Chapter Text
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t remember when things started going wrong. Which means it was already too late when he noticed.
If he were a better person—if he’d been paying attention—there would’ve been a moment. A clear fracture. Something he could circle and say, this is where I ruined it.
But there wasn’t. It just drained out of them. Slowly. Patiently. Like something dying while he was busy looking the other way.
He tells himself it was gradual. Work swallowing him whole. Days that ended with him too tired to feel anything except irritation and bone-deep exhaustion. He came home irritated and expected the apartment to understand.
Talking felt like effort. Another thing he was failing at.
So he stopped trying. And the worst part is that he told himself he was doing no harm.
The first thing he remembers clearly is the feeling of being watched.
Not suspicious. Not accusing.
Just… careful.
Every time he opened the door, Dokja would straighten slightly, his body reacted before his mind could stop it. His eyes would flick over Joonghyuk, quick and practiced, like he was checking for damage he wasn’t allowed to ask about.
“Did you eat?” Dokja would say.
Joonghyuk’s mouth would answer before his brain caught up. “Yeah.”
Even when it was a lie.
He didn’t want to explain himself. Didn’t want concern. Didn’t want to be handled.
Dokja would nod and let it go. And Joonghyuk took that as proof that it didn’t matter. He didn’t see how much effort it took for Dokja to let it go every time.
Joonghyuk likes quiet. He always has. Silence was control. Silence was safety. Silence meant no one needed anything from him.
At some point, the silence turned hostile. It pressed against his chest when he came home. Sat between them on the couch. Crawled into bed and lay there awake long after they stopped talking.
Dokja stopped asking questions.
Stopped trying to fill the gaps.
Stopped getting upset when Joonghyuk came home late—or not at all.
At first, Joonghyuk felt relief.
Good, he thought. Finally.
Then the relief started to rot.
Guilt crawled in its place. Thick and sticky. The kind that makes your hands shake for no reason. The kind that sits in your stomach until everything you eat tastes wrong.
He stayed out later. Took longer routes home. Let his phone die.
Avoidance dressed up as self-preservation.
He noticed the changes. He just pretended they weren’t warnings.
Dokja wearing his hoodie constantly, hoping for Joonghyuk's scent to envelop him as a form of the presence of someone who was not by his side.
Dokja eating alone even when Joonghyuk was home, he had learned not to wait any longer.
Dokja laughing softer, apologizing more, shrinking in ways Joonghyuk swore he hadn’t asked for—
“You should go out more,” Joonghyuk said one night, words spilling out wrong. “You don’t talk to anyone but me.”
Dokja smiled.
God, that smile.
Small. Careful. The kind that doesn’t expect to be kept.
“I like being here.”
Something inside Joonghyuk snapped.
His chest went tight. His fingers curled uselessly at his sides. His skin felt wrong—too tight, too itchy.
He didn’t want to be someone’s entire world.
Didn’t want to be the axis everything else quietly revolved around.
So instead of stepping closer, he pulled away.
And told himself it was kindness.
The night he didn’t come home, he knew exactly what he was doing.
His hands shook when he turned his phone face-down. His stomach churned for something he refused to admit.
I just need space, he told himself. One night.
He barely slept. Woke up nauseous, head buzzing, body heavy like it didn’t belong to him.
Standing in front of the apartment the next morning, keys cold and slippery in his palm, his vision tunneled.
Dokja was on the couch.
Of course he was.
Waiting.
Joonghyuk’s throat closed. His hands trembled harder. He felt detached from his body, like he was watching this happen from a few feet behind himself.
“I’m tired,” he said.
His voice sounded flat. Tired.
Tired of disappointing someone who never complained.
Tired of being loved in a way that felt like expectation, even when it wasn’t meant to.
Tired of knowing he was hurting Dokja and realizing he’d already done too much damage to fix it.
“I don’t want to be someone you shrink yourself for.”
The words tasted bitter.
What he didn’t say was I don’t know how to stay without destroying you.
Packing felt unreal. His hands moved without him. He folded things wrong. Dropped things. Had to stop once because the nausea surged so hard he thought he might throw up.
He left behind the hoodie.
The sticky note here and there.
All evidence suggests that he once loved someone tenderly, but still destroyed them.
At the door, his chest burned. His eyes stung.
Say it, a voice screamed. Say you’re sorry.
He didn’t.
Because sorry wouldn’t undo this. And he didn’t deserve absolution.
The door closed.
Joonghyuk stood in the hallway shaking, breath shallow, head spinning.
For the first time, he understood—
Leaving slowly hadn’t been mercy.
It had been cruelty stretched over time.
And by the time he realized he wanted to turn back, his ego forced his feet to walk away from there.
Yoo Joonghyuk thought leaving would make things quieter.
It didn’t.
The silence followed him.
It settled in the rented room—sterile, stripped bare. No clutter. No stray mug on the counter. No hoodie draped over a chair, waiting for someone who might return.
Just him.
And the noise in his head.
The first night, he didn’t unpack.
He sat on the edge of the bed with his shoes still on, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the floor until his legs went numb. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He pressed them together until it hurt, hoping the pain might tether him to his body.
It didn’t.
Every sound felt overwhelming. The hum of the fridge. The ticking clock. His own breathing—irregular, shallow, and abnormal.
He kept seeing Dokja’s face.
Not crying.
Not yelling.
Just… still.
That was what broke him.
Joonghyuk gagged, lurched upright, barely reaching the sink before his stomach emptied itself. There was nothing in him, but his body didn’t seem to know the difference.
He stayed there afterward, forehead against the cold metal, breathing hard, as if he’d pushed himself past his limits.
This is what you wanted, he told himself.
Space. Quiet. Freedom.
It felt less like relief and more like punishment.
Days blurred together. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
Except sleep stopped coming easily.
He lay awake staring at the ceiling, chest tight, his mind replaying moments he’d dismissed at the time.
Did you eat?
The hoodie.
The way Dokja stopped waiting.
Sometimes his hand reached for his phone without thinking. His thumb hovered over Dokja’s name, heart racing, mouth dry.
Then guilt hit hard enough to turn his stomach.
What would he even say?
Sorry I broke you slowly?
Sorry I noticed when it was already over?
So he set the phone face-down and let his hands tremble instead.
He stopped eating properly. Coffee replaced meals. His stomach ached constantly—a dull, persistent pain he almost welcomed, because it meant he could feel something besides regret.
People asked if he was okay.
He said yes.
He was good at lying now.
One night, he found the sticky note in his jacket pocket.
He didn’t remember taking it.
Sorry I borrowed your jacket! Hurry home, I love you!
The handwriting was familiar enough to make his chest cave in.
He sank to the floor, clutching it in his fist, breath stuttering, vision blurring at the edges.
“This is your fault,” he said aloud to the empty room.
Leaving doesn’t end anything. It just removes the witness.
Joonghyuk started forgetting things. Not the important ones—small details. Where he left his keys. What day it was. Whether he’d eaten. His body moved on autopilot while his mind stayed elsewhere, trapped in an apartment that no longer belonged to him.
He dreamed of Dokja constantly.
Not dramatic dreams. No arguments. No reconciliation.
Just Dokja on the couch.
Waiting.
Joonghyuk woke with his heart racing, sheets tangled around his legs, hands grasping at empty air. Sometimes the pain in his chest was so sharp he had to sit up and focus on breathing, counting seconds to keep himself from shattering.
He told himself Dokja was better off.
He needed that to be true.
Because if Dokja was suffering—if he was sitting alone in that apartment, wondering what he’d done wrong—Joonghyuk didn’t think he could survive knowing it.
He avoided places they’d gone together.
Avoided songs Dokja loved.
Avoided mirrors, because his reflection looked hollowed out, eyes dull, the face of someone who had already lost the most important thing in his life and was still pretending otherwise.
One night, weeks later, he drank more than he should have.
Not enough to forget.
Just enough to strip away restraint.
He sat on the bathroom floor, back against the tub, head tipped back, laughing softly at nothing.
“You warned him,” he muttered. “You told him not to shrink.”
The laugh cracked halfway through, collapsing into something raw and broken.
“But you didn’t stay,” he whispered.
His hands shook violently. He pressed them to his face, nails digging into his skin.
“I ruined him,” he said.
Saying it out loud made it irreversible.
He slid down onto his side, curling in on himself, knees drawn to his chest, breathing fast and shallow, as though his body believed it was dying.
Maybe part of it was.
At some point, something worse than guilt took hold.
Regret.
The sharp, unbearable understanding that he had been loved gently and treated it as a threat.
That Dokja hadn’t asked him to be perfect.
Only present.
Joonghyuk stared at the dark ceiling and let the weight of it crush down on him.
He hadn’t left to protect Dokja.
He left because his ego was too big to grasp the opportunities that were available. And he hadn’t been brave enough to try.
The thought lodged deep in his chest, heavy and unmoving.
For the first time since he walked out that door, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t think about going back.
He thought—
I don’t deserve him.
That night, he dreamed he was back in the apartment.
Dokja was there, in the kitchen, back turned.
Joonghyuk tried to speak. Tried to move.
His body wouldn’t respond.
He woke up choking on air, hands clawing at his chest, heart pounding so hard it made his vision pulse.
For a long time, he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for his body to calm down.
This is what you chose, he reminded himself.
The words felt thin now.
One evening, he came home and sat on the floor instead of the bed. His legs gave out halfway there, like they’d forgotten how to support him. He didn’t bother getting up.
He stayed seated, back against the wall, knees drawn up, head resting on his arms.
Time slipped.
Minutes. Hours. He couldn’t tell.
His phone buzzed once.
Just a notification. Nothing important.
Still, his heart reacted instantly—sharp, violent hope before he could stop it.
His hands went numb.
He pulled the phone closer, then froze.
Dokja’s name sat there in his pinned contacts, unchanged. Untouched. As if time hadn’t moved for him at all.
Joonghyuk stared at it until the letters blurred.
His breathing went shallow. His chest felt tight, constricted.
Just check, a voice whispered. Just see if he’s okay.
His thumb hovered over the screen.
Images flooded in uninvited.
Dokja on the couch.
Dokja nodding instead of arguing.
Dokja not crying when Joonghyuk left.
What if he answered?
What if he didn’t?
What if Joonghyuk’s voice broke the fragile distance Dokja had built to survive?
His stomach twisted violently. He pressed his free hand to it, nails digging in.
“I don’t get to do that,” he said quietly.
The words sounded distant.
He locked the phone and set it face-down on the floor.
His hand stayed there long after, fingers still curved as if gripping something that had already slipped away.
Later, lying in bed, he realized something that scared him more than the shaking, more than the numbness.
He didn’t miss being loved.
He missed being needed.
And he was the one who had walked away from that.
The thought didn’t come with tears.
Just a deep, aching pressure behind his eyes.
Yoo Joonghyuk turned onto his side and stared at the wall until the room faded into gray.
For the first time, the idea of reaching out felt terrifying.
And that, more than anything, told him how badly he’d broken something.
There was no going back to before.
END