Chapter Text
Everyone at CORTIS High knew who Eom Seonghyeon was.
Tall.
Formidable.
Rude.
Disinterested.
He hung out with the wrong people, the kind who thrived on chaos and reputation.
He picked fights with anyone who dared look at him wrong—or sometimes, for no reason at all.
His muscles were impossible to ignore, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, and people whispered, "He's not from our world."
And they weren't wrong.
There was something darker that everyone saw but nobody wanted to talk about.
The black track marks climbing his arms like veins of shadow.
The lines he snorted in the bathroom while the rest of the school ate lunch.
No family to stop him, no teachers that cared enough, no one to check if he was okay.
Just Seonghyeon, existing on the edge of everything, untouchable, dangerous.
Keonho had tried to look away, honestly.
He'd told himself a thousand times not to notice him, not to let Seonghyeon's chaotic pull get under his skin.
But it always did.
Every time Seonghyeon leaned against a wall, smirked at a fight he hadn't even started yet, or moved with that careless, untamed grace, Keonho felt it—an annoying, relentless tug in his chest.
He hated that he wanted to know everything about him. Hated that he found himself staring at the scars, the track marks, the defiance, and feeling... something.
A crush. A stupid, impossible crush.
On someone so dangerous that even his good looks weren't incentive enough to romance him.
Keonho liked the drug addict, and he was so, so fucked.
~~
They shared one class together. History.
Keonho always came early, the kind of student who liked the calm before the noise.
He'd take his usual seat by the window, sunlight catching on the edge of his notebook as he wrote down the date. But today, that calm didn't last long.
Seonghyeon walked in late, as always, backpack half-zipped, uniform shirt wrinkled, one earbud still in. The room seemed to shrink around him.
Conversations dimmed, the teacher paused mid-sentence, and the air shifted like everyone was bracing for something.
He didn't care.
He never did.
He dropped into his seat near the back, slouched low, eyes unfocused as if the world didn't deserve his attention.
Keonho wasn't sure what made him do it.
Maybe curiosity.
Maybe the way Seonghyeon's hair caught the light.
Or maybe it was the silence—the way no one ever spoke to him unless it was to curse or complain. Whatever it was, it pulled the words out before he could stop himself.
"Hey," Keonho said quietly, turning halfway in his seat. "Do you—uh—need the notes from yesterday?"
You were absent because you were injecting god knows what into your body again, weren't you?
For a second, nothing. Not even a blink.
Then Seonghyeon looked up.
It wasn't the kind of look people gave each other.
It was slow, deliberate, dissecting.
His dark eyes swept over Keonho, head to toe, like he was studying something that didn't quite fit the environment—something worth inspecting but not necessarily touching.
His gaze lingered just a second too long before he leaned back, expression unreadable.
"No," he said simply. His tone was clipped, almost bored, but there was a trace of something beneath it—curiosity, maybe. Or amusement.
Keonho blinked. "Right. Okay."
He turned back around, trying to focus on the lesson again, but his heartbeat betrayed him—fast, uneven, too aware.
He could feel Seonghyeon's gaze still on him, faint but deliberate, like the other boy was still deciding what to make of him.
When the teacher began to speak again, Keonho dared to glance back.
Seonghyeon wasn't looking anymore. He had his hood up now, pen spinning lazily between his fingers, eyes half-lidded.
Still, Keonho couldn't shake the image of that stare—the weight of it, the strange curiosity hidden inside it.
It hadn't even been a real conversation. Barely a few words exchanged. But for some reason, it lingered in his chest long after class ended.
Because for one fleeting moment, Eom Seonghyeon had looked at him.
And Keonho couldn't help but want him to look again.