Chapter Text
The sound of his phone ringing dragged Daeyoung from sleep.
He groaned, rubbing at his eyes, the familiar dull ache behind them already pulsing from yesterday’s performance. His voice felt raw, caught somewhere between exhaustion and disuse. He reached for his glasses on the nightstand, nearly knocking over the water bottle beside them, then fumbled for the vibrating phone.
Sion.
He blinked hard and answered.
“Hello?” His voice cracked.
“Hey,” came Sion’s hesitant voice on the other end. “Yushi gave me some papers from… from Riku. For you to sign. I’m downstairs, if you could ring me up?”
Daeyoung stared at the ceiling. His fingers gripped the phone tighter.
Of course. Of course.
He cleared his throat. “Okay. I’m letting you up now.”
The line went dead. Daeyoung sat still for a beat, the silence of the apartment pressing in around him. He reached for a hoodie, tugged it on over his shirt from last night, and padded barefoot into the living room. The apartment was clean, quiet, and cold. The kind of cold that lived in walls, not air.
He didn’t look at the framed photo still sitting turned face-down on the bookshelf. Or the mug Riku used to drink from that remained on the counter, too far back for him to reach without effort. These were the choices he made. To let things sit. To not move them. Because cleaning them away felt like writing the ending too neatly.
The doorbell buzzed.
Daeyoung opened it.
Sion stood there in a dark coat, a thick envelope in his hand. His expression was strained—not unfriendly, but distant, the way someone looks when they’re carrying something that isn’t theirs.
“Yushi’s downstairs in the car,” Sion said after a beat. “I’ll just… leave this with you. Let me know when I can pick it up.”
Daeyoung nodded, silent. Sion gave him an awkward wave, and Daeyoung watched his friend turn and walk away without a word more.
He closed the door slowly.
He felt tired all over. Not just his body—but the part of him that used to hope.
He sank onto the couch and stared at the envelope like it might vanish if he waited long enough. But it didn’t. It just sat there. Heavy. Patient. Final.
He opened it.
Japanese paperwork. Neat and clear. Clean lines and cold language. Terms that made it feel like everything had already been decided months ago. Amicable. Peaceful. No contest. No lawyers, no fighting. Just the silent end of something that had once meant everything.
Daeyoung dragged a hand over his face and let out a long, shaking sigh. He didn’t cry. Not anymore. He didn’t have it in him.
He had cried enough. For Riku. For what they had. For what they lost over one child, one misaligned vision of the future, one stupid misunderstanding they had never managed to untangle.
He had been selfish, once.
He had asked Riku to wait.
And this was where it brought him.
Divorce papers on his lap. The hum of the refrigerator in the distance. The scent of Riku still buried in the closet he hadn’t opened in weeks.
Daeyoung stared at the papers, eyes burning, heart hollow.
Then, slowly, he picked them up.
And ripped them in half.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
The sound echoed in the still apartment like thunder.
He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t know what it changed. But he couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not without fighting back, even if it was pointless. Even if it was too late.
And then—just as suddenly—
He gasped.
His eyes flew open.
The room was dark.
He was back in bed, heart pounding, breath sharp and uneven. His hoodie was gone. His hands were empty. The couch, the papers, the torn edges—they were gone.
He turned, wide-eyed, and reached for his phone. No missed calls. No message from Sion. The time read 4:17 a.m.
It had all been a dream.
A nightmare.
But the dread didn’t fade.
It just sat there in his chest, heavy and horrible, because part of him believed it could still come true.
He lay back against the pillow, sweat cooling against the back of his neck.
And for the first time in weeks, Daeyoung sighed into the darkness,
“Riku hyung… what do I do?”
✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧
The morning came too slowly.
The pale light filtering through the curtains only made the apartment look colder, emptier. The dream still clung to Daeyoung’s chest like smoke—he could feel the phantom weight of the torn papers in his hands, could still hear the rasp of the envelope as it was passed to him, see Sion’s guilty smile. None of it had happened.
But it could.
And that was the part that made him press a fist against his mouth as he sat up in bed, trying to steady the way his heart thudded in his chest.
Riku had been gone for three weeks.
It still didn’t feel real. Some part of Daeyoung kept expecting to hear the front door open. To hear Riku’s voice calling from the hallway, or the sound of keys hitting the counter like always. But it never came. Just silence.
Jelly didn’t understand any of it.
She padded the apartment in slow loops every evening, nose twitching at the door, the couch, the empty spot at the edge of the bed. Some nights, she’d sit by the entrance, ears perked, tail wagging faintly—waiting. Daeyoung couldn’t bring himself to tell her he didn’t know what they were waiting for anymore.
He fed her. Walked her. Talked to her more than was probably healthy.
But neither of them felt like they belonged in the space anymore.
Daeyoung stood and stretched, aching from sleep and something deeper. He moved into the kitchen with bare feet against the cold floor, pouring himself half a cup of coffee before realizing it was from yesterday’s pot.
He didn’t make more.
Instead, he sat at the kitchen table, staring at his phone.
He hadn’t called. Not once. Not because he didn’t want to. But because he didn’t know what to say.
What was there to say, after everything?
He had heard bits and pieces through others. Sion had mentioned it in passing, awkwardly, like he didn’t want to say too much. Yushi says Riku’s already back in training. The new season’s starting soon. He’s working hard again.
Of course he was.
Riku didn’t know how to sit still when he was hurting. He poured himself into something else—volleyball, community work, anything that would let him avoid the sting beneath the skin. It made sense. It was what he did.
And part of Daeyoung was proud. Proud that Riku was standing again. That he was building something.
But the rest of him—
The rest of him wanted to scream.
Because he missed him. So much more than he’d let himself admit.
He missed the sound of Riku brushing his teeth too loudly. The way he stole Daeyoung’s clothes and pretended they didn’t fit just to annoy him. He missed the way Riku would fall asleep with a hand resting lightly on his stomach, like he needed to stay connected even in dreams.
He missed the home they used to have.
And he didn’t know if they could ever get it back.
Daeyoung looked down at Jelly, curled up under the table, her ears twitching at the soft creak of his chair. She lifted her head and blinked at him.
“Me too,” he whispered.
The apartment was still. Heavy with silence.
But now, the nightmare wasn’t what scared him.
It was the growing feeling that waking up hadn’t changed anything at all.
✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧
Five Years Ago
It had been a quiet spring evening in Daegu, the kind that came with a soft breeze and windows cracked just enough to let in the sound of passing cars and a distant birdcall.
Daeyoung sat at the kitchen table, still in his pressed shirt from brunch with his parents, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. The tea his mother had brewed was already cold.
He hadn’t touched it.
Across the table, his father’s words still echoed through the quiet, stubbornly refusing to settle.
You’re getting engaged. To the Maeda family’s son. His name is Riku.
Daeyoung hadn’t reacted at first. Just blinked, twice, as if he’d misheard. His mother, seated beside his father, had smiled that serene, watery smile she always wore when she was worried he would resist something.
He didn’t resist.
He never did.
It was the strangest thing. Looking back, he couldn’t remember exactly when it happened—when he gave up fighting for his own choices. Maybe it had been chipped away over time, softened by years of being the "good" son. The easy one. The one who didn't get into trouble, who always stayed in line, who did well in school and never embarrassed the family.
He wasn’t even the heir to the family business. That responsibility had always belonged to his oldest brother. But still, they came to him with this request—this expectation, really—and something inside Daeyoung had simply… nodded.
Why? He would ask himself later. Why did I say yes to something so absurd?
To someone he had never met?
Maybe it was because he had grown used to choosing silence over rebellion. Maybe it was the soft look in his mother’s eyes, the way she folded her hands in her lap and said, “The Maedas are old friends of the family.”
Maybe it was because he had always been the one who stayed behind, quietly tending to the life his parents had shaped around him. And maybe—just maybe—there was a part of him that saw this as an escape. An opening. A sliver of possibility to leave.
To go to Japan.
To start something new with someone he hadn’t known before—someone who didn’t know who he had been all these years. Someone who might look at him and not see "third son," "reliable Daeyoung," "the one who never says no."
He remembered nodding. Saying okay. His voice hadn’t wavered, even though the world had tilted slightly around him.
Afterward, he sat alone in his room, the hum of the air conditioner rattling faintly in the background, and looked up Riku’s name online. Found a few scattered articles—volleyball match reports, mostly. A photo or two. Short interviews. Nothing deeply personal.
He looked young. But he was actually two years older than Daeyoung.
And he also looked sharp around the edges.
There was a stubbornness in his eyes, even when he smiled.
Daeyoung had stared at one particular photo of Riku holding a gold medal, sweat still clinging to his hairline, his grin wide and breathless.
It wasn’t love at first sight.
It wasn’t even curiosity.
It was a flicker of something deeper. Something like possibility.
What would it be like to start over with someone who didn’t know all your grooves and patterns? Who didn’t know the weight of your family’s name or the years you’d spent being invisible just to keep everyone else’s peace?
He could do anything in Japan, couldn’t he?
He could try acting. Audition for a musical. Becoming more than just a music teacher. Walk through Daegu without anyone stopping him to say, Aren’t you Mr. Kim son?
Maybe, just maybe, this engagement—this absurd arrangement—wasn’t a cage.
Maybe it was a door.
And though he didn’t know it yet, didn’t feel it yet, somewhere in the space between resignation and longing, Daeyoung whispered to himself, “Please. Let this turn into something real.”