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Dokja’s old office in the observatory, in the middle of the industrial complex—once cold, once used for planning and meetings mid-scenario—had, somewhere along the way, become warmer. Lived-in. The long metal conference table was cluttered with things he was fairly certain weren’t meant to be there. Manuscripts and drafts had overtaken every surface. It was almost charming—until you needed to find something.
Like today.
“Are you sure it isn’t on there?”
“I told you, I’ve checked that over five times.”
Dokja looked at the table, taking its full measure. It didn’t look searched so much as ransacked. He sighed, shaking his head lightly.
“Calm down. We’ll find that envelope.”
“By when?” he asked. “We don’t even know when the event is.”
“And whose fault is that?” Sooyoung huffed. “I told you to open it the moment I handed it to you.”
He exhaled slowly.
It could be one of those days. A small shift—just enough, a slight raise in voice, a slight edge in tone. Nothing serious, nothing that mattered, but enough to drag things out longer than necessary.
But what was Kim Dokja, with free will, if he didn’t exercise it with immaculate patience?
It was getting late.
He crossed the room to where Sooyoung was crouched on the floor beside the sofa, digging through a stack of papers that had long since stopped resembling anything organized. She looked tired—they had been searching for that one envelope the entire afternoon. Her shoulders were tense, which meant she was already past irritated and settling into something quieter.
He reached down, gently pulling her up.
“Come on,” he said, drawing her in without resistance. “We’ll find it tomorrow.”
She exhaled, just like that—the fight leaving her as easily as it had come.
At their age, they were supposed to be past petty arguments. Apparently, they never would be—but they had learned, at least, to let most of them go.
She let her head fall briefly against his shoulder, then smiled, faint but real. “Thank God. I’m tired.”
“I never asked you to do thorough search,” he said.
“And let you gloat when you’re the one who finds it?” she shot back, pulling away just enough to look at him. “No, thanks.”
They left it there.
Not unresolved—just set aside in the way most things between them had learned to be. The lights went out without ceremony, the quiet settling over the room as naturally as it had once filled with voices and plans. Whatever remained of the argument thinned into something unimportant somewhere between closing doors and shared space, until it was no longer worth holding onto. By the time sleep came, it had already loosened its grip.
The room was dim in that indistinct pre-dawn way where the world hadn’t decided yet whether to wake.
Han Sooyoung was half-buried beneath Kim Dokja.
Not crushed—he was careful even in sleep, always careful—but enclosed so thoroughly she could feel him everywhere: one arm beneath her neck, the other curved over her waist and tucking under her ribs, one knee slid between hers, his chest pressed warm and solid to the front of her body until there was barely a pocket of air left between them.
She could not have escaped without significant effort—
not that she wanted to.
His hand was in her hair—shorter now, cropped close enough that his fingers couldn’t sink in the way they used to.
He remembered the first time she cut it—not the moment itself, just the aftermath. His mistake of calling it “old lady hair,” even though she hadn’t looked a day over twenty-five in decades, as she walked away. And the way she’d turned right back, stepped into his space like she meant to start a fight.
“Yeah,” she’d said, too close. “Say it to my face.”
He hadn’t—
He hadn’t—not at that distance, not when she looked like that.
Close like that, his thoughts didn’t quite line up. She was—beautiful. It didn’t feel like enough of a word, not up close.
He noticed things he shouldn’t—the shape of her mouth when she spoke, the steadiness in her eyes, the familiar angle of her jaw he’d memorized long ago. Everything else had changed. Not her.
Too close, not enough distance to think properly—and he didn’t look away.
* * *
Up close, not just resting there—threaded deep, fingers spread against the back of her head—like he had pulled her in during the night and never once considered letting go. His wrist brushed the shell of her ear. His palm cradled her skull. Every now and then, in that unconscious way sleeping people moved, his fingertips shifted and combed faintly through the strands.
A soothing motion—possessive in the gentlest possible way.
The feeling lingered.
Sooyoung opened her eyes to the soft dark of his throat directly in front of her.
This close, she could hear the slow drag of his breathing, feel the rise of his chest against her own, the steady beat under skin and bone where her face was tucked near his collar.
She stayed still.
Dokja always looked younger asleep. The tension left his mouth. The crease between his brows smoothed out. His shoulders, usually held like he expected impact, loosened enough to feel human.
Safe.
The thought came quietly enough to startle her.
Inside his arms, pinned in place by his ridiculous height and stupidly long limbs and the unfair breadth of him, she felt it settle—something steady, something she hadn’t been expecting.
How annoying.
She shifted an inch, only to test it, and his hold tightened immediately.
A sleepy exhale ghosted over her forehead.
Then, without waking, he bent further over her.
Sooyoung actually huffed.
“Are you serious?”
No answer—
only his body settling heavier around hers, as if some sleeping instinct had registered movement and decided the solution was simply to gather her closer.
His forearm drew her in until her nose brushed his neck. His hand slid from her hair to cup the back of her head fully, thumb pressing warm near her temple. His chin rested above her crown.
It was absurd.
She was a grown woman—a competent, terrifying, highly intelligent one.
And Kim Dokja, half-conscious, had apparently decided to hold her like something precious enough to shield with his entire body.
For a long moment she did nothing except lie there listening to him breathe.
Then she tipped her face up.
His eyelashes trembled.
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re awake.”
A pause.
“…Possibly.”
“You fraud.”
His mouth twitched.
Sooyoung made an offended noise and tried to pull back enough to glare at him properly, but there was nowhere to go. One of his arms was literally under her shoulders and the other had made a prison of her waist. She managed approximately three centimeters before he looked down at her, sleepy and unrepentant, and drew her right back.
“Dokja.”
“Hm?”
“I can’t move.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“You are six feet of unresolved attachment issues.”
“That’s not a measurement.”
“It should be.”
His eyes had that soft unfocused haze of someone not fully awake yet, but he was smiling now—small, private, the kind of smile he only ever wore in these unguarded moments when there was no audience to perform indifference for.
It did something unfortunate to her chest.
She scowled on instinct.
He lowered his head and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
Just there. Lingering.
Then another at her temple.
Another beside her eye.
Each one slow enough to feel less like teasing and more like a quiet inventory—as if he were reassuring himself she was real under his hands.
Sooyoung went still.
His lips brushed the bridge of her nose.
Her cheek.
The corner of her mouth.
By the time he finally kissed her properly, she was already melting into him, one hand fisting in the front of his shirt.
Dokja made a soft sound against her lips—barely there, almost disbelieving.
When he pulled back, he didn’t go far. Their foreheads rested together. His hand remained cupped around the back of her head, fingers spanning nearly ear to ear.
He looked at her the way people looked at miracles they did not trust themselves to touch.
It would have been embarrassing if she weren’t busy drowning.
His thumb stroked once near her hairline.
Then, so quietly she almost missed it, he murmured, “You fit.”
She blinked. “What?”
A faint flush climbed his ears, but his gaze never left her.
“In my arms,” he said, voice rough with sleep. “You fit.”
Han Sooyoung stared at him.
There were, objectively, a hundred cutting remarks available to her.
All of them vanished.
Because Kim Dokja was looking at her like he had just discovered the physical dimensions of his own happiness.
Like every extra inch of his reach existed solely for this—for circling around her, for folding over her, for making a place she could disappear into and still be found.
Something hot and helpless cracked open behind her ribs.
Unbelievable.
She lifted both arms and looped them around his neck, tugging him down until he had no choice but to bury his face against hers.
His breath caught.
“There,” she muttered, pressing her nose to his cheek. “Now you fit too.”
Dokja laughed.
It was the quietest sound in the world, and somehow it wrecked her more than anything else.
His arms tightened.
Not enough to hurt.
Enough to say mine in a language neither of them would ever admit aloud.
Sooyoung slid one hand into his hair. Held him there. Felt the shape of him curved around her like a wall built for only one purpose: keeping the cold out.
Neither of them spoke.
There was no need.
Because she could feel it in the way his fingers trembled once at the nape of her neck before settling.
Could feel it in the reverence of each absentminded kiss he kept pressing into her skin.
Could feel it in the almost desperate care with which he continued to cradle her head, as if even lying in bed with nowhere to fall, he still wanted to be the thing that caught her.
And Dokja—
Dokja, with his face hidden against hers, was thinking with a kind of stunned, aching gratitude that still sometimes blindsided him:
I get to keep this.
Her warmth. Her weight.
Her sharp mouth and sharper mind.
The fact that she was here, tangled in his sheets and his arms in this impossibly ordinary morning.
His.
The luck of it was unbearable.
Across from him, eyes closed, holding him just as tightly despite the mismatch of limbs, Sooyoung had the exact same thought and hated him a little for it.
How dare he become the place she wanted to stay.
She pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw—not hurried, not careful, just enough to keep him there.
Her hand lingered, thumb brushing along his cheek without thinking.
It settled somewhere low in her chest—heavy, unfamiliar in its certainty.
This could last.
Not forever—she knew better than that. Just however long constellations lasted.
Long enough that she didn’t have to brace for the end of it.
She let it sit there. Let it spill, just a little, into the space between them.
Dokja responded by folding over her further, until she was nearly swallowed again.
Annoying. Wonderful.
She could have stayed there until the end of the time and called it a life well spent.
The room stayed quiet around them.
On the metal table, beneath uneven stacks of paper and a draft Sooyoung would have sworn she had already checked twice, a wedding invitation lay untouched—unopened.
The names were familiar, though time had placed them differently now: Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung’s granddaughter.
It waited there, quietly—exactly where it had always been.
“…We’ll find it,” Sooyoung murmured again, her voice already soft with sleep.
Dokja’s hand tightened slightly at her waist.
“Of course.”