Chapter Text
Han Sooyoung laughed.
It tore out of her before she could stop it, loud and sharp and completely out of place in the otherwise quiet apartment. She bent forward at the waist, one hand braced against her knee as if her body had physically rejected the situation she’d just been informed of. The sound echoed off the clean surfaces, uncontained, bordering on hysterical.
“Shut up,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.
She tried. She really did. The laughter hitched instead, breaking into something breathless and wheezing that only made it worse. She dragged in air through her nose, eyes watering, shoulders shaking.
“Ya—” she managed, voice cracking, “how did you, of all people, end up in this kind of arrangement?”
Joonghyuk turned away from her, irritation radiating off him in a way that suggested he’d already made several internal decisions about whether throwing her out would be worth the effort. “Just get out of my house already.”
“You didn’t deny it,” she shot back immediately, straightening just enough to grin at him.
She paced a few steps, still buzzing with leftover laughter, like she needed movement to bleed it off. The apartment was exactly what she expected: sparse, orderly, everything in its place with the kind of precision that bordered on hostile. There was no trace of Kim Dokja anywhere, which somehow made the situation worse.
“This is insane,” she continued, more composed now but no less animated. “I can see Dokja doing this. Hell, I expect him to. He’d call it something clever, pretend it’s practical, and then spiral quietly when it stops being convenient.”
She turned back to him. “But you?”
“I didn’t,” he snapped. “It’s not—”
“Don’t play semantics with me,” she cut in, straightening just enough to look at him properly. “I write for a living,” she drawled.
He looked away, irritation flickering across his face like a warning signal.
“You don’t do shortcuts,” she said. “You don’t half-commit. You don’t agree to undefined anything. You’re the kind of person who looks at a problem, decides what it is, and deals with it head-on.”
Her gaze sharpened. “So I’m trying to understand how you ended up sleeping with Kim Dokja and calling it nothing.”
That landed.
Joonghyuk’s posture shifted, subtle but unmistakable. He reached for a glass on the counter, then seemed to think better of it, leaving it where it was. His jaw tightened, the way it did when he was restraining himself rather than calming down.
“I didn’t call it nothing,” he said.
“Oh, please,” Han Sooyoung scoffed. “You didn’t call it anything at all, which is worse.”
She leaned back against the counter, folding her arms. The humour faded into something more intense. “You don’t stumble into this kind of thing by accident. So stop pretending you did.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable.
Finally, Joonghyuk spoke, voice lower. “I thought it would make things easier for him.”
That made her still.
“For Dokja?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him, laughter completely gone now. “Hmm, explain.”
He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder, like he was lining his thoughts up before letting any of them through.
“He’s afraid of wanting things,” Joonghyuk started,the pause before the words noticeable. “Especially when it comes to people.”
Han Sooyoung let out a slow breath. “That’s not news.”
“I know,” he replied. “But he treats it like a flaw. Like something that needs to be managed.”
He paused, then added, more reluctantly, “I thought if I didn’t make it serious, he wouldn’t feel like he was doing something wrong.”
The words settled heavily in the room.
“You thought,” she said carefully, “that if you kept it casual, he’d stop punishing himself for being close to you.”
Joonghyuk didn’t contradict her.
“That’s…” She shook her head, a short, incredulous laugh escaping her. “That’s exactly the kind of logic that only makes sense if you’ve never been Kim Dokja.”
He looked at her then.
“Yoo Joonghyuk-ah,” she continued, pushing off the counter, “he hears ‘temporary’ and translates it into ‘replaceable.’ You gave him an arrangement with an expiration date and expected him not to internalise it.”
Joonghyuk’s expression darkened. “I see that now,” he said.
She studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. You probably went about it the worst way possible.”
He didn’t argue.
“And the thing is,” she added, quieter now, “he’ll never tell you that it hurt. He’ll just adjust. Pretend he’s fine. Pretend he never wanted more in the first place.”
The apartment felt emptier all of a sudden.
“Usually,” she said after a moment, glancing around, “he’d be here right now. Making this unbearable. Picking a fight or cracking a joke just so we wouldn’t sit in silence.”
Joonghyuk’s hand curled against the counter.
“Without him,” she finished, “you actually have to deal with what you did.”
She slung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. “For what it’s worth,” she said, not turning back, “you weren’t wrong to want to make things easier for him.”
Her hand paused on the handle.
“You were just wrong about how.”
The door closed behind her, leaving Joonghyuk alone in the quiet, staring at the space Dokja usually occupied, forced to confront the fact that trying to make things safe had only taught Dokja how to disappear inside them.
---
After Han Sooyoung left, the apartment did not feel quieter so much as it felt exposed.
Joonghyuk stood where he was for a long moment, hand still resting against the counter, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. The door had closed cleanly behind her. No hesitation. No lingering. She had said what she came to say and left him with it, like she always did.
He preferred that.
What he did not prefer was the way her words continued to move through the space after she was gone, settling into places he had deliberately kept unexamined.
He had never thought of himself as someone who drifted into situations. Every decision he made was deliberate, weighed against consequence, evaluated for risk. He did not do things because they were convenient. He did them because they made sense.
This had made sense.
Kim Dokja had come into his life already knotted with restraint, already careful in a way that went beyond politeness. Joonghyuk had noticed it early on. The way Dokja framed his wants as jokes. The way he stepped back before being asked. The way he pre-emptively diminished himself so no one else had to.
Joonghyuk did not like that.
He had not known what to do with it at first, only that pushing would make it worse. Dokja reacted badly to pressure. He shut down, redirected, laughed things off until they were safely unreal. So Joonghyuk had adjusted. He always adjusted.
The arrangement had not started as indulgence. It had started as accommodation.
If Dokja was afraid of wanting, then Joonghyuk would remove the weight from it. If Dokja needed things to stay unspoken to feel safe, then Joonghyuk would not be the one to force language onto it. He had thought that by keeping it undefined, he was giving Dokja room to exist without feeling trapped by expectation.
He had believed—wrongly, it seemed—that clarity could wait.
Joonghyuk had told himself that what they shared was functional. That it served a purpose. That Dokja was less tense, less guarded, when he did not feel like he was being evaluated for permanence. Joonghyuk had taken that as confirmation. Evidence that he was doing this correctly.
What he had not accounted for was how Dokja interpreted consistency.
Joonghyuk was not someone who changed his behaviour lightly. When he did something, he did it fully. He showed up the same way every time. He was reliable to the point of inflexibility. He had assumed that Dokja understood this about him.
Now, standing alone in the apartment, he was forced to confront the possibility that Dokja had understood it too well.
That what Joonghyuk thought of as stability, Dokja had experienced as inevitability.
Joonghyuk exhaled through his nose and turned away from the counter, pacing once through the room. His movements were controlled, precise, but there was tension in them now, something restless beneath the surface discipline.
Han Sooyoung had been right about one thing. He did not do shortcuts.
He had thought this wasn’t one.
He had thought that easing Dokja into closeness without labels, without pressure, would prove something. That it would show Dokja that there was nothing dangerous about being chosen. That affection did not have to come with immediate demand.
Instead, he had taught him that closeness could exist without acknowledgement.
That it could be quietly withdrawn.
Joonghyuk stopped near the couch, gaze dropping to the place where Dokja usually sat, half-slouched, controller abandoned, presence threaded casually into the space as if he belonged there by accident rather than intention.
That had never been true.
Joonghyuk had always known where Dokja was. Had always accounted for him without thinking about it. The absence now was not dramatic, but it was exact, like a missing piece in a structure that had been built to accommodate it.
He clenched his jaw.
He did not regret being close to Dokja. He did not regret touching him, sharing space with him, letting him into routines Joonghyuk did not share lightly.
What he regretted was assuming that Dokja would understand restraint the same way he did.
Joonghyuk saw boundaries as lines to be respected. Dokja saw them as warnings.
He had thought he was being careful.
He had not realised he was also being distant.
The stream replayed itself unbidden in his mind. The question. The answer. The way he had shut it down immediately, efficiently, without considering how it would land. He had treated it like any other correction. Clear. Necessary. Final.
He had not meant to hurt him.
But intention, he knew better than anyone, did not negate outcome.
Joonghyuk sank onto the edge of the couch, forearms braced against his knees, staring at the floor. The apartment no longer felt orderly. It felt unfinished.
“Temporary,” Han Sooyoung had said.
He had never planned for ‘temporary’ to mean ‘disposable'.
They met on a weekday afternoon, which already felt like a decision made for convenience rather than sentiment.
The café was quiet in a way that suggested it had survived several trends without bothering to follow any of them. Nothing about it demanded attention. Dokja arrived early, chose a seat with a clear view of the entrance, and ordered something cold he barely tasted. He wrapped his hands around the cup anyway, grounding himself in the condensation.
Seo Hana arrived exactly on time.
She did not hesitate when she saw him. There was no flicker of uncertainty, no second glance to confirm. She approached with the assurance of someone who had already decided this would be manageable, regardless of the outcome.
“Kim Dokja?” she asked.
He stood automatically, bowed slightly out of habit, and nodded. His movements were polite, practiced, careful not to invite interpretation. This was not unfamiliar territory. He had learned long ago how to occupy space without taking up too much of it.
They shook hands. Brief. Neutral. The kind of gesture that existed only to acknowledge another person, not to bridge any distance between them.
Seo Hana sat first. Dokja followed, folding his hands loosely in his lap. He kept his posture attentive, receptive, the way he always did when listening mattered more than speaking.
“I’ll be direct,” she said, after a moment. “Not because I’m impatient, but because I don’t think either of us benefits from pretending this is something delicate.”
He hummed softly in acknowledgement. It was an instinctive sound, one he used when he wanted to show engagement without inserting himself unnecessarily. He had been doing it for years, often to smooth conversations that were already decided without him.
“My mother has been trying to set me up for years,” Seo Hana continued. “She worries that I’m too focused on work, that I’ll regret not settling down earlier. I don’t share that worry, but I do get tired of defending myself against it.”
Dokja nodded once. He understood that fatigue intimately. The way concern could masquerade as pressure. The way expectations accumulated until compliance felt easier than resistance.
“When she mentioned you,” she went on, fingers resting lightly against her cup, “I thought it might be efficient. You’re established. Visible. Successful in a way that satisfies older relatives. And you don’t strike me as someone who would complicate things unnecessarily.”
Something shifted in his expression, subtle enough to be missed. It wasn’t surprise or offence, only recognition. He had learned early that usefulness came first, and that being wanted, if it came at all, was incidental.
“I’m not looking for romance,” Seo Hana said calmly. “I’m not opposed to it, but it isn’t a requirement. I have a career I care about. I’m financially independent. I would like my personal life to stop being treated as a problem that needs solving.”
Dokja listened. Really listened.
It was not difficult to imagine this working. That was part of what made it appealing. There were no unspoken expectations here, no emotional negotiations hiding beneath polite phrasing. She was offering him something defined, something cleanly outlined.
Something that did not ask him to want more than he was allowed to have.
“If we proceed,” she said, “it would be practical. Our families would handle the arrangements. We’d be respectful. Honest. If either of us decides this no longer works, we say so and stop. No lingering obligation beyond what we agree to.”
She paused, studying him—not to corner him, but to confirm that he understood the terms.
His silence was not hesitation. It was calculation, the quiet kind of consideration he had always relied on.
This would solve several problems at once. It would give his aunt peace. It would give him distance. It would give him a future that did not hinge on unspoken feelings or careful restraint.
It would give him a way out.
When he spoke, he chose his words carefully.
“Yes. I understand. This arrangement works for me, if you are comfortable.”
Seo Hana blinked, then smiled. Not in relief or triumph, but with the quiet satisfaction of someone who appreciated clarity when it was offered without theatrics.
“That’s enough for me,” she said. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
They stood. She offered her hand again. Dokja took it, mirroring the earlier gesture with the same neutrality, the same lack of expectation.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” she said.
He nodded.
As she walked away, Dokja remained seated, his hands returning to the cup long after the drink had warmed. The café continued around him, indifferent to the fact that something significant had just been set into motion.
He told himself that this was sensible. That choosing something defined over something fragile was the responsible thing to do.
And that stepping away now—before longing turned into something he could no longer manage—was not cowardice.
‘It was control.’ He convinced himself.