Chapter Text
After-school silence was never truly silent—not in the way books and movies liked to pretend a school could empty out and instantly become a serene, echoing sanctuary. The building was too old, too lived-in, too saturated with the day’s leftover noise. It carried sound the way a sponge held water: even wrung out, even forgotten, something always remained.
There was the hum of the fluorescent lights, a relentless, insect-like buzz that no one noticed during the day but became shrill and almost personal once the halls emptied. There was the distant metallic clatter of one of the sports teams unpacking equipment on the field below the hill—the football team, if he had to guess, because they always dropped things instead of placing them. And faintly, so faintly you’d think it was imaginary if you didn’t know the school layout by heart, there was the muffled heartbeat-thump of someone in the band hall’s percussion closet hitting a bass drum to test it.
It was a strange blend of quiet and not-quiet, a stillness that had a pulse under it.
For most teachers, it was peaceful.
For In-ho, it was tolerable.
The only truly intolerable thing was the printer.
He stood in his empty psychology classroom, arms crossed tightly, staring down the school-issued machine like it owed him money. The fading late-afternoon sun cut across the room, illuminating dust motes and casting long shadows from the desks, but even that gentle light did nothing to soften the sharp spike of irritation spreading across his skull.
“Print,” he said firmly. And flatly.
Like he was giving a command to a dog that absolutely knew better.
He pressed the button again.
The printer responded in the most unhelpful way possible.
It whirred.
It clicked.
It blinked its little green light at him like it was trying to appear innocent.
And then it displayed the same lie it had been flashing for the past ten minutes:
ERROR: PAPER JAM (NO PAPER JAM DETECTED).
His exhale came out through his nose in a long, slow, tightly controlled stream—the kind of exhale that, if he let it out wrong, could turn into a groan or a growl or something distinctly unprofessional. His jaw ached from clenching.
“Okay,” he muttered, rolling up his sleeves like he was about to perform surgery. “Fine. We can do this the hard way.”
The printer, predictably, did not respond.
Machines never did when you wanted them to. Only when you didn’t.
He crouched down beside it, the floor tiles cold through his slacks. He opened the back panel. Nothing. No jam. Not even a stray corner of paper. Just a suspiciously clean interior that mocked him.
He removed the toner cartridge.
Put it back.
Took it out again, just in case it needed some kind of ritualistic reseating.
He pulled out the entire paper tray, inspecting it like a detective examining a corpse. He put it back in with a careful push. Then he pulled it out again. And back in. It was stupid, but he had fixed a different teacher’s printer that way once. Printers were like that: temperamental, petty, and fully capable of being manipulated by meaningless gestures.
Still nothing.
He straightened up just enough to pull his phone out and searched:
“HP school printer fake paper jam fix.”
He tapped on a random YouTube thumbnail. A man with a too-white smile and aggressively upbeat background music began explaining troubleshooting steps in a chipper, exaggerated voice.
After thirty seconds, In-ho felt the onset of a stress migraine.
“You are insufferable,” he told the man in the video. “Of course it works for you.”
He paused the video before throwing the phone across the room became a viable option.
The printer beeped loudly. A single, sharp note, as if chiming in with its own opinion.
“…that was not a yes or no question,” he muttered at it.
He pressed Print again.
The printer groaned. Actually groaned. The grinding noise it made sounded offended and vaguely threatening—like it wanted him to know it could print but simply refused to out of spite.
That was it.
That was absolutely enough.
He stood up so fast the chair beside him rattled. He wiped his palms on his slacks, trying to get rid of the electricity of irritation buzzing through him. If he stayed in this room any longer, he would snap the printer in half or throw it out the open window. Neither option was ideal.
Which meant:
He had to ask someone else for help.
Unfortunately.
He gathered the half-finished stack of papers he had managed to print earlier, straightened them into a neat pile, and walked out into the hallway.
The hallway was mostly dark. Only every third ceiling light remained on, casting uneven pools of brightness across the linoleum. It made the school look abandoned in a way that was both eerie and strangely comforting. Classroom doors were shut, almost all completely dark inside—except a few who always stayed late.
He knew exactly which one to check first.
Two doors down, in the history wing, a familiar figure leaned half-out of his classroom doorway with a mug in hand, looking like an overworked grad student rather than a teacher.
Park Jung-bae.
Of course.
Jung-bae clocked him instantly. “Teacher Hwang! Still here? That’s rare.”
“I could say the same to you,” In-ho replied, shifting the papers under his arm.
“Well, you know me,” Jung-bae said, lifting his mug in a toast to his own dysfunction. “Grading. Procrastinating. Talking to the ghosts in my room. The usual.” He squinted. “You look distressed.”
“I’m fine.”
“So you’re distressed,” he corrected cheerfully.
In-ho didn’t dignify that with an answer. “The printer isn’t working.”
“Ooh.” Jung-bae made a dramatic, theatrical wince. “Painful. Unrecoverable. You tried sacrificing a student to it?”
“Unfortunately illegal.”
“Unfortunate indeed.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Okay, so what kind of not-working? Is it jammed?”
“It says it’s jammed. It isn’t.”
“Ooh, the lying kind.” He tapped his mug. “Those are the worst kind of printers.”
Then his face brightened with sudden realization.
He snapped his fingers.
“Ah! You should ask Seong.”
“…Sang-woo?”
“No, no,” he said, waving that idea away. “Our beloved band dad.”
In-ho blinked. “…why would I ask the band director how to fix a printer?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Jung-bae asked, delighted. “His printer is special. He treats it like a pet. Or a child. Or both. He prints so much sheet music that the district actually gave him a more expensive model.”
“If he prints that much, he will have used it to death.”
“Opposite!” Jung-bae said, chest puffing with pride for a story that wasn’t his. “He babies it. Cleans it. Maintains it. Talks to it. I swear I once caught him apologizing to it because he printed something on the wrong setting.”
“…he apologized to a printer.”
“Yes!” Jung-bae said, beaming. “It was adorable! Anyway, he probably knows how to fix anything printing-related. He’s still here—heard the rehearsal end about half an hour ago. If he’s not in the band office, he’s definitely still in the main room making his kids’ music sound like the Chicago Symphony.”
In-ho stared.
He hated asking for help. But he hated being stuck even more.
“Fine.”
“I’ll walk you there.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I insist,” Jung-bae said, throwing an arm around his shoulders for approximately one second before realizing In-ho stiffened. “Ah—sorry, sorry. Personal space. My bad.”
“It’s fine,” In-ho said. It wasn’t, but he didn’t feel like correcting him.
They walked together down the music wing, passing posters of past marching seasons, glitter still stuck to the edges of the paper from some forgotten pep rally. The faint bass of a tuba line vibrated through the floor—leftover practice, muscle memory, sound ghosts.
When they reached the band hall, Jung-bae gave an exaggerated salute.
“Good luck. If he tries to recruit you to play triangle in the next pep band, run.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
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The door to the band hall was heavy, old, and slightly swollen from humidity. When In-ho pushed it open, it made a low groaning sound—as if announcing his presence to anyone inside.
The lights were still on.
Of course they were.
Band rooms were cavernous by design, built to swallow sound and spit it back differently. This one was no exception: the long rows of black chairs, the gleaming music stands, the shelves of battered instrument cases stacked like sleeping animals. It all felt oddly alive even in the quiet.
Well—mostly quiet.
There was the distant hum of the HVAC system fighting its losing battle against fall humidity. The faint, wandering whistle of someone idly tuning a woodwind in the practice rooms. And underneath it all, the leftover smell of brass polish and sweat and pencil shavings.
In-ho stepped inside slowly, like he was intruding.
He was.
He almost turned back, but then—he saw him.
Seong Gi-hun sat cross-legged on the floor near the podium, his back to In-ho, surrounded by an almost ceremonial circle of sheet music. Not neatly stacked. Not organized. Just fanned out in a wide, chaotic radius around him, like some sort of artistic implosion.
He was muttering to himself, pencil between his teeth, hair tied up haphazardly, wearing that stupid grey hoodie everyone on campus had seen him in at least twice a week.
He looked… absorbed. Entirely consumed. A man studying runes carved into stone instead of eighth-note runs.
In-ho hovered by the door, uncertain.
Gi-hun didn’t notice him.
He was tapping beats on his knee, nodding to himself, scribbling something onto one page and then immediately crossing it out. Three times. Hard.
A page fluttered off his lap and drifted to the floor, joining the rest of the paper disaster.
In-ho cleared his throat.
Gi-hun jolted so violently the pencil fell out of his mouth.
“Oh my—! Jesus, you scared me,” he said, putting a hand to his chest. Then, squinting, “Oh. Hi. Hello. Teacher Hwang.”
His voice was warm in that naturally scatterbrained way that made it impossible to tell whether he was embarrassed or just… like this all the time.
In-ho bowed slightly out of habit. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—startle you.”
“You did, but it’s okay,” Gi-hun said, waving him closer with ink-stained fingers. “What’s up? You need something?”
The question hit In-ho with the uncomfortable weight of needing help he didn’t want to need.
“My printer stopped working,” he said finally. “I tried everything. I was told—”
He paused, feeling ridiculous already.
“—that you might know how to fix it.”
Gi-hun brightened instantly, like someone had flipped a switch on behind his eyes.
“Oh! Printers.” He sat up straighter, suddenly energized. “Yes, yes, I absolutely can. Probably. Maybe. I think I can. I fix mine all the time. It hates me, but I love it anyway.”
This was… not reassuring.
Still—In-ho stepped closer, navigating around the scattered sheet music with exaggerated precision.
Gi-hun noticed and laughed, a small, breathy sound.
“Don’t worry about stepping on them,” he said. “They deserve it.”
“I’d rather not,” In-ho murmured.
He didn’t know why he was being careful. He just was.
Gi-hun stood up, brushing off his knees, then gathered a few pages and stacked them vaguely into a pile. Not neatly. Just enough to feel like the space was less chaotic.
Then he looked at In-ho—really looked.
“You okay?” Gi-hun asked.
The question was casual. Too casual. It wasn’t prying. It wasn’t intrusive.
But it hit strangely hard.
“…I’m fine,” In-ho said, forcing his posture straighter.
Gi-hun nodded like he accepted that answer but didn’t quite believe it.
“Well, either way, I’ll take a look at it,” Gi-hun said, moving toward the door and snagging his keys off the music stand. “Lead the way. Is it your classroom printer? Those district ones are fickle. They get moody. Like teenagers. Or me.”
“You… get moody?” In-ho asked before he could stop himself.
“Oh, all the time,” Gi-hun said cheerfully. “But I hide it by being loud.”
He said it like a joke, but something in his smile didn’t match it.
In-ho didn’t know what to do with that information, so he said nothing.
Gi-hun held the door open for him.
“After you, Teacher Hwang.”
The title sounded different coming from him—lighter, warmer, almost teasing. It made something low in In-ho’s chest tighten unexpectedly.
They started walking back toward the psychology wing together.
And In-ho wondered, not for the first time, why everyone on this campus talked about the band director like he was some kind of legend.
Because seeing him up close—
He looked more like a storm trying very hard to appear sunny.
The hallway outside the band room felt colder than before—maybe just because the band hall was always a few degrees warmer from the sheer volume of teenage breath and brass instruments.
Their footsteps echoed lightly against the linoleum. The building had that faint after-hours smell: dust, floor polish, and the leftover cafeteria scent that never fully left no matter how many times the custodians mopped.
Gi-hun walked beside him, not too close, not too far, just perfectly—annoyingly—attuned to the distance where their shoulders wouldn’t brush. He had a loose, unhurried stride for someone who’d been elbow-deep in sheet music chaos two minutes ago. Keys jingled in his hand in a completely irregular rhythm.
In-ho held his stack of papers like a shield.
“So what exactly is your printer doing?” Gi-hun asked.
“Lying,” In-ho said flatly.
Gi-hun snorted. “Mood.”
“It says there’s a paper jam. There isn’t.”
“Oh, the phantom jam. Classic. Textbook. The printer equivalent of a child faking illness to get out of gym class.”
In-ho stared at him. “You… say that like it’s normal.”
“It is normal,” Gi-hun insisted. “Printers are drama queens. The district buys models that have emotional needs.”
“That doesn’t sound… correct.”
“Listen,” Gi-hun said, holding up a hand, “I have fixed more printers than I have fixed musical mistakes. And I fix musical mistakes for a living.”
The worst part was that he wasn’t joking.
They rounded the corner into the academic wing. Most lights were off, leaving pools of brightness broken up by shadows from the locker rows. Somewhere far away, the janitor’s cart squeaked rhythmically.
“What were you printing?” Gi-hun asked.
“Quiz papers.”
“Ah. See, there’s your problem.”
In-ho blinked. “What?”
“Printers know when what you’re printing is important. They sense fear. They sabotage high-stakes paperwork out of spite.”
“That’s… absurd.”
“Is it?” Gi-hun asked, eyebrows raised.
In-ho hated that he had to consider it for a full second.
They passed the science wing door with the poster about lab safety peeling in the corner. They passed the vending machine that had eaten both of their money at least once in the past year.
Gi-hun slowed when they reached In-ho’s door.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing toward the handle.
In-ho unlocked it and pushed the door open.
The psychology classroom was dim except for the single lamp In-ho always left on—warm, orange, soft around the edges. It made the room feel smaller in the best possible way. The posters on cognition and developmental theory hung neatly. His desk was organized with rigid, borderline obsessive order.
But the printer sat there, hulking, traitorous, and smug.
Gi-hun approached it with the seriousness of a surgeon preparing for heart surgery.
He set his keys down. Rolled up his sleeves. Bent over the machine.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he murmured to it.
In-ho stared. “You are not talking to my printer.”
“I talk to all technology,” Gi-hun said, opening the front panel with practiced precision. “Positive reinforcement. They like it. They behave better.”
“That’s—”
“Shh,” Gi-hun whispered to the printer. “Ignore him.”
In-ho closed his eyes briefly.
Gi-hun peered inside the panel, squinting. “Ah. Yep. Classic false jam.”
“You can see that already?”
“Mm-hm.” He poked the empty paper path gently, humming. “Sensor’s probably dusty. Or out of alignment. Or just having a tantrum.”
“Machines do not have tantrums.”
“You would think that,” Gi-hun said, reaching for the back panel next.
The room was quiet except for the soft clicks of plastic snapping open, the shuffle of In-ho shifting his weight, and the faint hum of the school heating.
Eventually, Gi-hun asked, “So. Long day?”
In-ho paused. “…yes.”
“Same,” Gi-hun said lightly, though he didn’t sound annoyed. “You can always tell when it’s going to be a bad rehearsal day when the tubas start fighting.”
“…fighting?”
“Not physically. Well—” he hesitated, “—actually, sometimes physically. But mostly verbally.”
“I didn’t know teenagers could fight about tubas.”
“You’d be shocked what they can weaponize.”
He said it with that effortless, worn-in warmth people only had when they loved something deeply…
…and were deeply exhausted by it.
Gi-hun poked a small brush into the printer’s interior, dusting off the sensor.
“Ah. There it is,” he said. “Yep. See? Dust. It was confused.”
“It… was confused,” In-ho repeated, trying to process the concept.
Gi-hun blew gently across the inside of the machine, scattering the rest of the dust.
The air disturbed the little strands of hair that had fallen loose from his messy tie-up.
He shut the panels one by one, each click clean and oddly satisfying.
“Try printing now,” Gi-hun said, stepping back.
In-ho hesitated, then reached for the stack of papers and hit PRINT.
The machine whirred.
It clicked.
It blinked.
There was a tense second where nothing happened.
Then—
The printer began feeding out pages.
Perfectly. Smoothly. Quickly.
In-ho blinked, stunned. “…it worked.”
“Of course it worked,” Gi-hun said, like he hadn’t just performed technological CPR.
He leaned against In-ho’s desk, smiling proudly. “So? Am I the printer whisperer or not?”
In-ho didn’t know why he suddenly felt the need to look away.
“…yes,” he admitted quietly. “You are.”
Gi-hun grinned—wide, unguarded, boyish.
And for some reason, the room felt warmer.
The last quiz page slid out of the printer with a soft, triumphant flap, and the room settled into that kind of silence that wasn’t empty at all.
Not with Gi-hun still standing there.
He didn’t leave immediately.
He didn’t even pretend he was about to.
Instead, he rocked back on the heels of his sneakers, hands in his hoodie pockets, eyes sweeping around the classroom as if he’d never actually seen it before—even though they’d both worked at Seongbuk for years.
“You keep your room really neat,” Gi-hun said.
“It’s just organized,” In-ho replied.
“Organized is neat,” Gi-hun countered. “Or at least that’s what I tell my drummers every time they try to store mallets in their backpacks with their lunch.”
“That sounds… inefficient.”
“Oh, it is.” Gi-hun laughed softly. “One kid pulled out a granola bar last week and it had three marimba yarn heads stuck to it.”
In-ho blinked. “…that sounds expensive.”
“It was. I cried.”
“You cried?”
He shrugged. “Well, not like—actual tears. But on the inside? Absolutely.”
In-ho huffed a tiny, unwilling breath of amusement.
Gi-hun’s smile flickered at that—as if he’d been waiting for it.
He moved toward the wall, scanning the developmental psychology posters like they were pieces in a museum.
“You teach all of this in a single semester?” he asked, raising a brow.
“Second semester is more complex,” In-ho said. “But yes.”
“That’s… impressive.”
“It’s standard.”
“It doesn’t look standard,” Gi-hun murmured, tracing the air with his finger in front of a Piaget chart. “Looks hard.”
In-ho didn’t know what to say to that. Compliments sat strangely on him, like clothes that didn’t quite fit.
Gi-hun must’ve sensed the shift, because he turned back around and leaned his hip against the desk—far too comfortable for someone who’d only come in to fix a machine.
“Do you usually stay this late?” he asked.
“No,” In-ho said. “Today I needed to prepare.”
“And by ‘prepare,’ you mean fight your printer for thirty minutes.”
“…yes.”
Gi-hun smiled again—that same unguarded, bright curve of his mouth that felt disproportionately warm for such a dim classroom. The soft lamplight painted his cheekbones in gold, softened the deep shadows under his eyes.
He looked tired.
He looked alive.
He looked like someone who never stopped moving unless forced to.
“So,” Gi-hun said softly, “can I ask why you’re here this late? Really here?”
In-ho stiffened. “I told you. I was—”
“Printing, sure. But most teachers run out of the building at 3:30 like the place is on fire.”
In-ho swallowed, eyes drifting to the stack of papers.
He didn’t want to admit that staying late kept him from going home to silence. Or that routine soothed him. Or that grading with no one around was easier than grading with the weight of people in the hall.
He settled for: “I like the quiet.”
Gi-hun nodded, slow and understanding in a way that felt undeserved.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me too. Kids make my job worth it. But the quiet after they leave?”
He exhaled. “Feels like breathing for the first time all day.”
Something in In-ho loosened at that—not visibly, not dramatically, but just enough that it felt like his ribs could expand again.
They stood there for a moment.
Not talking.
Not needing to.
The printer whirred cooldown clicks like it was clearing its throat, trying to remind them it still existed.
Gi-hun finally pushed off the desk. “Well. If it breaks again, you know where to find me.”
“In the band room,” In-ho said.
“In the band room,” Gi-hun echoed. “Or wandering the hallway eating Goldfish crackers straight from the bag.”
“That sounds unprofessional.”
“It is,” Gi-hun said. “Don’t tell administration.”
“I won’t.”
“You sure?” Gi-hun teased, tilting his head. “You seem like the responsible type.”
“I am responsible,” In-ho said, frowning slightly.
“That’s not a bad thing.”
Gi-hun’s voice softened. “It’s… actually kind of nice.”
In-ho felt heat crawl, unwanted, up the back of his neck.
Gi-hun didn’t seem to notice—thank God—or if he did, he was kind enough not to bring attention to it.
He picked up his keys from the desk and jingled them once before heading to the door.
But he paused in the doorway.
Turned back.
“Hey,” Gi-hun said, quieter now. “Thanks for—uh—letting me help. Most teachers don’t… they don’t come to me for things unless it’s band-related.”
“That seems like a mistake.”
Gi-hun blinked, startled—and then he smiled again, this time small, genuine, warm in a way that curled under the ribs.
He nodded once.
Then left, letting the door ease shut behind him with a soft click.
The room was quiet again.
But it didn’t feel like the same quiet as before.
It felt… charged.
And In-ho hated that he stood there, staring at the door like an idiot for three full seconds before forcing himself to sit down and grade something. Anything.
He chose the assignment on cognitive biases, which felt fitting, given that his own bias toward one extremely chaotic band director was becoming a problem.
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When the door finally clicked shut behind Gi-hun, the silence folded around In-ho like a heavy blanket.
He set the graded papers aside.
Set the red pen down.
Sat back in his chair.
And then, unfortunately, his brain began doing what it always did: rerunning every moment, every detail, every expression, like a security camera stuck on loop.
He hadn’t meant to linger in it.
He hadn’t wanted to.
But the images flickered anyway:
Gi-hun blowing dust out of the printer, hair falling into his eyes.
Gi-hun leaning against the desk, sleeves rolled up, that easy, tired smile.
Gi-hun saying “that’s not a bad thing” like he actually meant it.
In-ho pressed a thumb between his eyebrows.
Ridiculous.
Unproductive.
Unnecessary.
He had work to finish. Essays to grade. Composure to regain.
But his chest still felt warm in a way that annoyed him deeply.
He stood and began stacking the now-perfectly printed quizzes, lining them up with precision that bordered on compulsive. The repetitive motion helped—small, steady, grounding.
And yet, he kept hearing it:
> “It’s… actually kind of nice.”
His pulse sped up embarrassingly.
He shut off the lamp, grabbed his bag, and left the classroom.
Locked the door twice, just to double-check.
Walked down the hall with fast, clipped steps like he could outrun his own thoughts.
But even as he drove home in the dark, the scene flickered at the back of his mind like a music cue he couldn’t turn off.
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Meanwhile, across campus…
The band room was finally empty.
Every chair pushed in.
Every music stand stacked.
The faint scent of valve oil still hung in the air like a whisper after a storm.
Gi-hun sat alone on the conductor’s podium, legs dangling off the edge, swinging without rhythm.
He should have been cleaning up.
Or locking cabinets.
Or doing literally anything that resembled his job.
Instead, he was… smiling at nothing.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, groaning softly. “Get it together, Seong Gi-hun.”
But unfortunately, his brain was also looping footage from earlier:
In-ho’s expression the moment the printer finally worked—surprised, relieved, and quietly pleased.
The tiny laugh he’d let out without meaning to.
His voice when he said: “That seems like a mistake.”
Gi-hun’s cheeks warmed.
He shouldn’t think about that.
He barely even talked to Teacher Hwang most days.
The man was collected, controlled, and—okay, maybe a little intimidating in a very attractive, very academically dangerous way—
Gi-hun rubbed his eyes again.
“Nope. Nope. We are not doing this,” he muttered to the empty room.
He slid off the podium and wandered into his office, tossing his keys onto his desk. The printer—his printer—sat quietly in the corner, humming in standby.
He patted it once.
“Thank your brother for making me look competent,” he said.
Then he paused.
“…and don’t you dare tell him to break tomorrow. I’m not using that as an excuse to talk to him again.”
The printer, blessedly, did not respond.
Gi-hun sighed, slumped into his squeaky office chair, and stared at the ceiling.
He wasn’t oblivious.
He had felt something in that classroom—something warm, something careful, something that made him want to stay longer even when he had every reason to leave.
But he wasn’t stupid enough to assume it meant anything on the other end.
Still…
Still.
It had been a nice moment.
A small one.
An unexpected one.
The kind that stayed with you long after it should’ve faded.
He exhaled, long and slow.
“Yeah,” he murmured to the empty band hall. “It was… nice.”
And just like that, two teachers on opposite sides of campus shut off their lights, packed their bags, and walked out into the night—
both pretending they weren’t thinking about the same thing.
both failing spectacularly.