Chapter Text
Wonwoo’s palms stung from the ball.
It struck the polished floor, rebounded into his hands, left again. The rhythm was steady, almost meditative, the only place in his day where force was permitted to exist without explanation. Around him, sneakers squeaked and bodies collided in controlled aggression. Shouts rose and fell. The air smelled of rubber, sweat, and disinfectant.
He was good at this. He was not excellent, but he was precise. His movements were efficient, economical, as if he were solving a problem rather than playing a game. Every pass landed where it should. Every shot was calculated. Even here, he was careful.
This gym was his sanctioned rebellion. His family allowed it because it built discipline, teamwork, physical resilience. It fit neatly into the image of the heir who excelled in everything placed before him. He understood this arrangement. He benefited from it. He did not question it.
Still, some days the walls felt closer than they should.
That day was one of those days.
He called for a substitution, stepped off the court, and headed toward the exit. No one questioned it. He was reliable. When he left, he always returned.
The corridor outside was cooler. The noise of the game dulled behind closed doors, replaced by the hum of fluorescent lights and distant footsteps. He rolled his shoulders, breathed out, loosening something that had tightened too long in his chest.
He told himself he only needed water.
Halfway down the hallway, a sound reached him.
Piano.
Not the scattered practice of beginners. It was a melody unfolding with quiet certainty, like petals drifting from a branch in slow motion. Light and precise. Falling, yet never quite touching the ground.
He stopped walking.
The music continued, threading through the corridor, soft but insistent. It did not belong to this place of basketballs and vending machines and parents waiting in cars outside. It belonged somewhere else. Somewhere calm.
He followed it without deciding to.
A door ahead stood slightly ajar. Warm light spilled onto the linoleum floor. The piano grew clearer with each step, each note settling into him in a way he did not immediately understand.
He reached the doorway and paused.
Inside, a boy sat at the piano bench, back straight, shoulders relaxed. A high school uniform hung neatly on his frame. His fingers moved across the keys with fluid confidence, long and slender, dancing rather than pressing. His hair fell over his forehead, shadowing eyes fixed on the instrument, fully absorbed.
Wonwoo did not enter.
He simply watched.
For the first time that day, something inside him loosened without effort.
He did not yet know that his life had shifted.
He only knew that the music had reached him, and he had nowhere else to go but forward.
Junhui sensed him before he saw him.
The last note lingered in the room, thin and trembling, and when he turned his head, he found a stranger standing in the doorway. For a moment, neither of them moved. The fluorescent light above flickered once, twice.
Then Junhui startled.
The sudden shift sent the bench skidding backward. His feet missed the floor. He landed awkwardly on the carpet with a small gasp, palms bracing against the ground.
Wonwoo moved without thinking.
He stepped inside, crossed the room, and offered his hand. The boy’s fingers were cool when they met his, lighter than he expected. Junhui rose quickly, brushing dust from his trousers, cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” Junhui said in careful Korean. “I didn’t know someone was there.”
Wonwoo shook his head. “I shouldn’t have stood in the doorway.”
Junhui laughed softly, the sound awkward but genuine. “You didn’t make any noise. I thought I was alone.”
Wonwoo glanced at the piano. The sheet music lay open, covered in neat pencil markings. “You play well,” he said.
Junhui blinked, then lowered his gaze. “It’s just practice.”
Silence settled, not uncomfortable, just new.
Junhui lifted his head again. “Did you come from basketball?” he asked, nodding toward the corridor.
Wonwoo looked down at his jersey, still damp with sweat. “Yes. Practice.”
Junhui smiled. “Then we are the same. Escaping.”
The phrasing was slightly off, but the meaning landed cleanly.
He hesitated, then added, “I’m Junhui.”
Wonwoo studied him for a moment. He noticed the slight accent shaping his vowels, the careful way he chose his words, the faint patch of fabric behind his ear that signaled a pheromone blocker. He took it all in without reacting, quietly storing the details as he always did, not yet sure why they felt important.
“I’m Wonwoo,” he said.
Junhui’s eyes brightened a little. “Nice to meet you, Wonwoo.”
The name sounded different in his mouth. Softer.
Junhui gestured to the bench. “If you want… you can sit. Next time you escape.” He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “After practice is also okay. I don’t have many friends.”
Wonwoo did not know why he said yes.
But he did.
And for the first time in a long while, the walls around his life felt just a little farther apart.
–
Wonwoo returned the next day.
He told himself it was curiosity. Nothing more. The piano piece had been unfinished when he left. He wanted to know how it ended. That was all.
He arrived earlier than usual for basketball practice, left earlier than he needed to, and walked the corridor with the quiet certainty of someone who had already chosen without admitting it. The door to the practice room was open this time, as if expecting him.
Junhui was there, hunched slightly over the keys, sleeves rolled to his elbows. When he noticed Wonwoo in the doorway, he smiled in recognition, easy and unguarded, as though they had met many times already.
“You came,” Junhui said.
Wonwoo nodded and stepped inside.
He sat on the bench at a polite distance, hands resting on his knees. Junhui resumed playing. The melody filled the small room, softened by the padded walls and the dull hum of the building outside. Wonwoo listened, letting the sound settle into the spaces inside him that basketball could not reach.
–
Days folded into weeks.
Sometimes Wonwoo arrived still flushed from the court, hair damp, breath uneven. Sometimes he arrived after his driver dropped him off early, pretending he had stayed longer at school. Sometimes Junhui was already waiting. Sometimes Wonwoo sat outside the door until he heard the first note before entering.
They spoke between pieces.
Junhui corrected his Korean when he stumbled over unfamiliar words. Wonwoo suggested books, writing down titles in Junhui’s notebook with careful handwriting. Junhui showed him Chinese characters, tracing strokes on paper, then laughing when Wonwoo held the pen too stiffly.
On days when Junhui grew frustrated with a passage, Wonwoo counted the repetitions quietly. On days when Wonwoo looked tired, Junhui placed a bottle of water beside him without comment.
Neither of them spoke of friendship. They simply met.
One evening, rain poured outside the windows, drumming steadily against the glass. Junhui closed the piano lid and stretched his fingers.
“Do you want to eat?” he asked. “There is a convenience store near my home.”
Wonwoo hesitated. He did not usually go to places without scheduled purpose.
Then he said, “Okay.”
They walked under one umbrella, shoulders nearly touching, shoes splashing through shallow puddles. At the store, they bought ice cream and sat on plastic stools by the window. Junhui talked about his younger brother, about Shenzhen, about missing the taste of food from home. Wonwoo listened and offered small questions, careful not to pry.
When it was time to leave, Wonwoo called his driver. Junhui waited with him until the car arrived, hands tucked into his jacket sleeves.
“See you tomorrow?” Junhui asked.
Wonwoo nodded.
It was already decided.
At night, Wonwoo studied longer than before, but his concentration fractured more easily. Words on the page blurred into lines of music. He told himself this was inefficient. He did nothing to stop it.
–
The first time they met outside the building happened without much thought on Wonwoo's part.
A film had just been released, something quiet and sentimental that Junhui had mentioned in passing. Wonwoo saw the poster near his school gate a few days later and thought of Junhui’s careful Korean, the way his eyes lifted when he spoke about stories. The invitation formed before he could decide whether it was wise.
“I’m going to see a movie this weekend,” he said when he found Junhui in the practice room. “If you want to come.”
Junhui blinked, surprised. Then smiled. “I would like that.”
They met at the station on Saturday afternoon. The crowd moved around them in steady currents: students in uniforms, parents with shopping bags, couples holding hands without thinking about it. Wonwoo noticed that Junhui kept close to him, not out of dependence, but because the world was still new and loud and fast around him.
On the train, they sat side by side, knees almost touching. Junhui leaned forward slightly to read the advertisements across from them, whispering unfamiliar Korean words under his breath. Wonwoo corrected him quietly, and Junhui repeated them, trying again until he was satisfied.
At the cinema, they shared popcorn. Junhui laughed softly at scenes that were not meant to be funny, then apologized for laughing anyway. Wonwoo watched him more than the screen. He found himself cataloguing the way Junhui’s shoulders shook when he laughed, the way his hand hovered near the popcorn bucket, the way he glanced sideways to check if Wonwoo was enjoying himself.
When the movie ended, they walked without urgency. Streetlights flickered on, washing the pavement in amber. The air smelled of fried food and rain that had not yet fallen.
“Thank you,” Junhui said. “I haven’t gone out like this since coming here.”
Wonwoo did not know what to say to that. So he said, “Any time.”
And meant it.
Later, as they parted at the station, Wonwoo realised something he had not expected.
He had enjoyed the day not because of the piano.
But because of Junhui.
The thought was small. Almost harmless.
He did not yet understand how far it would travel.
--
By the time final year arrived, time had become a tighter thing.
Wonwoo’s days filled with tutoring sessions, mock exams, strategy meetings with teachers who spoke of universities the way generals spoke of battlefields. His schedule was printed, colour-coded, laminated. His driver knew it by heart. His mother checked it every Sunday evening. His grandfather asked only one question at dinner.
“How are your scores?”
Junhui did not attend his school. He did not see the rows of students bowing to teachers, the relentless countdown to the entrance exams, the quiet panic settling into hallways. But he saw it in Wonwoo’s shoulders when he arrived at the practice room. In the slower steps. In the way he sat before speaking.
They met less.
Some days, Wonwoo stood outside the practice room door and listened to a piece end before turning away again, knowing he did not have time to enter. Some nights, Junhui waited with the piano lid closed, then left when the building lights dimmed.
They did not speak of it.
They both felt it.
Then one night, Wonwoo skipped tutoring.
He left school early, walked instead of calling his driver, let the cold air bite into his lungs until his thoughts loosened from their neat lines. He found himself at Junhui’s neighbourhood without quite remembering each turn he had taken.
The playground was empty. A lone streetlamp cast pale light over metal swings and a slide slick with frost. Junhui sat on one of the swings, feet brushing the ground, hands tucked into his coat sleeves.
“You’re here,” Junhui said, not questioning. He was just stating a fact.
Wonwoo sat on the swing beside him. The chains creaked softly as they moved.
He admitted it before he could reconsider. “I skipped. I missed you.”
The word hung between them. Junhui slowed the swing with his feet and turned, studying him as if seeing him for the first time that day. The chains creaked. Breath fogged in the cold.
Wonwoo kept his gaze forward, jaw tight, waiting for a reaction he could prepare for.
None came. Not immediately.
Junhui’s voice, when it arrived, was soft, almost curious, as though he were placing a fragile thing on the ground to see if it would break. “Jeon Wonwoo,” he said, “I think I like you.”
The words were simple. They were clear, no hesitation or flourish.
Wonwoo’s breath caught, just once.
He did not think of consequences or families. Or exams, or the future that waited like a contract already signed.
He reached out and took Junhui’s hand.
“Junhui,” he said, voice steady in a way his chest was not, “me too.”
They leaned toward each other. Junhui’s forehead brushed his. Their noses touched. Their mouths met.
The kiss was soft at first, uncertain. Then warmer. Closer. A small point of heat blooming in the cold night air.
When they parted, Junhui’s eyes were bright. Wonwoo’s heart pounded with a force no basketball game had ever pulled from him.
For a moment, under the streetlamp, the future did not exist. There was only this.
Later, lying in bed with his textbook open but unread, Wonwoo thought of Junhui’s hand in his. The quiet certainty in his voice. The warmth of his mouth.
He thought, distantly, that some things in life arrived without strategy.
–
After that night, they stopped pretending their meetings were accidental.
Time did not suddenly become generous. Wonwoo’s schedule remained rigid, his days partitioned into blocks of achievement. Junhui’s lessons and family obligations did not vanish. But they began to reach for each other in the narrow spaces between, as if the lack of time made each meeting more necessary.
Sometimes it was only twenty minutes in the practice room. Junhui at the piano, Wonwoo beside him on the bench, knees brushing, breath synchronising without intention. Sometimes it was a walk between stations, sharing one pair of earphones, the cord looping between them like a fragile tether. Sometimes it was sitting on the curb outside a convenience store, hands wrapped around warm cups, shoulders pressed close against the cold.
They touched more easily now.
A hand guiding the other away from a closing door. Fingers grazing a wrist while passing a notebook. Junhui leaning into Wonwoo’s side while reading over his shoulder. Wonwoo resting his palm against the back of Junhui’s neck, thumb moving in small, absent circles.
Each gesture was small. None were accidental.
They learned each other in fragments. That Junhui’s skin carried a faint scent of clean soap and something softer beneath. That Wonwoo’s voice dropped unconsciously when speaking to him alone. That silence between them did not demand filling. That closeness felt both terrifying and right.
One night, the practice building lights shut off one by one around them. They remained in the piano room, the city’s glow filtering through the window. Junhui slid down from the bench to sit on the floor, back against Wonwoo’s legs. Wonwoo rested his chin atop Junhui’s head, arms folding around him as though the position had always existed.
Junhui tilted his face up. Their mouths met again, slower this time, familiar now. The warmth that spread through Wonwoo was no longer startling. It was something he anticipated, craved, missed even before it ended.
When Junhui finally closed his eyes against his shoulder, breathing steady, Wonwoo understood something quietly, without drama.
He was falling.
It was not in a way he could step back from, or in a way that allowed careful calculation. It was something softer and sharper than anything basketball or textbooks had ever given him.
By winter, being apart felt wrong.
By the turn of the year, being together felt necessary.
He did not yet ask himself what it would cost.
–
After that, their need for each other stopped being subtle.
They found reasons.
Wonwoo claimed he studied better with someone on call. Junhui said his Korean improved faster when he listened to Wonwoo read aloud. So they opened video calls at night, textbooks spread across separate desks, each doing their own work, neither speaking much. Sometimes they forgot the call was even on. Sometimes they stared at the small square of the other’s face longer than necessary, reassured by mere presence.
When Wonwoo’s eyes grew tired, Junhui reminded him to blink. When Junhui’s handwriting slowed, Wonwoo told him to rest his wrist.
They did not talk about missing each other.
They simply did.
During the short break before final exam preparations resumed, Wonwoo woke one morning with the weight of absence pressing against his ribs.
He did not overthink it. He called Junhui.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he said.
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet. Just… come.”
Two hours later, they were on a bus headed west, the city thinning behind them. The destination was Jebu-do, a small island town where the sea met concrete roads and rusted fishing boats leaned against low stone walls. It was not a place people posted about online. It was simply quiet.
They walked along the tidal flats, shoes in hand, trousers rolled up. The water was cold. Junhui laughed when a wave caught him off guard. Wonwoo watched the sound of it settle into his chest.
They climbed the narrow steps of a small lighthouse, paint peeling, railings worn smooth by wind. At the top, the sea stretched in all directions. No schedules. No teachers. No family tables. Only horizon.
For lunch, they wandered into a tiny place with plastic chairs and handwritten menus. Junhui scanned the options, then shook his head when the owner offered skewers.
“I don’t eat those,” he said.
“Why?”
Junhui looked faintly embarrassed. “I ate one once and got food poisoning. Got sick for two days. Now I can’t bring myself to eat them.”
Wonwoo smiled. “That’s reasonable.”
Junhui looked at him for a moment, then laughed. The sound carried easily in the small restaurant, and the owner smiled too, not understanding the words but understanding enough.
By evening, the tide had returned. The sky deepened into soft violet. Streetlights flickered on one by one. The last bus back to Seoul sat at the stop, engine idling.
They stood there without moving toward it.
Junhui hugged his jacket tighter around himself. Wonwoo watched the way his breath turned to mist.
He took Junhui’s hand.
“Want to stay the night?” he asked.
Junhui’s fingers tightened around his.
“Yes,” he said.
The room they found was small, with a thin mattress and a heater that rattled when it worked. The room smelled faintly of sea salt and the detergent used on the thin blanket folded at the foot of the mattress. Outside, waves broke against the shore, soft and endless, like breath.
Junhui sat cross-legged on the mattress, drying his hair with a small towel. His cheeks were pink from the cold. Wonwoo watched him from the plastic chair by the window, one hand resting on his knee, fingers tapping once every few seconds without his permission.
“You’re staring,” Junhui said, not looking up.
“I’m not,” Wonwoo replied.
Junhui lowered the towel and turned his head. His eyes curved slightly. “You are.”
Wonwoo did not bother denying it again. He stood instead, moved to the mattress, and sat beside Junhui. The space between them was small. Not touching. But close enough that warmth crossed.
Junhui’s hair was still damp at the ends. Wonwoo reached out, hesitated, then let his fingers brush lightly against the strands. Junhui leaned into the touch without thinking, eyes falling closed.
The movement loosened something in Wonwoo’s chest.
He slid his hand to the back of Junhui’s neck. The skin there was warm. Alive. Junhui’s breath shifted, slow and steady.
“Wonwoo,” Junhui said quietly.
“Yes.”
Junhui turned fully toward him. Their knees touched. Their hands rested between them, fingers brushing once, twice, before entwining. Junhui’s grip was firm, sure, as if he had already decided this moment earlier in the day.
Wonwoo leaned in first. Carefully. Like approaching a door he did not want to frighten shut.
Their foreheads met. Junhui tilted his chin up. Their lips brushed. Once. Then again. A little longer. Junhui’s free hand found the collar of Wonwoo’s shirt, holding him in place as if afraid he might disappear.
The kiss deepened. Not rushed. Not clumsy. Just earnest. Exploratory. Breathing mingling. Hearts beating too fast.
Wonwoo’s hand slid from Junhui’s neck to his back, drawing him closer. The towel fell forgotten to the side.
Junhui shifted onto his knees. Wonwoo followed. Their bodies aligned, knees pressed into the mattress, hands on shoulders, backs, waists. Each touch asked a question. Each answering touch said yes.
When Wonwoo eased Junhui down onto the mattress, it was slow. Giving time. Giving choice. Junhui’s fingers never left his wrist.
The blanket tangled around their legs. Clothes were loosened, pushed aside, dropped to the floor without urgency. Skin met skin. Warmth spread. Junhui’s breath caught once, then settled as Wonwoo kissed his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth.
They moved together with hesitant certainty, learning the shape of each other in whispers and gasps and the soft creak of the mattress springs. Junhui hid his face against Wonwoo’s shoulder when feeling overwhelmed. Wonwoo held him tighter, as if anchoring him.
Outside, the sea continued. Inside, time folded inward.
Later, when the heater rattled again, Junhui lay curled against Wonwoo’s chest. Wonwoo’s arm circled his back. Their legs were tangled. Their breaths had slowed.
Junhui traced idle shapes on Wonwoo’s ribs with one finger.
“Stay,” he murmured.
Wonwoo pressed his lips to Junhui’s hair. “Hmm.”
–
The house was quiet in the late afternoon. Soft carpets absorbed footsteps. Heavy curtains filtered light into warm gold instead of harsh white. Even the air smelled curated, pine and citrus and something faintly floral that never lingered too long.
Wonwoo stepped inside, removed his shoes, and placed them parallel to the edge of the mat. His school bag rested against his hip. The weight of it felt ordinary. Everything else did not.
His mother was seated by the window, a porcelain teacup in her hand, steam threading upward in thin spirals. She looked up as he approached, her expression smooth and unreadable, as though nothing in this world could truly surprise her.
“You’re home earlier than expected,” she said.
“There was no extra class today,” Wonwoo replied.
She nodded and gestured to the seat across from her. He sat. The cushion yielded just enough to feel expensive, never soft enough to be indulgent.
She poured tea into another cup. The stream of liquid was steady. Precise. He accepted the cup with both hands. The porcelain was warm against his palms.
For a while, they sat in silence. Outside, the garden shifted in the breeze. Leaves brushed against one another, quiet and constant.
Then his mother spoke.
“Your little uncle visited yesterday.”
The words slid into the room without emphasis. Still, something inside Wonwoo tightened.
She continued, eyes on the tea surface as though reading reflections there. “He has started another course of treatment. The doctors say the tremors have eased. His appetite has returned somewhat.”
Wonwoo’s fingers curled around the cup. He did not sip.
He remembered the hospital room. The drawn blinds. The way his uncle’s hands shook even while resting on the blanket. How the man who once carried him on his shoulders had looked so small in that bed, breath uneven, skin pale, eyes hollowed by something deeper than illness.
He had overheard the adults talking about the bond removal surgery. The omega wife who left. The fever that followed. The screams that came at night when no visitors were present. The way the house received him back, not as a son or brother, but as a lesson.
His mother lifted her cup and drank.
“She was intelligent,” she said at last. “Ambitious. But she could not understand what it means to belong to a family that stands above individual desire. She wanted love to be enough.”
Her lips curved slightly. Not in mockery. In recognition of inevitability.
“When she left, she took her freedom. Your uncle kept the family. Each paid a price.”
Wonwoo stared at the tea. The surface had gone still. No steam now. His mother set the cup down gently.
“You will graduate soon,” she said. “Your life will begin to take shape in ways that cannot be undone.”
She did not look at him when she spoke the next words, as though allowing him the dignity of pretending this was not personal.
“Affection is natural at your age. But not every attachment is meant to be carried into adulthood.”
Wonwoo’s heartbeat slowed. Or perhaps he simply noticed it.
His mother finally lifted her gaze to him.
“You are a Jeon,” she said. “One day, you will have people depending on you. Thousands of them. You must never place someone in a life they cannot endure.”
Her voice never rose. Yet the words settled in his chest with the weight of stone.
He thought of Junhui’s laughter on the beach. Junhui’s hands playing piano in a small practice room. Junhui leaning into him beneath a rattling heater, whispering stay.
He thought of that same Junhui sitting in this room. Under these eyes. At this table. Learning how to fold himself smaller, quieter, more careful, until the lightness in him dimmed into survival.
He saw his uncle’s shaking hands again.
He saw Junhui’s hands on ivory keys.
The images overlapped.
His mother reached for the teapot, refilling his cup though he had not touched it.
“You have always been sensible,” she said. “I trust you will remain so.”
The conversation ended because there was nothing left to say. His mother returned to her book. The house resumed its quiet.
Wonwoo bowed and left the room.
He walked down the corridor lined with framed photographs of weddings, inaugurations, ribbon cuttings, handshakes with politicians. A lineage arranged like evidence of inevitability.
In his bedroom, he closed the door and leaned against it.
His phone lay on the desk. No new messages. No missed calls.
He imagined texting Junhui. Reminiscing about their trip again. The sea. The small room they spent the night in. The way Junhui had fit against him like something meant to be held.
He imagined bringing Junhui here one day. Introducing him. Watching him stand uncertainly at the threshold, polite smile fixed in place, shoulders drawn tight. He imagined the slow years that would follow. Polite meals. Careful conversations. Invisible walls. The quiet erosion of something once free.
He imagined Junhui asking him, someday, to choose. And he already knew the answer.
His chest tightened. He breathed in, then breathed out. Controlled. Measured.
He sat at his desk and opened his textbook. The words blurred. But he kept reading.
That night, when Junhui messaged him first, Wonwoo waited a long time before replying. It was not because he did not want to answer, but because he was learning how to let go without breaking anything too quickly.