Chapter Text
The mark on Jinhyeok's left shoulder blade had been silent for thirteen months, two weeks, and four days.
He didn't count anymore, not consciously, but his body remembered. Each morning when he woke up in his dorm room, the city sprawling gray and unfamiliar beyond his window, he felt the absence like a phantom limb. The cybersigilistic pattern that had once pulsed with a faint warmth, a gentle reminder of connection, now lay cold and inert against his skin. Dead circuitry. A tattoo of what used to be.
November in Korea was colder than he remembered. Seven years in China had thinned his blood, made him forget the particular bite of Korean wind that cut through even the thickest coat. Or maybe it wasn't the years, maybe it was just that nothing felt warm anymore.
Jinhyeok stood in front of the bathroom mirror, steam from the shower still clinging to the glass, and twisted to look at the mark. It remained exactly as it had been the day Jaehyuk left: an intricate network of angular lines and curves that resembled both circuitry and calligraphy, something that belonged equally to the future and the past. Asymmetric. Incomplete without its twin.
He had Googled soul bonds once, in the desperate weeks after, and found nothing useful. Academic papers speculated about quantum entanglement and shared consciousness, and forums were full of romantics who spoke about destiny and completion. None of them mentioned what happened when the bond broke. None of them described this: the hollowness, the inability to feel anything beyond a vague, distant echo of what that emotion used to be.
"Hyung, are you ready?" Minhyeong’s voice carried through the apartment, followed by the sound of keys jingling. "We're going to be late."
Jinhyeok, pulled back to reality by the voice that came down the hallway, pulled back on his turtleneck, covering the mark. Out of sight, but never out of mind.
The HLE gaming house smelled like instant ramen and energy drinks, a scent universal to team houses across every region. Some things transcended borders. Jinhyeok had made a verbal agreement with Hanwha Life Esports in October, even before the stove-season had started, lured back to Korea with promises of a championship roster and enough money to make the return seem logical. His agent had called it a homecoming, but Jinhyeok called it what it was: momentum, the path of least resistance, one foot in front of the other because stopping would require a reason and he had none.
He had been good at League of Legends once. More than good, he had been exceptional, one of the most feared junglers in the LPL. His career talked for him, an MSI champion, a five-times LPL champion, two times regular season MVP, made it seven times to the LPL 1st All-Pro team. Playing for JDG in 2024 had been the peak: mechanically sharp, strategically ruthless, synergizing perfectly with his team. Synergizing perfectly with him.
Now he was just competent. Professional. He hit his marks, made the right calls, maintained a 72% win rate in scrims. The coaches praised his consistency. His teammates respected his experience. No one seemed to notice that he was playing in automatic mode, executing patterns memorized so deeply they required no passion, no fire. A machine performing its function.
"You've been quiet," Wooje said after the scrim, which had ended in a victory. The top-laner was sprawled on the couch, phone in hand, not looking at Jinhyeok. The statement hung in the air like a question he was too polite to ask directly.
"Focused," Jinhyeok replied, which was both true and a lie.
Wooje nodded, accepting it. People always did, as Jinhyeok had perfected the art of being present while absent, there but not there. He attended team dinners and laughed at jokes with a half-second delay, he gave interviews in measured sentences, he existed in the world the way a photograph exists in a frame: two-dimensional, static, a captured moment with no before or after.
The only time he felt anything that could sparkle some emotion into him was in the moment before a match, when the crowd roared and the lights blazed and his heart rate spiked with manufactured adrenaline. But even that was mechanical, a pavlovian response, his body remembering what it once felt like to care.
—————ʕ·͡ˑ·ཻʔ︎ ——————ฅ՞••՞ฅ︎
December arrived with early snow, dusting Seoul in white that turned to gray slush within hours. The LCK Cup wouldn't start until January, but the pre-season activities had already begun: photoshoots, sponsor obligations, charity events and dinners. Always dinners.
"Player dinner next week," Geonwoo announced during practice, reading from his phone. "HLE, Gen.G, and T1 full attendance confirmed, at least the players that are in the country, other people from other rosters are also joining in."
Gen.G. The name landed in Jinhyeok's chest like a stone in still water, sending ripples outward that he immediately suppressed.
"Cool," he said, voice flat.
He knew, of course, he had known since the roster announcements in November last year. Jaehyuk was Gen.G's ADC now, had been for a full year. He had completed his mandatory military training earlier in December, just in time for the new season. Jinhyeok had seen the press photos: Jaehyuk with shorter hair, sharper jawline, the same dark eyes that used to look at him like he had hung the moon.
He had looked at those photos for exactly thirty seconds before closing the browser. Even through the numbness, there were limits to what he could endure.
The days leading to said dinner passed in a blur of practice and preparation. Jinhyeok told himself it would be fine. Seoul was a city of ten million people, the esports scene vast enough that avoiding one person indefinitely was statistically probable. He would shake Jaehyuk's hand if required, exchange professional pleasantries, and leave. Simple. Clean.
His shoulder ached the night before the dinner, a phantom pain that had no medical basis. Jinhyeok pressed his fingers against the mark through his shirt, feeling nothing but his own cold skin, and tried to sleep. He dreamed of circuit boards and broken connections, of reaching for something that dissolved like smoke the moment his fingers closed around it. He woke at four in the morning with his heart racing and the distinct, irrational sensation that somewhere in this city, someone else was awake too, staring at the ceiling, counting the months.
Thirteen months, three weeks, and five days.
But who was counting?
· · ─── ꒰ঌ· Jaehyuk ·໒꒱ ─── · ·
Jaehyuk's reflection in the restaurant window looked like a stranger.
He had gained muscle during military service, filled out in the shoulders and chest, traded the lean build of a professional gamer for something more solid. His hair was short, growing out now but still cropped close enough to show the shape of his skull. He looked older, like someone who had survived something, although the void in his chest suggested otherwise.
"You good?" Jihoon asked, adjusting his jacket as they waited in the restaurant lobby. The mid-laner's eyes were concerned, the kind of gentle worry that Jaehyuk's teammates had perfected over the past year. They all knew something was wrong. None of them knew what.
"Yeah," Jaehyuk said, and it was the same lie he had been telling for thirteen months.
The void had appeared the moment he had stepped on the plane in China, November of 2024, his contract with JDG ended and his new life with Gen.G began. He had felt it like a physical rupture, as if someone had reached into his chest and hollowed him out with a spoon. The mark on his right shoulder blade, the mirror to Jinhyeok's, the circuit completing the circuit, had gone cold.
Soul bonds weren't supposed to break. That's what the limited research suggested, what the few documented cases indicated. They were permanent, immutable, written into the fabric of two people at a level deeper than DNA. But "weren't supposed to" and "couldn't" were different things, and Jaehyuk had learned the difference the hard way. Distance, it turned out, could sever even quantum entanglement. Or maybe it was the choice. Maybe the bond couldn't survive the act of leaving, the conscious decision to prioritize career over connection. Maybe it had taken one look at what Jaehyuk had done and decided he didn't deserve it.
He had tried to fill the emptiness. Six months of white-knuckling through practices and matches, pretending everything was fine while the void grew teeth and started gnawing at his insides. Then Siwoo had happened. Son Siwoo, NS Red Force's support, who Jaehyuk had played with in Gen.G in 2022, who was kind and patient and willing to try.
It had been comfortable, easy. They understood each other's schedules, spoke the same language of competitive gaming, fit together in a way that looked right from the outside. Jaehyuk had tried to love him. Had tried so hard that it hurt, forcing himself to feel something, anything beyond the vast emptiness where his bond with Jinhyeok used to live. But you couldn't fill a void shaped like one person with another. The geometry was all wrong.
"I knew," Siwoo had said when Jaehyuk finally broke it off, three weeks ago. They had been sitting in Siwoo's car outside Jaehyuk's apartment, the heater running, fog creeping up the windows. "I always knew I was... a placeholder. Or an experiment. It's okay."
"It's not okay," Jaehyuk had said, voice cracking. "You deserve better."
"Maybe." Siwoo had smiled, sad but not bitter. "But you deserve to stop punishing yourself. Whatever you're running from…" He had gestured vaguely at Jaehyuk's chest, at the invisible wound. "You can't run forever."
Jaehyuk hadn't told him about the bond, he hadn’t really told anyone, because how could he explain that he had had something most people only dreamed of, something supposedly unbreakable, and he had walked away from it anyway? How could he make anyone understand that the choice had felt necessary at the time, that staying in China with JDG meant stagnation, meant being forever in someone else's shadow, meant never knowing if he could stand on his own?
He had been almost twenty-four when he met Jinhyeok. Fresh off a disappointing Worlds performance with Gen.G, hungry to prove himself, jumping at the chance to join JDG. Jinhyeok had been twenty-two, but already a veteran, legendary in the LPL for his aggressive playstyle and razor-sharp game sense. They had met during pre-season training and the attraction had been immediate, magnetic, a pull that Jaehyuk couldn't explain and didn't try to resist.
The marks had appeared two months into their relationship, during an intimate moment when Jinhyeok had traced the line of Jaehyuk's shoulder and gone very still.
"Turn around," he had said, voice strange.
Jaehyuk had turned, and Jinhyeok had shown him his own shoulder in the bathroom mirror: an intricate pattern of lines and curves, cybersigilistic and beautiful, glowing faintly with a warmth that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Asymmetric. Incomplete.
"Check yours," Jinhyeok had whispered.
Jaehyuk had looked, and there it was: the mirror image, the other half, the completion of the circuit. Together, the marks formed something whole, a language neither of them could read but both understood instinctively. Soul bonded. Written in their skin.
It had been everything. The bond had amplified what they already felt, creating a feedback loop of connection that was almost overwhelming in its intensity. Jaehyuk had never felt so seen, so understood, so completely known. Jinhyeok had been his gravity, his center, the person who made everything else make sense.
And then Gen.G had made their offer.
"Come with me," Jaehyuk had said, the night before he signed. They had been in their shared apartment in Beijing, Jinhyeok's arms around him, the bond humming between them like a second heartbeat. "We can both sign, Gen.G wants to build a championship team. We could do it together."
"I can't," Jinhyeok had said, and there was something in his voice that Jaehyuk had never heard before. Fear, maybe. Or resignation. "I've been in the LPL for too many years, this is my home now. My career is here."
"Your career could be anywhere. You're you."
"I'm twenty-three. I have maybe four, five good years left. I can't start over."
"I am older than you, I'm supposed to stay too? Give up my chance?"
Jinhyeok had pulled away then, and the absence of his touch had felt like frostbite.
"I'm not asking you to stay, I'm just saying I can't go."
The fight that followed had been quiet, surgical, the kind of argument where every word was chosen to wound. Jaehyuk had accused Jinhyeok of being complacent, afraid, content to fade into obscurity. Jinhyeok had said that Jaehyuk was naive, selfish, willing to destroy something precious for the sake of ambition. Both of them had been right. Both of them had been wrong.
"What about the bond?" Jaehyuk had asked, desperate, grasping at the one thing that had always felt certain. "Doesn't that mean anything?"
"It means everything," Jinhyeok had said, and his eyes had been so sad that Jaehyuk almost took it back, almost said he would stay, almost let Gen.G and his future and his pride all dissolve in the face of that sadness. "But it doesn't change reality. You have to do what is right for you."
So Jaehyuk had gone. Had signed with Gen.G, packed his things, boarded a plane to Seoul. He had felt the bond snap like an overstretched rubber band the moment the wheels left Chinese soil, the warmth in his shoulder blade dying so abruptly he had gasped aloud, causing the passenger next to him to ask if he was okay.
He hadn't been okay since.
—————ʕ·͡ˑ·ཻʔ︎ ——————ฅ՞••՞ฅ︎
The restaurant was upscale, the kind of place where esports money bought privacy and discretion. Players from HLE, Gen.G, and T1 mingled in the private dining room, coaches and managers hovering at the edges. Jaehyuk moved through the crowd on autopilot, shaking hands, making small talk, his brain cataloging exits and blind spots.
He didn't let himself look for Jinhyeok, but he didn’t really need to. He could feel him, the way phantom limbs ached in weather changes. Somewhere in this room, the other half of his soul was breathing the same air, and every molecule in Jaehyuk's body was screaming about it.
"Jaehyuk!" Wangho appeared at his elbow, grinning, pulling him into a quick hug. They had played both together and against each other enough times to be friendly. "Good to have you back. Military done, right? How was it?"
"Long," Jaehyuk said, managing a smile. "But finished. How is retirement treating you?"
"Great, actually. They have a really solid roster this year. The new jungler…"
Jaehyuk's heart stopped.
"…is insane, honestly. You remember Jinhyeok? From JDG? Kanavi?”
The world narrowed to a pinpoint. Somewhere behind Peanut, across the room, Jaehyuk could see him. Black turtleneck. Dark hair, longer than it had been, falling across his forehead. Same sharp features, same broad shoulders, same hands that Jaehyuk used to hold like they contained every answer he would ever need.
Jinhyeok was talking to Minseok, expression polite and distant, and then, as if pulled by the same inevitable gravity, his gaze shifted. He found Jaehyuk across the crowded room.
The impact was physical. Jaehyuk felt it in his chest, a percussion that had nothing to do with his heart and everything to do with the mark on his shoulder blade, which suddenly flared hot, so hot he nearly gasped. The void in his chest cracked, just slightly, and for the first time in thirteen months he felt something other than emptiness: pain, bright and sharp and real.
Jinhyeok's face went white. His hand came up to clutch his left shoulder, fingers digging into the fabric of his turtleneck, and Jaehyuk knew, knew, that he was feeling it too. The bond, trying to reform. Trying to bridge the distance and the damage and the choices that had severed it. It hurt. God, it hurt like nothing Jaehyuk had ever felt, as if every nerve ending in his body had been dormant for a year and was suddenly, violently waking up.
Jinhyeok turned abruptly, muttered something to Minseok, and walked toward the restaurant's back exit. His movements were jerky, controlled panic, a man fleeing a burning building. Jaehyuk should have stayed. Should have let him go. Should have done the smart thing, the safe thing, the thing that would protect them both from whatever fresh hell this was.
"Excuse me," he said to Wangho, and followed.
· · ─── ꒰ঌ· Jinhyeok ·໒꒱ ─── · ·
The cold air hit Jinhyeok like a slap, December wind cutting through his turtleneck as if it were paper. He stumbled into the alley behind the restaurant, one hand braced against the brick wall, the other still clutching his shoulder where the mark burned like a brand.
His heart was racing, actual racing, a sensation so foreign after thirteen months of artificial calm that it took him a moment to identify it. Fear. Panic. And underneath that, worse than that: longing, so intense it threatened to drop him to his knees.
The bond was trying to reconnect. He could feel it like a live wire pressed against his skin, electricity arcing across the gap that distance and choice had created. It shouldn't be possible. Broken things stayed broken. That was the rule. That was what had allowed him to survive.
His hands shook as he pulled out a cigarette, an habit he had picked up in the months after Jaehyuk left. The lighter flicked once, twice, three times before the flame caught. He inhaled, held the smoke, exhaled into the night. The nicotine did nothing to calm the storm in his chest.
"Since when do you smoke?"
Jaehyuk's voice came from behind him, and Jinhyeok didn't turn around. Couldn't. If he looked, if he saw those eyes that used to look at him like he was magic, like he was worth something…
"Since you left," Jinhyeok said, voice rough. The honesty surprised him. Thirteen months of careful neutrality, and the truth slipped out in five seconds.
Footsteps on concrete. Jaehyuk moved into his peripheral vision, keeping his distance between them, as if he also understood that proximity was dangerous. He looked different up close. Older. Sharper. The military haircut made his eyes look larger, more vulnerable. The set of his jaw suggested he was holding himself together through sheer force of will.
"I felt it," Jaehyuk said quietly. "In there. The mark. It…" He pressed his hand to his right shoulder blade, fingers digging in. "It's trying to reform."
"I know."
"Is that supposed to be possible?"
"How the fuck should I know?" The words came out harsher than Jinhyeok intended, anger bleeding through the numbness. He took another drag of his cigarette. "I Googled it once. There's not exactly a manual."
Silence. The city sounds filtered into the alley: traffic, distant music, the hum of existence continuing around them while they stood in their own private apocalypse.
"You look good," Jaehyuk said finally, and there was something raw in his voice that made Jinhyeok's chest constrict. "Different, but good. HLE is treating you well?"
"It's fine." Jinhyeok flicked ash onto the ground. "You?"
"Fine."
They were lying. Both of them knew it.
"I saw the gossip, Yunfeng showed me," Jinhyeok continued, still not looking at him. "You and Siwoo. Congratulations."
Jaehyuk made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.
"We broke up. Three weeks ago."
Jinhyeok's hand stilled halfway to his mouth. The cigarette burned between his fingers, forgotten.
“What?"
"It wasn't…" Jaehyuk exhaled, long and shaky. "He was good to me. Kind. But I couldn't... There was this void, this emptiness where the bond used to be, and I thought maybe I could fill it with someone else. Someone who wasn't…" He cut himself off. "It didn't work. I was using him. He deserved better."
The mark on Jinhyeok's shoulder pulsed, a sharp spike of heat that made him wince. Jaehyuk noticed, took a half-step forward before stopping himself.
"Does it hurt?" Jaehyuk asked.
"Yes."
"Mine too."
Jinhyeok finally turned to look at him. Mistake. Jaehyuk's eyes were the same dark brown he remembered, but there was something broken in them now, a fracture that mirrored the one in Jinhyeok's chest. He looked like someone who had been hollowed out and was trying to pretend the shell was enough.
"I tried everything," Jaehyuk said, words tumbling out in a rush now, as if a dam had broken. "I tried to pretend it didn't happen. Tried to move on. Tried to fill the space with someone else, with work, with anything. But it's like… it's like there's this hole in my chest that's shaped exactly like you, and nothing else fits. Nothing else even comes close."
"Don't." The word came out sharp, desperate. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Act like you didn't choose this." Jinhyeok took a step back, putting the wall between his shoulder blades, needing the solid support. "You left. You got on a plane and you left, and the bond broke, and that was your decision. You don't get to…" His voice cracked. "To show up now and tell me about the void. I know about the void. I've been living in it for thirteen months."
"You think I don't know that?" Jaehyuk's hands clenched into fists at his sides. "You think I don't replay that conversation every single night? I made a choice. I chose my career over us, and I've regretted it every day since."
"Then why didn't you come back?" The question burst out of Jinhyeok like a wound opening. "If you regretted it so much, why didn't you get on a plane and come back? Why did you date someone else? Why did you…" He couldn't finish. Couldn't articulate the betrayal of watching Jaehyuk move on while Jinhyeok had been trapped in emotional permafrost, unable to feel anything beyond gray static.
"Because I'm a coward," Jaehyuk said simply. "Because admitting I made a mistake would mean accepting that I destroyed the best thing in my life for nothing. Because I was terrified that you might have moved on, that you were better off without me, that the bond breaking was a blessing in disguise."
"A blessing?" Jinhyeok laughed, bitter and broken. "You think losing the ability to feel anything romantic is a blessing?"
Jaehyuk's face went pale.
"What?"
"That's what happened. When the bond broke." Jinhyeok stubbed out his cigarette against the wall, grinding it down to nothing. "I lost it. All of it. The capacity for attraction, for connection, for giving a shit about anything beyond the mechanical process of existing. You got a void. I got nothing. Just this…" He gestured vaguely at himself. "Walking corpse going through the motions because stopping would require a reason and I don't have one."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Jaehyuk looked like he had been struck, his eyes wide and horrified.
"I didn't know," he whispered. "I didn't know it would do that."
"Neither did I." Jinhyeok's voice was flat again, the brief surge of emotion already receding into numbness. The mark on his shoulder was still burning, but he had learned to compartmentalize pain. "But that's what happens when you break a soul bond, apparently. Surprise."
"We could…” Jaehyuk started, then stopped. Started again. "The mark is trying to reconnect. We felt it. Maybe if we…"
"No."
"Jinhyeok…”
"No." Jinhyeok pushed off from the wall, putting more distance between them. The mark screamed in protest, a white-hot lance of pain that he ignored through sheer stubbornness. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to walk away, realize you made a mistake, and then walk back expecting everything to magically fix itself."
"I'm not expecting that. I'm just saying maybe we could try…"
"Try what? To be together? To pretend the last thirteen months didn't happen? To ignore the fact that you chose your career over us once and could do it again?" Jinhyeok's voice was rising now, control slipping. "I can't do this. I can't go through this again. I barely survived it the first time."
"I wouldn't…"
"You did." The words hung in the air between them, final as a grave. "You already did, and I believed you when you said you loved me, when you said the bond meant everything, and you still got on that plane. So forgive me if I don't trust promises anymore."
Jaehyuk flinched like he'd been hit.
“I did love you. I do love you. That never changed."
"Love isn't enough," Jinhyeok said, and the truth of it felt like swallowing glass. "If it was, you would have stayed. Or I would have gone. Or we would have figured it out. But we didn't, because at the end of the day, we both chose ourselves over each other, and that's not love. That's just two people who wanted different things."
"So that's it?" Jaehyuk's voice broke. "We just… what? Stay apart? Ignore the fact that our marks are trying to reconnect? Spend the rest of our lives feeling like this?"
"Yes." Jinhyeok met his eyes, and he hoped Jaehyuk could see the resolve there, even if it was built on foundations of dust and desperation. "Because the alternative is worse. The alternative is trying again and failing again, and I can't…" His throat closed up. "I can't break twice. Once was enough."
"Jinhyeok…”
"You should go back inside," Jinhyeok said, turning away. "People will notice we're both gone."
"I don't care…”
"I do." He pulled out another cigarette, hands steady now, the numbness creeping back in like an old friend. "I care about my reputation, my career, my team. I care about all the things that are still here, still real, still mine. You taught me that. The importance of choosing yourself."
The cruelty of it landed like he had intended. Jaehyuk made a small, wounded sound.
"That's not fair."
"No," Jinhyeok agreed. "But it's true."
He heard Jaehyuk move, footsteps shuffling on concrete, and for a horrible moment he thought Jaehyuk might touch him. Might put a hand on his shoulder or turn him around or do any of the thousand things that would shatter Jinhyeok's carefully constructed defenses. But Jaehyuk stopped. Stayed at a distance. When he spoke, his voice was thick with unshed tears.
"I'm sorry. For all of it, leaving, breaking us, not being brave enough to come back. For the void. For whatever happened to you when the bond broke. I'm so fucking sorry, and I know it doesn't fix anything, but I need you to know that."
Jinhyeok closed his eyes. The cigarette burned down between his fingers, heat kissing his knuckles.
"I know."
"I loved you," Jaehyuk said softly. "I loved you so much it terrified me. And I think… I think that's why I left. Because loving someone that much means giving them the power to destroy you, and I was too much of a coward to live with that."
"And now?" Jinhyeok asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.
"Now I'm destroyed anyway," Jaehyuk said. "So I guess the joke is on me."
Footsteps. Moving away this time. The sound of the back door opening, restaurant noise bleeding into the alley for a brief moment before cutting off again.
Jinhyeok stayed in the alley for another ten minutes, smoking three more cigarettes in succession, waiting for the mark on his shoulder to stop burning. It didn't. Eventually, he gave up and went back inside, slipping into the dining room through the side entrance.
Jaehyuk was at a table with his Gen.G teammates, laughing at something Minkyu had said. The laugh didn't reach his eyes. Jinhyeok watched him for exactly ten seconds, memorizing the shape of his smile, the way his glasses fell across his nose, the line of his shoulders that Jinhyeok used to trace in the dark.
Then he turned away and found his own team, slipping into conversations about the upcoming season, about strategies and rosters and all the safe, normal things that didn't tear him apart from the inside.
The mark burned all night.
By morning, it had gone cold again.