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Wonwoo wakes before the kettle. This, already, is unusual. His glasses are on their last legs. He takes them off where they have indented into his skin and peers at them through the early morning blur. Their last, very crooked legs. He’d slept without taking them off again.
He grunts when they’re back on his face, then blinks into the early morning fog. Wonwoo’s bed creaks when he shifts; the mattress has long since warped from damp. There’s a low hum hanging in the air. It’s the same every day. Wonwoo knows it’s the sea, but sometimes he can feel it between his ears, and inside his chest—the same sound as something boiling over, but distant. It takes him a moment to realize: the waves haven’t crashed yet.
The sea is always there. Wonwoo wants to listen, but it is too early. She’ll talk later anyway.
The cottage is shaped wrong for wind. It’s built in odd angles, jutting from the cliffside like something half-remembered. The walls are cluttered with jars, scrolls, ropes of dried seaweed. Bits of copper and wax, charms and scribbled warnings. Wonwoo doesn’t believe in most of them, but they make good insulation.
He stumbles into the kitchen. It smells like iron and lavender. The floor tiles are uneven. Something squishes underfoot. It’s taken him a bit to get used to it. He doesn’t look.
The kettle hisses when he touches it. Not boiling. Just annoyed. He pats the handle. “Sorry,” he says, and it quiets.
The tide charts are spread across the kitchen table, weighed down by a chipped mug and an old jawbone. Wonwoo runs his fingers over yesterday’s notations.
3rd bloom, out of season — Barnacles humming again — No shorebreak for two tides — Circle in pool: oddly untouched by wind — Something in the fog (unclear).
He doesn’t like that last one. The ink’s smudged; he can’t remember writing it.
Wonwoo marks the new date and taps his pen three times. A habit. For luck. Not that it helps. Then he glances at the window.
Outside, the sea is glass. Not calm — calm has texture, a rhythm. This is something else. Too still, like it’s pretending.
Wonwoo pats the kettle again, just to make noise.
He goes to the garden next: a patch of dirt clinging to the cliffside, shielded by driftwood fencing. There’s a row of sea radishes, a few sickly herbs, and a cluster of bellflowers that shouldn’t be alive this late in the season.
He kneels beside the radishes, checks the soil. Damp. He frowns and digs a little deeper. Salt.
“Great,” he mutters. “That’s new.”
The bellflowers chime faintly in the breeze. He squints at the sound and realises the breeze is coming from the wrong direction.
Wonwoo stands, brushes his palms off on his robe, and looks out toward the sea.
It hasn’t moved.
He turns sharply and goes back inside. The kettle screams.
The tea pours too hot. But Wonwoo can't bear to wait today, so he drinks it before it cools; the heat scorches his tongue and he doesn’t flinch.
The fog has started to creep in through the cracks in the window. A droplet forms at the top of the pane and slides down slowly, like it’s thinking about it.
The house hums faintly with pressure. He can feel it in the floorboards. In his teeth.
He writes again, slow and clinical:
Air density increased — Fog entry (active) — Tide: artificial stillness —
Someone?Something watching.
He lingers over the last words, a prickle crawling up his neck.
The knock comes just before noon.
It’s soft. More like a tap, or a suggestion.
Wonwoo freezes mid-step. He’d been moving to fetch another candle. The ones in the study keep going out.
The door hasn’t opened in weeks. The hinges are sealed — the salt did that long ago. If something’s knocking, it shouldn’t be.
Another tap.
Wonwoo turns.
Waits.
The house exhales.
Then, impossibly, the door swings open.
And someone steps inside.
The figure doesn’t resolve all at once. First the fog lifts, thinned by something brighter inside it. Then the doorway fills, bent out of proportion like water warping glass. By the time Wonwoo blinks, there is already a man standing on the uneven tiles, though the salt-sealed hinges have not moved.
His robe is darker with seawater, dripping as though he has walked straight up from the waves. The hem does not dry, though the room is warm. His hair — red, not the pale wash of kelp or coral but the slow flare of dusk through water — clings in wet strands to his cheekbones. He glows, faintly, as if the fog outside has remembered light for the first time.
Wonwoo does not breathe.
The man tilts his head, droplets sliding loose, and smiles with something patient in his face. His voice, when it comes, is calm and low, carrying no more weight than the kettle’s sigh. Wonwoo notices: the kettle has quieted as soon as the door opened.
“May I come in?”
The words hang in the air, absurd. He’s already inside.
Wonwoo still feels he should say something, if only to give his mouth something to do. He realizes it has been hanging open when the stranger’s eyebrows raise.
“You’re dripping on the floor,” he settles on instead.
The man glances down; hair brushes his cheek as the puddle at his feet spreads, slow and deliberate. He hums, then says, in a voice Wonwoo has to lean toward to hear, “Sorry.”
The water still doesn’t stop.
The man — if that’s what he is — takes another step forward. The puddle follows. Wonwoo backs up, almost trips over a coil of rope he’s meant to put away for months. His fingers brush a jar hanging from the ceiling; it clinks faintly, a whisper of shells. The sound is too loud in the hush that’s fallen over everything.
The man’s glow softens. It isn’t bright enough to cast shadows, but the air bends around it, refracted. The moisture in the room thickens, fog licking at the walls.
He’s beautiful in a way that’s uncomfortable. Delicate — all soft angles and stillness — he doesn’t seem to mind being seen. Wonwoo has the urge to catalogue: how the man’s hair keeps dripping down his temples, the droplets disappearing before they reach his shoulders; whether the glow comes from somewhere inside him or whether the air around him merely remembers to shine.
He clears his throat. “The door was sealed.”
“Must have been,” the man says.
“Yes — I made sure of that. How did you—”
“You wanted company.”
Wonwoo’s mouth opens, then shuts. “I did not.”
The man smiles again, almost kind. “You wrote it down.”
He gestures toward the tide charts. Wonwoo’s eyes dart to the table. The ink of his last entry — Someone? Something watching — has bled; the letters have warped into a shallow ring of saltwater.
Wonwoo swallows. “That wasn’t an invitation.”
The man hums softly, like the kettle when it’s just short of boiling. “It was enough.”
He steps closer. Wonwoo can smell him now — sea brine and something faintly floral, like the bellflowers clinging to the cliff. The glow shifts as he moves, catching in the lenses of Wonwoo’s glasses until it feels like he’s seeing double: the man before him, and the impression of something vast and shapeless behind him.
The kettle chooses that moment to rattle; its lid twitches. Wonwoo flinches and, muttering “Traitor,” yanks it off the stove.
“Tea?” the man asks, as if he’s the one offering.
Wonwoo doesn’t answer. His throat still burns. He fills two cups anyway.
The clinking continues as they drink. Steam curls upward, thin as breath. Wonwoo stirs honey into his own, then pointedly leaves the other untouched on the table between them.
The man — still wet, still glowing faintly — leans close, eyes tracing the shelves, the bundles of herbs, the hanging jars. “You’ve been here a long time,” he says.
Wonwoo bristles. “You say it like it’s wrong.”
“It is not,” the man murmurs. “But it must get lonely.”
Wonwoo looks away. “I prefer it that way.”
The man’s gaze lingers, unreadable. He reaches out and brushes a fingertip over the rim of the second cup. The tea ripples once, a perfect circle spreading outward, then settles. When he speaks again, his voice feels as if it comes from somewhere beneath the floorboards.
“The sea’s been asking for you.”
Wonwoo laughs once, sharp. “She asks for everyone eventually.”
The stranger’s eyes brighten. “You are the only one who answers.”
The hum in Wonwoo’s chest shifts — no longer the sea’s, but something smaller, closer.
“I think you should leave,” Wonwoo says finally.
The man tilts his head, the way animals do when they don’t understand a word but recognise tone. “If I leave,” he says softly, “the sea will stop moving.”
Wonwoo freezes.
The kettle rattles again. A drop of water slides down the man’s wrist and disappears into the wood grain.
“Drink your tea, Wonwoo,” he says, using his name like it’s an old song.
And Wonwoo, without meaning to, drinks.
Morning finds the house changed.
The fog has thinned to a pale mist that drifts through the open window, no longer pressing but passing. Somewhere below, waves move again — low, even breaths against the rocks. Wonwoo lies half-curled on the kitchen bench. His neck aches, and there’s an unusual warmth about him. He remembers grumbling to the kettle while his visitor took the bed; he remembers the curl of red hair at his nape, the shine of sea glass in a necklace. He does not remember bringing a blanket. His glasses sit on the table beside a ring of dried salt.
For a few seconds he doesn’t move. The quiet feels wrong in a new way — too gentle, like a fever broken.
When he sits up, the kettle sighs. Steam curls from its spout even though he hasn’t lit the stove. The tide charts are dry. The ink on the newest page has fixed itself, no longer bleeding; the words are neat and clear. At the bottom of the list, in loopy cursive that isn’t his, one more line:
Sea restored. Rest easy.
Wonwoo stares at it until the letters blur. He wipes his eyes, annoyed.
The air smells of salt and something faintly floral — the same scent that clung to the man’s hair. He glances toward the door. It’s shut again, the hinges crusted with fresh sea salt. The puddle is gone.
He makes tea automatically, just to keep his hands busy. When he lifts the kettle, it feels lighter, as though some weight inside it has been poured out overnight.
The first sip is strange — sweet, almost.
He finds himself saying, “Thank you,” to no one in particular.
The sea answers with a soft crash, like laughter muffled by distance.
Wonwoo sets his cup down, takes up his pen. The page waits. He writes:
Tide resumed at dawn. The sea — content.
He hesitates, taps his pen against the cup, and adds, almost as an afterthought:
Unexplained visitor — gone.
The words sit there for a moment before a drop of water lands on the edge of the page. Just one. Perfectly round.
Wonwoo looks up. The ceiling is dry.
He doesn’t smile exactly, but something in his shoulders loosens.
Outside, the bellflowers chime in the right direction again.
Three days pass before the sea misbehaves again. Wonwoo feels like there’s something missing.
He wakes to the sound of footsteps above the ceiling — or at least, something that sounds like measured, unhurried pacing. The cottage only has one floor. He lies there listening until the noise fades into the steady hiss of rain.
When he finally gets up, the kitchen is wet. Not flooded — just damp. The windowpanes sweat. The floorboards glisten. The kettle hums softly to itself; it hasn’t stopped lately.
And the man is sitting at the table.
He’s drier this time, though not entirely. His hair hangs loose, still red and dark at the ends, curled as if he’s been underwater for years. He’s looking at one of the tide charts, head tilted, mouth pursed in mild interest.
Wonwoo stops in the doorway. “You—”
“Good morning,” the man says, polite as ever.
Wonwoo swallows. “The door was sealed. Again.”
“Yes.”
“How did you—”
“You really do like asking that.”
“I’d like an answer someday.”
“Someday, then.” The man looks up, smiling faintly. “You left the kettle on.”
“I—” Wonwoo glances toward the stove. The kettle is steaming. He mutters something unprintable and shuts it off. “You can’t just come in here.”
“I didn’t,” the man says, lips pursed in mock offence. “You asked me to.”
Wonwoo opens his mouth, decides against the argument. He settles on coughing and asking, “And you are?”
The man considers, then the corner of his lip curls. “Jisoo.”
Wonwoo repeats it under his breath, testing the sound. It feels strange in his mouth. “Jisoo.”
“Yes.” Jisoo smiles. “Now you can stop calling me the man.”
“I never called you—”
“In your head.”
Wonwoo freezes. “Excuse me?”
Jisoo’s expression softens. “Sorry. I forget that isn’t polite, up here.”
“Up here?”
He gestures toward the ceiling. “Land. People. Boundaries. You think so loudly.”
Wonwoo grips the back of a chair. “Get out of my head.”
“I’m not in it,” Jisoo says, still gentle. “Just listening at the edge. You keep it so open.”
Wonwoo’s pulse spikes. “I don’t have a door in my head.”
“You do,” Jisoo says, almost fondly. “You just never learned how to close it.”
For a long moment they stare at each other. Rain ticks against the glass. The sea murmurs below the cliff, restless again.
Finally Wonwoo sighs. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told,” Jisoo says, standing. He looks around as if reacquainting himself with the space. “Do you have breakfast, or only tea?”
Wonwoo opens his mouth to argue, but the words dry up. “There’s bread,” he says instead.
Jisoo’s smile widens, soft and satisfied, like the tide returning to shore.
Jisoo has claimed a corner of the table by the time the rain eases. He isn’t eating the bread; he’s turning it over in his hands as if it might reveal a secret. The crumbs on his fingers dissolve into droplets before they fall.
Wonwoo tries not to look. He fails.
“You’re wasting it,” he says finally.
Jisoo glances up, amused. “It’s very dry.”
“It’s supposed to be. Keeps.”
“I don’t think things should have to keep.”
“That’s because you don’t have to make them.”
Jisoo hums. “Fair.” He tears off another piece and places it carefully on his tongue, chewing like someone tasting for the first time. “It’s not bad.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not. You’re better at being human than I expected.”
Wonwoo looks up sharply. “I am human.”
Jisoo’s expression softens. “Not entirely.”
“Don’t start that again.”
Jisoo only smiles and leans back. The light catches in his hair against the dimness of the room. For the first time, Wonwoo notices faint marks across Jisoo’s forearms — thin white lines, like the paths of currents through sand. They shift slightly when he moves.
He feels like he should ask. He doesn’t.
Instead he mutters, “If you’re staying, don’t touch anything.”
Jisoo holds up another piece of bread idly, squinting as it turns into a puddle in his palm. “So you wish for me to stay.”
Before Wonwoo can answer, the kettle hisses again. Jisoo looks toward it, then back at him. “It likes when you talk to it,” he says.
“I don’t talk to it.”
“You apologize.”
Wonwoo glares. “It’s not the same.”
Jisoo smiles, that slow, patient curve of mouth that Wonwoo can’t help but track. “If you say so.”
The house is quiet. Jisoo is looking at him, and Wonwoo feels his ears heat. He looks around, settles finally on the kettle, silent for the first time in years. Wonwoo walks closer, peering at where it would usually be bubbling. He can feel Jisoo’s eyes on him; he is sure he’s being looked at in what he hopes is amusement — Jisoo’s smile like a pressure at the nape of his neck. The kettle stays still, so he raises an eyebrow.
Kettle, of course, chooses that moment to spit. A single hiss, then a pop. A spray of boiling water jumps the spout and hits him square on the wrist.
Wonwoo yelps, jerks back, and his heel finds the uneven tile he’s meant to fix for months. The world tilts. He lands hard, half-sitting, half-sprawled; his glasses go crooked.
There’s a heartbeat of silence where all Wonwoo can somehow hear is the searing heat on his wrist. Then he realises Jisoo is beside him, hand extended. Wonwoo blinks. Jisoo laughs.
It’s not loud — more a ripple than a sound — but it fills the house. The fog in the corners seems to thin for it. The sea outside answers with a faint surge against the rocks.
Wonwoo opens his mouth for a retort but finds none. He settles for a low grumble before taking Jisoo’s palm — big, and surprisingly soft. Warmth spreads through the prior cool as he holds harder and helps himself up. They are chest to chest; he can see flecks like salt in Jisoo’s eyes. The kettle hums contentedly, as if pleased with itself.
Wonwoo steps back and coughs into his hand. “You knew it was going to do that.”
Jisoo smiles innocently; the corners of his eyes curve up as his hand drifts along Wonwoo’s forearm, ghosting over the wrist. “Did I?”
This time when Jisoo squeezes, Wonwoo’s entire arm chills, and the pain is gone the next second. It hits like ice. He stumbles back and catches himself on the counter.
He clears his throat. “I’m making more tea.”
And there it is again — that laugh, light and low, the sound of water catching sunlight.
Wonwoo tells himself it’s just noise. But when he turns to reach for the cups, he’s smiling too, just a little.
The days blur in the way all quiet days do. The rain changes shape — sometimes mist, sometimes drizzle, sometimes the kind that feels like breath against the skin.
Jisoo never really arrives and he never really leaves. Some mornings Wonwoo wakes to find him already there, sitting on the windowsill, the light through the fog turning his hair to pale flame. Other times he’s gone for hours; the only sign of him is a wet footprint on the floorboards or the faint scent of salt clinging to Wonwoo’s neatly folded clothes.
Wonwoo stops pretending to be surprised.
He still keeps his notes — out of habit, he tells himself. The ink runs less these days, and the pages no longer stick. Half the entries have turned from measurements into observations:
Fog density decreasing — Jisoo hums when he thinks — Bellflowers blooming again (out of season, unbothered).
He tries to cross that last line out twice, but each time the pen refuses to scratch through the words.
The kettle, traitorous thing, has become an accomplice. It hums before he even lights the flame. When Jisoo brushes his fingers along its side, the dull metal brightens as if grateful. Wonwoo mutters about interference, but never when Jisoo’s near enough to hear.
One evening, Jisoo finds him tracing the line of solder where the handle had cracked.
“It’s holding,” Wonwoo murmurs.
“It likes you,” Jisoo says.
“It’s a kettle, not a pet.”
“Everything responds to care.”
Wonwoo looks up, startled by how softly Jisoo says it. “You make it sound romantic.”
“Finally, you understand,” Jisoo replies, smiling small and bright before turning away.
Wonwoo pretends to be annoyed, but he’s smiling, too.
When the wind turns colder, Jisoo starts tending the garden. He hums as he works, sleeves rolled up, red hair sticking to his temples. Wonwoo watches from the doorway under the pretense of checking his notes.
The bellflowers have gone wild again. Their chime carries through the fog, faint and steady.
“You’ll kill them if you touch them too much,” Wonwoo says, even though the flowers seem to lean toward Jisoo’s hands.
“They like attention,” Jisoo says, smiling. “Everything does.”
“I don’t.”
“That isn’t true.”
Wonwoo glares. “You really don’t know when to stop talking, do you?”
“I do,” Jisoo says, brushing soil from his fingers with an elegance that shouldn’t be. “I just don’t want to.”
Inside, their routines begin to overlap. Wonwoo measures tides; Jisoo reads the notes over his shoulder, smelling like sea salt, bellflowers, and something purely himself.
When Wonwoo burns a pan of sea radishes, Jisoo laughs until the smoke fogs the whole room.
“You’re not helping,” Wonwoo says through clenched teeth, waving at the haze.
“I wasn’t trying to,” Jisoo says, still laughing. He glides forward, takes the pan from Wonwoo’s hands, and cools it with a single touch. The sizzle dies instantly.
“You can’t just—” Wonwoo starts.
“Fix it?” Jisoo interrupts, tone soft, almost fond. “Someone should.”
“I was doing fine.”
“You were doing your best,” Jisoo corrects gently, tipping the ruined radishes into the bin. “Which is different, but still admirable.”
Wonwoo blinks. The words land somewhere between teasing and praise, and he can’t decide which unsettles him more.
Jisoo hums, already reaching for another bundle of radishes. “Watch, if you’d like.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Wonwoo says, but his voice comes out quieter than he means.
The smell of salt and herbs fills the air again — something clean and alive, something that feels like Jisoo. Wonwoo pretends to busy himself with his notes, though his eyes keep drifting back to the way Jisoo’s hands move: calm, sure, unhurried.
He doesn’t realise he’s smiling until the kettle hums softly behind them, pleased.
That night, the sea is restless. The waves breathe against the cliff, steady but louder than usual, as if something vast has shifted in its sleep.
Wonwoo lies awake. The air tastes of salt and faint smoke; the scent of Jisoo’s cooking still lingers. He stares at the ceiling, listening to the house creak under the weight of the tide. His tide charts are stacked neatly beside the bed; the ink is still damp. He can’t bring himself to write anything else.
He hears the floorboards shift before he sees him: a soft pulse of light touches the edge of the room, gold through fog.
“You should rest,” Jisoo says. His voice carries like a wave — low, even, impossible to ignore.
“I’m resting,” Wonwoo mutters.
“You’re thinking.”
“Same thing.”
Jisoo hums; the sound brushes the air like a current. “For you, maybe.”
There’s a pause. Wonwoo doesn’t move, doesn’t look. “You don’t have to check on me.”
“I wasn’t checking,” Jisoo says. “I was listening.”
“To what?”
Jisoo drifts closer. “You. You hum when you can’t sleep.”
Wonwoo turns his head. “I do not.”
“You do.” Jisoo’s mouth lifts slightly, that quiet smile again — the one that always feels like light breaking through fog.
Wonwoo wants to roll his eyes, but Jisoo’s warmth unsteadies him. “If you’re here to make fun of me, you can leave.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what?”
Jisoo hesitates, then sits at the edge of the bed. The mattress dips and the faint glow around him turns the sheets into rippling light. “The sea’s too loud tonight. Thought I’d stay somewhere quieter.”
Wonwoo lets out a small breath, half a laugh. “Quieter? Here?”
Jisoo looks at him. “You make quiet,” he says simply. “Even when you talk too much.”
That pulls a startled huff of laughter from Wonwoo, soft and unguarded. The sound makes Jisoo’s expression gentler still.
“Doesn’t it get lonely?” Wonwoo asks after a while, voice quieter. “All that noise.”
“Sometimes.” Jisoo’s eyes flick toward the window. “But loneliness doesn’t stay long. It goes where it’s wanted.”
“And where is it wanted?”
Jisoo looks back at him. The silence that follows isn’t heavy — it’s full. “Not here,” he says finally.
Wonwoo’s throat tightens. He looks away first. “You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
For a long time, neither speaks. The sea’s hum fades into something steadier, almost like breathing.
When Wonwoo’s eyes finally close, he feels a cool touch at his temple — Jisoo’s hand, light as sea foam. The noise in his head quiets.
“Sleep,” Jisoo murmurs.
And for once, Wonwoo does.
Morning comes quietly. The fog outside is gold instead of gray. Wonwoo wakes to find Jisoo gone again, but there’s a tangerine sitting on the table, bright against the damp wood.
He stares at it for a long time before smiling, just a little.
Wonwoo notices the stillness long before the waves rise. The air tastes heavy, the kind that means change. The fog outside the window folds and unfolds itself like breath.
He’s halfway through noting it in his charts when the floor trembles. A jar tips from the shelf. The kettle gives a single warning hiss before going silent altogether.
“Jisoo?”
No answer. Only the sea — louder than usual, restless.
Wonwoo pulls on his coat and steps outside. The air is cold enough to sting. The world has lost its edges; fog and rain blur it all into one moving thing.
Jisoo stands at the cliff’s edge, the hem of his robe streaming around him, hair bright in the gray light. He doesn’t turn when Wonwoo calls his name, but Wonwoo knows he’s heard.
“Something’s wrong,” Wonwoo says. “The tide—”
“I know.” Jisoo’s voice carries, even through the wind. “She’s been waiting.”
Wonwoo’s breath catches. “For what?”
“For you.”
The words land soft but heavy, like stones through water.
“I’ve told you before,” Jisoo continues, finally turning, “the sea doesn’t take what isn’t hers. She’s calling you home, Wonwoo. That’s all.”
“I can’t just—” He swallows hard. “I have things. Notes. The house—”
Jisoo smiles faintly, kind but unyielding. “She already knows them. You’ve been writing her language all this time.”
Wonwoo stares. Rain beads along his glasses. “You could have warned me.”
“I did,” Jisoo says, stepping closer. “Every time I told you to listen.”
He reaches out a hand. Wonwoo hesitates a second before the wind makes the choice for him. The next wave rises up and over the cliff, pulling them both down.
The fall is brief.
Then — silence.
The water closes around them like a held breath. The cold hits first, sharp and bright, but then warmth floods in behind it, curling through his chest. Wonwoo gasps and finds the air replaced by something softer. It fills him without burning.
He doesn’t sink so much as drift.
Jisoo is there — always there — his glow cutting through the deep. The light bends around him like devotion. He’s holding Wonwoo’s wrist, steady and sure.
“Don’t fight it,” Jisoo says, voice clear though there’s no sound.
“I’m not—”
But he is. His muscles lock. His chest aches. He’s always been fighting — wind, waves, silence, everything.
Jisoo’s thumb presses gently against his pulse. “Breathe.”
Wonwoo does.
The water moves through him, not against him. The sea hums in his veins, in the space between his ribs. His hair floats upward, streaked with — like light through tangerine skin, bright even here, a trick of the water.
Jisoo watches, eyes calm and patient. “See? You’ve known how to do this all along.”
Wonwoo can’t speak, but the thought forms anyway. It’s different than he’d thought it would be.
Jisoo tilts his head, smiling. “Things usually are.”
They drift closer until the world narrows to a shimmer of gold and orange between them. The currents slow. The sea around them stills, not with silence, but with quiet recognition.
“You belong here,” Jisoo says, so softly it almost isn’t a word.
Wonwoo’s throat tightens. “Then stay with me.”
“I’ve been here the whole time.”
Then Jisoo’s forehead finds his — the smallest touch, the one that anchors everything.
Wonwoo had thought his lips would be wet. In all honesty, Wonwoo hadn’t thought much up until Jisoo was finally pressed up against him. Jisoo’s mouth was always stained red. His bottom lip shone like the tide did the week Wonwoo had wanted only to listen to him hum with soft sand under their toes. He’d noticed then how Jisoo’s mouth was curved perpetually. Mocking, he’d thought — but when he feels that curve against his own, it isn’t mockery at all. It’s warmth, patience, and the quiet surprise of something that has waited centuries to happen.
His head feels lighter. The world steadier. The sea hums like breath between them.
When they part, the light doesn’t fade — it settles, gentler now, wrapping them both in the rhythm of everything that’s alive.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞
The cottage is gone. He doesn’t really miss it. The cliff where it stood has folded into the sea, swallowed not in violence but in relief, like something returning home.
Now there’s only the great quiet beneath. Maybe he misses the kettle.
But light moves differently here. It comes down in ribbons, glinting over coral and glass, over the slow sway of anemones that glow like candles. Wonwoo lives with the currents and shells; his books are written on sheets of sandglass, his charts made from the motion of fish.
His hair used to be fully dark. He doesn’t remember when it happened, but now it’s gone the soft orange of tangerine peel. Jisoo says the sea did that so Seungkwan would always find him.
Somewhere in the distance, a cluster of small shapes flashes through the water. The younger ones move too fast to count, little red bodies scattering bubbles like laughter. Seungkwan leads them — voice ringing clear even here, calling for his father to come and look.
Wonwoo knows it’s not meant for him, but he looks anyway, though he pretends not to. He hears the swish of robes and ringing giggles through his half-open door. He tries to finish a line he’s tracing on his latest chart, but the ink drifts away with the current.
“You’ll never win,” Jisoo says beside him.
Wonwoo turns. Jisoo is floating easily, hair a halo of red-gold light, his robe rippling in the slow tide. He looks exactly as he did the day Wonwoo first saw him, though his eyes are softer now, content.
“They’re loud,” Wonwoo mutters.
“They’re alive.” Jisoo’s smile curves the way it always has, patient and knowing. “They get that from you.”
“I don’t think they do.”
“They do,” Jisoo insists, drifting closer. His hand finds Wonwoo’s, fingers tangling without thought. The water hums where they touch, warmth spreading through the cold.
Wonwoo looks up toward the faint, wavering ceiling of the sea. Somewhere above it, the human world goes on, small and distant. “Do you ever miss it?” he asks.
Jisoo tilts his head and hums curiously, hand at his necklace.
“The quiet.”
Jisoo’s smile widens. “We have quiet here too. Just different.”
And he’s right. The silence below the surface isn’t empty — it’s full, breathing. The kind that settles in the bones instead of pressing on them. Wonwoo closes his eyes and listens. The sea’s rhythm matches his own heartbeat.
He leans forward, forehead resting against Jisoo’s. Around them the light folds and refolds, endless as tide.
When Seungkwan’s laughter echoes again through the water, Wonwoo laughs too. The sound drifts upward, breaking against the surface, turning into a shimmer of waves.
Above, on a calm afternoon, Hansol stands near the rocks with his bucket in the water. The sea is glassy and bright. For a moment he thinks he hears laughter in the distance — a sound like sunlight in water — but when he looks, there’s only the ripple of a single red-scaled fish darting toward him. Hansol leans closer; the fish tilts up at him, already at home in his bucket. He grins and wonders whether fish can pout.