#ChanHo | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kesujo · 3 months ago

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You're the Light to my Shadow

As you’re heading out the café, you discover it isn’t empty.

“Hi, Seulgi.” Seulgi jumps, causing a smile to form on your face. “Finishing up some homework?”

“Hi Chanho! Yeah.”

“We’re closing and it’s getting dark, shall I walk you home?”

“Yes!” Before you can process how hastily her response is, Seulgi is already packing up her backpack. “Let me just—” She reaches for her coffee but ends up knocking it off the table instead. “Oh—” the cup clatters onto the ground, depositing its contents onto the bottom half of your pants. “—oh my god! I’m so, so, so sorry!”

You can’t help but smile at Seulgi, red-faced and profusely bowing. “Seulgi, it’s—”

“I ruined your—I-I’ll buy you new ones!”

“—fi-what? You don’t have to.”

“Are you sure?”

Your smile turns into laughter at her guilt-ridden expression. “Yes, I’m sure. Should I get you a new cup? Pumpkin cappuccino with less sugar and ice, right?”

“What? No! I couldn’t ask you to do that!”

“It’s alright, today’s batch is gonna get dumped anyway.”

Without waiting for an answer, you whisk away into the backroom, returning a minute later with a new cup of Seulgi’s drink and fresh pants.

“Oh, thank you so much!”

“No problem. Ready?”

You can tell Seulgi wants to say something, but the space you give her to say it lasts five, ten minutes. Eventually, Seulgi pipes up, “Thanks for walking me home. And, for this,” Seulgi motions to her cup.

“Don’t mention it.” You can see words starting to form on her face, but the only sounds that fill your ears are rustling of the orange-yellow leaves of the trees planted along the sidewalk and the accompanying howling wind.

One question. Nothing more.

“Something on your mind?”

When Seulgi turns to you, you can’t tell if her pink cheeks are from the cold or from her flustered state. “Um! … yeah … so, Chanho…”

The bashful way she diverts her gaze, the way her naturally-pouty lips part to allow her tongue to briefly loll out of her mouth, it takes everything in your power to resist the urge to call her ‘cute’.

“Did I make that cappuccino poorly?”

“What? No! Of course not!”

You smile at that. From the offended expression on Seulgi’s face, you may as well have called her kittens ugly. “So, Seulgi…”

At this point, her cheeks are even pinker than the hot-pink cropped T-Shirt she’s wearing. “D-Don’t tease me!”

“Sorry—”

What are you doing? After that question, nothing more. Right?

“But, u-um!” You turn back towards her. “Are—Are you and Sunmi … dating?”

Sunmi, your manager, who claimed she could handle closing by herself when you know she dreads closing shifts the most. “No.” Seeing the relief on Seulgi’s face fills your chest with dread.

This isn’t happening. Not with Seulgi.

“So, then, um … are you single?”

You almost can’t hear those last few words over the wind that threatens to whisk away her denim cropped jacket. Honestly, you wish you hadn’t.

You were being so careful, though: teetering on friendly but never flirtatious, treating her with respect but only befitting a regular customer. Where did you go wrong? And now, Seulgi: the one girl you can’t take your mind off, the one girl that threatens to upend your pact against the fairer sex you’ve upheld for the past year, the one girl you know you should’ve stayed away from but couldn’t escape from, with her magnetic, bright, bubbly personality and that luminescent smile that turned her eyes into upside-down crescents and your heart to mush.

“Yes.”

“Oh!”

A few seconds of silence hung in the air after that. In the corner of your eyes, seeing her shivering causes the urge to give her your jacket to swell—but, now, more than ever, you need to resist.

“Th-Then, then, um, do-do you want to go, um, are you free—”

“Seulgi, I’m sorry.” Seeing her face turn from shock to on-the-verge-of-tears tugs at your heartstrings. But, you have to say this. “I’m … I’m really sorry. Someone like you shouldn’t involve yourself with someone like me.”

“Wha-What?”

You can hear the tears in her voice and steel your heart. “Sunmi. I’m not dating her now, but I used to. Back in high school. Do you want to know why we broke up?” I can do this. “She caught me flirting with her friends. Plural.” This is for the better. “You might’ve thought I would’ve stopped after getting caught the first time, maybe even the second time, but I didn’t. I just kept doing it.” The thought of never seeing her again fills you with dread, but not as much as the thought that she may end up like any of your exes. “What’s worse, Sunmi forgave me. She just, she kept forgiving me and forgiving me, and every time she would, what did I do with her trust, her love?” You can feel Seulgi’s eyes on you, but you refuse to meet them. “I quashed it.” Disdain, disgust, horror—what kind of expression must she be making at you? “Not just Sunmi, either. All those women whose hearts I toyed with, not stopping even after getting hospitalized a few times by the brothers and fathers of those exes, all to satiate my own ego. That’s the kind of person I am, Seulgi. Whatever you see on the surface is just masking this ugliness underneath. I’m just a disgraceful, lonely, insecure excuse of a man who doesn’t deserve—Seulgi?”

Hearing her sniffling is what causes you to inadvertently turn your head towards her and finally get an answer to the rhetorical question you posed to yourself earlier: her eyes shimmering and the area around them red, her pouting lips pulled into a deep frown, tears freely running down her cheeks, over the fingers that are failing to contain the flood pouring out her eyes … she’s looking at you with sympathy.

“I-I’m, I’m, I’m so sorry…” You don’t respond. You’re unable to. What about that story could have possibly aroused such a reaction from her? “…it’s—it’s just, I can s-see the pain in your eyes and hear it in your voi-voice, a-and it’s just, it’s so sad to see that be-because you’ve clearly changed so much, bu-but, you look like you still can’t forgive yourself…”

The autumn chill picks up, and Seulgi shrinks in the face of it. You catch yourself midway into taking off your jacket, undoing the few steps closer your feet had taken you towards her. You remember complimenting this exact outfit on her before. Surely, Seulgi didn’t choose to wear it despite the cold weather because of that, right?

“I don’t understand.” Seulgi sniffles again and looks up at you. “How … is that your reaction to what I said?”

“W-Well, you’re being so vulnerable for me, how can I react an-any other way?”

As she finishes her sentence, another cold gust of wind assaults her, and seeing her curling up pushes you over the edge. Her health is more important than my concern over her reaction to this.

When your jacket comes over her shoulders, her eyes widen and she looks up at you again, with considerably more pink cheeks this time. “O-Oh! Thank you so much, but aren’t you going to be cold?”

“I’ll be fine.”

As the two of you trod along the leaf-ridden sidewalk, Seulgi’s sniffling dies down. “Do you remember my first time at that café?” Caught by surprise at the sudden question, you take a second to shake your head in response. “The previous night, I didn’t fully plug my phone in, so I missed my alarm and overslept. While showering, I discovered I was on my period, and even worse, my coffee machine broke. Nothing was going right that morning: I had to go back to my apartment because I had forgotten my homework first, and then my phone second, so when I saw that café on my way to class, I decided I needed at least something to push me through that morning. I remember I was double-checking my backpack when my name was called; in a rush and a complete emotional mess, when I went back to my backpack with coffee in hand, I tripped on it spilled my coffee all over you.

“I remember I was ready to cry right then and there. But, I didn’t, because your response to being drenched with a medium-sized cup full of icy-cold coffee wasn’t to be angry, but to be empathetic. You very kindly reassured me that you were ok, checked to make sure I was fine and that my backpack didn’t get wet, and then even offered to remake my coffee free of charge. For you, it was probably just another Monday and I was just another customer. For me, that day, you saved me.”

Seulgi is glowing. It’s like the universe is shining a spotlight on her: the orange sunlight mixes with the orange of the autumn leaves to create a halo effect around her entire body. Seulgi is an angel, and you are basking in her divine presence.

“It’s true that I don’t know much else about you. For five months, I couldn’t find the confidence to ask for your name, and when I finally did, you smiled and pointed at your name tag and I wanted to die right then and there.” The corners of your lips twitch. “But let me tell you what I do know: you’re kind, you’re considerate, you’re friendly, you always try your best, you show empathy and warmth to even customers who are yelling at you for something that isn’t your fault, and you always try to smile. And that’s all that matters to me.”

Did that really happen? How do you have no memory of it?

“So, please, stop beating yourself up for the mistakes you’ve made in the past. Everyone deserves a second chance, especially those who have self-reflected and are striving to be better.”

Seulgi’s very being is blinding. You’ve met women like her before—you’ve ruined women like her before—but none nearly so vibrant. You, on the other hand, are a shadow. Opposites. Never meant to be together.

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t deserve someone like you—”

“Don’t say that!” You jump at how forceful her words are. In the short few months you’ve known Seulgi, this is easily the sharpest tone you’ve ever heard her use. “Don’t just give up on yourself so easily! I don’t know how bad of a person you were in the past, but why does that still matter?”

It hurts. The more reflection you’ve done, the worse you felt. You’ve long since accepted you don’t deserve forgiveness.

“Sunmi forgave you for what you did in the past, right?” You nod. Your eyes land on the shadow the setting sun casts upon the two of you. “But it sounds like you still don’t.” You nod again. But Seulgi makes it sound so easy. Could you…? “Then, let me help. Let me show you that you’re worthy of forgiveness. Or, it doesn’t have to be me, but let someone help you.”

“But … I mean, I didn’t even mean to…”

Seulgi catches the tail end of the unspoken sentence and softly smiles. Despite the redness around her eyes and slight puffiness on her face, her smile, illuminated by the setting sun in the background, stops your heart. “But that makes all the difference, right? That you didn’t mean to?”

A shadow can’t exist without light. Maybe you aren’t opposites after all. Maybe…

“Seulgi, I think you’re wrong.”

Seulgi blinks. “What?”

“It does have to be you.” The confusion on her face slowly transforms into understanding, then of wide-eyed excitement and exuberant joy. “You’re the only one—”

You’re cut off by Seulgi suddenly throwing herself onto you. And, for the first time in a year, you give into your desires, wrapping your arms around her slim frame.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise, I’ll make it up to you!”

Last year, a particularly bad breakup kickstarted your journey of self-growth. Now, surrounded by the same beautiful array of autumn leaves, Seulgi has somehow reached into your chest and pried open the iron cage you’ve surrounded your heart with. “No, Seulgi. It’s me who needs to promise to make it up to you.”

#kpop fluff #kpop #red velvet #seulgi #male oc #redemption #fluff #autumn #fall

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