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The warmth of Christmas arrived sooner than expected. All the lights were up, every house glowing like it was trying too hard to be soft, to be gentle, to pretend the world wasn’t as cruel as it really was. But none of it touched him. None of it warmed the hollowness sitting in his lungs.
This whole no-contact situation they had going on was tougher than either of them thought it would be—like choosing to breathe with only one lung because the other hurt too much to use. Jaehyun had always been the type to message Sungho whenever something stupid happened to him or his family—when his aunt slipped on a puddle while decorating the tree, when his dog barked at the snow like it was the apocalypse, when the heater broke and he had to wear three jackets indoors just to survive. His brain worked in impulse, and that impulse always led to Sungho.
And Sungho… God, Sungho was the type to send him the most random thoughts, like how he rewatched a movie from childhood and it hit different—hit deeper—because now he understood what loneliness looked like in the eyes of the protagonist. Or how he burned his tongue on hot chocolate but didn’t regret it because it reminded him of winter nights spent sharing one blanket on the dorm couch, pretending they weren’t too close, pretending it wasn’t too much.
Now there was nothing. No messages. No midnight calls. No lazy “did you eat?” sent out of habit. No soft “goodnight” typed half-asleep.
This silence didn’t feel neutral. It didn’t feel like space. It felt punitive, intentional, like the universe was holding their throats in its hands and seeing how long they could go without gasping.
Jaehyun’s fingers hovered over his phone too many times to count. His drafts were cluttered with unsent messages—you wouldn’t believe what just happened, my uncle bought the wrong ham, I miss your voice, this is stupid, why did I agree to this, why does this hurt like I’m losing something I never even had properly. But he never pressed send. He promised. And if there was one thing Jaehyun hated, it was breaking a promise—especially one made with Sungho.
Sungho wasn’t doing any better. He found himself reaching for his phone at the smallest triggers—songs, inside jokes, the sight of snow falling too fast, like it was rushing somewhere it didn’t belong. Every instinct in him wanted to share these pieces of his day with Jaehyun, because that was what they’ve always done. That was their rhythm, their strange, off-beat dance of staying close while pretending they weren’t, he was the one who suggested the no-contact rule. So he swallowed the impulse each time it rose, let it choke him for a moment, then set his phone back down like it was something dangerous.
The absence felt personal. The silence felt like a bruise he kept pressing just to see if it still hurt.
The truth was: it always did. Every hour. Every damn day.
Because the world kept moving—Christmas carols playing, families laughing, snow falling gently—and yet all Sungho could think was how wrong it felt experiencing all of it without Jaehyun’s voice somewhere in the background, threading itself into the noise like it belonged there. It was tough for the two of them, considering how they’d been each other’s anchor since they were in 7th grade—long before the almosts, long before the blurred lines, long before they learned what it meant to love someone in a way that felt wrong to the world but right everywhere else.
The distance felt unnatural, like someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut the red string that kept them tethered through every version of themselves they had grown into. Breakfast tasted different. Nights stretched longer. Even the stupid little things—the way Sungho’s mom still roasted the bread too much, the way Jaehyun’s dog barked at literally nothing—felt hollow without the instinct to tell the other.
Sungho kept catching himself mid-thought, fingers hovering over his screen. He’d type, “Just watched this film about nostalgia, reminded me of you—” then delete it until the message bubbles disappeared like they never existed. He hated how quiet his phone had become. He hated how he kept checking their old messages, scrolling up to places where the two of them were still brave, still stupid, still trying.
Somewhere in another house, at the same time, Jaehyun kept replaying Sungho’s voice in his head—the soft, trembling way he had said “now it feels like it’s gonna go on forever.” He knew that tone. It was the tone Sungho used when he was scared enough to shake but too proud to crumble, the tone Jaehyun could never unhear.
He tried distracting himself, drowning in melodies and chord progressions, pretending that the ache wasn’t sitting in the middle of his ribs like a bruise he kept pressing on. He’d draft a joke to send, something stupid about his brother knocking over the Christmas tree again, but every time he hit send, the ghost of Sungho whispering “just this once” stopped him cold. It was pathetic. It was painful. It was the saddest kind of discipline—choosing silence when everything inside them wanted to reach out.
Their families celebrated around them. Lights twinkled. Food smelled warm. Laughter filled the rooms. It should’ve felt safe. Comforting. Familiar.
But for the first time since they were twelve—they felt alone, Not because the world was empty, but because the one person who made it make sense wasn’t allowed to cross the invisible line they’d drawn out of fear, out of habit, out of something that was beginning to feel like losing each other on purpose, and it hurt in a way that holidays never should.
It was only Christmas Eve, but Sungho already felt suffocated in his own household. The walls felt tighter this year, as if the house itself decided it didn’t want him there. His mom had just told him, very casually over dinner, about how someone from church came out and got blacklisted—“so sad, but what did he expect?”—and everyone else nodded like it made perfect sense. His brother was being rude for no reason, snapping at him like every word he said was some kind of offense. His dad was in one of those moods where every sound was too loud, every question an inconvenience. His cousins excluded him from conversations without hesitation—inside jokes and topics he couldn’t keep up with, interests he couldn’t pretend to care about, a version of himself they seemed convinced he’d grown out of.
He felt like a guest in his own family. he felt like furniture. Something present, but unnoticed. Something easy to walk around. The whole time—even when he tried not to—he kept thinking of Jaehyun. How Jaehyun, in moments like this, would always find a way to look at him and make everything feel less heavy. How he’d squeeze Sungho’s hand without saying anything. How he’d laugh at something stupid just to get Sungho to laugh too. How he always made room for him, even when others didn’t.
Everything felt too loud tonight. The television. The voices. The fake holiday warmth that wasn’t meant for him. It was all so loud that Sungho wanted to disappear into the quiet he used to hate.
The family tradition was simple: stay up until midnight, open one gift, save the rest for the next day. It was a ritual he used to love as a kid—he’d get excited, count down the hours, run to his parents’ room to remind them. But this year felt different. This year felt like he wasn’t part of it anymore.
Because when the clock struck 11:57 and everyone gathered around the living room, nobody called him. Not even once. Not even out of habit. They just continued talking, continued laughing, continued being a family without him. He was awake the whole time, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the ceiling like it owed him an explanation. But none came. Of course it didn’t.
Midnight passed quietly for him. No knock on the door. No “Sungho, come here.” No “Where’s Sungho?” Not even a half-hearted shout from downstairs. He stayed there, listening to distant laughter, the rustling of wrapping paper, the clinking of mugs. All the little sounds of a family he realized he wasn’t really part of anymore. Not in the way that mattered.
In that silence—his personal, self-inflicted exile—he felt something inside him sink. Something heavy. Something he didn’t have a name for. He wished he could message Jaehyun. God, he wished he could. Even if Jaehyun scolded him for breaking the no-contact rule. Even if Jaehyun left him on read. Even if Jaehyun was already asleep. He just wanted to say something. Anything. Just to feel like someone remembered he existed. but he didn’t. He stayed still, hands cold around his phone.
It was pathetic, really—how being left out of a holiday tradition could hurt more than the big things. How the quiet could cut deeper than the shouting. How he had never felt so alone in a house full of people.
He curled onto his side, the blanket barely warming him, and it hit him—he missed Jaehyun in a way that scared him. In a way that felt like he was losing pieces of himself every hour they didn’t speak.
The silence was horrible. It wasn’t the soft kind of quiet that came from peace or rest—it was the kind that scraped against the walls, the kind that made the house feel colder than it actually was. Sungho sat on the edge of his childhood bed, knees pulled in slightly, listening to the hum of the electric fan and the distant chatter of relatives downstairs who seemed to have forgotten he existed entirely. It was strange, really, to feel invisible in a place that raised you. To feel like a ghost wandering through the halls of a home you once ran through barefoot, laughing. Now he could barely step out of his room without feeling like someone was watching him with thinly veiled judgment written across their faces—or worse, not looking at him at all.
His mother’s story kept replaying in his head: the boy from church who came out and was immediately shunned, blacklisted, whispered about like he was a curse. She said it so casually over dinner, like it was a sad inconvenience rather than a cruelty. Sungho remembered how his fork suddenly felt heavy, how his throat tightened around nothing. He had stared down at his plate, pretending the food was interesting, pretending the words didn’t strike a nerve deep enough to shake him.
His brother didn’t help either—snarky comments, small jabs disguised as jokes, irritation dripping from every word as if Sungho’s existence itself was a chore. His dad’s mood swung unpredictably, and his cousins? They all sat in a circle in the living room talking about things he apparently “wouldn’t understand now.” Different. Wrong. Other. They didn’t say it directly, but he felt it between syllables, in the way their voices lowered when he approached, in the way their laughter dimmed until he walked to another room.
He felt displaced. Out of orbit. A planet knocked out of its usual course, drifting somewhere unfamiliar and cold. He thought about how Jaehyun would nudge him playfully and say, “Come here, idiot,” whenever Sungho felt like retreating into himself. How Jaehyun always had this way of pulling him back, of grounding him, like he was saying without saying it, You belong. You matter. Sit next to me. Even when things between them were tense or messy or undefined, Jaehyun always made space for him.
Sungho needed that space now more than ever.
On Christmas Eve, the house buzzed with the usual chaos—pots clattering in the kitchen, TV variety shows playing too loudly, kids running around with sugar in their veins—but none of it reached him. Not really. He sat alone, scrolling through photos and old messages he promised himself he wouldn’t look at.
Tradition dictated that everyone stayed up until midnight to open one gift. Just one. The rest tomorrow. It was supposed to be fun. Warm. A moment of togetherness, and this year, no one knocked on his door. Not even a soft call of “Sungho, come down.”
He was awake. He was waiting. He kept listening—for footsteps, for his name, for anything, just the sound of muffled laughter downstairs and the faint ringing in his ears that always came when he felt like crying but refused to let the tears fall.
“What the fuck did I do?” he mutters to himself He sat there, suffocating under the weight of being forgotten, thinking, absurdly, that Jaehyun would have noticed. Jaehyun would’ve called. Jaehyun would’ve burst into the room, scolding him for isolating himself even if it wasn’t his fault.
Jaehyun would’ve made him feel human.
Wasn’t it pathetic? That the only person who felt like home wasn’t here, wasn’t calling, wasn’t allowed to talk to him because of a rule he himself suggested.
Sungho pressed the heel of his palm to his eyes, breathing shakily. The ache in his chest felt familiar and unwelcome—the kind of ache that comes from wanting someone you told yourself you didn’t need. The kind of ache that tasted like regret and longing and every sentence he left unsaid.
Downstairs, midnight arrived. Someone cheered, someone clapped, wrapping paper rustled, upstairs, Sungho sat alone in the dark, swallowed by a silence so heavy it felt like it could drown him.
The silence was horrible. It wasn’t even the soft kind, the peaceful kind, the kind that just settles over a tired house on a cold holiday night. It was the kind that presses against your ribs and forces your heartbeat into your ears, the kind that makes the shadows on your walls feel like they’re staring at you. It lingered, thick and choking, like the air before a storm except the storm had already come and gone and somehow left the pressure behind. The kind of silence that makes you feel like you’ve been forgotten on purpose.
So at 2 a.m., Sungho broke. It hit him out of nowhere—no warning, no reason he could name, nothing dramatic like a fight or a slammed door or an argument echoing in the hallways. Just the weight of everything he’d been swallowing whole since he got home. It all swelled inside him until his chest felt tight, then tighter, then burning. And suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
He sat on the edge of his childhood bed, hands trembling against the sheets he once outgrew and then somehow grew back into the moment he came home. His vision blurred, breath stuttering, heart racing like it was trying to outrun the pain. His body went cold, then hot, then numb. That awful, familiar buzzing filled his ears, drowning out even the sound of distant Christmas lights humming in the hallway. His throat closed up. The walls felt too close. His fingers curled and uncurled, desperate for something to ground him. Anything.
He tried to tell himself to calm down. Tried to get air in. Tried to count. One, two, three. But the numbers kept breaking apart, dissolving before he could hold them. Everything in him was shaking.
And the worst part? The absolute worst part? He didn’t even want family in that moment. He wanted Jaehyun. He wanted Jaehyun’s stupid, soft voice telling him to breathe, hey, breathe with me. He wanted Jaehyun sitting beside him on the floor, knees touching, guiding him through the inhale, exhale, again, one more time, I’m here. He wanted Jaehyun to ask him what happened, even if Sungho didn’t have an answer. He wanted Jaehyun to pull him into a hug without needing to be asked, hold him like he wasn’t something to be ashamed of.
He wanted comfort. He wanted recognition. He wanted the person who made the world less sharp. but he couldn’t reach for him. Not tonight. Not during this stupid no-contact pact he asked for. Not during the holidays, where he promised they’d both try to stand on their own. Not when he was the one who always ran and then came back and then ran again.
So Sungho sat there at 2 a.m., chest caving in, breath shaking out of him in broken pieces, trying to keep himself from reaching for his phone like it was the only lifeline he had left. He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to stop the tears that were already spilling. He didn’t even know what hurt more—the panic attack itself or the aching truth that the only person who could soothe it was the same person he was trying to stay away from.
In that moment, he didn’t feel like someone growing up, or someone changing, or someone trying to understand himself. He felt like a kid again, scared in a house that misunderstood him, trying not to make noise, trying to hold himself together, trying not to exist too loudly. The panic kept climbing, kept clawing at him with cold fingers. He folded over himself, elbows on his knees, trying to breathe around the tightness in his throat.
The thing is: Sungho is never in his right mind when he cries, when he cries, he stops being logical. He stops being careful. His mind unravels like pulled thread, and every terrible thought he’s ever swallowed rushes out all at once, loud and merciless. He becomes someone who feels everything too much, who remembers everything too clearly, who wants everything too desperately, when he cries, he gets emotional and starts doing things he’ll eventually regret once the storm settles—once he’s grounded and in his right mind again, once he remembers the stupid holiday agreement, once he remembers that Jaehyun is trying to give them both space.
The room felt too small, too cold, too empty. The silence was pressing on his chest like a fist. The air felt thin. His hands were shaking, knees pulled to his chest as he sat on the edge of his childhood bed that suddenly felt like it belonged to a stranger, the house was dead quiet, the type of quiet that felt intentional. Like everyone knew he was awake and purposely didn’t knock on his door. Like he was a ghost moving through a house he used to belong in.
Ghost-Sungho—panicking, crying, unable to breathe—only ever had one person he knew would pick up. One person who never made him feel invisible. So, genius emotional Sungho, brilliant in all the wrong ways, pressed call.
He didn’t even think about the time. He didn’t think about the stupid promise they made. He didn’t think at all. Just hit call—because who else would he even call?
“Hello? Sungho?”
Then an ugly, broken sob came out of Sungho, “Jaehyun…”
Sungho couldn’t even speak at first. His breath kept hitching, breaking in the middle like his lungs were refusing to work. His vision was blurry, every color in his room dimming to something gray and shapeless. He hated crying—God, he hated it—because it made him feel like some helpless kid again. And it was worse when he had to hear himself cry. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t the kind of crying you could hide behind laughter. It was raw and awful and real, the kind that tore something open.
Jaehyun’s voice came through the line again, low and careful, already adjusting to that gentle tone he only ever used for Sungho. “Sungho… hey. Talk to me. Please?”
Sungho let out a pathetic sound that wasn’t quite a sob, wasn’t quite a breath. Something in between, trembling. “I—I can’t—” he managed, wiping at his face even though it didn’t help. “I don’t… I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Okay. Okay, that’s fine,” Jaehyun said softly. No frustration. No annoyance. Just concern—steady, warm concern that made Sungho cry harder. “You’re okay. Just breathe with me, yeah? Slow. Like this.” Jaehyun started breathing into the phone, slow and deliberate, giving Sungho something to latch onto. Something familiar. Something safe.
Sungho tried to match it, but every inhale came in sharp, every exhale shook like it didn’t belong to him. He pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes, trying to ground himself, but it made everything worse—the silence of the house, the darkness of his room, the feeling of not belonging anywhere. “Jaehyun…” His voice cracked so badly he winced. “I feel—fuck—I feel so alone.”
Jaehyun was silent for a moment, but it wasn’t cold. It was the kind of quiet that wrapped around him, steadying him, like Jaehyun was choosing every word carefully. “You’re not alone,” he said finally. “I’m right here.”
“But you’re not here,” Sungho whispered, voice breaking again. “I’m in this house and everything feels wrong. My mom—my brother—everyone—God, I don’t even know why it hurts this much.” His breath shook again. “I don’t know why I can’t handle this.”
“You are handling it,” Jaehyun murmured. “You called me. That’s handling it.”
Sungho let out a choked laugh-sob, burying his face in his blanket. “I know we weren’t supposed to contact each other,” he whispered, small, almost ashamed.
Jaehyun sighed—that quiet, familiar sigh that meant idiot, I still love you anyway.
“Yeah, well,” Jaehyun said, voice softening in a way that made Sungho’s chest ache. “Some rules don’t matter when you’re falling apart.”
Sungho swallowed, his throat tight. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know you’re supposed to be with your family.”
“I am,” Jaehyun said. “But you’re just as important. You’ve always been.”
Something in Sungho shattered at that—quietly, silently, painfully. He let himself cry a little harder, but this time the panic loosened just a little. He could breathe—still messy, still shaky, but breathing nonetheless.
Jaehyun stayed on the line, listening carefully, never rushing him. His voice came through the speaker like a hand reaching out in the dark—steady, familiar, gentle. Sungho’s breath hitched at the sound of it, a sound he’d promised himself he wouldn’t hear until the holidays were over. But promises cracked easily when someone was drowning.
Sungho couldn’t speak at first—only the sound of his breathing, broken and uneven. He pressed his fist to his mouth, trying to hold it together, trying not to sob into the quiet. He let out a broken noise, something between a gasp and a sob. “I hate it here,” he finally said, barely audible. “I feel like— I feel like I don’t exist. No one even noticed I wasn’t downstairs. No one… no one even knocked.”
Jaehyun was quiet for a moment—quiet in a way that wasn’t empty, but full.
When he spoke again, his voice had lost the soft edges; it carried something raw, protective, almost angry on Sungho’s behalf. “They should’ve checked on you,” Jaehyun said. “You deserve better than that.”
Sungho wiped at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, but the tears kept falling, like his body had decided it wouldn’t be done until his heart emptied itself. “It’s Christmas, Myungjae,” he whispered, voice breaking on the last word. “I shouldn’t feel like this.”
“I know,” Jaehyun murmured. “I know, Sungho. I’m sorry.”
Sungho swallowed hard, throat burning. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“You don’t need anyone else.” The words came out quickly, like Jaehyun didn’t have time to think about the consequences of saying them. “You call me. Always.”
Sungho exhaled shakily. He tried to calm down, tried to follow Jaehyun’s breathing again. His panic was still there—still clawing at him—but the edge of it dulled, softened by the presence of someone who knew him too well.
“Do you want to talk?” Jaehyun asked gently. “Or do you want me to just stay on the line?”
“Stay,” Sungho whispered. “Please.”
Jaehyun didn’t hesitate. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Silence settled between them—real silence, not the kind that suffocated but the kind that held warmth, the kind that let Sungho breathe without feeling like the world was crushing him.
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You’ve never bothered me,” Jaehyun said, and there was something fierce beneath his tone. “Sungho, look— whatever this ‘no contact’ thing was supposed to be… fuck it. If you’re breaking, I want to be the one you call.”
Sungho’s breath trembled at that, it hurt, but in a different way, in a way that reminded him why moving on from Jaehyun felt impossible. “…I miss you,” he admitted, barely a whisper. “So much that it hurts.”
On the other end of the line, Jaehyun inhaled—slow, shaky.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I miss you too.”
In the small bedroom of his childhood home, at 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve, with the whole world asleep and indifferent, Sungho let out another sob—this time into the warmth of a voice that had always been his safest place.