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tojikai · 10 months

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Sundered 4: GEARS

Pairing: Gojo x reader

Genre: Angst

tags/cw: angst, mean!gojo(kinda), babydaddy!gojo, babymomma!reader, motherhood, insecurities, suggestive smut, arguments, name-calling, L-bombs(lol)

word count: 6.7k

Decisions take seconds to make but can take months and even years to realize and regret.

“I still love you, Y/N. So, so much.”

Satoru wept, sniffing as he ran his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. His vision was cloudy but the memories in his head were crystal clear. The day he met you, the day you told him the news; it was unexpected, but it gave Satoru a warm feeling in his chest. How could he let himself forget that feeling so easily?

You don’t get to get her back. A voice in his head once again whispered to him, allowing sobs to erupt from his lips.

The day he separated from you, he told you you’ll make things work, no matter what it takes. A few weeks after that his mother introduced Naomi to him. It wasn’t her job but she helped him work on himself, gave him all that she has to offer, and held him when he felt like losing his mind.

You were almost out of reach, mostly just talking to him when it concerns your daughter. It almost felt like he was fighting alone. It made him feel like he was not changing anything. He barely sees your face; barely feels you.

And then it happened, in such a short span of time. Naomi was the only one he sees, the only one he feels with him.

“It could work, you know? But only if both sides are committed to making it work.” She said, “But like these gears,” She pointed at the constructible toy train of his daughter, “The gears will only work if they fit.” Satoru didn’t need to hear any more of her words to understand what she was trying to explain.

He found himself smiling at her smiles and laughing at her laugh. He found himself saying: “We kinda fit, don’t you think?” nudging her playfully as they walked Yui to the park, earning a shy laugh from her.

He found himself spending more time with Naomi than spending time figuring things out with you. It all just happened in such a short span of time.

It felt like setting himself free when he didn’t have to think about the problems with you. It was emancipating to just lie under the covers, snuggled up in bed with Naomi’s skin against his. It was a breath of fresh air to share the same breath as her every morning and night as they soak in each other’s embrace, feeling the warmth of their swollen lips on one another.

He wishes that he considered the day he’ll see you like that with someone else.

To say that he was shocked when you came and saw him with Naomi was an understatement. He didn’t want it to be like that. He wanted to introduce her to you, to explain things to you, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want you to think that you meant nothing to him. But at that time, he thought that he meant nothing to you.

He searched for the emotions in your eyes but failed. He waited for your questions of “Why?” and “How?” but they never came. It’s like you just really stopped giving two shits about whatever happens in your relationship. And Naomi’s words reverberated in his head: “The gears will only work if they match.”

And that’s how his decisions were made.

That you deserve someone who’ll treat you how you want to be treated; that he deserves this serenity with Naomi, too. He’s not some kind of hero to keep heading for war when there’s a humble abode waiting for him. He thought that there was nothing for you and him but different paths. Maybe this is how falling out of love happens, he thought.

And that is how he learned that decisions can sometimes take months and even years to realize and regret.

“I love you too much to fight anymore, Y/N.” Satoru was pretty sure that he was inaudible and incomprehensible by now. The cracks in his voice and his occasional hiccups were probably louder than any sound near his phone. “You know, I never meant any of the shit I said to you that day. You and Yui were the best thing to ever happen to me, never will I regret you, love.”

He couldn’t even pay attention to your voice as he harshly wiped his tears away, blinking his eyes to look up at the blurry, colorful lights “I know you’re happy, I know you don’t even want to see me again if you’re given a choice.” Satoru shook his head, undoing the first two buttons of his shirt so as to help with the ache that is now smoldering his chest.

“But I just want to take those words back.” He whispered, running out of breath before quickly gasping, “Hell, I just want to take everything I did after I gave up on us back.” Getting nothing was painful enough, and so is getting up.

He doesn’t know where he’s going but he trusts that his feet will take them to where he belongs.

—---------------------------------------

“Yeah, she’s sleeping now. Sunburnt and all.” You laughed, tilting your head as you tried to hold your phone between your ear and your shoulder. “‘Gumi talk, Daddy. Pwease,” You heard Megumi’s voice over Toji’s chuckles. You and Yui spent all day at their residence once again. The kids had a mini swimming party with the neighbor’s son, Yuuji.

You can’t deny that your little girl’s been a bit more energetic nowadays. She’s also learning things, like pouring beverages into a cup; something from the internet that Toji has been teaching Megumi to do. “What do you wanna say?” Toji answered before the little kid’s voice followed. “Yui later. Come later. Uh, bye.” The little message made you giggle.

“She’s asleep now, ‘gumi~ We’ll visit again soon.” You heard Toji playfully scold him to go to bed already before getting back to the call, “I’ll tuck him in now. I’ll see you tomorrow, babe.” Humming, you said your good nights before ending the call. You watched Yui sleep, caressing her soft, blushing cheeks.

Everything’s been going good, and you could only hope that it’ll also be good for her.

Placing a gentle kiss on her forehead, three knocks at the door almost gave you a heart attack. It’s already late, who could it be? The place is a three-unit, up-and-down apartment, maybe someone got the wrong door. Wrapping yourself in a robe, you walked to the door. There was a muffled sound behind, and you can’t miss your name being mumbled.

You know the voice too well to wait any longer for confirmation.

“Satoru?” You spoke, brows knitting together. His hair and shirt were soaked in sweat. “Hey…” He laughed, standing straight as he stared at you with bloodshot eyes. Has he been crying? “What’s going on, Satoru?” You opened the door, letting him make his way inside as you gave him a concerned look.

“I mean it, Y/N.” What is he talking about? You wondered as he looked at you, sobbing all while trying to catch his breath. If somebody else saw him, they’d probably think something really awful happened. Not once have you seen him this broken before; not even when you fought so bad he had to leave the house.

“Satoru, I don’t understand you. You’re dru–“ You were cut off when he wrapped his arms around you, crying on your shoulders as he grabbed the sides of your robe, like a child not wanting to be left alone. “Y/N, please. I know what I’m saying, love.” He was gasping for air as he spoke, pulling away

“I know I’m drunk but not drunk enough to make wrong decisions.” His laugh lacked enthusiasm. Pulling away, you could see the smile on his face contradicts the big tears cascading down his cheeks. “Did you drive here?” You pulled away from his grasp, thinking about the next thing to do.

“No, I walked here. Let’s talk, please. Just a few–“ His face was close to yours, begging. His voice broke, and it broke you too and you know you can’t keep listening if he’s like this. “Satoru.” You turned, taking a step away from him. You could hear the shaky breath he took by how quiet it was.

“Yui’s already asleep.” You informed him, a subtle reminder that you wouldn’t want her waking up to a commotion again. Satoru nodded, lips quivering. “I can call Naomi to pick you up–“ You trailed but it was now his turn to cut you off. “No. I don’t…want that.” He knows it doesn’t sound right, and it gave you the impression that they fought.

“Fine, just your mom, then.” You turned to get your phone but his hand caught your wrist, a secure yet gentle grip. “No. Please.” He sounded like a kid. What has he done that not even the both of them can know that he’s here? “Can I stay here? Just for the night. I’ll sleep on the couch, Y/N. W-we’ll talk later… right?” He was on the verge of crying and you can’t stand there to watch any longer.

You don’t think it was a good idea, but this is the father of your child. Whatever happens to him will affect your daughter too.

“Just…wash up. Change. Check on Yui, if you want. I got a folding bed if you want to sleep there.” You turned around before walking back to your room, not waiting for the man to answer. You were planning to have some tea before going to sleep but now you just want to call Toji.

In two rings, you heard his voice from the other line. “Sorry, were you sleeping already?” You paced around your room, pursing your lips. “No, I was just checking on some files. Are you alright?” Concern was prominent in his voice. You wanted to tell him about this because he has a habit of coming over in the mornings. You surely don’t want him getting the wrong idea.

“Listen, Satoru’s here. I feel like he fought with Naomi, I don’t really know. He’s in Yui’s room.” There was a long silence and you got a feeling he was thinking carefully about how to react. “Is he trying to…” Toji cleared his throat before sighing, “Do you need me to go there?” He asked, and you could tell he was not very comfortable with your situation.

It’s only been a couple of months but Toji’s proven nothing but sincerity to you and it was all unconditional. You’re aware of the tension between him and Satoru; the latter being more impolite than the former. But even so, Toji never tried to take away the father role from Satoru. This only heightened your respect for him.

“It’s fine, I just wanted to tell you. I don’t want you thinking anything if you saw him here tomorrow.” You plopped on the bed, massaging your temple as you closed your eyes. “So, you know I’ll be going there tomorrow?” There was a chuckle behind his words. You felt a blush creeping up your cheeks.

“Go to sleep.” You rubbed your eyes, with a small smile on your lips. Once again, good nights were exchanged between the two of you. You’re just glad that Toji isn’t as shallow as other men. You were worried that your decision to let your ex stay for a night would upset him. Putting your thoughts to rest, you lay down on the bed, feeling the soft mattress against your skin.

Not even half an hour has passed and another set of knocks startled you. The fact that you have no idea what happened with Satoru made you worry. Could it be Naomi? Was your name involved in their fight? You doubt that she’d come here at this hour, though. You don’t see her as that type of woman at all.

You don’t even know if they really fought. Thoughts raced through your head as you hurried to the door. You wondered if Satoru was woken up by the knocks. He’s drunk and he sleeps like a log when he's drunk. But it would be different if your daughter starts crying. You don’t really want to talk with him about whatever it is.

It scares you when you think about how ‘the talk’ with him ended the last time. The day he shredded the last remaining hope you had of him, you and your daughter being a family.

Seeing headlights shining down your window pane, you wondered if Toji really drove here to accompany you. But he can’t be that fast, you thought as you opened the door.

Dressed in her expensive coat and a designer scarf, was Satoru’s mother, and you could already tell that she was not in her best mood. If Naomi and Satoru fought, you’re sure that your name’s mentioned.

Without thinking, you moved out of the doorway to let her in, “Good evening, Ma’am—” Slap. The next thing you know, you were already grabbing your cheeks. The skin was throbbing from the force of the contact and you were sure that this is about to leave marks later on.

“Won’t you quit being a slut?” You thought that the stinging sensation on your face was already painful, but those words proved you wrong. You felt degraded, humiliated even when no one was around; you felt like your whole being was trampled on. You don’t even know what you did. Does she hate you that much?

She used to claim that you ruined her son’s life. That you were just trying to leech off him so you wouldn’t need to work or use your brain. Those words broke your heart, not for yourself but for your mother who tried so hard to give you all that she can. When Satoru confronted her about it, she cried to him, blabbering about why she was right.

It wasn’t easy to speak about those things, you don’t want to make it seem like you were tearing him away from his mother, all while you were tearing him apart due to your situation back then. But you made sure that he knows the reason why you don’t want her around your daughter so much.

You wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the one who coaxed Yui to call Naomi Mama. After all, she’s also the same mother who shoved someone else into her son instead of helping to make sure that his granddaughter would grow up with a whole family. Do you disgust her that much? It shouldn’t be painful anymore at this point. She already won in kicking you out of her son’s life.

“I-I don’t know what’s going on, Ma’am. My daughter’s sleeping can we talk outside—?” Her scoff halted you. You found yourself wishing that you let Toji come over or for Satoru to wake up. “Now, you don’t want your daughter hearing about her mother’s mess?” She hissed at your face, laughing as you pushed yourself to walk out and close the door behind you.

“Satoru’s here Ma’am but I don’t—” Another slap landed on your face and this time it took everything in you not to throw the punch you were saving in your fist. “How fucking desperate can you be?” With her eyes blown wide in surprise, she pushed passed you, mouth foaming with her nasty words.

“Satoru!” She called out, walking like she owns the place. “You really took advantage of his feelings for you. You’re always so ready to ruin his and Naomi’s relationship so he’d go back to you.” She turned, pointing a finger at you. Your eyes widened at her words. Satoru’s feelings for me? You were confused.

“Just so you know, my son’s never been healthier ever since he left you. He doesn’t need a toxic relationship with a woman he didn’t even choose to be with.” The words were sharp and the way to your daughter’s room felt like you were being shot with each step. You already know that.

Why does she have to keep rubbing it to your face that you weren’t someone he voluntarily chose to love?

“Please don’t bring the child to this. I know you—” You felt like you never had the chance to speak a full sentence. “Of course, I am not. I won’t let her grow up with you. For what? So she could turn out to be like you, too? Satoru!” The words filled you with dread. You feared that they could easily take her away from you by any means they can. You got nothing to give.

Before she could even open the door to your daughter’s room, Satoru already came out. The emotions on his face were indiscernible as she stared at his mother. “Don’t take Yui, please. I won’t talk to Satoru if you want, just don’t take my child away.” You cried, ready to get down on your knees but Satoru was immediately on your side.

“What is this? What is going on? Mom!” Satoru held your figure, shaking violently and your skin, cold. You tried to get out of Satoru’s grasp, wanting nothing but to get close to your child who’s already starting to cry. You hated yourself for putting her in situations like this.

“Let me get Yui, Satoru, please. You can’t take her away.” Satoru was now the one baffled. His head felt like someone was hitting his skull with a hammer from the inside. Now, he wakes up to his mom causing commotion in a house where his daughter is in.

“No one’s taking Yui away, Y/N.” One of his arms wrapped around your waist, and the other, shielding you from his Mom. Satoru used to believe that his mother only wanted the best for him. He didn’t realize that what his mom wants for him is not the best for his daughter. “Mom, what are you doing?!” He reiterated through clenched jaws as you slipped away to get to Yui.

“You ask me what am I doing? You! Satoru, what are you doing, letting this whore ruin you and Naomi?” Satoru’s eyes widened, "Mom!" he looked at you and his wailing daughter, holding her against your chest. Terror was clear in her tear-stained face as she peeked over your shoulders, while you try to keep her eyes away from the chaos, “Bad Meemaw, Bad!” She sobbed, pointing her finger.

Satoru was about to close the door when his mother tried to beat him to it. “Is this how you want to raise your daughter, Satoru? In this environment?!” She was fierce with her words and Satoru’s just slowly putting the pieces together as she spoke. “She’s messing with your head, Satoru. Look at her, getting it on with another rich guy to milk, trying to make you come back to her.”

“You're the one creating this environment. Why did you even come here?” He questioned, stepping in front of her to prevent her from getting to you. “Where else would you be? You just called me saying you still love this bitch—” You don’t understand how a person could hate you so much when you’ve done nothing but try to respect them. “Don’t speak of her like that, Mom! You’re not of any help.” There was a hint of exasperation in his voice.

Satoru’s mother was the second wife to his father. Your mother used to say that 'the woman's just bitter because she knows that she’ll never really have his father’s heart even if she’s the one with him.' The first wife of his father went away, not wanting her only child to be in such tough and disconcerting conditions and just letting Satoru’s father be with his Mom.

Thinking about it now, you realized that your situation is kind of similar.

“Ma, no cry. Ma.” You heard your daughter reach for your face, making you ache even more. History really does repeat itself, you thought. “Mama’s fine.” You felt sorry for your child; for allowing her to witness something this chaotic. You wished that you’re a bit more well off, maybe her mother wouldn’t be so small and fragile against people like her grandmother.

“I didn’t call Y/N...” Satoru whispered, turning to look at your back as you tried to protect your daughter from the scene. “Just because he’s wasted and he’s telling you that he loves you, doesn’t mean you get to slither up at him like a snake!” Words were thrown at you and only now have you realized the situation.

Satoru tried to call your number to tell you that he loves you.

Your eyes snapped up at him, catching him looking already looking at you. He did plan to let you know about how he feels. But he didn’t want you to find out like this. He already messed up by letting himself break down and call the wrong person. Hell, he shouldn’t have even said it in a call.

It just hurts so bad. It’s like the words would pierce their way out of his heart and lungs if he didn’t get them out.

He can’t even expect anything, and he doesn’t even know how you’d take it. He could lose you completely after all this and that’s the last thing he wants. Now that you have Toji, he’s got no choice but to stand aside and watch. Like how he made you feel with Naomi. The thought made Satoru swallow as he took in your crying face; his chest throbbing with pain.

“Mom, can you please just leave?” He spoke in a low voice, breathing hard to stop himself from exploding. “You said too much already. Just go, this is my problem to fix.” His mother’s face tells Satoru she’s not letting up so easily and it took everything in him not to scream back at her.

“Of course, I have so much to say. I am helping you because she has done so much to you–“ Before she could even her sentence, Satoru was already raising his voice at her, making you cover your daughter’s ear. “Mom, all you did was make things worse!” It was a bad sight, you’ve never seen him get angry at his mother.

Knowing her situation with his Dad, Satoru always chose to be understanding to her. He once told you that he always wants his mother to feel loved and cared for because his father would never give her enough of that. “How could you? All because of–“ She trailed.

“You’re trespassing, Mom.” He said firmly, forcing himself to calm down. She knows what Satoru meant by that. You could file a case against her if she continues to cause trouble. “Listen, I don’t know what this woman fed you, but you better get your head straight.” She pointed a finger at Satoru’s face.

“I created this problem. Let me fix it by myself.” You could tell that fighting with his Mom is the last thing Satoru wants to do. There was a tired look on his face as he shook his head, “I wouldn’t want to create a space between us Mom. But I can’t let you involve yourself in every decision I make.” His mother can sense the light threat in Satoru’s words.

“Then, make the right decisions, Satoru. Stop ruining your life for someone with no future.” Before any of you could even talk, his mother was already stomping her way out of the room, slamming the door like it’s hers, causing Yui to start crying again. You sat there, thinking about everything you just heard.

“Shh, it’s okay, love. It’s alright.” Satoru took Yui from your arms, eyes full of worry. Rocking the weeping child in his arms, he hung his head low as you stared at him. You wiped the tears that were about to fall as you stood up, heading to the living room and letting him put Yui back to sleep.

You let yourself cry, you let yourself think. Just when you thought you were getting better, just when you started to accept everything that has happened. Yui’s cries slowly stopped after almost half an hour. You wanted to go there and put her to sleep by yourself but you don’t want her to see you cry anymore. It’s not good.

“What were you trying to do, Satoru?” were the first words that came out of your mouth. He stood there, motionless as he watched you turn away to wipe your eyes. “I…I love you. I didn’t mean it when I said I regret you or Yui. I love you.” His answer was a whisper but it was firm. Your eyebrows furrowed, tears once again threatening to fall. “Why?” You sobbed, “Why now?”

Satoru doesn’t know what to answer. He doesn’t even know if there’s a right answer but all he knows is he can’t expect anything from you. “I…I still do. I don’t think I ever stopped, I—“ He was cut off by your sharp intake of breath as you clutched the fabric of your robe to your chest. He let himself see how much he destroyed you again, how he heartlessly tore you apart once more.

“Why are you trying to ruin me again? Why are you trying to take away what I just got?” Your shoulders shake as you lean your forehead on your clasped hands. He wanted to hold you but he feared that you'd run away. Like how you’re getting harder to reach right now, with every passing second.

“You have no idea how much I wanted you to say that before all this, Satoru. You have no idea how many nights I had to cry myself, putting myself back together while you were trying to make someone else whole!” You turned to him, cheeks and eyes swollen from crying. “You have no idea how many times I blamed myself for not being the better one for you…” You whimpered.

It felt as though your words were a blow to his body, determined to crush his diaphragm to gouge his heart out as payment for yours that he stomped on so many times. Your hands were visibly shaking as you wiped your eyes with the back of it before speaking again, “You can’t say you love me now just because you want to, Satoru.”

“I know I can’t change anything…” Everything that comes out of Satoru’s mouth makes him feel stupid. If he was you, he wouldn’t even listen to him. While you both had your shortcomings in your relationship, Satoru knows that you wouldn’t have pulled yourself away if he didn’t give you a reason to.

“...but I can make it better, Y/N. I can prove it to you. Just let me—” He was getting desperate to put his feelings into words but you don’t want to hear it. He should’ve known. “Naomi is a good woman. She’s…a perfect fit for you.” You laughed bitterly, “Don’t hurt her. You know why I didn’t fight even when I wanted to get you back?” Each snivel that you make was a nail to his heart.

“Because you looked happy together.” The pain in your voice was thick before you gasped for air. “And I didn’t want to be unfair to you and to Naomi.” There was a sad smile on your face, probably reminiscing the day you found out he moved on from you. “So…please. Let’s not be unfair to Toji, too.” You looked up at him, smiling through your tears.

You looked tired; so, so tired of it all.

“But I love you…” He breathed out as you stood up, ready to retire to bed. “...I just wanted you to know that.” He grabbed your hand, urgently kissing it as he sobbed. You watched his face contort with sadness, closing his eyes and letting his tear slide over the bridge of his nose as he tilted his head to your palm.

You looked away, suppressing your cries; feeling it harder to breathe through the pain the more you feel his touch. You pulled your hands away slowly before quickly walking to your room.

Before you locked the door, you could hear his wails of anguish and the sound of two hearts shattering once more.

—------------------------------------------------

You woke up to the feeling of the bed dipping on your side. What time is it? When did you fall asleep? Yui. Remembering your daughter made your eyes snap open, trying to stand up immediately.

“Hey, hey. Calm down, it’s me, I’m here.” It was Toji, when did he come here? The brightness of the color of your curtains indicates the light of the sun shining down behind it. “I forgot that I fell asleep.” You sighed. In fact, you don’t even remember getting on your bed. The last thing you were doing was crying on the floor beside the bedside table. Did Satoru put you in your bed?

“Satoru left after feeding Yui her breakfast. She’s playing on my phone.” He got closer to kiss your forehead. “It’s too early for phones.” You yawned, covering your face with a blanket before sitting down. “Megumi’s with her, I’m taking their phones away after we eat.“ You nodded, pursing your lips as you remembered all the events from last night.

“Let me brush my teeth, I…got something to tell you.” You can see Toji licking his lips before humming, “Alright, we'll talk about it. I cooked something.” Letting him kiss your cheek as you stood on your knees and wrap your arms around his neck. His hands automatically snaked around your waist, murmuring “Let’s talk while eating.”

You told Toji about what happened the other night. Not as detailed as you remember it but you made sure that he knows everything he needs to know. No matter how awkward it was to discuss for you. There was a blank look on his face throughout the story and you can’t help but feel concerned.

“So that’s why he told me to take good care of you before he left.” It was obvious that he was tense, “I should’ve come last night.” Sighing, you shook your head, “It’s alright, I handled it. Please, try not to worry. You’re my boyfriend now.” You moved to sit beside him, pecking his lips.

You didn’t know how else to reassure him, you don’t like seeing the defeated look in his eyes. Throughout the day, he would randomly kiss you; burying his face in your neck. He’s more clingy than usual, and although it worries you, you find it really cute.

The following weeks proceeded the same, Satoru picking up Yui and Naomi tagging along wasn’t new but it happened for consecutive weeks now. You don’t know if Satoru told her, but she showed no signs of it. Though her gazes linger between you and Satoru at times, but there’s not a hint of hostility to it.

You don’t really know how they are with each other in private, but there’s a noticeable change in Satoru’s behavior towards her. “Get your bag from Naomi.” Satoru once commanded your daughter when you came to get her from his house. “Naomi?” She repeated, and running only after he nodded at her, confirming how she should address her.

“Did you take a cab? Toji’s not with you.” He would speak to you in a voice he never did before, it almost shocked you. He lost weight, he looks exhausted. “Yeah, he’s at work.” You answered earning a hum from him. “If you’re comfortable, I can take you home. It’d save you money, you know?” It was now your turn to hum, locking eyes with him.

When did they start looking this gently at you?

“You ready to go?” Naomi cleared her throat, suddenly appearing with Yui behind Satoru. “Yeah, I’ll be driving them home then I'll head straight to work.” He gave her a small smile, picking Yui up before taking the bag that Naomi was giving to you. “Bye, I love you.” Naomi stood on her tippy toes, kissing the side of his lips. “I'll see you later…love you." He responded.

The change on Naomi’s face cannot go unnoticed as she glanced at you. You looked down, feeling bad that she was probably anxious. And the fact that she’s clueless about it all just made it heavier than it already is.

Satoru opened the door of the passenger side for you. Now, he would usually let you sit on the back. You had to glance back at his house to know if Naomi saw it. You don’t want her to have problems with you when in fact, you're trying to help her.

“How are you and Naomi?” You found yourself asking Satoru as he sat beside you, his eyes watched you from the rearview mirror. “I’m trying. I really am. But I can’t force myself, Y/N.” He looked away, biting his lip. Your daughter was talking to her doll behind you and you’re just grateful that she’s still too young to understand this.

“Satoru, she’s been nothing but good to you. She did a lot of things for you.” You spoke gently. You’re surprised that you could now talk about this more calmly. Because it involves you. And you wouldn’t know what to do if Naomi finds out that her boyfriend’s still in love with you, begged you to take him back and never told her. You don’t owe her anything but you’re not that type of person.

“Would it be right to stay with someone for that sole reason?” He asked, and suddenly, you don’t know the answer. “It might only hurt them more if they find out that you stayed with them just because you feel obligated to and not because you truly love them.” He explained, smiling when he heard his baby daughter call his name randomly.

“It’s Dad. Not ‘Toru” You reached over to pinch her cheek, silently thanking her for breaking the ice. “Toji Dada too? Hm?” You can see Satoru tense up before a sad look flashed in his eyes. “I don’t know, love...Ask Mama?” You can tell he was hurt by how he got quiet. The little joy left in his eyes, now completely gone.

“You know Toji corrects her for that.” You defended as you stopped at the red light. “It’s good, though. I…” Pausing, Satoru took a deep breath. “I think he’s gonna be that, anyway.” He laughed, tapping the wheel before turning to look at you.

“You know I just want to prove to you that I love you, right? You don’t have to love me back, I know you’re happy with him.”

—----------------------------------------------------

Naomi’s been observing her boyfriend for the past few months. She can’t really determine what exactly changed but she knows that it wasn’t the same. The day you picked up Yui with Toji for the first time, she noticed that Satoru prepared more than he usually does.

At first, she thought it was just him getting more responsible. But when she saw that you came with your new boyfriend, she got a feeling that Satoru wanted to impress. She figured that it was because he wants his baby momma’s boyfriend to think highly of him and left it at that.

He’s been having mood swings but he’s also been getting more projects to work at so, it’s understandable. She also noticed how almost every movement of his daughter was documented and sent to you when she's with them. It was new because he rarely does it before. But she thought that it was only because your co-parenting plan was going better.

Everything that she notices about Satoru has valid reasons so, why is she feeling unsettled whenever the two of you would meet? It’s an unreasonable feeling because you’re already dating someone. There shouldn’t even be a single concern in her body.

Just a few weeks ago, his mother called her in the middle of the night, asking if Satoru was with him. When she said that she’ll call him to ask where he is, her mother quickly interrupted her, saying that he already replied that he was working overtime for a VIP client. She also said something about not interrupting him because the client’s a big person.

She still texted Satoru that night asking why he didn’t tell her about it. Satoru replied hours later, saying that it was an emergency project that needs to be discussed as soon as possible. After that, he sent another message with ‘I’m sorry.’

She came over the following night, intending to give him a soothing break. She prepared thoroughly during the day, wanting to please her boyfriend. Fatigue was obvious in his eyes when she arrived. Like he didn’t get an ounce of sleep.

“I’ll take that tiredness away, just relax in there.” She giggled, sensuously running down her fingers on his skin as she makes sure every physical contact they made was as soft as possible. She went down on him, watching him close his eyes as he grabbed her hair eliciting moans from her.

“Let’s do it without one,” She smiled, excited as she positioned herself on top of him, allowing him to feel her warmth as she pressed her chest against his. It was slow, passionate. He was so gentle with his touches and Naomi wanted to convince him to do it inside her so badly.

She was sure that all those perturbing thoughts of her would also be put to rest if that happens, she thought as she smiles, grinding onto him. But before she could get to that, he halted her, “Wait,” he spoke, reaching for the packet in his bedside cabinet.

Before she could even speak she was flipped over and it’s now Satoru on top. “I can take Plan B, just do it inside.” She bit her nail, giving him the eyes which only earned a smile, “Can never be too safe.” Not long after that, they both finished. Back then, he would agree to do it inside as long as she takes an emergency contraceptive after.

How come he wanted to be ‘too safe’ this time?

Her worries were put to rest for a little when he held her close when they came to get Yui. It also helped that you're still with your boyfriend. It only lasted for a bit until you had to pick Yui up on your own. Satoru found out that you were taking Yui out for an ice cream and the little girl asked him to come.

Naomi wanted to join; she was ready to dress up. But Satoru suggested that it should just be the middle day in your schedule, where the three of you would spend time together. It took everything in her not to frown in front of you. She felt rejected, she felt left out. The last straw was the talk she had with Satoru three days ago.

“What do you think about civil weddings?” She spoke to him, sitting on his lap as he watches T.V. “Huh?” He turned his attention to her, “Civil weddings. Maybe we could have it before the grand wedding, don’t you think?” She wiggles her brows at him, laughing as she daydreamed. Placing his hands on her waist, she kissed his lips softly.

“Or maybe we could put a bun in the oven first so, she’d be with us in wedding photos.” She whispered, half-joking. “Why are you dreaming? It’s still early.” Satoru laughed, taking his hand off of her to get the remote, switching between channels.

“I’m serious, though.” She pouted, hugging his neck. “Yeah, I know. But…It’s not in my plans, yet.” Her heart dropped at his words. She knows that he doesn’t mean it that way but it hurt her that after all the family talk and jokes he made with her, she’ll find out that it’s not even in his plans yet. Naomi wanted to cry, but instead, she got upset. She didn't let him know but she chose not to stay over at Satoru’s that night, claiming that she has paperwork. Before, he would persuade her to stay even if she has to do something.

How come he just kissed her goodbye this time?

It was tough on Naomi. Whenever she would ask Satoru about it, he said that he just got really busy with work. Even when he tells her that he loves her, she can say that he’s not even fully into it. And he doesn’t want to talk to you because she doesn’t want you to think that she’s accusing you when you got a whole new boyfriend.

Picking up her phone, Naomi decided that she just can't take the mystery anymore. “Hey, Mom. Are you free for lunch? I’d like to catch up.”

She just needs some advice. And she thinks that no one knows sons better than their mothers.

PREV | NEXT

taglist: @forever-war @astral-hydromancy @witchbybirth @coeqi @starshinedowo @coffee-on-a-rainyautumn @lost-lonnie @haitanifxn @dearsunaa @clairdelunaax @anxious-chick @tigerchaeee @megufushi @tsukkisrightpinky @crowiechan @makimais @infinitemoonlight @iloveblogging2 @cloudsinthecosmos @uchiwife @bellaadonnas @lawlietily @lilxnvm @poopoobuttsy @yihona-san06 @luhvbot

@sagekko @lugkuic @asbony @uhremmi @kurookinnie @why-am-i-here-again-shitheads @galaxyfever @guenievresworld @y2kcy3brz @chocokaylarobin @hopeannalea @ruunavalentine @tojirin @teapartyspilled @ackermendick @shadowarchon @vinkiesz @awkwardaardvarkforever @btsw1fe @nvvacanesworld @wolffmaiden @underburningstars @rntrsuna @vampgguk @doulcha @creolequeen11210

#angst #gojo satoru #gojo angst #gojo x reader #gojo x you #gojo satoru angst #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk #jjk x reader

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qdbs-writes · 9 months

Note

How do you think the Cullens would act around a disinterested crush? Maybe they're fated but reader isn't having it lol

(I love your twilight writing btw thank God someone is still doing it 🤤🤤)

ah it has been many moons since I've gotten a twilight request yay!

Cullen Clan Reacting To Their Crush Being Disinterested In Them

Carlisle Cullen

Being alive for just over 400 years tends to give one a good perspective on life and the bigger picture, and Carlisle sure has a pretty good idea of how all things pan out. So you're not interested in him? That's fine, Carlisle can wait for as long as you need to change your mind.

In the meantime, Carlisle will continue to maintain your friendship and continue to show just how hard he's worked to become the kind caring father figure he is. He knows you'll fall for him, eventually.

Esme Cullen

Obviously, she's not going to stop caring about you just because you don't return her feelings. But she might switch up how she shows her affection.

Rather than flirty winks and suspiciously candle-lit wine tastings, she'll back up to more traditionally motherly affections. Making sure you're eating right, baking cookies, etc. And of course, giving you homemade soup when you're sick is still one of her favourite things to do, no need to stop now.

Edward Cullen

Of course, you're not interested, how could anyone love a monster like him? Who did he think he was, thinking he was worthy of your love? Or so his inner monologue goes.

But it's really not that dramatic, it almost never is, Edward just sprung his crush on you suddenly and it caught you off guard. It was largely the excessively long preamble about how he was an irredeemable murderer that put you off first, but of course, he won't realise that until considerably later.

Rosalie Hale

She's a little relieved actually. All her mortal and immortal life, Rosalie has been aggressively pursued by people she wasn't particularly interested in, so the fact that she can crush on someone who isn't really that interested is a wonderful change of pace.

For the first time ever, Rosalie has butterflies in her stomach, she fumbles with her words when she speaks to you, and she feels like a silly, mortal teenage girl again, begging her mother to let her go to the dance just so she can sneak away to catch a glimpse of someone just like you.

Emmett Cullen

You and Emmett had been good friends for a while so when he casually drops a blissful "We should get married" into the conversation, you initially choke on your drink in laughter.

Emmett's a little heartbroken that you'd laugh at something like that, considering that he was being 100% serious. But since you've known him, the both of you have been constantly cracking up jokes, trying to get on each other's nerves, so no wonder you thought this was another one of his pranks. He decides to take this reaction as a blessing, you have no idea he's actually into you, now he knows he has to work out a different way to confess his feelings for you.

Alice Cullen

She's a little confused obviously, having multiple visions of the two of you in a romantic relationship kind of gave her the impression that it might've been going to come true, but your disinterest says something else altogether.

But the worst part is that those damn visions of you and her together keep coming back, taunting her, luring her in deeper to despair with the thoughts of what might be. It's all getting so intense, so she decides to skip town for a bit, see if that changes anything, or at least helps her clear her head.

Jasper Hale

Oh well, so you're not interested in a romantic relationship, so what? Doesn't mean you can't still be friends. Doesn't mean he can't be the charming Southern gentleman he is. Doesn't mean he can't still pull out chairs or open doors for you. Or send anonymous bouquets to your house. Or leave your favourite snacks in your locker when you're having a rough day. Of course not.

It doesn't mean he can't worry about other people who might want to date you. Doesn't mean he can't scare off people who'd be bad for you. I mean, what else are friends for?

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ferrstappen · 7 months

Text

Everybody wants a taste l LN4

a/n: i am in an urgent need of writing ideas I've had for MONTHS so brace yourselves I guess?? also the title ofc is from pop anthem jealous by nick Jonas.

i am also very very very stressed waiting for the standing start.

pairing: Lando Norris x actress!reader

this is angst. and some tom holland after this poll results <3

summary: Lando had never been the jealous kind, but after seeing you with many co-stars, he reaches his limit. and his girlfriend doesn't like it.

No one would ever know Lando Norris' was reaching his limit as he stood on the sidelines of another press junket for his girlfriend's new movie: a coming of age movie that already was creating awards season buzz, and God was he proud of her, having witnessed the ten minute standing ovation she received during Cannes.

But of course the limelight wasn't only on her. No, it was on him.

Lando remembers when he was asked who he'd want to portray him if they ever did a biopic and he didn't hesitate: Tom Holland. There could be some similarities between the two, both British, chestnut curls, but now Lando's skin crawled just from hearing the name.

He had dealt with different co-stars during the almost two years of relationship; he'd seen her kiss them, fight with them, fall in love with them, but this was different, he never had to witness her naked skin pressed against someone else, placing her body on top of his, pretended noises he knew weren't real and authentic, but still, they were supposed to be just for him. All for the sake of making a point of her character being an adult now, some shit about an epiphany of being able to take control of her own life, make decisions about her body, and whatever the screenwriters wanted to portray.

And of course Lando didn't help himself.

user1: God has favorites, just check y/n having fake sex w tom holland and real sex w lando norris

user2: no but y/n and tom??? such a hot couple I NEED it to happen

user3: and what are you gonna do with lando and zendaya? lol user2: idc I just want y/n and tom to be a thing

And that was just the beginning, before the movie had even dropped, because the day of the premiere? Everything went wrong.

Sunny Los Angeles had welcomed you and Lando after landing from London, paparazzi eagerly waiting for the arrival at LAX, catching the perfect pictures of Lando placing you in front of him, holding your hand tightly and doing his best to shield your body from prying eyes who just wanted a couple of dollars.

Despite being jet lagged after spending a couple of days in your home in Monaco, there wasn't much time to catch a break because the moment the two of you set foot on the Beverly Hills Hotel, they barely let you take a shower before giving some nice, fluffy robes. Lando was first, out of nowhere two people were working on his hair while the other was applying some kind of serums and creams on his face, but he didn't care when it was time for another team to start working on you; Lando was mesmerized by the way your hair perfectly framed your face, the natural glow of your skin, the deep red of your lips.

"I don't like being so separated," Lando pouted, walking towards your seat, earning a giggle from you because he looked so funny and cozy with the big robe.

"There's not much we can do, baby. I can barely move," You searched for his eyes and that was when Lando got the idea. The hair stylists gasped when the racer sat down on the floor, circling his arms around one of your legs and resting his cheek on your thigh. "Oh, you're willing to be told off by the make up artists as well?" You asked him but your insides were dancing all over the place, your fingers quickly finding their place on his curls.

Neither of you noticed a Vogue photographer capturing the scene, with Lando's eyes closed and cheek smushed, with his arms secured around your leg, but neither realized representatives for Armani had walked in carrying Lando's tux and your body-hugging black velvet gown.

So far so good. A picture perfect young couple who loved each other very much and had photographers swooning by the way Lando fixes your earring and checks for lipstick on your teeth, and how you make sure his bow tie is leveled.

But then, they get to the red carpet.

It was an elegant affair, but still full of people and before he realized, the red carpet manager was separating you from him for an alone photo call before the one and only Tom Holland got there, cheerfully greeting you in front of the cameras, throwing a couple of jokes to make you laugh as he placed his hand on your back.

This was a nightmare, having to listen to people say how cute the two of you looked, a perfect on and off screen pair, chemistry on and off the screen, both your names already on the shortlist for the Oscars.

Lando's skin was starting to crawl, and it didn't help that he had to re watch the scenes haunting his mind, but this time it was out for the entire world to see, and it didn't take long for his latest instagram post to be flooded of vile comments.

when are you getting replaced by tom holland??

now tom holland can play you in movie and y/n plays herself, nothing changes lmao

lando control ur woman!!!

lucky man, she sounds so pretty I almost had to leave the theatre

lando honey you can leave her I'd never do that to you

And Lando knows he shouldn't, but when your hand reaches for his when the night ends, he pretends to look for his phone; when you try to fix a messy curl, he moves his head out of your reach.

and you know your boyfriend too well.

"Baby, are you okay?" You ask him once you reach the shared hotel room.

Lando lets out a dry chuckle, but too aware of his throat closing. "Why wouldn't I be?"

But you weren't having it, not today, not on your big day, not when you just wanted rest your head on his chest and fall asleep with his arms wrapped around your frame.

"I don't know, you tell me, you're the one acting weird,"

"I am not," Lando argued, trying to take deeper breath, but failing miserably.

"Okay Lando, whatever, I don't care. You can be selfish during a very important day for me for all I care,"

Those words struck a nerve: "Me? Selfish? Are you fucking kidding me?" Now you could see his cheeks flushing, maybe even his neck gaining some red color.

You wanted to be scared, to walk away and let him cool off any unwanted feeling or thought on his head, but you couldn't.

"No, I'm not. Please illustrate me as to what happened to put you in this insufferable mood," You argued back and watched as Lando's mouth opened and closed as he undid the cuffs from his shirt, threw the suit jacket on the leather sofa and threw away the bow tie, all in just a couple of seconds.

"Am I not allowed to be upset to watch him all over you, having to look at the both of you acting like the best of friends or lovers for all I care, and then have to watch on this fucking enormous screen how you kiss him and touch him," Lando spat the words as if they were venom; he could feel his throat closing

Your eyes widened in disbelief, your brain not processing Lando's words. "Lando, you are not making any sense. Are you listening to yourself?" You were careful not to raise your voice, knowing he wasn't in a clear space of mind, but you blood was running hot too after processing what he was implying.

"Yes, I am. (Y/N), baby, I'm tired of having to watch you making out with a different guy every a couple of months, it is so tiring, and I understand that this is your job, but..." Lando was about to continue but was stopped by you, messily taking off the heavy velvet dress and heels, putting on the first pair of jeans and oversized sweater you found. "What are you doing?"

"I don't want to listen to you anymore. You are ridiculous, Lando. You're talking about my job, my career, that I've worked my ass off, and never in a million years I thought you'd be telling me this bullshit! I'm not going to entertain this, so if you can't deal with this anymore, please let me know so that I can move on," this time your throat tightened, the last words coming out broken and choked, emotions fighting to make their way; from anger to utter sadness.

"Where are you going?" Lando didn't know if he was angry with you, disappointed in himself, maybe a mix of both as he watched you grab the Chanel black backpack.

"I don't know, but let me know if you can do this or what,"

You were sure those were the last words of the unforeseen argument, but as you were grabbing the card key of the room, Lando opened his mouth.

"Maybe you can go with Tom, everyone wants you two together anyway."

Of course he needed to get the last words.

#lando norris au #lando norris x reader #lando norris x reader#lando norris fanfic #lando norris imagine #lando norris angst #lando norris x you #lando norris x y/n #f1 x you #f1 x reader #f1 fic #lando norris x oc

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golden-moony · 2 months

Text

king of my heart | smau

pairings: lando norris x fem!reader | pato o'ward x fem!reader

summary: y/n is an F1 content creator loved among the grid and the fans, and more than one person ships her with lando due to how close they've always been. but when y/n goes to her first IndyCar race, the last thing she expects is being involved in rumours with another mclaren driver.

warnings: love triangle? kinda.

author's note: i might turn this into a mini series but i'll see how it goes. btw english it's not my first language so if there's any grammatical error please let me know so i can fix it, ty🧡 now enjoy!

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

------------------------------------------------------

yourusername posted to their story!

[caption 1; it's indycar weekend in Long Beach, babyyyy!] [caption 2; time for practice and snacks🌞]

patriciooward

liked by indycar, zbrownceo, yourusername, and 83,527 others!

patriciooward INDY500 colors and back in the streeetz🤩

user1 lookin' goooood🔥

arrowmclaren it'll look even better with confetti covering it😉 user2 admin knows a win is coming!! 💪

user3 Este es tu año, cabrón! VAMOOOOS 🇲🇽

user4 is it a requirement to be handsome to drive in mclaren? cause daaaamn

user5 same girl, same

yourusername black is the new papaya fr 🔥 can't wait for tomorrow!

patriciooward hopefully you'll be wearing #5 user6 OMG?!?!!!??? yourusername can't show favoritism! i'm a professional, sir patriciooward it can be our secret then 😉 user7 OH MY- HELLOOOOO? user8 landonorris come get your girl bro!!! user9 omfg mr o'ward i wasn't familiar with your game user10 y/n sweety, wrong mclaren driver landonorris 🤨 user11 she really said i want a mclaren, don't care which one😭 user12 and she's so real for that

user13 let's goooo Pato!! 🦆🧡

user14 y/n and pato's exchange?? NEW SHIP HAS ARRIVED!

user15 i feel like i'm betraying my roots but pato and y/n would be the it couple fr user16 SO TRUE user17 pato and lando deserve sooo much better.

user18 NOT LANDO REPLYING TO THE COMMENT 😂😂

user19 f1twt is about to have a blast with this one 🍿 user20 they already have #teampato and #teamlando hashtags going on 😭😭

yourusername posted to their story!

[caption 1; preparation for ✨qualy day✨] [caption 2; that's how you arrive in style]

yourusername

liked by pierregasly, alexanderrossi, shelovesformula1, and 76,088 others!

yourusername First IndyCar race ✅ can't explain how incredible this weekend was! I’ve had the pleasure of chatting to so many cool people, discovering so much about this series and meeting so many of you! 🧡 can't wait to show you everything soon 😘

user1 what a babeeeee 😍

frosenqvist so great to meet you! hope you come to another one again soon! 🏁

arrowmclaren we second this! user2 she's an indy girl now 😎 tkanaan especially after all the fun we had last night😜 yourusername oh i'll definitely come back for more races (and parties ofc🙊) user3 she's part of the family now! love to see it user4 mclaren team 🤝 us: being in love with y/n

user5 PATO INTERVIEW??!! WE WON

lissiemackintosh so happy to have met you!! 💖

yourusername can't wait to see u again 🥹 user6 MY FAVES 🤩🤩 user7 girls supporting girls 💞 user8 we need a colab!

landonorris y/n get out of there. That's not your family!

carlossainz55 y/n please hurry, the kid has missed you maxverstappen1 y/n please hurry, we can't stand him anymore maxfewtrell y/n please hurry, he gets whiny when you're not around alex_albon y/n please hurry, oscar is about to commit crime oscarpiastri that is correct, so please y/n hurry landonorris when i asked y'all to back me up, this is NOT what i meant 🙄 yourusername if it helps at all, i've miss you all 🫶 (except Lando) landonorris i hate y'all fr user9 this is the kind of content i pay my internet bill for 😂

user10 literal queen 👑

user11 she couldn't become lando's wag so now she goes to indy to try to find a man lol such a clout chaser

user12 girl stfu she's literally just doin her job user13 try not to sound so bitter next time 💋 user14 get a life, hater

user15 MOTHER IS MOTHERING

user16 i don't think we're talking enough about that last photo

user17 RIGHT?! Y/N X PATO LET'S GOO user18 nah y/n x lando >>>>>>>>

patooward Indy looks good on you 💯 i wonder who took that amazing first pic

yourusername credits to you, amateur😘 user19 you can't convince me they're not flirting user20 i truly don't know if i wanna be pato or y/n... i only know i'd hate to be lando rn 😭 user21 y/n and lando are the endgame user22 Y/N X PATO TILL THE END

landonorris posted to his story!

[caption; safe and sound where she belongs]

sooo.... y'all want part 2?

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asahicore · 9 months

Text

real me, real you - psh

pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader (ft. jay... sorry)

synopsis. You’re your school’s popular pretty smart girl, but with a twist - you lead a completely different life at home, where you are messy, lazy and foul-mouthed. Only your family and best friend Sumin know about this, until Park Sunghoon, of all people, finds out. The resident cold and arrogant heartbreaker of your school decides to blackmail you into doing his biddings - but you can’t say no, not even when he asks you to be his fake girlfriend, otherwise he’ll ruin your reputation. But as you and Sunghoon get closer, you realize that maybe he’s not so bad after all, and you may be more similar than you'd originally though - all while your old childhood friend Jay watches from the sidelines.

genre. fake dating, high school au, very slight love triangle action, fluff and angst

warnings. this is the first thing i ever wrote so there may be slightly cringe and awkward things but i didn't wanna change anything lol, hoon is a meanie at some point and everything is dramatic and very fanfic-y, mild childhood trauma for both of them <3

word count. 22.9k

author's note. @end-hyphen genie this one is for you... i hope you still like this fic after all this time lol ! as i said in the warnings i only changed a few typos and punctuation from the original but i decided to not make any major changes bc i think it's nice to see what my writing was like when i had just started out!! hopefully i've improved lol, also this was not inspired by true beauty!! i've never seen the show nor read the webtoon. i was inspired by two mangas called switch girl and kare kano (or his and her circumstances) which have this plot of a girl being two different people at school and at home. anyways hope u guys enjoy this and if u do pls lmk <333

Nobody was supposed to find out.

You were the most popular girl in school, known for your looks, good grades, and kind personality. You had a nice group of friends and the whole school at your feet, students and staff alike. As the student representative, you had an image to keep up and needed everyone to think you were perfect; and they did. So you always wore a smile on your face, kept your head up and made sure your uniform was creaseless, all while maintaining the highest scores in your year. Always being friendly to your peers and helping them out prevented anyone from thinking you were a stuck-up goody-two-shoes. You made high school look like a breeze.

But such a life didn’t exist. Who was happy waking up at 6 a.m. every day and dedicating all of their time to schoolwork and student life? You certainly weren’t. What you thrived off of was having everyone think you were. Hearing whispers in the corridor of, “She’s so pulled together!” or “I wish I had her life”, now, those skyrocketed you to heaven. The cherry on top was a nod of approval from a teacher or an “outstanding job again, Y/N” as they handed you back your graded paper. Your favorite color had become the red of the pens your teachers used to write A+ at the top of the page.

You’d always been academically gifted, but as you heard those words more and more, you’d started craving them and doing everything to hear them again until they started controlling you instead of the other way around. Everything you did needed to be perfect. And that was how you had created this persona of the perfect girl who had it all together at the ripe age of 17. But that’s exactly what it was; a persona.

As soon as you stepped off the bus and waved goodbye to your friends, you became another person. Or more accurately, you reverted back to your natural self. You weren’t an evil person by any means; it wasn’t your intention to actively deceive everyone at school, it was more of a side effect of keeping up appearances. Only your family and your closest friend Sumin knew what you were truly like: greedy, messy, short-tempered, self-centered, and sometimes downright insufferable. Your younger siblings, Sunoo and Yeeun, liked to joke that you had a button you switched on and off whenever you left the house. When on, you were the sweetest girl ever, but when off, all your vices crept up and let themselves known to the world, or rather to your family. You didn’t mean to make them suffer, but after a long day of being perfect, you needed to blow off some steam; if they had to be your metaphorical punching bag, so be it.

When Sunoo entered high school, you made him swear he wouldn’t say a thing to anyone. You trusted him and knew he wouldn’t let your secret out - it was too entertaining for him to see you act perfect at school and reveal your true self at home. There was no risk of anyone finding out - you were so intent on keeping the act up that nothing ever slipped you. It had been that way since middle school, and your senior year of high school was going to be no different.

Nobody was supposed to find out, so what was Park Sunghoon doing right in front of you in the frozen aisle of the corner convenience store, just when you happened to be bare-faced, with thick glasses on and a pimple bright red from just having been popped, in your comfiest pajamas, and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s in hand?

“Kim Y/N? Y/N, is that you?”

You froze in place, not knowing how to react. There was no way this, your worst nightmare, was actually happening.

When you regained your senses, flight seemed the best way out of this. You avoided Sunghoon’s curious gaze and curtly replied, “No, sorry, I don’t know who that is,” before walking away, iron grip on the ice cream.

But the boy was quicker than you and grabbed you by the wrist, forcing you to turn around. “It is you! Come on, Y/N, aren’t we friends? Do you not recognize me or something?”

If it wasn’t for the panic coursing through your veins at that moment, you might’ve laughed at his question. How could you not recognize the Park Sunghoon? Along with Park Jongseong and Sim Jaeyun, or Jay and Jake as they liked to be called, he was only the most popular guy in your year - hell, in the whole school. The three of them had gained attention from freshman year as the three handsome soccer players. Jake and Sunghoon had been attached at the hip since kindergarten, Jay joining them sometime in middle school when he came back from his year abroad in Seattle.

Your parents and Jay’s had been college best friends and you two had therefore grown up together, and even used to be quite close. You’d grown apart when he joined Jake and Sunghoon’s friend group, and although you still got on well, there was always a bit of an awkward atmosphere when you caught up with each other.

The three friends had quite different personalities but their complicity and shared history made them stick together. Jake was known for his academic achievements, rivaling yours, and his friendly personality; Jay, for his surprisingly funny antics once you got past the somewhat menacing appearance (which he blames on his resting bitch face). Sunghoon, on the other hand, was as cold as ice, so much that he’d earned the nickname of ice prince, but girls continued to swoon over him due to his incredibly handsome features. When turning down girls, Jake and Jay always tried to let them down gently, but Sunghoon wasn’t one to hold back: he’d laugh in their face or straight up say no, staring them right in the eyes. Most confessions ended in tears (not his, obviously), but girls kept on testing their luck, thinking they might be the one to melt the ice prince’s cold, dead heart.

Clearly, you weren’t Sunghoon’s biggest fan.

His behavior had always made you wonder why Jay and Jake were friends with a person like him. They went back a long time, but how did Sunghoon not become a nice and approachable person like his two best friends? They both seemed so genuine, but he looked like he was hiding something. This was what had made you weary of him; you knew all too well how easily an image that was the opposite of reality could be created. So on one hand, you sort of felt for him, thinking he might be in a similar situation as you. But on the other hand, you couldn’t help but feel some kind of jealousy: if you acted the way he did, you wouldn’t receive half the admiration you did. Hell, you’d probably be hated for it - no one likes a girl that’s both successful and bitchy about it.

One thing was sure, though, and that was that you wouldn’t call the two of you friends, as he just had.

“Y/N? You okay?”

The pure panic in your eyes must’ve made Sunghoon realize something was wrong. He released you and looked you up and down, trying to take your appearance in. The Y/N he was seeing right then was worlds away from the one he was accustomed to at school.

You realized there was no ignoring him, so you collected yourself and faced Sunghoon. “Uh, yeah, hi, Sunghoon. Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting to see anyone I knew here.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, no wonder. You look quite… different from what you usually do,” he said, voice laced with sarcasm.

This whole situation got you dumbfounded. You usually knew exactly what to retort when somebody messed with you, your friend or a classmate, but this time, you were completely speechless. You just wanted to escape.

“Well, it was nice seeing you Sunghoon, but I need to get home.” You pivoted on your heels and started walking again, but Sunghoon had other plans.

“Aw, come on, so quickly? We barely got to chat!” He followed you through the aisles as you picked up the remaining ingredients on the list your mother had given you as quickly as you could.

“I didn’t know you needed glasses. Do you wear lenses at school?”

“Yes. I need them to see.”

“I figured.” You could hear the smirk in his voice, and your shock was slowly morphing into anger. Were teenage girls so blind that they’d have a crush on someone with such an abominable personality, no matter how angelic his face was?

“I really like your outfit, by the way. Looks super comfy.” And as if your embarrassment couldn’t grow any bigger, he added: “Too bad you got a stain on the shirt.”

You looked down at yourself and noticed a huge grease stain on the collar of your shirt. Admittedly, you didn’t always have the best table manners.

You swore under your breath. It was quiet for a couple minutes as you arrived at the register and paid for your items, Sunghoon still on your tail. He had apparently given up his purchases to focus solely on tormenting you. When you walked out of the store, you thought he might finally be done. But of course, he wasn’t.

“You know, my sister has this really effective pimple cream she uses. Do you want me to ask her what brand it is?”

That was it. You sighed deeply. “Alright, Park. What do you want?”

When you turned to face him fully, arms crossing over your chest and an obviously tired expression on your face, the mischievous glint in his eyes made you realize something. That idiot was enjoying this.

Indeed, he beamed down at you. You had probably never seen him smiling so widely. “Wow, Y/N, didn’t know you could have such an attitude.”

You stayed silent and continued staring at him, waiting for an answer. He mirrored your pose, out of instinct or to irritate you, you weren’t sure.

“You know, when I moved to this neighborhood before the start of school, I was definitely not expecting to see Perfect Miss Y/N out in her pajamas buying ice cream. I thought you were more into, I don’t know, rescuing puppies from fires or something. That sounds like something you’d do in your free time.”

“Well, is there anything wrong with what I’m doing?”

“Oh, absolutely not! Just a surprising sight. Makes me wonder what the rest of the school would say…” He looked intently at you, clearly waiting for a reaction. You weren’t about to give him one, though.

You chuckled and rolled your eyes, shifting your weight on your right foot. “Yeah, like anyone would believe you if you said you saw me looking anything else other than perfect.” It might’ve sounded arrogant, but that was the image people had of you. Even your friends asked you how you did it - if only they knew the truth.

At that, his smile got even brighter. “Don’t worry about that, I won’t need to tell anyone. I’ll just show them!” He pulled out his phone, showing you a picture of you in your god-awful pajamas searching for your favorite flavor of ice cream.

He watched as your face fell, taking your silence as an opportunity to go on. “You were so engrossed in the tubs of ice cream that you didn’t notice a dashingly handsome and tall young man very obviously taking pictures of you.”

This put you into panic mode again. It might have seemed foolish, but you hadn’t worked for years to create a perfect version of yourself only for a stupid boy to destroy it all with one picture.

You sighed and lowered your head, taking a moment to think. You didn’t know Sunghoon that well, but you didn’t put it past him to send that picture to everyone and ruin your image in the process. You opted for honesty instead of bluff. You took your glasses off and looked back up at him; even if you couldn’t see him as well without them, maybe he’d see the despair in your eyes better.

“Park. I mean, Sunghoon. You can’t show that picture to anyone, okay? You have no idea how bad I need to keep up appearances. It’s really important to me, so just delete the picture and let’s never talk about this again, yeah?”

You tried smiling at him, but his expression infuriated you. You could tell he had something else up his sleeve. “Now, Y/N, why would I do that? If I’m gonna do something for you, you should do something for me.”

You weren’t sure if you wanted to hear the rest of his thoughts, but you needed to know. Eyeing him suspiciously, you told him to go on.

“Well, I can’t think of anything right now, but I’ll let you know when I do, okay? I’ll see you around, Y/N.” He flashed another one of his smiles, patted your head, and walked away, just like that, leaving you standing outside the convenience store on your own, a melting tub of ice cream in your plastic bag. At least for now, you were safe.

Right?

—

“You saw Park Sunghoon? As in, the Park Sunghoon?” your little sister Yeeun asked, looking at you with huge eyes. You two and Sunoo were sitting on your bed, sharing the ice cream by eating it directly from the tub.

“Yes, that’s literally what I’ve been saying this whole time. How do you know him anyway? You’re still in middle school…”

“Are you crazy? He’s famous in our whole school district! I wish we had cute boys in my school as well,” she sulked, pouting.

“That’s not the point, Yeeun,” Sunoo chimed in, then turned to you. “Well, this is either bad news or the start of a beautiful romance.”

“Sunoo! Take this seriously! I’m in a huge dilemma right now.”

Your siblings shared a knowing glance and snickered.

“Hey! I’m right here. I’m not overreacting, you know. If he does send those pictures around, I’m done for.”

“Oh, come on, Y/N, you’d be so much better off if you could be yourself at school. I see you there almost everyday, and the way you laugh always sounds so fake. Nobody would care if you forgot to put makeup on one day or had a crease in your shirt. If anything, it’d make you look more human.”

You could see where Sunoo was coming from, but you chose to ignore it. You sighed deeply. “You guys just don’t get it. They all see me as this perfect, put-together girl. If I showed them even a glimpse of the truth, everything would shatter. It’s too late to go back now.” You ignored their pitying looks and took another big spoonful of ice cream.

It was their turn to sigh. As always, it was impossible to reason with you. Deep in your thoughts, you added: “You know, there was something really off about him today. I’d never seen him act that way before.”

Your siblings looked at you questioningly. “He’s always so cold and distant towards everyone. I’ve only seen him smile when he’s laughing with Jake and Jay or when he makes fun of someone. But just now, he kept smiling at me like he was having fun. He even patted my head when he left.”

At that, Yeeun swooned dramatically, hands over her heart. You looked over at her and said, “I’d be swooning too if it was any other guy than Park Sunghoon. I’m more confused than anything right now, he was a completely different person from when I see him at school.”

They exchanged another look. “You guys stop doing that!”

“Well, it’s just that that sounds an awful lot like someone I know,” Sunoo replied. Realization hit you and you scoffed, mildly offended. At least you were nice to others at school and didn’t act like an asshole with a superiority complex.

“Anyway,” he continued, “what will you do about Sunghoon?”

“I’m not too sure. I guess all I can do is wait and see whatever it is he could want from me.”

“Yeah, do that, and then date him, please. If I can’t have him as my boyfriend, then I’ll have him as my brother-in-law,” Yeeun joked. You didn’t have it in you to retort anything back and started laughing along with her.

If everything did shatter, at least you’d have your siblings to make you laugh.

—

The next day, you made your way to the bus stop after your daily morning routine: jogging, showering, eating a filling breakfast, choosing the perfect accessories for your school uniform, applying just the right amount of makeup and going over your subjects and tasks of the day. As always, efficiency is the key. You had become so used to this routine that your body did it on its own, which let your mind wander wherever it pleased. Usually, you’d use this time to prepare yourself for the day ahead, but today, the only thing on your mind was Park Sunghoon. What was that boy up to? Was he up to anything, or did you completely imagine his mischievousness yesterday? In any case, you hoped it would all be over soon.

You got on the bus and sat down next to Sumin. Your close friend group at school consisted of her, Park Sieun, Lee Heeseung and Choi Jiung, but she was the only one who knew about your secret. You had been friends for so long that you hadn’t even been able to hide it: she’d seen you from all angles, both before, during and after your transformation to who you were now. It was nice having someone else than your siblings to rely on and tell everything to.

“Minie, you’ll never guess what happened yesterday. I ran into Park Sunghoon at the convenience store next to our apartment unit.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, but her reaction wasn’t as big as you thought it’d be. She smiled and said, “Huh! I knew he’d moved to our neighborhood, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d live so close to you that you’d even shop at the same place.”

She registered your confused expression and continued. “Didn’t you hear? He moved out of his parents’ house at the end of summer. Something about a huge fight with them that made him move out. But there are always so many rumors about him and his group that I don’t know what to believe.”

“Oh,” you mumbled, unsure what to say. Now that you thought about it, Sunghoon had mentioned moving in your conversation yesterday, but you were so preoccupied with him seeing you in your wild state that you hadn’t paid much attention to his comment.

“Wait, did he do something? Your face is telling me he did something.”

You got closer to her face and gestured for her to do the same. With lowered heads and in hushed tones, you said, “He saw me on off-mode.”

She gasped and jolted back in surprise, eyes wide and eyebrows shooting straight up. “What?”

You shushed her and pulled her in by her shoulders. “He even took pictures.” Your grip tight, you held her from jumping again. “That’s not even it. You know how he's always really cold and distant?”

“You mean how he’s always being a douchebag?” She scoffed. “Yeah, I know.”

You remembered that Sumin had been one of the first of many girls who shot their shot with Park Sunghoon, only to get rejected. You both grimaced at the memory that always left a bad taste in your mouth.

“He was completely different yesterday. Kept following me around the store and, I’m not sure, teasing me? Like trying to get a reaction out of me? In a weird half-friendly half-bully way.”

“Hm, you’re right, that doesn’t sound like him,” she mused. “It does sound like a stupid teenage boy though, which I guess he is, no matter how hard he tries to pretend he’s not.”

This is what you loved about Sumin. She could see right through people, and never hesitated to say what she thought of them, especially when they acted the way Sunghoon did. Sure, there were some personal feelings attached there, but she had quickly gotten over them when she realized how much of a douche he was towards everyone else.

When the bus stopped to pick up some more students, Heeseung hopped on. You quickly told Sumin to keep it a secret, at which she smiled and made a motion as if zipping her lips and throwing the key. If you told your friends about Sunghoon, you’d have to tell them the truth about how he had dirt on you, but you wanted to keep your friendship clean. You chatted the rest of the bus ride away and tried not to worry over Park Sunghoon too much.

When you finally got to school, you, Heeseung, and Sumin made your way to your classroom to join Jiung and Sieun. Before you could get there, however, Jungwon, an underclassman you had talked to a couple times for student council meetings, called out your name. You told your friends to go on without you and turned to the younger boy.

“Jungwon! Hi, what’s up?”

He seemed flattered that you had remembered his name but quickly got on with his business. “Um, I’m not sure why, but Sunghoon told me to come and get you? I’ve never talked to him, I think he just picked me randomly and assigned me a task…”

You sighed. Park Sunghoon truly was something. “Thanks for telling me, Jungwon. I’ll make sure he gets an earful for this, he has no right to boss students around like that.”

Jungwon’s eyes doubled in size as he frantically waved his hands in dismissal. “No! No need to do that, I don’t want to get in trouble with him. I’m just here to relay the message.” At that, he scurried off, and you headed towards Sunghoon’s homeroom.

When you walked in, a few people were in the room, some girls gossiping with each other, a couple students doing some last-minute revision for a test. You found Sunghoon sitting at his desk, snickering with Jay and Jake and hoped that the subject of their laughter wasn’t you. They noticed you approaching and the two decent boys greeted you; the other one eyed you, that mischievous glint back in his eyes. What could he possibly have in mind?

“Hi, guys.” You smiled at Jay and Jake and reflexively stood closer to Jay. “Sunghoon, Jungwon said you wanted to see me?” you asked, trying to keep your impatience at bay.

“Oh, was that his name? Well, thank heavens for him, ‘cause I forgot my lunch at home. Would you be a sweetheart and go buy me something at the cafeteria? You know how everything runs out as soon as lunch period starts, and I get really cranky when I’m hungry.”

You stared at him, wide-eyed. His two friends’ reaction wasn’t very different from yours. Go buy him lunch? That’s what he wanted you to do?

“What? You don’t want to? That’s too bad, cause there’s a picture I think everybo-”

You cut him off before he could finish. “No! Of course I’ll do it! Can’t have our star player go hungry, now can we?” You cringed at your own words and Jay eyed you suspiciously. Sunghoon beamed, and Jake’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of you in pure confusion. “Um, any preferences?”

His smile got wider. “A tuna mayo would be amazing. Thanks, Y/N! You’re the best!”

“Sure…” you mumbled and quickly walked away, more bemused than ever. You checked your watch. You had 10 minutes before the first bell rang, and you could not be late for class, which meant you needed to hurry.

You got back to Sunghoon’s classroom just a minute before the first bell. To your dismay, the class was almost full, and girls had gathered around him, trying to get his attention, but he seemed unbothered by their presence. You braced yourself and walked towards him. As your presence rarely went by unnoticed, most eyes were on you and Sunghoon. Not only were you two some of the most popular kids in school, you also happened to be handing him his lunch, a never-seen-before sight between the two of you.

“I also got you banana milk, for good measure…”

What had seemed like a great idea a few minutes ago, something to appease the devil in him, now felt like the biggest mistake of your life. The girls around him started whispering left and right and you weren’t sure whether they felt bad for you, sensing an incoming rejection, or wanted to tear you to shreds for even trying.

The whispers grew even louder when Sunghoon took the sandwich and milk from your hands, thanking you with a smile. You’d be lying if you said your heart hadn’t done a small jump in your chest at that moment. As much as you hated to admit it, if looks were the sole factor for popularity, then you could definitely understand why Park Sunghoon was so loved. His face looked like it had been carved by the gods themselves. When his eyebrows weren’t turned in a frown, his eyes looked almost sweet, especially when he laughed. His two moles gave him so much charm, the curve of his nose was so delicate and his pink lips looked so, so soft…

You cleared your throat and smiled back at him before turning around to walk to your own classroom.

“Wait, Y/N!”

You turned back around, all eyes on you. You could feel Jay’s eyes burning holes into you. Sunghoon was still smiling. You thought you’d seen him smile more in the past two days than you had in all the years you’d known him.

“I’ll see you later.”

—

And indeed see him later you did. You always hung back a bit after classes ended to get homework done or work out student council issues. Being in an empty classroom brought you some peace and quiet, very different from the busyness and noise of your home. You couldn��t even focus in your own room, your siblings or parents always barging in to disturb you. The after-school janitors now knew you by name and saved cleaning the classroom you were sitting in for last.

You had been barely sitting there for 5 minutes, nose buried in a math problem, when Park Sunghoon graciously strode in, swung the chair in front of you around and sat on it, arms crossed over its back as he peered at you. You didn’t even bother to look up at him as you spoke. “What, Park?”

“Oh no, back to last name basis already?” he joked. You didn’t laugh. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Wow, tough crowd. Anyways, thanks for the sandwich today.”

This made you look at him. Or rather, shoot daggers at him. “Yeah, what the hell was that all about? Did you have to pull that little stunt in front of everybody? You know what our school is like! Rumors are gonna start spreading like wildfire.”

“I already told you,” he said with a defensive tone. “Forgot my lunch, everything was gonna run out, didn’t want to get hungry later,” he said as he shrugged, completely ignoring the latter part of your complaint.

“And you couldn’t have gone and gotten it yourself?”

He beamed. If it wasn’t so damn beautiful, you probably would have started getting tired of his stupid smile already. “Why would I do that when I could get you to do it?”

You sighed. “I knew you weren’t the nicest guy, but I didn’t know you could be such an asshole, Park.”

If you hadn’t been staring him down so intently, you might not have noticed the falter in his smile, so quick it was.

“Oh, come on, Y/N. If anything, I’m doing you a favor by not sending out to everyone that picture you so desperately want to keep secret. Thing is, doing that wouldn’t benefit me in any way, except for getting the satisfaction of seeing everybody realize you’re not as perfect as they think you are. Whereas holding it over your head allows me to do basically anything I want with you. And that, that is just so much fun,” he beams, lowering his voice into a whisper for the last sentence.

What a psycho, you thought. You just sighed once more and returned to your textbook, too weirded out to say anything back. You hoped the silence would make Sunghoon realize how creepy what he had just said was.

It was quiet in the room, only the sound of your pencil scratching your notebook could be heard. Sunghoon sat in the same position and watched you working. He often saw you like this, focused and benched over a desk, in the library or walking past your classroom. But it was always in passing, and looking at you so closely made all the world’s difference. He could see how you scrunched your nose when the problem got particularly difficult, or how your smirk as you solved another one made your left dimple appear. He also liked the annoyed looks you gave him every once in a while, as if his presence was disturbing your focus. He wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something about seeing someone who always went about their way with such purpose sitting in such silence.

He decided to break that silence. “You know, Jay was asking about you earlier.”

You kept your eyes trained on your notebook but abruptly stopped writing, your pencil leaving a small scratch on the paper. This didn’t go unnoticed by Sunghoon. “Did he?” you said, trying to sound as uninterested as possible, although you couldn’t help but be curious. Ever since Jay and you had grown apart, there was always a part of you wondering what he was up to, how he was doing, if he thought of you once in a while or reminisced about the good old times as you sometimes did.

“Yeah. I mean, everyone did, but I didn’t really care,” he answers simply, and even though you’re itching to push him to say more, you stay quiet. “You’re right, by the way, I do know the people in our school. The rumors have already started spreading. Up to you whether you wanna deny them or not, though,” he said with a smirk.

“Don’t even think about it, Park. There’s not a chance in hell I’ll let them think we have a thing going on. I have a reputation to uphold, you know.”

He chuckled. “Trust me, I know. Anyway, he wanted to know why you did that for me. Guess he was jealous you didn’t do it for him, too.”

“Why would he be?” you asked, trying to make the question sound as innocent as possible.

“Well, you two go a long way back, right?” he asked tentatively, as if testing the waters.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then it was probably weird for him to see his childhood best friend and his best bro interacting out of nowhere, even though we’ve both seen each other around a lot and nothing has ever come out of that. Don’t you think?”

A beat passed as you thought about it. “Yeah, I guess that’d look weird to him,” you replied, trying to keep the disappointment out of your voice.

You quickly wrote down your last answer, packed up your things, and stood up. “Well, I’m off now. I’ll see you around, unfortunately.”

Sunghoon, surprised at your quick departure, scrambled to get off his chair and chased after you. “Do you want me to drop you off? I’ve got a car, you know. Much more glamorous than the bus.”

You turned around and looked at him. “I’d rather get hit by said bus than get in your car, Park.”

He stood there, watching you walk away with a smirk on his face as your ponytail swayed from side to side. This was going to be a challenge. You were going to be a challenge.

Thing is, he loved a good challenge.

—

Back home, you flopped down on your bed and buried your face in your pillow. You laid there for a few minutes, taking some time to gather your thoughts and try to understand Sunghoon’s actions. It was of no use; you weren’t a mind-reader, and he seemed impossible to figure out. He could make you do basically whatever he wanted to, and he decided to make you get him lunch, creating rumors along the way? What could he possibly get out of that?

Your reflexions were quickly interrupted, however, by a flurry of incoming messages on your phone. Someone had posted a photo of you handing his banana milk to Sunghoon on your school’s Instagram account - because apparently, your school was so obsessed with gossip that they had created an Instagram page just for it. The photo had blown up among your peers and it made you wonder if people really were that bored with their lives.

People you barely knew but that felt entitled to knowing your relationship status were DMing you, asking about today’s events. You quickly got tired of it, so you texted your worried and confused friends that you didn’t feel like talking tonight and would catch up with them tomorrow. You opened your textbook, deciding that studying would be the best and most efficient distraction.

When your parents called you and your siblings for dinner, you still weren’t feeling great. Your family quickly registered your annoyed expression and could only hope for the best. You already weren’t the easiest to live with, but when you were tired, you just got a hundred times worse.

“So, how was everyone’s day?” your mom asked cheerily.

Yeeun’s eyes lit up instantly. “Mine was great! I met a really cute boy. His name is Nishimura Riki and he just transferred from Japan.”

“Oh, that’s nice!”

“You’re too young to be thinking about boys, Yeeun.”

Your mom and dad had replied at the same time, then gave each other a stern look.

“I’m not thinking about him, Dad, just looking,” your sister replied, earning a chuckle from your concerned father.

“Mine was alright. I guess the start-of-a-new-year excitement has already worn off. After a week,” Sunoo said with a sigh.

Your mom turned to you. “What about you, Y/N?”

“It was fine.”

The sharpness of your tone changed the atmosphere in the room at once. You ignored the looks your family exchanged and continued eating your food, eyes not leaving your plate.

For some reason, Sunoo thought it’d be a great idea to chime in. “She’s not happy because she had to buy Park Sunghoon his lunch and everybody went crazy over it.”

“Sunoo!” you protested. Your parents didn’t need to know about this sort of stuff.

“Park Sunghoon? Is that someone we’re supposed to know?” your dad questioned.

Yeeun scoffed. “Uh, he’s only the most popular and handsome guy at Y/N and Sunoo’s school, dad. Duh.”

“Right. Duh,” your dad said, imitating your sister’s tone.

“And why did you have to buy his lunch, Y/N?” your mom asked.

“Because he saw what she looks like when she’s not at school,” Sunoo said, not even giving you the chance to reply yourself.

“Sunoo!” you scolded again.

“And now I guess he’s using that against her to get her to do what he wants? Right, Y/N?”

You glared at your brother and let a beat pass. “Right,” you reluctantly admitted.

“Lucky…” your sister mused, expression like she was daydreaming about being Sunghoon’s personal assistant.

Your dad ignored your sister and looked straight at you. “That’s inadmissible, Y/N. You can’t let him do that.”

“Your father’s right, sweetie. It’s not right,” your mom added when you stayed silent.

With everybody’s eyes on you, you felt obligated to reply. “It’s fine. It’s not like he asked me to do anything crazy. I’m sure he’ll stop soon enough.”

“You know, boys that age, they’ll do anything to get a girl’s attention,” your dad warned. “Just ignore him and he’ll go away.”

“If she ignores him, he’ll tell everyone what she’s really like,” your brother explained.

“And what’s so bad about that? I’m sure it’d be easier if you stopped lying to everyone.”

Everyone suddenly stopped in their motions, wondering why your mom would say something so true yet so controversial. You looked up at her. “What’s so bad about that? What’s so bad? I don’t know, maybe the fact that I’ve worked so hard all these years for everybody to like me and look up to me only for a stupid picture taken by a stupid boy to ruin everything,” you said all in one breath, voice coming out harsh. You were tired of having to explain the same thing over and over again - your parents just didn’t understand why you did what you did.

Your mom opened and closed her mouth again, knowing it was useless trying to talk sense into you. It never ended well when you had this conversation.

“Who put mushrooms in this anyway? You know I hate mushrooms,” you said before filling up your bowl and taking it to eat in your room, making sure you’d slammed your door behind you.

—

On the bus the next day, you tried to explain the events of the previous day to your friends.

“There’s nothing really to it. He just asked me to get him lunch so I did, and when I handed it to him, his whole class was there and saw everything.”

“I get that, but I just don’t understand why he made you do it in the first place, or why you agreed,” Heeseung said, “it’s so unlike the both of you to do something like that.”

You hadn’t even thought to come up with an excuse for your and Sunghoon’s yesterday - your friends were definitely super confused, but you didn’t want to tell them the truth, so you had to quickly find something to say that was somewhat believable, and change the subject.

“I have no idea why he did what he did, but I didn’t want to cause a scene so I just agreed. I don’t really care, to be honest, I just wish it didn’t have such consequences. People seem to think we’re characters on a stupid Netflix coming-of-age series or something, when we literally just go to their school.”

As soon as you’d turned your phone back on this morning, it started pinging with all the messages that had flown in since last night. People were talking about it everywhere: Kim Y/N, highly sought-after bachelorette, had offered Park Sunghoon, notorious rejecter of girls and breaker of hearts, a sandwich and a banana milk, and he had taken them. What’s more, he had been seen at lunch heartily eating them. This was serious.

You didn’t think things could get any worse until you got to school. You were used to random people coming up to you in the hallways or in class for help, except today they weren’t asking for help at all - they were asking what was up between you and Sunghoon, as though handing him a tuna mayo was like asking for his hand in marriage. Most of them were just curious, but some, especially his fanclub members, had an aggressive tone to their voice, which you weren’t used to. If people started liking you less because of Sunghoon, you were going to kill him.

But you had to hold onto that thought, because an all too familiar voice had suddenly called out to you on your way to class. You took a deep breath and turned around, watching him take long strides towards you. You immediately became aware of the amount of people in the hallway and realized you couldn’t talk to him like you had the previous day in front of everybody. You mustered the fakest smile you could and greeted him.

“Hi, Sunghoon. What can I help you with today?”

He smiled, obviously enjoying the fact that you had to be nice to him. “I’ve got my sports bag because of practice later tonight. Mind holding onto that for me for the day?”

Your fake smile turned a bit crazy as your eyes widened in disbelief. "Don’t you have a locker for that, Sunghoon?”

“Yeah, but it’s so much more fun if you’re the one to hold it.” And with that, he threw the bag in your direction, leaving approximately 0.5 seconds to catch it. “I’ll need that later today. Meet me in front of the locker rooms after school, yeah?”

He didn’t bother to wait for your answer and walked away, Jake and Jay following closely behind. Jay sent you a questioning look, to which you could only reply with a shrug. If it wasn’t for all the students in the hallway, you would’ve been yelling Sunghoon’s ear off at that point. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a possibility, so you just smiled to your friends who were looking more confused than ever.

“Let’s just go to class, guys.”

—

Throughout the whole day, you could feel people staring at you, then at the bag you were holding, then starting to whisper among themselves. You tried your best to concentrate in class so you could momentarily stop pondering over what Sunghoon’s evil master plan might be, but everyone seemed bent on making that usually simple feat impossible. When 3:30 p.m. finally came around, you bid your friends goodbye and headed to the boys’ locker room. Every boy walking in eyed you suspiciously, unsure as to what you could be doing there. Of course, Sunghoon had to take his sweet time to get there.

Staring at the opposite wall and planning Sunghoon’s murder in your head, you hadn’t noticed Jay and Jake arriving. Jay signaled for his friend to go inside the locker room and told him he’d join him in a minute. He waved his hand in front of you to get your attention, a smile on his face. You sighed in relief at the familiar sight of your friend.

“Hey, Jay. Sorry I didn’t see you.”

“You okay, Y/N? You look like you’re about to murder someone,” he said, slightly amused.

“If only you knew,” you mumbled.

He noticed the bag in your hand. “You waiting for Sunghoon?”

“Yeah. If only he could hurry up a little bit. I’ve got stuff to do.”

There was something about Jay that made it impossible to lie to him. Maybe it was the fact that you had known each other for so long, way before you’d turned into what you were now, that made you feel as though showing a side of you that gets annoyed and impatient and doesn’t smile all the time was okay.

Jay looked at his feet before looking back up at you. You were still staring at the wall but your murderous thoughts had somewhat calmed. “Mind telling me what this whole thing with Sunghoon is about?”

You turned to him and were about to fumble for an answer when someone interrupted you. “What whole thing with me?”

Whew. Saved by Sunghoon. You didn’t like that it was thanks to him that you could get out of answering Jay, but at least you didn’t have to come up with yet another stupid excuse.

Jay turned his attention to his friend and stood up straighter. “You know, making her get you lunch or hold your bag all day. There’s dozens of girls who’d be more than happy to do that for you, so why Y/N? She doesn’t have time for this stuff.”

You looked at Jay with surprise. Sure, you were friends, but you hadn’t thought he’d defend you like that in front of Sunghoon.

“Well, Y/N’s just such a nice, reliable person. No one better to ask to do those things.” What a reason, you thought. He turned to you and took the bag from your hands. “Thanks, Y/N. I’ll see you outside in a couple minutes.”

“Huh? What do you mean? I’m leaving,” you said, body already headed towards the other direction.

“What? You can’t leave before practice has even started. Go to the benches outside, we’ll be out in a few.”

You were about to open your mouth to protest, but he cut you off. “You don’t want to?” He started pulling out his phone. “That’s funny, because there’s a pict-”

“I’ll be on the benches! See you soon!” you quickly said, pushing the two boys inside the locker room, Sunghoon smirking, Jay looking at you in utter confusion.

Girls sat in a few different groups in the bleachers. You recognized the girls in one of those groups, so you decided to sit with them. As you approached, they quickly looked at each other and then back at you, expressions half-friendly, half-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here.

“Hi guys! Mind if I join?”

“Hi Y/N! No, of course not, come sit,” Jake’s girlfriend, Yujin, said.

“Are you guys here to watch practice?”

“Yeah! I’m here on girlfriend duties for Jake. These two are just here for the eye candy and to keep me company,” Yujin explained.

“Yeah, but mostly for the eye candy,” added her friend Wonyoung.

“What about you, Y/N? I’ve never seen you here,” asked the last girl, Gaeul.

“Oh, um, Sunghoon asked me to come, actually.” You regretted your words as soon as you’d let them out. They all ooh-ed at your response, making you blush, which just egged them on. This was nothing to blush about, Y/N. You’d just made the rumors get a hundred times worse with one sentence.

“The whole school’s been talking about you two, you know. Anything you wanna share? Don’t worry, we can keep a secret,” said Wonyoung with a wink. You chuckled awkwardly.

“Oh my gosh, yes, tell us!”

“Guys, don’t make her uncomfortable,” Yujin chimed in, smiling at you. You returned her smile, grateful, once again, that you didn’t have to explain your new link to Sunghoon. “Look, practice is starting.”

You turned your head towards the field as the soccer players started doing laps as per the coach’s instructions. Your eyes immediately drifted towards Sunghoon without you even realizing it. His lean figure hypnotized you. The last time you had had PE with him was in freshman year, and puberty had hit him like a fine, fine truck. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him as he lightly jogged next to his friends, chatting like it was nothing. You weren’t being very subtle with your stare and he eventually noticed you, sending a wink your way. This made you snap out of your reverie and you scowled at him, as if he could make out your annoyed expression from such a distance. You turned back to the girls, who were giggling at you.

“Wow, those were some serious heart eyes you were giving him, Y/N,” Gaeul giggled.

You opened your mouth in mild shock. “Was not!”

“Sure, whatever you say,” she replied knowingly. “Well, look all you want. Warm-up is the best part. It gets boring when they actually start playing.”

“No way! Watching them play is my favorite part,” Yujin disagreed.

“Yeah, that’s cause you’ve got someone to root for,” retorted Wonyoung. She looked at you slyly. “Well, I guess Y/N does, too.”

You scoffed. “Believe me, I will not be rooting for him.”

You started staring at him again, this time with a glare in your eyes. From their silence, you deduced the girls must’ve judged it a better idea to not question you too much. After the boys were done with running exercises and stretching (which you had enjoyed watching a bit too much, if you spoke truthfully), they started playing. The coach split the boys into two teams, Jay leading one and Sunghoon the other. It was a very close game. You could never tell who was leading, although that might have been due to your extensive lack of knowledge in the sport. All you knew was that you desperately wanted to see Sunghoon lose; that might put him down a peg. What you told yourself, however, was that you wanted Jay to win. So when he scored a goal, you surprised the girls next to you, the boys on the field and yourself as you jumped up and down, cheering for him. Realizing what you were doing, you quickly sat down and sent him an awkward thumbs up.

Jay tried to hide it, but he was blushing. Hard. Truth be told, he had noticed your little eye contact moment with Sunghoon during warm-up and hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. So seeing you cheer for him like that made him swell with pride, which only grew when Sunghoon scored and you barely reacted.

When the game was over, you thought you might be able to finally go home and start studying. But Sunghoon had other plans for you, as always these past couple days. Heading towards the showers, he motioned for you to come down from the benches. As you did, Jay walked past, and you smiled at each other.

“Good game.”

“Thanks, Y/N.” He continued walking as Sunghoon reached you.

“What about me? I scored a goal, too.”

“Oh, did you? Didn’t even notice," you said, looking at your nails. The polish was starting to chip - you’d need to reapply a layer tonight.

“Whatever. Wait for me, yeah?”

“What? No! I gotta go home!” But your protests were in vain, as he completely ignored you.

You waited outside the school with Yujin, Wonyoung and Gaeul. After a little while, Jake, Jay and Sunghoon joined you guys, having successfully showered and not smelling of sweat and dirt, thank God. Yujin was dropping her boyfriend and her friends off, so they bid their goodbyes and headed towards her car. Sunghoon and Jay also started to walk towards the parking lot, leaving you standing alone, not sure what to do. Sunghoon turned around and looked at you with a frown.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know, what are you doing?”

“I’m dropping you and Jay off.”

“Oh,” you mumbled, taken aback. “Didn’t know I was just supposed to guess that.”

As soon as Sunghoon started to drive, you noticed the awkward air between the three of you. Luckily, after years of being a people-pleaser, you had become somewhat of an expert in making small talk, which helped prevent a silent ride. You don’t think you could’ve gone through that without a mental breakdown.

Because you and Sunghoon lived closer to each other (and we all know the consequences of that), Jay was dropped off before you. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow at school,” he said before giving you a last glance.

“Bye, Jay.”

“See you, bro.”

Thankfully, you only lived a couple minutes by car from Jay’s and hoped the rest of the car ride would be peaceful. Which was really stupid of you to hope for, because you were in the car with Park Sunghoon.

“So, Park Jongseong, huh?” he said, eyes trained on the road in front of him. Even though he was trying to keep his tone light, you thought you detected a slight harshness to his gaze.

“What about him?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“There’s nothing to say. We’ve just been friends for a long time.”

It was silent for about five seconds. “You really feasted your eyes during warm-up, huh?”

“Shut up, Park.”

“No, it’s alright, I get it. I’d do the same.” He laughed at his own joke that wasn’t really a joke. Why was he laughing, anyway?

You looked at him. His face was so different from all those times you’d seen it at school. His eyes, rid of the harshness you’d seen earlier, crinkled at the edges and had an amused glint in them. His smile dug pretty dimples into his cheeks and you let your gaze linger long enough to notice he had sharp, vampire-like canines, which were surprisingly cute. You didn’t know why he was showing you a side of him he never showed anyone, except for his close friends, you assumed. You weren’t sure what overcame you, but you chuckled with him.

“So, do you already know what task you’re gonna give me tomorrow?” you asked, genuinely curious.

“Hmm, haven’t really thought about it yet. I’d rather keep it a surprise, anyway. Keep you on your toes.”

“Pfft. What a great surprise.” He laughed again, and you couldn’t help but join him. He was unusually giddy that day, but you didn’t want to complain. This was a thousand times better than the arrogant Sunghoon with his I’m-better-than-all-of-you facade. What you didn’t know was that he, too, liked your snarky, no-nonsense side infinitely more than the model student, pretty girl persona you had created for yourself.

Finally at your house, you got out of the car and headed to your house after waving goodbye to Sunghoon. He rolled his window down and leaned out of it.

“Y/N?”

You turned around. “Yeah?”

“About your task tomorrow…”

“…Yeah?”

“I’m sure you’ll love it.” He gave you an umpteenth wink, rolled his window back up and drove off.

You weren’t so awful to your parents and siblings that evening.

—

The next day at school, you were wondering why Sunghoon had said you would love your task. Because you were, in fact, quite loathing it. He had found you studying during your free period after lunch and dragged you to the part of the library where it was okay to talk a bit over whisper level. You were currently going over a scene in The Tempest which you had seen in AP English Lit last year and clearly had no time for. But obviously, that wasn’t a problem to Sunghoon, who just wanted to get a passing grade on his English essay without putting in too much effort.

After twenty minutes of going over the same five lines, you were about to give up. “Look, Sunghoon, I don’t mind helping you. I’ve tutored dozens of students before so I’m used to it. But you’re not making any effort! If you want to get it, you need to at least try.”

“But it’s so boring,” he whined, not unlike a child. “How am I supposed to find any meaning in this? It’s just stupid people doing stupid stuff on a stupid island.” You cringed at his words and hoped Shakespeare wasn’t listening in on this conversation.

“It’s not stupid. It’s about power, and being punished for chasing it, and it’s a metaphor fo-”

“Ugh!” he groaned loudly. “You know what, I don’t care enough about this. Just write the essay for me, okay?” He got up and left, again not waiting for your answer. You wanted to protest, but you know what would happen if you said no to any of his requests, so you just quickly got to work.

Everyday over the next couple of weeks, Sunghoon would find something for you to do. Most days, he’d just get you to buy him lunch (although he thankfully had started paying you back) or carry his stuff around like the first two times. He didn’t ask you again to tutor him, however, so you had gotten used to sitting in an empty class together after class, you doing his homework for him and attempting (and failing) to explain it to him, and him alternating between playing on his phone and looking at you. Although it’d flustered you at first, not used to having someone stare at you while you were trying to concentrate, you’d grown somewhat okay with it - all of your complaints were ignored anyway. One time, he even got you to work on his science project with him, a weirdly-shaped volcano he needed to paint and decorate before actually putting the chemicals in. You’d be lying if you said it hadn’t been fun painting it together, occasionally ‘accidentally’ getting paint on the other’s hand or cheek instead of the volcano.

You went to see him at practice two to three times a week, although you weren’t sure what use that had for him. If anything, you were probably the one who enjoyed yourself more. Perhaps, after being forced to spend so much time with him, you had started to soften up to him. And, perhaps, that made you appreciate his good looks even more. You couldn’t deny the effect his damp hair, stuck to his forehead with sweat, had on you.

The rumors hadn’t died down, but people had started getting used to seeing the two of you together around, so they didn’t ogle their eyes at you everytime you and Sunghoon had some kind of interaction. Not liking that you couldn’t control people’s opinion of you anymore, you were still a bit bothered by them, but Sunghoon’s little posse of fangirls didn’t seem to be. They’d been the one to question you the most, and you got a few nasty looks in the hallway, but the gossip around school hadn’t stopped them from keeping on following him around, harassing him from morning to afternoon by going to his homeroom at breaks, sitting at a table near him at lunch, and going to see him at practice. Their group had dwindled down, though; most likely, some of them thought you two might be dating and had finally realized they didn’t stand a chance with the one and only Park Sunghoon. Thank God you had your friends and now sometimes Yujin, Wonyoung and Gaeul around you during those times, otherwise, you’d probably have been jumped. Spending so much time with him had kept you a couple times from your friends, which they’d complained about, but sensing that they couldn’t do much about it, they let you be, even though they hadn’t gotten a satisfactory explanation yet.

One person who didn’t want to, or rather couldn’t let it go, though, was Jay. He still couldn’t figure out why you’d started spending so much time with Sunghoon, seemingly overnight, and it created an unpleasant, sour pit in his stomach. Out of all the people you could’ve decided to form a new friendship with, why’d it have to be his best friend, meaning he saw you more often now than before, but not because he was the one you had come to see? Why did you never get him banana milk for lunch, and why’d you only start coming to soccer practice because Sunghoon had asked you to? He’d tried to ask both of you about it, but you always gave him half-assed excuses that didn’t make much sense.

He realized what he was feeling was jealousy the day you came into their homeroom before the first bell rang and asked Sunghoon how his science project had gone. You’d never asked him how his science project, or any of his projects or tests, for that matter, had gone. He recognized it as the same feeling he had harbored when he had come back from the US in middle school and saw you dating Choi Soobin, or when Lee Heeseung had joined your tight-knit group of friends in freshman year. You and Soobin had only dated for three weeks and a half because you had a relationship-terminating argument over mint chocolate ice cream, and you and Heeseung had never become more than friends, nor had the intention to. But Jay didn’t care about that; all he saw was that there were boys around you that weren’t him. He had never acted upon those feelings, dismissing them as over-protectiveness for someone he had known since forever, but seeing Sunghoon and you laughing together hit too close to home. He couldn’t ignore how he felt because he was reminded of it everyday, but he didn’t know what to do with these newfound emotions.

And what’s the best thing to do whenever you don’t know what to do? Talk to your friends. Or well, in this case, your friend. He didn’t wanna talk about you to Sunghoon. He was a firm believer of bro code, but he didn’t wanna bottle up his feelings like he had all these years. So he went to Jake and told him everything, from your childhood friendship to Soobin, Heeseung and now Sunghoon.

“I know it’s stupid. It’s this whole cliché of, you only realize what you have when you lose it.”

“Well, you haven’t really lost Y/N, you know. It’s not like Sunghoon and her are dating.”

“I guess not, but he clearly likes her. It’d be a dick move to go after her now that they’ve got something going on.”

Jake hesitated for a second, debating whether he should say what he was thinking, but ultimately deciding it might be better to do it. “You know, I’m not sure that he does. You know what Sunghoon’s like. He’s never very honest about his intentions. I don’t wanna bring the subject up with him, cause I don’t wanna cause any drama, but it’s so suspicious to me that he’s suddenly spending time with Y/N when he’s never mentioned her all those years and when he rejects all these girls all the time.”

“I think it’s weird, too,” agreed Jay. “I just can’t seem to figure it out. And I’m a bit scared for Y/N, to be honest. Remember that girl in freshman year? They’d gotten along really well when he suddenly dropped her. I still remember his cold-ass stare when he turned her down. It even chilled me, man.”

“God, yeah, I always forget about that. He may be a jackass to all those girls, but when you know what he’s really like like we do, it seems so unlikely that he’d do something like that.”

Jay sighed and looked out into the distance. “I just hope he doesn’t hurt Y/N.”

Jake looked at his friend, thinking how to phrase his next sentence. “Like I said, I don’t wanna cause any drama… but, man, if you don’t want him to hurt Y/N, just don’t let him. If you make a move on her, you might get to her before he does. Better to do that now than to have to pick up the pieces, don’t you think?”

Jay mentally thanked the heavens for gifting him with a friend like Sim Jaeyun. “Yes, that is much, much better.”

He was going to stop sitting on his feelings and finally let them see the light.

—

But before that, Sunghoon had another one of his requests for you. You were sitting together in an empty classroom after school as you often did these past weeks. For you, today was an ordinary day, but the boy in front of you had something else in mind. He wasn’t saying anything but you could feel his nervousness and it was starting to make you feel anxious as well.

You lifted your head from your notes and looked at Sunghoon who seemed lost in his thoughts. “What is it, Sunghoon?”

This made him snap out of his reverie. “Um, nothing.”

“Well, seeing how you’ve been tapping your foot at the speed of lightning ever since we got here, it doesn’t seem like nothing.” You crossed your arms over the table and looked at him more intently, eyes asking him to tell you what was on his mind.

He sighed, giving in. “I was just thinking… there’s something I wanna tell you.”

“Go on. “

“I need you to date me.”

Your breath caught in your throat. Park Sunghoon… needed you… to date him? Was he asking you out? The way he’d worded it was a bit odd, but you didn’t put it past him.

Taking in your silence and wide eyes, he quickly added: “Not in that way! I, um, need you to be my fake girlfriend.”

Oh.

So he wasn’t asking you out. You weren’t sure why that made you so upset, but you tried to keep the disappointment out of your eyes and voice.

“Right,” you said, tone a bit harsher than you’d meant it to, “and why would I do that?”

Sunghoon smirked lightly. “Well, first of all, you don’t have much of a choice.” You rolled your eyes at that. It’d been a few days since the reason why you had started hanging out in the first place had come up, and you didn’t like to be reminded of that god-forsaken picture.

“And second of all… I guess I should be completely honest with you.” This piqued your interest, and you leaned back on your chair to listen to him.

“When I saw you at the store and took pictures of you, I wasn’t really thinking of doing anything. Maybe just get a laugh or two and tease you about it. I even told you outside the store that I didn’t know what I was gonna do. To be honest, I didn’t really think there was anything you could do for me that I’d need to force you to do. So I thought about it all night. And I asked myself, what’s the thing that pisses me off the most at school that you could change?” he looked at you expectantly, as if you could figure it out. You just shrugged.

“It’s those girls that keep following me around. All these years, I’ve acted like a giant asshole with them and still they think they have a crush on me or whatever. And I’ve never liked any of them, they’re all so superficial and ask me out without having ever talked to me before. So I thought, hey, maybe if I have a girlfriend, they’ll leave me alone. Which is why I made you do all those things for me.”

“So that they’d think we were dating?” you asked, trying to take all this information in. You’d sort of known it this entire time, but Sunghoon blatantly admitting he’d been using you hurt nonetheless.

“Yeah. But obviously, you always denied the rumors, so it hasn’t worked as well as I thought it would. It still did a bit though. So I think, if we take it the next step, and actually pretend we’re dating, it should really work. But I need your full cooperation on this, okay?” He looked at you, hopeful eyes and hands in prayer.

You sighed. As he said, it wasn’t like you had much of a choice.

“Please, Y/N? I really want them off my back.”

“Fine, Park, I’ll do it. But this better be the last thing you make me do.” You couldn’t help but sound cold. This made you rethink these past few weeks’ events. Were you the only one actually enjoying spending time together?

“Thanks, Y/N. And yeah, of course. You won’t have to carry my bag or get my lunch anymore if you want. Maybe it’ll be more believable if I do that for you.”

You had focused your attention back to your homework, wanting this conversation to be over as soon as possible.

“I’ll also pick you up in the morning, so you don’t need to take the bus.”

You hummed in response.

“Um, and I’ll also drop you off after school and after practice…” Sunghoon trailed, troubled by your silence. You hadn’t been so cold since the first couple times you two had talked, and he hated the idea that that might be because of what he had just said. So he took a chance.

“You know, Y/N, this doesn’t change anything. I wouldn’t have made you do all those things if I didn’t like spending time with you. You’re really nice to be around,” he admitted shyly.

You were far too flustered to lift your head and let him see your face. You just grinned and murmured, “Whatever, Park.”

—

Sunghoon kept his promise and picked you up in the morning. He called you at exactly 7:55 a.m., saying he was waiting outside and you rushed out of your house, piece of toast still in your mouth. In the car, you two went over what being in a fake relationship would involve.

“We just need to be seen around together, right?” you proposed, hoping your lack of experience wasn’t showing.

Thankfully, Sunghoon had no idea what being in a relationship, fake or not, entailed either. “Yeah, I think. And maybe…” he hesitated.

“Maybe?” you prodded, hoping he wouldn’t (or actually would, but you’d never admit it) say what you thought he was about to say.

“I don’t know, like, hold hands, and… kiss.” The last part had barely been audible, but you’d still heard it.

“Kiss?” you echoed, voice almost a shriek. “I don’t think we need to go that far, Sunghoon.” A little voice in your head was saying that you’d really like to go that far but you made it shut up.

He was blushing profusely but didn’t want to drop the subject there. “At least on the cheek, or something. We do have to make it believable.”

And there it was. The little sentence, reminding you none of this was real. Seemed like that was a pattern in your life.

You looked out the window. Sunghoon glanced over at you, cursing himself for always saying the wrong thing. He was trying so hard to drown his blooming feelings for you that he kept on hurting you in the process. This whole fake-dating plan was the perfect excuse for him to spend more time with you without having to come to terms with his feelings.

“C’mon, Y/N, it’ll be fun. Promise.” He nudged your arm playfully, making you look at him. His smile was contagious; you could never help yourself but start grinning when you saw his face light up like that. Maybe he’s right, you thought. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

When you arrived at school, Sunghoon told you to wait for a second. He got out of the car and quickly walked around to your side, opening the door for you. You hated how your heart fluttered at the sweet gesture, reminding yourself it was just for show. The important part was that it fooled everyone else, and it did - as you took Sunghoon’s hand, letting him help you out of the car, and walked with him hand in hand towards the school gates, you could feel all eyes on you. You could hear whispers of see, I told you they were dating! and defeated no ways.

You realized you didn’t care about what anybody might be seeing, which was a first for you. You’d always made sure everybody saw you exactly the way you wanted to see them. As he was the most popular guy in school, dating Park Sunghoon at once helped your reputation and put you on many girls’ bad side. But holding his hand, you felt as though there was some kind of barrier protecting you. You’d never felt so exposed and so safe at the same time.

You noticed Jay standing next to the gates, looking particularly antsy. He’d texted you that morning, saying there was something he wanted to tell you. Usually, you’d have stayed up, overthinking what that could be, but what with today being the day you’d announce yourself to the world (your school) as Park Sunghoon’s (fake) girlfriend, you had had other things to worry about. You gestured at Sunghoon towards Jay. Your friend only saw you when you were calling his name, standing right in front of him.

“Oh, hi, Y/N! I-”

He immediately cut himself off when he saw yours and Sunghoon’s interlaced fingers. Embarrassed, you took your hand out of your fake boyfriend’s, opting for holding onto his pinky instead, not realizing that it was a much cuter action that made one boy��s heart flutter and the other’s fill up with sadness.

“There was something you wanted to tell me?” you asked with a small smile.

“Uh- yeah, but it’s not important, actually. We can talk about it later.”

“Oh, you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” He returned your smile, hoping to make the situation less awkward. It was very obvious he didn’t want to say whatever it was he needed to tell you in front of Sunghoon, which you had both understood.

Sunghoon spoke up. “Right, well I’ll see you in class, Jay. Y/N, I’ll walk you to yours.” And with that, he started walking, holding his friend’s gaze for a few steps. You turned back to look at Jay for a split second, trying to decipher what had just happened, but Sunghoon grabbed you by the waist, making you look up at him in surprise, and breaking Jay’s heart even further.

—

Once Sunghoon and you got to your class, you felt as though you were in one of those movies where the boy drops the girl off at her house after their first date. Except that this was in a crowded school hallway two minutes before the first bell rang. What you had in common with that girl from the movie, however, was that you were freaking out over what your boy was going to do next. In the car, you’d ended up agreeing to a kiss on the cheek, but you hadn’t realized it would be happening so soon.

As you two hovered around your classroom’s door, you looked at each other and giggled. Damn, you were selling this well. So well that if you could have ascended out of your body and looked at the scene as a third party, you’d probably have barfed all over yourself.

You were still holding his pinky. You could tell he was too hesitant to do anything now that you had reached the classroom, and so you mustered all of your courage, stood on your tippy toes and softly pressed your lips to his cheeks. (You were pretty sure you’d heard gasps around you.) Your courage went as fast as it came, and as realization hit you, you quickly squeaked “bye, Sunghoon” and practically ran to your seat. The boy stood there for another second or two, hand going to his cheek where you had just kissed him. He walked happily to his own classroom, completely oblivious to the stares he was receiving.

Heeseung, Jiung and Sieun were looking at you in disbelief as you approached them. Sumin, on the other hand, looked like she had paid no attention whatsoever to the scene.

“Y/N,” Sieun teased in a sing-song voice. “Care to explain what just happened?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve actually managed to make the oh-so-great Park Sunghoon fall for you?” Jiung asked jokingly.

You looked down in an attempt to hide your grin. You usually did that sort of stuff to appear humble when someone complimented you, but this time it was completely genuine. The mere thought of Sunghoon made you all giddy inside. “Um, yeah, he actually asked me to be his girlfriend last night.”

Your three friends gasped dramatically and Sieun pulled you into a hug, as if you’d just received an award of some kind. Heeseung and Jiung patted your shoulders, congratulating you.

“Sumin? Did you know about this?” Sieun enquired, turning to your friend.

“What? Oh, yeah, Y/N called me last night,” she answered, briefly looking at you before turning back to her phone. Sieun looked at you, surprised, not understanding Sumin’s reaction to what seemed like happy news.

You had indeed called Sumin the previous night, and the call had gone similarly to the way she was behaving this morning. Although you usually told her everything, this time, you didn’t want to share the fact that you and Sunghoon were only fake dating. You found yourself actually wanting it to be true - and you thought it’d be easier to believe it yourself if everyone, including your best friend, did too.

“Minie! I’ve got some news,” you’d said as soon as she picked out.

“Ooh! Hit me,” she’d replied with as much excitement in her voice as you.

“So…” you’d started, already giggling. “Sunghoon’s just asked me out. I haven’t told anyone else, I wanted you to be the first to know.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. After a while, you added, “Minie, you still there?”

“Huh? Yeah, um, that’s nice, Y/N, I’m happy for you,” she said, not sounding happy at all. There was no trace of excitement left in her voice.

“Yeah, thanks,” you replied, voice ten times smaller than a minute ago.

“I’m sorry Y/N, but I’ve got to go, my parents are calling me. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She hung up suddenly, giving you no time to say bye in return. You were completely confused. Was Sumin bothered by you and Sunghoon dating? Other than a reminder about his past behavior, she hadn’t said anything when you two were getting closer. So what was wrong? You’d hoped you’d find out the next day at school, but the way she was acting didn’t help at all.

You snapped out of your flashback when Heeseung nudged you, faking a pout. “Not fair! Why did she get to know before we did?”

You forced a smile and said you’d known you’d see them the next day and thought it was better to tell them in person, and that you had just wanted to rant to someone quickly. Your teacher came in as the bell rang and everyone went to their seat. During class, you tried getting her attention so you could ask her if she was okay but she kept her attention on the teacher the whole time.

After that, as time went by, you kept up your charade of being the perfect student as usual, adding to that of being the perfect girlfriend to Sunghoon. Time with him passed by so quickly: you hadn’t realized you were more than halfway through the semester until you needed to wear a thicker jacket outside and the leaves had started falling, covering school grounds in shades of brown. The plan had worked: he was finally left alone by his admirers. Sumin had stopped being weird after a few days, saying she had had some problems with her parents but hadn’t gone into more detail. Everything was as great as it had ever been: good grades, good friends and a good boyfriend. Well, fake boyfriend, which you needed to remind yourself a bit too often, on the days Sunghoon didn’t do it himself. You felt a pinch in your heart every time he said something like, “there’s my fake girlfriend!” when it was just the two of you, or “great job today, Y/N” after dropping you off.

One day as you arrived home, Yeeun was waiting outside your house, trying to catch you red-handed. She dragged him inside by the arm and you panicked, not wanting him to see how you lived. But your messy room and invasive siblings didn’t scare him off at all; on the contrary, he smiled one of the biggest smiles you’d ever seen on him, canines and dimples on display. Your mom made him stay over for dinner and it was probably the happiest dinner you’d ever had. The idea of bringing someone home and having them see your habits and odd family dynamics had terrified you for the longest time, but you felt so comfortable around Sunghoon that it felt as if he was part of your home as soon as he’d stepped foot inside. You didn’t feel the need to hide anything from him.

After dinner, he helped your parents clear up the table and even washed the dishes, even though they kept insisting he didn’t have to do anything. He had completely won them over. They sat at the table and watched you two laugh together in the kitchen. They looked at each other, knowing they were thinking the exact same thing: their daughter hadn’t looked this happy in a while.

When you were done cleaning up, you two headed to your room under the pretense of needing to study.

“Alright, but keep the door open!” your mom had yelled after you, making you groan and Sunghoon’s face turn crimson red.

You really had planned on studying - there was a big test coming up and you couldn’t afford to get a bad grade. When you got your physics textbook out, Sunghoon groaned in protest.

“What? You seriously want to study right now?”

You sighed. “I don’t necessarily want to, no, but I need to. And so do you, may I add.”

“We’re not even in the same physics class!”

“Yeah, but we both have Mr. Cho, so I know you’re gonna have a test as well.”

He rolled his eyes and dramatically flung himself on your bed. “Fine.”

When he didn’t move for a few minutes, you guessed what he had meant was that he’d let you study but wasn’t going to do it himself. But after ten minutes, he suddenly got up. “I’m bored to death, Y/N. The test isn’t in another week. Show me what you do for fun,” he said, on the verge of desperation. It had only been ten minutes, but you felt bad having him over and not entertaining him.

“Well, I do have a Switch…” Sunghoon’s eyes widened in awe. “I guess we can play Mario Kart.”

He almost squealed in joy at that. You just chuckled at him, not knowing he was such a fan of car video games.

“I’m gonna crush you, Kim. Get ready,” he said, already looking victorious.

You smirked, not wanting him to get his hopes up. “Oh, it’s on, Park.”

As expected of a pro player like you (on non-schooldays, you could stay up all night playing this game), you won every single round. Sure, he gave you a run for your money, but you always came on top. He took it surprisingly well, congratulating you each time. After your fourth win in a row, you wiggled your face in front of his with a devilish smile, as you couldn’t help but torment him a little. But he wasn’t smiling. At first, you’d thought he was finally getting mad he kept on losing; but then the proximity between you two hit you. You noticed his eyes flicker momentarily to your lips and had backed off immediately.

“Um, if we go for another round, I’ll go easy on-”

He cut you off by putting his hand on your cheek, making you turn to look at him. You’d daydreamed about this moment before, but you hadn’t imagined your heart beating this fast or the butterflies eating away at your stomach. He was now fully staring at your lips, and you couldn’t look at anything else but his either. Too scared to move an inch, you felt him get closer and closer, so close that his lips were almost on-

“Y/N, mom says it’s late and Sunghoon needs to- AH!”

Sunoo had walked in, eyes riveted on his phone until he looked up and saw you and Sunghoon suspiciously close to each other. Sunghoon practically leaped off of your bed in surprise and you flung a pillow over your face, not believing you had almost kissed Park Sunghoon but that your stupid little brother had ruined everything.

“Sorry! I’m sorry!” the culprit squeaked before running away. You and Sunghoon looked at each other. It was awkward for two seconds, then you both erupted in laughter.

“Alright, guess I should get going then. Um, thank you so much for tonight. I haven’t had a family dinner in a while, and… Well, it was really nice,” he admitted shyly after you’d calmed down.

“Of course, Sunghoon. I’m sure my parents would love to have you over any time.”

You walked him to your front door, where you exchanged goodbyes and I’ll see you tomorrows. You watched him take a few steps, then turn back and jog towards you. He stood in front of you for a second, then leaned down and placed a kiss on your forehead.

“Bye, Y/N.”

You were too stunned to say it back.

—

After the almost-kiss, it felt as though something had changed between you and Sunghoon. The event had somewhat revealed your feelings: you both knew you wanted to kiss each other. But since those feelings hadn’t been acted upon, the transition from fake-dating to real dating couldn’t happen as smoothly. Well, it could, if you two stopped acting like idiots and told each other how you felt. But the author wanted to get a couple more thousand words in, so it had to wait.

You’d gotten used to Sunghoon’s little requests at school, but you definitely hadn’t anticipated a phone call at past 11pm on a Wednesday night.

“Sunghoon? Why are you calling me so late?” you asked, groggy voice because of sleep. Since you woke up so early to get ready in the morning, you always went to bed around 9:30 to 10 p.m. Sunghoon was making you lose precious minutes of slumber.

“Late? It’s barely midnight, Y/N.” You groaned. “Whatever, put on some clothes and come outside! I’m waiting for you.”

“You’re what?” you whisper-screamed, suddenly feeling very awake.

“I’m waiting for you! Hurry up!”

As always, he hung up without waiting for your reply. You couldn’t really turn him down anyway; although you were somewhat obligated, you had stopped seeing it that way and started doing things for him out of your own volition.

Not wanting to get out of your pajamas, you just threw on a warm sweater, a scarf, some socks, and headed down the hallway on your tiptoes. Your parents weren’t the strictest out there, but you still didn’t wanna get caught sneaking out, and with a boy, at that. After putting on your shoes, you left your house, closing the door behind you as quietly as you could.

The late October night was a bit chilly, but you had wrapped up warm enough. Sunghoon was indeed waiting for you outside, wearing a denim jacket over his gray sweatshirt and matching sweatpants.

God, he looked good.

“Finally! Took you long enough.”

“Quit it, Sunghoon. Just tell me why you wanted to see me.”

“There’s a place I wanna show you. Come on,” he said, taking you by the hand. You felt tingles in your palm and fingers wherever his hand touched yours. How could something feel so natural yet make your heart race so at the same time?

“Are we walking there?” you asked.

“Yep, it’s not too far. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Those five minutes felt like five seconds walking with Sunghoon. You chatted and joked around the whole way, not letting go of each other’s hand. You hadn’t even noticed you had reached your destination until he stopped walking.

“Here we are,” he said, facing the building, which made you turn in the direction he was looking.

“The ice rink? What are we doing here?” you asked, confused. It was 11:30 pm; surely, the rink would be closed.

“You’ll see!” he said, heading towards the entrance. To your surprise, he pulled out a key from his pockets and opened the doors.

“What? Sunghoon! How do you have a key to the ice rink?”

“I’m chummy with the janitor. I just need to let him know when I’ll be coming and he doesn’t tell anyone,” he replied, an easy smile on his face, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. He led you first to the shoe rack, helping you find skates your size, and then to the benches next to the rink’s entrance. He knelt in front of you and helped you put on your shoes, doing the laces for you.

He looked up at you, a glint in his eyes. “I’ve never taken anyone here, Y/N. I know your secret, so I thought I’d show you mine.”

You didn’t know what to say, surprised at the sudden confession, so you just looked at him curiously as he took ice skates from his backpack and laced them up.

He stood up, turned to you and said, “Ready?”

You followed him to the doors leading to the ice. He stepped inside without a trace of hesitation, but you were much more doubtful about your ability to stand on the ice without falling instantly. He turned around and saw you looking helpless. He took your hand in his, helping you step onto the rink.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. As long as I’ve got you, you won’t fall.”

“Don’t let go of my hand, then,” you said pointedly.

Too focused on not slipping, you didn’t see his smile. “I wasn’t planning to.”

He helped you get your footing, skating backwards in front of you and holding both of your hands. After a few minutes on the ice, you got brave enough to skate on your own, and you miraculously managed to stay on your feet. However, after a while, your bravery turned to hubris, and you dared attempt a spin, resulting in you miserably falling on the ice, butt first. Sunghoon was worried for a second until he saw you laughing uncontrollably. You looked at him, wide-eyed, and said, “This is so much fun, Hoon.” You were so exhilarated that you hadn’t noticed the nickname slipping from your lips but the boy’s cheeks and ears turned redder than the bruise you had surely just earned yourself. Thankfully, if you commented on it, he could just blame it on the cold.

He helped you up, and you skated on as if nothing had happened. This went on for another thirty minutes, you skating hand in hand and occasionally falling together (but most of the time, just you falling on your own). Sunghoon had been so nervous before bringing you here; he was scared you’d think his hobby was unmanly or lame, as he’d been made to feel. But seeing you have the time of your life, all his worries dissipated. This place was like a second home to him, and bringing someone into your home was always nerve-wracking, but he thought you fit perfectly in it.

When you told him you were getting tired and wanted to sit for a while, you skated back together to the benches and he gave you some water from his bag. You sat in silence for a while, waiting for your breathing to come back to a normal pace.

You broke the silence first. “So, why’d you take me here? Not that I’m complaining.”

He hesitated a second before speaking. "I used to come here all the time as a kid.” He didn’t look at you when he answered, keeping his gaze on his hands. “My mom would take me. She left us for another man the summer before middle school started. She left me alone with my asshole father.”

You let out a small gasp, not expecting such a confession. You placed your hand on his back for comfort and said, “I’m sorry, Sunghoon.”

He quickly glanced at you, a half-smile on his face. “Don’t be. Anyways, he had to somewhat start taking care of me now that my mom wasn’t there to do it.” He chuckled darkly. “I guess his idea of taking care of his son was forbidding him from doing the one thing he loved. He thought it was a stupid sport for a boy. He stopped all of my lessons and made me sign up for soccer, even though I hadn’t ever said I wanted to do that. I still came here from time to time, but I didn’t wanna risk getting caught. God knows what he’d have done if he saw me here.”

You weren’t sure what to say. You felt as if no words would be enough to express how his story made you feel. “I- it’s awful, what he did to you. No parent should ever make their child feel as though their passion isn’t worth it. If it’s any comfort, even though you were mostly helping me, I thought you looked ten times better on that rink than scoring any goal. And that’s saying something.”

He finally looked at you and grinned. “Thanks, Y/N.” He seemed to be thinking for a few seconds, and then continued: “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I think that’s why it’s hard for me to open up to people and make lots of friends. I only trust Jake because I’ve known him forever and I can’t really get rid of him now,” he said with a chuckle, “and Jay, well, Jake took to him instantly in middle school so I guess I didn’t have a choice there either, and he’s not so bad anyway. The more people I let in, the more likely I am to get hurt. It’s much easier pretending I don’t wanna have anything to do with anyone than try.

“I guess it’s also why I talked to you on that day. Sure, I ended up thinking you could help me with all those girls. But at first, when I saw someone like you, who looks like they have it all together, who’s actually the opposite in real life - no offense - it reminded me of myself. And I thought, maybe she’d understand. Which is why it was so easy to be myself around you.”

You took his hand in yours and pressed it slightly. “I’m glad you were.” You didn’t feel the need to say anything else, hoping it was enough.

“Now, your turn. What made you the person you are today?” he asked with a grin, trying to approach lightheartedly this heavy subject, which you appreciated.

“It’s all about making people think you’re someone else, isn’t it? Because, depending on who you are, they’ll treat you differently. I found that out as a kid, because I, too, have a tragic childhood backstory.” He gasped jokingly.

“It’s not as bad as yours, so sorry about that. Back in primary school, I already had this… attitude that I have today. I had quite the ego, and I didn’t want anyone doing better than me at school. I didn’t care about how I looked, if I was the prettiest girl in class or had the cutest shoes. I was the smarty-pants of the class, basically, and a lot of the kids teased me for that. But I also didn’t let myself get trampled over, and fought back, quite aggressively at that, so I was somehow the nerd and the troublemaker at the same time. I didn’t have the best reputation, but I did have a friend. Jay. Or Jongseong, at the time, before he got too cool for his real name,” you joked. “The thing is, I didn’t see him as a friend. Sure, I was only eight or nine, but I really liked him. And the day I was planning on confessing, I saw him hold hands with the prettiest girl in our class. So I never told him, and then he left for the US a few months later.

“During the time he was gone, I had a complete makeover and actually started caring about my appearance, especially when middle school started. So now I had academic validation from teachers, which I had craved since forever, and both female and male validation from all the girls telling me how pretty I was and all the guys liking me. The people who were in my primary school and went to the same middle school told them how I used to be, but nobody believed them, and if they did, they didn’t care, so everybody just gradually forgot about it. And I just got addicted to the validation, which is why I always studied harder and tried to be prettier, even when it turned into a complete lie. I thought that if I could make everyone believe I was perfect, then it didn’t matter what I was like in real life, so at home, I just let myself completely go. And even now that I’m aware of all of this, I still can’t stop.”

Sunghoon looked at you like you had just slapped him. “So, you used to have a crush on Jay?”

You looked at him in exasperation. “Seriously, Hoon? That’s what you get from everything I just told you?”

He smiled shyly. “Sorry. Thank you for telling me.” You sat there in comfortable silence for another few minutes, still hand in hand. Then, Sunghoon got up, grin on his face.

“Wanna see something cool?” You nodded at him, returning his grin. He headed back inside the rink.

You thought he was gonna show off by doing some fancy trick. But he started gliding on the ice, and you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. He took long strides that looked as natural to him as walking. He spinned one, two, three times, and continued skating as though it was nothing. You were completely mesmerized. You already thought he was out-of-this-world beautiful, but his beauty was brought to another level when he skated. His elegant moves rendered you breathless. When he skated back towards you, you were looking at him with only awe and admiration in your eyes.

After what he’d told you and what he’d just shown you, you couldn't help but get a little emotional. You engulfed him in a hug as soon as he’d stepped out of the rink, your arms around his neck and his naturally coming to your waist. Your hands came up to his cheeks as you leaned back to properly look at him.

“That was- wow. That was amazing, Sunghoon. Thank you for showing me.” You could see the gratefulness in his eyes. There was something else there, and whatever it was, you knew you were looking back at him with as much of it. It was only you two in the building, but it might as well have been the two of you in the whole world.

All too similarly as in your room, his gaze went from your eyes to your lips, and you couldn’t help but mirror that. This was the perfect moment. You inched your face closer, letting him close the gap between you. Your lips touched and it was as if everything fell into place. The kiss was shy at first, neither of you sure what to do, your mouths moving at a slow but steady pace. But as your hands traveled from his cheeks, to his jaw and down to his neck, and you felt him sigh in the kiss, something unclicked in you, making you want more. You deepened the kiss, and he returned it with just as much force. Your right hand came to grab at the nape of his hair and his hands gripped your waist tighter. After minutes or hours, you broke the kiss in need of some air. Your eyes met again and you smiled at him, relieved it had finally happened.

You thought he’d have a similar reaction, but he suddenly looked panicked. Realization hit him like a truck. He liked you. Far too much. And even if the kiss and these past weeks told him you might like him back, it scared him. He’d unlocked his heart for you but couldn’t let you keep the key. Otherwise, he’d let you open it more and more and more until there he was completely bare in front of you, and you decided you didn’t like what you’d found and left him. Just like his mom did. Just like everyone eventually does. Just like his dad never even tried.

He took a step back. His panic was rubbing off on you. You called out his name, but he quickly got his bag and said, “Sorry, Y/N, I have to go. I’ll um- I’ll see you.” He took a few steps, turned around, and said, “I think you should take the bus tomorrow morning. Sorry.”

He started walking away. A few steps before he’d be out of your view, he turned back around. He hated the look on your face, how sad, confused and helpless it was all at once. Above all, he hated that he was the reason behind it. But he told himself it was better to leave you now than be left in a few months when you got bored of him, and started walking again without another word.

—

You walked home alone. It was a dark November night, and you were shivering from the cold and from sadness. Try as hard as you might, you couldn’t figure out why Sunghoon had reacted like that. The past month had gone so well, you were only getting closer and more comfortable with each other. The only logical conclusion you could come to was that kissing you had made him realize he didn’t like you. Thankfully, you didn’t live too far from the ice rink and you got home in five minutes. Lost in your thoughts, you couldn’t even be bothered to be quiet closing the front door and walking to your room, and you woke Sunoo up.

At first, he looked like he was about to scold you for making so much noise; but upon seeing your disheveled state, he started worrying.

“Y/N? What’s wrong, why are you only coming home now? Where were you?”

You couldn’t hold it in any longer. You fell in your brother’s arms and started crying your heart out.

He held you for a little while, but not wanting to wake the others up by staying in the hallway, he said, “Come on, let’s get you in your room. You’re freezing.”

He left for a few minutes and came back with two cups of tea in his hands. He joined you on your bed. You had calmed down a bit and took a sip of the tea, already feeling warmer.

“So, tell me everything.”

And you did. Not just about what had happened at the ice rink, but everything before that: how yours and Sunghoon’s relationship was fake, which you hadn’t even told your siblings, but that it hadn’t kept you from falling for him, and how you really thought he felt the same way. When you got to the part where you told each other about your stories, Sunoo grabbed your arm in surprise, and said, “I can’t believe you told someone about that. Good for you, big sis.”

You sat in silence after a few minutes when you’d finished telling him everything, you, still reflecting on your evening, and him, trying to think of something good to say. He took a deep breath, and started: “You know, this might be completely useless, but I feel like there’s no point trying to figure out why he did that. We’re not mind readers, and assuming things will just go wrong. I think the best thing to do is just ask him tomorrow, or whenever you’re ready to face him, really.”

You looked at your brother fondly. “How can you be so stupid sometimes, yet so wise right now?”

Sunoo and you talked for another minute, but when you yawned for a good seven straight seconds, you both agreed it was time for bed. Before you fell asleep, you told yourself that tomorrow morning, you’d find Sunghoon and make him be clear with you. You at least deserved that.

—

Heeseung and Sumin were clearly surprised to see you the next morning in the bus, but you told them you didn’t want to talk about it and they didn’t push, although it very obviously had something to do with Sunghoon. As you rode the bus and psyched yourself for your conversation with him, you had no idea he was currently in the midst of a heated argument with Jay. The latter pushed him with force, making Sunghoon’s back hit the classroom wall behind him.

“What the fuck did you just say about Y/N?” Jay asked, venom in his voice and fury in his eyes.

Despite the pain, Sunghoon smirked, wanting to rile up his friend even more. “I said, Y/N’s just as stupid as all the other girls. She probably thinks she’s so much better than everybody, but in the end it was so easy making her fall for me. It was almost boring, really, how easy she was.”

Jay pushed him again. “Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”

“Aw, little Jay is getting upset over his little Y/N? You sad that the girl you like actually likes an asshole like me?”

Jay hadn’t had many reasons to get angry in his life. This was making him discover another side of himself; he didn’t know he could get this angry. He didn’t know rage could fill up his veins like that and make him want to destroy absolutely everything around him, but above all, the person in front of him who’d he considered a friend all these years. On the verge of losing control, he reared up his fist, before Sunghoon said:

“You know what’s even sadder? She used to like you, too.”

His arm dropped. “What?”

“Yeah, in primary school. Didn’t you think it was weird how different she was before and after you left? Her little heartbreak made her change everything about herself just so that people would like her. And now all she can do is lie to everyone. I pity her, really. And to think that she thought I liked her. What an idiot.”

That was the last straw. Jay punched Sunghoon square in the nose, making him stumble back a few steps until he hit the wall again. He held onto his bloody, and possibly broken, nose and looked Jay straight in the eyes, still smirking. Thinking his job was done (but not sure what the job was in the first place), he walked away, heading to the nurses’ station. The scene had gathered quite an audience outside. It was less than ten minutes to the first bell, so already quite a few students were there, but no one had dared to venture inside. Jake, arriving too late to prevent any damage, looked wide-eyed back and forth between Sunghoon walking out and Jay standing inside, fists clenched by his side and panting from anger.

Sunghoon barely spared him or anyone a glance as he left the room. What he did notice though, were a crumpled tuna-mayo sandwich and a banana milk on the floor, looking as though someone had dropped them.

What had he done?

—

You had already run back to your friends and were currently crying for the second time in twelve hours in Sumin’s arms. It was the first time ever you cried at school, and probably also in front of your friends, spare Sumin, so it was a curious sight to most; she took you to another room for privacy.

There, you practically told her everything you had told Sunoo the night before, including the fake dating.

“Wait… so, you and Sunghoon weren’t actually dating?”

You nodded, embarrassed by your lie.

“I- Why didn’t you tell me, Y/N? How could you fool everyone like that?”

You looked up in surprise at your friend’s harsh words. You probably deserved them, but you weren’t used to hearing her speak in such a way, nor to the cold stare she was peering down at you with.

“I don’t know… I’m really sorry…” you mumbled, ashamed.

She scoffed. “You should be. I just- I just don’t understand how you can already be living such a lie, and still add onto it. It makes me wonder how I’m still friends with you.” The bell rang right at that moment, and she got up, saying, “Let’s go to class. You wouldn’t wanna be late.”

You followed her, but you felt sick to your stomach. Usually, you could always hide your discomfort or sadness, no matter how bad your period cramps were or how serious an argument with your parents had gotten. But this time, it was too much, and fifteen minutes into the class, you asked the teacher to go to the nurse. Not used to you needing to leave class and trusting that it was for a legitimate reason, your teacher let you off and you quickly packed your bag and left.

When you got to the nurse, you sat down in front of her and said you weren’t feeling well and wanted to go home. For the same reasons as your teacher, she said she’d let you but needed to ask you a few questions before about your general well-being. You answered them quickly, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible and just go home.

When you finally were able to leave, you only took a few steps out of the nurse’s office before someone grabbed your wrist, making you turn around. Sunghoon, who was resting in the room next door, had heard your voice and gotten up as soon as he’d heard you leave. His nose was covered in bandages and his eye had started swelling and turning blue, and you mentally thanked Jay. You ripped your arm out of his grip and continued to walk away without a word. You were too tired to argue.

“Y/N, please, hear me out.”

This made you stop in your tracks, but you didn’t turn around. “Hear you out? I’ve already heard enough, Sunghoon. No need to explain, you made it very clear what you think of me.”

You started walking again but he doubled you and blocked your path in the narrow hallway.

“Y/N, I’m sorry, if you’d just give me a minute-”

“I don’t care that you’re sorry, Sunghoon! Sorry doesn’t cut it. I trusted you. Actually trusted you. You out of all people should know how hard it is to do that. Or was that a lie too?” Seeing him in front of you, your sadness retreated to the back of your heart and you were left with only anger.

“It wasn’t, I prom-”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.” You pushed past him and walked on. And this time, he let you go, even though the only thing you wanted him to do was make you stay. You so desperately wanted to hear him out and forgive him, but you knew you couldn’t do that. You had too much dignity, and it would only end up hurting you even further.

So you didn’t shed a tear the whole way home. When you finally got to your bed, you didn’t have the energy to start crying. You fell asleep, tears quietly rolling down your face.

—

You slept the whole day, waking up to a soft knock on your bedroom door. It was your mom, telling you Jay was here to see you. Everyone had been surprised to see you already at home when they came back from work or school, but they knew better than to wake you up.

“I’m surprised, you know. He’s gotten so handsome.”

You rolled your eyes at her. “Just tell him that I’m not feeling well and he should go home, please.”

“Oh, I’ve already tried to, honey. The boy is adamant on seeing you.”

You sighed. “Fine. Can you bring him here, then?”

A few seconds later, you heard another knock, and Jay opened the door just enough to peek his head through, asking if he could come in.

“Well, you’re already here, so might as well.”

You sat up and gestured for him to sit down on your bed.

He looked around, taking in the messiness of his surroundings. “You know, I thought your room would be much more… organized.”

“Didn’t Sunghoon tell you? I’m a big, fat liar who hides the truth from everyone,” you said sarcastically.

“About that… did you hear everything he said?” You hummed in response. “I’m so sorry you had to hear that, Y/N. I don’t know what happened to him. He’d never said anything like that about you, and then, all of a sudden… What an asshole. I can’t believe he was my friend.”

“Was? You shouldn’t end your friendship over me, Jay.”

“Are you kidding me? I can’t be friends with a guy who talks about anyone like that, let alone you.” After a few minutes of silence, he asked, “Did um- did anything happen, for him to say those things?”

You sighed deeply. “I’ve already told this story twice in the past few days, so I’ll give you the short version, but basically, we were fake dating, and I started really liking him, and I thought he did too, until we kissed, and he left me completely stranded, and then the next day I hear him say all those things.”

Silence again. You suddenly remembered something Sunghoon had said that you had completely put to the side: Jay likes you. At least, according to Sunghoon. You didn’t know if it was true, but judging by his disappointed face, it looked like it. Seemed like all of your friendships were going to hell.

“Oh,” he simply said.

“Yeah…” you murmured back.

“Well,” he turned to you, “that just confirms to me that he’s an asshole. Cause no guy in his right mind would turn you down, Y/N. I know I wouldn’t.”

He looked straight at you as he said that. Yep. Jay liked you. It was a nice feeling, but it was also about ten years too late.

“Do you- do you know what I’m trying to say, Y/N?” he asked, gulping.

You hesitated for a second before saying, ”I think I do, Jay. I have to say, your timing isn’t great.”

He chuckled a bit lifelessly. “Yeah, I guess right now isn’t the best time to say this.”

“I also meant, you know what Sunghoon said, earlier? That I liked you before you left for the US? That was true.”

He looked at you, mouth agape. “Oh, was it…” His head hung down in defeat. “I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot. I feel like it’s my fault that Sunghoon hurt you like this. If only I’d been just a bit earlier…”

“None of this is your fault, Jay. Please don’t think that. It’s mine for thinking Sunghoon could actually like me back.”

Jay took a deep breath. “God, as much as it hurts me to say, Y/N, I think he did. Or does, actually.” You furrowed your brows at him. “Sunghoon, he has this thing where he goes into retreat mode as soon as he gets too close, too personal. It’s a stupid defense mechanism, and when he realizes he’s let you in a bit too far, he snaps everything closed and hurts you before you can hurt him. At least, that’s how he sees it, I guess. He’s done it to Jake and me a couple times, and it takes some getting used to, but he stops after a while. When he knows for sure that you won’t hurt him.”

You didn’t know what to do with this information, so you just stayed quiet, which Jay took as a sign to go on.

“I’m not saying forgive him. Believe me, if I could smack him into space and never let him see you again, I would. But I think maybe, just maybe, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to, hear him out.”

You smiled at him. “You’re a good friend, Jay. And I don’t mean just to me but to Sunghoon as well. I hope you know that.”

Jay tried to ignore the pinch in his heart at the word ‘friend’ and smiled back.

“Oh, there’s another thing I needed to show you.” His tone was suddenly much more apprehensive, and he looked both sorry and scared to say whatever he was about to say.

He pulled out his phone and searched the thing in question. Before showing you anything, he warned, “Nobody knows who did this. It was sent out to the whole school on a library computer-”

Expecting the worst, you snatched Jay’s phone from his hands. And there they were. Pictures of you from your primary school years, recent pictures of you in your comfortable clothes, at home or in close proximity to your house. Sent out to the whole school, as Jay had said. You were horror-struck. You could feel all the years you had spent perfecting your image and maintaining it crumbling around you as though they were paper. Charismatic smiles and trendy accessories had been your brick and mortar, but a sledgehammer had hit them, destroying your foundations further with each swing.

And that sledgehammer had a name: Bae Sumin. You’d figured it out in an instant. You’d been friends your whole life, she was the only one apart from your family to know about your true face; only she would have access to such photos. You knew it wasn’t Sunghoon because the pictures he had taken that day weren’t there.

If what had happened with Sunghoon had made a crack in your heart, then this had shattered it into a million pieces. The person who you’d trusted the most, who you’d thought would never do anything to hurt you, had done the worst thing anybody could do to you.

“Y/N- are you okay?” Jay asked tentatively. You had forgotten he was there.

“Um, yeah, yeah- I think I just need to be alone for now, if that’s okay.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind staying a while.”

“Sorry, Jay, but I’m sure.”

He looked at you for a few seconds. He’d never felt more distance between you two, not even when you had been oceans apart. “Alright. Call me if you need anything. I mean it.”

You smiled a tiny, tiny smile in response and he left your room. On his way out, your mom hugged him, saying it was nice to see him again and that he was welcome anytime, and he thanked her.

As he walked home, he couldn’t help but bitterly laugh to himself. Even when he confessed, he hadn’t been able to say the words he’d wanted to tell you this whole time: I love you.

—

You didn’t go to school for the rest of the week, the only stain on your perfect attendance record. All of your friends had tried to reach you, asking if you were okay, and you replied in a few small messages, telling them you’d be back when you could. Other people had contacted you, asking if those pictures were real. You obsessed over your school’s gossip Instagram account: the past few days, all the posts had been dedicated to your pictures and Sunghoon’s and Jay’s fight. You had ten missed calls from Sunghoon and seventeen from Sumin. You ignored each and everyone of them, only giving Jay, Heeseung, Sieun and Jiung the time of day.

On Sunday morning you woke up, already dreading going to school the next day. You could already picture the nasty stares and whispers you’d get in the hallways. You thought about facing Sumin and Sunghoon again, and you thought the worst thing possible would be to have to do it at school. So you decided to wait until they called you again, as you knew they would, and finally picked up their call.

Sumin contacted you first, at eleven in the morning. You agreed to have her come over to your house to talk. When she appeared at your front door, you realized you weren’t sad, angry, or disappointed; you were just confused. You didn’t understand why she’d done it. Looking at her face, you couldn’t imagine her sitting down at that computer and sending out those pictures, writing the comment This is what Kim Y/N is like in real life.

You let her in and walked to your room, your siblings’ eyes burning holes into her soul the whole time. You sat down on your bed, sighed, and said, “Go ahead.”

“Thank you for letting me come here and explain myself. I don’t know what took over me, Y/N. Well actually, I guess I do. Jealousy, as stupid as it sounds.” She chuckled at herself. “I’ve always tried to hide it, but I’ve always been a bit jealous of you, Y/N. You’re the prettiest girl, the smartest, the nicest, and I’m just the best friend. That’s all anyone knows me as. Everybody loves you, yet I know it’s all a facade. And I’m not saying that to be mean, because I know you’re an amazing person even without all the glamor. And when I saw you with Sunghoon, I mean, you saw how I was. I didn't fight with my parents. I was so, so jealous. You hadn’t shown interest in any guy since Choi Soobin and all of a sudden you were dating Park freaking Sunghoon, and he knew about your quote-on-quote ‘real’ face, so I couldn’t even comfort myself that he didn’t know who you really were.”

“Wait- why would you be jealous of Sunghoon and me?”

She took a deep breath. “You remember, freshman year, when I confessed to him and he turned me down?”

“Yeah, but I thought that was in the past.”

“Do you also remember that guy I told you about later on, who I’d gotten really close with but completely shut me off when I thought we were about to start dating?”

Something clicked, but you didn’t want to face it. “Yeah…”

“Well, surprise surprise, they were the same person. Ha. I got mad at you for lying to me, but I did the same thing.”

“Sumin… Why did you never tell me?”

“I’m not sure. When we were in that talking stage, I could’ve bragged about it to anyone, you know, that Park Sunghoon was actually being nice to me, but I didn’t. I wanted to keep him my little secret. And then I confessed, and we all know how that ended.” A beat passes as she takes a deep breath, shaking the bad memory away. “I am over it, it was more than three years ago. Maybe there was a nice part of me that thought he had changed, because you seemed happy with him, and I didn’t want to ruin that. But maybe there was another part that hoped he might hurt you like he did me. And that’s such a shitty thing to do, I know. I should’ve told you when I saw you get involved with him. I can’t believe after all these years, he did the exact same thing to you that he did to me. What an asshole.”

You were staring at the wall in front of you, feeling empty. Why did everything have to happen at the same time? You were just drained of any willpower.

“This doesn’t explain the pictures,” you said plainly.

“Right. When you told me you were fake dating, I guess something snapped in me. I couldn’t believe it was another lie, I thought we had gone past the stage where you hid things from me. So that, plus jealousy, I just went a bit crazy, I think. I really wasn’t thinking, Y/N, and I promise you with all my heart that if I could go back and undo everything, I would. I’m so, so, so sorry. I regretted it as soon as I hit post.”

You looked at your friend and knew she was telling the truth. You believed her, and yet you couldn’t quite look past it.

“I know you are, Minie. It’s just… what am I gonna do now at school? Everybody must hate me.”

“I won’t lie, some people haven’t been saying the nicest things, especially Park’s fangirls. But God, Y/N, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but who cares? They’ll talk about it for a week, two at most. Your life at school won’t be the same, but you’ll still have all of us. I’ve talked to Heeseung, Sieun and Jiung, and they’re not the tiniest bit mad at you. They’re just worried to death. A bit confused too, but mostly worried. And you know what? Even Yujin, Wonyoung and Gaeul, who I’ve literally never talked to before, came to ask me how you were. Jay and Sunghoon are barely on talking terms but they always team up when it comes to practically verbally assaulting anyone they overhear talking behind your back. Jake has to hold them back sometimes but he always glares at those people too. You don’t wanna see Jake Sim glare, I promise you. It’s so scary,” she says in a confessional tone, visibly shuddering just at the thought of angel-faced Jake looking angry, and you can’t help the small chuckle that escapes your lips.

Her face softens as she places a warm palm over your hand. “We all love you and care for you so much, so screw literally every single other person in that school. They don’t matter.”

There was something refreshing about Sumin’s words. The idea that you could live your life without worrying about other people had always been in the back of your head, but you always told yourself you were in too deep to go back. Now that you had been forced to, you understood why you felt so empty: the immense weight of having to keep up a persona, had been lifted off your shoulders. You would only have to carry yourself, and not a second person, which made you feel weightless. You’d just have to get used to it and come to enjoy that feeling.

You took your friend’s hands in yours. “I want to forgive you, I promise I do. And I will. I just don’t know if I can do that right away. I’ll need some getting used to this new life.”

“I completely understand, Y/N.”

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you around anymore. And you know what, I’m sure one day I’ll look back at this moment and thank you.”

—

Sumin left a few hours later and you were now waiting for Sunghoon to call you. You waited and waited, until your phone rang with a small ding: he wasn’t calling you, but had sent you a message. A very, very long message. You were very tempted to reply with a I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened, but you thought it might not be the appropriate moment.

You opened the message, which had come after thirty unread texts, and started reading, slightly appalled by the lack of paragraphing.

Dear Y/N,

Is this how you start a long text? I would much rather be telling you this than writing it, but someone hasn’t been picking up my calls. Sorry. I probably shouldn’t be giving you much attitude right now. Where do I even start? The ice rink, I guess. Asshole move #1, obviously. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you like that. That kiss was really really good and I really really liked it. Because I really really like you. And I think I’ve known that for a while now, but the kiss confirmed it. And I was happy for a second, but then I panicked. There’s no other word for it, I panicked. I’ve never liked someone this much before and I was so scared. I still am. I’m terrified shitless. But I know that my fear is completely irrational, and that you’re literally the best person on Earth, which is why I’m writing this. I know it’s cliché to say my mom left me and now I think everybody will. And my first reaction to that is to hurt someone before they can hurt me, which is what I did. But as much as I wanna fight it, it’s always there at the back of my mind. You can even ask Sumin about it. Should I be saying that? I feel like I might as well. I was an asshole to her, and I’m so angry at myself that I did it again with you. I didn’t mean a single word of what I said about you to Jay. Not a single one. You’re not stupid, you’re the smartest and most amazing girl I know, and I never pretended I liked you, because I never had to. I think I just wanted Jay to punch me, really. I wanted him to run to you and make sure you were okay, because I was too scared to do that myself. But I regret doing that so much. I hope you know that. And bless Jay, he’s a real one. He told me to get my shit together and talk to you. I can tell he’s still mad at me but still wants to make things good between us. I was already trying to call you before he said that, but I probably would’ve said something stupid that would’ve made things worse. And I can’t afford that, Y/N, I really, really can’t. You get me like no one does and being with you is the most liberating thing ever, I’m never myself more than when I’m around you. You just bring out the best in me. Well, except for that thing I did. Which I promise I’ll never do again. I am so extremely sorry, and if you wanna hate me for the rest of your life, I completely get it. But I would also be very happy if you didn’t. I hope I’ll see you tomorrow at school. I really miss you.

Your Hoon

You wiped away the tears that had formed in your eyes and typed back:

You’re such an idiot, Park.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

—

The next day, as you imagined, was mostly hell. You’d decided not to dress up as usual: there was no point trying to look good after this, it would only make you seem more ridiculous. You put less makeup on, not bothering to hide your eye bags, and didn’t bling your outfit up with accessories or fancy shoes, opting for your worn-out Converse you’d had since your feet stopped growing. On the bus, where people usually ignored each other, you could already feel the gossip being told about you. You avoided people’s gaze like the plague and sat down next to Sumin. You laid your head on her shoulder and sighed.

“I already wanna go home.”

She laughed, “I know. We’ll be with you the whole day, so don’t worry.”

You spent the bus ride catching up on what had happened when you were gone (nothing much), and although there was some awkwardness there, it was nice being with your best friend. When Heeseung got on, he practically screamed your name and suffocated you by means of greeting.

“I’m so glad you’re back. You know, I think you look really cute in those pictures. All these people are just jealous they don’t look as good as you even when you don’t dress up.”

Sumin shot daggers with her eyes at him and he cringed, saying, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

You reassured him, saying that it was fine since it was all you were going to be hearing the next few days. “Might as well get used to it.”

It was somewhat easy to ignore the stares coming your way when you walked into school with Heeseung and Sumin flanked at your sides like bodyguards. When you reached your classroom, Jiung engulfed you in a hug and Sieun was almost crying. How the hell had you gotten such sweet friends?

In the hallways, some people tried to get reactions out of you by calling you out, yelling liar! or you can’t fool us anymore. You couldn’t ignore them as they were very much in your face. When at lunch, a table of girls next to you was very clearly talking about you in the nastiest way possible, you took your tray and were ready to get up and leave, but a very familiar voice stopped you in your tracks.

“You think it’s funny talking about someone like that?” Sunghoon was practically screaming at the girls. “You think you’re any better than her? I bet you do the exact same thing but are just glad someone else got called out for it.” You weren’t sure if that made you feel much better, but you appreciated the effort.

“As a matter of fact,” he continued as he pulled out a chair and got up on it, his voice getting louder, “I’ve got something I wanna say to everyone.”

Somebody whooped (probably Jake) and you tried to get Sunghoon to come down from the chair, but he just smiled his radiant smile at you and turned to look at the students in the cafeteria.

“All of you who judge Y/N are hypocrites. You wanna tell me you’re all as perfect at home as you are at school? That you never relax a little bit? Sure, she pushed it a bit far- (hey! you grunted in protest), but nobody shows who they truly are to everyone. We all judge each other in this stupid high school, so Y/N did what she had to do and protected herself. If anything, this should make you respect her even more. And it’s not like she did anything wrong to you. She didn’t use her popularity against anyone, so you better not use this against her.”

From the crowded tables in the cafeteria, somebody yelled “Nobody cares!”

Somebody, whose voice you thought you recognized as Jungwon’s, joined in: “Yeah, what is it about you seniors and thinking the whole school revolves around you? We still like Y/N!”

Sunghoon, taken aback, simply said, “Oh. Alright. Well, you better keep it that way then!” and got off his chair.

He turned to you, already a pleading look on his face and said “Y/N, I’m so sorry-”

But you cut him off right away. “I know, Sunghoon, I know. I think this proved it.”

“I really wanna make it up to you. So just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. Buy you a house, move to another country, you name it. I’ll do it.”

You chuckled at him. “You don’t need to go that far.” You looked down, then back at him. “I think I just want to pretend like nothing happened. Like it was all a huge, awful fever dream. Even if I can’t forgive and forget right away, I don’t think I want you out of my life while I figure it out.”

He let out the biggest sigh you’d ever heard. “My God, you don’t know how happy to hear that, Y/N. Thank you so much.”

“Thank you for defending me just now. That was… definitely something.”

He smiled down at you. "I did my best. Too bad those sophomores ruined everything.”

You could feel eyes burning into your sides, so you turned your head a bit and noticed that your friends and the table of girls that had just been gossiping were staring at you, some of them teary-eyed. When they saw you notice them, they all turned back to each other and pretended that they were having some other conversation. You and Sunghoon chuckled, and you realized how much you had missed him.

Yes, Sunghoon and Sumin had hurt you, but you were a strong believer of second chances. Even if it was hard at first to stop thinking about Sunghoon’s voice when he had said those things or Sumin’s intentions when she posted the pictures, they’d made it up to you in any way they could and you’d reciprocated that by being completely honest. No more trying to look perfect all the time; you were human and were allowed to have low moments. Your grades even dropped by two points, because you’d started spending more time with your friends than with your textbooks. You’d spent whole Saturdays at the ice rink with your now real-boyfriend Sunghoon, and had invited the whole crew. Heeseung was surprisingly good at it. You had even caught your little sister Yeeun on a date with the cute Japanese boy she’d talked about.

As promised, Jay came once a week or every two weeks to have dinner with your family; Sunghoon always insisted on being present. The tension between them had turned into friendly competition, and you could tell the two friends were glad to have each other back.

You’d never felt so free. Your relationship with Sunghoon felt like uncharted territory and home at the same time; so daunting and exciting yet so comfortable and relaxing. You kept the PDA at a minimum at school, but when it was just the two of you, your whole body never failed to heat up, even in the cold of the ice rink. He had been nicknamed the ice prince, but he was so, so warm.

In the end, everybody found out. But you had Park Sunghoon by your side, so it was alright.

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monamourbladie · 9 months

Note

AHH OKAY SO.. this feels so weird typing out but IF YOU'RE COMFORTABLE CAN YOU WRITE LIKE PROTECTIVE/POSSESSIVE DAN HENG IL? idk how to describe it aaa like.. id imagine because he is a vidyadhara, they stay with their lovers for life, so he's be like very protective over his lover. maybe smut but its up to you!!!!!!!

Possessive Dan Heng/IL head canons

okay firstly i wanna say i was sitting on this ask for days bc i was trying to think of a possible plot but I couldn’t:( so i’m just gonna do some head cannons, i hope you don’t mind! I’ll be including some nsfw ones at the end too don’t worry :)) and thank u for being my first request on this blog hehe~

Dan Heng:

alright, so Dan is a very reserved and kept to himself kinda guy as we can see on the Express. he doesn’t show his emotions a lot and he’s kind of hard to read

you’re one of the few people that can read him like a book due to how close you guys are and how much he trusts you. like, even MARCH couldn’t get him to open up as much as he does with you

so when he’s upset, you just know. like it’s so obvious to you and you alone lol

so let’s say you’re out in Belobog and he’s speaking with March & Stelle when some guy comes up to you and starts chatting with you

initially he wouldn’t think much of it until he starts hearing laughter from you, and then all his attention is on you and him. like, why are you laughing at his jokes? what’s he even doing talking to you??

he’d just kind of keep his distance and just watch. nobody else really understands what he’s doing, but you can immediately recognize the coldness in his eyes as he’s glaring daggers at the man.

eventually he’d have enough when he notices him starting to touch your arm and he immediately walks over, keeping a calm & collected stature

“y/n! there you are, i was wondering where you ran off to.” he’s walk up behind you and wrap his arm around your waist, keeping you pressed close against him.

your cheeks would flush and you’d immediately lean into him, feeling better now that he’s here and can scare the guy off. “i was just waiting for our drinks.”

“and speaking with me. i was offering to give her a tour around Belobog, since she’s new,” the man said with a smile to her. dan’s grip would tighten around your waist and he’s grit his teeth.

your drink would be called and he’d move away for just a moment - (it helped that you were waiting by the counter, anyway) and grabbed your drinks for you, handing you one and kissing your forehead as he did so, “that’s sweet, but we already have a tour guide. let’s go.”

he’d grab your hand and fast walk you away, his heart almost aching from the exchange.

you always understood how sensitive he is about you dating him, since he’s been so heavily traumatized by his previous marriage in his past life. any scenario where you could leave him in any way terrifies him more than he wants to admit.

“was that supposed to be intimidating?” march would comment with a giggle as they walked over. dan simply sighed as he handed march her drink, “leave it, march.”

you’d look up at him with a soft smile and tilt his face to look down at you. you’d grin and kiss his lips longingly, “don’t worry, sweetheart. i was just being nice and keeping conversation.”

this eased his mind greatly - it’s not like he doesn’t trust you, he’s just extremely insecure and fearful about losing his loved ones, even to a random stranger in a planet they have no plans to stay on.

back at the hotel when you’re alone though? that’s another story. he doesn’t feel the need to keep his usual reserved facade up, and you know that.

the moment the door is shut, he’s immediately behind you, his arms trailing up yours as he peppers kisses up the back of your neck, “i hated seeing him speak with you, you know that?” he’d mutter against your skin.

you’d hum and close your eyes as you leaned into his touch, knowing this was going to be a pleasantly long night. “were you jealous, baby?” you’d playfully tease him.

he’d let out a low growl against your skin as his grip on you tightened, moving you in his arms so you’re pressing your chest against his own. he leaned down and started to kiss against your jawline up to your ear, “i don’t get jealous. i get protective.”

“you’re so jealous,” you’d giggle, moving your head so you could kiss his lips instead. he’d kiss you back harshly to immediately shut you up, beginning to walk the two of you slowly over to the bed as you’d kiss

he’d pin you down against the bed quickly, his kisses getting more feverish as his hands start exploring your body, “that’s enough out of you. you’re my girl.”

you’d squirm under his touch in enjoyment, cheeks flushing red from being called his girl. you loved when you got him to act all touchy, especially when he was riled up like this.

he would absolutely tease you all throughout the night just to get you so riled up that you’d just be panting and begging for him to finally let you have your release.

he’d click his tongue and lean in against your ear, his fingers teasing you unbearably slowly as you squirmed. he wouldn’t let you have your release until you cried out that you were his and only his, reaffirming him in the best way.

he’d lean down and kiss you heatedly as he pumped his fingers quickly to push you over the edge, “good girl, that’s right… you belong to me, no one else…”

youd cry out as he helped you through your high, “o-only yours, dan… f-fuck…”

there was literally nothing he adored more than seeing you a sobbing, moaning mess all because of him. part of you wondered if you should get him possessive more often if he would treat you so nicely afterwards…

Imbibitor Lunae:

if you thought dan heng was closed off and reserved, dan feng was another level. we all know everyone described him as cold and uncaring, but when it came to you? he was a total opposite and an absolute sweetheart.

he had his moments of being a typical brooding dragon, but the love he has for you is so immense that it outweighed every once of coldness in his heart and actions

it honestly surprised most of the quintet when he announced that you two started dating, because out of everyone they expected to actually get a girlfriend the high elder himself was last on the list — let alone a short life species such as yourself.

dan feng does not like showing any ounce of PDA in public by any means. in the public eye, he only would have his arm around you if you were walking around, or occasionally held your hand. he would never kiss you if he knew a lot of people would be seeing it

at least that’s how he acted early on in your relationship. this lead to most people thinking you were single, so it was not uncommon that you would have guys flirt with you right in front of him.

the first time dan feng noticed a drunk guy coming into you hardcore, it made his blood boil. unlike dan heng, dan feng was totally cool with showing off his angry side.

he immediately stormed right up and got between the two of you, resting his hand against your chest and glaring at the man, “i think it’s best if you leave.”

the man scoffed as he crossed his arms, “actually, it would be best if you left. i was having a great time with her.”

dan felt his blood boil and he glared at him, “that’s my fiancée, and i suggest you get away from her immediately.”

“or what?” the man spat back. “for being her fiancé, you certainly don’t act like one.” without thinking, dan shoved the man against the wall, his arm pressed firmly over his chest, “you have some nerve to speak to your High Elder in such a way. I told you — stay away from her. you should be thankful i’m not throwing you into the Shackling Prison for being an ass.”

the man’s eyes widened as he started sobering up enough to realize how badly he fucked up. he squeaked and nodded furiously, “i-i’m so sorry, your highness! it won’t happen again!”

he’d step back and let him run off quickly. turning back to you he saw your cheeks burning red with embarrassment, and his demeanor immediately changed back to stoic. he approached you and began to walk away with you, his hand wrapped around your waist, “i believe i owe you an apology. i didn’t realize i wasn’t acting as much of a fiancé as I thought i was.”

and ever since that day, he made sure he always had his arm around you in some way, and made it very, very clear that you were his fiancée.

he’d pretty much be the same as dan heng, except way more passionate and dominating about it. he’s not afraid to entirely let his guard down in private with you, especially about anything sexual, so absolutely be prepared for a long, pleasure filled night

he’d be very dominate but definitely a pleasure dom … most of the time lol, other times he’d just be absolutely rough with you if he was really, really feeling jealous or possessive

he would not be afraid to leave a lot of marks - it made him proud that others would absolutely know you’re taken just by one glance at your neck, and he wasn’t ashamed of it, either. he knew he fucked up early on, and he made sure to always make up for it, especially in bed

and yes — part of the reason why he’s so protective over you is because you are a short life species. it absolutely destroys him that while you will grow old and spend the rest of your life with him, he cannot share the same blessing with you, and he absolutely hates himself for it. it’s not fair.

that’s why any time anyone tried anything with you, he’d get so angry over it because how dare they flirt with his one and only?

he also gave 0 fucks that some vidyadharans did not approve of you, in fact he loves to flaunt it in their faces now and kiss you at public events when he hears people murmur about the high elder and his “short-life woman.”

moral of the story, don’t fuck with the high elder’s woman or you’re a dead man

i hope this is what u had in mind alenfhehddhhd thank you for the request 🫶🏻

#honkai star rail #hsr #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #masterlist #dan heng #dan feng #imbibitor lunae #dan heng x reader #dan feng x reader #imbibitor lunae x reader #dan heng il x reader

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flynnriderishot · 4 months

Note

i needddd cute pt 2

cute pt.2 - m.s

a/n: i’ve been feeling really bad that i missed the original persons request by a mile 😭 so i’m gonna add that into this part lol

warnings: i couldn’t really figure out how to word it but i PROMISE matt wasn’t being creepy about following her to the bathroom‼️ he just really wanted to meet her. we don’t do that weird shit over here 🙄

also, vinnie hacker mention 🗣️ unfortunately, he has nothing to do with the story, i just needed someone to add💀

you were invited to a party that a friend of a friend was throwing.

did you know who this person was? vaguely.

in your eyes, it didn’t really matter.

what mattered was that matt sturniolo and his brothers would also be attending this party.

while you didn’t really have to go, you were a good friend and rightfully needed some time away from your social media life.

what better way to do that than to surround yourself with social media influencers? cue the sarcasm.

what made this all the more annoying to you was that it was a ‘valentines day’ party.

as if you weren’t all over the age of eighteen. you wanted to roll your eyes at the thought.

sure, the thought was cute and the idea was definitely there. but as you walked into the house, y/f/n’s hand in your own, you couldn’t help but scrunch up your face at the excessive amount of pink and red that flooded your vision.

“i guess we missed the memo?”

“no, i saved us the embarrassment of looking like we were back in third grade.” y/fn laughed out a scoff.

“i should definitely pay you more.”

while she was your friend, she also helped quite a lot with managing your channel. with reminding you of what your supporters wanted to see, to recording you anytime you needed content.

and though before she would say it was out of the kindness of her heart, you felt bad that she did so much for free. and once you started getting popular, you made quick work to pay her for all the stuff she did in the past and now she practically worked for you.

it was a win win situation. you got a best friend and a coworker all in one. it was much better than your previous partner that expected so much more for doing not nearly as much as y/f/n did.

“i definitely wouldn’t complain.”

you shared a laugh, moving your way through the crowed and to the drink table.

“i haven’t been to a party in a while, what are the odds we see a fight break out?”

a voice behind you interrupted before she could respond, “that would make this place so much more entertaining.”

your eyes widen as you froze up, trying to pinpoint where you may have heard the voice before turning around to actually see who it was.

“hi.” nick smiled at you.

“oh my god. hi.” you pulled him into a hug, pulling away to see him do the same to y/f/n, introducing himself to her as they hadn’t known one another very well.

“it’s so nice to finally meet you.”

“you’re telling me.” you stepped aside so he could lean against the wall with you two, “i’ve been wanting to say thank you in person since you’ve sent me that lip balm.”

“i can vouch.” y/f/n spoke up, “after your live together, she wouldn’t shut up about it.”

nick smiled, “i appreciate it, and i’m glad you like it. ive been wanting to meet you too, you’re like one of my favorite youtubers ever.”

“my god, shut up.” you roll your eyes, nick coping the motion.

“speaking of the live…”

“goodness.”

nick didn’t stop, “what’s this crush you have on my brother?”

“no crush, just…admiring his beauty.” you brushed off the teasing look they gave you.

“it’s definitely a crush. you can’t admire matt’s beauty without thinking nick and chris are attractive as well. they’re triplets.” y/f/n stated matter of factly.

“right.” nick agreed, “we literally have the same face.”

“nick and chris are gorgeous.”

“oh, thank you.”

you look back to see chris walking towards you guys, smile on his face. with just a simply glance to the side, you could see matt following closely behind his brother, eyes darting around him.

“oh.” your eyes widen, chris’ snort echoing in your ears as you pass your soda off to him, “i need to go to the bathroom.”

“no, you don’t.” nick laughed.

“i’ll be back!” you shouted, secretly having no intentions of returning until it was clear that matt wouldn’t be around.

“she’s nervous to meet you.” you could hear y/f/n telling matt after the middle triplet asked what was wrong.

if he was absolutely beautiful through your screen, you couldn’t imagine what he’d look like in person.

you barely managed to stop your face from warming up when you saw him in one of their podcasts episodes, how would you react if you got the chance to see him in person? last thing you wanted to do was embarrass yourself.

“hi, yn.” a voice called out, leading you to look over and smile,

“hi, vinnie.”

“you okay?” the hacker frowned at your unusually tense nature.

“i’m fine, i need the bathroom!” you called out, unaware of the blue eyes that were following your figure, also hearing your statement and making it his goal to get there before you.

“you’re going the wrong way.” vinnie laughed, pointing in the opposite direction of which you were walking.

“right, i knew that!” yoh waved off his drunken cackle, managing to make it down the hall and to the bathroom within a minute. you hoped you were lucky enough to walk in a not see some random couple doing it on the counter top.

as you opened the door, letting a sigh of relief and a short, “jesus”, you were startled when a voice spoke to you,

“take it as a compliment, you’re a lot cuter in person.”

opening your eyes in a panic, you spotted matt, arms crossed over his chest as he stood in front of the mirror.

“oh, my god.”

taglist: @hearts4chris @timmyandsturniolo @mayhem-72 @luvsturns @knowingnothingnoel @mrsmattyb

tags for this fic: @3kslav @bb-1s-blog @annamcdonalds67 @sturns333 @dracoflaco @electrobutterfly @wolfstarfate @landrysflannel @3mm4yung @strnsblog @lexxxiii-iix @patscorner @lemon-criminal

#sturniolo triplets #nick sturniolo #matt sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo imagine #chris sturniolo #matt sturniolo fluff #matt sturniolo

414 notes · View notes

writingstoraes · 1 year

Note

hey there!! i love your stories!! can i please have a social media au where it’s a redbull driver reader soft launching her relationship with charles? okay love u! thank u!

grid love 🏎

pairing: charles leclerc/fem!redbull!reader

type: instagram imagine, social media au

notes: sorry this took so long, anon! hope you like this hehehe 🤍 also lets pls pretend the faceclaim does drive for redbull, okay? okay. love u 2 anon (also this is purely ig posts hehe)

about: the last thing anyone expects is a redbull driver dating another from ferrari. a series of soft launches from you didn't help either!

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen, charles_leclerc, pierregasly, and 1,223,882 others

yourusername weekend shenanigans 🏁

redbullfan NOT HER CASUALLY SOFT LAUNCHING SOMEONE

ferrarigirl crying someone bagged the baddest bitch in f1

leclercluv That shadow looks an awful lot like Charles 😂😂😂😂

sainzzz55 reaching? we cant even see his face

leclercluv Charles was literally spotted at an Italian restaurant of the same setting today but okay 😂

maxverstappen Interesting

yourusername what's interesting about this? 🤨

maxverstappen Cause if I'm right, carlossainz55 and pierregasly owes me $50 🤣

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen, charles_leclerc, danielricciardo, and 1,223,122 others

yourusername french and princess treatment kind of night 🥂

dr3sainz ANOTHER SOFT LAUNCH?????

f1thusiast cryinggg shes got everyone and their mamas speculating on who her mystery man is 😭

carlossainz55 Max is so gonna owe me $50

maxverstappen No???

hamilt0n literal millionaires betting on $50 i have seen it all

leclercluv French?? Yeah it's Charles lol

redbullracing ❤️🤍

sainz55lec WHAT DO U KNOWWW RBR ADMIN

redbullracing Not much, as long as our golden girl is happy ❤️🤍

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, yukitsunoda0511, maxverstappen, and 1,220,345 others

yourusername 16 times happier than i've ever been ❤️🤍

midnightleclercs not charles liking this 1 minute after it was posted 😭

pierrestsunoda he got her notifs on thats why

leclercluv Game over ladies that's literally Charles' car 😭

lecssainz isn't his car a ferrari pista?

leclercluv He was seen driving it around Barcelona today, apparently it's a new one 🤷‍♀️

maxverstappen 🫣🫣🫣

gaslysfilm literally why use 16 when you can use another number 😭 the y/n-charles soft launch theory may really be real lol

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen, charles_leclerc, arthurleclerc, and 1,992,221 others

yourusername drove this baby around today

leclercluv CHARLES' PISTA 😭

lecshamilton this fr the hardest soft launch anyone has ever done in history im afraid

redbullfan Yeah this shit confirmed this is all we needed lmao

pierregasly maxverstappen 💸 Pay up

charles_leclerc

liked by redbullracing, scuderiaferrari, yourusername, and 2,103,334 others

charles_leclerc My rival on track is my heart keeper off track ❤️

tagged: yourusername

pierregasly This is about the cheesiest thing you have ever done

scuderiaferrari Feeling all the feels right now ❤️

redbullracing This serves as our truce, off track?

lewishamilton WOAH.

carlossainz55 I told you, maxverstappen! Pierre and I win 😄

yourusername what is this bet anyway

maxverstappen Which one of you will hard launch first, you really failed me, Y/N 😔

yourusername if i beat you in canada next week you have to buy me a lifetime supply of my favorite foods 😋

charles_leclerc Bring it on, bull

yourusername not a fan of the nickname, red

f1fan HOTTEST COUPLE EVERRRR

charlossainz this is the ferrari and redbull crossover i did NOT expect

-----------

tagging: @slytherheign

notes: didnt know im still capable of doing a post of just ig pictures lmaooaoa ive been so used to adding twitter posts and let me tell u it takes SO MUCH time 😭

anyway i hope u like this, anon! thank you for reading 🤍

2K notes · View notes

royaltozaki · 23 days

Text

you can kiss a hundred boys in bars

synopsis: good luck, babe! - inspired fic (essentially sana left 6 years ago and you still can't stop thinking about her even though you're married to another man)

warnings: cheating, internalised homophobia, not chronological, implied sex, cursing

w/c: 6.4k

a/n: hi 😀 this one may not hit as many of the audiences but it was interesting to write. i zon't think i like it toooo much for how much time i spent on it (edit: the moots have made my day i do like this one a lot actually) but just one of those things i needed to get out before i was able to move on to the next thing :P weeeEEEEHHEEEE i love angst!!!!!!!

ok this one's going to be a bit different guys pls READ THIS or you'll be like what the fuck. purple text is the present. ty enjoy, that was it LOL.

▂▂⌇

you wake up with a migraine. it came not long after you married frank and it’s stayed ever since. you sit up on the bed, careful not to make too much movement or sound to wake your husband next to you. although that was pretty unlikely anyway considering how he slept.

you sigh lightly, holding your head in your hands trying to mitigate the damage.

your head starts drifting off, as it did on most nights these days. it seemed the only thing that ever worked to stop the pounding in your head was thinking about her.

▂▂⌇

funnily enough, sana was actually the reason you and frank had met.

it had happened when the both of you were at a bar after class celebrating the end of exams. sana being sana had made a whole group of friends 10 minutes upon entering the establishment. you were sitting back watching her challenge someone to down the most shots in one minute. you would have stopped her on another day but after the hell week she's been through with her finals, you figured she deserved it. and you'd be there to take her home afterwards anyway.

she's whooping and jumping around, turning back to you with a grin when she wins. the poor loser skulking away back to his friends.

frank goes up to her then. introducing himself with that kind voice of his, just making sure she had someone to go home with and look after her.

and sana adored the attention. she's flirting with that charm of hers that no one could resist. but strangely enough, frank resisted. he was a gentleman, not wanting to pursue anything while sana was intoxicated, instead, he asked who could look after her, and sana points to you.

▂▂⌇

you're not getting back to sleep. instead you silently step out of bed, grabbing your phone and the hidden pack of cigarettes you kept in the second drawer of your bedside cupboard.

you step outside onto the balcony, breathing in the cool night air, shivering a little as you wrap the blanket you left on the balcony chair around you.

you click the lighter on, the small flame illuminating the darkness of the night, the only other light source aside from the moon. you're thinking if sana's somewhere she can see the moon right now while you put the lighter to the end of your cigarette. is it night for her? was she asleep? did she ever think about you?

you bring the stick to your mouth, inhaling, feeling the roughness of the nicotine hit your lungs, and exhaling softly, watching the wisps of smoke dissolve into the night sky.

sana hated when you smoked. frank didn't like it too much either, but he was never able to stop you.

▂▂⌇

"do you have to do that here?" sana's frowning when you release a puff of smoke into the air.

"sorry. stressed." you mumble in response, cig still stuck between your lips.

"you know i can help with that. just not when you taste like an ashtray." sana's still staring at the cancer stick you're sucking on with contempt, she never hated anything but if you had to place your money on something it'd be your bad habit.

you're smiling sheepishly, taking the cigarette out of your mouth and smooshing the end until it's not burning anymore.

the frown on her face is gone immediately, she's charmed you listen to her so easily. and she sticks to her word, stepping closer and leaning in.

your lips meet lazily, she's got a hand on your cheek, the other at your waist. you're wrapping your arms around her hips, holding her against you as your lips slot against each other.

sana was an attractive woman. there was no doubt about that. the two of you had met during high school. she had caught you sneaking off for a smoke during P.E. and had somehow convinced you to go and get your nails done with her instead. ever since then you two had been inseperable.

it was after you broke up with your first boyfriend in college that you started sleeping together. you remember he had decided to call it off because he was going all mormon and was ashamed of having had sex already, calling you a 'sex-addicted whore who was sent by the devil to tempt him into the flames of hell'. sana despised that he made you feel unwanted, and even more that he blamed you for the break up. she needed you to know just how valued you were, just how wanted you were, and in her drunk dazed mind that meant worshipping you until you came crying under her. and in your drunk dazed, heartbroken, self-pitying mind, you let her.

when it happened again, and again, and again, and then not under any alcoholic influence, the both of you decided to continue seeking each other out for sexual relief whenever you were stressed, or in any sort of mood that called for sex. you stopped every time one of you started a new relationship, but you always found your way back into each other's arms eventually.

▂▂⌇

you curse lightly when you reach the end of your cigarette.

picking out another one, you’re repeating your actions, lighting it up, bringing it between your lips, inhaling, feeling it fill your lungs, and then pushing it back out.

there hasn’t been a single day that’s gone by where you hadn’t thought about sana. frank didn’t get it at first. he asked you why you couldn’t just call her, you two were the best of friends, surely it wouldn’t be that difficult to reconnect?

he didn’t know you slept with sana on the night of you and frank’s wedding. doesn’t know the countless times you’ve slept with her before that. doesn’t know sana woke up earlier than you the next day, disappearing into the early morning, no note, no text, nothing. you were too ashamed to try and contact her for weeks after that, it wasn’t until you came back from your honeymoon that you realised you were knocking on an empty door when you tried to find her at her apartment. it was cleaned out, no furniture, no remnants of her, nothing to prove she even existed. you had called her over and over, tears of desperation spilling over, holding back choked sobs that only grew stronger with each voicemail message.

it wasn't until sana's old landlord holding a 'for lease' sign in his hand comes and kicks you out that you finally realise you'd lost her.

after that, your relationship with frank started to deteriorate. what did you expect though? was it sana's fault? if sana hadn't left would you have lived happily ever after, the three of you together?

it took a long time to realise the answer to that was no. you spent years blaming sana for leaving, and when you finally came to the terms that you were the one who drove her away, it was too much to bear.

▂▂⌇

"y/n!"

you smile at the sound of sana calling you in the corridor, turning to meet her hug as she crashes into you.

she starts talking your ear off and you nod along enthusiastically, but suddenly she stops, looks down to your hand, intertwined with someone else's.

"oh. who's this y/n?"

you look over at your newest boyfriend in surprise, almost forgetting he was holding your hand and standing next to you. you tended to forget a lot of things when sana was around.

"oh this is danny. we met at that bar i told you about last week remember?"

"hmm..." she's looking up at him in scrutiny, eyes squinted and eyebrows furrowed. you can feel danny's palms start to sweat under her gaze.

"one week huh? not bad, let's see how long you last, if you go longer than a month then i'll introduce myself to you." sana says then.

"sana!" you're hitting her lightly, flabbergasted at her insinuation.

"what? your last one was like 3 days. you just keep breaking these guys' hearts y/n." she places a hand over her heart dramatically.

danny's tightening his grip around your hand, speaking up, "excuse me, i don’t appreciate you wishing doom on our relationship even before its started. and i wouldn’t want to be introduced to a slut who’s never had a real relationship before anyway.”

sana’s speechless for a second but her face morphs into a scowl quickly after, “okay danny,” spitting out his name, “first rule of being a decent boyfriend? don’t talk shit about your girlfriend’s best friends. let’s see you last another hour after that comment.” she turns to you, raising an eyebrow, “you gonna let him off with that y/n?”

you’re stuck, and danny’s looking at you expectantly.

“sana… that comment was a little uncalled for y’know… you did kinda start this…”

danny’s smirking, looking smugly back towards sana.

“what?! are you serious right now y/n? y’know what? i don’t care. your life and whatever. see you later.” she’s stomping off, your heart sinking as you watch her.

“c’mon babe, forget her. let’s go get sushi.” danny doesn’t wait for a response before he’s pulling you in the other direction.

▂▂⌇

when you wake up again the next day, frank’s gone.

you stumble to your feet, clumsily making your way to the bathroom.

it’s almost late afternoon already. you’re lucky you didn’t have work today.

sana always used to scold you if you woke up past noon. she said you'd waste the whole day sleeping when you could have been spending it with her.

these days the second option wasn't exactly viable.

you cringe a little when you catch sight of yourself in the mirror. unkempt hair, dark circles under your eyes, visible signs of ageing. you'd bet sana still looked as radiant as she was all those years ago.

your phone starts buzzing when you turn on your electric toothbrush. it couldn't be anyone else other than frank. you didn't really talk to anyone else anyway. after sana left, you became a social recluse, and a lot of your friends were technically sana's friends so without that mutual connection anymore, you drifted from them very quickly.

“hello?”

“hey y/n, is my white button-up back from the dry cleaners yet? i need it tonight for this work event.”

“… no you didn’t tell me to pick anything up.”

“what? i left a note for you on the fridge did you not see it?”

“i just woke up frank.”

“it’s 2pm.”

“yeah.”

you can hear him sigh over the phone, “alright it’s fine i’ll pick it up after work.” he hangs up abruptly after he says that.

no goodbye, no i love you, he doesn’t call you by any pet names anymore either, just y/n. well it’s not like you did any of those things for him so you suppose it’s fair. he did do a lot of those things when you were dating and early in your marriage but eventually, when you stopped responding and got more and more tired of being with him, he stopped trying as well. you can’t even remember the last time you were intimate together.

frank had suggested the both of you try out marriage counselling but you were strongly against the idea. you didn’t feel particularly excited about disclosing everything that went on with sana with frank let alone with a complete stranger. you remember that week you fought about it and you ran away and didn’t come back until a month later. frank only tried to call you once during that time.

▂▂⌇

you were standing in front of an apartment door in japan.

you weren’t really thinking when you stood at the front desk of the airport, demanding a ticket for the next flight to osaka with only a small backpack and some essentials you were able to grab after your fight with frank.

it wasn’t until you were physically in the plane that you realised you didn’t actually know anyone but sana there. and you had made that unconscious decision because being with frank was simply too… nothing, and being with sana was… everything. it had been over 6 years since you had seen her last, when she left you that quiet night in may.

though it seems fate was on your side this time. sana’s cousin just happened to be working at the airport the night you arrived, when she recognised you, she was waving excitedly, ushering you over.

“y/n right? oh my goodness i haven’t seen you in so long! not since that time sana brought you here 7 years ago right?” her accent is a little thick but you’re grateful she can speak korean regardless, you could only understand very basic japanese picked up from sana.

you’re nervously rubbing the back of your neck, “ahaha yeah… do you actually happen to have sana’s address?”

she frowns a little, “she didn’t give it to you when she found out you were coming?”

it seems like sana hasn’t told many people about your relationship with her either.

“u-um ahaha no she must have forgotten. you know how she gets… too excited she forgets the important little details.”

the cousin laughs a little in response, agreeing and quickly typing in sana’s address on your phone. internally you’re thanking all the gods and deities you know of for this stroke of luck or you’d really be stranded in osaka with no knowledge of the language and nowhere to stay.

“i have to get back to work but say hi to sana for me! we haven’t seen her much since she came back a few years ago, she’s been really busy with work i think.”

you nod, heart pounding at the tidbits of information you’re getting about sana. anything to fill in the 6 year gap you’ve been apart.

you wave goodbye, thanking her again and then you’re hailing down a taxi and showing the driver the destination on your phone.

so now you’re standing in front of her apartment door, hands sweaty and nervous, just praying she wouldn’t kick you out or worse.

you’ve been standing here stupidly, deliberating when, how, if you should even knock. when there’s a slight commotion to your left, the sound of a bag of groceries dropping and a light gasp.

“y/n?”

it’s very cinematic when you turn, sana coming into view for the first time in so long is like finding water in a desert. you’re drinking her in hungrily, her darker hair, smile lines, perfect nose, she looks just as beautiful as you remember.

“sana…” you’re voice is hoarse with emotion.

she’s taking slow steps towards you after picking up her groceries. one… two…

“what are you doing here?”

“i-i- u-um i-“

“how did you get my address?”

“u-um i saw y-your cousin at the airport and she recognised me and i- i may have asked her for your address... i'm sorry! i would have called or like let you know but... y'know... i-i couldn't really do that..."

she considers you for a little bit, looking you up and down, her face stoic.

"...did you come here for something then?"

"i- um- well not really it was k-kinda an impulse decision. u-um frank and i fought and i just- i don't know i went to the airport and i found myself here i guess..."

you notice how her hand tightens at the mention of frank's name, the slight sound of the crinkling of her grocery bag.

"and what did you want me to do about that?" she's pushing past you now, taking out her keys and starting to unlock her door. you begin to panic, scrambling for words.

"i- sana please! i- i'm sorry! i'm sorry okay?"

the jingling of her keys stops, but she doesn't look back at you.

"what are you sorry for? i'm the one who left remember?" her voice is bitter and a little shaky, you realise she's not facing you because she's trying not to cry. you ache to hold her.

"i… i’m the reason you left though. right? it took me a long time to realise but i’m sorry i wasn’t able to be true to myself and i’m sorry you were a casualty to that. i missed you sana…." your voice is quiet, you feel your own tears welling up in your eyes.

“… what weren’t you true to yourself about?”

you take a big inhale, breath shaky when you let it back out. “that i love you.” your voice is tiny, you just confessed your love for the woman you’ve spent most of your life with, the woman that’s occupied your mind every second of every minute since she’s entered your life. the woman you were too scared to admit you loved, who waited for you to do exactly that only for you to enter a loveless marriage with someone else. you can only imagine the pain you’ve put her through. it would be nothing compared to the last 6 years without her. and the last 6 years without sana were undoubtedly the worst of your life.

sana’s sniffling now, unable to hold back her cries.

you inch forward and tentatively place a hand on her shoulder. when she doesn’t move it, you shift closer again to wrap your arms around her loosely.

suddenly sana’s turning and burrowing her face in your neck, you feel her wet tears stain your skin, but also your own start to run down your face. you're surrounded with sana sana sana, her smell, her sounds, the feel of her against you when you tighten your arms around her. you missed this so fucking much. you missed her. and for the first time in 6 years, you finally felt like you were home again.

▂▂⌇

after you've finished your morning routine, you lazily trudge into the kitchen, discarding the small note frank had told you about, and pouring yourself a bowl of cereal.

you sigh into the empty house. frank wanted kids of course, that's why you bought such a large house in the first place. he had dreamt of the whole white-picket fence family and you were excited to share that with him and sana. she had helped you design the place, decorate it when you first moved in, she was meant to move across the street and you were going to grow old together and watch as your kids played around and became the best of friends, just like the two of you were.

now though? you hated this house. it just felt so much more empty. you and frank had tried for kids, although that only really drove you further apart. sex just became more of a chore than something you enjoyed, and when people know you're trying to get pregnant? suddenly everyone has their 2 cents on what you should eat, what types of exercise you should do, the latest superfood that was meant to make you more fertile. everyone seemed to have more control over your own relationship, over your own body than you did.

eventually, the small amounts of love you and frank had for each other, fizzled out. and you decided you didn't want to raise a child in a loveless marriage, that wouldn't be fair to them. frank, even with his endless optimism and kind soul, agreed.

▂▂⌇

that night in japan, for the first time in six years since you saw sana, you were able to kiss her again, to feel her bare skin against yours, to taste her as she writhed and cried out your name above you.

you woke up before her the next day, sun sluggishly making its way past the horizon. you watched as her breaths came in and out, soft, her expression at peace, not clouded with anger or sadness at you. you traced the lines of her face, recollecting every single hair, every mole, every perfection and imperfection on her, so she'd always be with you in your memory.

she stirred after a while, blinking softly and you wait for her to come to, fingers tracing soft lines over her side.

you feel her freeze under you, breathing picking up, just barely noticeable but you were sharing the same airspace. her eyes meet yours for the first time that morning and you're committing the brown irises to memory now as well.

"you didn't leave." her voice is laced with morning fatigue.

you only hum in response, continuing to trace random shapes into her skin.

"why?"

you take a moment to think about your answer. years ago, you would've been terrified with the idea that someone would've found out about the two of you. that someone would know your dirty little secret. and that secret was that you were in love with your best friend. it was different for sana. sana was flamboyant, and proud, and happy. it wouldn't matter who sana liked because that didn't take away from her personality. she was still valuable as a person. you weren't like that though. you were always just sana's best friend or danny's girlfriend or frank's girlfriend or whoever else you dated at the time. the moment you deviated from that, a new label would be stuck on you, and people would pity sana, talk about how she could do so much better, how you were a witch who lured sana in. so you were selfish. you took from sana, and you never gave back. because sana was perfect in your mind, and she didn't need anything else.

"i'm sorry. there's a lot to be sorry for and a lot i need to make up to you. but at the core of it all, i love you sana. these six years without you have been hell. and i'm sorry it took that long for me to realise this, but i love you, not frank, not anyone else, just you."

you feel your eyes begin to tear up, heavy with emotions, sana's mirroring you, her bottom lip slightly quivering.

"what happened with frank?" her voice is a little shaky.

"we fought. i didn't want to deal with him anymore, my feet took me to the airport, and i ended up here."

sana sighs then, turning away from you and lying on her back. "so you're still together?"

"well... i- no but-"

"how is this time any different then y/n?"

"i- i- it's over, me and him. seeing you again has affirmed that for me. there hasn't been love between frank and i for a long time. i never loved him the way i love you. i'm ending things as soon as i get back. i promise sana. please- please believe me." you're scrambling a little, you couldn't afford to lose sana again. not after you had just gotten her back.

you can see tears running down the side of her face. you hate yourself for making her cry. that seems to be all you ever made her do.

"okay."

"okay?"

she turns to you again, wiping at her eyes, "okay. i really shouldn't but i love you too much and i've missed you too much to say no."

"really?" your perking up, disbelief clear.

"you keep asking me that and i'll change my mind." she teases, smiling for the first time.

you're overjoyed. rolling onto her and sweeping her up in a kiss, hoping your actions convey your feelings for her better than your words do. she's laughing into you and god have you missed that sound. you attack her sides immediately, almost desperate to hear it again, to make her feel something other than the sadness you've caused her. you make a promise to yourself in that moment, that you'd never, never make sana cry again.

it took you only a month to break that promise.

▂▂⌇

"hi, frank's wife right?"

you resist the very strong urge to roll your eyes, instead nodding politely and listening as the woman who approached you launches into a conversation about her husband and how he and frank got along at work and really you couldn't care less.

you were at the work event frank had mentioned in the morning. he did end up picking up his own dry cleaning and you saw him briefly at the event when you first showed up, only saying a quick hello and kissing your cheek before he was off again mingling and entertaining guests.

you had intended on just sticking to the bar and making use of the free-flow alcohol but now this woman was talking to you about her kids, and whatever else and you really just want to throw your drink in her face and yell at her about how to read a room.

you spot frank in the corner of your eye, surrounded by a group of women. you knew he had slept with other people ever since you stopped accepting his advances and affection. you're honestly surprised he hasn't asked for a divorce yet.

but frank was kinder than you. you were still his friend before you were his wife. he still cared about you and didn't want you to be left alone. you couldn't seem to convince him you were fine alone. you learnt to be fine when sana left. although lately, even he seemed to see you less as a friend and more and more, just as his wife.

▂▂⌇

"i still can't believe that time you thought danny was a good choice for you. and you defended him too!" sana was laughing, slapping your arm playfully.

you whine in response, "i told you i was sorry for that alright!!"

she's still laughing when frank comes back to the two of you, looking at you inquisitively and gesturing vaguely towards sana. you shrug, helping him set the food he had ordered for the three of you on the table.

"what's funny sana?" he asks, sliding into the booth with you and picking up a burger.

sana's waving a chip around now, pointing at you, "just talking about y/n's shitty taste in men."

frank fakes shock, looking at you with an exaggerated look of hurt, "me?"

you laugh, hitting him lightly, "not you dummy."

"yeah you're one of the good ones franky. probably the only good one out there."

"aww thanks sana."

sana grins, digging into her food.

you smile at the two of them. your two favourite people in the world. when you first met frank, you were skeptical of him. you were sure he was only trying to be friends with you to get with sana. so imagine your surprise when he had actually been plotting with sana behind your back to ask you out. you had said yes of course, he was a sweet guy, attractive too, and most importantly, sana liked him.

you ended up hitting it off, and the three of you were almost inseparable after that.

it wasn't until about 7 months into your relationship that sana started distancing herself. she would say she was busy, turn down more offers to go out, start hanging around a new group of people.

you heard from frank later that they had some sort of disagreement, which was why sana had started avoiding you. you were hurt by this though, because sana was still your friend. she was yours before you were frank's, and even when you were frank's you were still hers. didn't she know that? she had to.

you intended for her to know that when you cornered her, a late afternoon on a friday when the three of you used to go out for ice-cream as a reward for the week's end, but she had been staying behind to study or always had something else on instead.

"why are you avoiding me?"

sana's eyes are everywhere, her movements skittish as she tries to look for an escape before giving up and huffing. "i don't know what you're talking about."

"yes you do."

"no i don't."

"stop this sana. frank told me the two of you fought. if you don't want to be around him fine. that's your choice. but that doesn't mean you get to avoid me too."

she looks at you then, eyes fiery, "is that what he told you?"

you nod, "i don't understand sana. i don't care that you fought. i can seperate us and my relationship with frank. you're still my best friend."

"we fought because he told me he felt like i was stealing you from him."

"what?"

"yeah. he said he never got to spend any time with you. i was always there. he felt like he was the one who was third-wheeling our relationship."

the words third-wheel and our relationship swim around in your mind, "w-what? that's impossible!"

"is it really though y/n?" sana's voice is soft now.

"what do you mean?"

"i mean, is it really impossible for you to see us that way? frank obviously did, and he felt threatened by that."

"w-what- sana what are you talking about?"

she sighs a little in frustration, and then suddenly she's yanking you forward by the collar and planting her lips against yours. you react automatically, kissing her back, hands immediately going to her waist as you revel in the feeling of her soft lips against yours. it was always so different kissing sana compared to all the other guys you've been with. you chalked it up to the fact that sana took care of her skin, her lips, the way she smelled, all of that made kissing her that much sweeter.

but then you remember frank and you're pulling away, breaths heavier than they were mere seconds ago. "what the fuck sana?!" you're whipping your head around, looking to see if anyone had seen the two of you. it seemed to be clear.

sana's chuckling lowly, wiping at her lips, face downcast.

"what were you thinking?! i'm with frank! you set me up with frank!"

her eyes meet yours again, and you're taken back by the glassy look on her face. she's whispering, "i know. i know and i hate myself for it. i thought- i thought if- i thought i could get over this if i saw you happy with someone else. and then you were! and i just felt worse y/n. and then frank could tell and that was the last straw i guess. i needed to be away, away from you so i could get make these stupid feelings go away. i'm sorry y/n i'm so so sorry."

you're dumbfounded, staring at her blankly when she starts sobbing, hands coming to wipe at tears falling faster than she could catch them.

you don't understand what this means, what you felt, all you knew in that moment was sana was crying. the person you cared about most in the world was crying and you were the reason for it. so you do the one thing to make her stop. you tilt her chin up, heart breaking at the sniffles and the watery eyes, and you press your lips against hers again.

you end up where you've ended up so many times. legs entangled, sweaty bodies on sheets, heavy breathing, and minds lost.

▂▂⌇

you couldn't stand being inside anymore. it was suffocating.

you breathe out smoke as you exhale, the cigarette end still burning.

you watch as someone makes their way outside, shuffling around a little in their pockets and cursing when they realise they don't have a lighter.

the person looks towards you and you hold out yours. you help them light the end of their cigarette and nod when they mutter their thanks, inhaling the smoke into their lungs and standing awkwardly to the side.

it's a few minutes here in the cold, and you're almost finished your cigarette, about to throw it away when the stranger speaks up.

"do i know you from somewhere?"

you pause, looking back, you don't think you recognise this person. "you must have me confused for someone else, i'm sorry."

"wait... no you're sana's best friend right!?"

you drop the cigarette in your hand in shock. it had been a long time since someone had said that name out loud. she only ever lived in your head, it was hard to believe she was someone to other people too.

"right yes of course i remember now! i'm momo i was sana's roommate in college. although you probably don't remember i think we only really met like once. sana was always with you around campus and posted you a lot though so i remember you."

you vaguely recall the woman as she chatters away excitedly.

"right... momo... it's nice to meet you. i'm y/n."

momo grins, "have you spoken to sana lately? i don't think i saw you at the wedding, although i may have just been drunk." she chuckles a little at herself, not realising the way your face drops.

"wedding?"

momo looks at you a little in confusion, "yeah. last month? sana got married in sapporo."

your head is spinning with the new information. sana was married?

“woah you feeling okay?” momo’s reaching out for your shoulder, steadying you. you didn’t even realise you had lost your balance.

“i-i- yeah sorry.”

“you sure? are you here with anyone? anyone i can call?”

“no. it’s okay, thank you though.”

“yeah no problem.”

she’s shuffling back again, sucking on her cigarette.

“sana and i haven’t spoken in years. i was just a little surprised is all.” you speak up when you feel a little steadier on your feet.

“oh shit! i’m so sorry y/n i had no idea!”

“it’s okay, it seems no one really does.” you laugh a little bitterly.

momo doesn’t know how to respond to this, flicking her eyes between you and the door.

“it’s fine though. i’m happy for her.” the words taste vile on your tongue. is this what sana felt when she watched you walk down the aisle on your wedding day?

momo softens a little, “she is happy.” she offers you a kind smile, tapping out her cigarette and mumbling a quick thanks before heading back inside.

once you're sure she's gone you let yourself break down. sobs wrack your body as you hold your hands over your mouth trying to quiet them. you can barely see through the tears streaming out of your eyes. this was it. you'd finally lost her. you couldn't cling to the delusion that somewhere out there, some of her still belonged to you, some of her happiness, her memories, her love. you'd lost all of that now.

▂▂⌇

"what was that y/n?"

"what?"

"don't fuck with me right now. that was frank wasn't it? on the phone just then?"

you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose, "what do you want me to say sana?"

"that you're keeping your promise. that you're going to return to him, break up with him, and then you're going to come back here to me. and then we can finally start our lives together."

"it's not that easy sana."

she explodes, "what do you mean?! it is that easy y/n! you told me when you came here that you and frank were over. have been for years. and now you can't tell me that same thing?"

"i don't- no sana-"

"what? what y/n? what’s your excuse now? do you have to make sure your job is secure? after you've spent a whole fucking month here you expect me to think you still care about that? do you have a child with him? is that it? is he sick? what other possible excuse is there for 'it's not that easy sana'?!"

"you don't get it! you can't say that to me sana!"

"what?! what don't i get?! tell me y/n, let's sort this shit out right fucking now. tell me why you can't be with me."

"it's not- that's just the way i am sana! i can't-"

"you told me you loved me. was that a lie then?" her eyes are brimming with tears, anger evident and your heart breaks again. you promised, you promised her and you promised yourself that this wouldn't happen again.

you're quick to step in again, trying to stop her from crying the one way you know how, brushing her cheeks with your thumbs and kissing her.

she doesn't let you get away with it this time though. she rips away from you, placing a hand on your chest and pushing you back lightly, keeping you literally at arm's length.

"don't do that." she's chuckling, her laughs mixed in with quiet sobs, "don't think you can just kiss away your problems. that's not how real life works y/n."

"please sana, please just-"

"what? you want me to be okay being your secret again? you want to be able to go around in public with frank only to come home to me? you can't have both y/n! i'm not going to do that again for you!"

you’re both crying now, standing across from each other in sana’s apartment, a place that’s felt more like home to you in a month than your place with frank has felt for you in six years.

your voice comes out in a hoarse whisper when you speak up, “i can’t- i can’t feel like this sana.”

sana’s wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. then she’s turning on her heel and heading into the bedroom.

you follow her, you’d follow her anywhere, but your heart sinks when you realise she’s going around the room picking up your belongings and shoving them into your bag.

“w-wait s-sana, what- what are you doing? stop please-“

you’re almost begging, scrambling after her trying to pull her back but she’s stubborn, she’s able to fill the bag within a minute and then she’s pushing it into you, and out the door.

“please! sana please i can’t lose you again don’t do this please- you’re my best friend sana.”

she’s managed to successfully push you out the front door now, still crying. “but you’re not mine y/n. you were never my best friend. you were always the love of my life. and you can’t be that for me anymore. so leave. please. don’t try and find me again.”

“n-no sana please d-don’t-“

“you’d have to stop the world just to stop what you feel for me y/n. but you don’t realise that. and i’m sick of loving someone who can’t give me all of that love back.”

and then she’s slamming her door shut in your face, the both of you sobbing on opposite sides of the door, hearts shattered a second time, and later, when it happens a third time, it’s only the sound of yours breaking.

#sana #minatozaki sana #twice sana #sana x reader #twice sana x reader #sana x fem!reader #sana x f!reader #twice x reader #twice x fem!reader #twice x f!reader #twice imagines #sana imagines #royaltozaki

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