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urmeio · 5 months

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��𝘌’𝘙𝘌 𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘓𝘓𝘠 𝘚𝘛𝘙𝘈𝘕𝘎𝘌𝘙𝘚 [ 𝘭.𝘮𝘬 ]

⧏ back to teaser || redirect to playlist ⧐

marks manages to land himself in a forty-two hour drive across the country with his archaeology major ex-girlfriend in the passenger seat. but for the duration of the whole ride, the only thing he can think about is that one twitter meme that states that “a majority of archeologists are women due to their natural ability to dig up the past.”

✧ photographer!mark lee x (fem.) archaeology major!reader ✧ exes to lovers, road trip au, referenced college au ✧ genres — fluff/angst, hurt/comfort ✧ word count — 25.2k

✧ disclaimers — profanity, mentions of food, legal (u.s.) alcohol consumption, they make out like once, emotional insecurity and vulnerability (i.e. several panic attacks, social anxiety), possible terminal illness (not of mcs), generational conflict, y/n cries a lot, mark sucks at parking

✧ caveat — this fictional plot is set in present-day america and does not accurately reflect the locations referenced. furthermore, this publication is not an endorsement of the brand or the product featured. all credit is given where it is due. (sources linked upon conclusion)

✧ author’s note — happy 24th birthday to my dear mark! note that the first scene is the exact same as the teaser, so if you've read that already, feel free to skip over! also note i half-assed the proofread so please let me know of any typos, plotholes, and other stupid stuff that i forgot to adjust. as for myself, you can catch a little update on the past two years of my life at the end of this fic so for now, enjoy!

「 DAY 00, 01:42 PM 」 — CUPID DABBLES IN BURNT TOAST

"oh, come on. i thought you were nicer than that!"

it's at times like these where mark is led to think that haechan only considers him as his very best friend for three things. his toaster, his car, and then of course, how easy it is to torment him.

he’s experienced enough to know that the guilt he feels is really only a direct result of haechan's guilt-tripping antics. and so he responds sarcastically, "yeah, nice enough to save a girl from a week of being in close proximity to the person she hates most in the world."

the toaster dings and haechan catches the two pieces of toast in their flight. he sticks one in his mouth, breaking off a bite, whilst turning to toss the other onto his friend's plate. chewing roughly, he leans back onto the counter opposite of mark, watching in contempt as the latter spreads jam across the burnt slice of bread.

haechan points a finger and juts it in his direction, offhandedly commenting, "i'm starting to think that it's you who hates her," a fact that both friends know isn't true. and because of that, mark doesn't make a big deal of denying it. "i don't hate her. i'm just..." he trails off and haechan takes the opportunity to craftily stage his intervention.

"not trying to make her uncomfortable?"

"yeah, i guess."

"not wanting her to hate you more?"

"there's that too."

"not over her?"

"hey, not cool."

a passage of silence elapses as mark sets the butter knife aside in exchange for his orange juice. gulping it down, he gets through two thirds of the glass before haechan perks up again. "actually, i think she still has a thing for you."

mark sputters, barely swallowing his drink before it could hurl out his disbelieving mouth. trying to smooth over his show of defiance, mark recovers a nonchalant expression as he deadpans, "there's no way. you know better than i do that she fucking hates me."

haechan takes another bite, aware but indifferent at how the crumbs have been gathering at his feet. his eyes trail absentmindedly to the clock on the wall behind mark, but only briefly for the hands are far past where he'd expected them to be. shoving the last of the toast into his mouth, he rushes to gather his belongings whilst uttering to his bewildered company, "shit, i'm gonna be late. pack it up."

obediently downing the rest of his orange juice, mark grabs his half-eaten, jam-slathered, burnt-to-a-crisp toast in one hand as the other reaches for his car keys on the way out. the unbearably hot sun of an early summer afternoon only hurries mark further along to his car, his wishes that he had worn shorts instead of jeans already too late to come true. but once both car doors have been shut and seat belts have been strapped, haechan carries on with his agenda without missing a beat.

"just give her the ride, mark. she'll keep you company and, i don't know, make sure you're not falling asleep at the wheel. and plus, she said she'll split the toll and gas fees."

mark shoves the last bite of toast into his mouth, the charred-ness of it procuring a nice crunch. even after he swallows, it takes him a second to respond. and though his answer is still far from budging, it sounds more like a justification, as if he needs convincing of his own opinion. "tell her it's cheaper to just catch a flight. and faster too."

exasperated, haechan retorts under his breath, "that's the same thing i told you," to which mark gives a raised brow, not catching what he said. instead of repeating, haechan only says, "just take her. you guys need to make up anyways."

that renders mark quiet for the rest of the ride as he tosses the thought over in his head. it's a thought that he knows he's been pushing away for far too long, hoping one day it'll become redundant enough to simply forget about. unknowingly, mark begins to speed a little, his turns become a little tighter, and when the traffic light signals red, the nose of his car is pulled daringly close to the car in front.

mark parallel parks shoddily in front of the archeology department building four minutes earlier than google maps had estimated. his best friend looks over at him expectantly and that in itself is enough to squeeze the reluctant words right out of him. "fine, i'll think about it."

haechan's face lights with a satisfied glow as he swings his backpack over his shoulder, making his way out of the car as quickly as he can. and just before mark can think to wish him good luck on his last exam of the spring semester, haechan blurts out the one crucial detail he had neglected to bring up until now.

"thank god, because i already told her you said yes."

「 DAY 01, 07:48 AM 」 — ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

the trunk of his beloved subaru crosstrek slams shut from behind. mark winces. the car door of the passenger seat slams shut shortly after. mark winces once again, but doesn't venture to comment on it. instead, he comments on something else entirely. "so why am i picking you up from the hospital?"

you roll your eyes, traces of hostility already to be found in your expression. "as if that's any of your business." you position the tote bag you brought up front by your feet and the contents inside clank against one another. mark gives you a questioning look, thus questioning, "what’s in there? rocks?"

instead of answering with what he would assume to be the same thing you said prior, you simply huff and lean back into the seat to fasten your seat belt. mark does the same, then hastens to shift the gears from park to drive. "you ready?"

lips set into a firm line, you're staring straight ahead when you say, "ready to get this over with." mark takes that as his cue to start the forty-two hour drive across the country, past barren lands and hilly roads, trading the smog of new york for the smog of los angeles.

the drive begins with a screeching hour of silence, all of which you’ve spent scrolling on your phone. and when you finally look up from your screen, the city view outside has already mellowed into sprawling countryside. mark takes this new development as a window of opportunity to spark up conversation, although you beat him to it nonetheless. “how many stops are we taking?”

he clears his throat for fear of a cracking voice and gathers his scattered thoughts to form a response. “about two or three times a day.”

“and how many days are we gonna be on the road?”

“three to four. i’m thinking we should take a few overnight stops as well. and also,” there’s a break in his sentence where he stops to scrunch his nose, “i might want to stop at random points to shoot some pictures. is that fine with you?”

you take your eyes off the road momentarily to get a good look at mark. he has a hand on the wheel and the other propped up by the window adjacent, eyes held forward all the while. looking back ahead yourself, you give in with a slight hitch of indignation in your otherwise colorless voice. “sure, why not.”

mark refers back to a time where the silent air between the two of you would sit comfortably and thinks of how he might have brought about conversation back then. he tries, as he might, to do the same with this scenario, catching the moment before the prolonged silence warrants it too late. “so what’s your business in LA?”

surprisingly, he spots less bite in your tone the more you speak. “my sister asked me to be maid of honor at her wedding next week.” mark’s automatic response comes out first as a laconic, “oh nice” but he follows up quickly after with an inquiring, “is it...is it still jaehyun? or is that a thing of the past?”

“it’s still him. they’ve been engaged for a while, remember?”

mark nods in agreement. he even remembers that exact phone call you received from your sister on the day your freshman year finals ended. sat across the couch, he can even recall the way you tried to motion the whole conversation with your hands to him while on the phone with her, your excitement on full display when you later hugged him tight since he was the only other person in the room.

he bites down on his bottom lip at the thought of the memory that’s still fresh in his mind. time seemed to pass more quickly for him now that it wasn’t divided into semesters and school years. taking a glance over at you, mark can’t help but think that while college life turned out to be unsuitable for him, it had done wonders for you in just the past year.

with little to no trace of the temper you initially harbored, your voice is about as neutral as it gets when you take your turn in questioning him. “what about you? what are you doing in LA?”

his answer is simple, really. his plan originally focused more on capturing the sights along the way to LA rather than the city itself. but seeing as how you’d expressed wanting to make the trip as curt and necessary as possible, he acquiesced for the lesser truth. “i’m just planning on taking some pictures and meeting some friends there. it’s a change of scenery too, i guess.”

the prospect of conversation eased in difficulty the more it steered in the direction of friendly small talk and catching up with one another. his career and his career-related decisions were always somewhat of a prickly topic, after all. his parents scorned him for it, calling it “easy money” that would just as easily come and go. his friends always said he just got lucky in the industry. and his old professors had shook their heads when he told them about his plans to drop out.

to mark, you were the only one who had ever cared to really understand his relationship with the passion that was now his life’s work. and because of that, his answer comes most naturally when you ask him, “what’s still keeping you in new york, though? i mean, you’re not there for school anymore and you’re not exactly a street photographer either.”

and without a thought to spare, mark blurts out, “you.”

what a perfect way to kill a perfectly fine conversation, he thinks in the midst of the grand silence that follows. red creeps its way up from his next to his ears until he’s flushed clean with embarrassment and terrible terrible regret, the only consolation being that your eyes seemed to be glued up ahead and not at him.

although it seems you’ve since dropped the conversation — seeing as how you’ve checked your phone five times in the last five minutes — you still make it your job to clear the air for any future attempts at conversing. after all, you’re going to be stuck with him for the entirety of the next three days. and that’s at the very least.

“mark, i don’t even want to know what you meant by that, but can we just keep our distance as…” you pause when you realize there really isn’t an appropriate label to describe your relationship with him. what do you call someone that you know really well, but aren’t on talking terms with, and have a long history of romantic instances with?

at the three-second mark in your hesitation, he lends a hopeful suggestion, “as friends?” and it’s another three unsure seconds spent on your end — unease on his — until you finally give in with a sigh and a small, albeit resolute nod. “as friends.”

he’s going at almost a hundred miles per hour on the empty road when you noticeably look over at him in time to catch the quirk of his lips, before he reassesses with a nod of his own in confirmation. with the first of (what you’re sure will be) many awkward exchanges passed, you reach a hand into the backseat to draw forth a thin blanket. “alright, i’m going to continue sleeping then.”

“mhmm,” he hums, watching in the corner of his eye as you lower the seat back. the position you assume, curling into the blanket, is as familiar as it gets and mark is reminded of countless road trip memories that he has never bothered to unearth. he sighs. “go ahead, we got all the time in the world.”

and after making sure you’ve fallen fast asleep with your slowed breathing and occasional snores, mark slows the car to a cruising 70 miles per hour.

「 DAY 01, 10:33 AM 」 — MORE THAN I THOUGHT

“keep right to stay on the i-81 south.” you slit an eye open, wide enough to see that the road ahead is blanketed in a gleaming white. the sun must’ve parted from the clouds. you close your eye in an attempt to fall back asleep. but just before you do, the automated voice from mark’s phone perks up again. “keep right to stay on the i-81 south.”

annoyed and disgruntled, you shrug the blanket off of you and, this time, crack both eyes open. sitting up in your reclined seat, you rub at your eyes and realize two things. one, the car is no longer moving. and two, you’re in the car alone. suddenly alert, you jab your finger into the ‘cancel’ button on his phone just as it continues its mantra of “keep right to sta—” and grab your own phone as you make your way out of the car.

the car itself is parked haphazardly in front of what is labelled to be a colon and rectal surgery building, with half the whole vehicle outside of the designated lines. but just as you begin to question mark’s motives, you turn to see a vast expanse of water on the opposite side. there’s small islands and clumps of trees jutting out and just across you can see a rise of buildings in the distance.

approaching the road that separates you and the riverbank, you bring a hand to shield your eyes from the light of the sun which you have yet to adjust to. and sure enough, through the blinding haze you make out a figure on the other side of the road, unruly black hair scuffed by the wind with a giant camera held at his hip. his other hand is held in the same shielding stance as you, and even his posture alone is enough to tell you that it’s mark.

both hands now cupping your mouth, you yell out a resounding, “mark!” just as a truck whizzes by but when the body of it passes, the man is revealed to be looking back at you with a silly smile plastered across his face. he holds the heavy film camera with both hands now, as he rushes up the slight grassy incline and jaywalks casually across the street.

you’re about to scold him for not even looking out for any incoming cars but up close, he only grins harder. mark is less than five feet away when he thinks to enlighten you, his beaming smile quickly growing sheepish, “google maps told me to keep right but i stayed on the right for so long, i ended up exiting the highway altogether.” his free arm gestures outwards in exclamation while he beams, “but look where we ended up!”

the sincerity of his bright eyes and bright smile puts a dampener on the tension, so much so that you even venture to joke, “the upmc pinnacle colon and rectal surgery center?” whilst pointing back to the sign. “you’ve no idea how confused i was when i woke up.”

“sorry about that. we’re in harrisburg now. so i’m guessing this is the susquehanna river.”

you shoot him a surprised look, “nice. almost halfway through pennsylvania.”

he ducks his head, a small smile adorning his nod in agreement, “yeah almost.” mark likes this new development of mood you seem to be in. chipper? not exactly. but much more pleasant than before? absolutely. he knows from personal experience that it’s the sleep. good sleep and good food do that to you. and thus he suggests, “should we get a quick brunch before getting back on the road?”

your eyes ignite a glow — rival to his — at the sound of brunch, though you have enough patience to consider, “did you get all the pictures you wanted already?”

mark nods once again, even though he isn’t even through a fourth of his first roll of film. he figures he’ll have plenty more opportunities to use it up down the line. plus, he likes the little smile on your face way too much to be the one to deny you what you want. and so he rushes to get his equipment back in their travel straps and he clambers back into the driver’s seat, all to careen his way about four blocks down to the mcdonald’s (but only after you’d shaken your head whilst he was pulling up at the wendy’s).

he orders drive through and you’re pleasantly surprised when he turns to ask, “same as usual?” and though you’re sure your usual order has changed at least once or twice in just the last year, you nod anyways. mark pays at the till and you’re handed a sausage burrito with large fries. as you’d supposed, it’s not your most up-to-date order but at this point, almost anything will get your mouth watering.

at your first bite, you sneak a glance over at mark. his head is bowed over the egg mcmuffin in his lap, hands clasped lightly together as he says grace. looking away, you give an unprompted chuckle under your breath in remembrance of his faith, new memories ringing up old habits in the back of your mind.

the next time you place a glance towards him, there’s crumbs littering the lap of his jeans and sauce smothered around the curves of his mouth. and when he looks over at you, an eyebrow raised in question at the sudden onset of attention you’re giving, you pay little mind to the fact that you have to stifle yet another chuckle in exchange for simply tossing a napkin his way.

sitting here in the passenger seat of his car, you can’t help but think that there must be something inherently wrong about spending time with an ex. especially when the two of you parted on terms that seemed somewhat insignificant, though only at the surface of things.

for the most part, mark was a good boyfriend. and the mark that sat to your left doesn’t seem any different than the mark you knew back then. maybe he got around to shaving his stubble a little closer and cleaning up his car a bit more often, but he wears the same carhartt jeans, eats as clumsily as he always had, and still drives his car as if he had extra lives to spare.

from his nose scrunches to his dutiful faith, the mark you’re sat next to now is undeniably the same mark you fell in love with what seems like ages ago.

and as he backs out of the parking space, almost reversing straight into the car opposite, you catch the uttered “shit” that falls so casually from his lips. the same lips that you could never get enough of against yours. the song that’s blaring from the speakers is a favorite of his, you know that best, and it has him humming lightly with the same voice that once serenaded you to sleep. his fingers drum incessantly on the steering wheel as he waits for a red light to turn green, the same fingers that once struggled, but succeeded against all odds, in learning how to braid your hair.

you swallow thickly and think of how unfair this has come to be. it feels impossible to have to sit with the fact that you revoked his license as your boyfriend, but now have to regard him as just a friend. it’s the same as holding someone you once held close at arm’s distance. and it’s like trying to purposefully forget the name of your favorite show, or your beloved dog, or even your own name.

all of a sudden, you feel like you’ve been caught in a fervid windstorm so strong that it threatens to uproot whatever reasonings had kept you grounded, amplifying whatever feelings lingered in his wake. except, the only thing you have left to hold onto is the realization that although the mark in the driver’s seat is the same mark you fell in love with way back when, he’s also the same mark that broke your heart without even a single word said.

「 DAY 02, 01:17 AM 」 — MARK LEE SMOKING?? (100% CLICKBAIT)

a bout of carsickness hits you at seven in the evening, right after sitting in at a roadside diner that served mashed potatoes that were suspiciously tinted green. but even after he pulled over so you could throw up on the side of the road, you’d implored mark to keep on driving until the two of you were at least at the outskirts of illinois. and that had happened on three separate occasions.

reluctantly, he’d kept his promise and poorly parked his car in front of relax inn, the closest and cheapest place that google maps could turn up. located in marshall, illinois with a striking two-star rating, it had everything you needed: free parking, shitty wifi, and even complimentary breakfast. or, it had everything you needed except two separate and unoccupied rooms.

you had been surprised, at first, when the man at the front counter had only charged mark $58. but that was after he had conveniently left out that the amazing deal was actually for only one room, not two. sighing, you drop your bag to the ground in resignation at the sight of the single queen-sized bed. despite the stiff sheets and musty smell, it still stands to look inviting after ten hours, give or take, of almost nonstop driving.

with only two stops taken for restroom breaks or gas fill-ups, you figure that either one of you has reason enough to claim the bed. there is a thought of mentioning how the two of you had slept side by side with no sexual implications many times before but it’s fleeting, dismissed, and gone within seconds.

instead, you begin drafting your argument, pulling out the persuasive points of your monologue about why you were more deserving of the bed. sure, he’d driven the car the whole while, his eyes must be strained and his ability to concentrate and energy have probably been rendered null. you, on the other hand, could pull the motion sickness, weak composition, nauseated passenger princess card. yeah, surely that’d do the trick.

your opening lines are right at the tip of your tongue, ready to win over a hefty opponent, when you turn to see that mark has already situated his belongings on the ground by the couch. wary of how you’d been standing there for a good two minutes completely unmoved, he looks your way and very plainly comments, “you take the bed. i’m fine with the couch.”

and suddenly you feel very supremely guilty for having even thought of going into a full-blown verbal altercation for a slightly more comfortable place to rest. you now think about thus commencing a full-blown verbal altercation over the slightly less comfortable place to rest, if not to ease your guilty conscience, then just out of politeness. but you digress because after all, mark is way too nice and you’re way too in need of a good night’s sleep. even if it’s just slightly better.

laying in bed, scrolling on your phone, you recall that this is how it’s always been with mark. that at one point, you became too tired of always trying to be the nicer person out of politeness when mark had the kind of genuineness you’d find in about one of a million persons. sometimes, a simple exchange of things like who should get the bed could blow itself out of proportion without either of you meaning for it to have gone that far. you came to the conclusion long ago that fights about who was the nicer person weren’t necessarily fights on character, but rather just fights like any other. and choosing to let mark carry through with his niceness — accepting the last french fry, taking his jacket when it was chilly, and now letting him have the couch — didn’t mean you were inconsiderate. in a way, it was a compromise of its own to allow him the opportunity to be of service to you.

you think of showering the following morning for it seems unlikely that you’d depart the comfort and looming sleep the bed provides. squirming around, you tuck yourself under the blankets but before you could fully relinquish your body to the confines of sleep, a soft rustling by the edge of the bed coaxes your eyes to open a sliver.

mark’s squatting so that you’re right at eye level with him. his hair is mussed more than the wind had done and wet at the tips, sticking up in several places that seem to defy the laws of gravity. with an elbow set on the bed, he peers at you over the screen of his phone, eyes wide and set in the frame of his black-rimmed glasses. he doesn’t whisper though his voice comes out so low, you wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference anyways. “sorry, i know you’re tryna sleep. just wanted to ask when you’d want to wake up tomorrow.”

repositioning to face him, you smush the side of your cheek into the pillow and the unease in mark’s face ebbs away. half alseep and a good amount dehydrated, your throat is scratchy when you pass it back to him, “what do you think?”

mark scratches the back of his neck with his free hand, “i, uh well… maybe six...?” and he traces your eyes as they find the clock on the nightstand. it reads 2:02 AM and he seems to share the same thought as you. “...thirty? six-thirty?”

you close your eyes, already losing your grasp on what he just said as you mumble out the last of your thoughts, “okay, we’ll grab breakfast downstairs and leave at seven?”

whatever he responds with goes in one ear and out the other. and it isn’t until he wakes you up, bright and early at 6:20 AM, that you remember the conversation even happened. in reality, you roll around in bed, trying to find another sweet spot that will lull you back into sleep, for about ten whole minutes. by the time you’ve given up, gotten out of bed, and begun collecting your garments for the shower, it’s 6:30 on the dot. it doesn’t even register in your mind that mark had accounted for your scheduled morning bout of grogginess until you’re out of the shower with a clearer head.

you sit across from him at breakfast and he passes the black pepper when you spoon your scrambled eggs. he offers to go refill your orange juice at one point and at another he apologizes adamantly for accidentally nudging your foot under the table. it’s only after he takes your empty plate with his back to the clean-up counter that you really bother to take a good look at him.

he must’ve skipped his morning shave, for his stubble is visible though not much more than a mere shadow. there’s a silver chain at his neck, one with a dangling cross pendant, and it sits prettily atop his plain black pocket tee. mark leads the way towards the front desk to check out. you notice the way he swirls the both the room key and car key around his fingers, his straight posture when he walks depite the heavy backpack mounted on him, and even the worn-in outline of his wallet from the rear pocket of his jeans.

and when he mistakens the pristinely cleaned glass door for a wide opening, resulting in a blooming red splotch on his forehead, you take the time to consider his big endearing head, and his big boyish eyes, and his big sloppy smile. you laugh along with him, but perhaps for more of a different reason. mark may have a big head, but at least it’s filled with good and godly things.

seconds later in the parking lot and you think to rescind those same regards. mark may be nice but there’s no way you’ll be the one to compromise on this one.

you’re fully in the seat and ready to get the car going, except mark is standing right where the door should be closing with his arms crossed and a foot hiked up on the frame of the car. his stance is a plain show of defiance, as are his firmly-stated comments. “i’m not letting you drive. you were vomiting everywhere just last night.”

“give me the keys, i need my redemption arc to happen right now.”

mark only tilts his head in disapproval, eyes boasting a look that emanates something along the lines of ‘are you kidding me?’ you press your lips thin in consideration, realizing that this has turned out to be harder than you’d bargained for. eyeing the keys hanging loosely from his left hand, you decide that your efforts were going to amount to nothing if not by way of force.

when you lunge for the keys, mark takes that you’re attacking him or something of the sort, throwing his hands out in front to block. in the three seconds the debacle had taken to unfold, the sharp end of the car key had scraped the length of your inner arm, nicking your skin clean apart. much to your chagrin and his relief, you end up in the passenger seat anyways.

mark wipes diligently at the long cut with an alcohol pad, whilst you use your unpunctured arm to search for where he’d claimed the first aid kit with the bandaids would be. you look away from the glove box to find his unimpressed disposition, and you hold the gaze until he meets it. but he only meets it for a split second before ducking his head back down to the red-stained alcohol pad, muttering low but loud enough for you to catch. “god you’re a mess, y/n.”

you return your attention to your search for bandaids, eyes rolling far into the back of your head. “i already admitted defeat. do you have to rub it in?” to which he responds with but a fleeting laugh. and by the time he can come up with a, “there we go, all clean,” you’ve conjured four bandaids for him to top it all off.

as mark busies himself with finding the most appropriate arrangement that would cover the length of the cut, you shove the first aid kit back to where you’d retrieved it in the far corner of the glove box. it’s then that the streak of red that was presumably tucked behind it catches your eye.

by the time mark returns from discarding the wipes and bandage packaging, it’s already too late for him to stop what’s to come. the red box — at first glance, what looks to be a sizable pack of cigarettes — had already found its way into your unsuspecting hands.

「 DAY 02, 07:09 AM 」 — BROCKHAMPTON SATURATION II, TRACK #16

when haechan first introduced his sophomore photography major best friend to you back in freshman year of college, he had described him as the guy with no emotional depth. and you had shaken his outstretched hand anyways, awkwardly laughing along even though you had no idea that it was an inside joke between the two of them.

you laughed again on christmas day, same year, same joke. however, you still had yet to figure out what it meant when haechan had gifted your new boyfriend the card game, cased in a brilliant red box. he had said something along the lines of “maybe this’ll get him to dig deeper” and your group of friends, most of whom had known mark since high school, seemed to find it funny and fitting.

the game itself, you knew; it was a popular drinking game among your college friends. you had played it several times yourself at more intimate gatherings, the reflective conversational prompts amounting to several instances of sob fests, tissue shortages, and long hugs. it was good for heartfelt conversations, and apparently mark wasn’t one for feelings. put two and two together and that made enough sense for you to laugh along and move on without much thought.

but well over two, almost three, years later, you wonder why it’d been shoved into the back of his glove box, the plastic wrap still intact and pristine. it’s as if mark had quite literally buried his feelings into the depths of this car, subsequently forgotten and later dug up by his girlfriend turned ex. life’s a funny thing, because only now as his ex-girlfriend do you understand what the gag gift meant in the first place.

looking out upon the barren gas station, you feel restless standing in the face of ten — bordering eleven — hours of driving beside mark of all people. but when he slips into the seat beside you, freshly washed hands wiping themselves down the length of his jeans, you begin to think of a better, or at least more interesting, way to pass the time. holding the box of cards out for him to see, your bouncing leg finally comes to a still as you suggest, “wanna play?”

mark regards the box with a joking manner, and while his casual, “yeah, why not” might prove his act of nonchalance convincing, you like to think you know him better than to look past the way his eyes had lingered, or the hesitance set in his brows, or even the readjusting of his position. he starts up the engine and moves the gear out of park as you fumble with the plastic wrapping. a small tear later and you’re peeling back the packaging, throwing small glances at mark’s way whilst he throws unsure glances at the box of cards.

two minutes back on the i-70 west, you’ve shuffled the cards until your fingers began to feel sliced through, and only then did you deem it time to begin. fanning the deck out to your left, you gesture for mark to select his first pick. he shakes his head and wordlessly gestures back at you to make the first move, a lick of his lips giving his uncertainty away.

shoving the rest of the deck into one of the cup holders on the middle console, you read along as your other hand sets forth in finding your phone. “wildcard. press shuffle on your music library. explain the first song that comes up!”

phone in hand, you look over at mark inquiringly, “me or you?” and if you had to guess his next words, there’d be no doubt that it’d be a stiff and uttered, “you.” almost taking glee in his squirmishness, you pull up spotify on your phone and click into your mess of a “liked songs” playlist. mark passes you the carplay cord and you plug it in, pressing the shuffle button apprehensively after the beep indicates it’s been connected.

heavy piano chords pan out from the speakers and a smile is slow to spread across your face as you come to a realization of what song it is. for better or for worse, mark seems to know as well, retracting his gaze from the road for less than a second to meet your eyes. there’s a sort of ‘ahh’ in them, an understanding, an underlying fondness.

in the heat of the summer…

“do i really have to explain?”

you know that you should be my boy.

“give it a go at least.”

in the heat of the summer…

“well…”

you’re so different from the rest.

you find yourself at a loss for words. amongst many other things that arise in this moment, your train of thought does its best to rationalize. why was this song still in the playlist? simple, you forgot to take it out. it’s only normal that things get buried with time. why can’t you just say that to him, then? simple, because then it’d be so easy for him to brush it off as a lame excuse, a cover-up, as to how plainly you still held onto your relationship. what the fuck are you feeling? panic. doubt. frustration. longing.

panic at the thought that he would read into it too much. doubt at the thought that there were other reasons for why you’d let this song gather dust in your playlist. frustration at the thought that there was only you to blame for this situation that you’d gotten yourself into. and longing. longing that had sat untouched for the same amount of time you’d decided to shove your feelings away instead of confronting them. longing that had since settled into your flesh and bones, going unnoticed. longing that, at the first chords of this song, had you casting your eyes downwards from the road ahead.

hastily, you grab for your water bottle, taking steady but large gulps. suddenly, your throat had become too dry. swallowing thickly, you wonder why the lump in your throat refuses to fall back. your breathing becomes noticeably haggard while the thing lodged in your throat remains. at the slightest indication of mark’s head turning your way, you snap your own in the direction of the window to avoid his questioning gaze.

biting down on your lip, your eyes fall closed even with the sprawling hills unfurling just outside. the sun is climbing to its height, as is your sudden onslaught of emotions that drowns out all noise except the sound of mark humming along to the song. you are numb, you are deaf, you are void of everything except his voice.

“do you remember?”

reverberating through you, it’s all you are able to feel.

“do you remember last summer at the lake?”

mind emptied, it’s all you know.

“it’s one of my favorite days, i’ll have you know.”

body capsized, it floods you. and it fills you to the brim until you can’t take it anymore.

“isn’t it funny that all my favorite days have been spent with you?”

and when it overflows, it comes in the form of tears.

your vision blurs and the wetness on your cheeks is quickly pulled into a pool at the edge of the seat. closing your eyes is a daunting task, even then, because you know just what you’ll see. you make the mistake of trying to blink away the tears, making them fall far faster than they had before. but for what it’s worth, it had been a favorite day of yours as well, albeit bittersweet.

the water was emerald green and the grass was knee-high. the sun rested overhead for almost fourteen hours a day and you had a tan comparable to that of a professional-grade spray. the wind was light though unrelenting, apparent in the way the clothes strewn across the clothesline were at the cusp of being carried away. everything under the sun was warm to the touch. the rocks, the grass, the water, his skin.

you snap your eyes open and only then do you notice that the car has come to a stop, pulled over to the side of the road. your hand is pressing into your forehead and the tears are still running free when you care to peer over in mark’s direction. both hands resting on the wheel, his eyes emanate in concern, lips pulled tight as if an apology was attempting to push past from within. it’s hard to pinpoint your finger directly to it, but there’s something about his expression that ticks you off so greatly that you regard him for less than a second before slipping out of the car.

the first inhale of fresh air makes the stuffiness inside the car feel like you had been breathing in water. the wind, just as it had been that day, is light though unrelenting, and it dries clean the tears in your eyes. your body sags and you give your weight into the side rails of the road, sitting against it and heaving thorough breaths to bring you some peace of mind. if you stared at your surroundings for long enough, the short grasses growing beside the road would grow long and the valleys in between the hills would carve out an emerald lake. the warmth would find its way back to you, but it’s far from pleasant and rather close to burning, scorching even. you fist and unfist your hands, recoiling from even the thought of it.

instead, you focus on the way the roughened wood of the rail nips at your skin through the thin spandex of your shorts. when you shift your position, the metal that accompanies it is hot to the touch and the uneven pavement beneath you is riddled with its fair share of pebbles and wood chips alike. taking your time, you come to pay more mind to your breathing, allowing the intakes to fill up your belly rather than your chest. the sky is a clear blue, the single cloud is pear-shaped, you can count up to seven peaks in the hills, and there are four dirt patches within your line of vision. it’s these little things that ground you.

seven minutes past. you hear a car door open you but you never hear it close. footsteps stop maybe three feet from your left but they never step any closer. he says, “whenever you’re ready,” but he never says anything more.

and perhaps that’s what hurts the most.

「 DAY 02, 01:56 PM 」 — LITTLE CRAZY LOVE SONG, MARY OLIVER 2014

“what’d you say?”

“nothing much, really—”

“well, you obviously said something if she’s voluntarily passed out for the last six hours.”

static crinkles on the other end and mark looks around at the endless stretch of trees surrounding the lone gas station. the signal is clearly not having its best moment here in the thick of the forest, but he rejoins anyways.

“i brought up last summer…” he trails off, hoping that just the season would provide enough context to tell of the situation without him explicitly having to name it as terrible, godawful, and no good whatsover. to be frank, mark wasn’t expecting understanding and empathy when he dialed haechan’s number. hell, he wasn’t even expecting to receive encouragement and good faith. perhaps all he wanted was recognition for the bad deed he’d committed and someone for him to bicker out his frustration with. and surely, haechan delivers just that.

“mark, you whole-hearted idiot. wh—”

“okay but in my defense, i thought we were having a momen—”

“i think only you were having a mo—”

“it just slipped out, i swear it wasn’t on purpo—”

“how the fuck did you think she’d react to your sappy bullshi—”

“—but it’s all cool now.”

the other end goes flat after mark’s statement and he thinks it’s owed to the faulty service, until haechan sputters in disbelief, breaking the quiet at an ear-splitting decible, “cool? you call that cool?!” mark furrows his brow at his friend’s overuse of emphasis whilst he busies himself with retrieving his credit card one-handedly. he knows that somewhere along the line, he fucked up. and he thinks he knows exactly where but at the same time, mark isn’t quite in the headspace to own up to it. so he retaliates.

“it’s like you set me up for failure.”

haechan justifies, “hey, it’s not like i did anything wrong. a friend needed a ride and i found someone who could give her just that.” but mark can hear the sarcasm in his voice and he decides he would rather confront his friend than question his ex. “i highly doubt she’d be down for a forty-two hour drive over a six-hour flight. what the fuck did you even say to convince her?”

the younger doesn’t waver when put in the spotlight. in fact, he gives it away as if it’s all just a fun prank on his end. and that’s not to say that isn’t at least partially the truth.

“i told her you already agreed to take her, same thing i said to you.”

smart as ever, he hangs up before mark’s initial surprise gets translated into brute annoyance. the silence after the disconnect tone hits him almost immediately and thus, he finds himself standing in the middle of an empty gas station, in the middle of the eerily quiet city of winona, missouri, which is sat at the edge of a brimming forest where nothing but trees run on for miles and miles on end. there’s a town & county supermarket in the same plaza and a rundown dollar general down the street he’d passed to get here.

it suddenly feels as if he’s the only person alive in this whole wide world, trapped inside his four-walled mind with no one to talk to except his regretful self. more than confronting his friends or even you, mark has known for a long time that he feels the most social anxiety whenever he’s left to confront himself. he tries to shake the thought, pocketing his wallet as he makes a beeline for the supermarket across the desolate parking lot. it’s far on foot and with each step, he descends down into the depths of despair, digging up all the times he must’ve made you uncomfortable with just his presence. for once, he doesn’t think it’s such a wonderful thing to be alone in the world with the person he loves most.

seven hours of almost straight driving is bound to make a person go at least a little insane, as mark wonders if he even remembers the last time he saw anyone other than you. he grabs a bag of popcorn, a charcuterie box, and a gallon of water at the supermarket and only at the cash register, manned by a live and tangible human, is he freed from the confines of his tortured mind.

gas filled to the max and provisions restocked, he’s once again met with the struggle of having to close the car door as quietly and undistrubingly as humanly possible. you’re still very much asleep and the last thing he wants is to jolt you awake when your latest memory of him is how he’d insensitively instigated a panic attack at barely seven in the morning, albeit unintentionally.

after he closes the door with exemplary caution and barely a thud, mark lowers his guard with a sigh in relief in tow. though in this fleeting moment of mindlessness, the very next moment he’s dropped his keys on the center console. wincing, he watches as the clattering elicits a stir on your end, fluttering eyelids, and then — to his utter horror and dismay — you wake up.

mark plays it cool, or so he thinks, by letting out a low “oh shit” to make sure you know of his accidental mistake. rubbing your eyes, the first glance you place his way isn’t strictly a glare, but it might as well be with how you barely acknowledge his stilled presence. mark waits until you’ve had a couple sips of water in your system and a full routine of arm stretches before speaking up carefully. “how’d you sleep?”

you look his way and tiredly blink a few times before saying, “fine.”

back at square one, he thinks. mark hands you the bag of popcorn and charcuterie box and reaches over to drop the giant water jug into the back seats. you eye the bag and the box confusedly, then the blanket draped across your knees that you’re sure wasn’t there when you fell asleep, and then finally your surroundings.

“what time is it?”

“about 2:20.”

“where are we?”

“missouri. just outside the mark twain national forest.”

you eye the landscape beyond the windows where you’re met with the parking lot, a few commercial structures, and a shitload of trees. you turn back towards mark, “are we on schedule?”

he nods. “we’re actually ahead of schedule. we were supposed to be just out of illinois right now.”

you give him a tight-lipped smile that does little to ease the tension. removing the blanket, you make a move for the door and mark thinks that this must be it. you’ve had enough of him, you’re tired of tolerating his presence, and you’ve set your mind on walking the rest of the way to los angeles. it’s a rather immature thought but he entertains it for a split second regardless. the second half of the second is spent coming up with a hastened, “wait.”

you’re halfway out the door when you look back over your shoulder, a left eyebrow cocked in question. mark doesn’t have anything on hand to say, so he blurts out whatever question he had first in queue, “why… why did you agree to come?”

fully out of the car, you stand facing him with one hand resting on the car door and the other situated on your hip. in your freshly awakened state, you cock your head at the absurdity of his unprompted question. there’s a trace of thought pooling in your eyes before you answer rather nonchalantly, “i wanted to see how you’ve been.” the words hang in the air, waiting for mark to process them, and when he does it’s as if he’s had the wind knocked out of him. breathily, he recites a quiet, “oh i see,” and then you shut the door square in his face, leaving him with only an equally quiet, “i need to use the restroom, be right back.”

mark thinks back to why he himself had agreed in the first place and he’s not sure how much of a role haechan’s little ruse had played anyways. he appreciates the honesty with which you answered because it gives him the space to be honest with himself as well. he’d agreed to go because a part of him wanted to see how you’d been doing as well, but he’d also agreed to go because a part of him simply just wanted to see you. the little stunt that haechan had pulled was just the tip of the iceberg of reasons that led to this whole ordeal, and mark thinks — or at least hopes — that that had been the case for you too.

when you return, freshened up and looking more lively than you had in hours, mark’s more prepared than the last time he’d thrown a haphazard question your way. you’re fastening your seat belt when he asks, “since we’re ahead of schedule, do you wanna go for a drive around the forest?”

he sees where it starts, slow in the upturn. what looks like the beginnings of a frown blooms into an easy smile. it doesn’t reach your eyes, but it doesn’t need to for mark to know that you mean it. “around?”

he smiles too, quick with a flash of teeth and a breathy chuckle. “in, i mean. in the forest.”

you let your head retract to facing frontwards, leaning back into your seat as you nod, “sure, let’s go.” folding the maroon blanket into your lap, you follow mark’s pointed finger until your eyes set on his backpack shoved under your seat. “there should be a map in there. can you be my guide?”

for a second, he thinks he’s being too greedy with your patience but your easy smile flattens to show complacency. “i can do that,” and you salvage the map from the front pocket of the mess of his backpack. seeing about an inch-thick stack of maps in the same compartment, you look towards him with your smile now edging towards a knowing tease. “you planned for this, didn’t you?”

mark shakes his head fervently though he can’t find it in himself to audibly deny. after all, number two on his bucket list is to visit all the national parks and forests the country has to offer. how could you have expected him to resist when passing by a city that sat directly under 1.5 acres of forest land? and with the extra time to spare, it was a given.

you have the map crinkled open on your lap as you load up the top destinations with your phone in hand. mark’s excitement seems to be rubbing off on you; his giddy smile lends into your glittering eyes, his drumming fingers on the steering wheel translating to your bouncy leg. twenty-four minutes north — one right turn and one left turn — later, you’ve successfully navigated the both of you to alley spring and mill, a three-story red statement with a clear turquoise spring tucked behind.

the summer heat licks at the nape of your neck when you first open the door. you grab the blanket, the charcuterie box, the bag of popcorn and — with a thought spared in consideration — the stack of cards shoved into the cupholder after tucking your phone into the waistline of your shorts. the rush of water grows louder as you approach, the uneven pavement ebbing off into scuffed dirt and then brustling grass further down the stretch. pausing a good distance away from the decades-old structure, you hear a sigh in wonderment coming from behind.

mark’s mamiya rz67 weighs down one hand, the other raised to his brow to deflect the glare of the sun. he has a sort of satisfied look to his face, one that only grows as he makes his way to catch up to you. “good find,” he comments, tearing his gaze away from the sights to meet your eyes. pride snuggles into the corners of your smile and you duck away from his stare.

“lemme go find somewhere for us to settle down for a bit,” you hold up the blanket in gesture and then wave him off with another smile, “you go do your thing, don’t mind me.”

there’s a few people here and there coming in and out of the mill and a few more along the skirts of the spring, but you manage to find a quiet spot along the water with some trees to offer a decent amount of shade. it’s much cooler down here, where the spray disperses itself fresh from the water and into the air, and you drape the blanket over the mildly damp grass. spreading the contents of the charcuterie box across a napkin and pouring a portion of the popcorn into the now empty box, the setting begins to look as if it were all planned and not, in fact, an impromptu day trip that fell in motion less than a half-hour ago.

slipping your shoes off, you ease into the spot, appreciating the clear air while you can. if you shield your eyes, you can see mark in the distance with his phone held up to the red building to check the light settings. he takes a shot there in that position, and you swear you can hear the ka-shink! of his shutter even from this far away. nibbling a corner of brie cheese, you watch him closely as he jogs in a zig zag across the plot to find another interesting shot to frame.

mark gets six or seven more in before he rounds upon where you’re sat, having finally found the alcove of shade you’d claimed. he’s still holding his camera with one hand, the size of his palm making the five pound camera seem small. in the back of your mind, you can still recall the weight of it from a year ago as mark demonstrated how to advance the film for your first try at a shot. you remember how difficult it was to get the hang of medium format photography, much less the bothersome large format that mark used to haul around wherever he went.

“may i join you?”

snapped out of your momentary reminiscence, you glance up at mark as if you hadn’t even seen him coming your way. at the nod of your head, he takes his spot across the blanket with his legs criss crossed. the seconds tick away while your eyes trace the lines of his hands, moving familiarly to load a new film stock into his camera. the delicacy of his movements, the steadfastness of his grip, the roughness of his knuckles, and the baby soft pads of his fingers.

there’s nothing to do with his hands when he’s done with his camera so he resorts to fiddling with the folds of the blanket and occasionally reaching for a grape. mark looks a little lost, if you are to be honest. or at least, it seems as if he’s unsure of his presence; too scared of breaching boundaries thus he shies away from interactions altogether. his patterns of behavior are nothing new to you. and though there was once a time where you’d despise having to always be the one to coax him out of his shell of insecurity, you aren’t nearly so distressed to do so when there’s no strings attached, no long withheld feelings that come with it.

“when should we get back on the road?”

mark looks up at you in surprise and relief floods his face when he realizes no sign of annoyance in your expression. as if he were taking a firm hold of the hand you’d extended, he responds kindly, “it’s best if we go before five, so we can take our time on the road.”

you check your phone and the time reads a quarter past four. scrolling down your notification screen to see if you missed any important messages, you find about four consecutive texts from haechan, sent just before you woke up from the six hour stress nap you inadvertently took.

【 2:06 PM 】 bro u good? 【 2:06 PM 】 mark told me what happened 【 2:06 PM 】 should i beat him up for u? haha 【 2:08 PM 】 call me when u get a chance ;)

shutting off your phone, you retrace your attention back to mark. he’s the spitting image of a kid whose one and only friend didn’t show up to school today, hence he had to sit at his own table during lunch. you chuckle under your breath at the thought and he happens to hear, giving you a raise of his brow to which you only shake your head in dismissal.

so badly do you want to just clear the air — his newly uptight demeanor being a nightmare to get along with — but you know better than anyone how avidly mark avoids confrontation at all costs. to bring it right to his front steps is just asking for uncalled-for frustration. you zip your lips, and eye your surroundings, hoping for a topic of conversation to jump out at you.

sure enough, the red boldface catches your eye and it lingers. who says confrontation is the only way to subdue the tension? sometimes all you need is a little fun. and what’s better than a game to do just that? you place a hand atop the deck and wait for mark to recognize your intentions before softly suggesting, “your turn?”

the expression he dons is a bit squirmish as he reaches for the cards, but you can tell that he’s glad his careless words hadn’t ruined the game for you forever. his fingers make quick work in shuffling them neatly and, face down, he draws one from the pile at random.

“what do you think is the hardest part of what i do for a living?”

mark glances up at you from the card expectantly and you’re thrown off guard for a moment. “i answer? i did the last one though.”

he only laughs, “yeah i know. but even if i wanted to answer, i couldn’t. you don’t have a job.”

“oh that’s right,” you smile, masking a tinge of embarrassment at your late realization,” okay, i’ll answer it then.”

you cross your legs like his and pluck a grape for your fingers to play around with. momentarily in thought, you realize that there’s not much to the question, not when pertaining to mark and not when asked to you.

“the thing is, i’ve seen a lot firsthand. and i think you know what i’m going to say.”

it’s his turn to be thrown off guard with wide eyes and a hand to his chest, “i do?”

nodding, you pop the grape into your mouth to give leeway for your thoughts to string into words. shortly after swallowing, the words follow in suit, “i mean, you love your job and from what i remember, it pays your bills. which is great, it’s really great.” careful with your next words, you approach them with caution, “but at the same time, i think — and correct me if i’m wrong — i think...it’s put a strain on some of your relationships.”

mark doesn’t look the least bit surprised. in fact, you’re sure he’d known the answer the second after he read the question. hardly disappointed, he smiles wide when your eyes brim with uncertainty. reassuring you, “you’re right on point,” and then nudging you along, “i still want you to elaborate on it though.”

“okay,” you smile back at him, mostly in relief, “i know this is pretty personal, but since you insist…”

and so you trailed on about what you knew. on how his job drove a wedge between him and his parents. on how they told him it was one thing to chase after your dreams, and a whole other to let your dreams crush you. but to him, dropping out of college didn’t make those two semesters a waste of time and money. rather, he thought that going to college in the first place made it easier for him to realize it wasn’t the path he wanted to walk. there were always going to be times where he wouldn’t be able to make ends meet but that was nothing to him if he could have the support of his friends and family to do what he loved most.

you knew very well that a “strain” was a light way to put it. his parents cut him off at nineteen when they realized he wouldn’t be returning to school. as most parents would be, they were worried but unwilling to financially support their son who they no longer believed in. his mom still brings stacks upon stacks of tupperware kimchi and side dishes each month and his dad still passes money under the table at family dinners. but for some reason, they could never look him straight in the eye.

“do you ever feel like they betrayed you?”

“no, never,” he declares almost immediately. “it’s easy to think that they did. it’s harder to really feel that way when i know how much they love me. it’s just that we value different things.” mark says it so convincingly that you nearly dismiss the suspicions behind your question. when you meet his eyes and they are dark and glossed over, you start to believe them a lot more than what he’d just said.

seeing his pain resurface as if it were there the whole time, you’re reminded of the guilt you carry for breaking up with him at perhaps the most vulnerable point in his life. knowing that mark could never blame you for it, you blame yourself in his place.

looking down from his gaze, you hold your left hand in your right, imagining it as his, and hope that just the thought of wanting to hold his hand offers him some comfort, in some sort of cosmically significant way.

「 DAY 02, 10:34 PM 」 — TOMAYTO TOMAHTO

mark drove past the ‘welcome to oklahoma’ sign at 7:30 PM. between cherokee and muscogee nation, he considered stopping at tulsa for the night instead of oklahoma city, the capital. it was around 9:00 by then and you were still fairly energized; he took from that to continue even though it was you who slept through the day, not him.

in your search, etrip.net claimed holiday inn to be $19 for a two person room, seemingly a ‘too good to be true’ deal for a four-star hotel with an indoor pool. you booked it anyways — though only after confirming that he was fine with sharing a room — and keyed in the address into google maps for mark to follow.

when you look out the window less than a half hour to your destination, it’s near pitch black, save for the distant outlines of buildings behind large fields of what you assume to be grass. the two of you are just outside the city and when you roll down the window; the air is rather cool and crisp for a summer night. there’s a truck in front of your car with a shipment of fresh tomatoes and the scent of them wafts sweetly in the dawdling air.

basked in a comfortable silence for the first time during this whole trip, you feel that summer break has finally started. the days are long and long gone are your day-to-day worries about when this assignment is due and how much this exam will affect your grade. in hindsight, they were all passing worries, things that never irked you for long enough to be significant. and now that you had finally made peace with it all — moved on, and slowed down — the world seems much more pleasant, less frantic, and more at ease than you remembered. it’s quiet and you’re happy.

glimpsing to your left to check how mark’s holding up, the first thing you’re met with are his wide, frenzied eyes. you trace his line of sight whilst venturing to ask, “you good?” before noticing the oblong shape that’s been planted straight into the dead center of the windshield. upon further scrutiny, there’s a redish secretion that’s oozing down the glass.

“y/n...what the fuck is that?”

the two of you are stunned in your seats, frozen at the thought of what it could possibly be. (a hockey puck! a donut! a scoop of ice cream! a bloodied body part?!) though soon enough, your conscience returns in time for you to register it as a tomato, straight from the truck ahead.

“holy shit,” mark mutters, and he begins to slow the car down and away from the alleged source. a second hits, (“fuck!”), right where your head would have been if not for the window. the third and fourth follow shortly, splatters sounding more like fist-sized rocks under the sheer force of impact. mark sees you ducking and dodging, this way and that, and his blood pressure sky rockets as a huge portion of his side becomes slathered in goop.

both of you are screaming at this point, mark has no way of knowing when the road will curve, and he’s still going seventy miles per hour, occasionally speeding faster whenever a jolt of adrenaline hits too hard and he loses fine control of his foot on the gas pedal. “roll up the damn window!” and your fingers fumble around for the button, almost opening up the whole door in the process.

you swerve your head right after the window’s safetly shut to see if anyone’s tailgating. “pull over, mark. there’s no one behind us.” and when the car comes to a stop, the two of you are panting uncontrollably, despite having barely moved for hours. there are no thoughts running through your mind — absolutely none, zero — when you turn your head to meet his eyes. and the second you do, the two of you burst into laughter, in utter disbelief at what just happened.

still breathless at the thought, your hand comes to your mouth in belated shock. the aftermath is disastrous. cautiously opening the door, you can spot remnant tomato juice dripping from the bottom edge. mark rounds the car twice in inspection, only to find that every last corner of his precious subaru crosstrek is coated in a sheen of red except for the back, bottom, and some of the top. the meager stack of napkins you saved from earlier in the day does the best they can, sweeping off most the meat but none of the juice. the scent doesn’t seem so sweet anymore when it’s all you can smell from a mile away.

you notice that mark has been standing in the same position for the last four minutes, unmoved with both hands on his hips, sweat gleaning from his brow, and a distant look in his eyes. you fear speaking up will spook him into tears. luckily, he speaks first.

“y/n.”

“yeah?”

“can you find the nearest coin-op car wash on my phone?”

“okay.”

“i’ll…” he trails off into a breathy laugh, that kind of echoed laugh that makes you want to give him all your hopes and dreams, support and love. “...i’ll be here for a bit.”

you clamber back into the passenger seat, careful not to transfer any of the liquids indoors. his phone is mounted on a stand and you pry it off, wondering how you would get past his passcode. you key in his birthday, a reasonable first try, but the lockscreen doesn’t budge. pressing your lips thin, you try to recall what his password had been way back then. mark was never one for unnecessary changes; he held onto his possessions and habits stubbornly.

after an aha! moment comes a moment of doubt. to get the code right was one thing, but you weren’t sure how you’d feel if it was indeed unchanged. shrugging off the hesitation, you press in the four numbers anyways, and sure enough it unlocks.

dumbfounded, your hands drop into your lap and your vision stills, zoned out on the curve of the steering wheel. it’s hard to really understand what you’re feeling and it’s even harder to discern mark’s intentions behind keeping his passcode set as your birthday after all this time. the signs have been there—and you had kept to avoiding them—but now is the first time you’re facing the possibility that mark still has feelings for you. and even just the thought of how it doesn’t disturb you greatly warrants extra precaution on your end.

mistakes are made so that they won’t be repeated.

you repeat the sentence to yourself perhaps five times over, and carry on with locating the nearest coin-operated car wash station as per his instruction. mark got in the car five minutes later with a small smile on his face. “it is what it is,” as he had put it. with only thirty minutes left, the car ride resumes in silence though this time around, there’s nothing comfortable about it. the man next to you is humming along to some john mayer song, oblivious to your disconterting mood that was induced solely by him (and partially by you, if we’re to be crystal clear).

deciding not to get too worked over it, you fixate, instead, on playing word games with haechan. time passes quickly as you win most of the rounds, half the time wondering why he’s even still awake when it’s already fairly late in his timezone. you make a mental note to call him when you get settled at the hotel, sooner the better if anything.

mark manages to hum along to every single song that comes up on the radio, sometimes even singing with a full voice and vibrato. you’re partially relieved that he’s no longer so on edge around you, also aware that now it’s you who’s way too in over your head. figuring that it wouldn’t be much of a problem once you call it a night, you move past your concerns and finally take a glance up from your phone.

marvelling at the ever-changing landscape on the other side of the window, your mouth falls agape at how the bare grasslands have since given away to streets among streets of buildings. you can peer even further down, where the city lights of oklahoma city make out a twinkling night sky, replacing the stars with their light pollution. devon tower stands the tallest and most discernable of the skyscrapers and for a second, your troubles melt away as you fall captive to The Big Friendly.

long past rush hour, the streets downtown are jam packed with both cars and pedestrians, forcing mark to brake every other second. the city night life in oklahoma feels warmer than the busy new york city had ever been. flourescent signs flash bright in invitation for you to enter, people flood the streets, swarmed with laughter and filled with good food. you keep a smile to yourself as this tedious road trip begins to feel a little more like a long-anticipated vacation.

marks pulls up at the coin wash station you’d found for him earlier. with it being a ten minute’s distance from the city’s main streets, the surrounding areas are quiet at this slow hour. when you reach over to unbuckle your seat belt, a hand comes to stop you and with a patient smile on his face, mark simply tells you, “wait here, i’ll clean it up real quick,” as he slips out of the car.

given no time to react much less disagree, he shuts the door behind him and you end up sitting in the car by yourself, watching mark as he busies around with his coins and then gets to hosing down the red streaks striping his car. presumably, they had dried in the wind. what a sight his car must have looked like, rolling through the city streets as if it’d been dunked in ketchup.

you get the idea then, while you’re idling around, to call up haechan quickly while you have the moment to yourself. if you could be curt with him, beat around the bush like the annoying little brat you are, you’ll have no problem with wrapping up the call within the next five to ten minutes it takes for mark to get the car scrubbed and shiny.

the phone rings a whopping total of seven times before he picks up. you put him on speaker and the groggy voice you’re met with is a telltale sign that you’ve freshly awoken him. “the fuck you want? i just fell asleep, you cow.” at least he went to bed, you think, whilst turning his loud ass voice off speaker and bringing your phone to your ear.

“woah, no need to be so vulgar. you’re the one who told me to call you.”

you hear a scoff coming from the other end. at his next quip, his voice is no longer groggy, now boasting a new tone of feisty. “yeah. i meant when i’m actually awake and willing to answer. bye, i’m hanging up now.”

“hey,” you whine, “you’re awake and i’m free right now so let’s just get it over with. what did you want to talk about?”

there’s a clear pause of deliberation on his end, only for less than three seconds though. “how’s it going with mark? i heard he made you cry.”

you sigh into the receiver, fingers having found the rim of your water bottle and decidedly tracing the cap around and around. “so he told you everything, i see. he just brought up some bad memories and i got overwhelmed in the moment. it’s all cool now.”

the line goes silent for while longer and the blasting hose outside just happens to shut off at the same time. you look up from your water bottle and through the shower of water, mark’s peering in with a sponge in hand, gleeful eyes greeting you hello. you give him an absentminded wave in return with your free hand.

usually, haechan had too much to say about everything but to your surprise, he only ponders with a lilt, “...it’s all cool?”

“it’s all cool,” you confirm. mark sweeps his sponge-equipped arm across the length of the windshield, the thick lather of bubbles building a wall between you and him. but just as his fingers dot two eyes and a big smile into the soap for you to see, haechan synchronizes, “so you guys are getting along?”

mark peeks into one of the holes to see you smiling as wide as the playful smiley face he’d drawn, the same one that was now at the mercy of the drooping liquids. contradicting your ear-splitting grin, you remark offhandedly, “we agreed to be friends.” and after a beat, you fill in the missing blanks, “for the sake of this trip, i mean.”

“friends…” haechan seems to have his panties in a twist today, for he’s pausing at all the weird moments, saying all the weirdest things. you can almost imagine the shake of his head as he cryptically states, “that won’t do.”

“what won’t do?”

the hose water is turned back on as mark directs it right at the windshield this time. you almost shriek in surpise, barely catching the click of his tongue that haechan gives. after dousing the windows clean, mark reaches for the snow broom to shimmy off the remaining water droplets. going row by row, he gives you a sore attempt at a wink when you meet his eyes. you supress your giggles as haechan’s dissatisfied voice soars past your ears without much thought.

“how can you be just friends with him when you still like him?”

you’re in no mood to be taking him seriously, so you end up saying the first thing that pops into your mind. “i’m pretty sure he’s the one that still likes me.”

“well you’re not wrong there.”

mark throws in another silly face — a really blown out toothed smile — and you decide then that you should probably end the call soon before haechan drags you into another discussion of who’s still hung up on who and who’s still in love with who. you decide then that, for tonight at least, you want to set aside the messy feelings and just have fun. because that’s what’s easiest when you’re with mark lee.

momentarily forgetting that you’re still on call, you hastily ramble out a quick, “hey i gotta go, something came up,” and the eye roll that haechan’s sure to give is predictable as it is true. “fine,” he deadpans, “talk to you later. or not, i don’t know maybe something will come up and i’ll forget about you for two weeks.” and with that, he hangs up right as mark reenters the car, eyes all shimmery and filled with glee.

“you have fun out there?”

he messes around with a few wet tips of his hair. “a lot of fun, actually. you should help me out next time.”

your heart races messily and mercilessly at the thought of ‘next time,’ so much so that you only have enough mindpower to muse absorbedly, “maybe i should.” he gets his seat belt buckled and you cap your water bottle after taking a long swig.

“so…” mark starts whilst pressing the start engine button, “who was that on the phone?”

“haechan wanted to know if we were ripping each other’s hair out yet.”

mark chuckles, reversing the car out of the small lot. his eyes tell you he knows that a lot more than just that was discussed, but he resists prying to a certain extent. “so what’d you tell him?”

“well...” you take a moment to admire his side profile, his one hand resting casually on the wheel, and the gentle way his lips curve into a smile when you say, “i told him that i still have a full head of hair.”

「 DAY 03, 12:00 AM 」 — YOU ARE MY SOUVENIR, MY PROOF THAT I WAS HERE

what etrip.net forgot to mention was that the $19 you happily gave away was actually just a reservation fee, and not — as they had deceived you into thinking — the actual price of the room. you direct a sheepish smile towards mark as the bright-faced young man at the front counter charges $124 on your card. evidently, the internet is why you have trust issues.

the hotel sits right in the belly of downtown oklahoma city, with the touristy bricktown district only two blocks away. you’re given a card key to a spacious room with a queen sized bed draped in a crisp and plush duvet. from the updated appliances to the chic furniture and decor, every corner of the room smelled like fresh lemon verbena.

“i guess this is what you get when you pay top dollar.”

mark nods dazedly, but at the mention of money, he snaps out of his haze. “here,” he fishes out his phone from his back pocket, “i’ll transfer you the $62.”

you recline into the white lounge chair in the corner of the room. a ding! sounds from your bag that you’ve set on the floor besides you, signaling the transaction. eyes now closed in respite, you direct your “thanks” towards no one in particular.

there’s no couch this time, despite having paid a ridiculous amount, so mark sets himself atop the left side of the bed. he rummages through the front pocket of his backpack until he draws forth a thin booklet with a giant OKC in bolded yellow on the front. as he remembered, there’s a checklist list on the second page that covers all the must-do, must-see activities and locations that oklahoma city has to offer.

mark looks up at you, then back down at the book, then back at you and back down at the book. he knows you well enough to see that you’ve yet to fall asleep. but give it another two or three minutes and the snores will catch up to you. but before those two or three minutes round upon him, mark decides that he has nothing to lose. if you want to come, you’ll come. if not, he still has a whole city to plow through in one night.

“hey.” there’s a hand on your shoulder and it’s shaking you lightly. distantly, you think that you’ve entered a state of lucid dreaming. a second after, the voice returns to say, “y/n, wake up,” and you’re conscious enough to recognize it as mark’s. willing your eyes to open, he’s hovering right above you with apprehensive eyes. “let’s go out.”

still not quite awake and still unsure of what you just heard, you blurt rather obtrusively, “what?”

“i mean...i mean like let’s go out out,” and he gestures to the window to make his point clearer. “we can get late dinner, or really early breakfast, or just walk around for a bit.”

not very convinced, you only frown at him. in turn, he’s prompted to ramble on further. “okay, but when’s the next time you’re visiting oklahoma?”

“like… never,” you drawl out slowly. mark nods fervidly as if there were a right answer and you were at the precipice of discovering it. impatient or in sudden fervor, he exasperates, “exactly! so you should make the most of tonight and see what it has to offer.”

he’s like an overly enthusiastic salesman and you decide that even if it’s just to please him, there’s no harm in playing tourist for a few hours; you could sleep as much as you want on the road anyways. you give in, “okay fine,” and watch as he pumps a fist not-so-covertly. “gimme like five minutes to change first though.”

by the time you meet him at the lobby, mark’s switched out his tour guide booklet for his phone, having loaded up all the destinations in preparation. the warm air outside is breezy to a fault and the wind picks up your hair and sloshes it this way and that. mark is quick to laugh but equally quick to tuck the wandering strands behind your ears. unknowingly, you blush and when you don’t break the stare, he breaks it for you. the tips of his ears are red when he looks away.

the first stop — a touristy jazz club — is closed for renovation, and the next one that you guys attempt had rebranded into a strip club. unease begins to nibble away at mark’s intial excitement, as his exhaustion and embarrassment collide to dampen his mood. the sidewalk crowd doesn’t care to part for two, so mark grabs hold of your wrist, leading you towards what he hopes is the final destination for the night.

mark finds his composure being built up and chipped away by your presence in the exact way he’d expected it to even before this whole ordeal of a trip. he can avoid your careful eyes and feign ignorance towards your attempts at civility, but he will never be one to deny to himself how much he still cares, how much he has always and will always care, about your opinion of him. it’s in the littlest ways that he hopes if not to impress you, then to make you smile at the least. mark doesn’t endeavor to lie to himself about that — that he wants you to smile and that he wants, even more so, to be the reason behind it.

he thinks he’s done a rather good job of accomplishing that tonight. from afar, “the flea” is but a green box with brick facing and a short line abutting the entrance. but upon entering, the ambiance of the bar feels rather like an old school arcade, with low ceilings and dimly colored lighting. it’s littered with games from pool to cornhole to connect four, and people are drunk and having fun. mark glances at you to gauge your liking, and supresses the urge to pump a lame and loser-ish fist at they way your eyes glisten in response to your lively surroundings.

he’s not sure if he’ll ever get the courage to apologize for the consequence of his thoughtless ramble from earlier in the day. and he knows that an apology is what you deserve. but in his own selfish and self-serving way, he hopes that this one night of drinking and games will at the very least make up for your soured impression of him.

you order two beers at the bar and amble over to mark, who’s found himself a spot at the darts corner. handing him the drink and taking a swig of your own, you query with a cocked eyebrow in the direction of the board, “wanna bet?”

taking the drink from your hands, mark deadpans, “you suck at darts.”

mouth full, you quickly swallow before laughing aloud, “maybe i got better, you never know.”

mark rolls his eyes in disbelief, but concedes nevertheless, “so what’s on the line?”

you take a quick scan around the room in consideration when a girl standing on the opposite side of the room by the pool table catches your eye. but not because she’s looking at you. feet crossed at the ankles and left hand swirling a half-emptied margarita, she has her sights set square on mark. a small smile dawns upon your face, and you turn back towards him. “you lose, you get her number.”

once glance around the room and he, too, knows who you’re talking about. maybe his heart sinks a little. and so he laughs. maybe he wishes you wouldn’t be so quick to write him off with another person other than you. mark takes a sip of his beer, and looks around the room once again. maybe he doesn’t mean what he’s about to say. “you lose, you get his number.” maybe he wants you to know that he still likes you, at least a lot more than the guy by the bar with the sleazy smile.

you take a look at him yourself and decide that he wouldn’t be too bad of a punishment. some part of you felt the need to distinguish you and mark as two single friends who were just hanging out. the barrier needed to be defined after how it’d been ebbing between the extremes of exes and more than exes the whole day. it’s hard to say that you don’t like mark at this point. and that while any other guy could make you feel things, it would never amount close enough to what mark made you feel.

but it’s even harder to say that you would want to get back together with him.

mark decides on a 200 point game and whilst you get off to a good start with two 20-pointers, mark beats you out by almost a hundred point margin to sum up the game. today, he feels up for admitting the truth to himself, for he knows well that he had tried his best to lose. but any further effort on that attempt would have made it obvious, as there was no conceivable way for him to out-lose your constant 1-pointers without suspicion.

he watches as you down the rest of your beer before gesturing in the direction of the bar. he smiles back when you mouth, “i’ll be back,” over the blaring music. he knows why you’re being like this. he knows that it’s mostly his fault. he also knows that you’re doing this to protect yourself, that it’s not a means of punishing him. but mark accepts his punishment anyways, looking onwards as you approach the guy with a tap on his shoulder. he watches as the guy’s eyes rakes your figure in delight, sets a casual hand on your waist, smiles along to your cheesy pick up line.

but mark tears his eyes away before the guy can smash his greasy lips onto yours, or before you respond in kind. even seeing him lean in made mark sick to the stomach. he goes to retrieve the darts from the board and when he returns, you’ve returned too. “got it,” you show him the contact and number in your phone, “and i got a smooch on the cheek too.”

a small, “ew,” is all he can muster in his confusion of equal relief and disappointment. mark keeps you close for the rest of the night. you suggest many times that he go talk to this girl, or how that girl looks like his exact type. but you don’t seem to understand that mark only wants to talk to you and that you’re the only person in this room, or even in the world, he’d consider to be his exact type. you are nowhere near the understanding that mark has never felt this unlucky to be spending the night with a girl he wants but has lost the privilege to have.

you’re tipsy, with an arm linked with his and your head on his shoulder, as he walks the two of you back to the hotel. mark can’t tell you — at least not in this state — how he’s thought of trying again at least a million times. he’s come up with a million scenarios of how he’d somehow loop himself back into your life and slowly regain your trust for him. a million times over, he’d lost the confidence to follow through, always so sure that he would fall in the same patterns of negligence and immaturity. even so, he’s never wanted to try as much as he does right now.

he places your shoes by the bedside and slips off your dirty socks to add to the laundry. rummaging through your toiletries bag, he comes upon the micellar water and reusable cotton pads. he swipes it across your sleeping face to collect the makeup and extra debris, then washes the two pads and clips them on a hanger to dry. mark is dutiful in drawing the covers up to your chin, in pulling your hair back from your face, in everything a boyfriend would do.

mark is sober when he sets his lockscreen as the only thing he has to remember oklahoma city by: a photo of you, smiling at him.

「 DAY 03, 8:21 AM 」 — HIS APOLOGY

“what is the hardest truth you had to face this year?”

you place the card to the back of the deck after reading the question aloud. mark takes his eyes off the road for a split second to glance at you. fiddling with a used toothpick with your fingers, mark wonders when you started flossing after years and years of ignoring your dentist’s nagging. yesterday, he noticed you were using a different chapstick brand than what he remembered as your go-to. you wear your hair up more often, and you frequent warm-toned clothing as opposed to your routine neutrals.

the more time he spends around you, the more mark realizes he’s never felt this distant from you. in barely two days time, he’s been surprised by how much you’ve changed in the relatively short duration the two of you spent apart compared to the time you had spent together. mark’s even more surprised by how little he’s changed in comparison.

the thirty seconds you’ve taken to formulate a response — to decide your terms of vulnerability in just how much to divulge — weren’t nearly enough for mark to be prepared for what you were about to share.

you don’t look at him when you speak. with your eyes set on the passing hills just outside, your voice breaches lowly into the air and across the car, right to mark’s utter confusion at the first of your words.

“i’ve learned that no amount of love goes wasted. i’ve learned that bad, unfortunate, terrible things happen to good people everyday, most of the time for no reason.” when you next blink, there’s a thin film of tears that gloss your eyes. “i’ve learned that the same bad, unfortunate, terrible things can happen to the very people that you love, and that sometimes there is nothing you can do about it.”

he thinks he can hear your breaths, or some similar rhythm pulsing in the thickened air, taut with tension and the fragility of your words. two beats pass, then four, before mark confirms it to be your now labored breathing. it stops shortly after, and you continue speaking to your best ability, which even then amounts to very little. “i’ve learned…”

mark turns to look at you for a little longer than he should, and the composure with which you held your head gives out, the weight of his gaze somehow heavier than that of your circumstances. he’s never seen you like this. he doesn’t know what’s your reality, and that this car, this trip, this moment, is your escape.

“i’ve learned what it means to grieve for someone before they’ve even passed.”

he doesn’t know that you’re running on stolen time. he doesn’t know, wasn’t there, never saw how your mom had given your hand a squeeze, feeble but certain. how she faults her poorly-timed illness. how she struggled to sit up to give your grief-stricken, heartbroken body a hug and a kiss goodbye, regretful she might never be able to rejoice in her daughter’s marriage, and yet grateful that at least her other daughter can rejoice in her stead.

when you find it in yourself to lift your head upright, mark takes in another glance at the puffiness around your eyes and the streaks running down your cheek to your neck. he knows he should free a hand to locate the tissue box or offer that hand in support but he can hardly breathe, much less move, when you start speaking again.

“it’s my mom. her cancer, it’s relapsed.”

for a few seconds, all he can hear is the white noise of his car tires on an endless expanse of road. it’s like your words dissolve into the noise, refusing their impact on his own ears, richocheting between reality and his imagination. mark holds so still that he might as well have stopped breathing, or thinking, or being.

it’s only when he hears a sob escape from you that his gravity returns to him out of a sense of realized necessity. a sort of certainty courses through his veins when he pulls over the car. there’s barely anyone on the road to witness him exit and circle around to your side. mark moves with conviction when he pulls your door open, unbuckles your seat belt, and embraces you whole. neither of you register the tears leaking from his eyes nor the way his hands shake ever so slightly, because his expression has been set straight, and his body sturdy for you to lean on.

forehead pressed to his chest, you’re gasping for air and making all sorts of incomprehensible sounds of anguish. you weren’t sure of where your strength had come from to confide in him like that, after you’d dutifully dedicated yourself to a trip detached fully of worries beyond your control at home. but you know it now. in the way he pats down your hair, rubs circles into your back, holds all the same grief-stricken, heartbroken pieces of your body together like glue, you know that it’s because it’s mark.

he doesn’t yet know what he’s saying but it’s coming out of him anyways. “i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.” he panics even more when you’re shaking your head in his arms, your hitched breaths unable to let forth any words of disagreement. but mark shakes his head too. you don’t know.

you don’t know how much it hurts him. from his heart, in his bones, through every fiber of his being he feels it. his apology.

“i’m sorry for not being there when you needed me most.”

you make up for your loss of words by looking up at him, finally. his mask of placidity folds, first at the seams with the furrow of his brow, but then in full as his face scrunches into what can only be described as indescribable heartache. his shirt is fisted in your hands as you sob, “how could you… how could you have known?”

mark shuts his eyes because he doesn’t think he has it in him to bear witness to the misery written across your face. his heart hammers inside his chest, unpromising of any relief any time soon. he holds you together, closely, closer, until there’s hardly a hardly a point of separation between the two of you.

your question rings in his head, because it makes no sense, because it only makes him feel worse about the last year he’s spent alone, because even without you by his side…

“i should have just known.”

only now do you realize that your trust in mark is the one thing that could possibly nullify your entire messy history. in hindsight, it was obvious. you knew that if you told him, he would make it his duty to make you feel better. you told him because maybe that’s precisely what you wanted to feel. and maybe you needed mark, more than anyone, to hug you like this and to convince you that everything was somehow going to work out. because maybe, just maybe, you would begin to believe it for yourself.

「 00:00 」 — AMARANTH

it was something that you didn’t think was possible. to live with someone, to inhabit the same room, sleep in the same bed, and yet, to be so distanced to the point at which you were strangers.

sometimes he’d leave a mug on the kitchen counter, lukewarm coffee left idle. other times the tv would be left on when you got home from class, or the shower was wet when you stepped in. it was these small things, like traces of a ghost, that reminded you of your relationship with mark, or what was left of it.

on the off chance that the two of you would meet face-to-face, he was always reserved to himself. a few small apologies, maybe a peck to your lips, and always a search for reassurance — that you would’t leave him, that you wouldn’t understand where he was coming from, that you knew he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

the it was complicated. on the surface, the it was his absence in the physical sense. despite dropping out from college and having a suddenly abundant amount of free time, barely any of that time was spent with you. despite moving in to your apartment after being cut off financially from his parents and being forced to move out of the school dorms, the it was him rarely being at home. mark was always out on some unnamed errand, or to shoot at some far away location, hours away from anyone and anything.

but under all that, the it was his inability to face himself and his future head on. the it was his latent realization that there were consequences to his impulsive and headstrong decisions, more than he had the foresight to think of, more than what he was capable of dealing with at the time. the it meant that he was incapable of putting any of these feelings to words, and even more so unwilling to say these words aloud to you.

mark didn’t know how to tell you he was lost without feeling like he had lost the one thing that was left of him — his dignity. he had held his head high when he’d passed word around that he would quit school, certain that it wasn’t the right path for him. he had held his head high when he had left his parents’ house, his childhood home, after his own father had gotten on his knees to beg him to just finish up his degree, to hold out for one last year. but he couldn’t even admit to himself, much less you, that he didn’t know what to do with himself after all his bravado had worn off.

it was an adulthood thing, he’d much later come to understand, his own version of a dramatic coming of age movie where he needed to lose himself in order to find himself. and it led him to the job of his dreams: somewhere between a full-time photographer and a part-time influencer, traveling the world, capturing it on film, documenting his process and growth journey for others to be inspired by. ever so passionate and devoted to his work, mark poured his whole into perfecting his craft. and only when he emerged atop the hill he had climbed all by his lone self — without a degree and without the support of his peers and parents — did mark realize that he had lost the one person that would have supported him through anything. you.

but the damage had been done. at that point, there was no such word in the english dictionary that could remediate the month and a half of unexplained absence. in response to his silence and refusal to confide in you, you had withdrawn from the relationship yourself, having given up on getting him to clue you in and having to deal with your own problems as well.

it was too late for mark to say anything about it, far too late for any verbal apology to make up for it all. mark figured that his actions would speak louder than his words ever could.

at the height of summer, the sun couldn’t have shone brighter. it was that day where you had come to understand that mark’s place of refuge had never been the apartment you thought you’d both called home; it was the lake. the emerald lake would have a special feature in the photobook that mark would publish months after the two of you had broken up. in his captions, he’d write that it was there that he would turn to when his thoughts overwhelmed him, when he didn’t have it in himself to face the world.

and it was beautiful, in the most heartbreaking way, to see for yourself that in his most vulnerable state, he had turned to these waters and these winds. it was most beguiling, in the most earth-shattering way, to watch as he submerged himself bare in the water, to realize that he could never bare his heart to you, didn’t know how to, didn’t want to, didn’t care to.

he didn’t understand how badly you wanted to love him for everything that he was. he was too proud to let you see the worst parts of him, too proud to let you love the worst parts of him.

to him, the water was a symbol of renewal. to bring you here, where his heart lay, meant that he was opening back up to you, urging to you enter his waters. to you, it was a symbol of cleansing. to enter the water where you were beckoned meant washing off all the grief and bitterness that had accumulated towards the tail end of your relationship. you hadn’t yet figured out where you stood with him, if you still loved him, or if you even knew him well enough to say that you still loved him.

it was ill-fated timing, really. your mom was diagnosed with hodgkin’s lymphoma, not even a week after what mark believed to be the turning point of your relationship. you had called him from the hospital, voice thick with affliction, rambling about chemotherapy and medical bills and breaking the news to your sister and everything else that had brought your world to a standstill. and yet in the midst of all your despair, mark could not for the life of him string together a single sentence.

later revealed, her cancer was at an early stage, so one round of chemotherapy was enough to quell it into remission. it wasn’t, however, easy on your family in terms of the financial burnden and emotional turmoil that steadily built over her four months of treatment.

all of this, mark would only hear of through haechan, for your relationship had ended the moment you had hung up that call.

blocking his phone number and social medias was the easy part. the hard part was convincing haechan to let mark move in with him. it was completely and utterly stupid and unreasonable, according to him, to end a fully committed relationship just because the guy couldn’t formulate a response to your trauma dump. “why?”

“because he’s emotionally constipated,” was the easy answer with an easy counter that haechan was sure to give, “but you knew that even before dating him.”

you sighed. however impossible, you could hear his impatience over the phone. it was enough to get you to be fully honest with your best friend. “he can’t talk to me. he can’t be honest with me. he can’t look me in the face and say ‘i’m sorry.’ tell me, hyuck,” your breath picks up and you’re mere seconds away from sobbing, “tell me, how am i supposed to come home from the hospital everyday and tell my sob story to a fucking wall?!”

later that day, haechan came over to your apartment to pick up all the belongings of your ex-boyfriend. you had dumped him because your life was in no state to house someone who didn’t know how to shoulder a burden. you had dumped him because, for the sake of your well being, you could no longer put up with his inability to communicate openly with you, to tell you what he was feeling, to tell you to ease your worries, or even just to tell you that he loved you.

but even now as you’re sat in the passenger seat of his car, if mark told you he didn’t love you anymore, you probably wouldn’t believe it.

you know it in the way he looks at you, with eyes so tender and attentive to your every motion, ears perked at every intonation, and heart worn bare at the foot of his sleeve. these were all made fact from the moment you first stepped in his car, when the simple idea of seeing him still made you apprehensive and guarded.

but with how low your defenses have since dropped, there’s no reason left to deny that mark wouldn’t believe you either if you told him you didn’t love him anymore.

and you can’t say it’s any sort of impulsive feeling, or an effect of loneliness that’s gotten the best of you. it’s evident to you now that the mark beside you is not the same mark you fell in love with. he is a result of your breakup, the one thing that he could not bury away with the rest of his feelings. the one thing that, if he ever turned to the lake for refuge, would only haunt him in the form of the memory of you that day. he could not run from the torment of losing you, because it had consumed him whole.

the mark beside you gave you your space when you needed it, and held you close even when you didn’t know you needed it. he still is awkward in responding to your questions, but he responds nonetheless. he apologized.

he’s not the same mark you foolishly fell in love with, overlooking his weakness until it ruined your relationship. the mark beside you is someone you have the choice of falling in love with, in full admiration for his growth and strengths, so much so that it begs the question:

what do you do when the reason you broke up with your ex no longer exists?

「 DAY 03, 12:47 PM 」 — WILL YOU GO ON A DATE WITH ME?

“thank you.”

mark jolts in his seat, though he keeps enough of his cool only to answer somewhat lamely, “uhh… for what?”

“for comforting me.”

mark doesn’t look over at you. he can’t. he’s afraid of what you have to say, of what’s to become of your fleeting friendship, of the boundaries he’d overstepped. so he merely brushes it off, hoping you don’t read too much into his actions to feel uncomfortable about it. “oh that? it was nothing, no need to thank me.”

but you look over at him, and continue to, for seconds or even minutes on end. the profile of his face is perfect to you, round eyes, the slope of his nose, an equally boyish and nervous smile playing at his lips. you could almost cry, again; this time at the irony of how your break up was so ill-fated by time, but your reunion so auspicious.

“it was not nothing to me. it was… everything.”

now he looks over at you with curious eyes, but you just shake your head slightly. “it just meant a lot to me. that’s all.”

mark returns his gaze up front. he’s still nervous, afraid, and ever so conscious of you, but at the very least, he’s glad that he seems to have successfully communicated his care for you. in silence, you’ve spent the last three hours switching between playing sudoku on your phone and annotating a red-covered book titled all about love by bell hooks with a pink pen.

until a few seconds ago, mark hadn’t had any insight whatsoever as to how you were feeling, whether you wanted more space to yourself, or if you wanted to just put it behind you and move on to cheerier conversations. and with bated breath has mark awaited some sort of sign that you were doing okay. now, as if given the green light, he sighs in relief and begins to speak, almost a little too eager to be able to strike conversation with you again.

“we’re almost halfway through texas now. well, the tip of it.”

the view just outside is completely flat for as far as the eye can perceive. blocked with only two colors, the vivid blue sky is completely void of any cloud, just as the dirt ground is void of any plant. seeing the landscapes change restlessly before your eyes over the past few days has felt like putting your life on double the speed, and the constant and unchanging blue and brown just outside feels like a welcome contrast. in all the flurry of this trip, you yearn for a moment to reorient yourself. and so you ask, “where are we staying tonight?”

“not sure yet, but if you want to you can look up some hotels in new mexico.”

you ponder the suggestion to yourself before suggesting an idea of your own, “how about we go camping? i saw your gear in the trunk.”

it’s gradual and awfully subtle, but you watch intently as the corners of mark’s lips upturn into a small smile. you even take note of how the sunlight from outside catches in his eyes, a small glint that gives his whole countenance a boyish radiance. he chuckles under his breath, simultaneously spotting a sign on the right side of the road. there’s almost a singing undertone in the way he says, “wanna take a break somewhere, grab some food, and plan something?”

you notice that the smile is still on his face as he sits across from you at a wendy’s in the middle of amarillo, thirty minutes later. in the same plaza there happened to be a taco bell and a denny’s, with an ihop and mcdonald’s across the street, inciting a fifteen minute heated debate as to which would make you less likely to vomit all over his car. in reality, there was no right answer. they were all wrong, but mark lee isn’t usually one to win arguments.

he has a few travel brochures splayed on top of the table, though he spends more of his attention typing into his phone and scribbling down notes on a yellow post-it. while he put himself in charge of finding a suitable camping spot somewhere in eastern new mexico, mark put you in charge of something you couldn’t mess up, and something you thought was too easy for the high paygrade of your company.

you did it begrudgingly and anyways, opening up the notes app on your phone, not all that happy to be left with the comparatively more boring job of coming up with a list of things to buy. with some on-the-go food options and a blanket on the list, you contemplated what kind of alcohol would most appropriately suit the occasion, looking up from your phone in time to catch mark as he did the same. briefly, your eyes met across the table.

he knows you both thought of the same thing. you must have.

he’s the only one who knows he didn’t actually need to study for any of his finals that semester, with most of them being projects and the only outlier being a general education psychology course. but mark was at the library every day and night with you, knowing you were scared shitless for your first week of finals as a college student. you were in two completely different majors, with no overlapping classes or even departments, and yet he was there, quizzing you on your human anatomy or art history notes. you’d get all in your head about the answers, rethinking and doubting yourself. and then you’d look up at him, eyes meeting across the table just the same as now, and you’d say the correct answer.

and there was that one time, in the complete silence of the top floor of the main library, where mark had slipped you a post-it note, eyes attentive and lips pulled into a line as he watched you read over his penned question. and as always, you had said the correct answer. i would love to go on a date with you.

just like back then, you smile at him brightly and fondly from across the table. mark looks taken aback for a second, either reeling or pleasantly surprised by thought of the memory. he takes a bite of his burger, chews a bit, then swallows roughly. you look back down at your screen and quickly type ‘soju’ before setting your phone down, figuring something stronger than beer would be able to get more truths out of you that wouldn’t escape so easily when sober. seeing as how this trip had you revealing more than you expected, even going as far as confiding your most vulnerable self to mark, you wish he would let go of some of his own thoughts as well.

mark sets his phone down too, as you rummage through your bag to find the red box you’d taken from the car. he watches as you set it on the table and after recognizing it, quips almost incredulously, “you still wanna play? after all that?”

“well i was thinking i could use a break from answering.”

“you want me to answer?” he quirks an eyebrow up, and you pass the set of cards over to him. barely shuffling, he draws a card at random and his eyebrows move again, this time to furrow as he skims the question. mark reads aloud, “how old do you feel, emotionally?”

it’s a question that you yourself can’t answer for him, even if you wished to. there’s no way for you to tell what kind of changes had occurred between then and now, but at the very least you know that he’s years wiser than the mark that once sat across from you at the library. and that thought alone pulls at your heart incessantly.

after giving the question some thought, mark answers in all the ways you least expect him to.

“i feel like i know nothing.”

and he doesn’t bother to elaborate further.

“what?”

mark laughs a bit. it’s evident that his thought was underdeveloped, and so he develops it some more, “i feel like a newborn baby, but like… really smart.” he continues to make no sense, so you laugh at him. and then you’re both laughing. it’s sweet, really.

he had spent so long in that library with you, dutifully studying for what would be the easiest final exam of his life. mark reread his psychology notes so many times that week that they would be forever ingrained in his mind. but to you, the next thoughts he shares are completely out of the blue.

“you know like crystallized and fluid intelligence?” he pauses to laugh some more at the quizzical look you’ve thrown him. “like crystallized is like accumulated knowledge and stuff like facts, while fluid intelligence is like problem-solving and reasoning or something.”

now he really needs you to stop laughing because it’s infectious. “and what does that have to do with anything?” your laughter is especially infectious to him, because he really can’t bring himself to stop laughing despite the point he so desperately wants to make.

“just let me finish my thought, okay? and then you can laugh all you want.”

at that, you stifle your laughter by pressing your lips together, and all mark can think of is how cute you are. he pushes past that thought and does his best to sound like he’s not stupid.

“i mean like, i feel like i have a bunch of crystallized intelligence from being in the world for so long, but at the same time i have zero fluid intelligence. like i’m a newborn baby with all the knowledge in the world, and no idea what to do with it.”

and you catch on immediately, “so basically like… adulting? like facing the real world after being coddled your entire life?”

mark isn’t laughing anymore nor was anything he said that stupid, but he has this stupid dopey smile on his face. because if there’s one person that can comprehend his thoughts so completely and so easily, even as he uses the most unorthodox methods to explain them, it’s you. always you. only you.

and just like that you understood it all. the months he spent in solitude after dropping out of college weren’t spent alone, they were spent facing the real world. you had always been so bitter that he would rather endure those rough moments by himself than shoulder his worries with you, but you understand it now. and he didn’t even need to say much at all. mark had needed space to figure out himself, for himself. he needed to unlearn everything that people and society had told him about who he was, what he was good at, bad at, should or shouldn’t do, and for once, spend time to get to know himself. after all, how was he supposed to be in a relationship with you if he didn’t even have an idea of who he was?

sitting across from him now, you can see in full how mark’s grown into himself, his passions, and his work. he’s facing the world still, and will always be, but he is confident instead of prideful. he isn’t ashamed of what he doesn’t know, for he will learn in due time. he isn’t afraid of failure, because he knows he’ll only grow from it.

it’s astonishing how these past few days have brought everything into a full circle. in hindsight, the messy break up was really just what the situation called for. and this impromptu reunion turned out to be a miracle of timing, to the degree at which the both of you can’t help but think…

right person, right time.

「 DAY 03, 10:12 PM 」 — MY DREAMS COME TRUE (WHEN I’M WITH YOU)

you found it strange, but didn’t think too much of it.

it was like there was some foggy haze over everything, like a honeyed film that made your world a little sweeter, softer, and more precious. you had spent almost a full two years juggling your classes, extracurriculars, and family and relationship issues, flitting between school and home and the hospital and then repeating it all over and over until you couldn’t even trace when you’d gone a bit insane. to you, it was something between a secret orchestration of the universe and an answered prayer to find yourself out here, surrounded by cicadas and under the scorching sun.

to him, it was everything he could have asked for, and more.

sumner lake state park had his favorite hues of greens, blues, and browns. and you were grateful, for mark frequently paused your impromptu hiking trip to shoot on his camera, leaving you moments to catch a breath and take in the views along the lakeshore.

the sun had set at half past eight. that was almost two hours ago, and two hours after the two of you had luckily scored a spot at the eastside campground. whoever made the original reservation would forever have no clue as to what they helped achieve by simply not showing up.

it was like a dream, except you were awake. it was like a movie, except you were the star. it was like a book, except it wasn’t all about love. it was all about mark lee.

he has one hand holding his mug and the other on your thigh. again, there’s the glint in his eyes, this time sourced from the small campfire he’s made. the summer night is hot enough, but mark had insisted. “for the ambiance,” he’d said, “for the memories.”

this is how the memory will go. for whenever you think back to this moment, you will always remember the glow of the fire reflected in his eyes, the buzz of cicadas, the sound of the lapping lake, and his hand on your thigh.

you take a swig of your soju, face scrunching at the initially bitter taste. setting your mug down, you lean back on the palms of your hands and look up towards the sky. it reminds you of the color pencil set you used to use as a kid, the black you’d always confuse for a dark navy and the dark navy you’d always confuse for the black. and dotted with a white color pencil were the stars, shining one by one, all too similar to the light in his eyes.

the water of the lake reminds you of him. the leaves of trees he’d dedicated countless rolls of film to reminds you of him. the singing of birds, as soft as his mindless humming, reminds you of him. the sweetness left by the soju in your mouth reminds you of him.

maybe the world felt a little lighter on your shoulders when you were with him, and everything seemed a little brighter because of his bright eyes and carefree smile. he makes you feel like you’re a kid whose imaginative color pencil drawings of her dreams spin off the paper and turn into reality. like a kid who, in her heart, only has space for hope for the future.

and you think, that must be what it means to love someone. to see everything in a different light, to see only the best of situations, of people, of the world around you. and ultimately, to love the world, everybody in it, every thing ever created, because you love him.

and so when he draws the next card, it’s the most ridiculous question ever.

“how did you get over your first love?”

you laugh a little, then gulp down the rest of the soju in your mug. wincing at the taste, you decide that it would do no harm whatsoever to be a little more honest with mark. compared to the first day you stepped in his car, back into his life, you now have a very good idea of how mark had changed, how he knew how to handle your feelings with care this time around. it’s a newfound trust, and you plan on exercising it.

looking him straight in the eye, you cock your head a bit to the left as if considering the thing you already knew you were to say. “i don’t think i’ve ever gotten over you.”

mark has no reaction. he just stares at you for longer and longer, until you tilt your head to the other side and he seems to remember that time hasn’t stopped for him. suddenly he’s also downing the rest of his soju, throwing his head back and gulping it down thickly.

truth be told, he used to be intimidated by the honesty with which you always spoke, but he thinks he gets it now. whether it be with other people or with himself, mark feared that the truth about his feelings, his pridefulness, or the nature of his insecurities weakened him. but at the end of the day, what good has avoiding the truth done for him? it was through losing the most sincere person in his life that he realized being forthright and overcoming the fear, the uncomfortableness, and sometimes the displeasure of being honest, made him all the stronger.

and it’s with these thoughts that mark is able to muster up the courage to regain your gaze with all the softness in the world. maybe it had a little to do with the alcohol in his system, but the words seem to slip right out of him. “i don’t think i’ve ever gotten over you either.”

you hold your gaze for only a few moments longer, for shortly after processing his words you break out into a grin so wide, mark can’t help but think the alcohol’s gotten to you too. and then you’re laughing a bit — whether out of relief or bewilderment, he can’t tell — but he’s glad. mark is glad to hear your honest answer, glad to give an honest answer back. he watches as you fully recline on the air mattress in the trunk of his car, looking onwards adoringly. there’s really no way to tell if he’s feeling this giddy because he’s drunk or because for the first time, there is no need to suppress his feelings for you. mark suspects it’s both, at the same time, in full effect.

he grabs another card, reads it for all of two seconds. mark leans over to where you’re peering up at him and, smiling fondly, he tells you to, “close your eyes for a sec.” you think of the campfire, the cicadas, and the lake, but when you recall this night in memory, this exact moment is what you remember most vividly.

it was bound to happen. you just didn’t know it’d happen like this.

the air mattress isn’t uncomfortable, per se; it’s just that it feels hot against your skin. chills run down the length of your spine, but it isn’t the doing of the wind from the half-open windows. it’s mark lee and his lips on yours. his hand comes up to your arm feverishly, barely grazing it, and more chills ripple from wherever the rings on his fingers ghost your skin.

mark stops for a moment. takes a breath. looks back up and peers into your eyes. he kisses you again.

you don’t know what to do except kiss him back. he has both hands on you now, the one on your arm and the other one on your neck. and he keeps kissing you, lips molding to yours with slips of his tongue here and there, gentle and prodding. he’s scared. for what exactly? he doesn’t know. maybe for his life.

his life, that you seem to be holding in your hands, the same hands that are now making their way around his waist. mark can’t breathe. the skin at the back of your neck is warm and soft to the touch, but he already knew that. he’s known it for so long. everything about you is familiar to him like a well-worn book or the lines of his favorite song. the sound of your voice is so low when the briefest of groans escapes you, but to mark it’s almost predictable. this is the you that he knows, the you that he couldn’t forget, the you that he lost.

mark can’t breathe, and so he stops kissing you. he mumbles an embarrassed, “i’m sorry.” he buries his head into your shoulder. he thinks he loves you. he knows he does.

but he can’t bring himself to say it out loud.

out of fear, he can’t tell you he loves you. it’s not the same fear that held him back from sharing any vulnerable side of himself with you, but instead the fear of losing you. even as you admit your lingering feelings and kiss him back like you’d never stopped, mark is filled with the fear of how overbearing he’d be if he fully leaned into his desire for you. he can imagine himself, in this same moment but in a million different universes, and in each one he messes up.

in one, he moves too fast by saying the words but he’s got the timing all wrong, and all of a sudden his feelings are a burden to you whose own feelings lack the depth of his. in another, he never says them at all, and this night marks the last of any intimacy he’ll receive for the rest of his life. in all of these universes, he knows why he kissed you, but he doesn’t know what you meant when you kissed him back. in all these universes, he wants, more than anything, to do right by you.

“sorry for what?”

mark lifts his head up to look you in the eye, and when he still fails to say a word, you tease him a bit to lighten the suddenly dour look on his face. “for kissing me? really?”

to your delight, he chuckles at that and shakes his head lightly.

you can tell he has a lot on his mind, but his neck and ears are flushed red and you don’t mean to use his inebriation to pry the words out of him. you pat the empty side of the bed, “lay down, we should get some sleep.”

slowly and cautiously, he moves to the spot next to you. laying down flat on his back and staring at the darkened ceiling of his car, mark wonders if this is the universe where nothing happens at all and he misses his chance completely. he sinks into this feeling and almost lets it consume him whole when he realizes he’s the only person who has the ability to change that.

the blanket the you bought earlier in the day has been discarded by your feet, the summer heat imanent even in the dead of night. you don’t know how to process what just happened, and you don’t get a chance to. a warmth is felt along your side before you realize mark’s arms have found their way around your waist, bringing you closer to him. he nuzzles his face into the sleeve of your shirt, eyes closed and humming in satisfaction.

his voice is barely discernible when he mumbles, “i’m sorry if that caught you by surprise.”

the sound of cicadas chirping just outside fills the space between his apology and your forgiveness. “it’s okay. i didn’t mind it.”

mark shifts his position a little. he places a small kiss at the base of your neck. “do you mind this, then?”

though his eyelids remain heavy and all his words are slurred together, he’s more alert than he has been all day. he doesn’t hear your small laugh so much as he feels it pulse against him, and it fills him with much joy. perhaps this has been his superpower all along, changing his universe in small and big ways, however he desires. perhaps, as long as he is true to himself and honest with his feelings, he will always find a way to have you close by his side, feeling every rise and fall of your breath.

that night, in the brief moments before sleep overcomes him mark decides that he will create a universe where you are his, happily, rightfully, and fatefully.

「 DAY 05, 1:44 AM 」 — JUST TELL ME YOU LOVE ME

number three on mark’s bucket list — the one he made in his sophomore year of college — is to one day visit the svalbard islands. located in the arctic circle, the northernmost town in the world, called longyearbyen, goes about half a year without sunlight during its dark season. it is there that mark wishes to undergo the challenge of photographing in almost complete darkness, something he’s never quite been able to catch the hang of.

number four on his bucket list is to start a company that produces camera gear for his own needs, and for the needs of the many people he’s inspired with his work. number five on his bucket list is to buy an old ass subaru manual transmission wrx and fix it up until it’s perfectly to his liking.

out of all these ambitions listed on his bucket list that mark had told you about way back then – the previously mentioned visiting of all the national parks and forests, shooting in svalbard, starting a camera gear company, and owning a wrx — he’d neglected to tell you what tops his list at number one.

after two years, his bucket list remains unchanged, even the mystery number one: to complete everything on his list with you.

when you had asked a few days prior why mark hadn’t bothered moving out of nyc as it no longer served his needs, he had said you were the one reason he couldn’t part with the city. it had made you frustrated as to why he kept you in the equation even after your relationship came to a close, but more so confused as to why he still held you to such importance.

you had spent the many months after the break up working hard at keeping your life together, removing all emotions, situations, and people that stood in the way of your priorities at the time, which were school and family. while that still holds true for you, mark’s priorities hadn’t changed either; you have continued to be a priority of his to this very day. and only now, when he’s right in front of you, do you realize this.

maybe it had been your insistence on moving on from him that you believed all his actions were nothing more than displays of his latent guilt. he’d send boxes of protein drinks to your front door, salves and balms for cracked skin, and woven hats for your mom who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time. and for you, there’d be the occasional uber eats ramen or chicken noodle soup that would arrive at your doorfront unprompted, and especially right at the times when you were up studying all night.

under suspicion, you had stopped complaining to haechan whenever you were feeling particularly tired or hungry, and the late night meals that were sent to your house lowered in frequency, and weren’t as punctual to your needs. mark wasn’t outright with anything, never showed up himself, or contacted you personally, but he wasn’t exactly discreet either.

only you, haechan, and mark knew your door code, for you hadn’t bothered to changed it after he moved out as there was no apparent need to. after the lightbulb in your kitchen went out and you had asked haechan a favor to buy you one at the nearest hardware store, you came home later that day to find it already fixed. knowing haechan was also busy with school and wouldn’t go to such lengths without further bribing, you had surmised it was mark and decided to put it to the test. the next time when your shower faucet started leaking, you mentioned it in passing to haechan and before the end of the week, it was good as new.

could it have counted as breaking and entering? that’s debateable. but you were aware of it and yet did nothing about it, rendering it legal at the very least. back then, you had given the vitamin supplements he had sent to your house to your mom, eaten every meal he bought you, and accepted all his covert services without a second thought, because you were firm in your belief that any form apology sent your way was useless in repairing the relationship you had put to a stop. you might as well accept it, move on, and wait until the day mark was no longer ridden with guilt, and no longer felt the need to perform such acts out as a result.

that day never came, and it’s evident to you in retrospect that he did nothing out of guilt, but everything out of care, for your health, your well-being, and safety. his care, simply, for you.

it’s evident to you in the way mark exceled in his role as the passenger princess the entire day. after he lost another argument to you, you finally found yourself behind the wheel which, somehow, felt like the safest seat in his car. he fed you snacks, kept you entertained, put on all your favorite songs, and navigated the both of you safely to the white sands national park in new mexico.

mark kept an extra pair of sunglasses in the central console of his car. mark also had facial oil blotting papers in the glove box. in the trunk, there was an extra pair of sandals in your size, and a set of two fold-out camping chairs. the way he never stopped caring, it was as if you never broke up with him.

there is no city in the world that mark would rather live in, if you are not there. there is no national park he would ever visit, if you are not with him. he would freeze to death in the northernmost city in the world, without your warmth beside him. he would run his company to the ground without your input, and his favorite wrx becomes just another car without you in the passenger seat. all his life goals lose their meaning in your absence. this is how it’s always been for mark. this is why you are a priority to him.

even with his sunglasses on, the white sands were exceptionally bright. for the duration of 45 minutes, mark had guided you along the dunes drive, a scenic eight mile drive through the famed gypsum dunefield. the road conditions were harsher the farther you went along, and so he instructed you into the nearest parking lot, and swapped seats with you before going on. mark held your hand while driving, and he also squeezed it whenever he inevitably hit a bump here and there, as if in apology, as if it was his fault.

mark had kissed you again, with nothing but the white sands and blue skies in the backdrop. he’d taken pictures of you, using up his most expensive film stock on your priceless smile. he’d paid for the motel too, knowing you hadn’t initially wished for the trip to be more than three days, but wanting you to stay for yet another.

all of this has you wondering if you have it in you to care for him the way he cares for you.

you wonder how much importance he holds to you, how much of your heart you’d be willing to give to him, where your love for him would take you if you set it free.

as it turns out, your unanswered questions would be answered in the wee hours of the following morning. this is after mark had driven another six hours to ensure you would be able to make it to los angeles by the day after that to help with last minute preparations for your sister’s wedding.

you are in miami, a city in which — up until the last hour of your life — you had no idea existed outside of florida. you are in arizona, a state in which you would never have had a reason for visiting, if not for mark lee.

you are in a room, at the two-star rated el rey motel. and now you are in the bathroom, dimly lit by the dispersed light of a plastic water bottle placed atop your phone flashlight. you are in the bathtub, and though the water’s no longer hot, the temperature maintains its warmth from the heat emanating off your body. alongside mark lee’s.

it’s a forced darkness; the single lightbulb was out, and the early hour meant the motel staff had already retired for the night. with only one weak light source, the darkness of the room sets a tension so high that both of you are afraid to speak, much less move. but you put it upon yourself to break the tension, as it was your idea in the first place. bathing together.

the silence and the darkness combined makes it so every movement and every breath is unmistakeable and pronounced. the same applies to the sound of your voice when you start to speak, “thank you.”

all of a sudden, mark repositions himself. you can barely see it, but you hear the water sloshing and you feel it move about you. he’s sat across the tub, and you find it fascinating that even without light, his eyes still manage to shine. looking into them, you resume, “thank for everything you did, after we broke up.”

you can hear him swallow. the more you talk, the more you feel the tears pricking at your eyes, your emotions rising as you continue to speak, “and thank you driving me across the country, and for always being considerate, and for apologizing, and for…” your voice lowers to a bare whisper, “...everything. for everything you have ever done for me.”

“you don’t… you don’t have to thank me for anything.”

whereas your tears are at the precipice of falling, you notice that mark has begun crying. they’re silent, the way his tears roll down his left cheek. the water around you shifts, ebbs and flows, as you move closer to him and reach a useless wet hand to wipe his tears. you keep your hand on his cheek. and again, mark finds that he can hardly breathe, “i did it all… i did all of it, because i…”

mark breathes a sharp inhale, the air struggling to squeeze past the three words that remain lodged in his throat. he’s twenty-four now, and he’s still scared of the dark. but by no means is he scared of the monsters under his bed. without light, a camera has to resort to longer exposure times to piece together a full picture. without light, the human eye has to dilate to capture more of what is right in front of it. if his exposure is set too low and if his eyes fail to dilate, all that will remain will be a blurry image, uncertainty as to what was, nothing when there was actually everything.

here in this bathroom, where there is nothing but you and him and a million unsaid truths, mark finds that he is terrified of losing what’s right in front of him to the darkness. again, he is most fearful of losing you.

both of your hands now cup his cheeks, bringing his face in line with your own. he has his arms around you, and you can feel his fingers pruning on the skin of your waist. you think you have an idea of what he’s about to say, was about to say, but you’re scared he won’t say it. with nothing but a thin veil of air between your noses, you decided to help him overcome his fears.

“i think we feel the same way about each other.” please say it to me.

mark blinks, breaks the stare, looks away, upwards, to the side, “we can’t possibly feel the same…”

he sounds almost exasperated, in the most diminished sense, but you push again, “even then, i don’t mind,” just tell me you love me.

“we can’t possibly feel the same…” mark returns your gaze again, and you watch as his pupils dilate, “because there’s no way you love me as much as i love you.”

the veil of air between your two noses lifts as you lean in for a kiss. a small one. one that says, i will always love you.

of all the things water could symbolize, the water in this bathtub surrounding the two of you represents life, the life that was breathed back into your relationship. this is owed to truth, which is a funny thing for it often hides in plain sight. a year ago at the lake, where the sun had touched every surface on the face of the earth, it had not bothered to dig deeper than that. it is only in the darkness that the truth has nowhere to hide. and if mark had been fearful of the dark moments ago, it is for this reason that he isn’t anymore.

「 DAY 06, 1:18 PM 」 — LIKE WE JUST MET

the trunk of his beloved subaru crosstrek slams shut from behind. mark winces. the car door of the passenger seat slams shut shortly after. mark winces once again, and complains rather brashly, “can you not do that every time you get in my car?”

“you’re late. we’re late. can we just get going already?”

mark huffs, turning his attention to the front because the both of you are at fault. you, for not treating his baby with love and care. and him, for picking you up almost twenty minutes after he was supposed to. the wedding venue was an hour away including traffic, and now mark had only forty minutes to not jeopardize the state of his new old relationship.

he’s all but broken your neck by the time you arrive — only five minutes late — after accelerating and braking as aggressively as was necessary to get you to your destination.

while you collect your belongings, mark exits the car, straightens out his tux, and makes his way over to your side of the car, pulling the door open for you. you meet him with a glare while clambering out the car, “you’re lucky nothing’s started yet.”

with you as the maid of honor and with him as just your plus one, he spends most of the time idling around and mingling with acquaintances he hasn’t seen in ages, whilst you headed to the suites of the beachside resort to help your sister get ready. mark is shocked, more than he has been in the past week, to find out that you hadn’t told a single relative that you’d broken up with him in the first place. still, he plays his role as “boyfriend for almost three years” quite well.

throughout the rest of the day, mark notices a few things.

1) you like the venue, a lot. a summer wedding on the beach, with pastels and flowers and the wind in everyone’s hair. and since you’d commented on these things more than once, mark made sure to commit it to memory for future reference.

2) your sister made a face at you before turning around and throwing the bouquet, which you caught. did everyone think he was supposed to propose right then and there? he doesn’t know, but something about the way your sister had regarded him the whole night makes him nervous. as in the “meeting the in-laws” kind of nervous.

3) lastly, you were more beautiful that you were yesterday. but also, yesterday you were more beautiful than you were the day before. mark had recognized this ongoing phenomena ever since you’d stepped in his car, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a cap to his admiration for you. at this point, it’s like he’s just waiting for any day now where it gets out of hand and he does propose.

it’s on the dance floor where this last point becomes very apparent to him. you’re laughing at everything he’s saying, eyes beaming up at him as he sways you this way and that. when he leans down to plant a kiss to your forehead, mark swears the smile you give in return could save lives with just how radiant it is. he feels a bit silly, like he’s gone a little crazy, but mark knows that the next wedding he’s going to will be his.

and it’s as if your minds communicated on a frequency that only the other could hear, as just the next moment you whisper in his ear.

“us next?”

✧ author's life update — honestly who knew i would get back into writing ff... basically i graduated from high school, got into a few t20 colleges, lost a parent to cancer, gained a parent, lost two best friends, broke up with my long term boyfriend, got my license, turned legal, AND saw the dreamies in concert. so if anyone's wondering why i left.... i'm just glad to say i'm so bored that i'm back. and yes this fic is mostly a self-indulgent account of what i wish my relationship and family life turned out to be but the moral of this story really is: if you're emotionally unstable, seek professional help before relying too much on your s/o. unless they are, of course, mark lee.

sources wnrs card game wnrs free deck (shhh) upmc pinnacle colon and rectal surgery center brockhampton saturation ii track 16 one star relax inn review little crazy love song alley spring mill the flea holiday inn at ok my fav tea that got me thru this wendy’s in amarillo sumner lake state park svalbard wikipedia things to do at white sands national park new mexico el rey motel

#mark lee fluff #mark lee scenarios #nct scenarios #think this just changed the trajectory of my life forever

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urmeio · 8 months

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This is the people you're siding with, these are the Israeli settlers.

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urmeio · 9 months

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wanted to post these here too

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urmeio · 9 months

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oh wait i want to be a hater. the stupid fucking phenomenon on th of people using those cutesy graphics for trigger warnings is literally one of the most annoying things ever just fucking have a LISTTTTT of things that someone can easily read instead of having to look at cute pixel art gifs with the text PHYSICAL ABUSE right beneath

#THIS IS TAKING ME OUTTTT HELP ME

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urmeio · 9 months

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wanted to post these here too

#character design #original character #oc art #my sona #chri's doodles

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urmeio · 10 months

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now focus on me 📺 only u & me

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urmeio · 10 months

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HEE HOO HEE HOO HEE HOO HEE HOO

it takes 2 to mango

pairing . beomgyu x gn! reader (ft. yunjin of le sserafim) about . 12.2k words, fluff + angst warnings . cursing, a lot of food mentions, kissing, mentions of murder/dying (it's all jokes), y/n is in denial half the time (about beomgyu and mangoes), it took me like 2 months to write this so it may be all over the place i'm sorry in advance

synopsis . after your parents drop you off at your aunt's, leaving you with your whole life packed in bags, all you can do is wonder when you'll finally be able to get back to your old life. except, of course, when a brown-haired boy makes you wonder if staying here isn't so bad after all. note . literally after 2 years of delay and many plot changes it's finally here!! happy (late) birthday @urmelo, i told you i would write it and it's here (albeit two months late but wtv). also i literally wrote this whole thing based on this image but halfway through i realized he's sitting in a classroom so my whole broadcast idea was stupid 😞 and this is slightly inspired by all of us are dead and f4thailand! i stole the mango pun from google tagging . @invuwrld @tocupid @mmmsvnts @seung-scrittore

You have never loathed mangoes more than this moment.

It’s only been a couple of hours since your parents dropped you off at your aunt’s house, your whole life packed into suitcases and a Hello Kitty backpack you’ve owned since fifth grade, and you’re already sick of this situation. You don’t even understand your parents’ thought process, because who would even leave their whole life behind to start a mango supply business in Thailand, and you’re even angrier at your aunt for encouraging it. Now, you’re forced to leave behind the comfort of your old life and start anew in the four walls of your new house, miles away from your parents and old friends.

You even hate the stupid smile on your mom’s face when you agreed to their plan. At least you’ll be somewhat rich when your parents decide to come home, however long that might take (hopefully it’s within the next five minutes or so).

“Y/N, let me know if you want to paint your walls, okay? Your uncle loves interior design, so he’ll be happy to organize your room.”

In your old house, your walls were a bright, cheery yellow. Now they’re a boring beige, reminiscent of the hospital walls you’ve always hated. It’s okay though, because now yellow will remind you of mangoes, and you’re just about ready to hurl something at the mere thought of the fruit.

“It’s okay Auntie,” you respond, tracing your finger across the indents of the walls, “I kind of like the beige.”

Your cousin Yeonjun snickers from behind your aunt, and you fight the urge to roll your eyes. Yeonjun is definitely the type to hate beige because even his personality shines a bright red flag. Even now, he’s on his phone, probably flirting with (code word for annoying) some poor soul.

“Okay, honey. Yeonjun can help you finish unpacking, and then he can take you to school so you can find your classes. Tomorrow is your first day, after all, I don’t want you to get lost.”

With that, she closes the door behind you, leaving the two of you in your drab room with no personality. Instead of helping you unpack, Yeonjun sits on the chair in the corner, typing away with no care in his mind.

“I thought you were supposed to help?” you huff, though it’s not angrily.

Even though you and your cousin were friends, at first forcibly due to your family relations and later willingly because he’s actually quite interesting, you know that he won’t hesitate to note whatever he can to have leverage over you. Already, he’s taken a picture of your backpack, and if he helps you unpack, he’ll definitely find the shark plushie you brought for the sentiment. It’s not out of malice; it’s just the way your relationship is, however annoying it may be.

“Like you need my help,” he scoffs, crossing one leg over the other as a means to get comfortable, “just let me know when you’re done.”

You survey the mess of your belongings scattered across the bed. It’ll probably take hours, if not days, to sort out properly, and even you are itching to leave this stuffy room and get some fresh air. You’ve sorted out what you need for the next few days, so you might as well revisit this mess later.

“Actually, we can go now. I kind of need a break anyway.”

“Goody-two-shoes Y/N needs a break? Are you in your rebel era?” he jokes, but he opens the door and sticks a leg out, leaving it open for you to walk through.

You smack him on the shoulder as you walk to his car, sitting shotgun and itching to put your feet on the dash. You’re an average kid and you do average things, but you’re not in the mood to argue and correct your cousin.

“Just shut up and drive.”

You kind of wish you stayed at home because even mangoes wouldn’t survive in this environment.

Actually, there’s nothing wrong with your new school. It seems even more modern and spacious than your old one, and it has way more amenities than you could even imagine. You can see yourself fitting in here quite well, and since Yeonjun is popular, it’ll be easy to make friends.

The only problem is that the air conditioner isn’t working today, which means it’s extremely hot in the building. The hot sun outside paired with the lack of cool air means the whole building could resemble the Sahara Desert, and you wish you’d worn something more fitting for the weather, like the tank top Yeonjun has on right now (although, he seems to have other motives for wearing it). The sweat beads trickle down your forehead, and the only thing saving you right now is the popsicle your cousin was kind enough to buy for you. Unluckily, the gas station only had the mango flavor left.

“Yeonjun, are we done yet?” you ask, although it sounds more like a plea as you trudge along the hallways.

“Actually, no. We still have the science hallway, and the math hallway, and—”

A shrill noise fills the air, and you cover your ears shut and watch Yeonjun’s popsicle fall from his hands. Startled, the two of you find stability against the wall as the sound disappears and is replaced with crackling noises.

“Fuck, my popsicle!” Yeonjun exclaims, looking extremely disappointed as he grabs a tissue and cleans the mess up.

“Forget the popsicle, what was that? It’s a Sunday, who’s playing with the speakers?”

“It’s probably the media team preparing for the week’s announcements. Come, I’ll show you the broadcast studio.”

Yeonjun’s flip-flops squeak across the floor as you two walk, and in a matter of minutes, you reach a bright blue door next to the auditorium. Big block letters indicating which room it is are engraved on top, and Yeonjun knocks on the door repeatedly until it opens.

“I knew it was you,” a blue-haired boy answers, “you’re the only one annoying enough to knock that many times.”

“Hey! You should’ve answered faster.” Yeonjun protests as you giggle, glad you’re not the only one who finds your cousin annoying.

The boy pouts as he lets you two inside, and immediately you feel like you were cast into a recording studio. Shelves of CDs and books fill the sides, and behind the glass panel, a room full of microphones and levers peeks through. You feel like Radio Rebel in her bedroom, only intensified, and as you check out the large computer screens that line the walls, you find yourself imagining sitting in the center and being a part of whatever goes on behind the scenes here.

Your eyes cross over a brown-haired boy sitting at the table, headphones covering his plush hair and a teal highlighter in his hand. He’s looking down at a piece of paper, probably a script, and unknowingly you’re leaning forward to get a better look at his face before Yeonjun taps your shoulder and you straighten yourself.

“Y/N, this is Soobin,” Yeonjun gestures to the blue-haired boy, “and that over there is Beomgyu,” he continues, pointing to the boy at the desk.

Soobin smiles warmly, shaking your hand awkwardly as if this was a courthouse and not a classroom, but your eyes are more focused on Beomgyu. They’re focused on the way he taps the highlighter on his lips when he’s deep in thought, or when he adjusts his headphones when he’s satisfied with something. Yeonjun moves to interrupt him, probably to introduce you, but you hold him back so he can continue his work.

“Are you interested in joining?” Soobin asks, handing you a flyer, “we could always use more people.”

“I’m not that much of a speaker,” you respond, taking the handout anyway.

“You don’t need to be. We do more here than just talk, you know?”

As Soobin waves you goodbye, you take one last glance at the room, particularly Beomgyu, before you step out. You don’t know for sure whether you’ll join the club or not, but you have a feeling that you’ll be seeing him around pretty soon.

You might hate your alarm clock more than you hate mangoes, but at least it’s useful.

It’s the first day at your new school, but you’re not really jumping for joy. School is school wherever you go, and you don’t really feel the excitement or jitters someone would usually feel after transferring. You’re just about ready to pass through the rest of the year as smoothly as possible and hopefully not gain unwanted attention as the resident new kid. You’re already suffering enough by joining after a whole semester; you don’t need to bring any more trouble to yourself.

“Y/N, are you ready?” Yeonjun yells from outside the house, revving the accelerator so you can hear his annoyance.

“Coming!” you yell back, grabbing your bag and rushing out the door, holding a half-eaten piece of toast and a glass of orange juice.

Yeonjun likes to go to school a little early so he can talk to his friends, but this was a fact you didn’t know until five minutes ago. In an ideal situation, you wouldn’t have been rushing on your first day, but your cousin never makes things easy for you. At least he didn’t drive off without you.

Yeonjun attempts to lecture you about your lateness in the car, but you tell him to pay attention to the road and stuff the toast in your mouth. One thing you won’t let your cousin disturb you about is food, so you’re glad he calms down and lets you enjoy a peaceful ride to school.

You’re finishing your orange juice as he pulls into the student parking lot. He has a spot reserved for him, apparently, and the fact seems to be true as he parks in the space with “YEONJUN” decorated in bright red spray-paint letters. He puts on sunglasses as he exits the car, and you’re extremely glad he doesn’t have fans swooning over him in front of his car because you don’t know how much more you can take. Who does he think he is?

Thankfully, the air conditioner seems to be working this time around because as soon as you enter through the front doors, a blast of cool air hits you in the face. It’s only January, but the sun outside doesn’t seem to be taking a break this week, so you’re grateful for the human wonder that is A/C. Yesterday’s empty halls are now filled with students, and already Yeonjun is dragging you off to introduce you to some new people. You’re just glad he has pink hair because otherwise, you would’ve lost him.

By the time you reach your first class, your mind is riddled with names of people you’ll probably never talk to again. You’ve met at least three Jaehyuns, a Yunjin and a Yujin and another Han Yujin, two Jisungs, and many more students you definitely won’t remember. If you were on your own, it would’ve taken you a whole year to talk to this many people, but with a semi-superstar by your side, it only took ten minutes. You’re just glad your presence seems to be well-received.

Your first class is math, and already you find yourself falling asleep. A stack of books finds its way onto your desk, a textbook for everything you could need, and you can foresee yourself sleeping in to skip this terrible class. The only good sight about this class is Mr. Kim, who’s nice and tries to be entertaining, but there are only so many ways you can make numbers and formulas fun. At least the girl sitting in front of you, Yunjin from earlier, helps you pass the time by doodling her number on the margins of your notebook.

Bored and half asleep, you trudge your way to your second class, history. You’re grateful your cousin helped you find your way across the school yesterday, because your class is across the school in a corner you wouldn’t have even known existed. Unlucky for you, Mrs. Jung isn’t as nice or entertaining as Mr. Kim, but just before you can succumb to slumber, the intercom buzzes.

The morning announcements play, but instead of Soobin’s voice, you hear someone unfamiliar.

“Hey everyone, happy Monday! It’s the beginning of the week, which means we have a long road ahead, but I believe in each and every one of you to get through it. We’re only a couple of weeks from break, which is an exciting thought to look forward to…”

You realize halfway through that the voice is Beomgyu’s, and you don’t know what it is about his voice, but it seems to be perfect for starting off the announcements. He seems to be tasked with maybe a desperate attempt to cheer up the student body on a dreary Monday, but they seem to be doing the job because you feel much lighter than before the announcements. Others seem to feel the same way too, because the atmosphere in the once stale, cornered history classroom is now bright and jolly. You honestly wish you had listened to the full script he had prepared, but either because of your previous fascination or his soft, honeylike voice, you find it hard not to be lulled to dreamland.

After, he's followed by Soobin, who talks about the daily updates and the weather, and you wonder how he manages to sound so upbeat and cheery this early in the morning. He then passes the mic to a boy named Taehyun, who voices important announcements and leads the school pledge before the mic crackles off.

You can’t stop thinking about Beomgyu for the rest of the class period, so when he slides into the empty seat next to you halfway through the lesson, you think you must be imagining things. It’s like he’s glowing, as if a dreamy filter spans across his face. You stare at him until he stares back and raises an eyebrow, a quirk to show his feelings of confusion. He throws a rolled-up piece of paper at you, and when you catch it, you realize he’s very much real.

Bit by bit, you unfold the paper, and in scratchy handwriting, he’s written ‘Am I that interesting?’ in all caps. Your face feels like it’s on fire, and you tuck the paper in between the crease of your notebook, filled with doodles of Beomgyu’s name. You quickly shut it, hoping he didn’t see it, and avoid his gaze for the rest of the period.

Unluckily for you, fate doesn’t seem to be on your side because as soon as the bell rings, Beomgyu is reaching out to grab your elbow. You think you’re utterly and absolutely fucked, and you’re even more mortified when he links elbows with you and leads you out of the classroom.

“What’s your next class?” he prods, and you only answer after he asks a second time because you’re too embarrassed to register anything.

“English, with Mr. Yoon. Look, I’m sorry about before, I thought I was dreaming—”

“Dreaming? Are you in love with me or something?” he asks, and even though the question is accusatory, his smooth voice makes it sound like music to your ears.

“No!” you exclaim, a little too loudly that you have to apologize to the teachers standing in the hallway before continuing, “Look, I was falling asleep in Mrs. Jung’s class, okay? Since the seat next to me was empty beforehand, I thought you were a random daydream that I was making up to distract myself. I genuinely didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable with my staring or anything, I just didn’t know you were real until you threw that ball at me.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” he responds, his features softening at your explanation, “her class is pretty boring anyway. You’re new here, right? Yeonjun’s cousin? I’m Beomgyu.”

“I’m Y/N, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. You’re a little weird, you know that?” he remarks, laughing as he walks you to class.

You look down at your linked elbows and his goofy skipping. His observance is contradictory, but somehow, his weirdness is a little endearing to refute.

“Yeah, but you’re a little weird too. We cancel each other out, I guess.”

As soon as you step into the production room, you’re cast with the smell of mangoes. Seriously, those damned fruits seem to be following you, and you can never seem to escape them.

“Y/N! Hi! Welcome!” Soobin greets, ushering you into the room and grabbing you a seat, “We’re so happy to have you.”

It’s the next Thursday, a week after the dreaded daydream incident, and you’ve decided to show up to the broadcast meetings. You’ve been toying with the idea of joining ever since you walked into the room on Sunday, but it was Beomgyu’s insistence yesterday that really pushed you over the cliff of uncertainty.

“We have a lot of fun there. You don’t even have to speak on the morning announcements to be a part of it! We do much more than that, like run the newspaper and manage the yearbook. There’s a place for everyone, Y/N, you won’t regret joining.”

Even now, he waves warmly from the seat next to you. You’ve been talking frequently these days, partially because he’s in quite a few of your classes and partially because he’s part of a group chat Yeonjun added you to. He’s interesting to talk to and he always makes you laugh, and being around him makes you feel warm and fuzzy. Like your initial observance, he’s a little weird and goofy too, but it makes him all the more delightful.

You’re not crushing on him, of course. He’s a nice person to pass the time with during and after school. Besides, your friends at home are much better; he’s just a placeholder.

“Have some cake, Y/N!” Soobin insists, pushing a plate toward you, “It’s mango flavored!”

You smile hesitantly as you pick up the spoon and take a bite. It tastes good and you hate admitting it because mango is a good flavor; you just don’t like being reminded of the sentiment that comes along with it. You gaslight yourself into thinking it’s strawberry and finish the plate quickly, downing your water bottle straight after.

“Was it good?” Beomgyu asks, his voice a little hard to hear due to the conversations of next week’s script being tossed around behind him, “I got it from a bakery near my house. We actually have a snack at every club meeting, and this week was my turn to bring it.”

“Yeah, it was good. I’m just not really fond of mango,” you respond, already cringing at the words coming out of your mouth.

“You don’t like mango? Who doesn’t like mango?” Beomgyu voices, responding exactly how you expected him to.

“Me. I just don’t.”

Beomgyu drops the topic at your insistence and talks about the club instead, introducing you to some of the members. Taehyun, the boy from the announcements, is president, and Soobin is vice president. You learn that Beomgyu does a little bit of everything, and you try not to smile as he blushes when his friends list out his talents.

“Is Yeonjun not part of the club?” you ask after he’s introduced you to one of the many Jaehyuns part of the management team, “you guys seem to be good friends.”

“He was initially, but he has modeling lessons on Thursday so he can’t make it. He’s more like an honorary member, to be honest, but he helps us out a lot.”

You hum in agreement, meeting another Jaehyun (why are they all so attractive?) and rounding the corner to talk to Taehyun.

“I’ll leave you with Tae. He’ll help you figure out which team you’re best suited for.”

Taehyun pulls out a chair for you as Beomgyu walks away, and you can immediately see why he’s president. He’s a little reserved but he’s domineering, and he seems perfect for managing things behind and in front of the scenes.

“So, Y/N, did you have anything in mind when you were joining?”

“No, not really. I’m not very talkative though, and I don’t know how to handle a camera.”

“Yeah, Beomgyu also mentioned those things. I think you’ll be a good fit for the newspaper, based on first impression. Editors mostly work on the scripts and I think you’ll find it interesting. Come, I’ll introduce you to the head.”

He introduces you to Yunjin, the girl from your math class, and she helps you get the editing software and drive set up. Yunjin tells you that she’s the type of person who has a lot to say, and writing is a powerful outlet for her because it allows her to explore topics she’s passionate about. You don’t exactly know if you relate to her thought process, but it does make you feel a little excited.

“Is Beomgyu also part of the editing team?” you ask, mainly out of curiosity because you saw him revising the script on Sunday.

“Ah, kind of. He floats around between everything so I guess I could say that he is. Would you like to read some of his work?” she asks, pulling out a newspaper article from a stack in the corner, “Last issue, he wrote the front page spread dissing the school lunch menu. It might seem silly, but it was actually a huge hit, and honestly, the food has even gotten better since.”

You skim through the newspaper, and the interactive, colorful parts draw your gaze in. Elements like the pie chart, bolded words, and quotes make the article worth reading, and you can already tell from skimming the text that Beomgyu is a good writer. You flip through the rest, reading the story headlines and noting that some are serious, some are current, and some are merely just for entertainment. Even throughout the rest of the spreads, you can tell the writers put effort into making sure the newspaper is actually catered to the student population, and you can already imagine yourself publishing an issue of your own in the near future.

“Since you’re new, you can help Beomgyu out with his new piece. Let’s take things slow, okay?”

You nod, turning to face Beomgyu. You don’t know what’s going on in that fascinating mind of his, but you’re excited to find out.

It’s been a busy few weeks since you’ve moved here. Unfortunately, school doesn’t slow down time for you, so you’ve had to handle piles of schoolwork on top of adjusting to your new environment, at school, and at home. Your aunt, for one, is double the amount of hyper your parents were, and it’s taken you a while to get adjusted to her presence. At least you’ve had Yeonjun to help you out.

The one thing that you’ve actually looked forward to at school is the broadcast club. Taehyun was right about you fitting the editor role, and you’ve grown to fit in quite well with the other members. Mainly, however, you spend most of your time with Beomgyu, often looking over his shoulder and bouncing off ideas he has and grammatical errors he needs to fix. The issue is a little satirical, making it fun to read, and you’ve enjoyed helping him out because he actually values your input and your experiences.

It's the reason why he invited you to come to school on Sunday. He thought working in a quieter environment would help you two brainstorm better, and you agreed. You’ve been busy all week working on collecting student opinions for him, and today, he hopes you two can get a significant portion of the article complete.

Unlike the first Sunday you were here, the air conditioning is actually on now, but you still feel a little sweat prickling at the top of your forehead. You’re nervous because this is the first time you’ve actually been alone with Beomgyu, without anyone else nearby to mitigate your nerves. You’re scared about screwing up in front of him, or even worse, floating off into dreamland, but hopefully, you’ll be able to concentrate on your work and keep your thoughts at bay. If anything goes wrong, you can just blame it on his sweet voice.

You’re at least thankful Yeonjun hasn’t caught wind of how you two met, because he would never stop holding it over your head.

You knock three times on the blue door and Beomgyu pulls it open, wearing a bright grin on his face. He’s in a hoodie and sweats, a little bit more casual than his school attire, but somehow it just makes him more attractive. Combined with his dimples, he resembles a teddy bear, and you’re honestly surprised he hasn’t joined the modeling industry like your cousin. He’d make so much money as a loungewear model, you just know it.

“Hey, come in! I just got here, so I’ve been working on some scripts for the next week. You can get your stuff sorted while I finish.”

You nod, pulling the papers out of your bag and opening your laptop. Your mission for the week was to interview students regarding the article. You don’t know if he’ll like them, but hopefully, you’ve got some good anecdotes for Beomgyu to include in his writing.

Or, apparently not.

“Beomgyu.”

“Hmm?” he asks, looking up from his paper.

“I accidentally grabbed Yeonjun’s bag. I left the data at home, I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe how stupid I am; how could I even forget something this important?”

“Hey, Y/N,”

“I just knew something was going to go wrong today, and I was so scared I was going to fuck things up and I did, and—”

“Y/N!”

You stop in your tracks, eyes wide and close to tears. You’re usually not this sensitive at all, but this means a lot to you, working with Beomgyu means a lot to you, and you don’t want to lose all of this over your stupidity and inattentiveness. However, Beomgyu looks far from angry, and he has his hands on your shoulders, rubbing them to calm you down.

“It’s okay. You’re all good. We have so much more time until the deadline, so don’t beat yourself up, okay? We can just hang out and have fun. Look, I even brought you some mochi from the corner store!”

He shows you the packet, and the bright yellow color is enough to have you burst into tears.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asks, looking at the packet, “it’s mango flavored. Oh! You don’t like mango. I’m so sorry, it slipped my mind. Forgive me?”

You sniffle, bringing him into a hug. The mochi wrapper crinkles between you as you put your head on his shoulder, clutching onto him as a means to calm you down. Beomgyu stills for a moment, probably out of shock before patting your back, albeit awkwardly yet reassuring.

“Sorry,” you mumble, “I didn’t mean to have a breakdown like that. I just didn’t want you to hate me. And I’ll eat the mango mochi, don’t worry.”

“I could never hate you, Y/N.”

“You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks; how could you say that?”

“Because even in the short time I’ve known you, I can tell how much of an amazing person you are. You’re bright and talented, and I love spending time with you, so stop apologizing, okay? It was just an accident.”

“Okay, I will,” you whisper, stepping back, “So, what now?”

“We could finish the mochi, for starters.”

You nod as you open the wrapper and take a bite. It’s tasty, so much so that you hate it, and you’re honestly five seconds away from letting go of your stupid grudge just to enjoy some fresh mango. However, your parents have plagued you enough with the fruit on their phone calls, which seems to hold your desires back well enough.

You stand to your feet as Beomgyu beckons you to follow him, wanting to show you something. He lets you in through the small door leading to the glass panel room, and you’re immediately illuminated by the huge screens around you. So much technology surrounds you, from microphones to switches to headphones, but you’re more intrigued by the feedback noise that emits once Beomgyu twists a knob, similar to the one you heard when you first got here.

“Does it usually make that noise when you turn it on?” you ask, walking around the room.

“Yeah, it’s a little bit annoying. That’s why we have to keep it turned on before school starts.”

“I figured. I heard it when I came here with Yeonjun before my first day.”

Beomgyu turns to you with an expression of mild surprise.

“I think Soobin and I were here that day. You should’ve visited us.”

“We did. We talked to Soobin, but you were working on something so we didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Is that why you thought I was in your daydream the day after?”

You feel like you’re on fire, and you look away from him. You didn’t expect Beomgyu to be this perceptive, but it was probably your fault for walking straight into this.

“Umm. Yeah, kind of. It’s embarrassing,” you say, covering your face with your palms.

“It’s not,” he responds, tapping your shoulder, “it’s actually kind of cute. Now that you’re in this room with me again, will I be in another one of your daydreams? I loved feeling like a celebrity.”

You mentally shrivel in humiliation, cringing when he lets out a laugh. If Yeonjun is a tease, then Beomgyu is most definitely a menace.

You are extremely close to falling asleep.

Currently, you’re sunbathing on one of Yunjin’s many beach chairs. They’re colorful and the sun shines ever so gently on your face, so the setting is perfect for you to take a nap. Too bad you’re at a pool party and not in your backyard, and Yunjin just might murder you if you drift off to dreamland after all the hard work you’d put into setting things up.

It’s spring break, which means one whole week of warm sun rays and well-needed rest. The newest issue of the magazine was published yesterday, and particularly this time around, it seemed to be quite popular amongst the student population. The group decided to throw a party to celebrate all the hard work that’s gone into publishing, and what other location would it be at than Yunjin’s gigantic mansion?

You’re particularly proud of Beomgyu’s hard work because his spread was absolutely stunning, but he merely brushed it off and thanked you for helping him when you thanked him earlier. He can be calm and graceful like that at times, like a soft breeze. Now, however, you turn to your side to see him sipping a mocktail on the chair next to you, donned in sunglasses and shark-decorated swim shorts, the farthest thing from serene.

“What flavor is that?” you ask, your voice tinged with sleep, “Actually, never mind. It’s probably mango.”

He laughs, and it’s so, so pretty. If you had to pick one sound to hear for the rest of your life, you’d take your chances on that.

“It is, but it’s kind of watery. I’m gonna save it for later though,” he starts, turning to face the pool and pointing at Taehyun.

“What about him?” you ask, craning your head to see him lounging in the pool with a duck floatie.

“If I cannonball into the pool, just how drenched do you think he’ll be?”

Your cries are practically unheard as you watch Beomgyu jump into the pool, absolutely obliterating not only Taehyun but also poor, unsuspecting Soobin next to him. Ten minutes later, after receiving a well-deserved scolding from Taehyun and issuing apologies, Beomgyu slogs his way back to the chair on your left with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“That was definitely worth it.”

“It definitely was not,” you counter, sitting up and leaning against the back, “you’re literally such a nuisance. If I had known you were this terrible, I would not have become friends with you.”

“I mean, you technically didn’t choose. You can’t really help who you daydream about, right?”

You’re glaring daggers into him, but he’s cruel enough to still find the situation funny. You can’t believe he’s trying to hold back laughter even in this situation, but you probably shouldn’t have expected any better. Seriously, how did he go from the sweet-talker broadcast boy to the literal devil?

“Watch your words, or I will slice you up as I did to all the mangoes in Fruit Ninja last week.”

“Woah, chill,” he starts, putting his sunglasses back on and taking a sip of his watery mocktail, “why do you even hate mangoes? You talk about them as if they were your exes.”

“My parents left me here to start a mango business in Thailand,” you say, picking at the skin next to your thumbnail and wincing when it hurts.

Beomgyu spits out his drink in alarm, but you kind of saw it coming. You’ve noticed that he tends to exaggerate things a lot, but you guess it’s just part of his personality.

“Wow, that genuinely sucks. I’m really sorry; I shouldn’t have prodded.”

“It’s okay. I don’t tell people because it’s only temporary. I might not even be here next year.”

Two months ago, you would’ve been happy at the thought. Now, however, even mentioning it brings a pang of sadness to your chest. You’ve known your time here was momentary all along, so why do you feel guilty?

“Are you happy?” he says, his voice a lot quieter now, “I mean, would you want to stay here or go back?”

You want to tell him what you think is logical, and logically, your old home was much better than here. You practically grew up there, and the place suits you so well that you’re meant to be there. However, the words that rush out of your heart speak differently.

“I honestly don’t know. I like it here, but I like it there too. I’ll just enjoy my time here before I leave. I still have a while anyway.”

Beomgyu flips to the other side, away from your gaze before he speaks. If you weren’t listening carefully, you might’ve not been able to hear his words.

“I don’t want you to leave. I like it when you’re here.”

He sounds so soft and clingy that it almost makes you cry. Instantly, you know that no one has ever cared enough to share the same sentiment back at your old house.

Home. You should’ve called it home, but it doesn’t feel right anymore. You used to think that home was a physical feeling, a place where you were raised and nurtured. Home before was the walls of the building you spend the most time in, but now, it feels a little different.

No, home isn’t your old house. It isn’t your new house either, even if the beige has grown quite well to your liking. Home is sitting here on this beach chair, surrounded by your closest friends, and the feelings of warmth that surround you all. Home is an emotion, something you’ve never felt in the past years of your life until you moved here. Home is being surrounded by people who want you, just because you’re you and not because it would be convenient.

“I like being here too,” you whisper back, and although he has his back turned to you, you can still feel his smile.

“Then just tell your parents you want to stay here.”

You can’t tell him that your mindset has made you feel that this is all temporary. Ever since you moved here, you’ve felt like a ticking bomb, waiting for a single phone call to determine your fate. Once, you would’ve been able to answer that it’s where you belong. Now, you seem to question if it’s merely just an obligation.

“It’s not that simple, Beomgyu.”

He sighs, and as he turns back around to face you, you drape an arm over your eyes. You don’t want to feel the intensity of his glare, but even without your vision, you feel his eyes shooting daggers into your abdomen. If only life were as easy as being able to sense Beomgyu’s responses, for you would’ve been sipping margaritas on some island with your talents.

“Isn’t it? Or maybe, just maybe, you’re overcomplicating it.”

You sigh, unwilling to answer, and the conversation falls to a standstill. You hate thinking, especially about this, but eventually, Beomgyu’s words are going to catch up to you. Whatever the implications of this conversation are, you’re sure you won’t enjoy them.

Not one bit.

You’re walking home with Beomgyu a couple of days after break has ended, an unfamiliar scene for you. Usually, Yeonjun drives you home in his shiny car, but he had to stay back for some tutoring today and you were left ride-less. Thankfully, Beomgyu swooped in to save the day, saying he’d keep you company since he knew the route. You’d accepted quite freely, definitely because you didn’t want to rely on Google Maps and not because you liked spending time with him.

Spring is in full season, which means the walk home is filled with greenery and a lush breeze. You feel like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie, but as you turn to look at Beomgyu, you realize he’s more aptly fitted for the scenario.

His hair is fluttering slightly through the wind, and his side profile is so perfect that only an animation artist could’ve crafted it. Beautiful is the only word to describe him, and each glance you take becomes increasingly hard to look away from.

You like him. It’s not a realization that’s come from this moment, but rather a million moments beforehand. Whenever you try to pinpoint an exact moment, your mind runs blank, as if you were pre-programmed to have him in your heart since the beginning of your existence. You’d just been so immersed in convincing yourself that you didn’t that you never really accepted you did.

“Y/N,” you hear from his lips, “are you going to the spring dance?”

The spring dance is next week, and it’s all everyone has been talking about lately, especially Yunjin. Honestly, if the Jung Jaehyun asked you out (yes, you can finally differentiate between the multiple Jaehyuns), you wouldn’t shut up about it either, but you don’t have any interest in it otherwise. The only updates you hear are when you don’t tone out Yunjin in math (there’s only so much you can hear about his features), and you’re growing quite sick of the talk.

Mainly though, you’re just annoyed you have to go without a date. A certain someone always pops up in your mind when you think about the event, but you’re too shy to ask and he seems to be preoccupied with other things. Even if it’s going just as friends, you’d take the chance, but it doesn’t seem in your cards for the near future.

“Yeonjun is forcing me to. I’d much rather spend my Friday nights with a show, but it is what it is.”

“Oh, come on!” he protests, shaking his head, “it’s always super fun. You won’t regret coming.”

“I guess, but I don’t really know who to go with. Yeonjun has a date, and I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

Beomgyu fishes something out of his pockets and holds it out to you. Upon closer inspection, you realize it’s a rectangular mango drink, and you raise an eyebrow.

“I know, I know, but it’s still driving me crazy that you hate mango. I want to be the person that changes your opinion on it, okay? Whenever you think of mango, don’t think of your parents, think of me!”

You roll your eyes as you grab the drink and punch the straw in. You don’t want to admit it, but the gesture is sweet, and already your negative thinking is rewriting itself to include positive memories with Beomgyu.

“Whatever,” you say, attempting to take a sip out of the straw only to find it stuck, “is there something wrong with your straw? Mine isn’t working.”

“No, there isn’t,” he replies, confusion settling across his face, “is it blocked? There might be something inside.”

Sure enough, you peek through the hole to see something white stuck in the straw, and you try your hardest to pull it out with your fingers. The texture is a little rough and thin, almost paper-like, but sadly you fail to get it out.

“Can you actually not get it out?” he asks, looking worried.

“Yeah, but it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll just get another straw after I get home.”

“This cannot be happening right now.” he mutters, grabbing it from you and trying his hardest to squeeze out the object, “Of course I fucked this up.”

“Beomgyu, it’s okay. Relax. It’s not that big of a deal,” you respond, trying to calm him down after seeing him get this worked up, “it’s just a drink.”

“But it’s not! Ugh,” he says, frustrated as he pulls out his phone, “you were supposed to be able to pull out the paper.”

“What are you talking about?”

He passes over his phone to you, and there’s a picture of a small piece of paper on it. When you zoom in to get a better look at the writing on it, you gasp.

“It takes two to mango, so will you be my partner?” you read out loud, looking at Beomgyu.

He smiles awkwardly, shrugging his shoulders.

“You’re asking me to be your date for the dance? Oh my god, yes!”

You hug him tightly, pressing your head into the crook of his shoulder. You don’t know if his intentions behind this are friendly or romantic, but the mere thought of being together, even just for a night, has you reeling. You feel so, so giddy as if you’re already on the dance floor and swaying in his arms.

You feel him sigh in relief, hugging you back.

“I’m so sorry I fucked up everything. It was supposed to be super cute—”

“Don’t worry about it. Even if you just asked me the question, I would’ve been happy. It was so creative though; how’d you come up with it?”

“I, um. I searched it up,” he replies, and you hear the bashfulness in his voice, “I just wanted it to be meaningful enough to us. I know that it’s unoriginal, sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Even just you researching to find something this creative is meaningful to me.” you answer honestly, “I’m saving that straw forever, I swear.”

He laughs, and you feel his chest vibrate against you. It’s a comforting feeling, one you’ll hopefully experience at the dance next week.

“I’m so excited. I can’t wait,” he whispers, pulling you in a little tighter.

“Yeah,” you whisper back, holding onto him, “Me too.”

The dance is a little lame, but being here with Beomgyu makes it worthwhile.

Seriously, if you’d come alone, you probably would’ve ended up sitting in the corner and munching on the brownies (they’re actually tasty, you can’t even deny it). However, Beomgyu has made it his personal mission for you to have fun, which is why he pulls you onto the dance floor to vibe with the beat of the song.

“This is so high school,” you mutter, feigning annoyance, “what song even is this?”

“I think it’s ‘Good Boy Gone Bad’ by TXT.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Who cares? Stop being a downer and let loose a little.”

Contrary to your dislike, you do end up dancing. The song has a peppy beat and the two of you lose yourself in it, but even as you forget all of what occupies your brain, Beomgyu still remains in your head.

You’ll never forget the sparkling expression on his face when he saw your outfit as he picked you up from your house or the way he turned up your favorite song as you sped along to the venue. You would pay a million dollars just to relive that moment again, laughing at each other’s singing and enjoying each other’s company, but you realize that you don’t need to experience past moments with Beomgyu when he constantly makes better memories with you. With Beomgyu, you like living in the present, and he makes you forget about special days in the past you had coined as ‘the best day ever’ because nothing could compare to the feeling of being by his side like this.

The song ends, leaving you all woozy and excited, but the feelings quickly shift away when a much slower beat starts playing. You don’t even have to ask for the song name, because Beomgyu is already whispering it into your ear.

“’Fairy of Shampoo’ by the same artist. They’re pretty good, right?”

You move to nod, but the action is long forgotten as Beomgyu wraps his arms around your waist. He’s staring you in the eyes, a silent request for permission, and your response is wrapping your arms around his neck in a similar manner. You sway, and Beomgyu follows your lead, but this time around, the only thing you’re losing yourself in is his eyes.

The soft, angelic singing and chatter around you are muffled as if everyone in the room has disappeared except you and Beomgyu. You’re in a trance, with the perfect feeling of his arms around you as if they were always meant to be there. It’s so easy to will yourself away from everything to focus his gaze that you should be concerned, but one look at his eyes can confirm he’s in the same boat.

Maybe friends can ask each other out to dances. Maybe friends can slow-dance together. However, you find it hard to believe friends can look each other like this in the eyes and pretend they don’t feel anything.

Before you know it, the air grows hazy, and the only thing that makes your vision clearer is leaning in closer to Beomgyu. Or maybe that’s what’s making you crazy in the first place, but you don’t care because you’re trapped in the magnetic pull he emits that drives you closer, and closer, and closer. You’re close enough to notice the small moles on his cheek and the faint cologne he wears that smells like jasmine. You can’t even tell if you’re moving anymore because the only action you’re focused on is the fluttering of his eyelashes and the pursing of his lips.

It takes your brain a while to register what he says next because his voice is husky enough to be covered by the music, but the mere fact that his voice dropped three octaves has your mind spinning.

“Do you want this as badly as I do?”

Your throat is so parched you can’t even speak, but you don’t need words to imply what you want. You nod, the tiniest nod that if he wasn’t so focused, he wouldn’t have seen it, but his eyes are solely on you and that’s enough confirmation for him. The last thing you see is him leaning dangerously close before your eyes flutter shut, but the moment is ruined as your phone rings from your pocket and startles you both.

You fumble with the device as he clears his throat, leaning back, and with wide eyes, you see that it’s your mother calling. You’re cursing her mentally for calling at the worst possible time, but one look at Beomgyu has him motioning you off the dance floor.

“Take it; it’s probably important. I’ll be right here.”

You smile tightly before rushing off the dance floor, finding a place near the entrance that’s much quieter than the center. From this position, you have a straight view of Beomgyu in the middle, but you’re blocked by a sea of people surrounding him. It reminds you just how many obstacles you have between each other, and you mentally berate yourself for being so careless and almost kissing him before answering the phone.

“Hello? Mom?”

“Oh honey, hi! Your Auntie told me you were at some school dance, are you having fun?”

“I am,” you whisper back, just now realizing how much you miss your parents sending you off to these dances, “but I miss you a lot.”

“Actually, I called you about that!”

“What do you mean?”

“Our business here is doing so well that another company wants to buy us and give us a huge amount of shares. This means we can move back home and still make a profit!”

Your mom goes on about the logistics, but all you hear is white noise ringing through your ears. You knew this moment would creep up on you, but you just didn’t expect it so suddenly, especially after sharing such an intimate moment with Beomgyu. God, Beomgyu. How can you even begin to tell him?

“Mom, I have to go.”

“Of course, you must be busy! I’ll call you later, okay?”

Your fingers shake as you cut the call, tears brimming at the corner of your eyes. The room feels hazy once again, but this time, it feels suffocating. Your cheeks feel hot and you have no idea what to do, and all you can feel is Beomgyu’s gaze staring at you from across the room, boring into your eyes. All you can think is that he knows, and he hates you, and he’s going to feel so betrayed—

“Y/N? Are you okay?” you hear, and Yeonjun steps in front of you, blocking the connection between you and your crush.

“I- I need to go home. Please.”

You’re glad Yeonjun knows when to not be a nuisance, because all he does is nod wordlessly and clasp your palm, leading you to the car. You’re thankful that your cousin is actually a nice person deep down because he’s ditching his date and dropping his many it-boy moments just to take you home and let you cry on his shoulder. You try so, so hard not to look back because you know you’ll break down, but you can’t help what your heart wants. As you turn and make eye contact with Beomgyu, you see his confused and betrayed expression as he pushes past the people on the dance floor, but the crowd is too large, and he’s stuck between the masses. It’s bitter how these people once reminded you of obstacles, and now they’re exactly that, but you’re thankful because you’re sure you won’t be able to stop the tears if he talks to you right now.

As Yeonjun whisks you away in the dreary night, all you can hope is that Beomgyu remembers only the good moments between you, and not the worst. Maybe one day, just one, you hope he’ll forgive you, even though you know that you’ll never forgive yourself.

You have no heart to even attempt the history homework sitting on your desk.

It’s only been a week, but you feel like you went through five years of trauma from it alone. If it weren’t for Yeonjun, you would’ve locked yourself in your room the whole week and finished a bucket of ice cream. Instead, you showed up to class every day, draped in an oversized hoodie and making no means of eye contact with anyone. Any time you encountered Beomgyu, you tried your hardest to avoid it, even going as far as bargaining with your teacher to switch seats in history.

The only person you even talked to this week was your cousin. He was the only person you could confide in, probably because he was the only one who truly understood your current predicament. It’s silly, depending so much on the person who could use this as blackmail at any moment, but you have to say you’re a little grateful for him dragging you to school in the morning instead of leaving you to allow in the four walls of your bedroom.

However, even the motivation from Yeonjun can’t stop your bleeding heart. You feel like you’re going through hell and back, and with exams coming up your mind just isn’t in the right place. How long are you going to keep your homework sheets sitting on your table void of pencil markings? Even the mere act of reading the instructions has you tired, and all you can do is rest your head against the table and try not to let your thoughts drift off.

Even this homework reminds you of him. It reminds you of how you would goof off during your lectures, texting each other through the crevices of your desk, or how you would sit for long hours in the library and attempt to study, kicking each other’s feet beneath the table. Even now, you can hear him knocking on the door, asking you to open up and talk.

“Y/N, it’s Beomgyu!”

Okay, maybe that part isn’t your imagination.

Why is he even here? What business would he even want with you after you’ve wronged him so much? Your mind has no idea, but the only thing you’re listening to is your heart as you pull open the door and take in his presence.

He looks beautiful, like always. His existence is something that you want to cuddle into a ball and put in your pocket, yours to keep and cherish forever because he is simply the word soft personified. Today, however, he sports dark circles under his eyes and a paler shade of skin. What has made your teddy bear so sad? Is it your doing?

“Hi,” you whisper, and your hands itch to reach out and wrap him in a tight hug.

“Yeonjun told me what happened. I wanted to give you some space, but it’s torture without you.”

Now you’re confused. Why is he showing up at your door and giving you comfort? Isn’t he the one who has been wronged this whole time?

“You mean, you’re not mad at me?”

“Why would I be? It’s not your fault you need to move back. Sure, I’m sad about it, but this isn’t something you can control, right?”

Now, nothing stops you or your conscience as you wrap your arms around him, furrowing into his familiar scent as tears escape your eyes. You’ve done a lot of hugging recently, but this time, it feels like an eternity has gone by. You never want to let go of him or this moment, and you can even feel your mind memorizing every aspect of this moment.

You guess Beomgyu makes you feel that way. Mind and heart combined, with no conflict.

“You always know what to say,” you point out, sniffling.

“I’d hope so; I have to do it every Monday.”

You laugh, although it’s choked and dry from your crying, but as your head moves, you hear a crinkle from his back pocket.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, um,” he starts, grabbing the object out of his pocket, “they’re mango popsicles. I was going to try and bargain with you if this didn’t work out.”

“Hmm, well, I’m not really convinced yet,” you joke, motioning him to follow you and sit on your bed as he rolls his eyes.

Silence ensues for the next couple of seconds as you both open the wrappers and enjoy the delicacy. The flavor doesn’t even bother you anymore, because now when you think of mango, you think of Beomgyu. You think of his sweetness, his humor, and his bright sunshine personality that matches the color of the delightful fruit.

“Oh, Y/N, you have some juice dripping down your chin,” Beomgyu notices, pointing to the area.

“Where, here?” you ask, patting the left side and feeling its dryness, “or a little higher?”

“No, I- here,” he says, leaning closer with his thumb and brushing off the liquid.

You want to thank him, but as you look up into his eyes, you realize how imperceptibly close you two are. Suddenly, you’re thrust back to a week ago when you were in his arms, leaning into each other until you could feel his breath upon yours, but this time, there’s nothing stopping you. No phone, no crowd, and most importantly, no insecurities come between you two now, and your mind is clear as you lean in and latch your lips upon his.

If you were unsure of what mango meant to you before, you’re definitely sure it will remind you of Beomgyu now, because all you can taste is the mango on his lips. It’s like your mind has gone into overdrive as you move closer, and you can vaguely register him using his free hand to palm the back of your head and tilt it up. The atmosphere doesn’t feel hazy anymore; instead, it feels shy and awkward, as if you were two lovers learning the world together. Like everything with Beomgyu, it feels right, just so right, and you never want to leave because you are his wholeheartedly, and he is yours.

Until you register what’s happening, of course.

You pull away quickly, chest heaving as you try to catch your breath. Beomgyu’s lips are puffy, and you’re sure yours must mimic a similar appearance, but that’s the least of your worries.

“Beomgyu, I—”

“I love you,” he breathes out, and his voice is light and airy as if he can’t hold in the words anymore, “I love you so much that it kills me you’re leaving. I don’t know how to fix this pain, but what I can say is that I’ll try my hardest to be by your side. Every day I’ve spent with you has been the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, and being without you this past week has made me realize how much light will disappear from my life if you leave. I’ll take you in any way you’ll let me, even if it’s through late-night calls or sparse texts. Please be mine, please.”

He's begging you now, holding your hands within his and clutching tightly, but even the words you want to say are trapped in your throat. You can’t do it to him. You can’t force him to love you thousands of miles away and look forward to you when he has a whole future ahead of him. You may be burdened by the ghosts of your past, but he isn’t, and you can’t deprive him of the one thing that makes himself him: his sunshine.

“I’m so sorry Beomgyu. I can’t put you in that position.”

Even the tears that once hesitated to fall now escape freely as he nods, cradling your cheek. After all that’s happened, he’s still so understanding, and even though he has a tight smile on his face, he keeps on a brave front for you.

“I knew you would say that. It’s okay, we can just enjoy the last of our days together.”

“Don’t hold yourself back for me, alright?” you whisper, wiping the stray tears that you don’t want him to see.

He notices the tear stains on your cheeks anyway, wiping the wetness with the pads of his thumbs. You notice he doesn’t respond, but at this point, he doesn’t need to. Even though you’ve warned him against it, you know without a doubt that he’ll always be waiting for you, even with all your uncertainty.

The last bell of the year rings, but as your classmates bustle around you with joy and laughter, you don’t know what to feel.

Moving is a funny concept. You leave behind everything you know just to start anew, but unlike most people, you’ve finally gotten the chance to go back to the past. Your old friends, your old family, your old life. Months ago, you would’ve jumped for this opportunity, as many others would in your situation, but now you’re experiencing a bittersweet emotion. You can’t even deny it: this place has had a tremendous impact on you through the experiences it put you through, the people it made you meet, and the emotions it caused you to feel. Even just thinking about going away leaves a pang in your heart, but you suppose life is about these occurrences, whether they’re sad or happy, and you’ll just have to persevere through it like you always do.

You’re walking out to the parking lot when Beomgyu joins you. You’ve still been talking even after the dreaded incident weeks ago, especially since you studied together for exams, but your relationship since you rejected him hasn’t been the same. It’s like you’re tiptoeing around with each other, waiting for one another to break, but you’ve already broken before so you don’t know why it feels so fragile. Maybe it’s the tension in the air around your departure or the lack of definition within your relationship, but either way, it feels suffocating.

At least you’re grateful he hasn’t shut you out yet.

“So, how was your last day of school?” you hear, but this time you focus your eyes on the ground instead.

It feels too weird to look at him. It’s like you don’t have permission to admire his beauty anymore, so you rarely ever make eye contact with him. Instead, you focus on the gum he’s chewing, the one you know is mango-flavored but always so bitter. Maybe it was a sign you two were never meant to be.

“It was good. You know, tiring as always, but I’m glad it’s over.”

“Yeah, I get it. Are you going back home soon?”

Honestly, your parents haven’t been super transparent with you, but from their calls, you assume that you still have well into the summer before you move out. They sound busy wrapping up things, and they haven’t given you an exact date, but they have promised you they’ll be here soon. Like all things in your life, even your parting is uncertain, and that’s what you tell him.

“So, what I hear is that I can still terrorize you over the summer.”

You laugh, but it’s forced and uneasy. The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife, but honestly, you’ve gotten a little too used to it by now.

“I guess you could, Gyu.”

He stops you in your tracks by stepping in front of you.

“Look, I know we’re a little awkward right now, but I feel like I have to say this, or I’ll never get the chance. I’m so honored to have been your friend, and I’m going to miss you a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I’m sorry for putting you in so many awkward situations, but I hope you can remember the good parts when you think of me.”

You sigh, patting his head. If you were on good terms with him, you would’ve gifted him a hug, but you hope the small gesture can do your feelings enough justice.

“I’m gonna miss you too. A lot a lot,” you mimic, watching him smile, “so text me often, okay? I’m sorry for making things awkward too.”

He shakes his head, willing to argue in your favor, but before he can even start a car horn sounds from the parking lot. You crane your head to see a familiar vehicle, one that’s accompanied you throughout your lifetime, except this time, it’s adorned with a painted mango on the side.

“Mom? Dad?”

Your parents step out of the car, and your legs are moving you towards them before you can even register it. Video calls don’t do their beautiful faces any justice, and it feels so surreal as you stop in front of them, waiting for them to just be a figment of your imagination.

“Hey, sweetie,” your dad says, and that’s all it takes before you’re leaning into his touch, burrowing yourself into him as you would often do when you were a little kid.

You forgot how much pain you felt when they left you here. All this time, you’ve suppressed it, and only at night when you were in your room, half-asleep and overthinking, did you let your tears come to bay. You wanted to be strong for them because everything they did was for you, but it was hard not to lose sight of their eventual return and get lost in the lifeless emotions associated with their disappearance every waking day that passed. It took every ounce of strength in you to pick yourself up every day and pretend like you were fine, but although there were many factors that helped you mitigate those feelings, none of them could truly ever make the ache ebb away.

“Why are you here? I thought it would be a while,” you ask after you’ve calmed down and properly reunited with them, “are we moving back soon?”

“Actually, about that… we’ve changed our minds a little bit.”

Your mom holds your face in her palms, pinching at the skin on your cheek ever so slightly.

“Your aunt told us how happy you are here, and how you’ve grown so much from moving here. I know that losing your parents so suddenly must’ve had a huge impact on you, but if this place helped you with those struggles even just a little bit, then it must be worth staying here. We thought that you might like it if we stayed here permanently. What do you think?”

You can’t believe it. It’s as if the world has deafened and all you can hear is the ringing echoing through your ears because what they’re saying sounds too good to be true. Moving here? Permanently? Is life playing some sort of cruel joke on you?

“You aren’t joking, right?” you whisper, and all your parents can do is laugh as they shake their heads.

They say that your life flashes before your eyes as you die, but right now, all that flashes through your eyes are the memories you’ve made in your seemingly short time here. You remember sitting shotgun in Yeonjun’s car as he annoyed you on the way to school, texting Yunjin during math while you two try not to fall asleep, and teaming up with Taehyun while wreaking havoc on poor Soobin.

However, most importantly, you remember Beomgyu. From the curve of his lips to the rings on his fingers, from the walks home you’ve shared to your first and last kiss in your very bedroom, he’s always been with you wholeheartedly. You haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since that very first day when the boy with dark curls caught your watercolor eyes, and for the foreseeable future, you don’t think you’ll be able to stop.

When you turn to look back at him, he’s there. He’s always there, waiting for you no matter how far you go. Even if he is just a speckle in the distance, just the size of an atom, you are his nucleus and he revolves around you, chasing you until he breaks down into a black hole of nothing. Even now, as you stare at him from the parking lot, one look at you tells him everything he needs to know. He’s here, here before your eyes in a matter of seconds, and as your parents ask him who he is, you know that only the most perfect boy would respond with such a beautiful answer as he directly addresses you.

“I’m whoever you want me to be.”

You shake your head, unable to hide the smile that flits across your face. After a long, long time of shying away from Beomgyu, you’re finally ready to embrace the feelings he brings you, whether tears or smile lines.

“This is Beomgyu, my lover.”

Your bedroom is still bare with your whole life packed into boxes once again, but at least this time around, your walls are painted yellow again. However, instead of a sunny yellow, they’re more of a mango color, your mom going even as far as to say it’s the exact same hue as the mangoes they grew in Thailand, fresh and ripe. Honestly, you’re just glad you’re not sitting within the depressing beige color again, because why did you even convince yourself it made you happy?

What’s not fresh is the old carpet you and your boyfriend are sitting on, but sometimes you can appreciate the old things too. In fact, it’s somewhat comfortable as you lie in his arms, sprawled across the carpet with no looming future dangling over your head. It’s just you, your other half, and nothing more, enjoying your well-deserved summer break weeks after school has ended.

“I’m not ready for school,” you complain, liking the feeling of being illuminated by the bright sun peeking through your blinds, “I like sitting around doing nothing. Imagine how hectic it would’ve been if I actually moved back.”

Your statement is only half-true though, because there are many things awaiting you once school starts that you’re actually very excited for. For starters, you get to have your own article published in the newspaper, and you have a slight inkling as to what it’s going to be about. Also, you have many wonderful friends who will make your life a lot easier, so even though school is school, at least you’ll have amazing people by your side. Really, you’re just complaining for no reason.

“I’m just glad we won’t have to throw you a farewell party. I don’t think Taehyun or Soobin would’ve let me near Yunjin’s pool again.”

You smack his chest lightly, and he laughs, curling in closer to lay your head against his chest. You really should be unpacking your things, at least, that’s what you told your parents you’d be doing, but you can’t pass up the chance to cuddle with Beomgyu every time you get it. You both have been pining for each other for far too long anyway, so why waste any more time?

“Y/N!” you hear from outside the door, “I brought you food!”

You get up to let your mom in, but Beomgyu is already five steps ahead of you. Your mom gives him a warm smile because seemingly, your parents seem more smitten with him than you are. You can’t really blame them though; who doesn’t like Choi Beomgyu?

“Thank you for the mango, auntie!” he responds, and of course, the endearment has her reeling.

“I thought you two would be hungry after working hard,” she says, leaning over to peek through the gap between him and the door, “but it seems you two have done nothing at all. Oh well, you can eat it anyway. You have all the time in the world.”

You two really do, because as you make yourselves cozy on the carpet once more, bowls of mango in hand, it feels like time has taken a pause after all the misery it has put you through. You eat the slices wholeheartedly as you think, with Beomgyu brushing off the juice that escapes your mouth occasionally when the piece is too big. You’re glad that time is moving slowly because you want to savor every moment you have with him. He deserves it, and so do you.

“We should really start setting things up,” Beomgyu starts, “How long are you going to sleep with just four yellow walls and no decoration? That would be so depressing.”

“Hey, at least it’s less depressing than beige walls,” you grumble, “but even just being here makes me content enough to fall asleep. I have nothing to worry about this time around, especially when you’re just five minutes or a phone call away.”

Mere seconds pass before he’s leaning in to place a kiss on your lips, and of course, everything about him tastes extremely mango. Your malice for the fruit is far gone now, far, far gone because not only are your parents back, but also because Beomgyu is the only thing you think about when reminded of the flavor. However, your rollercoaster feelings for the fruit are the last thing on your mind as you lean in closer, placing the mango bowl beside you.

“You still hate mango, baby?” he whispers between kisses, and it takes everything in you to pull him back, reminding him that you two are supposed to be unpacking and not making out.

“Answer the question,” he whines, a cute little pout on his face that makes you five seconds away from forgetting your very own warning and kissing him breathless again.

“No, I don’t,” you finally answer, grabbing his hand and interlacing it with yours, “I love it now.”

He grins, and you decide to succumb to your desires, forgetting all sense of rationality when it comes to him as you press a kiss to his lips again.

“I love mango just as much as I love you.”

#beomgyu x reader #beomgyu #txt #txt x reader

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urmeio · 1 year

Note

🎵 me & u by cassie with beomgyu (i won't leave u jobless)

weird & unconventional . beomgyu x gn!reader warnings . none

out of all people you'd be assigned to work the overnight shift with, you never expected it to be choi beomgyu, one of your fellow interns that made you question if the universe really had it out with you.

beomgyu was not a bad guy (or at least, that's what you tried to convince yourself). he was just some guy that seemed to have it out for you. you didn't really know how this intense animosity started, but to this day, every glace at beomgyu rendered you speechless.

in annoyance, of course. not because he was one of the attractive men you'd ever seen. the thought of that was simply atrocious.

every time your team had meetings, he'd always refute your plans in some way or another. he always tried out for the same tasks as you, and it seemed his only goal was doing what you did, just ten times better. the once prized company you'd dreamed of working at had now become a nightmare, all because of some random guy who made it his mission to be better than you.

so tonight, you'd prayed with every bit of your heart not to end up with choi beomgyu. this was your one shot at actually showing your manager your skillset, and you would've really appreciated not being paired with someone that could overshadow you.

but the universe had other plans, and you ended up seated across from beomgyu, who's permanent smirk made you nauseous to your stomach. his freshly dyed red hair seemed to reflect the anger you felt within, and it took everything for you to not snatch his perfectly framed glasses off his sculpted-by-the-gods face.

"take a picture, it'll last longer."

you scoff, staring back at your report, although your mind is doing everything but focusing on it.

"if you're going to flirt, at least be original," you mutter, a sentence that doesn't miss his keen sense of hearing.

"oh, so you want me to continue flirting with you?" he teases, running a hand through his hair, and your stomach tumbles (although you can't tell whether it's from attraction or revulsion).

"just... finish your report beomgyu."

"i'm already done. what's taking you so long? too busy staring?"

"can you shut up for one second? otherwise i'll call—"

"call who? we're the only ones here y/n, don't be silly."

your shoulders slump, and you bury your head in your hands, tired from exhaustion and beomgyu's antics. you don't miss the way beomgyu's face shifts into something calmer, but you choose not to comment upon it.

"hey y/n, i didn't mean to make you feel—"

"it's fine beomgyu. let me just finish this product, okay? then i'll be out of your hair since you seem to hate me."

"hey," he shifts, taking a seat next to you, "i don't hate you."

"stop lying—" you start, continuing to type on your computer before it's pushed away by beomgyu's hand, forcing you to stare at him.

"i mean it. i just like toying with you, but i don't do it with any malice."

"what other reason could you possibly have for outshine me at my own job and make sure i fail in every aspect?"

"it's to get your attention," he states with finality, as if that will answer all your questions.

it doesn't. it just forms more, and you blurt out the one that seems the most promising at finding the root cause to beomgyu's actions.

"why do you want to get my attention?"

"because you're cute. and if i can't get enough interactions with you at work, then i just have to make them myself."

you think he's lost it. but judging by the cute puppy stare he has, you start to register that some of his previous actions start to make a lot more sense. his weird, unconventional way of courtship brings a small blush to your face, and if beomgyu notices it, he doesn't make any comment about it. with clarity, you realize that he has caught your attention (in more ways than one), and that you'd grown accustomed to it, craving it more than rejecting it.

"you know what beomgyu?" you start, and his eyebrow quirks up, expecting your response.

"if you ask me out properly, i might just give you more than a daily scowl every day at work."

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urmeio · 1 year

Text

jang wonyoung x gn! reader now playing — mona lisa by valntn. warnings . slight mentions of body image, the aesthetic might seem more afab reader but nothing is gendered!

you first met wonyoung when you offered to model for her fashion design final

you approached her through an ad she'd put out looking for a fellow student to model for the piece she designed

and looking to earn some extra money, it was the perfect offer for you!

however, when you first met at a cafe to discuss the details, you were honestly surprised that she wasn't the one modeling instead of you

she was easily the most gorgeous person you'd ever seen, and when you'd confessed the thought to her, she merely smiled

she explained that although she had modeled in the past, she ended up becoming more interested in the creative process behind it, leading her to end up as a fashion design major instead

and as you bonded over a cup of coffee and some desserts, it was safe to assume you were falling in love with her and her unique personality

you'd meet quite often in the weeks following, and whether it be for outfit alterations or styling setup details, you were always willing to be there for her

wonyoung never failed to remind you how grateful she was for your help and how you were the perfect person for her outfit, and it always made you less anxious in her presence

she was always accommodating to your needs, such as adding a few extra inches so you could be more comfortable or adjusting the harshness of the lights so it wasn't so glaring on you

her creativity was commendable as well because the outfit she designed seemed as if it should be the display of every major fashion brand out there

sooner than you had expected, the day of the final shoot had rolled around, and as anxious as the two of you were, it ran smoothly thanks to the communication between you both prior

after she had gotten photos she was satisfied with, the two of you had packed up, and although commemorable, it was sad to know this was the last time you'd meet her

you'd grown to love her sweet self, and the nervousness inside you whenever she walked into the room wasn't a feeling you were foreign to

however, it seemed like wonyoung had the same intentions because right as you bid her farewell, she slid a piece of paper into your arms

"I've really enjoyed working with you y/n, and i really don't want to make this our last meeting. if you're interested, you can come with me to the carnival next saturday!" she'd gestured, pointing at the ticket in your hands

and when you showed up at the amusement park the next week, the smile on her face was definitely worth it

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urmeio · 1 year

Text

we all want what we can't have

pairing . prince! jake x knight! gn reader (ft. yuna of itzy) word count . 5.4k warnings . i wrote this 2 years ago so brace yourself. there's angst but it has a happy ending! jake is a flirt and yuna is gay (cause why not). this is written in a style that is meant to mimic romantic old-fashioned fantasy but i didn't do a very good job of it 😭 as always, terribly sorry in advance for this monstrosity.

synopsis . you thought coming face-to-face with prince jake would be the end of you, but sadly, getting dubbed by him seemed to be the least of your worries. note. this was originally a secret santa fic with a different idol, so sorry if there are name mistakes! this is also a repost from my old account if it seems familiar. i also apparently wrote this at 4am so please excuse the mess that this is. tagging . @stealanity @haerinz

Far, far away, past the weeping willows of the dark forests and the scorching sands of the sunburnt deserts, there laid a small vine opening, covered with twigs and vines, embedded in secrecy. Only those who seek this door could enter, and only those who dared to venture could truly experience the treasure they were meant to seek for.

Here beyond this secret entrance lay the land of Senkō, a land filled with prosperity and enchantment alike. Home to one of the world’s most charming cities, this empire carried an aura of purity that wrapped around and around and encased you tight, never wanting to let go.

And in the center of it lay a prince to match, feasting on the fresh pears from the palace garden and radiating a smile that could rival that of the blazing ball of fire that shone upon him.

“Master Jake! You shouldn’t be eating those pears; those are for the royal family’s bouquet at the end of the month!”

Jake leaned against the tree, eyeing the half-eaten pear in his hands, before glancing at the short maid who had come to warn him against his irresponsible actions.

And then he grinned.

He watched the maid’s cheeks turn bright red, resembling the rubicund apples in the orchard nearby. Nations far and beyond have acknowledged Prince Jake’s dazzling smile and incredibly handsome aura, and he was well aware of it, using it to his advantage to get out of trouble. Being flattering was simply a pastime for him.

“Are you sure I can’t have a few more pears? I’m sure I can… let you have a bite of this one if you wish.”

The maid turned profusely beet red as if she couldn’t have possibly turned into more of a tomato, and with a quick squeal, she scampered back into the castle, leaving behind a laughing Jake and a half-eaten pear.

“Didn’t know you were the designated castle flirt,” a familiar voice remarked, causing Jake’s eyes to shift to the new subject.

“You seem quite observant, Commander Sunghoon. I wonder if you would like a bite too?”

Jake dangled the pear in front of Sunghoon, commander of the royal army and his best friend, only to be met with mock disgust and a silent scoff.

“Quite humorous aren’t you, Prince Jake? Anyhow, I’ve come to ask for your presence at the induction ceremony for our recruits. Can’t have the nation’s brightest soldiers be dulled by the absence of the ever so coquettish prince, can we?”

Jake, biting the last part of the almost-finished pear, met Sunghoon’s glance with a smile. “Well, what are we waiting for? Lead the way.”

You were quite nervous.

Throughout all the rigorous training you’ve endured for the past two years, you’ve never felt so anxious. Wielding a blade and charging headfirst were tasks that came most naturally to you, but social integration and public speaking were far from your line of expertise. A million uncertainties were running through your mind at the very prospect of failure in being dubbed a soldier, and you hoped you wouldn’t end up being the nation’s royal laughingstock.

What if you tripped on stage? What if you accepted the wrong award? What if you—

“Nervous?” you heard a voice murmur next to you, filled with light amusement and tender undertones.

“In your dreams Ni-ki,” you whispered back, not willing to show weakness, although you supposed your best friend knew you better than you knew yourself.

He let out a soft chuckle, well knowing of your dishonesties, and patted your uniform-covered shoulder in a gesture for comfort.

“You’ll be fine Y/N. Besides, everyone tends to get a little weak-hearted while standing next to Prince Jake. If anything goes wrong you can just blame it on him!”

It’s not that simple, you wanted to retort, but you didn’t have the heart to diminish Nishimura’s extra-cheerful attitude today. So, you just dipped your head in respect as a mere thanks, hoping your nerves would settle down and let you breathe.

“Oh, that’s my name! See you on stage Y/N!”

You watched as Ni-ki pranced onto the carpet-covered stage, a smile flitting across your face in pure affection. Eons ago, you both had vowed to become the finest soldiers of the royal guard and here you were today, fulfilling your dreams side by side.

You found your eyes shifting from the now kneeling Nishimura to the man upright in front of him, slender hands repositioning a blade from Ni-ki’s left shoulder to his right, a movement proclaiming your best friend’s newfound royal status.

Prince Jake. The man of everyone’s dreams and desires alike. You wished you weren’t prone to his charms, but alas, everyone has their weaknesses. Jake Sim’s smile just happened to be yours.

Having been lost in your contemplations, you hadn’t realized time was nearing your turn until your wandering eyes noticed Ni-ki making his way off the stage.

“And now, let us welcome the highest-ranking recruit of this division, Y/N!”

It felt like a blur walking onto the platform, clad in combat boots and your royal uniform. Despite the loud clapping and the shrill cheering from your comrades, your eyes were trained on the man adorned in regal blue, a man you supposed you’d need to grow accustomed to.

Your breath hitched as he stepped forward to perform your accolade, and you mentally cursed yourself for having the qualities of a fangirl at this very moment. Ni-ki was right; Prince Jake had the vexatious ability to take anyone’s breath away (not that you were complaining).

“I don’t suppose you need this dubbing,” you heard, the faintest whisper of a melody so familiar yet so unique, “for your skills are far more worthy of recognition than my blade.”

Cheeks burning, you turned akin to a beetroot as you bowed your head in respect, heart thumping at the mere delight of such a wonderful man praising yours truly.

“We mustn’t skip formalities, your royal highness,” you whispered back, kneeling on one leg before him, “because even one as skilled as me would enjoy the honor of your unsheathed steel on my shoulders.”

You sensed the lightest grin pass across his face as he performed the rite of passing, and as he helped you stand back up to shake his calloused palm, he leaned in to make the faintest promise.

“One day, I hope I can have the opportunity to duel with you, the ever-so-skilled Y/N, in a match of fencing. After all, you aren’t quite the only one to receive such honor, hmm?”

True to his word, Jake arranged a duel with you. Rather than just wanting to see your form in action, the fight was arranged for a more subtle aim: Jake’s desire to get to know you. Surprisingly, or rather, unsurprisingly, he admitted that he still remembered every detail of your first encounter. He knew it seemed a little obsessive, but then again, all the male characters in books have been victims of the love-at-first-sight syndrome.

Why exactly he found you so fascinating? He didn’t quite have the answer to that himself. Maybe it was the way your confidence was nowhere to be seen despite your highest-ranking title, or the fact that you were still able to utter out cautions about formalities despite looking like you were to go faint any moment. He couldn’t deny that he found you a little cute (just a little). He’d never had a knight fancy him, especially a high-ranking one, but he wasn’t one to carp. The thought of your duality merely aroused his attention, which is why he was so keen on carrying out this match.

Although, Jake’s plans didn’t exactly schedule themselves as he wanted, because when he arrived at the grass training grounds, uniform poised and blade in tow, he was met with the faces of the rest of your peers, eager eyes ready for action.

“Sunghoon, what is the meaning of this?”

“My apologies Jake, for how would the elders take it if the royal prince wanted an individual match with a recruit?”

“Oh, you know I meant no harm—”

“Obviously, however, other people simply don’t have the pleasure of knowing your royal highness as well as I do. I kindly ask you to adjust to the current circumstances and carry this forward as a teaching lesson, rather than a chance to fancy yourself with a new lover.”

Jake paled at Sunghoon’s words, turning to face him with an impeccable glare.

“Don’t be so surprised Jake; I too am capable of noticing wandering eyes. Whether your thoughts start as mere interest or mad infatuation, please be cautious of your actions. Tis the season to be betrothed, after all.”

With the warnings ringing throughout his ears, Jake stepped up to the platform, meeting your curious eyes. Simultaneously, you both bowed, and Jake was taken aback to the formalities you’d mentioned previously before. Today you looked more at ease, and he couldn’t quite figure out what for. Was it because combat came naturally to you? Or perhaps it was the reconnection of you both? Only time would tell.

Although this was an obligatory battle, seemingly for educational and ritual purposes, Jake could sense that you wouldn’t go easy on him. That wasn’t what worried him. Jake also wasn’t the most skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and he knew what the outcome of this event would be. That wasn’t what worried him either.

What worried him was the realization that he was excited to be with you again. He recalled the past few days, tracing through them to find that his mind had often wandered off to the upcoming battle with you. The thought of getting to know how you carried this particular interest of yours, the thought of meeting your gaze again, the thought of merely perceiving you had plagued his mind until this very moment. He felt like a fool, like a little boy eyeing a certain pastry he had craved through the windowsill. Maybe Sunghoon’s wandering eyes were right; maybe he was smitten with you.

He looked up to see you unsheathing your sword, preparing for the beginning. He mimicked your action, the blade unfamiliar and uncomfortable in his hands, designed to flaunt rather than to function. The both of you poised with your arm outstretched, blades crossing and knees bent.

He could tell by the slight grin on your face that you were well aware of the outcome. He wondered if you knew he visited for entirely different reasons than battle, but judging by your expression he knew the answer was quite evident.

He was so distracted by you that he didn’t even realize the start of the duel. He focused to see that you had knocked the heavy blade of out his hand (doing him a favor, really) and as it soared in the sky, you twirled him around and pulled his back flush against your frame, encompassing him in a body lock. Jake couldn’t care less about what you were doing to him. The mere feeling of you sharing contact with him was enough to make his brain go dizzy. And quite surprisingly, he sensed that you were affected too, due to the evident rising heartbeat against his chest.

As the fight commenced and the audience clapped (blasphemy really, Jake hadn’t carried out a single action the entire time), his attention focused on your figure, which was walking off the platform. He noted your slight trembling hands and your heavy breathing, accompanied by the lack of eye contact he had once received before.

Were you nervous? Embarrassed? Or perhaps, blushing? These thoughts haunted Jake as he returned to his chambers, falling into a restless sleep filled with you, you, and only you.

A couple of weeks later, you had the opportunity to tour the extravagant castle. It was a part of your training, in case the palace ever fell under attack and you were required to defend it, however, most of your comrades took it as an opportunity to finally experience a sliver of royalty that they had never had growing up. As most of you came from poor backgrounds, the diamond chandeliers and velvet carpets seemed daunting and awe-striking, and you swore some of your units had hearts in their eyes as they dragged their fingers along the winding corridors of the palace.

You, however, weren’t quite as interested. The sole purpose for your visit was education and you made sure to concern yourself with only that, disregarding most of the accessories and amenities the palace had to offer. You didn’t really focus on most of the extravagant interior (although that was probably the most vital segment in your training) because you knew it was filled with barely-touched rooms designed to complement and boast. All fortresses were built with the sole impression of looking majestic, and the only part you deemed important for your training were the places in which the royal family frequented.

You were told that Jake enjoyed the palace gardens, so you ventured off to exactly there, mentally mapping out particular landmarks that you help you familiarize layout. You could see exactly why he frequented this location; the white rose bushes and worn stone paths resounded a sense of serenity, and you soon forgot about the actual reason you were here, continuing to inhale every petal and feel every path of grass underneath your sole-covered toes.

Somehow you had found your way to the fountain, sitting on the edge and tracing your palm across the clear water drawing ripples. You had laughed when you first found the location because of the angel sitting atop the basin, reminding you exactly of the man behind the reason you had come here.

Jake. It always seemed to steer back to him. After your duel you simply couldn’t stop your brain from wandering off to his presence, the way he moved, his pretty eyelashes, his kissable li—

“Y/N, are you okay?”

You hadn’t realized you were extremely close to falling into the fountain until Jake’s voice resounded, bringing you out of your quite embarrassing daydream. A flush covered your rosy cheeks as you locked gazes with him and nodded, letting him pull you up to your feet and away from the water.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, gripping your shoulders lightly.

Your brain felt dizzy from the direct contact, and your throat dried up as you attempted to speak.

“Training, walking around memorizing—”

“Calm down Y/N, I understand. Please take a seat love, you must’ve had quite the shock from almost falling into that fountain,” he responded, gesturing to a patch of pasture as he pulled you down next to him.

If your brain wasn’t malfunctioning already, it definitely was now. Love. The word floated through your head like dandelion seeds in rough winds, like a kite gone lost. No one had ever called you such an endearing term before, and despite not knowing Jake’s intentions behind it, you still cherished the four letters he had chosen to label you.

You wondered what Jake would say if he knew the reason you almost fell was the fact that you were daydreaming about him. Or perhaps he already knew? You turned to ask him something of the sort, only to meet his preset gaze on you already.

Maybe it was a part of your imagination, but he stared at you as if you held the universe in your arms. If Jake Sim was the sun, he stared at you as if you were an even brighter star speckled somewhere far, far away from his vicinity, yet so, so close. His stare was so warm, so tender that it made you want to shine more brilliantly to keep that expression within his eyes and his heart and never, never ever let go of it.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” you found yourself asking instead, your tense atmosphere dissipating and shifting into something more fond, more affectionate.

“Like what?” he returned, a slight grin on his face indicating he already knew the answer.

“Like you’re in love with me,” you blurted out, the impact of your words hitting you only after you’d recited them.

His gaze shifted, turning into something rawer and more emotional, almost as if you had crossed an unknown boundary and he didn’t know how to react to it. You could feel regret filling your feelings, and maybe he sensed that too because he changed the topic, effectively shutting down any potential outbursts.

“Come on Y/N, let’s get you back to the castle. Your comrades must be worrying about your absence.”

Since then, it had become quite the regular occasion for you to cross paths with the prince in the palace gardens (willingly or unwillingly, you wouldn’t answer). Sometimes you had Ni-ki in tow (only for him to be cast aside anyway), and sometimes you strolled alone, subconsciously keeping an eye out for the man that had somehow bewitched your heavy heart.

You didn’t know when the line blurred between admiration and romance, but you quite simply didn’t care because the Jake Sim had given you his time in return for conversation. He seemed to be enjoying seeing you, talking to you, breathing with you, sitting with you so close that your shoulders almost touched and you could lean over and kiss him. Out of all the pretty humans, he wanted your time, your affection, your words, and your smiles. And you certainly weren’t complaining.

At times you’d find yourselves talking about anything and everything in the world, and at others, you’d fall into silence, bedridden with comfort. His presence grew consolatory to you, an aphrodisiac you’d simply succumbed to throughout the routine of your lifestyle. His figure often occupied your thoughts before you slept, and you’d wake up to the chirping birdcalls in anticipation of your next meeting. Dreaming, you were, as you floated with your feet in the dappled clouds blessed with the warm sunshine that was Jake’s laughter.

Deep within your mind, buried for a later reflection was the hidden notion of restriction, of not being allowed to fall for the charms of his royal highness. A dangerous tightrope you pranced on, shying towards his flirtatious advances and straying away from the acceptance of your feelings. You knew that one day had to come to terms with reality, but that day was not today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. Soon, you presumed, soon enough to infiltrate your worries but not soon enough for you to distance yourself from your growing affections.

One day, when the night sky was particularly clear and the white stars were particularly bright, Jake asked you a simple question.

“Y/N, what happens when you… you want something you can’t have?”

You turned to your side, meeting the heavy, cautious glance of the human next to you. Jake always seemed very grown up to you, perhaps because of his princely duties, but at this very moment, he resembled a childish boy, as if he had broken a vase behind his mother’s back and tried to hide from his consequences.

You couldn’t tell if you enjoyed his cautious vulnerability, but you did have the slightest inkling of the layers hidden underneath his seemingly simple question.

“Well, it’s human nature, your royal highness. I suppose it—”

“No but, what happens?” he prompted, effectively cutting your words off and leaving you wordless.

“Well,” you started after some consideration, trying to phrase your answer quite sensibly, “well then, it’s simple. You bear the consequences. Because Jake, we all want what we can’t have.”

And the look on his face haunted your dreams for many nights.

The royal banquet was an event many anticipated, Jake very well included. Delicacies from far and wide were served upon gold platters (made with numerous ingredients such as the pears Jake was discovered feasting on), and although it served as a chance for royal delegations with countries much like theirs, the entire palace staff was invited. It was an occasion simply to remember, and Jake being excited was a bit of an understatement.

Jake couldn’t deny that a factor of his enthusiasm was your attendance this year. Despite having many acquaintances, the only person Jake typically interacted with at formal events was Sunghoon, and your presence would be a nice contrast to his usual experience.

(And maybe he’d been waiting for a chance to see you outside of your occasional garden getaways, but he’d never admit to it.)

From the moment Jake arrived at the occasion, his eyes were searching for you. Although he knew training kept you for quite a while, his gaze was always focused on the entrance, hesitantly waiting with a chocolate mousse in hand.

“Sunghoon, when do you suppose the knights will arrive?”

“Your Highness, not to be disrespectful but you’ve asked this question thrice already. They will be here soon, I swear.”

“Sorry Sunghoon,” Jake responded, embarrassed but too bashful to care, “as you can see, I’m quite impatient.”

“It is quite obvious, your Highness. Here, why don’t we preoccupy ourselves with conversation? I’m sure our comrades from far and wide will be expectant to speak a few words with you, hmm? It will take your mind off, ahem, a particular other person.”

Conversation was the plan and Jake followed it, mingling with his guests to distract himself. As a prince, Jake was born and raised to frequent polite manners and converse equivalently, but truth be told, his usual acquaintances were young women seeking a way to his heart (and his money). At normal times he wouldn’t be bothered by such minor inconveniences, but today he just couldn’t seem to return the same flirtatious advances.

Maybe it was due to the certain soldier lingering at the tip of his tongue, the corners of his brain. Jake was extremely lucky that he was graced with a good enough appearance that women seemed to be entranced by because, without it, he most likely would’ve received complaints regarding his obvious disinterest towards people who garnered it.

He was able to flutter around casually until his mother pulled him aside, excitedly urging him to direct his attention to his father’s annual oration. Jake was, simply put, perplexed as to why she was so enthusiastic about a simple speech, but he followed his mother’s orders, anticipation bubbling inside his ever-so-faint heart.

He should’ve protected his heart while he could’ve.

“With proud honor, I would like to announce the betrothal of my son, Jake Sim, to the elegant princess of the Shin kingdom, Princess Yuna!”

The only emotion Jake felt was numbness. Despite Sunghoon shaking his shoulder like a madman and a multitude of cheers resounding around him, the only thing that phased Jake was the distant sound of a plate crashing, igniting an unknown fear hidden deep within his heart.

And as clapping echoed around Jake, he whipped around to see broken shards of glass speckled on the floor, and the love of his life running away with the intention of never seeing him again.

In many novels you had read the phrase ‘the heart grows fonder with distance’, but you never assumed it to be true until you started evading the prince.

It had been approximately three weeks since your last meeting (not that you were counting), and you seemed to be facing insanity. Once a narrative that followed romance novels, your tale now diverged into that of heartbreak and sorrow, betrayed by the person whom you were most bewitched by.

No books in your library explicated how to heal a torn heart, so you confided in the most trustworthy source you knew: Nishimura Riki.

“See Y/N, this is why you should never trust a man.”

“But Ni-ki you—”

“I’m the exception.”

Was your best friend the most suitable option for comfort? Mayhaps not, but he tried to the best of his abilities, and you appreciated his efforts.

Three consecutive knocks startled the both of you and before you could even stand upright, Ni-ki had opened the door, coming face to face with the royal commander. The both of you bowed to your superior, who merely waved the formalities off and requested an audience for a short while.

“Knight Y/N, I request you see the prince immediately as—”

“With all due respect Sir Sunghoon, I have no desire of interacting with his royal highness ever again.”

“Y/N—”

“My decision is final.”

With a dejected expression and a heavy heart, Sunghoon left the building, leaving you with a shattered mind and a dull ache in your chest. Today’s interaction had broken the thin wall you had mentally built to separate you and your lover, and you traveled right back to the beginning as if you had just run away from a shattered glass plate and a wedding announcement.

The only word to describe your predicament was reality. You and Jake had spent weeks floating around in the heavens, soaring through the skies like kites let free. Now your feet were grounded, bound in shackles that hauled behind you, growing heavier and heavier with each teardrop.

You suppose there was a way to free yourself, but it wasn’t a solution that would be found yesterday, today, or tomorrow. Once soaring, you were now drowning, ruined in the faint memories of him, him, and only him.

Days passed with monochromasy, and you buried yourself in work with the hopes of distraction. The gardens were a plate untouched, unseen to your naked eye, and instead, you frequented the confines of your bed, once slumbering with dreams about a certain man now only to slumber with cold rivulets gushing down your cheeks instead.

Hatred filled your once curious heart, seeping deep within chambers once filled with pliant affection. You found yourself obsessively irritated at training, lashing out at your colleagues for the simplest of matters and aggressively sparring during practice. As a knight, you well knew that patience was key, but Jake Sim had ignited your murderous streak and cursed you with eyes of red vision, fury the only lens through which you noticed your surroundings.

But most ironically, you hated that you wished him back. Dusk was spent with tear-stained cloths and torn newsletters, every inch of your being reminding you of who you once were. And you hated that while you were suffering, he was enjoying his new fiancé, frequenting ballrooms and relishing lively conversation.

You wanted him gone (and yet you wanted him close). You really did.

“So, Jake, what’s your favorite color?”

Jake hated everything about this setup. Currently, he was spending time with his bride-to-be (his parents had forced him to for a good relationship), and he wouldn’t be lying if he said this was extremely awkward. There was nothing wrong with Yuna per se; in all the right circumstances, Jake would’ve thought her an ideal bride. However, she wasn’t you. She wasn’t the one that he was in love with, the one that flitted through his dreams every night, the one he spent every day thinking of, the one he was smitten with.

“It’s blue. Yours?”

“Mine too!”

They both fell silent. Silence. Whenever the noise diminished between you and Jake, it felt comfortable. It was nice to cherish and he basked in it. But this silence? This silence was awkward, something he wanted to throw off a jagged cliff and never see again.

“You’re in love with someone, aren’t you?” Yuna suddenly asked, chewing on a piece of asparagus.

“What? Of course not. And even if I was, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Jake, I don’t want to spend an eternity with someone that doesn’t love me.”

His heart softened at her words, and he turned to glance up at her calculating gaze as if he was a mathematics theorem she was meant to prove. And Jake despised math.

“But we can’t—”

“We can Jake. If you will for something so badly, the universe will grant your wish. And I can see your desperation, Jake. You’re in love.”

“Stop. Please. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

They both fell silent again but this time it seemed tense, conniving. After a few moments of shifting the uneaten steak on his plate, Jake spoke up again.

“I apologize. I shouldn’t have been so impolite,”

“No no, the fault is mine. I intruded into decisions that you should be making, and I just heavily influenced you.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, have you ever been in love with someone Yuna? Do you know what it feels like?”

Yuna stopped playing with the food on her plate, freezing at Jake’s words.

“I have been in love, actually.”

Jake waited silently, noticing Yuna’s shaking hands.

“Love is a fragile thing, Jake. Once shattered, no matter how much you try to put the pieces back together, they won’t ever fit the same. I shattered it, Jake. I shattered my love for her because I wasn’t brave enough to back out of this arrangement.”

With caution, Jake outstretched his arm, silently holding Yuna’s as a sign of comfort. Although he couldn’t see her teardrops, he could hear them.

“Please Jake, please don’t make the same mistake as me.”

He looked up at her, teary-eyed and soulless, urging him on.

And then he ran.

He ran and he ran, as far as his legs could take him and even past the point of that, with only one goal in mind. Time felt supersonic, a blur that he seemed to experience only with the presence of you. Your name was all that echoed in his mind. He didn’t know where you were, or how you were doing, but he knew he had to find you. To tell you how much he loved you, how much he wanted you, how much of a fool he was letting you go. He was an idiot. But he was yours.

Your house was the first place he had visited, opening the door to a slightly angry Nishimura who relaxed once realizing the situation. He didn’t know where you were. He tried the training ground, only to see it empty. The garden, and the banquet hall, all empty. He felt like he was losing his mind, a game of cat and mouse making him a madman.

And then it hit him.

He burst open the doors to the stage, seeing you sitting on top, tracing mindless circles into the polished wood. You looked up at his entrance, your eyes filling with rage and angst as you turned to get up and leave the area.

He hated it. Eyes once filled with love and affection towards him now were violent. He loathed that he was the cause of your misery. And he was going to do everything to fix it.

“Y/N! Y/N please, please don’t leave. Just listen to me for five minutes. That’s all I ask.”

You stilled, your backbone facing him. “And why should I?”

“Because, because I made a mistake. I’ll admit it; I knew that day would come. I knew my fate was predetermined and it was my stupid fault for being a coward to not change it. And yes, I made a mistake in falling for you.”

“Is this what you—”

“But I don’t regret it. Not one bit. Because if loving you was a mistake, then I’d make it over and over again for the rest of my life. If loving you was a mistake, then suddenly I adore mistakes, because loving you was the best thing that could ever happen to me.”

He trudged up the platform, facing your tearful eyes.

“You once told me that we all want what we can’t have. I couldn’t have you Y/N. But I wanted you. I still do, so, so badly.”

He kneeled, handing you the sword he’d dubbed you with the first day you two had met.

“I want to be with you Y/N. No matter how hard it is, I want to try. So will you dub me as a knight for your love?”

He couldn’t tell what you were thinking. With tears streaming down your face and his heart pounding out of his chest, he braced himself for the worst, closing his eyes shut.

Only for you to shakily shift the blade from his shoulder to shoulder, dropping down to your knees and hugging him, crying into his shoulder.

“Knights swear an oath to never do the wrong thing, you idiot,” you speak softly, breathily, and he can feel your small smile against his shoulder. “Then I’ll be an idiot. Your idiot.”

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