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The refrigerator's low, steady hum filled the apartment, a mechanical heartbeat pulsing beneath the stillness. It wasn't loud—it was background noise you would normally forget was even there—but tonight, it seemed strangely present, like a bass note threading quietly through the silence. Every so often, the compressor clicked on with a muted tick, a sound so brief and routine it might have gone unnoticed, if not for how still everything else was. The world beyond the walls felt paused—cars might have been passing outside, neighbors might have been talking in muffled tones somewhere down the hall—but here, inside this pocket of solitude, the only proof that time hadn't stopped entirely was that hum.
Mark sat at the dining table as if the chair had grown to fit him—spine not quite straight, shoulders relaxed and loose in that unselfconscious way reserved for when no one is looking. Without the scrutiny of cameras, there was no need to think about posture, no need to hold tension in his frame. His elbows occasionally brushed the edge of the table, lazy movements that blended with the room's softness.
The apartment light was warm and low—not dim enough to be gloomy, but just enough to round the edges off sharpness. A single pendant lamp hung above the table, and its golden pool of light spilled downward, catching on the sheen of the polished wood. That glow made the grain of the table richer, the shadows gentler, as though the entire room had been placed beneath a soft filter. Around the perimeter of that light, objects faded into the muted calm—the pale wooden floor that creaked lightly when you stepped in certain spots, the framed photo of his family angled just above eye level, the potted ficus by the sliding balcony door whose leaves swayed faintly whenever the air conditioning cycled through.
On the table in front of him, the smell of dinner lingered, full and savory. Steam coiled lazily upwards from slices of glistening samgyeopsal, their surface catching that soft golden light so that each piece looked as though it had been painted with a faint gloss. They were arrayed neatly beside a small dish of ssamjang whose deep reddish-brown hue promised a welcome kick of salt and spice. The stack of lettuce leaves waiting on their own plate were crisp, their green edges curling delicately, a cool counterpoint to the heat on the meat platter. Somewhere in the background of his mind, he knew these would go cold if he didn't start eating soon—but there was no rush in his body, no urgency in his hands.
His chopsticks, resting lightly between his fingers, made a faint, almost rhythmic click as he absentmindedly tapped them together, the sound carrying only far enough to meet his own ears. He let the motion repeat three or four times before setting them down. Metal on wood made a soft, rounded sound as the tips touched the edge of the table. With his free hand, he reached for his phone, its smooth glass cool against his fingertips.
His other elbow found its anchor on the table as his palm supported the weight of his tilted head. His posture was almost a teenager's slouch, the kind you'd probably get scolded for in school, but now—alone—it felt natural, as though gravity itself was slower here.
The glow of the phone screen painted his face in pale light, competing modestly with the golden warmth overhead. Notifications greeted him immediately—a restless cascade of activity waiting for him to scroll through. Twitter, Instagram, fan café updates... each platform was a different stream, but all seemed to pour endlessly and simultaneously. Colorful, chaotic, brimming with life.
He scrolled slowly at first, not seeking anything in particular. The feed rolled under his thumb like water under a bridge, glimpses of text and images drifting past with no urgency to stop for them. His expression didn't change much—only slight shifts from neutral to faint curiosity, nothing anyone would pin as excitement.
They never sleep, do they? The words surfaced in his head without him meaning to phrase them, accompanied by the half-smile that comes from private amusement. Somewhere, in some time zone completely opposite his own, someone was awake and typing. And not just one person—thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe. All narrowing their focus into this strange, electric common ground that connected them.
It was only when a specific thumbnail caught his attention—a freeze-frame of his own face from last week's schedule—that his scrolling slowed. Without hesitation, his thumb tapped the image.
The video began with faint crowd noise, then shifted into a crystalline snippet of laughter—his own. The sound startled him slightly; he always thought he knew what his laugh sounded like until he heard it in a clip.
"Oh man..." The words slipped out low, threaded with a small, quick chuckle. "I can't believe they caught me laughing like that. I look like a seal."
The corners of his mouth curved upward—an amused self-consciousness. He shook his head lightly, moving on, though there was something warm lingering in his chest now. Like revisiting an old diary entry written without realizing it would matter later.
Then came familiar faces—as if someone had queued up a personal slideshow for him. Jaehyun in the middle of a sharp, complicated dance break, strands of hair fanning out in the momentum. Yuta caught mid-laugh, the kind of laugh that looked like it could bend the light in the room. And Haechan—ever the spark—wearing that smirk that seemed to vibrate with mischief, the same one that usually made the crowd scream even before he spoke.
Mark's scrolling slowed again when he spotted a pastel-toned video edit stitched together with what felt like real devotion. It opened on his much younger self, hair dyed a bright color he hadn't worn in years, eyes sharper and more uncertain. Then the clips rolled forward in time—his look, his voice, his movements changing across eras. A piano melody played softly over the montage, each gentle note slowing his breathing without him meaning to.
He could feel it: the cuts were deliberate, the sequences built to draw a reaction not with spectacle, but with recognition.
Whoever made it... noticed things. Tiny, human things—how his shoulders dipped slightly when he laughed deeply, the way his hand always hovered before it rested on someone's back, his default tilt of the head when listening intently. Things he hadn't thought anyone would isolate.
He held the phone still, thumb resting idle against the screen, letting the last notes of the song fade before he moved again.
And then—
It happened.
Not with the kind of dramatic drumroll soundtracks use, not with flashing lights or anything grand. Just a shift. A flicker of movement on his feed so subtle, it almost didn't register until his brain caught it half a second later.
It was a thumbnail—two videos laid neatly side by side, split down the center like some kind of before-and-after advertisement. But this wasn't about haircuts or weight loss transformations. There was an intentionality to it—a symmetry that pulled the eye in. It wasn't official. Not a broadcast he knew of, not a clip from their label's channel. This had the distinct fingerprint of a fan or a casual internet sleuth with too much time, someone who had seen—or thought they had seen—connections between unrelated moments and decided to stitch them together as proof.
The caption hovered above it in bold, blocky lowercase letters. No hashtags, no emojis, no extra fluff. Just a single baited hook:
maybe i'm reaching... but is it just me or does it sound like they're QUITE LITERALLY talking about each other?
The phrasing felt casual, almost offhand—like the person was pretending to underplay the accusation—even though Mark knew, from experience, that people only wrote captions like that when they were absolutely convinced of their theory.
Almost instantly, his brows drew together. That unnamed part of him—the performer who spent years under the unblinking eye of cameras—snapped to a state of quiet alert. His scrolling hand froze mid-air, suspended between one post and the next, as though his body understood before his mind did that this was not something he could just swipe past.
The lamplight above pooled heat across the top of his head and shoulders, but the colder, artificial glow of his phone screen lit his face starkly from below, tracing pale blue across his features. In that light, his eyes narrowed, not in anger exactly, but in the way someone does when they're trying to sharpen their focus, the world around them dimming as their attention zeroes in.
The relaxed softness from a few minutes ago, the warm aftertaste of amusement from fan edits—that was gone. This felt different.
He hovered for one more second—thumb suspended, heartbeat ticking in his ears louder than the refrigerator hum—before tapping the thumbnail.
The first video snapped to life.
He knew it immediately.
The pale, almost sterile backdrop. The faint, telltale hum that came from filming in an apartment. The thin, bright light that never let you forget there was a camera on you, registering every blink, every fidget. All of it was familiar—too familiar—because it had been his shoot. His interview. A little over a month ago.
He didn't need to think about when. He could recall the exact shirt he'd worn that day without even waiting for the first frame to load fully.
There he was. On screen. Sitting across from Charles—the interviewer with an easy, conversational smile and a way of leaning in like you were already mid-story, even if you weren't talking yet. Mark remembered the whole atmosphere that day: warm enough to feel relaxed, but still laced with the faint buzz of professionalism.
On the recording, Charles tilted her head, voice even but just playful enough to live on the edge of teasing.
"You've never had a crush, have you?"
Mark's on-screen self smiled faintly, answering in the calm, measured tone he defaulted to when cameras were rolling. "I have."
"When you were a kid?" she prodded, tone light, eyebrows raised with just enough disbelief to make it feel like friendly banter.
"Yeah," his past self said simply, nodding once.
The interviewer's smile widened—leaning into the comfortable assumption she'd been building toward.
"You haven't had one as an adult, right? Because you don't have any reason to have a crush." She almost laughed while saying it—as if it was an agreed-upon truth.
On screen, Mark leaned forward the tiniest bit, his voice lacing with that playful resistance he sometimes slipped into when he wanted to disarm an assumption without fully explaining himself.
"No, no, I have~"
The clip ended there.
Mark stared at the space where the video had been, his jaw tightening fractionally. His lower lip pressed against his upper teeth like he might speak, even if there was no one in the room to hear it.
He didn't need to imagine the comment section; his brain was already filling in the blanks. He could see how the internet would thread this into any narrative it wanted. Selective edits were half the internet now—cut everything in a way that suggests what you want it to mean, and let everyone else fill in the gaps with their own certainty.
Before he had time to replay the full memory of that day, to chase the rest of what he'd actually said, the second half of the split-screen began.
This time, it wasn't him.
It was YN.
The tonal shift was immediate. Her setting was brighter—studio lights flush and balanced, set pieces arranged for a breezier, more vivid look. She sat tall yet relaxed in her chair opposite a different host. Her hair was tucked neatly behind one ear, exposing the subtle curve of her jaw as she smiled in that almost self-effacing way she got during interviews.
Even through the compression of the video, her laugh came through warm, low, and a little restrained—the same laugh he'd heard countless times off-camera. A sound that held back, like she was conscious of microphones but unwilling to let the humor pass her by entirely.
"So, YN," the host began, leaning forward slightly, her tone tinged with an almost conspiratorial curiosity, "the fans have been wondering if their lovely leader is seeing someone... or crushing on someone right now."
YN's head ducked slightly as she chuckled again—this time with a flicker of awkwardness that wasn't there a beat ago. Her gaze skipped off-camera for half a second. A tell? Or just her thinking?
"Um..." she said, voice tentatively soft.
The interviewer smirked. "Would it be better if I say... have you crushed on anyone recently?"
That earned a bigger smile from YN—subtle but genuine, like a tiny thread of tension in her had just loosened. She let out a small exhale that was almost a laugh again.
"Yeah, that's definitely better," she replied.
Mark recognized the rhythm in her tone—the little upward turn in better—as she laughed lightly again, filling the brief pause that followed.
Then she let her gaze drop for a moment, lashes dipping toward the floor as she thought—or maybe remembered—before lifting her face back toward the host.
"Um... I have," she said finally.
The interviewer's words — "Can you tell us anything about them... and how that's potentially going for you?" — landed softly in the air, but their weight was immediate. There was a visible flicker in YN's posture, that stillness before deciding how much of yourself you're actually willing to hand over to someone — or in this case, to everyone watching.
On the studio set, she didn't fumble the way people do when they don't have an answer. This wasn't the startled, deer-in-the-headlights hesitation. It was the considered kind — the pause of someone gathering every sentence into their palms and weighing each one before letting it go.
Her gaze flickered away from the interviewer's face, dipping toward the corner of the floor as though the next words might be hidden down there somewhere. When her eyes lifted again, the shift was small but present — a breath in, the faintest straightening of her spine.
"Um..." she began, her voice cushioning the word in a stretching, searching tone. She seemed to let that single syllable fill the tiny pause between them, settling her own pace before continuing.
And then:
"He is truly... a very, very, very nice person."
The repetition of very wasn't careless; it came with the rhythm of sincerity, as though the first two alone weren't quite enough to communicate her point. Her lips curved not quite into a smile, but into something softer, tugged from a private place.
"We have a lot of similar morals..." Her voice thinned slightly, not in weakness, but in the way people sound when they're stepping too close to a memory they can feel but shouldn't put in full view. "And I think we would have been great together."
On the other side of the screen, in the quiet little orbit of his dining table, Mark's brows pulled together into a slow, almost imperceptible knot. The phrasing pressed against him — not a stab, but a subtle push that demanded attention. His eyes narrowed just enough for the phone's glow to sharpen their edges.
"The reason we didn't end up together," YN continued, tone leveling out, "is because... considering our job descriptions, it probably would have never worked out."
The interviewer nodded once — curious, definitely — but didn't break in, letting the faint hum of anticipation linger. "Can you touch more on that?"
YN's mouth tilted in what looked like half of a real smile, half of a let's-just-get-through-this expression. She gave a small, resigned laugh, the kind that dissolved before it could really warm her face.
"I'll try," she said, eyes glinting briefly with wry humor, "whilst being as vague as possible."
The host leaned back slightly, a quiet invitation for her to take her time.
YN inhaled, drawing the breath in as though it would help her find the right words, and then began carefully:
"We both have very—" She stopped abruptly, her jaw tightening the barest amount. There was a split-second of recalibration, the kind anyone who speaks under public scrutiny would recognize. "Actually, no. I have a very protective and... possessive fan base."
The interviewer stayed watchful, listening.
"And," she went on, "they tend to be... a little much when I even breathe the same air within a hundred feet of someone." The laugh that followed was dry — humor edged with the exhaustion of lived experience.
Her eyes flitted down for a second before coming back to the interviewer. "I've noticed it throughout the years of being an idol, and it's... extremely toxic. And this is me just being 110% honest."
Her shoulders shifted minutely, as though bracing herself. "I know I'm probably gonna get some flack from my company and the fans, but... it's why I'm choosing my words very wisely right now."
Mark exhaled slowly without realizing he'd been holding the air in. This wasn't the performance-polished YN. Not the careful, rehearsed interview version. This was... her voice, unvarnished, even if measured. Something about the way her tone dipped at 110% honest pulled at a part of him he didn't touch often in public.
"But," she continued, "being in my mid-twenties, it's... honestly shocking that I haven't had the chance to truly experience relationships."
Her gaze lifted somewhere just past the camera lens, searching in the middle space between memory and longing.
"Or even crushes that were reciprocated." There was a faint exhalation around the words — not even a sigh, just a quiet surrender.
She gave the ghost of a smile, one that didn't reach her eyes. "And I say that because I'll have a crush on someone, and they'll have one on me as well, but... they won't tell me. Because of my fan base."
The quotation marks she made in the air with her fingers carried less sarcasm than obligation, a visual rhythm to match the point.
"And as much as people may say, 'Oh, well, you can just keep it private, keep it away from the fans'—" she paused here, leaning into the contradiction of it. "I feel like that's just not healthy for a relationship. Especially because of who I am."
She tilted her head slightly, grounding her next words. "That's not... healthy. Like..." one hand opened briefly, palm up, as though offering the thought to any listener willing to hold it, "I should be able to experience having a love life. To have a relationship that's private but not... secret."
By now, Mark wasn't just watching; he was leaning forward almost unconsciously, chin just barely hovering over the crook of his palm. His own food sat cooling inches away, steam dissipating into the warm air, forgotten.
YN's voice steadied, the gentleness giving way to conviction. Her gaze locked onto the interviewer as though she'd decided to stop softening the edges.
"I shouldn't have to hide the fact that I'm with someone from the world. And I'm not even just speaking for myself — I'm speaking for celebrities in general."
Her hands moved once, loosely sketching her emphasis in the air. "Because it's been seen time and time again... idols having what's called a 'dating scandal', which is already ridiculous. Dating shouldn't be a scandal, unless it's something genuinely problematic."
Her brows drew together slightly, voice tightening with sincerity and a hint of restraint. "But simply... being in love, or being fond of someone? That should never be a scandal worth receiving hate, death threats, stalkers, and the threat of losing your job and your income — just for liking someone."
She let the weight of that hang for a beat before continuing, quieter now but no less steady:
"And the guy that I was crushing on..." A faint smile, almost bitter in its fragility, edged her lips. "He did, actually — funny enough — end up telling me his feelings."
Her gaze dipped, and for a split second it looked like she might waver. But she pressed on:
"And I couldn't reciprocate. Not because I didn't feel the same, but because he's... super loved in the industry. And so am I. And all it takes — literally all it takes — is one glance at each other in the wrong setting, and suddenly it's a problem. It's an issue."
A small shrug, as though the movement might make the truth lighter.
"So me having a crush... usually goes nowhere."
Her smile then was almost weightless in the most fragile way, resigned in its edges. "And that's... kind of sad. But I feel like I've learned to live with it for now."
There was a pause here, a rare, vulnerable stretch of silence before she added, softer still:
"I just... worry that by the time me and my members decide to take a break from being idols, it'll be too late. That we won't really get to experience certain things you're supposed to in life, you know?"
The interviewer's nod was measured, as though she were physically holding onto each word YN had just given her. The weight in the air between them was visible — not awkwardness, but respect. Her eyes had the kind of focus that lived somewhere between pure professionalism and genuine human engagement.
"Wow," she said finally, voice quieter than before, softer in the way people subconsciously speak when they've been drawn close to something raw. "You know... I think you're probably one of the first idols I've spoken to who's gone this in-depth about it without... true fear of backlash."
YN's mouth pulled into a dry little grin, her head tilting slightly as if to say what's the point in fear at this stage? She let out a short laugh — not dismissive, but tinged with an understanding far older than her years.
"I mean..." she began, a small shrug rolling over one shoulder, "I feel like I'd get backlash either way, you know? Because you originally asked me if I've ever had a crush — and if I don't answer, people will just assume I have one and I'm hiding it, and that'll cause an uproar. But if I do answer..." Her lips pulled into an almost-smile with no mirth in it. "... well, that's still going to cause an uproar."
Her shoulders lifted again, the tiniest punctuation mark to the statement, and then lowered with a sigh you could barely hear. "It's a lose-lose situation. And that's exactly the problem. It's... not healthy." Another shrug, but softer this time. "That's all I have to say on that."
The interviewer smiled at her — a small, knowing curve of the lips — then tilted her head, voice casual but laced with the tiniest sting of curiosity. "Well... if your crush is watching... is there anything you'd say to him?"
Mark's spine straightened just enough for him to notice his own muscles pulling tight. It wasn't a dramatic movement — most people wouldn't have even noticed — but in the warm, dimly lit quiet of his apartment, it felt seismic.
On the phone's screen, YN didn't glance up right away. She looked down at her hands instead, palms resting loosely in her lap, fingers curling in toward her skin in slow, near-symmetrical motions. A small, almost imperceptible intake of breath lifted her shoulders.
The silence in the studio bled through into the silence in his apartment, amplifying the hum of the refrigerator behind him into something deeper, heavier.
Then, finally — she raised her head and fixed her gaze not on the interviewer, not off-camera, but at the lens itself. Straight through it.
Mark felt his pulse skid in his chest.
"Wherever you are..."
Her voice was quieter than it had been seconds ago — quiet in a way that wasn't for the audience, quiet in a way that stripped away the idea she was playing to millions. It was almost... private. Like the world had been set aside for someone specific.
"You confessed to me recently."
Mark's jaw locked without conscious thought.
"I want you to know that when I told you I didn't have feelings for you, and that I only viewed you as a friend... I..." She took a breath here — not shaky, but deep enough to mark a divide in her sentence. "... I'm sorry for hurting your feelings. Even though you said you weren't hurt, and that you were okay with just being friends — I know that's probably not true."
She didn't blink. Didn't glance away. Each word came wrapped in that same focused fragility — controlled, yet deeply unguarded.
"... I'm sorry."
Her eyes stayed locked to the camera the entire time, no cuts, no flickers away, no escape route.
Then, abruptly, the frame went black.
The shift made the dim room he was in feel even dimmer — the glow of the phone's screen fading until the dark reflections of his own face and the ceiling lamp overhead ghosted across the glass.
For a few seconds, the dominant noise in his life was again the fridge — humming like it had before all of this. He became aware of it slowly, like sound drifting up through water.
The phone, idle in his hand, threatened to slip into standby mode. His thumb hovered above the glass, both too heavy and too unsure to move.
What?
The thought was barely even a word inside him — not loud, not startled — just... stunned.
Had she... lied?
About not liking him back?
The words replayed without mercy, colliding with the memory from that night — the reflection of her eyes in low light, the careful way she'd closed that door in his face while still standing in the doorway.
She likes me?
His eyes dropped to the caption above the split-screen.
maybe i'm reaching... but is it just me or does it sound like they're QUITE LITERALLY talking about each other?
The line hit differently now. Almost accusatory in its certainty. He read it again. Then again. A third time.
Because he knew that in his interview clip, he had been talking about YN. He hadn't said her name, hadn't even steered too close to specifics — but he'd been telling the truth in it. About her. About that crush.
But in hers?
She was talking about me?
The sentence both warmed and pressed against his ribs in the same beat — a rush and a sting tangled together.
Had she felt the same all along? Was that night, that careful turning-down, less about denying there were feelings... and more about protecting both of them?
The idea drew a tightness into his chest — not pain, not fully comfort, but somewhere between. Too heavy to dismiss. Too sudden for a quiet Wednesday night over a half-eaten platter of cooling samgyeopsal.
Before Mark had the time to talk himself into ignoring it, his thumb moved on muscle memory alone. Scrolling.
Down to the replies.
Because the only thing worse than letting this idea take root on its own... was letting it take root and finding out he'd been fooling himself entirely.
Maybe she wasn't talking about him at all. Maybe it was vague, heartfelt in a generic way the internet was just twisting into juicy speculation.
His thumb dragged slowly this time, each movement careful, as if speed might make the truth burn faster.
Usernames rose and fell past his peripheral vision. Profile pictures. Tiny bursts of text stacked in endless vertical sequence.
The first few replies were harmless.
Simple. Light in their tone, the kind of internet chatter that skimmed along the surface without trying to dig any deeper.
"Okay, but... if they're not talking about each other, then explain THIS."
The capitalized THIS was followed by an image—a cropped, pixelated screenshot from a fan account. And as soon as Mark's gaze landed on it, his pulse gave a subtle skip.
It was a lyric set. His lyric set. Lines he'd written months ago, scrawled first in the corner of a notebook he carried in his backpack everywhere, before being shaped, polished, and folded into a song.
Now they were sitting there, out of context, under a caption claiming they matched YN's personality "to a tee."
He didn't even need to read the actual sentence to remember it — he knew the texture of those words before his eyes traced them. He remembered the precise moment they had come to him, leaning against a studio wall in the late hours of a Thursday night, the melody looping endlessly in his head, the ache of her lingering behind everything.
He remembered the exact mood — low lights, late fatigue, that weird crossbreed between clarity and exhaustion. And, most vividly, he remembered the person in mind. One person.
And now... strangers on the internet were holding those private syllables up to the light, turning them in their fingers like they were examining evidence.
His chest tightened as though the air inside had been pulled taut.
The next few replies rolled upward, softer in tone:
"Please, I'm manifesting this so hard. Let them be happy."
"Protect them at all costs. I want this for them."
The words were gentle, almost tender, and for a moment he felt... touched. In that quiet, unexpected way you do when someone wishes you well with no strings attached.
But almost immediately, his other instinct kicked in — the hovering, wary thing that wanted to put as much distance between himself and this growing wave as possible. Because attention, even well-meaning, could shift without warning.
He pressed his lips together, caught between leaning toward the warmth and pulling entirely away from it.
Another one blinked into view, stark white against the screen:
"The idea of Mark and YN literally yearning for each other is tearing me to pieces."
He exhaled, a slow stream of air that left his chest in measured increments. The corner of his mouth twitched upward for half a second—not quite a smile, but the acknowledgement of how ridiculously dramatic that wording felt. Still... there was something in it that seeped under his skin. The choice of "yearning" — it was too close to the truth for him to easily laugh off.
He leaned back slightly in his chair, the shift small enough that the wood creaked just faintly beneath him. His thumb hovered, skimming the glass without moving it yet, eyes scanning but not reading fully. Not yet ready for whatever the next one might be.
Some replies felt like quiet, supportive corners of the internet — rare spaces where the tone wasn't invasive, just... perceptive.
"It's not surprising that he has had a crush (it's normal). It's more so the fact that he's able to admit it given how crazy and possessive some 'fans' are... YN is getting death threats as we speak for the mere SPECULATION that they're talking about each other."
Mark's fingers stilled. The term death threats jumped off the screen the second he saw it, electric and ugly.
He knew—it wasn't like he'd lived in blissful ignorance. He'd seen the headlines, heard the stories, been made aware during urgent company briefings about boundaries breached, stalkers found outside dorm buildings, letters laced with things no one should ever read.
But seeing it written there so plainly, blunt and certain — while thinking of her, thinking of YN as a name in the same breath as those two words — sent a knot curling tight in his gut.
The thread stopped being theoretical in that moment. It wasn't just a virtual guessing game anymore. The stakes were right there, black letters on white background.
The next reply pulled him back in, though this one landed like someone had been sitting inside his head the whole time:
"This is going to make me cry—the way we can see from his point of view it feels like unrequited love to him, but for her it's her choosing to protect the both of them from crazy-ass fans. Guys... I really think they're in love."
He froze.
His thumb rested just above the glass but didn't move. That comment was too on-the-nose, too unnervingly close to exactly what he'd been thinking — what he'd been trying not to admit he'd been thinking since watching her clip.
It nearly made him shut it all down right there. Lock the phone. Drop it beside his plate. Pretend this had never wormed its way into his evening.
But... he didn't.
He kept scrolling.
"Lover boy and lover girl."
Short. Playful. The kind of nickname fans liked to toss around with giddy ownership, claiming the smallest sliver of intimacy through language. He could almost hear the sing-song in which it had probably been written.
"Honestly I'm not shocked. Her and Mark have been friends for years, and their chemistry has always been through the roof. Who would have thought it's because they potentially had feelings for each other?"
His attention snagged on that word—potentially. It felt like the tiniest scrap of restraint. Like one thin thread was all that kept the entire sentence from tipping forward into confirmation.
The good comments came in a streak — warm little embers among the noise:
"They both have such good taste if this is true."
"Oh they'd be a power couple of the century."
"This is so cute. If Mark was a puppy his tail would've been wagging just at the thought of YN."
"Them having a crush on each other is so innocently them, it's adorable."
"Please let them get together, I need this #ShipName."
He could feel them propelling him forward, keeping him afloat for a few lines at a time before the weight of it all would inevitably drag at the edges again.
And then—
The last one he saw before he stopped:
"I can't even describe how happy it makes me seeing them saying this—even if it isn't about each other."
The sentence hung there, unassuming, almost serene among the noise. Simple enough to breeze past, but he didn't.
He blinked slowly at it, letting the words settle like dust in his chest. Something about the simplicity made it require an extra beat to process. That someone could be content just watching them be open — whether or not the fantasy was true — felt... rare. Purity was unusual here, like catching a glimpse of still water on a wind-rough lake.
For a moment, he let himself breathe in the softness of it.
But he knew better than to think that softness could last.
Because for every warm comment — every gentle-hearted fan piecing together cute theories, romanticizing the smallest coincidences — there was always another side lurking just beyond sight, coiled and patient.
He could feel it before he saw it, the way sailors can smell a storm before it breaks. That subtle but unmistakable shift in current — the invisible line where curiosity stopped being sweet and started to curdle; where attachment calcified into ownership, and ownership sprouted venom.
And yet...
his thumb moved anyway.
Dragging downward, screen pulling him deeper.
The first hit didn't feel like a punch. Not yet.
It was dressed up as a rational take, wrapped in the pretend civility people used when they wanted to be cruel without staining their own hands.
"Charles only used the phrase one-sided crush, btw. Saying he never had a crush would be absurd, but she wasn't talking about crushes in general. The point here is that he's being humble, saying not everyone he's liked liked him back. But some ppl are (ofc) being weird about this lol. He and YN are NOT talking about each other."
Not an attack — not technically. But it had the same effect. A neat dismissal. An attempt to pack both him and her into a tidy labeled box, latch it shut, and shove it to the back of the closet. A casual authority from someone who didn't — and couldn't — know the reality.
Mark's jaw tightened anyway.
Scroll.
The next one didn't even pretend to be nice.
"Oh god, of course he's into that slut. Everyone's always all over YN. He should be careful."
The word hit like oil — slick and foul, coating his skin until it itched. His stomach twisted slow and tight. He hated how quickly his mind jumped to her seeing it. He knew exactly the face she'd make if she did — the sharp roll of her eyes, the air-slicing remark about touchy strangers who knew nothing. But he also knew what came after: the silence. The phone face down on the table.
He didn't want to think about her alone in her apartment, staring at that word like someone had spit it directly into her open palm.
Scroll.
"If it's true, how dare that bitch turn him down."
The ugliness in it burned differently — a jagged mix of entitlement and spite. As if his feelings, her feelings, were chips in some public poker game strangers had the right to place bets on.
He stared longer than he meant to, watching the cursor-blink of his own thoughts stall out.
He could stop. Right now. He could put the phone down, stand up, walk into the kitchen. He knew that.
Instead, his thumb moved again.
It was the same lie he always told himself when falling into these holes: context.
If he just read more, saw more, understood more, it couldn't blindside him later.
But deep down?
He knew it wasn't context he was chasing — it was the sting.
"She's just using him for attention. Bet she's got a whole PR plan for this. Pathetic."
"Mark deserves someone with CLASS. Not some industry mattress."
His hand tightened around the phone. The smooth edge dug into the soft skin of his palm.
"The way she flirts with everyone makes me sick. She'll chew him up and spit him out like she always does."
"Honestly, I'd lose all respect for him if they ever got together. He can do way better."
The muscle in his cheek twitched each time his eyes flicked over another line. He could feel heat rising in his ears, that strange, throbbing warmth that came with wanting to fight back and knowing he wouldn't.
"Doesn't matter if he likes her — she's bad news. All her exes say the same thing."
YN's never even had a boyfriend...
Scroll.
"She probably slept her way into that interview anyway."
That one stopped him cold. The words tunneled his vision until only the bright rectangle of his screen existed, everything else sliding into shadow.
He could hear her laugh in his head — not the warm, easy one she used when she actually found something funny, but the airy, deliberate one she put on when pretending not to care. The one that fooled strangers into thinking she was untouched by it all.
But he'd been there in the after, when the laugh faded and the silence took its place.
Then the subtleties dropped altogether.
"Whore."
"Trash."
"She's disgusting. They both are."
His thumb kept moving, but it felt detached from the rest of him — as if his body had been hollowed out and left running on some mechanical loop. The scrolling was automatic now. Impulse without thought. And yet every fresh line of text hit with precision, another bruise laid over the one before it, the weight compounding until it was almost unbearable.
"He's so fake. Acting humble while he's probably fucking her behind the scenes. Church boy my ass."
"If he ends up with her, I'm done supporting him."
"Her? Of all people?"
"im unstanning NCT. marks my bias and i cant believe hed be into her."
The words bled up the feed in a steady, ugly stream. And with every one, Mark's pulse thudded harder in his ears — slow, relentless, like a heavy drum inside a closed, echoing room. He could feel it in his fingertips, that faint, unpleasant tremor that made the phone wobble almost imperceptibly in his grip.
His breathing was all wrong — shallow, clipped pulls of air through a chest that felt bound too tightly, as if his lungs were trying to shrink themselves, retreat somewhere smaller, quieter. The heat that had started innocuously in his cheeks had spread like wildfire down his neck, prickling hot against his collarbone and under the back of his shirt.
His jaw ached. He hadn't noticed how hard he was biting down until his teeth ground together again, the pressure spiking whenever another venomous phrase splashed across the glass.
And the thing was—if it had just been about him, maybe... maybe he could've found the crack to let it drain out. He wasn't immune — he never had been — but he'd been around long enough to build that thin, hard skin over the soft parts. To remind himself that strangers could scrape together scraps of information and build the story they wanted.
But this wasn't just him.
They weren't poking holes in his character for sport.
They weren't speculating about some abstract stranger he could shrug away.
They were cutting into her.
Reducing YN to something smaller, uglier, until she wasn't a person at all. Just a name in their mouths, a target on their dartboard. A plotline for their soap opera that could be rewritten at will.
The edge between his teeth pressed sharper, harder, until it almost hurt.
He didn't even notice that his thumb had stopped mid-swipe until seconds later, when the movement froze, hovering above the slick glass like it was afraid to flip over the next card.
And then—suddenly—he shut it down.
One sharp, almost violent swipe upward, the app snapping shut. The abruptness was more satisfying than he expected, like slamming a door in someone's face.
The glow was gone — replaced by the dim black of his home screen, his own faint reflection staring back, warped by the gloss of the glass. His face looked... tight. Drawn.
For a long moment, he just sat there, phone resting in his palm like a loaded weight.
And then — without letting himself think it over — he tapped into their text thread.
Calling wasn't an option. Not now.
He was sure that if he heard her voice, every wire currently buzzing inside his chest would snap at once. Whatever was waiting in him would surge up all at once — and there'd be no getting it back down. The truth, his anger, the ache — it would all just spill out, raw and untethered. And he didn't trust himself not to spill too much.
Text was... safer.
Text gave him space.
Text put a filter between impulse and delivery.
A slim, fragile edge of control.
He typed:
Hey.
Looked at it.
Deleted it.
Tried again:
Are you okay?
Deleted that one too before it could even breathe on the screen.
Something longer drifted through his fingertips next. Specific things. Actual reference points. Halfway through it, his chest constricted, like he'd just stepped too far into something heavy. He backspaced until the words were gone, erasing them like they'd never existed, though the feel of them still lingered in his knuckles.
Three starts. Twelve half-sentences. Too many pauses staring at that blinking cursor, its steady pulse taunting him with send me or don't.
Finally, with a stubborn breath pressing against his ribs, he forced himself into what felt like the simplest, least dangerous version of what he needed to say — the one that might not spark anything she wasn't ready to hold.
Hey. you busy right now? I want to talk to you about something.
He read it once.
Read it again.
His thumb floated over Send, his pulse ticking hard enough in his chest that he swore he could hear it in his ears.
It wasn't a long message. It didn't even say much. But it felt heavy, heavier than the letters on-screen deserved. It felt like the kind of message that couldn't be taken back once it landed. The kind that would sit in both their hands, vibrating with everything that wasn't written.
Before he could give himself one more excuse — one more out — he tapped the screen.
The green bubble slid upward and locked into place in their history. Just like that, there was no turning back.
The worst part came next.
Always the same.
The waiting.
He dropped the phone to the bed beside him, like physical distance could slow the clock. Thirty seconds later, he picked it up again. Nothing. Lock. Stare at the ceiling. Unlock. Still nothing. That empty space beneath his last message glared like an open wound.
It felt like decades were falling away grain by grain — but when his eyes flicked to the corner of the screen, it had been... what, ten minutes? Maybe less.
And then — finally — the edges of that empty space softened, a small bubble popping into existence at the bottom, three dots pulsing gently in their rhythm.
Mark's back straightened without conscious decision, his shoulders pulled tighter as his eyes locked onto the screen.
Then the bubble vanished for a breath.
Came back.
And just when he thought he couldn't stare at the screen any harder.
Her reply unfolded in soft gray across the glass:
hey markie. sorry I didn't reply right away i just got in from rehearsal. im free to talk. everything okay?
A small exhale punched out of him before he could catch it.
It wasn't relief exactly—more like a loosening of a knot that had been sitting under his ribs for the past hour. His chest eased... only a little, just enough to make him aware of how tight it had been.
God, even through text she had that thing—that way of sounding so soft, so unconcerned, like she wasn't already carrying two lifetimes' worth of weight on her back.
The casual lowercase, the missing punctuation, the little admission about coming in from rehearsal—it all felt so her.
And Markie.
It was just a nickname, one she'd probably used hundreds of times without thinking, but the letters still managed to curl strangely warm in his stomach. It was ridiculous, but for half a second, he actually pictured her saying it—tone light, lips quirking—before flicking her gaze away the way she always did when she was trying not to smile too much.
She didn't know it, but if she'd asked him for the moon right then, he would've found himself wondering where to buy a ladder tall enough to reach it.
Before that train of thought could get away from him any further, his thumbs were already moving.
Yeah everything's fine. I just wanna talk to you about something. It's kind of important.
This time there was no endless hovering, no three failed rewrites. The words rolled out quickly, clearly—like they'd been ready for days. He tapped Send before the part of his brain that normally second-guessed everything could rear its head.
And then he held his breath.
The moment the small, damning Read slipped into place beneath his message, he felt his heart stutter. A small bubble bloomed almost immediately—three dots pulsing like a miniature heartbeat.
OK, what's up?
That was it. Those four words had been the perimeter he'd been circling for days. Weeks, maybe. The thing that had been pushing from the inside out every time he thought about her, every time her name lit up his phone.
Now there was no excuse. No barrier of timing or circumstance.
He sat there for several long moments, the faint white-blue glow of the phone making everything else in the room seem far away. He could hear the gentle refrigerator hum in the kitchen, the occasional pop of metal cooling in the walls, but none of it seemed to touch him.
It wasn't that he didn't know what to say—he knew exactly what was clawing at his chest.
It was that putting it into her hands, even through text, felt like sliding the pin out of a grenade.
He inhaled slowly. Tried to steady it. Failed. The breath spilled out uneven. That shaky little wobble in his chest wasn't nerves anymore—it was truth digging in its heels, refusing to stay quiet.
He started typing. Slowly. Deliberately. As though speeding up might cause his courage to trip over itself.
About the other night...
He stopped. Even seeing the words there made his stomach turn over.
His mind replayed the memory without mercy—the way his voice had wavered when he'd said it in person, the way her eyes had fixed on him, grounding him and unraveling him at the same time as she'd listened—really listened—to him pour himself into that moment.
A swallow scraped down his throat before his thumbs moved again.
When I confessed to you .
The text blinked back at him from the screen, solid and undeniable. His instinct twitched to delete it, to take refuge in vague phrasing, to call it "what we talked about" instead.
But he didn't.
The truth was the truth, and sanding the edges off wouldn't make pushing it across the table any easier.
I know we talked about staying just friends and everything, and I don't want you to think that I'm pressuring you or trying to change your mind on anything...
He paused. Read it back once. Wince. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel cornered. That had always been his worst-case scenario—making her feel like his feelings were a cage around hers.
But this had been scraping at him for days. And if he didn't let it out now, it would keep scraping until it built splinters he wouldn't be able to pull free later.
His thumbs picked up speed on their own. The words—or maybe the weight of them—pushed him forward.
...but I saw a clip of an interview you did recently. You were asked about crushes, and you started talking about how it feels being an idol, about relationships, and all those super personal, intimate things you feel. And at the end of it, the interviewer told you to give a message to your crush.
Stop again. Eyes on the words. Heart in his throat.
This was the part that had buried itself under his skin.
And you said... you lied.
His heartbeat thudded so loud it filled his ears.
You said you lied about telling me you didn't feel the same. That you wanted to stay friends. That you were sorry.
And now the apartment seemed to shrink around him. The glow from the phone was too bright, the air too still.
And maybe I'm just being delusional—maybe I'm just hoping—but I can't stop wondering if I'm the one you were talking about.
He sat there staring at it, the lines softening at the edges from how long he was holding them in his sight.
I just... I have to know if it was me you were thinking of when you said that. And again, I don't want you to feel pressured or trapped in any way. I just can't help but see this as more than coincidence. I just want to understand... to have some kind of closure. And maybe, if it is what I think it is... we could talk. Figure out what's next.
He read it. Then again. Then one more time, the tremble in his chest steady but unyielding. His thumb hovered over Send, knowing the weight of the shift this could cause.
It could open a door.
Or it could close one he wasn't ready to have slammed yet.
Finally, he threw the breath out and tapped.
The message slid upward in the chat, neat and green, the tiny delivered mark appearing underneath like nothing more than a footnote—until you realized it might be one of the most pivotal sentences in the story of them.
And now... there was the nothing.
The endless open space of waiting.
The bubble appeared almost instantly—those three gray dots pulsing in place—and his pulse jumped like someone had snagged it with a hook.
They vanished.
Reappeared.
Vanished again.
It became a rhythm: dots for two seconds, gone for four. Back again. Gone again. Each return felt like a promise; each disappearance, a retreat. He pictured her somewhere else, phone in hand, chewing at her lip or twisting her hair as she weighed... everything. Choosing whether to tell him nothing had changed. Or...
Or saying it had always been him.
The thought made his muscles coil too tightly to stay still. His leg bounced under the table. His fingers found the edge and tapped a restless percussion against the wood.
He couldn't sit here in this silence anymore. He got up—crossed to the table and, without even realizing it was a choice, started finishing his now-cold samgyeopsal. Force of habit took him through rinsing the dishes in the sink, water splashing against metal with a sharpness that seemed to cut the hum in his ears.
Still—his gaze kept darting toward the bed, where his phone lay like an unexploded shell.
Then—
A sound.
The distinct, crystalline ping.
It sliced through every other noise, left the air ringing in its place. He froze mid-motion, the fridge door half-closed behind him.
Slowly, carefully, he finished pushing it shut with one hand while the other reached for the phone.
By the time he sat back down in his chair, lowering himself gingerly—as if moving too quickly might somehow shatter whatever this was—Mark became aware of it.
His hands.
They were shaking.
Not violently, not in a way someone across the room would notice — but enough that the phone trembled faintly in his grip, the edge of the case whispering against his fingertips.
He took one long, deliberate breath — in through his nose, out through his mouth — the kind you take before reading a difficult letter or opening an envelope you've dreaded for months.
Then he unlocked his phone with a swipe that felt heavier than it should have, the glass cool beneath his thumb.
Her name lit the top of the screen.
And below it—
A dense block of text. Long enough that he had to scroll to see all of it.
His thumb hesitated before touching the screen, like the words might burn if he moved too fast.
And then he began to read.
I was talking about you... and what I said is true.
The first blow landed there. Eleven words, and they managed to rewrite the entire map inside his head. His pulse kicked hard in his chest, a heat blooming upward quick and sharp — not entirely joy, not entirely relief, but something molten and unnameable.
I lied about not liking you back and only wanting to be your friend.
He froze over that line. His gaze caught there longer than necessary, the sentence tolling in his head like a slow bell. Days—weeks—of replaying that night, of dissecting every glance, every syllable... and in one sentence she'd cracked the glass on the memory.
I said that because you and I both know what it's like to be idols in this world, in this industry, where all it takes is one wrong move and we could be the next big scandal, losing everything we love so much.
He could see her as he read it — not just the words, but the tilt of her head when she spoke about their industry, that sharp glint in her eyes that was half-weariness, half-defiance. There was no exaggeration here. They both knew the math: one photo, one "suspicious" interaction, and the machinery of rumor could grind a career to dust in days.
When I told you that night I didn't feel the same... I didn't say it because it was true, or because I wanted to hurt your feelings, or anything anyone might have assumed or that you might have thought.
Something stung behind his sternum here — the quiet, almost embarrassed knowledge that he had assumed. Not the worst things, but things. That maybe he'd misread everything. That maybe her warmth toward him had just been a kind trick of personality.
I said it to protect you.
His throat closed up on that one. It was simple but brutal. He thought he'd known what protection was — keeping quiet, keeping distance, making their connection look ordinary in plain sight. But this was different. She'd chosen to be the villain in his story so he wouldn't have to be in anyone else's.
I get threats daily from every corner of this industry, just for existing.
His grip on the phone tightened. He didn't need the examples — he'd seen enough in the past hour's spiral through comment sections. Still, something about her stating it that plainly made his stomach harden.
People are ruthless online—fans, strangers, coworkers.
A bitter taste rose in his mouth. He could picture every one of those categories with alarming specificity, faces and usernames flickering like a slide show he wanted to smash.
As much as I try to pretend it doesn't affect me, turning off my phone, ignoring the negativity, it never works.
His own reflection stared faintly back at him from the black edges of the phone. He thought about how convincing she was when she laughed things off, how easily she hid.
Now he knew that hiding was never the same thing as being untouched.
No matter where I go, I am me, and I can't escape the cruel words, the snark, the constant judgment.
He read that twice. The truth of it was welded to his own reality too tightly for him to pretend it didn't apply to them both.
Turning you down... that was me trying so hard to shield you from that.
A sharp ache rippled across his chest — the image of her slamming that door shut, not because she wanted to, but because she thought it would keep him safe.
Because I love you.
He stopped breathing.
Even alone, the words rooted him to the chair. His pulse was loud in his skull.
Whether as a friend, a crush, or... something more, I love you. I always have.
Every version of her that he had known flashed simultaneously — laughing backstage, tired in airports at 4 a.m., leaning against the wall of a practice room half-asleep. It hit him that maybe she'd been loving him through all of those moments.
Maybe I thought if I turned you down, we could just remain friends, live our lives like we always had, and keep everything from getting messy.
His lips pressed together. He understood that instinct too well — the wish to stay just one step behind the edge, where nothing you feel can destroy you.
But now I know... now I know we both feel the same thing. And there's no way I could just be your friend after this.
Something fluttered low in his stomach — equal parts anticipation and the dizzy fear of a free fall.
Every time I hear your voice, every time you make one of your stupid jokes that sometimes hit, sometimes miss... my heart flutters.
A helpless smile twitched at the corner of his mouth before he could help it. She'd been keeping track.
It does stupid things. It makes me want to cry. Makes me want to laugh. Makes me a little angry too, but that's because I've been trapped in this world for so long, thinking that no matter how much I loved you, I could never actually have you.
He swallowed hard. This mirrored his own private resentment — loving someone you can stand next to in public but never touch.
And maybe that's true—but I love you. So much.
By now, the words were starting to blur slightly.
Not in the way that came from tired eyes or poor lighting — the lamp above the table was still sending out its steady amber glow, the screen in his hands radiating that cold blue-white. No, this blur came from the inside out. From blinking more than he should, from the way his eyes kept darting back to the same lines as if they might shift when he wasn't looking.
He leaned back in his chair, letting the spine of it catch his weight. The phone tilted in his hands until it was angled toward the ceiling, like holding it farther away might dull the impact of what he'd just read. As if a few inches of distance could act as armor.
It didn't.
I'm so sorry I hurt you.
The line sat there, plain and unadorned. No flourish, no attempt at dramatic poetry. Just a directness that somehow cut sharper than any winding apology could have managed.
He felt it in his chest — an ache that wasn't pain exactly, but a kind of reopening. Like a scab you'd convinced yourself had fully healed, until something brushed against it the wrong way.
I hope you can forgive me. I will be okay with whatever that forgiveness and that process looks like.
He could feel the sincerity radiating from the glass, as though she'd somehow managed to press it into the message itself. For a moment, if he let himself, he could see her — sitting somewhere quiet, phone in both hands, head bent slightly forward, lips moving just enough to mouth the words as she typed. That tiny furrow in her brow she got when she was telling the truth even though it scared her.
Mark's hands shook as he scrolled back to the top — not skimming, but letting his gaze snag on each sentence deliberately. Line by line. Almost like rereading would be the only way to believe it was real.
Every sentence felt like a single thread being pulled tight against his ribs, weaving itself into something impossible to ignore. Every phrase reminded him of the months, maybe years, they had both been carrying the same quiet weight. Of the unspoken risks. The constant fear. And under it all — the one thing neither had dared speak in the open air until now.
His heart was pounding so hard it almost felt audible — like the vibration might somehow travel through the phone and reach her. His breathing was uneven, catching halfway in and short on the way out, a pattern that kept resetting each time a particular line punched a little harder than the last.
And yet — through the adrenaline, through the dizzy edge of disbelief — something shifted.
He smiled.
It wasn't instantaneous or steady. It was slow, stretching upward in fragments, his lips trembling with it as if afraid to commit too soon. But it was there — an incredulous, breathless, almost childlike smile.
Because after all the chaos, after all the second-guessing and forced distance, after all the lies told for self-preservation... she had chosen him.
He sat frozen that way for a long moment after the last word of her message. The phone was still in his hands, its glow painting the pale planes of his face, catching on the faint shimmer around his eyes. The screen light carved out the disbelief in his expression, the raw ache swelling in his chest, the flicker of hope he hadn't dared touch in what felt like forever.
He couldn't breathe properly — not at first. The words kept bouncing against the inside of his head, ricocheting too fast to catch:
She loves me. She's always loved me. She lied... to protect me...
It was absurd — almost laughable — and maybe that's why a strange, bitter chuckle rose uninvited to his throat. It started small, but once it breached, it grew shaky, jagged, until the sound tangled with a different kind of release altogether.
Tears.
Not the hot, angry kind. These came slow, deliberate, tracking down his cheeks quietly at first. By the time they reached his jawline, they'd gathered enough to catch the light, pooling briefly in the hollow of his skin before slipping away. He didn't bother brushing them back. Letting them fall felt truer.
Months' worth of breathless holding-in was unraveling in real time.
His fingers tightened around the phone, trembling violently as he scrolled upward again, finding that line almost reflexively:
I lied about not liking you... because I love you...
It was too much — too full. Like opening a door to a room so bright you had to squint before you could step inside.
He shot out of the chair without thinking, the legs scraping lightly against the floor. His pace across the apartment was fast, aimless, circling the small space from corner to corner as though movement might help regulate the spinning inside his ribs.
The phone stayed clutched to his chest like something fragile and necessary, his heart hammering against it hard enough to make him aware of both sensations at once.
Finally, at the edge of the pacing, he stopped in front of the window. The outside world seemed almost alien right now — the sharp pinpoints of city lights blinking across the night, cold air leaking in through the narrow slice where the glass didn't fully seal. He let his fingers brush against it, the chill giving him the smallest ground back inside his body.
But the thoughts wouldn't still.
He unlocked the phone again, opening a fresh message. His thumbs tried for words, but trembled so violently the first few letters looked like they'd been typed by someone in the middle of an earthquake.
I... I love you too.
No. Delete.
Another try — more careful, deliberate, but still shaking:
I... I can't believe it. I... I love you too. I've loved you for so long and I didn't know if you felt the same. I've been so scared to ask again, scared I'd ruin our friendship...
Pause. Breath. He read it once, twice, eyes unfocused, then added:
...but knowing you feel the same... it's like a weight has lifted. I've been holding it in for so long, convincing myself it wasn't real, that maybe I was imagining it, but now... now I know. I can't stop smiling. I'm trembling... I'm laughing... I'm crying... all at once. I never want to let this go.
No more hesitating. His thumb slammed send.
The rush that followed was immediate — adrenaline and warmth racing through him so fast he actually laughed out loud, startled by its sound. Then it broke again into a soft, hitching cry. Relief and joy were tripping over each other on their way out.
He paced again, turned in a full circle, then collapsed into the chair like gravity had decided it wanted him after all. His eyes scanned her message once more, soaking it in as if the words might evaporate if he blinked too long.
Without letting the fear of overstepping catch him, he typed again:
Can we... can we just talk now? I don't want to wait another second to hear your voice. I want to hear everything, all of it...
Almost instantly — three dots.
His breath caught and held.
Her reply was swift, almost urgent:
Yes. I want to hear yours too. I can't wait any longer.
His chest caved around the exhale that came. He laughed again, the sound so tangled in tears it was impossible to tell one from the other. Dropping to the floor almost unconsciously, he sat cross-legged, leaning back into the couch as if he needed something solid to keep him upright.
The phone pressed against his heart, its glow painting the ceiling as he rocked gently. Every muscle in him was shaking — from the sheer release of it, from the months of speculation and fear dissolving at last into something certain.
He typed one final line:
I love you. I've loved you all along.
Send.