Chapter Text
I stay up at night not because sleep eludes me, but because I can’t bring myself to accept that my day was nothing more than this mundane, predictable, endlessly repeating. The hours crawl past like slow traffic in a city that never moves, each second a reminder that nothing I do seems to matter. My job ended weeks ago, though I can’t quite call it a “job” to begin with. The offices I’d drifted between feel like a blur now, all fluorescent lights and endless paperwork. The truth is, I have nothing to hope for, and yet the night refuses to let me lie down and forget.
The apartment is quiet. Too quiet. The hum of the fridge and the soft creak of the heating pipes are the only things that break the silence, and still, they feel louder than they should. Shadows stretch across the walls, jagged and uneven, but I don’t reach for the light switch. I like the dark, the way it folds around me, wraps me in a cloak of half-sleeping dreams I can almost touch. It’s comforting and terrifying at once.
Jisung is asleep in the bedroom, soft breaths rising and falling, his arm draped over the pillow like he belongs to the night itself. Even asleep, he glows, like a candle in a drafty room, fragile but constant. I lie on the edge of the couch, watching him through the doorway, feeling my chest tighten. Soonie, our small, orange cat, curls around Jisung’s shoulder, her purr vibrating softly, a pulse in the silence. She twitches occasionally in sleep, chasing dreams I can’t see.
Everything feels too perfect. Too small, too soft, too fleeting. I’m hyperaware of the light reflecting off Jisung’s hair, the rise and fall of his chest, the little twitch of Soonie’s tail. My mind spins, whispering warnings I can’t turn off: It can’t last. This is too good. Something will break it. I clutch the blanket around me a little tighter, trying to anchor myself in this moment that already feels like a memory I might lose.
I stare at the window. Outside, the city is quiet, but not asleep. Lights flicker from distant apartments, and I imagine stories behind each one: arguments, laughter, someone eating ice cream on a balcony, someone crying quietly, someone brushing their cat’s fur, someone scrolling through their phone and feeling exactly as small as I do. I wonder if they feel it too. the strange, fragile suspension of life when nothing is really happening, but everything could.
I reach for the small notebook I’ve kept hidden under the couch cushion. My pen hovers over the page, but nothing feels worthy of writing. I could record the patterns of shadows on the walls. I could write the sound of the radiator hum. I could describe Jisung’s breathing and call it poetry. None of it seems enough. The words feel too blunt, too concrete, too human. I want to capture the night itself, the invisible tremor that runs through it, but how do you trap a heartbeat in ink?
Soonie shifts again, stretching luxuriously, claws clicking softly against the hardwood. She opens one eye, then closes it, as if judging me for my restlessness. Jisung murmurs something, turning in his sleep, and I feel the tight coil of my chest loosen slightly. Maybe I’ll be okay. Maybe this is okay.
And yet the anxiety clings. My eyes dart to the apartment’s corners, the faint outlines of furniture, the walls that are too still. My heartbeat quickens for no reason, then slows, then quickens again. I can feel the fragility of this. my home, my love, my little cat curled like a living ornament against Jisung’s shoulder. It feels impossible that it is real, that it belongs to me, that it could survive another night without something cracking.
I take a deep breath and try to center myself. I focus on the soft weight of Soonie against Jisung, the warm sweep of his hair brushing the pillow, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. I remind myself: This is real. For now, this is real. My chest swells with a strange, fragile joy. My heartbeat slows, yet somewhere deep in me, the tremor remains. the delicate, unavoidable awareness that anything this sweet could vanish in a blink.
I shift on the couch and look at Jisung again. His face is serene, untouched by the world outside these walls. The golden lamplight catches a strand of hair that has fallen across his forehead, and I find myself holding my breath. Soonie twitches one last time and settles. Silence envelops the apartment again.
I close my eyes briefly, feeling the weight of the night pressing in. And in that moment, I realize something I haven’t admitted even to myself: I am completely, irreversibly in love with him. With Jisung. With Soonie. With the quiet, fragile life we have built together.
I let myself linger in it, in the trembling, bittersweet beauty of it, and I wonder, almost hope, that maybe, just maybe, nothing will shatter tonight.