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JL walked beside Woongki under the soft glow of streetlights, guiding him slowly toward the dorm.
The night felt calm after the group’s small get-together.
The others were still laughing in the venue, but Woongki’s face was already red from the drinks, and he swayed lightly with every step. Someone needed to walk him home, and JL volunteered before anyone else even thought about it.
He didn’t want to miss this chance to stay by Woongki’s side.
Woongki hummed a tune that didn’t make much sense, kicking tiny stones on the sidewalk.
“JL, you’re the best,” he mumbled, clinging to JL’s arm as if the ground might tilt without warning.
JL smiled, even though his heart beat louder than their footsteps.
He wasn’t used to Woongki being this clingy, and it made him both nervous and warm inside.
They walked slowly, the world around them dim and quiet. JL listened to Woongki ramble about anything that entered his cloudy thoughts. The foods he likes, songs he wanted to sing, and how tired he felt. JL answered when he needed to, but most of the time he let the silence settle.
It wasn’t uncomfortable, it was peaceful.
A little breeze brushed against them as they reached the small bridge near the dorm. Woongki stopped walking and looked up at the sky as if waiting for answers to fall from it.
“The stars look weird tonight,” he said, squinting. “Like they’re watching us.”
JL laughed lightly. “Stars don’t watch people, hyung.”
“Maybe they do,” Woongki answered, his voice soft. “Maybe they watch you more.”
The words caught JL off guard.
His breath snagged for a second, and he felt something push up from inside him, something he kept buried for too long.
He wanted to tell Woongki everything right there, with the streetlamps flickering and the cool wind brushing their skin. He wanted to say how he watched Woongki too, how he noticed every smile, every frown, every spark of energy that kept everyone else going.
So he opened his mouth. The words lined up in his throat. “Hyung… I—”
But his courage cracked like thin glass. His mind filled with the fear of losing everything if the truth slipped out. Fear of waking up the next day and finding Woongki distant, confused, or hurt. Fear of changing a bond he treasured more than anything.
“Forget it,” JL whispered instead.
Woongki blinked at him, confused for only a moment before the drunken fog pulled him somewhere else. He nodded without understanding and leaned on JL again, complaining about being sleepy.
JL didn’t speak anymore. He just guided him the rest of the way, each step heavier than before.
When Woongki finally reached his bed and drifted off without a clue, JL stood by the doorway for a few seconds. He watched the peaceful rise and fall of Woongki’s chest and wondered what might’ve changed if he pushed himself to finish that sentence.
Morning came, and Woongki woke up cheerful and clueless, stretching like nothing strange took place the night before. His eyes sparkled with the same familiar brightness.
No signs of confusion.
No memory of JL’s almost confession.
JL acted normal too, even though something in his chest still felt stuck.
Later that day, Steven, Jeongwoo, and Han called JL over with teasing smiles on their faces. They told him they wanted to show something funny, something from last night, and they were already laughing before he reached them.
When JL stood beside them, Steven raised his phone and opened a string of chaotic messages from Woongki. The screen showed sentences with missing letters, swapped vowels, and words that looked like they were typed while the sender was spinning in circles.
It wasn’t surprising, they all went drinking, and Woongki often sent messy texts whenever alcohol filled his system a little too much.
The group burst into laughter again, repeating some of the funniest lines. JL forced himself to chuckle along with them, pretending the messages amused him the same way.
On the outside, his expression showed nothing but harmless humor, but inside his chest, a soft sting spread like frost over warm skin.
Every misspelled word felt like another reminder that Woongki drunk-texted almost everyone.
Everyone except him.
He stayed quiet, watching their screens as the others read the messages over and over with endless amusement.
It confused him a little.
Out of all the people in their group, in their small circle that spent so much time together, why was he not someone Woongki chose to message during a hazy, late-night moment? Even when Woongki’s thoughts were messy, even when reason barely guided his fingers, JL still didn’t cross his mind. He wasn’t someone whose name popped up when alcohol loosened every filter.
He kept smiling, pretending nothing inside him cracked. But he never found the courage to speak about the small wounds moments like this created. Fear wrapped around every feeling he kept inside.
Fear that if he spoke, Woongki might laugh, or brush him off, or worse, look at him differently.
JL didn’t want to lose the version of Woongki he saw every day, the kind one, the cheerful one, the affectionate one who made his world feel lighter by simply existing.
Yet at night, when he thought about everything alone, he wished he was the one Woongki texted at midnight. He pictured his phone lighting up with Woongki’s name in a messy string of mistakes, imagining Woongki thinking about him while tipsy and restless.
He wished he was the reason Woongki stayed awake longer than he should.
He wished he was someone who lived inside Woongki’s thoughts the way Woongki lived inside his.
He wished he was more than someone Woongki passed by on the way to somewhere else.
More than a friend in the background.
More than a familiar figure standing next to everyone else in the group.
He longed to be someone Woongki looked for even before realizing he was doing it.
Every day, the feeling inside him pushed a little harder. He wanted to speak, to open everything buried in his chest, but the weight of fear always pressed him down again. His heart whispered so many things, but his voice never followed. Instead, he spent his days hoping Woongki might somehow sense the truth without JL saying anything.
It was a foolish hope, he knew, but it was the only safe place to put his feelings.
Months passed. Seasons shifted, schedules changed, and their lives continued like nothing ever happened that night. The group still teased Woongki about the drunk texts. They still laughed whenever he denied being that messy.
And JL still stood beside them, smiling, pretending everything was normal.
Nothing changed in the way he moved around Woongki.
Nothing changed in the way Woongki treated him either.
They still exchanged jokes, still shared rides home sometimes, still talked during long practices. But beneath every conversation, JL felt the same ache sitting quietly inside his ribs.
He still couldn’t speak.
Every time he thought maybe today would be different, maybe he could try, the same fear rose like a wall taller than anything he could climb. So he stayed silent, carrying his feelings like a shadow that followed him everywhere.
Each day grew a little harder. Woongki stayed on his mind from morning to night, and JL struggled to pretend he was fine. He laughed when needed, acted normal when expected, and kept everything locked inside because he didn’t know any other way to keep the peace between them. The truth pressed harder with every passing week, but he still refused to risk the one connection he treasured the most.
Even if loving quietly slowly wore him down, he still chose silence, because losing Woongki, even as a friend, terrified him more than anything his heart whispered.
He would rather destroy himself quietly just to keep a friend.
It felt easier to break his own heart piece by piece than to risk letting Woongki see the truth.
So he chose to hide, chose silence, chose distance that hurt more than anything else. All because he feared Woongki might not feel the same.
The fear stayed like a shadow following him everywhere, whispering doubts into every corner of his mind.
Sometimes, when the night turned too still or the air grew too cold, he wondered if he ever crossed Woongki’s thoughts even for a second.
He wondered if Woongki ever paused in the middle of his day, felt a strange tug in his chest, and thought of him. He wondered if Woongki sensed the way everything in his world centered on him, like gravity pulling without mercy.
Maybe he was just dreaming too much.
Maybe he was giving meaning to things that were never there in the first place.
He remembered the way Woongki smiled, bright like morning sunlight. The way he spoke, warm and gentle, making even ordinary words feel soft against the heart. That smile lived inside him, refusing to leave no matter how he tried to push it away. Each memory felt like a small flame, comforting and painful at the same time.
Every day the questions grew louder.
If he tells him the truth, what will he lose?
He thought of the worst possibilities.
Maybe Woongki would step back. Maybe he would look confused, surprised, or even uncomfortable. Maybe the easy bond between them would crack like thin glass. The fear of losing that bond terrified him more than silence, more than longing, more than the ache of loving someone in secret.
So he stayed quiet.
He played the role of a loyal friend, always present, always ready, always pretending everything inside him was calm. He told jokes, listened to stories, and acted normal. But every time Woongki looked at him with those kind eyes, his heart stumbled.
What if Woongki feels something too?
What if he is only waiting for someone brave enough to take the first step?
JL would then scold himself for hoping, but hope was stubborn.
He often stared at his phone late at night, reading old messages that were simple and ordinary but meant the world to him. Sometimes he typed out words he wanted to send, then erased them before they could exist.
Words like “I miss you,” or “Do you think of me too?” or the scariest one of all, “I like you.”
But the words stayed trapped in his chest, swirling, heavy, restless.
One evening, when the sky turned dark purple, he found himself whispering into the quiet room, “I wonder how you would reply…”
It was a question he feared and longed for at the same time.
A question he kept close to his heart, waiting for the day he might be brave enough to know the answer.