just a unit number, which tells you something about the kind of person who works here. His name is not on anything.

The door code he texts you the night before is eight digits. You stand in the hallway and type it in and feel, for no reason you can justify, like you are entering somewhere you were not entirely meant to find.

The studio is not what you pictured. There’s a long desk crowded with two monitors, an audio interface, and a keyboard controller pushed to the far edge to make room for a legal pad covered in handwriting you cannot read from the doorway. Cables are bundled and labeled with small pieces of tape. Three empty coffee cups are lined up along the windowsill. One of the monitors has a sticky note on the bezel that says fix the low end on 3 in what you assume is his handwriting.

Seongje is at the desk with his back to you, headphones around his neck, clicking through something on the left monitor. He does not turn around.

"Sit down," he says.

The only other chair in the room is pushed against the far wall. You pull it up to the desk and sit.

He finishes what he is doing, rolls his chair slightly to the right, and pulls up a project file on the right monitor. The waveforms are dense, layered, more tracks stacked than you expected for something still in the working phase. He has been in here building this for a while. You look at the file name at the top of the screen.

YN_titletrack_v9.

Version nine.

"Instrumental first," he says. "Don't say anything until it's done." He hits play.

The track comes through the studio monitors. It’s different from what you’ve been hearing his references through laptop speakers for the past two weeks. The sub-bass sits below your hearing and registers in your sternum instead, a low persistent pressure that you feel before you consciously process it as sound. The opening is sparse, the bass and a hi-hat pattern land slightly behind the beat in a way that makes your body want to lean forward into the rhythm.

Then the melody comes in. It’s softer than the instrumental suggests it should be, sitting in a middle register that has room and warmth to it. There’s a moment in the pre-chorus where the bass drops out entirely for two counts.

The chorus builds slowly. It deepens, adding texture in layers, the melody folding into a lower harmony that runs underneath it and pulls the whole thing somewhere more serious than it started.

The second verse is tighter than the first. He has compressed something in the arrangement, pulled the space in slightly, and the effect is the feeling of something closing around you. The bridge strips everything back to the bass and a single vocal line, unharmonized, and the nakedness of it after the layered chorus is the most affecting thing the track does. It is over in eight bars and when the final chorus comes back in you feel the loss of that space immediately.

The track ends on a single sustained note that fades.

"It's good." The admission requires no effort because it is simply and completely true, and dressing it up would be embarrassing for both of you. "It's very good."

Something in his posture settles. Not pride or satisfaction in the way you expected it would look on him but more like the quiet release of a tension he was not visibly carrying.

He pulls up a new document on the left monitor and turns it toward you. "This one’s still a working draft. Nothing is locked."

You lean forward. The title track is called Under Your Skin.

The first verse opens cleanly, the language restrained, almost domestic in its specificity.

You leave your things on my side of the room Like you're marking something Like you already know I don't mind, I don't mind That's the part I can't say out loud

You read it twice. It’s not explicit per say. Implication is more effective than statement, and the restraint of the first verse makes the turn in the pre-chorus land harder than it would have otherwise.

I've been good at keeping distance You make it look so easy to close it Come here, I said, come here

The repetition of come here sits in your chest the same way the bridge of the instrumental did, stripped and direct. You keep your face very still. The chorus arrives and the track stops being careful.

I want to get under your skin Find the parts you don't let anyone near Stay there I want to stay there Tell me where it hurts I'll learn every single one

The second verse deepens what the first established. The language is still not technically explicit but it has stopped pretending to be innocent, the domestic specificity of the opening replaced by something more physical.

You run warm, always warm I notice everything The way you breathe when you're trying not to show it I notice everything

The bridge has four lines.

Don't tell me to be careful Don't tell me to slow down You've been watching me the whole time We both know what this is

You finish reading and sit back in your chair and look at the ceiling for a moment.

"It's still good." You look back at the monitor. "It's also very."

"Very," he repeats, waiting.

You gesture at the screen. "You’ve written a song about sex."

He leans back in his chair. "The reading is up to the listener."

"Seongje." You point at the screen. "Explain to me how that is suggestive and not explicit."

He reads it again with the genuine focus of someone considering the question seriously. "It could be about emotional vulnerability."

"It’s obviously not."

"You're being a prude."

"I am being a professional." You sit up straighter. "I agreed to sexy. Not to whatever the bridge is doing."

He looks at you for a long moment. "Are you actually going to be able to sing this?"

"I can sing it."

"You look like you've never heard a song with a double meaning before." He tilts his head slightly. The studio lighting catches the edge of his glasses. "You're not seriously this sheltered. You've been in the industry for five years."

"Being in the industry for five years does not mean—"

"I'm just saying." He leans back in his chair. "You're acting like a virgin."

The word lands in the room and sits there. You open your mouth, unable to stop yourself from gaping at him.

"It was a joke," he scoffs, already turning back to the monitor. "Calm down."

"I know it was a joke."

"You're very red."

"It’s warm in here."

"The temperature is fine." He scrolls through the lyrics. "Look at the second verse, the meter is what I actually want your opinion on—"

"I'm not a virgin," you say.

The scrolling stops.

He turns his chair very slowly and looks at you. You avoid eye contact. The back of your neck is hot. You said it too fast and too loud, with the specific energy of someone who has proven the exact opposite of what they intended to prove. You know it, and he knows it.

"Okay," he talks to you in the same tone you would use with a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“The second verse,” you change the topic. “You wanted my opinion on the meter.”

He’s quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice has lost its usual edges. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was a cheap joke.”

You weren’t expecting this. Three weeks of meetings have taught you to anticipate his deflections. You don’t know what to do with this plain acknowledgment. The lack of performance disarms you more than the apology itself.

“It’s fine,” you manage.

He accepts this with a small nod and turns back to the monitor. “The third line in the second verse runs long. Tell me if it feels natural to sing or if it needs cutting.”

You pull your chair closer to the screen and read the third line of the second verse.

You run warm, always warm

It sits cleanly in the melody in your head. The problem is not the meter. The problem is that the line means something different than it did sixty seconds ago, and Keum Seongje is eighteen inches away waiting for your professional opinion.

"It's fine," you say, in a perfectly level voice.

"Agreed," he nods and opens the next file.

────୨ৎ────

The break happens at a natural pause, him switching between project files and you reaching the limit of how long you can read suggestive lyrics with your face arranged into something professional. He gets up to deal with the coffee situation, which apparently involves a small machine on the shelf behind the desk that he operates with the quiet focus of someone who does this exact thing at the same time every day.

You roll your chair back and stretch your neck.

"I want to see the rest."

"Sure," he says, and sits back down.

He opens the second file and turns the monitor toward you.

The title is two words. Taste Test.

You read the title. You set your coffee cup down.

"That's just the title," he says.

You read the actual lyrics. You read them twice because the first time through you are not entirely certain you are parsing the Korean correctly, and the second time confirms that you are.

"I need a moment," you say.

You stand up and walk to the far side of the room and stand there with your hands on your hips facing the wall for approximately ten seconds. The wall has a small framed print on it, abstract, which you study with great attention while you locate your professionalism. Then you walk back and sit down.

"Next one," you say.

He opens the third file. Get Closer.

The opening line is deceptively simple. Four words, nothing technically explicit, but sitting inside the melody he has built for it in your head they land with a weight that is considerably more than the sum of their parts. You read the first verse without incident. You read the second verse. You get four lines into the bridge.

Don't keep the door between us You know I can hear you breathing Come here, just come here Stop pretending you don't want this too

You stand up. You make it to the door this time before you turn around. Seongje watches the entire thing with his elbow on the desk and his chin resting in his hand, expression unreadable.

You walk back. You sit down. "All of them," you say. "Just show me all of them at once."

He opens tracks four, five, and six in sequence and pushes the monitor toward you without a word.

Track four is called Running Hot and opens with two lines that make the back of your neck prickle immediately.

You run warm, I run warmer Come find out what that means

The chorus of track four does not bother with implication.

Track five is called After Hours and is structured as a conversation, call and response, the kind of song that requires two people to perform it.

Track six is called Stay and is the quietest thing in the folder, slower than the others.

You read all three without getting up, which you consider a genuine personal achievement, though by the end of track six you are sitting with your elbows on the desk and your face pressed into both palms.

The room is quiet. Down the hall, something from another studio moves through the walls at low volume.

"I'll edit them," Seongje says.

You lift your face. "What?"

"The other tracks. Pull the language back on a few of them." He is already opening the second file. "The title track is close to final but the rest have room to—"

"Don't."

He stops.

You look at track six still open on the screen. Stay is sitting there in plain text and the last two lines are still doing something to the inside of your chest that you are not going to examine right now. "These work. All of them. Don't water them down because I made a face."

He says nothing for a beat. Then, carefully: "I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Because two weeks ago-"

"I am aware of what I said two weeks ago." You pick up your coffee. "I am updating my position. People are allowed to do that."

He looks at you for one more moment, the corner of his mouth doing the thing you have started to recognize as the closest he gets to laughing, and then he turns back to his keyboard.

"Meter on the bridge of track two," he says. "It runs long."

You pull up Taste Test and read the bridge again. The bridge is still the bridge. You read it with professional detachment and only minimal damage to your composure. "Last four words. They're dead weight."

He makes the note.

"Track three, second verse, line five," you say. "Syllable count is off against the instrumental. You can hear it even when reading it cold."

He leans over and reads it, then pulls up the instrumental file and plays the section in question. Twelve seconds of music fills the room, the bass sitting in your chest the same way it did on the first listen. He stops it and makes a note. "Good catch."

"The call and response structure on track five," you say. "Is that intentional or a draft thing?"

"Intentional."

You look at the lyrics for After Hours on the screen. "That requires two voices. Are you planning a feature?"

"Something like that," he says, which is not an answer .

The session continues. Track four remains exactly as written. You read the chorus of Running Hot two more times over the course of the afternoon for purely professional reasons, and by the third time the initial heat in your face has downgraded to something that is almost, almost manageable.

Almost.

────୨ৎ────

The booth is smaller than it looks from the other side of the glass. You put the headphones on. Through the glass Seongje settles into his chair at the board, pulls the monitor toward him, and his voice comes through the cans a moment later, close and direct in a way that is slightly disorienting.

"Warm up first. Anything."

You run through your scales. Your voice sounds different here than it does in any rehearsal room you have worked in, the acoustic treatment catching every detail.

"Good," he says, when you finish. "Take it from the top of the first verse. Just the verse, don't push into the pre-chorus yet."

You find the melody in your head and come in on the count.

The problem is the bridge.

Specifically the third line of the bridge, which reads simply as "I've been waiting so long I've forgotten how to want anything else", and which you have now sung fourteen times across two hours with results that Seongje has described, in order, as: too bright, too controlled, too performed, too careful, too much like a ballad, too much like a jingle, and, most recently, too much like you are reading a grocery list.

"Again," he says, through the cans.

You breathe. You come in on the count.

Don't tell me to be careful Don't tell me to slow down I've been waiting so long I've forgotten how to want anything else We both know what this is

"Stop," he says.

"I know what the problem is,” You sigh, stopping him before he can start. “I don't know how to fix it."

"What does the line mean to you?" he asks.

"Wanting something for so long it becomes the whole of you," you answer. "Losing the ability to want anything else because the wanting has taken up all the available space."

"And have you ever wanted something like that?"

"That's not relevant," you say.

"It's the only relevant thing." He leans forward, elbows on the board. "The line requires a specific quality of longing. The particular feeling of something you have wanted for so long it has become structural, part of how you're built." He pauses. "If you haven't felt that you cannot fake it. The mic will hear the difference."

"I have felt longing before."

"Not like this," he says, and the certainty in it is not unkind but it is absolute. "This is not the longing of someone who is sad about missing something. This is the longing of someone who wants something long enough that the wanting has become its own kind of fever." He holds your gaze through the glass. "That is a very particular feeling and your voice does not have it yet."

The booth is very quiet.

"I don't have a reference point for it," your voice comes out quieter than you intended and more honest than you planned.

The studio is completely silent except for the low hum of the equipment.

You do not look up.

Through the glass you hear the subtle shift of his chair, the sound of him sitting back. He does not say anything for a long moment, long enough that you are constructing a full list of things he might say, all of them worse than the silence.

"That's the problem," he says finally. "I'm aware."

Another silence.

Then, in the same tone, unhurried and completely clinical: "I could give you that reference point."

Your first thought is that you misheard him. The headphones sometimes do something to consonants, compress them slightly. You have been in this booth for two hours and it’s possible that what he actually said was something logistical, something that your exhausted brain assembled incorrectly into the sentence you think you heard.

Your second thought is that you did not mishear him.

You look at him through the glass. His elbow is on the desk, face in its usual arrangement. He does not elaborate or follow it with anything that would tell you whether it is an offer or a producer solving a technical problem with the most direct available solution. The silence stretches.

You think about asking him to clarify. You construct the sentence in your head: what do you mean by that. Four words, professionally delivered, a reasonable request for clarification in a working context. You could say it. You should say it. You have the sentence fully assembled and ready.

He pushes his chair back, the casters rolling softly on the floor, and stands up. He doesn’t look at you as he walks around the console. He reaches for the door handle of the booth and you take a step back without meaning to, a purely physical response, your body making a decision slightly ahead of your brain.

The seal breaks with a soft thump of releasing pressure.

Suddenly he is in the booth with you. The small booth turns microscopic. He pulls the door closed behind him, and the world outside the glass ceases to matter.

He closes the distance in two deliberate steps. Now he’s standing in front of you, not touching, but the heat from his body is a tangible force. He looks down at you, his sharp eyes cataloging every micro-expression: the widening of your eyes, the quickening pulse in your throat, the way your fingers curl uselessly against the foam panel.

“You’re shaking,” he observes. His voice is lower here, without the mediation of the headphones.

“I’m not.”

“You are. Here.” He lifts a hand, fingertips stopping a centimeter from your throat. “And your breathing is all fucked up. You’re holding your breath, then taking these shallow little sips of air. You can’t sing like that.”

“I know how to breathe,” you whisper. The protest is pathetic.

“Do you?” He finally touches you. Just his index finger, under your chin, tilting your face up. The contact is electric, a jolt that travels straight down your spine. His skin is warm. “You know technique. You don’t know feeling. It’s a physical problem. So we solve it physically.”

His other hand comes up, palm flat against the panel beside your head, caging you in. You are surrounded by him.

“What are you doing?” The question is airless.

“Giving you a reference point.” His thumb strokes the corner of your mouth, a slow, deliberate pass. You do your best to resist leaning into the touch. “You said you lacked the experience. I’m providing the experience. Consider it vocal coaching, free of charge.”

He leans in. His mouth hovers near yours, sharing the same frantic air you’re exhaling. You’ve been kissed before, chaste, staged things for cameras or awkward, fumbling attempts in darkened vans. This is nothing like that.

“Have you ever been touched?” he asks, voice a rough murmur against your lips. You can’t speak. You shake your head, a tiny, shameful movement.

“Ever had a man’s hands on you? Here?” His thumb leaves your mouth and drifts down, tracing the column of your throat, over the frantic jump of your pulse, down to the neckline of your sweater. He hooks a finger in the fabric. “Or here?” His palm settles, heavy and warm, over the swell of your breast through the thick wool. You jerk as if scalded, a full-body flinch that he absorbs without moving.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and for the first time, the clinical edge slips, replaced by something darker, more intrigued. “You really are completely untouched.”

The humiliation is a hot wave. You squeeze your eyes shut.

“Don’t. Look at me.” He commands it. Your eyes fly open. “This isn’t something to be ashamed of. It just means every sensation is new. That’s what I need from you in there.” He nods toward the microphone. “That raw, unfiltered signal.”

His hand on your breast kneads once, slowly, and a shocked, thin sound escapes you. Your nipple tightens instantly under the layers of fabric. The sensation is utterly foreign, a line of pleasure that draws your belly tight.

“See?” He watches your face like a scientist. “That’s a physical response. You’re not supposed to think about it. Your body knows things your brain hasn’t caught up to yet.”

He drops his hand from your breast, and you almost whimper at the loss of contact, a reaction that horrifies you. But he’s not finished. His hands go to the hem of your oversized sweater. You grab his wrists, panic flaring.

“Wait—”

“Do you want to fix the bridge or not?” The question is brutal in its simplicity. It’s not about this. It’s about the song. It’s always about the song.

Your fingers loosen. You let your hands fall to your sides, clenched into helpless fists.

He pulls the sweater up and over your head in one smooth motion. The cool studio air hits your skin, and you cross your arms over your simple cotton bra.

“Stop hiding,” he says, and his hands wrap around your wrists, pulling your arms down to your sides. He bends his head, and his mouth finds the skin where your neck meets your shoulder. He bites.

The pain melts into a deep, throbbing heat that pools low in your abdomen. You feel yourself growing wet, a desperate betrayal between your legs.

“You like that,” he says against your skin. One of his hands releases your wrist and slides down your side, over the waistband of your jeans, to cup you between your legs. You buck against his hand, a shudder wracking your whole frame. Even through the denim, the pressure is intense and overwhelming.

“So sensitive,” he mutters. His fingers rub a slow, firm circle over the core of you. The friction is maddening. Your hips jerk, seeking more, and a ragged moan is torn from your throat. “There it is. That’s the sound. That’s the fucking sound I need on the track.”

He unbuttons your jeans. The zipper’s rasp is obscenely loud. He shoves the fabric down over your hips, just enough. His fingers slip beneath the edge of your plain cotton panties, and then he’s touching you, skin to skin.

You gasp, your head thudding back against the panel. His fingers are direct, exploring without ceremony. They slide through the slick heat he’s found, parting you, finding the tight, clenching entrance of your virgin body.

“Jesus,” he breathes, the clinical detachment faltering for a split second. His forehead rests against yours. “You're dripping wet.”

His thumb leaves your entrance, shifts upward, and finds the swollen, desperate knot of your clit. Your knees actually buckle. Only his body and the wall keep you upright.

“There,” he says, his voice rough in your ear. He begins to move his thumb in slow, deliberate circles. The pressure is perfect. “This is the part they don’t put in the songs. This specific, fucking needy ache.”

You are unspooling. Your hips are moving on their own, a frantic rocking against his hand, chasing the sensation. You’re making noises you’ve never heard before, guttural, hungry little whimpers that echo in the dead air of the booth.

“That’s it,” he coaxes, a dark, approving whisper. “Give me the real sound.”

The pleasure builds in a terrifying, glorious wave. Your muscles clench, breath coming in ragged gasps. The world dissolves into a blur of sensation: the scent of his skin and the perfect rhythm of his thumb. You are so close to something, teetering on the edge of a cliff you didn’t know existed. Your body is tensing, bowing, every cell straining towards a shattering release.

“Please,” you hear yourself beg, the word ripped from somewhere primal. “Oh, God, please…”

You’re right there. The wave is cresting, about to break.

He pulls his hand away.

The loss is so violent and abrupt, it’s a physical shock. A cry of raw protest tears from your throat. Your body convulses, empty and furious. The promised release snatched away leaves you throbbing and desperate, obscenely unfinished. You slump against the wall, trembling violently, humiliation and need warring in the pit of your stomach.

Seongje brings his wet fingers to his mouth and tastes them, his gaze locked on yours.

“Now,” he says, his voice low and graveled with a tension that wasn’t there before. “You know what wanting feels like.”

He steps back, giving a single, devastating once-over your heaving chest and the ruined look in your eyes. “Now let’s sing the bridge.”

────୨ৎ────

The month happens the way most significant things happen, gradually and then all at once, the individual sessions blurring into a continuous thing that you stop being able to separate into distinct memories somewhere around the third week.

What you can reconstruct, if you try: the first time you stayed past midnight because the bridge of track three was not sitting right in the mix and leaving felt wrong. The takeout containers that started appearing on the windowsill beside the coffee cups, a permanent installation, Seongje ordering without asking what you wanted after the second week because he had already catalogued your preferences. The studio couch, which is narrow and not particularly comfortable, on which you fell asleep twice and woke to find a jacket over you that was not yours.

The almost-moments are harder to reconstruct because almost-moments require identifying where they begin and end, and in this studio, in this month, they did not have clear edges. They accumulated instead, layering over each other the way tracks layer in the mix, until the texture of being in a room with Keum Seongje became something you had to consciously manage.

You did not name any of it. Neither did he. The work was always there to return to, and returning to the work was easier than examining what was accumulating in the space around it.

The lap situation has a clear origin, which is that the studio's listening setup is built for one person. There’s only one chair at the board and one set of monitors positioned at ear height for whoever is sitting in that chair, the sweet spot in the room calibrated to a single point in space. When Seongje plays back a finished section he sits at the board and listens from that point. The sound is exactly what he built it to be. When you stand beside him to listen, the perspective shifts enough that the mix loses something. The difference matters when you are trying to evaluate a finished take.

You stood for three sessions before your back made the decision for you.

The first time you sat on the edge of his chair he moved without comment to give you room, which somehow became you sitting properly on his lap and him with an arm loosely around your waist to keep you both on the chair.

It’s simply how you listen to the playbacks now, your back against his chest, his chin occasionally dropping to your shoulder when he is focused on something in the mix, the weight of his arm across your lap a thing you have stopped noticing the way you stop noticing.

That’s not entirely true. You haven’t stopped noticing. You have simply developed a working arrangement with the noticing, a way of letting it exist alongside the professional purpose of being in the room without letting it consume the professional purpose of being in the room.

It is an imperfect arrangement.

────୨ৎ────

The finished album takes six weeks from the first vocal session to the final master. On the last night he sends the final files to the label and then opens them again in the studio.

You climb into his lap. He moves his arm to accommodate you without looking away from the monitor. He pulls up the first track.

Under Your Skin fills the studio through the monitors and it is different from every previous listen, different from the rough mixes and the working drafts and the late-night playbacks where you were still fixing things. It is done. The decisions are made and locked. The version of you that is in this track is permanent now.

Seongje's arm is across your lap. You can feel his breathing against your back, slow and even, the breathing of someone giving the music his complete attention.

The pre-chorus arrives. You remember the fourteen takes of the bridge you two went through. The chorus opens up the way it always does, the production expanding outward, and your voice is doing what he built it to do.

His chin drops to your shoulder, the way it does when he is listening to something specific in the mix. You feel rather than hear the small sound he makes in the back of his throat.

"It's done," he says.

By track four you have stopped looking at the monitor. You listen to your own voice do things that six weeks ago you didn’t know your voice could do.

Seongje shifts slightly behind you. His chin lifts from your shoulder. You feel him turn his head and you are fairly certain he’s looking at the side of your face rather than the monitor, but you don’t turn to confirm this.

Track five begins and you are not prepared for it, which should not be possible given that you already recorded it. After Hours in its final form is the most intimate thing you have ever heard your own voice do.

You remember recording the pre-chorus. You remember the specific quality of Seongje's silence through the glass after the first clean take, the way he sat very still at the board for a moment before reaching for the talkback button. You remember him saying, simply, that's the one, and the flatness of his voice when he said it.

The chorus arrives and it is the most explicit thing on the album, the language finally abandoning the restraint that the other tracks maintained, direct in a way that made you stand very still in the booth the first time you read it and very still again now, listening to your own voice deliver it with a conviction that still surprises you.

Tell me what you want Don't dress it up, don't make it pretty I want to hear you say it All of it Tell me what you want from me tonight I can take it Tell me

The track ends without a resolution, the two channels falling silent at different times, the right channel a half beat after the left, like one person leaving a room before the other has finished speaking.

You look at the monitor. The waveform for track five is complete, flat line at the end, the album continuing to track six automatically. You reach forward and stop it.

"There's no feature," you say.

"No," he says.

"You built the production around two voices." You look at the waveform. "There's a space in it. You built a space for another voice and you never filled it."

"I remember. I’m taking it off the album," he says.

You turn your head to look at him, which requires some maneuvering given the current arrangement, but you manage it. His face is its usual face, attentive and composed.

"What? Why?" you’re more upset than you thought you’d be.

"It doesn't fit the sequencing."

"It fits the sequencing perfectly. You built the sequencing around it. Track four into track five into track six is the emotional arc of the whole second half of the album. You told me that yourself."

"The arc works without it."

"Seongje." You look at him steadily. "We spent four sessions on that track. The pre-chorus alone took two hours. Whatever your reason is, it is the best thing on the album and pulling it makes the record weaker. You know that."

"The record is strong without it."

"Who were you going to feature?”

"It doesn't matter."

"It clearly matters."

"The track is coming off," his voice has the finality he uses to end conversations, the tone that in the first weeks of the project made you feel like a door being closed. You know it better now. You know it is not always a door being closed. Sometimes it is a person standing very still in front of something they do not want looked at directly.

"It's my call," he insists. "I produced it."

"Release it as a solo track," you fight back. "No feature. Reformat the production and close the space in the mix, it works as a single voice. It's actually more interesting that way. You know it's more interesting that way."

The quiet that follows is different from the other quiets in this studio. It has heat in it. Seongje stands up.

"You want to talk about what's actually happening," he says, and his voice is low and even, "or do you want to keep talking about the track."

"Close the space in the mix," your voice is steady, which is an achievement given the current circumstances. "Release it as a solo track. If you pull it, I’ll go to Chansung."

The mention of the CEO’s name lands like a thrown glass. His eyes flash, a crack in the composed facade. “You’d really run to him?”

“To release my best work? Yes.” Your voice doesn’t waver. “It’s my name on the album. My career.”

“Your career.” He repeats the words like they’re a joke in poor taste. The space between you evaporates. He closes it in two swift steps, his hands coming up to frame your face, his grip not painful but inescapable. “You think this is about your career?”

His mouth crashes down on yours.

He bites your lower lip, sucks it into his mouth, and you gasp against him. Your hands fly up, clutching at the front of his shirt, the fine cotton twisting in your fists. He breaks it as suddenly as he began, breathing harshly, his forehead pressed to yours.

“It’s a song,” you pant, your own breath coming in short, sharp bursts.

“It’s our song.” He spits the words. “That gasp in the bridge? At 2:47? That’s the sound you made when I had my fingers inside you. That’s mine.” His thumbs dig into your jawline. “You want to release that? You want the whole world to hear exactly how wet you got for me in that booth? To play it on the radio while they drive to work?”

Heat floods your cheeks, but a different heat coils low in your belly. “They won’t know.”

“I’ll know.” He shakes you, just once. “Every time I hear it, I’ll see you against that wall. I’ll remember how you shook. You want to let strangers get off to the sound of you coming apart?”

“Stop it.”

“Or what?” His voice drops to a seething whisper. “You’ll run to Chansung and tell him what, exactly? That your producer won’t let you release the song he fucked the performance out of you for? You think that helps your ‘sweet member’ image?”

The slut-shaming is crude, effective. It reduces the raw, terrifying intimacy of those sessions to something cheap and dirty. It makes you feel cheap. And yet, your body betrays you, a treacherous pulse throbbing between your legs. He sees it. He always sees it.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite,” he growls. “You cling to that demure little act, but you begged for it in that booth. You came against my hand like a starved thing. Now you want to package that and sell it.”

“That’s not what it is!”

“It’s exactly what it is.” He releases your face, his hands sliding down to your waist, yanking you hard against him. You feel the rigid proof of his anger straining against his slacks.

He grinds himself against you. A ragged moan escapes you, humiliation and arousal twisting together into one inseparable knot. Your head falls back, and his mouth finds your throat.

His teeth sink into the soft skin beneath your jaw, a sharp claim that draws a gasp from your lungs. You push at his chest, but the motion was weak, your body arching into the brutality of his mouth instead of away from it.

“You’re turning me into one of them,” you spat, the words trembling. “You wanted this. A marketable slut.”

He released your throat with a wet sound, leaning back to look at you. His eyes held a weary, cynical amusement.

“Maybe the concept just needed the right material.” He ground himself against you again, the hard line of his erection a blunt demand through the fabric. “We haven’t even fucked yet, Y/N, but you’re fine with the whole country listening to you sound like a desperate little thing begging for it.”

You shoved him, hard enough this time that he took a single step back, his hands falling from your waist. The space between you crackled with violent, unsaid things.

“I’m not desperate,” you said, but it sounded thin.

“Aren’t you?” He laughed, a short, harsh bark.

Your calves hit the edge of the couch and you collapsed onto it, looking up at him as he loomed over you. He undid his belt with a sharp, metallic rip. He pushed your skirt up your thighs, hands rough and efficient.

His fingers hooked into the sides of your plain cotton panties and tore them down, the fragile material yielding with a soft sigh. The cold air of the studio kissed your exposed skin, making you flinch. You were spread open before him, utterly revealed, and the clinical glare of the desk lamp left nothing to the imagination.

“See?” he said, his voice low. “You’re dripping. For a man who’s done nothing but use you for a song. That’s not desperate?”

You had no answer. Your body was a traitor, slick and throbbing, clenching around nothing.

He watched you, his eyes dark and unreadable, before lowering himself to his knees on the floor between your spread legs. You tried to close your thighs, a last instinct of modesty, but his hands clamped on your knees, holding you open.

“Don’t,” he said, the word flat. “This is what you’re selling, remember? Let’s see the product.”

He leaned forward, his breath hot against your inner thigh. So perfect and untouched,” he murmured, a mockery of wonder.

One hand left your knee. You heard the rustle of his slacks, the tear of a foil packet. You squeezed your eyes shut.

“Look at me.” The command was absolute.

You opened your eyes. He was sheathing himself, his expression focused, almost bored. The sight of him sent a jolt of pure animal fear through your veins. It was too much. You were too small.

“I can’t,” you whispered.

“You can.” He moved closer, the head of his cock pressing bluntly against your entrance. The pressure was immense, a fullness that promised to split you open. You cried out, a sharp sound of protest, and your hands flew to his wrists, nails digging into his skin.

He stilled, but didn’t retreat. “Relax.”

“It won’t fit,” you gasped, panic clawing up your throat.

“It will.” He shifted, removing himself, and you felt a dizzying mix of relief and shameful loss. He spat roughly into his palm, the crude sound echoing, and brought his wet fingers back to you.

One finger pushed inside you, deeper than before, a slow, relentless invasion. Your body resisted, clenching tightly around the intrusion, a sharp burn accompanying the stretch. He swore under his breath. “So fucking tight.”

He began to move his finger, a slow in-and-out. The burn began to soften, your body reluctantly yielding, betraying you with a fresh slickness.

“See?” he said, his voice low. “Your body knows what to do. It’s just your brain that’s scared.”

He added a second finger. The stretch was intense, a burning pressure that made you gasp and arch off the couch. He scissored them inside you, stretching the tender, virgin flesh.

“That’s it,” he coaxed darkly. “Take it. Just like you took my direction in the booth. Open up.”

He crooked his fingers, searching, and found a spot that made you jolt. A shocked, sharp sound was punched from your lungs. He pressed it again, circling it, and your hips gave a helpless, involuntary jerk. A broken sob escaped you.

“There,” he breathed, a hint of triumph in his voice. He worked you open, his fingers pistoning with a ruthless rhythm, stretching you until the initial burn faded into a hot, slippery ache. Your cries softened into moans.

The sound you made when he withdrew his fingers was a wet, obscene gasp in the quiet room. Your body clenched around nothing, a reflexive protest against the sudden emptiness. Your mind was a storm of shame and want, the sharp bite of pain from the stretching already softening into a deep, throbbing ache. He watched you, his eyes tracing the glistening evidence of your arousal on his fingers before he wiped them casually on the leg of his slacks.

“Up,” he stepped back, giving you space to rise on trembling legs. Your skirt fell back down, a flimsy veil over your utter exposure. The torn cotton of your panties lay on the floor near the couch, a stark white flag of surrender. You couldn’t look at them.

He was already moving, his back to you as he walked around the desk. You watched his hands, those same hands that had just been inside you, as they reached for a piece of equipment.

It was a microphone. A sturdy, professional condenser model on a short stand, one of several he kept nearby for when a melody or a lyric struck and couldn’t wait for the booth. He placed it carefully on the cleared edge of the desk, adjusting the angle with a precise twist. The small red power light winked on.

He looked at you over the expanse of black glass and scattered papers. “Come here.”

Your feet carried you forward on autopilot. You stopped in front of the desk, the cold edge pressing into your thighs.

“Turn around,” he said. “Bend over. Put your hands flat on the glass.”

You turned, facing away from him, toward the darkened window that reflected a ghostly, fractured version of the room. You saw the lamp, the couch, the torn underwear on the floor. You saw your own wide, dark eyes in the glass. You leaned forward, the position forcing your hips back, your spine into a deep curve. The cool, smooth surface of the desk met your palms. Your cheek pressed against it a moment later. The scent of lemon polish and old dust filled your nose.

One hand settled heavily on the small of your back, pinning you in place. The other gripped your hip, his fingers digging into the bone.

The blunt, thick head of his cock nudged against your entrance, still slick from his fingers and your own arousal. You tensed, every muscle locking.

“Don’t,” he warned, his breath hot against your ear. “You’re ready. Take it.”

He buried himself deep inside you, letting you feel every inch of him, letting your body convulse around the sudden, shocking intrusion. Your cry echoed off the hard surfaces of the office, decaying into a series of ragged, wet sobs.

“Fuck,” he groaned into your hair, the word vibrating through his chest and into your back. “You’re so fucking tight.”

He pulled back almost all the way, the drag a new, shocking friction, and slammed back in. The force of it drove you forward an inch on the desk. His hips slammed against your ass with a wet, meaty sound that was obscenely audible over both your breathing.

He was hitting something deep inside, a place his fingers had only teased. A broken, gasping moan fell from your lips.

“That’s it,” he snarled, his voice rough with exertion. “Let me hear it.”

And you did. You were so, so loud. Every slam of his body into yours punched another sound out of you, a sharp gasp, a choked sob, a high, keening wail you didn’t recognize as your own. You were crying, tears smearing the glass under your cheek, but you were also pressing back against him, meeting his thrusts with a desperation that shamed you.

He shifted his angle slightly, and on the next downward drive, he struck a place that made your vision whiten. A shattered, screaming cry ripped from your throat, echoing wildly in the room.

His hand left your hip. You heard a faint click. Then his fingers were in your hair, fisting painfully, yanking your head up and back. He forced you to look into the dark window at your own reflection.

“Look at you,” he panted, never breaking his rhythm. “Look at what you are. Not the sweet little idol. This. A messy, noisy, desperate little fuck.”

You wanted to deny them, but your body was proof. You were clenching around him, milking him. The coil in your belly was winding to a breaking point, fueled by the overwhelming friction and his degrading praise.

“You’re gonna come,” he stated, as if reading the tremors building in your thighs. “Come on my cock. Let the whole building hear you.”

He reached around your hip, his thumb finding your clit, swollen and exposed. He pressed, hard, and rubbed a rough circle.

Your back arched wildly against his restraining hand. A raw cry was torn from your very core, a sound so loud and ragged it scraped your throat. Your inner muscles clamped down on him in frantic, fluttering pulses, gripping him like a vise.

The feeling of you climaxing around him was the trigger. With a guttural groan that was pure animal satisfaction, he buried himself one last time, grinding deep. You felt the hot, sudden rush of his release inside you.

He held there, both of you locked together, shuddering. The only sounds were the ragged symphony of your breathing and the faint, electronic hum of the equipment.

Slowly, he softened and slid out of you. You heard him dealing with the condom, the soft toss into a trash can.

You couldn’t move. Your forehead was back on the cool glass, body trembling.

You saw his hand in the reflection. He reached for the microphone on the desk beside your head. He pressed a button. The red light went off. He had recorded it.

You pushed yourself up from the desk, your arms shaking violently. The cool air of the studio hit the wet mess between your thighs, a disgusting reminder. You turned to face him, your body screaming in protest at the movement. He was calmly wrapping the microphone cable around his hand, his expression unreadable.

“You… you recorded that?” Your voice was a hoarse shred of itself.

“I record everything.” He didn’t look at you, placing the mic back on its stand. “It’s a studio. That’s what I do.”

A hot, cleansing fury boiled up through the shame and the ache. It cut through the daze. “You’re sick.” The words were a whisper, then a shout. “You’re a fucking pervert!”

He finally looked at you, his sharp eyes assessing. “Am I?”

“You get off on this! On degrading me. That’s what this is!” You gestured wildly at the desk, at your own body, your voice cracking. “It’s not about the music. It’s about you being a twisted, controlling pervert!”

“That performance, right now, was the most honest thing you’ve ever done. I wanted the real thing.”

“That’s not me!” you screamed, the tears coming hot and fast now.

He walked to the laptop, his movements unhurried. He tapped a key, and the screen bloomed with a waveform. He clicked play.

The room filled with the raw, intimate cacophony of your own pleasure. First, the wet, slick sound of his fingers working inside you, obscenely amplified. Then your sharp, hitched breathing, the muffled sob against the leather couch. Your own voice, pleading “I can’t” in a tremulous whisper you hardly recognized.

You clapped your hands over your ears, but it was useless. You were hearing the pure need in the guttural moans that followed each brutal thrust.

“You set me up,” you whispered, the fury gone, replaced by a cold, sinking horror.

He closed the audio file. “You chose to come here. You chose to fight for the track. You chose to push. Your body chose to respond.”

Your hand moved before you could think. The slap cracked through the room. His head snapped to the side. A slow, red bloom appeared on his cheekbone.

He didn’t react. He just turned his head back, absorbing the shock, his eyes never leaving yours. A faint, almost approving smirk touched his lips. “Good.”

Then his hands were on you again. One palm cradled the back of your head, fingers tangling in your sweat-damp hair. The other splayed against the small of your back, pressing you into him. His mouth found yours.

You fought it for a second, teeth clenched, before a broken sound vibrated in your throat and you opened for him. He walked you backward until your knees hit the edge of the heavy steel desk. He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged.

He didn’t bother with a condom this time. He just gripped himself, gave two rough, slick strokes, and guided his head to your sore, swollen entrance. He pushed in with a deep thrust that made you gasp, your back arching off the cold metal.

Your body, despite everything, rose to meet his. A ragged, pathetic moan escaped you with each drive. You were wet for him again, a fresh, hot slickness that eased his passage and betrayed your every protest.

“This is the deal,” he grunted, his rhythm stuttering as he pushed deeper. “You want the art that matters? You pay for it here. I’ll give you a masterpiece to show the world. That’s the transaction.”

“That’s it,” he hissed, feeling your internal muscles begin their frantic flutter. Your legs wrapped around his hips, ankles locking, pulling him deeper into the mire of your own betrayal. “Come on it. Come on the truth.”

Your cunt clamped around him in rhythmic pulses, milking him desperately. It triggered his own release. He slammed into you one final, crushing time and groaned as he emptied himself deep inside your clenching heat.

He pulled out slowly. A gush of his spend followed, pooling beneath you. He found a box of tissues from a drawer and tossed it onto your stomach.

You mechanically cleaned yourself, wadding the tissues and letting them fall to the floor.

He was back at the laptop, his back to you. “Fine. The track stays on the album. Go home. Shower. Be back at ten for vocal comps. We’re finishing the album.”

You walked to the door on numb legs. Your hand paused on the handle.

“The recording,” you said, not turning around. “The raw file.”

You heard the clack of a single key. “Deleted.”

You didn’t believe him. You knew you would never speak of it again. You opened the door and stepped out into the sterile, bright hallway.

The demo he’d played earlier was still on the laptop, the track now irrevocably fused with the memory of your own screams. He highlighted the file: YN_AFTERHOURS_TAKE_H_FINAL.

He changed one letter. The H became a J.

YN_AFTERHOURS_TAKE_J_FINAL.

────୨ৎ────

The album drops on a Friday.

By Saturday morning it has charted in eleven countries. By Saturday afternoon the title track has two million streams and the comments section of every platform is a variation of the same thing: who is she and I did not know she could do this and where has this been hiding.

By Saturday evening your phone has become a continuous notification, buzzing against every surface you set it on. Chansung calls three times. The third call you answer.

"The numbers," he says, and then stops, like the numbers are too large to follow with a complete sentence.

"I know," you say.

"The label is—" Another stop. "There are no words."

He mentions a celebration dinner on Monday. Full label team, management, A&R, the marketing department who spent three months building the rollout. You agree to Monday. You hang up.

You sit on the floor for a while with your back against the bed and your phone face up on your knee, watching the notifications come in. Streaming numbers. Comment screenshots. A fan-made compilation of reaction videos set to the title track that someone has already edited together and posted, which you watch twice.

Seongje does not call. Seongje does not text.

You are not waiting for him to.

────୨ৎ────

The message arrives at 2 a.m.

A link. Below it, eight characters: the password.

Below that, a single word: Congratulations.

You sit up.

You look at the message for a moment, clicking it when you should probably wait. It’s seven in the morning and you are not fully awake. Whatever is behind a password-protected link that Keum Seongje sent at two in the morning is probably something you should approach with more preparation than you currently have.

The drive opens. It has an audio file, the filename a string of numbers with no title attached, the way his working files always look before he names them properly.

You put your earphones in and press play.

The opening is familiar. The bass line of After Hours settling into your sternum the way it always has, the production you spent six weeks living inside, the mix you know well enough to identify individual elements by the way they sit in the arrangement.

The difference arrives in the second half of the first verse, where the right channel comes in with the answer to your voice's question. It is his voice.

I'm not ready to go, he sings. His voice isn’t a performer's voice, not polished or produced in the way yours is, but it doesn’t need to be because he built the track around exactly what it is, something unguarded and direct, and the directness of it is worse than polish would have been.

You open the message thread.

You: what is this You: why does it sound like that You: you recorded yourself on it Seongje: The mix needed something in the right channel. Go listen to the rest of it. You: why did you put your voice on it Seongje: Twelve now. Chile came through last night. You: That's not what I asked. Seongje: Congratulations on twelve countries. The label dinner is Monday. Get some sleep. You: I'm still angry at you Seongje: I know

You look at the word for a long moment. It is the closest thing to an admission you have ever received from him.

You lie back against the pillow and close your eyes.

Seongje: Congratulations again

the unnecessary cherry on top to the missed goal is loki scoring another one all by himself with what little time that was left. if earlier was a public humiliation ritual, then you're not sure what this is because it blows out of the water by more than a few magnitudes. you just know that the locker room is going to be screaming bloody murder from all corners.

the egregiously large scoreboard hammers in the final nail to the coffin of the match, a blaring JAPAN VS FRANCE 2 - 4 rubbing salt in the fresh wound. would it be unprofessional of you to run away into the tunnel before the teams did?

as entertaining as the thought is, you are glued to your spot to watch the teams wave their final goodbyes. or rather, france waving theirs while japan hangs in despair. you can see loki yawning while hugo trails behind him, unintelligible words exchanged between them, no doubt about blue lock's shortcomings. in this state, you're not one to disagree.

isagi stops hugo from behind, an all too familiar look on his face that tells you he's far from defeated. sometimes you really wonder where he gets the audacity from, but that's blue lock's and by extension japan's poster boy, you guess. whatever words are being said result in what looks like a smile from hugo, and something about it makes you feel like you're seeing the eighth wonder of the world. when he turns around to follow the rest of his team into the tunnel, his eyes immediately search for you.

even among the crowd of people, he spots you within seconds, locking eyes with you. he's bathed in the afterglow of a win, the smallest smile on his face. his eyes seem to sparkle in the stadium lights, and… was hugo always this… pretty?

he doesn't approach you, of course not in such a public setting, but you can faintly see the movement of his arm as if he was trying to reach out to you. the distance between you however isn't one that can be overcome by the length of an arm, so instead his smile speaks for him. right before he enters the tunnel and disappears from your sight, his lashes flutter and the quickest wink is sent your way.

now, your face isn't warm from embarrassment anymore, but still warm from something else…

(must be the summer heat, you try to reason, but when you remember that cheeky smile, your face warms all over again.)

for some reason, hugo feels free in a way that winning a match hasn't given him in a long time.

he shouldn't feel this way, at least not to the extent that he does, after losing to isagi in a one-on-one. blue lock imploded on itself at the end, this much was to be expected, but that wasn't what has hugo feeling so… happy, is that the word for this?

ah, it must be because you were watching him, just like he wanted you to. and this time, you didn't run away.

hugo wanted to speak to you, to ask if he impressed you. to hear your voice call him, to see himself reflected in your eyes, to feel your hand in his again. quietly, he laments that he didn't get your contact.

the locker room is loud with celebration, everyone patting each other on the back and cheering loki's last goal. normally, he would at least participate, but this time, hugo can only sulk to himself. you were just here, he could've asked for your number…

"why do you look like you're sulking?" charles's voice pulls him back to the present, wide eyes staring at him with a towel hanging on his head, head tilted a little like a curious dog.

"…i'm not."

"you tooootally are!" the blonde giggles. "lemme guess why! hmm… it's cause you didn't get her number, right?"

"…"

"i'm right!" charles grins, before waving his phone in front of hugo's face. "weeeeeell… lucky for you, i have it!"

it would be a lie to say that hugo didn't perk up even just a little bit at his words. however, something in him said that asking for it from another person didn't feel quite so right.

"and i can give it to you for the low price of —"

"no thanks." hugo stands from the bench, phone in his pocket, and towel around his neck. charles's face morphs into one of surprise, and hugo can just about see the gears in his head turning, and mouth forming into an 'o' shape.

"you're gonna ask her yourself?!"

the answer is clear from the moment hugo stood up, and for some reason, his heart is pounding faster than it ever did for the entire match. only when he walked through the locker room's doors and into the tunnel did he realise that he, of all people, did not have a plan. first, for how he was going to find you, second, how he was going to ask you. what if you were in the japan locker room? there was no way he was going to check there, even he knows it would be insanely crazy if not disrespectful to do that. should he just wait outside like a weirdo…?

but just as destiny had planned your first meeting, destiny had predetermined this meeting too.

right outside france's locker room hallway, there you stand, outside of japan's locker room hallway. you have yet to notice him, engrossed in writing something on your tablet, so hugo takes this moment to admire you in your element.

your brows furrow in concentration, unconsciously chewing your bottom lip while your hand grips the stylus in your hand. small sounds of confusion from you are like music to his ears, and hugo can't help but think, wow, i really am in love with her.

apparently, hugo doesn't know that the connection between his thoughts and his mouth are but one in the same, and so those very same words he was just thinking of echo through the hallway.

"je suis vraiment amoureux d'elle." the words spill out before hugo even realises, and for a brief second he wonders who managed to read his thoughts. when it registers that it was in fact his own voice, his face suddenly feels a little too warm.

you stare at him, mouth agape. oh, the earbuds must've translated what he said…

"um, i wasn't wearing my earbuds… what did you say?" you ask timidly in english, hugging the tablet to your chest.

oh. so you didn't know what he said…

"don't worry about it," hugo dismisses your question, choosing to keep his thoughts to himself as they should have been in the first place.

"in that case, i'll be going…!" you make a move to walk into the labyrinth of hallways, but before you can, hugo catches your hand.

"don't go yet," he very nearly pleads, voice breathless. when it comes down to it, hugo is just like any other person; shy, and afraid of rejection from the one he loves.

you stop in your tracks, turning to face him. a sense of deja vu washes over him, and he's reminded of your first meeting.

"is there something i can help you, mr hugo?" hugo shakes his head in a wordless reply, still trying to find the words to properly say what he means.

"call me vivien." he murmurs, closing his eyes briefly, finally finding the words to say.

"i want to know you, far more than just this. so… could we exchange contacts?"

in hugo's defence, he's never done this before. (please go easy on him.)

"ah, um… o-okay…" hugo reaches for his phone at lightning speed, the keypad already open. you take it with nervous hands, typing in your number and handing it back.

now, you're both staring at each other, unsure of where to go from here.

"i gotta go… i'll see you around, hu— vivien." you correct yourself and give him the tiniest of smiles, disappearing behind the hallway corner. only after you leave does hugo let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

on the screen, your numbers stare back at him like the beginnings of a victory.

(when hugo went back into the locker room, charles pounced on him and immediately asked what took him so long and how it went. if the pink on his cheeks weren't enough to speak, then the way he held his phone to his chest was enough of an answer.

while you hid behind the corner of the hallway, desperately trying to calm your beating heart, and trying to figure out how you went from being someone he disliked to… whatever this is.

is this what they call psychological warfare?)

Mechanics moved around with frightening precision while engineers monitored glowing telemetry screens, conversations staying low and professional underneath the occasional sound of power tools and roaring engines from neighboring garages. There were many people gathered around, busying themselves with their jobs. Which confused you, weren’t you the only one supposed to take the test today?

But no matter, the only thing you needed to wrap your head around was the incoming race. And you did that, relaxing your muscles with the same breathing exercises that Rin taught you and used himself whenever he needed to calm down before a big game. It was going all well, all the training you had since childhood were coming back to you and you were feeling more pumped, until the moment your eyes caught sight of it, causing your breath to hitch in surprise. Your steps slowed to a stop immediately as you took a double look. Nope, actually you need to blink once again and rub your eyes in surprise.

Only then after that long ass sequence did you physically gasp. Parked beneath the bright fluorescent lights was the F2 car they had prepared for you, the black paint practically swallowing the light around it. The machine looked less like a car and more like some predatory animal crouched low against the asphalt waiting to lunge forward at any second. It made your old formula car look like a joke in comparison, to be completely honest.

The aura alone that the car gave off made you want to genuflect on your knees before it, and keep in mind, this was before they even turned on the engine. Yes, I know I was being very dramatic. But this engine wasn’t like any God you worshipped, this was a beast. A king more ferocious than any lion. It was more rabid and feral than anything on the top of the food chain, and a machine like that took guts to control.

The car represented the team it belonged to, very well. It was an Apex Predator. Its sleek curves wrapped around the carbon fiber bodywork while sharp aerodynamic edges cut through the air even while standing still. It looked dangerous in the most beautiful way possible. Honestly, it might’ve been more breathtaking than Mount Fuji itself, though maybe you were a little biased considering your unhealthy obsession with cars.

The formula car matched your track suit perfectly, almost like the entire thing had been designed together as one complete image. Matte black carbon fiber stretched across the body with silver linings accenting the sharp contours of the chassis, giving it an aggressive but refined appearance.And painted boldly along the sides was the Apex emblem, the scarlet red “A” standing out sharply against the dark bodywork.

It was stunning, the logo itself looked intimidating up close. The shape of the “A” resembled both a star and the silhouette of a speeding car at the same time, sharp and angular while the surrounding circular ring wrapped around it like motion frozen mid-turn. The red they used wasn’t bright or flashy either. It was deep and rich, almost the exact same shade as the red from Japan’s flag.

You could even smell it from way over here, that new car scent was driving you crazy. It smelled so heavenly that it scratched that specific itch in your brain at just the right angle. It made you practically drool, albeit at least not as bad as Rin does in his flow state. The numbering on the car had the same striking red shade with a 6 on the front hood and surprisingly it even had a couple of sponsor decals that almost made your eyes pop out of their sockets. They had many different brands backing them up, those specifically based in Japan, most notably Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Honda. You had to physically remind yourself to breathe.

“… No way.” You spoke, but at the moment with how you were acting, you probably looked like a weirdo to everyone else.

The companies sponsoring Apex were monsters inside the automotive world. Giants. Rivals even! So why the Hell were these guys, who constantly competed against each other in different corners of motorsport and the automobile industry, come together to sponsor this academy?! This alone said more about Apex than any speech Hayashi gave earlier. It proved even more that this wasn’t some underground development program, they were the next coming Blue Lock Program.

This place was serious and they were just getting fired up. They had companies all over Japan pooling all of their resources, putting behind their pride and coming together to create the most perfect Academy to rival those World-class Europeans. Your heart started pounding harder in your chest from pure excitement alone as you forced yourself to move. You approached the car quickly, again forgetting that there were still engineers and mechanics around watching you. Though, you bet they wouldn’t really care as to what you did, because one thing for sure, you wouldn’t be in this paddock unless you loved cars. Surely they had the same reaction as you.

So you, treating this car like it was your first time ever seeing or driving such a magnificent beast, may actually not be the weirdest thing your team of mechanics and engineers have witnessed in their lifetime. The closer you got to the vehicle, the more details you noticed. The exposed carbon weave beneath certain sections of the matte paint, the silver aerodynamic fins, the impossibly low ride height, the slick racing tires were still spotless from preparation.

Even the smell hit differently in comparison to your old car. The fresh rubber, machine oil, and new carbon fiber smelled once again divine. It smelled like money, danger, and speed all mixed together into one intoxicating scent. You moved toward the cockpit almost instinctively, crouching slightly to look inside while your fingers lightly brushed against the halo structure.

It had admittedly been a while since you last drove a formula car and something with this much pressure— both literally and figuratively, on your shoulders, but your body still recognized it immediately. Years of drilling it into your brain and muscle memory was awakening. The shape of the steering wheel, the tight cockpit opening, the seating position, the countless switches and controls staring back at you. It was starting to feel like yesterday was when you first got in your first formula car.

You knew formula cars. You knew how sensitive they were, how violently they reacted to mistakes, how every tiny movement mattered once you were going at those kinds of speeds. You knew how hard it was to turn the steering wheel, how hard it was to press down on the brakes, and how hard the strain was on your neck when you’re going at speeds of around 335 km/h.

You remembered the pressure of sitting inches above the asphalt while the entire car practically became an extension of your body. But you weren't afraid or nervous, (you lied a bit on the nervous portion) you've been driving for as long as you could remember, you could probably even do it blind folded.

Ever since you gave up being in your old racing academy, you've been completely focused on dominating the underground racing scene. And though you don’t regret it, the moment’s come to back you back in the ass. You've haven’t been able to touch a formula car in so long that you’re not sure if you could produce the same results as you were before when you still hadn’t left the academy. But you had to try your damn hardest for this.

And God, you missed this more than you realized. A quiet laugh escaped from you before you could stop it, disbelief and excitement mixing together while you circled the car again like you were scared it would disappear if you looked away for too long. Somewhere behind you, one of the mechanics chuckled softly at your reaction while another continued adjusting something near the rear suspension.

You barely noticed them. Because standing in front of this machine, staring at the black carbon fiber body gleaming beneath the garage lights, something inside you settled with complete certainty. You belonged here. And though you were too distracted to notice a lot of things going on at the moment, your mind was still able to think critically. You were well aware of why they made you drive an F2 car, not a F1 or even a F3.

Driving a standard Formula 2 car was different from F1 in a lot of ways, and not just because of speed alone. An F2 was designed to be far more standardized compared to F1, but also because most of the cars used nearly identical chassis, engines, aerodynamic packages, and technical setups, which meant there was far less room for teams to rely on superior machinery to gain an advantage over others.

In F1, engineering played a massive role, the smallest technological advantage could completely change the outcome of a race. Teams spent millions constantly developing their cars, refining aerodynamics, improving downforce, adjusting suspension geometry, and finding microscopic performance gains that normal people wouldn’t even notice.

Formula 2 stripped most of that away. The cars were intentionally kept more equal so that the focus shifted heavily toward the driver themselves. Their racecraft, adaptability, consistency, braking control, throttle management, and mental composure became far more exposed once everyone was given machinery that performed similarly.

There was nowhere to hide in Formula 2. No massively superior car to carry sloppy technique. No absurd engineering advantage to compensate for hesitation. Mistakes became obvious almost immediately, especially because F2 cars were less refined and more unforgiving than F1 machinery. They lacked the overwhelming aerodynamic grip and technological sophistication that made Formula 1 cars feel almost inhuman at times.

F2 demanded that the driver wrestle control out of the car themselves instead of letting the machine smooth everything over for them. Which was probably exactly why Kurogane started you here. Because if F1 was the polished final stage of racing evolution, then Formula 2 was where drivers got stripped down to their fundamentals and exposed for what they truly were behind the wheel.

“So, if you're done aweing at the car, do you have any questions or want any small adjustments before you start?” A man wearing a standard mechanic suit with the Apex logo tapped on your shoulder from behind.

You finally tore your eyes away from the car and looked back at him. He looked around his late twenties, maybe early thirties, grease stains faintly visible along his gloves despite how clean the rest of the garage was. Compared to Hayashi’s sharp professionalism, the mechanic carried himself more casually, though the way he observed both you and the car made it obvious he knew exactly what he was doing. Your gaze shifted back toward the F2.

You crouched lower near the side of the chassis again, eyes narrowing slightly as you studied the setup more carefully now that the initial excitement had worn off a little. The suspension geometry looked aggressive. Low ride height. Tight setup. Built for maximum grip and precision. Too precise. You reached out, lightly pressing against part of the front suspension while mentally piecing things together from the setup sheet resting nearby.

“… So this is Kurogane’s setup preference.” You muttered mostly to yourself.

The mechanic raised a brow slightly. “You can tell already?”

“It’s stiff…” Your voice was also stiff

“In Formula racing that’s usually the point.”

“Yeah, but this feels like it wants to kill me the second I touch a curb wrong.” That earned an amused snort from one of the nearby engineers.

You stood back up fully now, crossing your arms as you stared at the car again, mentally imagining how it would behave once pushed near the limit. Fast corner entry. Extremely responsive. Sharp weight transfer. But unforgiving. Very unforgiving. That sounded exactly like something Kurogane Renji would prefer.

You’ve heard of Kurogane Renji’s name before this, anyone who was a part of underground racing would know if only they ask around. He was a myth in the community, the King of racing. Some people still talk about him, but no one really knows the whole truth of his story. It was said that people called him the Black Comet because whenever he appears in a race, he only shows up for a moment, destroys the competition, and leaves without a trace.

You weren’t sure how it happened but there were multiple rumors as to why he stopped racing. Some say he died in a car crash, others say he was scouted to go racing more professionally which obviously was fake. So no one really knows for certain what exactly went down except for the fact that in his most critical and important race, he lost. Resulting in it being his last ever race to be seen in.

“Can you soften the rear anti-roll bar slightly?” you suddenly asked, which made the mechanic blinked once, “And loosen the rear suspension compression just a bit.” You continued while walking toward the nose of the chassis, “Not too much. I still want responsiveness, just enough so the rear doesn’t snap violently during exit recovery.”

The mechanic stared at you for a few seconds longer now, clearly reevaluating you internally, “You haven’t even driven the car yet.” He pointed out slightly offended

You shrugged lightly, “Will it be done quickly?"

One of the engineers immediately began adjusting notes on the setup tablet while another moved toward the rear of the car, “And remove some steering resistance if possible.” You added, “Not completely. Just enough that I’m not fighting the wheel through every high-speed correction.”

“Do you prefer lighter steering?” The mechanic asked curiously.

“No...” Your eyes remained fixed on the car, “It just suits my driving style better..”

The atmosphere around you shifted slightly after that. The mechanics who initially looked at you with mild curiosity earlier now seemed far more attentive. Not impressed exactly, Apex didn’t seem like the kind of place that praised people openly, but interested. Because most drivers didn’t immediately request setup changes like that before even entering the cockpit.

After that, it was a blur, the team introduced themselves to you as they fixed up the last modifications to the car before pushing it out to the grid and strapping you in it. Giving you one last check up before giving the okay signal to start the race which will be timed based. Now this was it, the final minute before you make a big decision, do well and change your life or fail and stick to underground racing for the rest of your life. One thing was for damn sure, whatever happens, you’ll be giving it your all to fight for a future you could be proud of.

Your helmet felt stuffy against your skin, the tight confines of the cockpit pressing around your body while the heavy harness locked you firmly into place. The engine beneath you vibrated violently through the carbon fiber chassis, every pulse of the machine traveling directly into your chest. It was loud enough that you could barely hear your own breathing underneath the roar. But you ignored all of it. Instead, you focused on your heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Calm down.

You tightened your grip around the steering wheel slightly, your gloved fingers flexing once as your eyes remained locked onto the starting lights ahead. Beyond the halo, the entire world seemed strangely distant now. The pit crew. The engineers. The observation deck where Rin was watching from somewhere above. Even Mount Fuji itself faded into the background. Everything disappeared. There was no (Y/n). No Rin. No Takeshi. No Apex. Just a driver and the machine beneath her. Then above you, 5 red lights illuminate one by one at one second intervals, until the very last one lights up…

And then suddenly, all 5 red lights go out.

Your foot slammed down on the throttle almost instantly. The rear tires screamed against the asphalt for a split second before violently gripping the track, the entire car launching forward so aggressively that your body was shoved hard against the seat despite the harness locking you down. The engine roared behind your head like an animal unleashed from its cage while the scenery ahead immediately blurred into streaks of color and motion.

The acceleration was brutal. Formula cars didn’t ease you into speed gently, they forced it onto your body all at once. Your vision tightened slightly from the sudden surge of G-force pressing against your chest while your hands instinctively tightened around the steering wheel. The car shot forward down the straight at terrifying speed, vibrations traveling violently through the carbon fiber chassis and directly into your bones.

But you didn’t hesitate. You couldn’t. The first corner approached impossibly fast, faster than normal road cars ever could. Your brain barely had enough time to register the braking marker before instinct took over completely. Your foot slammed onto the brakes with enough force to make your entire body jolt forward against the harness while the car screamed beneath you in protest.

Downshift.

Downshift again. The steering wheel fought heavily against your grip as you threw the car into the corner, the tires biting hard into the asphalt while the sheer lateral force tried to drag your head sideways. Your neck immediately strained from the pressure but you ignored it completely, eyes locked onto the racing line ahead while your body moved almost entirely on muscle memory alone.

The car was sensitive. Violently sensitive. Every tiny input mattered. A little too much steering and the rear threatened to step out. A little too much throttle and the tires protested immediately beneath you. There was no room for hesitation at these speeds, no time to second guess yourself once the car committed to a corner.

But somehow… God, it felt good. The moment you exited the first corner and slammed down onto the throttle again, something inside your chest ignited violently. The engine screamed louder as the speed climbed higher and higher, 180… 220… 260 kilometers per hour. The track stretched endlessly ahead while the world around you blurred into meaningless shapes.

And somewhere along the way, the pain stopped mattering. The pressure crushing against your body. The strain in your arms. The burning sensation slowly building in your neck from fighting the G-forces. You stopped noticing all of it. Because right now, the only thing that mattered was the next corner. The next braking point. Becoming the next apex predator was your goal. You pushed harder. Later braking. More throttle on corner exit.

The rear tires twitched dangerously beneath you as the car aggressively rotated through a high-speed section, but instead of panicking, your hands corrected instinctively. Small and precise. The exact kind of movement someone only developed after years of driving unstable machines at illegal speeds through mountain roads at 2 in the morning.

The F2 responded beautifully. Not perfectly, but oh so beautifully. Above the pit lane at the viewing deck, Rin stared through the observation glass almost speechless. The speed itself was terrifying enough already, but what unsettled him more was the way you drove. There was no fear in your movements anymore. No uncertainty. You looked completely different inside that cockpit, like the moment the race started, something else entirely took over your body.

He could feel his heart racing in fear for your safety, every time the black Formula 2 car disappeared into another corner at impossible speeds, his chest tightened so hard it almost hurt. Rin had watched countless intense matches before, had stood on fields where one mistake could cost everything, had experienced pressure so overwhelming that it usually made people crumble beneath it. But somehow, this felt different. Worse.

Because unlike soccer, there was no safe distance between you and danger here. One wrong movement. One late reaction. One tire losing grip at over 300 kilometers per hour. That was all it would take. Rin’s hands unconsciously curled tighter against the railing in front of him as his eyes stayed glued to the circuit below. That was his girl risking her life for a future she wished to see. And he was borderline losing it between deciding if he should be proud or fear for her life.

The black Apex car flew through another section of the track so fast it almost didn’t look real, the engine screaming violently as it cut across the asphalt like some kind of weapon barely being contained. Every corner looked dangerous to him. Every aggressive overtake of the racing line made his stomach twist harder.

And the worst part? You looked alive. You looked alive out there. More alive than he had seen you in years. Who knew you had this entirely new persona underneath, he was sure your ego was in action. You looked completely fearless. No hesitation or second thoughts as you drove like someone who trusted the machine beneath them with their life entirely and that realization terrified him more than he wanted to admit.

Because Rin knew you. He knew how reckless you could become whenever something truly mattered to you. The more pressure placed on your shoulders, the more stubborn you became about proving yourself, even if it destroyed you in the process. His jaw tightened slightly as the car disappeared briefly behind another sector before reappearing moments later down the straight, moving so fast it almost blurred together with the track itself.

And somehow that only made the fear inside his chest worse despite how proud and slightly excited he was for you. It made Rin feel unhinged. Because Rin finally understood something clearly now. This wasn’t some phase. This wasn’t some hobby you’d eventually grow out of. And he knew that, even before, sometimes he’d just hope it wasn’t real. Racing was stitched into your existence so deeply that taking it away from you would probably feel the same as ripping soccer away from him. It was the place where you felt the most complete, the place where all your thoughts sharpened into instinct and movement until nothing else in the world mattered anymore.

Just like him during a match. The realization settled heavily in his chest while his eyes followed your car entering another corner aggressively enough that even some of the engineers below shifted slightly in reaction. And despite how scared he was for you, despite how badly he wanted to tell you to slow down, to stop pushing yourself so recklessly, another part of him couldn’t look away.

Because you were beautiful like this. So terrifyingly beautiful. The same way lightning storms were beautiful right before they destroyed something. And so when the black F2 sliced through the circuit violently, attacking corners with an aggression that made even some of the engineers below pause from their telemetry screens briefly, it made Rin’s breath be caught in his throat. The rear of the car occasionally stepped just slightly on corner exits before immediately getting corrected again, not sloppily, but intentionally. Controlled instability.

This was Rin’s first time watching a formula race and he’d never had expected to be watching it in real life nor that you’d be driving it. He didn’t even know what to expect from this race or how the rules worked, usually he’d just ignore you when you have races playing in the background while you both studied in his room before, so Rin had been searching on google like crazy earlier trying to figure out the basics of Formula racing and how to tell if someone is going to crash or not.

And he didn’t fully understand racing even after that short research session he had earlier. But this was definitely going at faster speeds than he’d expected it to have gone, it seemed slower in the videos he watched somehow. But he was glad he brought the omamori that you gave him, those 2 years ago, not like he ever left it, it was always with him one way or another. He needed something in this moment to keep him grounded while you threw yourself at speeds he’d probably pass out on if he were the one driving. Rin actually carried the omamori in his bag wherever he went, especially when he had a match.

At first, he just kept it around as a goodluck charm. And though he views luck not as random magic, but as an active, mechanical element on the soccer field that rewards those with relentless resolve. It does help to ease his mind with having the omamori around, not because he believes in the luck it gives but because you gave it. It was like he was carrying a part of you with him through his hardships and yes, if you were wondering, it did help him feel a little less lonely in Blue Lock.

It was especially helpful when he first started out there, back when the scent of your perfume lingering on it was still strong, until it eventually faded out, Rin got grumpy and mourned for a few days because of that, which made the other boys wonder what got Rin so worked up. He treasured that small item secretly, making sure not to get it dirty or accidentally damaged it. And no one else knew it existed except for him and you, though he doubts you’d still remember giving him this. Your memory was really ass.

But going back, in this moment looking at you speeding away, even Rin could tell you were driving like someone trying to devour the track whole and he wondered if you were in a flow state right now just like he’d be in soccer. Meanwhile, down below near the pit wall, several engineers exchanged quick glances while telemetry data rapidly updated across their monitors.

“She’s overdriving the rear.”

“But she’s maintaining control.”

“Brake input’s aggressive.”

“… Her recovery timing is insane.”

And standing slightly behind them all with his arms crossed was Kurogane Renji himself. Silent and watching. Rin spotted him from the corner of his eyes, taking off his eyes on you for a second to see what he assumed to be your coach since the man’s vibes practically screamed that he runs Apex. Kurogane’s sharp eyes, which Rin noted were even sharper and more intense than Ego's, followed the black F2 as it flew across the circuit at nearly 300 kilometers per hour before diving violently into another corner with barely controlled aggression.

Most drivers approached Formula cars carefully during evaluations. You attacked it again and again relentlessly. And somehow, against all logic, the machine seemed to respond to you better the harder you pushed it. Your body screamed at you by the second lap. The G-forces grew more brutal the faster you drove, your neck straining painfully every time the car changed direction at high speed while your forearms slowly burned from wrestling the steering wheel through corners.

Sweat gathered beneath your fireproof suit despite the cold weather outside, your breathing growing sharper inside the helmet while your heartbeat hammered violently in your ears. But you ignored all of it. Because slowing down wasn’t an option. Not here. Not now. You had sacrificed too much already to hesitate.

The car launched out of another corner as you shifted upward again, your vision narrowing entirely onto the straight ahead while the engine screamed loud enough to drown out almost every coherent thought left inside your head. Faster.

You needed to go faster. Even if your body broke down trying. Even if you’d feel like blood was going to run down your nose soon. Even if your lungs were screaming at you. Push yourself beyond your limits, you’d only receive this kind of opportunity once in your life, so don’t waste it. Eventually the 5 laps were up and the first race with the formula car ended, you exited the vehicle full of sweat in your hair and took off the head mask.

1:27.843

The numbers flashed across the telemetry monitor brightly enough that even through the exhaustion clouding your brain, you immediately understood one thing. That was fast. Very fast. The reactions around the garage alone confirmed it. Conversations between engineers suddenly quieted while one of the mechanics actually leaned closer toward the monitor like he expected the timing system to suddenly correct itself. Another engineer quickly rechecked the sector times while muttering something underneath his breath, his brows furrowing deeper the longer he stared at the data in front of him.

Meanwhile you were over here trying not to collapse. The moment the adrenaline began fading, your body punished you for every reckless decision you made during those five laps. Your neck burned horribly from fighting the G-forces while your forearms felt painfully heavy every time you flexed your fingers around the water bottle one of the mechanics shoved into your hands. Sweat clung against your skin underneath the fireproof suit despite the cold weather outside while your breathing still came out uneven beneath the aftermath of everything you just forced yourself through.

And somehow… Even through all that pain, all you could think about was wanting to drive again. Which probably meant there was genuinely something mentally wrong with you. A shaky laugh escaped your lips while you pushed damp strands of hair away from your face, your eyes briefly flickering back toward the Formula car still sitting beneath the fluorescent garage lights. The black carbon bodywork gleamed beneath the overhead lighting while mechanics already swarmed around it gathering telemetry and preparing post-run diagnostics.

There wasn’t even enough time for the adrenaline from the Formula 2 run to fully leave your body before Apex immediately pushed you toward the next evaluation. The moment you stepped out of the F2 car, the mechanics already practically swarmed around it with frightening efficiency while engineers rapidly exchanged telemetry data across glowing monitors. It almost felt like the garage itself never stopped moving. Nobody lingered around celebrating your lap time and nobody praised you openly either. Apex didn’t seem like the kind of place that cared about impressive moments unless you could repeatedly prove them.

No long break. No proper recovery. Not even enough time for your heartbeat to settle completely. One of the engineers approached carrying another setup tablet while Hayashi calmly informed you that the GT division had already finished preparing your next vehicle based on your Formula telemetry earlier. Apparently Apex believed in throwing people directly into suffering before their bodies fully recovered.

Honestly, at this point you were beginning to suspect this academy existed purely to psychologically and physically destroy young racers. The moment you entered the neighboring garage, the atmosphere shifted entirely from the clinical precision of the Formula division. The GT side felt heavier somehow. Louder. More aggressive. The smell of heated rubber and gasoline hung thicker in the air while mechanics moved around the vehicle with quick practiced movements beneath the fluorescent lighting.

And sitting in the center of it all was the GT car. Black carbon bodywork stretched low against the ground while silver aerodynamic detailing cut sharply across the frame. The Apex insignia rested boldly against the doors while several sponsor decals reflected faintly against the growing rain outside the paddock. Compared to the Formula car earlier, this machine looked less refined and more violent. Like it wanted to fishtail through corners out of pure aggression alone.

But what immediately caught your attention wasn’t the car. It was the weather. That atmosphere outside only made your heart race harder. And unlike earlier, the weather had started turning against you. Well, this would be a little bit more than just being a slight problem.

Rain tapped steadily against the garage roof now, soft at first but gradually growing heavier with every passing minute. Beyond the paddock, dark clouds swallowed most of the sky surrounding Mount Fuji while the once dry circuit now reflected streaks of light across the wet asphalt. The colder air brushed sharply against your damp skin, making the exhaustion sitting inside your muscles feel even heavier than before.

Honestly, the conditions were terrible. The kind of weather that made grip inconsistent and braking distances unpredictable. The kind that punished hesitation immediately while rewarding reckless confidence just enough to trick drivers into making dangerous mistakes. Yeah, if you were a noob or hadn’t had much experience in these conditions, then you’d pretty much be screwed. But at the same time, even if you were used to it, it didn’t mean you’d be good at driving with these conditions. It was far too unpredictable and dangerous.

The reduced grip and longer braking distances sure made the situation difficult. Standing water beginning to gather near certain sections of the track. This was the kind of weather that punished overconfidence immediately. Which probably explained why your smile widened slightly the moment you noticed the rain worsening. It was a very unhinged smile if you couldn’t tell. Think positive you kept telling yourself, yes, gaslighting yourself was the best decision you could do at the moment.

One of the engineers handed you the setup tablet while explaining the modifications they already made to the GT car based on your Formula telemetry earlier. They changed it up to have a more looser rear setup. More aggressive throttle response. They also slightly altered the weight distribution to make the chassis rotate easier through corners. Apex had practically tailored the car around the exact way you drove and honestly, that realization alone almost made your chest tighten from excitement. They were already adapting to you.

You weren't given much time to ponder though, just like earlier they quickly strapped you in and began the second race. And the GT race itself blurred together violently after that. The moment the tires touched the rain-soaked asphalt, the car fought you constantly beneath the steering wheel. Unlike the Formula car earlier, the GT machine carried heavier weight transfer through corners while the rear threatened to break loose every time you accelerated too aggressively exiting turns. Water sprayed violently behind the tires while the engine roared through the wet circuit loud enough to vibrate directly through your chest.

But instead of hesitating, your instincts sharpened. Years of underground racing through mountain roads during storms had permanently carved themselves into your body. Despite the disadvantages the rain brought, you refused to let that push you down. You’d use it to your advantage as much as you could if possible. The moment traction disappeared, your hands corrected automatically before your brain fully processed it. You performed some tiny steering adjustments and controlled the throttle feathering. Deliberate oversteer through corners while the chassis danced dangerously close to spinning beneath you.

And while you were having the time of your life, somewhere above the pit lane, Rin genuinely thought he was going to lose his mind. By now he wasn’t even pretending to relax or be nonchalant anymore. His one hand remained tightly wrapped around the railing while the other stayed shoved deep inside his jacket pocket, fingers gripping the omamori you gave him years ago so tightly the fabric pressed painfully against his palm. Every time the rear of your GT car slid slightly through another rain-soaked corner, his chest physically tightened hard enough to make breathing uncomfortable.

He hated how he loved how fearless you looked. Not because it annoyed him. But because it terrified him. Yes, again and again, we keep talking about how Rin’s terrified of losing you but at the same time he loves you too much to stop you from chasing after your dream. But Rin simply can’t help how he feels, he’s just a guy in love, so who were you to blame him? He literally just got you back just this morning and now you’re acting like you’re trying to send yourself 6 feet under. Who wouldn’t have a heart attack from that?

The GT evaluation ended almost as brutally as it began. By the time the car rolled back into pit lane, rainwater clung heavily across the black bodywork while steam faintly rose from the overheated tires. The moment you climbed out, your legs nearly buckled underneath you from exhaustion before one of the mechanics quickly steadied your shoulder.

Your body hurt. Actually hurt. Your arms trembled slightly while your breathing came out ragged against the cold air, damp hair sticking against your forehead while exhaustion settled heavily into your muscles. But before you could even properly recover, Apex immediately pushed you toward the final evaluation.

The motorcycle division. At that point, even you started questioning whether these people were actually human. Maybe if you still continued your harsh training from back then, you wouldn’t be as fatigued as you are right now, but no matter, what’s done is done. The only thing you could focus on was the present, the superbike waiting beneath the garage lights looked just as aggressive as everything else Apex owned. Black carbon fairings reflected the fluorescent lighting sharply while rainwater slid slowly across the bodywork in thin streams. The Apex insignia stretched boldly across the sides while mechanics performed final checks around the tires and suspension.

By now your body was beyond exhausted. Your arms trembled slightly every time you moved them while your neck still burned from the earlier Formula evaluation. But the moment your hands wrapped around the handlebars, something inside you sharpened again. Because slowing down now wasn’t an option anymore. Not when you’d already made it this far.

Meanwhile above the pit lane, Rin genuinely felt like he was losing years off his life every single lap. When you came out with the motorcycle without taking any breaks in between. At that point, Rin genuinely considered going downstairs and physically dragging you out of the garage himself and booking a taxi or something to get home because like Hell would he let you drive right after looking like you’re on the brink of death.

His eyes remained glued to the track below while one hand gripped tightly against the railing and the other stayed buried deep inside his jacket pocket, fingers wrapped firmly around the omamori you gave him years ago. The familiar fabric pressed tightly against his mouth now, half tempted to start chewing on it to keep him grounded against the anxiety twisting violently inside his chest every time your car slipped through another rain-soaked corner.

Rin held the omamori tighter and tighter until his palms started turning white, every single time the motorcycle leaned lower against another rain-soaked corner. His heartbeat hammered violently against his ribs while the engine echoed throughout Fuji Speedway underneath the pouring rain. Watching you drive the Formula car earlier already terrified him enough. The GT race nearly killed him from stress alone.

Because unlike cars, motorcycles gave you absolutely nothing. No cockpit surrounding your body. No harness keeping you secured. No carbon fiber shell protecting you from the asphalt if something went wrong. Just you, the machine beneath you, and the rain-covered circuit waiting to tear you apart if you made one mistake.

And somehow… You still looked excited despite everything. Despite that terrifying reality, despite the worsening weather conditions and the exhaustion slowly tearing your body apart, you still pushed harder every lap like you physically refused to let yourself fail.

But because watching you throw yourself toward danger so fearlessly made him realize just how little control he actually had over protecting you here. On a football field, Rin trusted himself completely. He trusted his body, his instincts, his ability to adapt faster than everyone around him. But standing here watching you race at horrifying speeds while rain poured harder across the circuit, he couldn’t do anything except watch helplessly and pray you didn’t crash.

The motorcycle evaluation ended up being the shortest out of all three divisions, but somehow it felt the most brutal physically. Every turn forced your body to move alongside the machine while rain sprayed violently behind the rear tire at terrifying speeds. Leaning into wet corners demanded complete trust between you and the bike beneath you because hesitation at those speeds didn’t simply cost lap time, it could completely destroy you. At those speeds there was no room for fear. Only instinct and movement.

The moment you got out though, you refused to collapse. You took off your helmet and the rain began to wet it thoroughly, and your already damp track suit began to cling onto your skin in an uncomfortable way. It’s been a while since you’ve experienced pushing yourself this hard, the G force put a strain on your body that even you didn’t expect to be affected by that much. Rin stood up from the viewing deck and made his way to you, preparing himself for what's to come when you looked like you were on the verge of collapsing at any moment.

A/n: NGL guys this chapter took so long because of the technicalities and I’m just an automatic girly so I had to raw dog and bullshit my way through this. But I’m finally done, so hopefully you enjoy this and pls ignore any inaccuracies

The Name You Left Behind

                        ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

The first time he stole a life, no one noticed.

Not the servants. Not the parents. Not the real William, asleep in his bed, dreaming whatever dreams a boy like him dreams. Only Albert knew. Only Louis. And then, later, you.

He took the noble clothes from Albert's room  fine fabric, tailored fit, the kind of clothes that cost more than most people earn in a year. He walked out the kitchen door, the same one you used, the same old lock, the same weak bolt. He walked into the London night.

And he became someone else.

He became your brother.

Not the cruel one. Not the one who slapped servants for breathing too loud, who tripped maids in hallways and laughed when they fell, who told lies to your mother until she dismissed anyone he didn't like. He became the version of your brother that never existed the one who stopped in doorways, who crouched down beside sleeping children, who spoke in a low, calm voice and gave advice to anyone who asked. He solved problems. He untangled knots. He was a ghost wearing a noble's face, and no one knew.

No one knew because the real William was homeschooled, rarely seen, a rumor more than a person. No one knew because the real William would never lower himself to walk among commoners. No one knew because the real William was asleep, dreaming whatever dreams a boy like him dreams.

And in the morning, the orphan would be back in his bed, face blank, hands clean, acting as if he had done nothing at all.

Only Albert knew. Only Louis. And then, later, you.

                       ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

You found out by accident.

The nights had always belonged to you. That was the one thing the manor could not take. When the house went dark and the halls grew quiet, you slipped out through the kitchen door the same old lock, the same weak bolt and London opened its arms.

You walked without purpose. Through wealthy streets where gas lamps flickered and the houses stood like monuments to greed. Through poor streets where the buildings leaned together like tired old men and the air smelled of smoke and river mud. You watched the city sleep. You watched the city never quite sleep.

No one looked at you twice. You were just another shadow. Another pair of feet. Another story no one would ever ask about.

This was freedom. This was the only freedom you had ever known.

And then, one night, you saw him.

It was late. Later than usual. You had walked farther than usual, near the edge of a wealthy district where the streets were cleaner and the gas lamps burned brighter. A figure moved ahead of you noble clothes, fine fabric, a silhouette that made your chest go tight because you thought it was your brother.

You thought he had woken. You thought he had followed you. You thought he had finally found a reason to make your life even smaller than it already was.

But then the figure stopped. Crouched. Placed something beside a doorway.

A loaf of bread.

You stepped closer. The figure stood. Turned.

Moonlight fell across a face you recognized, but not your brother's face. This face was paler. Sharper. The eyes were scarlet, not dark blonde. The hair was the same pale blonde but messier, less controlled. The orphan. The one Albert had brought home. The one who never spoke.

He stared at you.

"You're not supposed to be here," you said.

"Neither are you."

His voice was quiet. Calm. Nothing like your brother's.

"You're wearing his clothes," you said. "You're pretending to be him."

He did not deny it.

"Why?"

He looked at the doorway, at the sleeping child, at the bread he had left behind.

"Someone has to," he said. "He never will."

You stood in the street, the two of you, two ghosts wearing borrowed skins. The gas lamp flickered. Somewhere a dog barked.

"I won't tell," you said.

He looked at you. Those scarlet eyes were unreadable.

"I know," he said. "Because you're like us."

He turned and walked away, disappearing into the dark like he was never there.

You stood in the street for a long time after he was gone.

You're like us.

You did not know what that meant. Not yet. But you carried it with you, a small warmth in your chest, as you walked back to the manor and slipped through the kitchen door before dawn.

                     ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

You did not tell.

You kept his secret the way you kept your own close to your chest, behind your ribs, somewhere no one could reach.

Sometimes, on your night walks, you saw him. You never spoke. You never approached. But you watched. You watched him give. You watched him help. You watched him become someone your brother would never be.

And you thought: Maybe this family can still be saved.

You were wrong.

                      ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

The night of the fire, you were not there.

It was April 1st. The real William's birthday. He was thirteen. The house had been tense all day your mother fussing, your father pretending to care, the real William demanding attention and gifts and praise. You sat through dinner with your jaw clenched, watching him slap a servant for pouring his wine too slowly. The girl did not cry. She had learned not to cry.

You ate nothing. You waited.

As soon as the house grew quiet, you slipped out. The kitchen door. The old lock. The weak bolt.

You walked.

You did not know where you were going. You just walked through the wealthy streets, through the poor streets, past the doorways where the orphan left his bread. The moon was high. The city was quiet.

You sat on a low wall and watched the clouds drift across the sky.

You did not know that the manor was rigged to explode. You did not know that Albert and the orphans had set a clock to trigger a gun at three in the morning. You did not know that the real William was already dead, stabbed by his own brother's hand, left to burn with the rest of them.

You knew nothing.

You were just a child sitting on a wall, breathing free air for the first time in your life.

The sky turned orange.

You looked up.

The Moriarty manor was burning.

Flames climbed the walls like hungry vines. The roof sagged, then collapsed. Windows shattered one by one, each explosion a small death. The fire roared. The sky glowed.

You watched.

You did not run. You did not scream. You did not cry.

You sat on that low wall, in the dark, and you watched your childhood burn to the ground.

The sound reached you a moment later — a deep, rumbling boom that you felt in your chest, in your teeth, in the hollow space behind your ribs. Then silence. The kind of silence that follows something ending.

You thought about the orphan. His scarlet eyes. His quiet someone has to.

You thought about Albert. His hand on your shoulder. His please in the hallway.

You thought about the real William. His cruel hands. His sharp smile. The way he had slapped servants, tripped maids, made everyone around him small so he could feel large.

You thought about all of it.

And you felt nothing.

No. That was not true.

You felt free.

You stood up. You brushed the dust from your clothes. You looked at the burning manor one last time.

Then you turned away.

You walked into the dark London streets.

You did not look back.

                      ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

You did not go to the funeral. There was no funeral. Just ash. Just three survivors Albert, and the two orphans.

You read about it in the papers, huddled in a cheap boarding house across the city. Moriarty Manor Destroyed in Gas Explosion. Three Survivors: Albert Moriarty and William Moriarty and their adopted brother Louis.

The name sat in your chest like a stone.

For a while, you were curious. You scanned the newspapers for any mention of them. You read about the investigation, the inquest, the official ruling of accidental death. You wondered if they were looking for you. You wondered if they thought you were dead.

After a while, you stopped wondering. You stopped reading the papers. You let the past fade.

You had a new name now. Something common. Something that would not make people look twice.

You were no one.

And being no one, you discovered, was its own kind of freedom.

                       ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

Thirteen years passed.

You did not count them. You let the days blur together waking, working, eating, sleeping. The city became your home in a way the manor never was. You learned its rhythms, its secrets, its hidden corners.

You learned what it meant to be a commoner.

It meant waking up early. Earlier than you ever woke at the manor. It meant your back hurt and your hands cracked and your shoes had holes that you patched yourself. It meant the cold was not an inconvenience it was an enemy. It meant hunger was not a feeling it was a roommate.

But it also meant something else.

It meant freedom.

No one told you how to sit. No one told you how to eat. No one told you that your hair was wrong, your voice was wrong, your existence was wrong. You were just another face in the crowd. Another pair of hands. Another person trying to survive.

You belonged here.

                       ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

You made friends.

Maggie ran the pie shop on the corner. She had broad shoulders and a sharp tongue and she did not ask questions. You came in one day, half-frozen, and she pushed a plate toward you without a word. After a while, she stopped charging you at all.

"You're too thin," she said. "Eat."

You ate.

Tom worked the docks. His hands were cracked and calloused and he had the loudest laugh you had ever heard. You met him when a fight broke out at the pub, and you both ended up on the same side, backs against the wall. Afterward, he bought you a drink.

"You've got a mean left hook," he said. "Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"Brothers," you said.

He nodded like that explained everything.

Martha lived two doors down from your room above the tannery. She sold flowers on the corner small bouquets wrapped in brown paper. She had a laugh like bells and she always saved the bruised blooms for you because she knew you could not afford the pretty ones.

Her husband was a good man. Quiet. Hardworking. He fixed shoes for a living. He never said much, but he always nodded when he saw you, always tipped his cap.

You liked them. Both of them.

Elsie was Tom's child. Small and curious and utterly without fear. She asked questions that would make anyone else wince, and you found yourself answering, a little at a time.

She did not judge you. She just listened to the small things you revealed.

"Your family was mean," she said one day.

"Yes," you said.

"I'm glad you left."

You looked at her small, serious face.

"Me too," you said.

                      ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

The murder happened on a Tuesday.

You did not know it was a murder at first. You heard shouting always shouting, in this part of the city and you assumed it was another argument, another drunk. You pulled your blanket tighter and tried to go back to sleep.

Then you heard Maggie scream.

You were out of bed and down the stairs before your mind caught up with your body. Your feet were bare on the cold cobblestones. Your shirt was untucked.

The alley behind the pie shop was dark.

The body was darker.

A man. Noble's clothes — you could tell by the fabric, by the cut, by the shoes that had never touched mud before tonight. His throat was open. His eyes were open. The rain had begun to fall, soft and steady, mixing his blood with the water in the gutters.

Martha was kneeling beside him.

The man on the ground was her husband.

You knelt beside her. You put your arm around her shoulders. You held her while she shook.

                      ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

The police came first. Then the reporters. Then the curious, the morbid, the ones who had nothing better to do than stare at death. The crowd grew. The rain grew.

And then a carriage pulled up at the edge of the alley.

The door opened. A man stepped out.

He was beautiful in the way a painting is beautiful — refined, elegant, almost too perfect. His hair was pale blonde, neatly styled, not a strand out of place. His skin was pale, almost luminous. His eyes were sharp and narrow and a deep, unsettling crimson.

He wore a tailored suit. A cane. His posture was composed, precise.

He looked like he had never known hunger,but still thin.

But you knew better.

You knew what he was. You knew what he did. You knew about the bread and the blankets and the small coin purses left in the dark. You knew that he had walked the night streets in borrowed clothes, pretending to be someone else, doing good in a name that had only ever been used for cruelty.

To the world, he was the perfect aristocrat. A brilliant academic. A mathematical prodigy. A man who solved problems for those in need with a gentle and approachable demeanor.

Calm. Stoic. Unreadable.

But you had seen him in the dark.

His eyes swept the crowd.

They passed over you.

Then they came back.

They stopped.

For a moment — just a breath — something flickered across his face. Not surprise. He was too controlled for surprise. But something. Recognition. A crack in the mask.

He knew who you were.

You did not recognize him at first. Thirteen years had changed him. Had changed you. You stared at his pale hair, his scarlet eyes, his perfect, composed posture, and something tugged at the back of your mind. Something you could not quite reach.

Then he moved.

It was a small thing. A slight tilt of his head. A shift in his stance. Nothing anyone else would notice.

But you noticed.

Because it was the same tilt. The same stance. The same way he used to stand in the dark alleys, waiting for you to catch up, bread in his hands and coins in his pockets.

The first time he stole a life, no one noticed.

Only Albert knew. Only Louis. And then, later, you.

The breath left your lungs.

He was here. In your neighborhood. Standing over a dead body like he belonged here.

Maybe he did.

Maybe he always had.

He held your gaze for a moment longer. Then he looked away. He turned to the police, to the body, to the crowd. He became the perfect aristocrat again. The mask slid back into place.

But you saw it. The crack. The recognition.

He knew.

And now, so did you.

                      ✧ 🕯️ ✧ • ✧ 🕯️ ✧

The rain continued to fall.

The body was covered. The crowd dispersed. He climbed back into his carriage. The door closed.

Inside the carriage, he leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.

"Something wrong?" Albert asked.

A long pause.

"Someone in the crowd," he said quietly. "They looked at me like they knew me."

Albert frowned. "Everyone knows your face."

"No," he said. His voice was strange uncertain in a way Albert had rarely heard. "Not like that."

Louis shifted in his seat. "Should we be concerned?"

He did not answer.

He was thinking about the face he had seen in the crowd. The face he had not seen in thirteen years. The face that belonged to the only other person in that house who understood what it was like to be an outsider.

You're like us, he had said once, in the dark. You don't belong here either.

He had been right then.

He wondered if he was still right now.

"No," he said finally. "Not yet."

The carriage pulled away. The rain washed the blood from the cobblestones.

And somewhere above a tannery, in a small room that smelled of leather and cheap soap, a person with no name and too much history sat alone in the dark with a crying woman in their arms and waited.

For what, they did not know.

But something was coming.

Something had already arrived.

And the fire that was supposed to be the end was only the beginning.