Chapter Text
Seungmin sat hunched over his laptop, elbows sharp against the edge of the cafeteria table.
The college noise vibrated faintly beneath his headphones. He wasn't listening to music, just white noise, a low loop from a YouTube tab he'd opened hours ago and forgotten about. It helped him think. Or not think. He wasn't sure anymore.
The cursor blinked in the middle of a page titled:
SCENE 6 - THE ROOFTOP
He stared at it like it owed him something.
Around him, trays clattered, chairs scraped, someone's drink exploded with a pop and a curse, and still-his world stayed silent.
His fingers hovered over the keys.
Yongbok... says something here. Something important.
Something that makes Lee Know stay.
But he didn't know what. Not yet.
He gnawed absently at the inside of his cheek, flipping between script tabs, audition forms, storyboard roughs. The checklist beside him was a blur of deadlines and scribbled ideas. Finalize casting. Edit Scene 4. Recheck rooftop safety permit. He'd crossed off none of it.
"You're going to die," Jisung announced, sliding into the seat across from him like a storm cloud with boba. "Physically. Mentally. Socially. All forms."
Seungmin didn't look up. "Not now."
"You've been here for three hours."
"Four," Chan corrected, dropping into the seat beside Jisung. He nudged Seungmin's tray. "When was the last time you ate?"
"Don't remember," Seungmin murmured.
Hyunjin plopped down on Seungmin's other side with a dramatic sigh, sunglasses still on indoors. "You're literally evaporating, Min. This isn't romantic."
"It's not meant to be." Seungmin said flatly.
Chan leaned back. "You know we're your crew, right? Not your unpaid emotional support system."
"Speak for yourself," Hyunjin said, twirling a plastic spoon like a cigarette. "I'm available if y'all need therapy anytime. Which, by the way, you really do."
Seungmin exhaled through his nose, finally looking up. "I need Lee Know."
"You need sleep," Jisung offered gently. "And carbs."
"And I need Yongbok." Seungmin completed.
Jisung cursed under his breath and looked away, running a hand through his hair like he was seconds from quitting the entire project. Again.
"If you say 'Yongbok' and 'Lee know' one more time, I will physically come over there and throw your laptop out the window," Jeongin announced, appearing out of nowhere with a stack of books tucked under one arm. He dropped them on the table with a thud. The whole table shuddered.
"Hello to you too, Innie." Seungmin muttered, rolling his eyes.
Jeongin huffed, ignoring the sarcasm as he slid a folder across the table. "Here. I've drafted the type of shots you might want for the rooftop sequence. I annotated by mood and lighting."
Seungmin raised an eyebrow and opened it. Shot diagrams, camera angles, even lens suggestions, all meticulously labelled in Jeongin's tiny, precise handwriting.
Chan leaned over to peek. "Damn. You snapped."
Jeongin shrugged. "I'm trying not to let your perfectionism ruin my GPA."
"It's not perfectionism," Seungmin murmured, eyes scanning the rooftop sketch. "It's... I don't know. Something close to religious panic, maybe."
Jisung snorted. "Wow. Okay, priest Seungmin."
Hyunjin leaned back in his chair. "That was supposed to be Jeongin."
Jeongin threw a paper cup at Hyunjin who yelped dramatically.
But Seungmin wasn't really listening. He was staring at a scribbled note beside the final frame:
"Hold the shot for 3 beats after the fall is interrupted. Let the silence ache."
His chest squeezed.
"Jeongin," he said slowly, his voice quieter now, like something raw had surfaced in his throat. "You think it's too much?"
Jeongin blinked. "The silence?"
"No. The whole thing." He gestured vaguely at the pile of scripts, the open casting spreadsheet, the countless rewrites.
Jisung answered before Jeongin could. "It's not too much, Min. It's just... big. It matters. You care too much and not enough, all at once. It's exhausting, but that's what makes it good."
Seungmin heaved a breath and looked down, elbows on the table, fingers curling into his temples. His laptop screen dimmed on idle beside him, and for a second he wanted to let it stay like that-black and empty.
Jisung looked at him for a few seconds and tapped the table. "Okay, everyone. Let's go over this again before Seungmin hangs himself by a ceiling fan."
"I'm not suicidal," Seungmin muttered into his hands.
"You might as well be." Jisung replied. "Now come on."
Hyunjin nodded sagely, mouth full of cafeteria cookie. "I'm ready!"
Jeongin rolled his eyes. "Can we focus?"
Chan pulled out his tablet, swiped past unrelated spreadsheets (and possibly a grocery list), and loaded the master doc. "Okay. Let's recap."
"Main cast status?" Jisung asked.
"Literally nothing up until now." Chan said.
Seungmin grimaced. "Don't remind me."
"We've got a dozen callbacks set up for this week," Jeongin offered. "Someone's bound to click."
Jisung cleared his throat. "Alright. Jeongin, how are we on locations?"
"Scouted the rooftop yesterday. Perfect lighting from 4:20 to 5:10 p.m., golden hour included. We'll need permits by next Thursday."
"I can get those," Chan said, typing it in.
"Hyunjin?" Jisung asked.
"Costumes are half ready. I pulled a few looks from reference films and stitched a moodboard. Think colour-coded emotions like warm tones for Lee Know, colder shades for Yongbok early on."
"Beautiful," Seungmin said, without looking up. "Just like you."
Hyunjin fluttered his lashes. "Flattery won't speed the tailoring."
"I can hope."
"Alright," Jisung said, flipping pages on his clipboard. "That leaves props, timeline, and scene breakdown. Changbin'll handle casting logistics, he said he's available after his class ends."
"I'll text him," Jeongin said, already typing.
A moment of quiet passed as everyone fell into a rhythm-typing, scribbling, flipping pages.
Then, Seungmin finally spoke again, voice low but clearer this time. "Thank you."
They all looked up.
"For what?" Jeongin asked.
"For... giving a damn."
Jisung reached over and ruffled his hair like it was nothing, even as Seungmin ducked with a scowl.
The dorm room was quiet, lit only by the soft amber glow of Seungmin's desk lamp. Rain tapped faintly against the glass. It smelled like cooled air and city dust.
Seungmin sat cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by scattered storyboard frames. Rough pencil sketches, a tangle of post-it notes, numbered arrows, and jagged corrections made in the same blue pen he always bit the cap of. The rooftop scene stretched across half the bed-seven sheets in sequence. He stared at the last one. The still frame after Lee Know is pulled back.
Three beats of silence. That ache.
He traced the pencil lines with his eyes, not his hand. There was something about the moment that unsettled him tonight. It wasn't the blocking or the camera angle or the lighting notes. It was the fall. The stillness just before the saving. Or maybe the part of the frame that looked like a choice.
He didn't flinch when the door opened.
Jeongin stepped inside, freshly showered, hair damp and curling into his forehead, two steaming mugs in hand. He kicked the door shut with his heel and nudged the desk chair aside with his knee.
"Coffee," he muttered, setting one mug down on the desk. The other he walked over and held out.
Seungmin took it without really looking.
The ceramic was scorching, but he didn't react, didn't even blink.
Jeongin didn't say anything at first. Just watched him. Then, after two seconds, maybe three, he leaned forward and tugged the cup gently back.
Seungmin blinked, startled by the sudden absence of weight. "What-?"
"It's burning," Jeongin said simply.
Seungmin frowned. "No, it's not-"
Jeongin held up a hand. "Your palm's red."
Seungmin looked down. His right hand-open and loose in his lap-was blotched faintly pink where the heat had seared through the base of his fingers.
"Oh," Seungmin said.
Jeongin exhaled through his nose, that kind of long-suffering sigh he gave when he didn't want to start a fight but was also deeply unimpressed. He placed the cup on the side table instead, nudging a script binder aside to make space. "You didn't even notice."
"I did," Seungmin muttered.
"No, you didn't."
Seungmin's shoulders slouched slightly. He reached for a post-it near his knee, pretended to read something on it, even though it was just a scribbled "check light shift" in half-torn ink.
"Did you eat today?" Jeongin asked, tone quiet now.
Seungmin gave him a look. Not sharp, not exasperated, just faintly guarded. Like this wasn't a conversation he wanted to spiral into. Again.
"I'm fine," he said.
"That's not an answer."
Seungmin didn't reply.
Jeongin dropped onto the foot of the bed, crossing one leg under the other, careful not to disturb the storyboards. He looked down at the last panel, the rooftop scene, then up at Seungmin.
"You've been stuck on this shot for two weeks."
Seungmin hummed noncommittally.
"You always rewrite it at night," Jeongin continued. "And you stare at it like you're waiting for it to tell you something. What is it about this scene?"
Seungmin shook his head, gaze fixed on the sketch. "It matters. It's the turning point."
"I get that. But why does this matter? Out of all of it? Why not when Yongbok says yes or when Lee Know finally asks him out?"
Seungmin didn't answer right away. His eyes drifted across the tiny figure in the sketch... Lee Know at the edge, wind tugging at his shirt, silhouette bowed forward. A line of charcoal smudged across the rooftop, the faintest suggestion of movement.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I wrote it before I knew the characters. Before I knew the arc. The scene came first."
Jeongin raised an eyebrow. "So you built the whole film around a suicide attempt?"
"It's not a suicide film."
"I didn't say it was. But it starts there. And it keeps coming back there."
Seungmin's voice lowered. "Because that's the only part that feels true."
The words hung in the air.
He didn't mean to say them out loud. Not like that. He wasn't even sure what he meant by "true"-just that when he imagined Lee Know letting go, it didn't feel contrived or manipulative or too dramatic. It felt... inevitable. Natural, even.
As if the silence that followed was the only honest sound he'd written.
Jeongin leaned forward, tone softer now. "Seungmin, hyung.... you worry me sometimes."
Seungmin flinched, just slightly, but enough.
"It's just a story." He said and didn't meet Jeongin's eyes.
"Right," Jeongin said, setting the pen down. "And I'm just your roommate who makes your coffee and notices when your hand's burning."
A pause.
The cup on the table was still steaming.
"I'm okay," Seungmin said quietly, like he needed to defend himself. "I just... I just need to write this properly... make it more... personal..."
Jeongin only glanced at him and nodded gently, "Okay."
They sat in silence for a while after that. The soft shuffle of rain continued outside. Somewhere down the hall, someone was laughing. A phone buzzed on vibrate. The coffee cup cooled between them.
Eventually, Jeongin got up, flicked off the overhead light, and climbed into his bed.
"Don't stay up all night," he muttered into his pillow.
Seungmin stared at the rooftop sketch.
Three beats after the fall is interrupted.
Let the silence ache.
He picked up his pen and began to write again.