Work Text:
Riki’s slumber seemed to linger long after his eyes had opened. The heaviness clung stubbornly to him, dulling the edges of the morning until even the silence inside the apartment felt exhausting. With a quiet sigh, he pushed himself upright and crossed the room, fingers curling around the curtains before yanking them apart in one swift motion.
Sunlight spilled through the windows immediately, pale gold flooding the dark corners of his room. He squinted against it for a second, hoping the warmth might shake him free from the sluggish haze clouding his head. Below, the street was already awake.
People drifted along the sidewalks carrying paper cups and shopping bags, cars rolled lazily past the intersection, and the small bakery across the street had begun gathering its usual morning crowd. Riki rested one shoulder against the window frame, gaze wandering absentmindedly over the scene until someone caught his attention.
A boy stood in front of the bakery window, completely absorbed in whatever was displayed behind the glass. Probably around Riki’s age, though there was something softer about him that made it difficult to tell. He had a cherubic face, the kind that still carried traces of boyishness despite the maturity settling into his features. Dark hair fell neatly over his forehead as he leaned closer to inspect the pastries lined inside the display case.
His brows furrowed in concentration, as though choosing between bread was somehow a life-altering decision. Riki huffed quietly under his breath. From up there, every pastry looked identical. Bread was bread.
Yet the stranger seemed deeply conflicted between a croissant and a baguette, lips pursed ever so slightly while he considered the options. Then, the boy smiled to himself. A dimple appeared in his cheeks. It was small, fleeting, but enough to soften his entire face so effortlessly that Riki found himself staring longer than intended.
The boy looked up suddenly. The stranger’s eyes widened with clear surprise, caught completely off guard to find someone watching from above. Riki’s heartbeat stumbled awkwardly against his ribs before speeding up altogether, sharp and annoyingly loud in the quiet room.
Instinctively, Riki stepped back and pulled the curtain shut. The apartment fell dim again. He exhaled slowly, one hand still gripping the fabric too tightly. His pulse refused to settle, thudding unevenly beneath his skin for reasons he didn’t care to examine too closely.
After a moment, curiosity got the better of him. He peeked through the curtain once more. The spot in front of the bakery window was empty.
──
Riki rested his cheek against the cold glass of his bedroom window, a cup of coffee warming his hands despite the winter chill lingering stubbornly through the apartment. Outside, the air looked painfully cold, the kind that turned every passing breath into pale clouds against the gray morning sky.
Then he saw him again. The boy from the bakery window.
Jungwon stood near the corner shop, bundled beneath a dark coat with a scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. His dark hair was slightly messy from the wind, though he either didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to fix it. An elderly woman stood beside him, speaking animatedly while Jungwon listened with surprising patience. A soft smile rested on his face as he nodded along.
The older woman suddenly reached over and pulled Jungwon into a brief hug. The reaction on Jungwon’s face changed almost instantly. His composed expression melted into something far brighter, softer, until a goofy smile spread across his face. A dimple appeared in his cheek. It caught Riki off guard all over again.
Jungwon laughed quietly at something the woman said, ducking his head slightly in embarrassment before patting her shoulder affectionately. For a moment, he looked younger than before. Less distant. Less like the stranger Riki had briefly locked eyes with through a window yesterday.
After saying goodbye, Jungwon walked toward a bicycle parked near the curb. A woven cane basket hung from the front handlebars, slightly crooked like it had been used for years. He adjusted his scarf with one hand before climbing onto the bike. Before riding off, he waved once more at the old woman. Then he disappeared down the street.
Riki continued staring long after Jungwon was gone, eyes lingering on the empty road as though expecting him to return. Only when silence settled back into the room did he finally blink. His fingers tightened around the coffee cup slightly.
──
Riki had been staring at his laptop for far too long. The words on the screen blurred together, unchanged no matter how many times he reread them. Work had stopped feeling like something meaningful hours ago, reduced instead to something he simply had to endure. With a quiet sigh, he pushed his chair back.
The apartment felt stuffy despite the cold outside, so he walked over to the window. He leaned against the frame, letting his eyes drift downward. That was when he saw the boy again.
Jungwon was moving quickly along the sidewalk, slightly out of breath like he had been running for a while. A paper bag hung from his hand, swinging lightly with each step. Riki only meant to glance once. But then it happened too fast. Someone stepped into his path. Jungwon fell. The paper bag slipped from his grasp, spilling its contents across the pavement.
Riki straightened instantly, fingers gripping the window frame.
“Oh—”
There was nothing he could do from here. Nothing useful. Just watching, stuck behind glass and distance as strangers.
One person helped him up almost immediately. Another gathered the scattered items, placing them back into the paper bag. Jungwon blinked for a moment, clearly startled, then let out a small, embarrassed laugh. He bent slightly at the waist, thanking the people around him repeatedly. He took the bag back carefully, checked if everything was still there, and smiled again.
Riki slowly leaned back from the window. And for some reason, he found himself thinking. Does he always smile like that?
──
At six in the morning, Riki woke to the dull pounding behind his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. His body, unfortunately, had other plans. No matter how late he slept, his biological clock never failed to drag him awake at the same miserable hour. He buried his face into the pillow for another minute, debating whether getting up was truly necessary. Sleep still clung heavily to him, but eventually he forced himself out of bed with a tired sigh.
The apartment was cold against his bare feet as he pulled on a hoodie and stepped outside.
The hallway sat in complete silence, faint morning light stretching across the floor from the windows at the far end. Riki barely paid attention at first, still too sleepy to think properly. Then he looked up. The boy from downstairs stood only a few steps away.
Jungwon had a stack of newspapers tucked beneath one arm, his attention focused on sorting through them before noticing Riki’s presence. Without the heavy winter layers from before, he looked unexpectedly soft this close up. His dark hair rested softly against his forehead, neat in some places and slightly tousled in others.
Riki forgot how to move for a second.
Jungwon glanced up, eyes meeting him almost immediately. There was curiosity in his expression, like he was trying to figure Riki out the same way Riki had been quietly observing him these past few days. Before Jungwon could say anything, Riki turned abruptly and rushed back into his apartment.
The door shut faster than intended, the sound echoing embarrassingly loud through the hallway. He leaned against it afterward, pressing both hands over his face while his heartbeat raced uncontrollably beneath his ribs. Excitement and embarrassment tangled together so badly he could barely tell them apart.
“What is wrong with me?” he groaned quietly to himself.
──
Riki never understood why sadness seemed to follow him so persistently. His life was good enough. He had a job he genuinely loved, one that paid well and left him with more free time than most people could hope for. But maybe that was exactly the problem.
Too much time alone with his own thoughts. There was never anything waiting for him after work. No one called him home. No distractions strong enough to drown out the emptiness sitting quietly inside his chest.
Loneliness had become so familiar that Riki stopped questioning it long ago. What frustrated him most was how little he understood himself. He could never explain where the hollow feeling came from or why it refused to disappear no matter how much he tried to ignore it.
Then, one cold morning in December, he met a boy with dimples in his smile. And somehow, things began to feel different after that.
As Riki opened his apartment door that morning, he nearly froze.
Jungwon stood in the hallway holding a folded newspaper beneath his arm. The moment their eyes met, Riki recognized the look immediately. It was the same curious gaze Jungwon always wore whenever he caught Riki staring from across the street or behind the safety of his curtains.
Except this time, there was amusement in it too. The corners of Jungwon’s mouth lifted slowly. He smiled.
“Hi.”
Riki stared for half a second too long before remembering how conversations worked. “Hi,” he replied quietly, the word coming out far more timid than intended.
Jungwon held out the newspaper toward him. “Your newspaper.”
Up close, Riki noticed things he hadn’t before. The faint pink tint on Jungwon’s cheeks from the winter cold. The softness in his eyes. The small dimple that appeared whenever he smiled properly.
And suddenly, all he could feel was painfully aware of himself. His messy hair. His tired expression. The awkward way he stood there while Jungwon looked effortlessly warm beneath the pale hallway light.
The feeling settled somewhere between insecurity, bashfulness, and excitement, all tangled together until Riki could barely separate one from the other. Yet despite how overwhelming it was, he already knew this would become one of those moments he would replay in his mind long afterward.
──
Winter stayed, lingering stubbornly over the city in gray skies and brumous mornings that made everything feel colder than it truly was. Yet somehow, Riki no longer dreaded waking up as much as he used to. Not when he knew he might see the boy downstairs.
Lately, it had become part of his mornings without either of them meaning for it to happen. A brief encounter in the hallway. Passing each other near the bakery. Small moments that should have been insignificant, yet somehow became the quiet highlight of Riki’s days.
He no longer had to steal glances from behind his bedroom curtains. Now Jungwon looked at him first sometimes. And every single time their eyes met, Jungwon would smile. That dimple kept appearing too, unfairly charming, as if Jungwon had no idea what it did to him.
Riki began noticing ridiculous things after that.
The way Jungwon tucked his hands into his sleeves when it got too cold outside. The way his nose turned pink during particularly freezing mornings. The quiet hums under his breath whenever he sorts newspapers downstairs. None of it should have mattered this much.
Yet somehow, it did.
And slowly, Riki started realizing that what he felt was no longer simple curiosity. It wasn’t just fascination either, nor the fleeting interest people developed toward strangers they happened to find beautiful. Those feelings had changed into something deeper without him noticing.
Could it be an attraction?
──
Night had already settled over the city. Riki sat by the window with an open book resting on his lap. His eyes kept drifting away from the page, slipping past sentences and paragraphs until they landed on the glass instead. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for at first. Until he saw the boy again.
Jungwon was standing near the edge of the sidewalk, head tilted slightly upward as snow gathered in his hair. He looked as though he had stepped outside with no particular reason, only to exist for a moment in the cold. He reached out once, letting the snow fall into his palm.
Riki didn’t know what made him move. One moment he was still by the window, watching Jungwon standing under the falling snow, and the next he was already reaching for his jacket, then left the apartment.
The cold outside didn’t feel like a warning anymore, just something he passed through as he stepped out, following a feeling he couldn’t quite name but didn’t want to ignore either.
Jungwon noticed him first. Across the street, beneath the falling snow, he lifted a hand and waved. Riki hesitated for a moment too long. Then, awkwardly, he returned the gesture.
The cold air felt sharper as he stepped off the curb, his focus unsteady, drifting more toward Jungwon than the road. Instead of stopping, he walked past Jungwon as if he still hadn’t fully processed why he had come down at all. His steps carried him straight into the bakery, the bell above the door ringing softly behind him as warmth rushed over his face.
A few minutes later, Riki came back out of the bakery with two cups of hot chocolate in hand. He stopped in front of Jungwon, the pause between them stretching just a little longer than necessary, before he finally offered one cup without a word.
Jungwon took it with a soft smile, his cheeks faintly flushed from the cold, partly hidden behind his scarf as he thanked him quietly. Riki only gave a small nod in return, suddenly unsure of where to look, as if the space between them had become a little too noticeable to ignore.
──
So much had changed, although winter still lingered stubbornly outside. The mornings remained gray. Snow still gathered along the sidewalks. The cold still seeped through the apartment walls no matter how high Riki turned the heater.
But somehow, none of it felt as unbearable anymore. Not after Jungwon became part of his days.
They talked often now, so naturally that Riki could no longer remember when the awkwardness between them disappeared. Conversations came easily with Jungwon in a way they never did with anyone else. Words flowed without effort whenever they sat together, and even when Riki stumbled over himself or lost track of what he meant to say, it never felt humiliating.
Because Jungwon would simply smile at him. And somehow, that always made everything better.
Most mornings began with Jungwon knocking lightly on his door, newspaper tucked beneath his arm alongside two cups of coffee from the bakery downstairs. Sometimes they stayed in the hallway talking until the coffee went cold. Other times Jungwon ended up inside Riki’s apartment, curled comfortably into the corner of his couch while they discussed everything from films to music to world politics neither of them could actually do anything about.
The apartment no longer felt empty when Jungwon was there. Riki noticed that too quickly.
Sometimes, without even realizing it, he found himself telling Jungwon things he normally kept buried inside himself. Small frustrations. Restlessness. Loneliness. Thoughts that had once felt impossible to explain aloud. And Jungwon always listened.
The dangerous part was that lately, every feeling Riki confessed somehow traced back to him in the end. The unbearable warmth sitting inside his chest whenever Jungwon looked at him too long. It was always him.
Maybe that was why Riki finally said it one evening without planning to.
Winter rain tapped softly against the windows while Jungwon sat beside him on the couch, quietly sipping his coffee, the warmth of it lingering between his hands.
“I think I like you,” Riki admitted quietly. The words left him before he could stop them. His heartbeat pounded so hard he thought it might genuinely kill him.
Then Jungwon looked up and smiled. A dimple appeared in his cheek as he reached over, gently tugging the magazine down from where it had been half-covering Riki’s face.
“I was wondering when you’d finally say it,” Jungwon murmured.
Riki blinked at him, the tension slowly easing out of his shoulders as the cold outside seemed a little less sharp, a little less distant, now that Jungwon was looking at him like that.
Winter lingered quietly beyond the window, but for the first time in a while, Riki didn’t feel alone anymore.