Chapter Text
Wonwoo wakes before his alarm.
The dorm room is still dim, grey light pressing softly through the blinds. His roommate turns in bed, mutters something unintelligible, and settles again. The radiator ticks. Somewhere down the corridor, a door closes with a muted thud.
Wonwoo sits up immediately.
The movement is precise, practised. Blanket folded. Pillow straightened. He stands, feet finding the same spot on the floor each morning without thought. The small room feels less like a place to rest and more like a station between destinations.
In the shared bathroom, fluorescent lights hum overhead. The tiles are cold beneath his bare feet. Someone’s toothbrush cup stands crooked on the counter. He straightens it without thinking, then catches himself and lets it be.
He washes his face. Water runs down his wrists. He watches it disappear into the drain.
Back in the room, he lines up what he will carry today: notebook, pen, timetable printout, student ID. Edges aligned. Corners squared. The arrangement calms him. Order is something he can still control.
His phone buzzes with a notification from the family group chat. A photo of breakfast. A brief message from his mother: Eat well today.
He does not reply. Not because he does not care, but because any response will open a conversation he is not ready to have. Instead, he closes the app and sets the phone face-down on the desk.
He thinks, briefly, of the weight of family.
At home, they never call it a company. They call it a foundation. As if what they built is something meant to support rather than something that weighs on the backs of thousands. As if steel and glass and profit can be moral, simply because they say it is.
The Jeon Group began with a single construction firm, his grandfather breaking ground on roads that did not yet exist on maps. Over decades it spread outward—bridges, shipping yards, steel plants, apartment complexes rising where farmland once slept. Logistics followed. Retail followed. Glass towers bearing the family name now stand in cities Wonwoo has never visited but is expected to one day command. People say the family name with the same tone they use for weather systems. Something vast. Something inevitable. Something you do not argue with, only prepare for.
Wonwoo grew up learning that inheritance was not a gift. It was gravity. A duty measured in grades, discipline, and the absence of scandal. Praise came rarely, precise as a scalpel. Love was quiet, conditional, often indistinguishable from expectation.
You are the future, his grandfather used to say. Not our future. Just the future. As if he had been born already mid-sentence, mid-obligation.
He learned early that his worth was not in being wanted, but in being reliable. Not in being loved, but in being useful. Even now, he is not sure whether anyone in that house knows how to love without calculating return. Or whether he himself would recognise love if it came freely, without cost.
Responsibility, he was taught, is the only proof of affection that matters.
He tells himself he believes that.
He had performed the role expected of him with quiet efficiency. The same way he learned to fold his blanket in the army. The same way he learned to keep his face still.
He does not think, not directly, of why he enlisted so early. He does not allow himself that word, the one that sits too close to the ribs and loosens the breath. Instead, he tells himself it was a necessary step. A strategic decision. A way to keep pace with a future already laid out before him.
It is easier to believe he chose the army for discipline, for timing, for advantage. Easier than admitting he needed distance from a life that had started to feel unbearable in its quietness. Easier than admitting he did not trust himself to stay in one place without breaking.
One year passed. The days were filled. His body grew stronger. His face learned stillness. Whatever ache he carried dulled at the edges, not gone, only pushed somewhere deeper.
He returned believing he was mended.
He is not.
He checks the university portal. Course registration. Credit requirements. Graduation conditions. Timelines that stretch forward in neat, predictable lines.
It is reassuring, in a way.
He is behind his cohort. He is also exactly where he is supposed to be. Both things are true at once.
He puts on his jacket.
The window shows the practice building across the courtyard. Its lights are still on, even this early. Someone must have stayed late. Or woken early. He wonders who it is, then stops himself.
A name hovers at the edge of his mind.
He thinks of internship applications instead. Of résumé formats. Of the polite way to answer interview questions. He rehearses sentences silently, lips barely moving.
The name returns anyway.
He notices this. The mind circling. He redirects again, deliberately, like steering a stubborn cart away from a ditch. He thinks of tomorrow’s lecture. Of the reading list. Of the cost of textbooks.
The name waits.
He exhales, slow and controlled.
There is nothing to be done about thoughts. Only about actions. He can manage actions.
He locks his door and steps into the corridor.
Outside, the air smells of damp concrete and coffee from the café already open near the main gate. Students pass with backpacks and earphones, umbrellas folded under their arms. The campus is waking, stretching into another day that promises to be ordinary.
He walks toward the cafeteria.
He tells himself he is hungry.
He is not sure if that is true, but it is reason enough.
The cafeteria is loud in the morning. Chairs scrape. Trays clatter. Steam rises from soup pots. Conversations overlap in fragments and laughter.
Mingyu spots him first.
“Soldier Jeon,” he calls, waving a chopstick like a flag. “Over here.”
Soonyoung is already mid-story, hands moving faster than his words. Jihoon sits opposite him, expression patient, eyes half-lidded. Minghao sits beside Mingyu, quietly picking at a plate they appear to be sharing without discussion.
Wonwoo sits down. A tray appears in front of him a moment later. Jihoon must have ordered extra.
“Eat,” Soonyoung says. “You look like you’re thinking again.”
Wonwoo picks up his spoon.
They talk around him. Course registration problems. Club schedules. A professor who assigns too much reading. Mingyu complains about the gym being crowded. Minghao responds with a single sentence that makes Mingyu laugh harder than the complaint deserved.
Wonwoo listens. He answers when addressed. He does not ask questions that are not necessary.
“So,” Soonyoung says between bites. “That first-year we told you about last night? He hasn’t joined us lately. Busy semester start, I guess.”
Mingyu shrugs. “Freshmen are like that. Overachievers.”
Jihoon hums in agreement. “He’ll appear again. Minghao invited him to the project wrap-up dinner next week.”
Minghao nods once. “He said yes.”
Wonwoo keeps his gaze on his food.
He does not ask who they are talking about. He does not need to.
He stores the information quietly, without outward reaction, the way he once stored phone numbers, schedules, directions. Small useful things. Things to be kept safe.
He takes another spoonful of soup.
The broth is hot. It burns his tongue slightly. He does not show it.
Across the table, Mingyu shifts, his knee brushing Minghao’s. Minghao moves half a centimetre closer, almost absent-mindedly.
When breakfast ends, he gathers his tray. He stands. He waves to his friends. He walks away.
He tells himself it is just another morning.
He almost believes it.
Wonwoo walks across campus with his hands in his pockets. The sky has cleared; sunlight glints off puddles left behind by morning rain. Students stream past him in loose currents, laughing, hurrying, arguing about class locations. He matches their pace without trying to.
At the library entrance, he stops to print a syllabus. The machine hums, spits out paper, jams once, then frees itself. He smooths the page, folds it neatly, and tucks it into his notebook.
When he turns, Junhui is at the next printer.
He does not hear him arrive. He only notices the small shift in the air, the presence beside him. Junhui stands with one hand resting on the machine, eyes scanning the screen. His hair is dry now. The hoodie from the other day has been replaced with a light jacket. He looks like any other freshman. He looks as beautiful as Wonwoo's memory of him, only visited during his rare moments of weakness.
Wonwoo does not speak first.
Junhui finishes printing. He lifts the paper, aligns the edges, and slides it into his folder. Then he looks up.
Their eyes meet.
Junhui inclines his head in a polite bow. “Sunbae.”
The first syllable of Junhui's name is already at the tip of Wonwoo's tongue when he realises that no, he is not ready to call out that name. He does not know what calling Junhui's name will do to the calmness he fights hard to maintain.
Wonwoo tilts his head, making it appear natural. “Hello.”
Junhui steps aside first, giving Wonwoo space to move past. He smells faintly of laundry detergent and something clean. No trace of the practice room. No trace of late-night buses. No trace of anything that used to be.
Wonwoo walks forward. Their shoulders almost brush. They do not.
By the time he reaches the door, Junhui is already gone, swallowed into the library crowd.
Wonwoo pauses with his hand on the handle.
He tells himself the exchange was polite. Normal. Appropriate.
He tells himself there was nothing else to say.
He pushes the door open and steps outside.
Later, he sits alone at a cafeteria table, notebook open, pen resting between his fingers. He writes down nothing. He watches the reflection of fluorescent lights ripple faintly across the window glass instead, layered over the movement of students passing behind his own mirrored outline.
The chair opposite him remains empty. Someone has left a half-finished coffee there, lid askew, condensation ring spreading slowly on the plastic tabletop. He does not move it. It feels like an intrusion into a space that is not his.
A laugh rises near the entrance. He turns his head without thinking.
Junhui is there, flanked by Soonyoung and Jihoon. Mingyu arrives moments later, ducking through the doorframe, voice carrying across the room. Minghao follows, quiet as ever, sliding naturally into the space beside Mingyu.
Junhui laughs too. Not loudly. Just enough that his eyes curve and his shoulders loosen, the tension he carries around Wonwoo nowhere to be found here. He looks at ease.
Wonwoo’s pen presses too hard into the page. A dot of ink bleeds through the paper, spreading in slow, dark petals.
He stares at it.
He does not remember pressing down.
He wonders, briefly, if this is what it means to leave something behind. Not absence, but presence in the wrong places. A life continuing without him. A warmth he once knew, now observed through glass.
He closes the notebook carefully, as if sealing something fragile inside.
He leaves the cafeteria before any of them notice him, moving through the doors and into the late afternoon light where the air smells of wet leaves and exhaust.
That night, in his dorm room, he scrolls through the university portal again. Internship listings. Application deadlines. The words line up neatly, offering futures that require no risk, no vulnerability, no backward glances.
He bookmarks three postings he is not yet eligible for. Deletes two. Rearranges a folder. Adjusts a spreadsheet he has made for no one but himself.
He tells himself this is what he chose.
He tells himself it is enough.
A thought appears, quiet and insistent.
If he had stayed.
He cuts it off before it can finish. Opens another tab. Reads a page without absorbing it. Closes it again.
The room smells faintly of detergent and instant noodles from somewhere down the hall. His roommate is out. The silence feels too large for the space.
He turns off the light.
In the dark, the room shrinks around him. The mattress dips under his weight. Springs creak. He counts his breaths until they slow.
Sleep arrives eventually.
Friday arrives with rain.
Mingyu sends a message to the group chat: Convenience store tonight? My treat.
Soonyoung responds first. Jihoon follows. Minghao reacts with a single thumbs-up.
Wonwoo reads the messages and puts the phone aside.
He does not ask whether Junhui will be there.
He arrives anyway.
The GS25 near campus is warm and bright, plastic tables crowded with cups and snack wrappers. A small heater hums near the window. Outside, rain draws silver lines down the glass.
Soonyoung is already halfway through a story when Wonwoo enters. Jihoon is leaning against the counter, choosing drinks. Mingyu stands by the refrigerator, door open, cold air spilling onto his legs. Minghao sits at the corner table, umbrella resting against his chair.
Mingyu is the first to notice him.
“Wonwoo,” he calls, lifting a bottle in greeting. “You’re late. Come here.”
Wonwoo steps closer. The group shifts instinctively to make space. Mingyu gestures toward the person beside Minghao.
“Oh, right. You haven’t met yet,” Mingyu says, tone casual. “This is Wen Junhui. First year in Hao’s department. Junhui, this is Jeon Wonwoo. He's the guy who went and enlisted after finishing our first year. He's doing business and leadership.”
Junhui turns fully toward him, hands wrapped around a paper cup. His hair is damp at the edges. His jacket is zipped to his throat. He looks as beautiful as the version of Junhui that visits Wonwoo's dream sometimes. That Junhui always looks at Wonwoo with an expression full of warmth.
This Junhui offers Wonwoo a slight bow. “Nice to meet you, sunbae.”
Wonwoo inclines his head in return. “Likewise.”
Mingyu nods, satisfied, and turns back to the refrigerator. Conversation picks up again, a beat slower than before.
Soonyoung pokes at his cup noodles with his chopsticks. “Midterms are going to kill me. I swear Professor Han assigns readings just to watch us suffer.”
Jihoon shrugs. “You say that every semester.”
“Because every semester he proves me right,” Soonyoung says, slumping forward dramatically.
Mingyu laughs. “At least you read. Some of us are surviving on vibes.”
Minghao finally looks up. “Your vibes are bad.”
“That hurts,” Mingyu says, hand to his chest. “Junhui, tell him my vibes are good.”
Junhui chuckles softly. “They’re… energetic.”
“So polite,” Soonyoung says, impressed. “Freshman manners. We lost those years ago.”
Junhui smiles, small and even. “I’m still adjusting.”
Conversation flows easily around them, the way groups settle into shared tiredness after a week of classes.
Soonyoung talks. Jihoon interjects dry remarks. Mingyu teases everyone equally. Minghao listens, occasionally adding a sentence that shifts the entire conversation by a few degrees.
Junhui fits into the rhythm without effort. He laughs softly. He answers questions. He offers snacks around the table. When Minghao speaks Mandarin to him once, just a phrase, Junhui responds in kind. Their voices are low, private.
Wonwoo does not understand the words.
He understands everything else.
Mingyu returns from the counter with skewers.
“Eat,” he says, placing one in front of Junhui. “You barely touched anything.”
Junhui smiles politely. “I’m fine.”
Mingyu pushes the skewer closer. “Come on. It’s good.”
Junhui hesitates. His fingers hover over the stick, then pull back slightly.
Wonwoo hears himself speak before he decides to.
“He doesn’t eat that.”
The table quiets.
Soonyoung blinks. Jihoon raises an eyebrow. Mingyu pauses with his hand still on the counter. Minghao turns his head, slow and careful.
Junhui looks at Wonwoo. Then he reaches out, picks up the skewer, and takes a bite.
“It’s okay,” he says calmly. “I do now.”
He chews. Swallows. Smiles.
The conversation restarts, a little more cautiously. Not long after, Soonyoung leans back in his chair, studying them both.
“So,” he says, tone light but direct. “You two know each other?”
Wonwoo feels the weight of the question. He does not look at Junhui. He does not look at anyone.
He hears his own voice answer. “Yeah.”
Rain continues to fall outside. The heater hums. A delivery bell chimes as another customer enters.