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The math was simple, and Kim Roksoo lived by numbers.
A standard two-bedroom off-campus apartment in the university district should have cost at least 1.5 million won a month, excluding utilities. For a sophomore majoring in Economics and Actuarial Science who was currently holding down two part-time shifts at the campus library and the university archives, that number was a financial chokehold.
So when Roksoo found an online listing for a luxury penthouse-style apartment looking for a roommate for a mere 500,000 won—utilities included—his immediate, calculated response was to assume the landlord was either running a black-market operation, dealing with a severe haunting, or legally insane.
He did not care about the risk. A cheap room was a cheap room.
He had shown up for the viewing with his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, expecting a sketchy landlord or a crumbling ceiling. He also sent his location to his friends, just in case he went missing.
Instead, he had been met by Cale Henituse.
Cale had looked entirely out of place against the backdrop of cheap student rentals. He was a freshman from a family whose name carried a heavy, historical weight, possessing the kind of delicate, aristocratic, sharp edges that usually belonged behind the iron gates of a private estate.
He had been flooded with applications from students desperate for a bargain, but Cale was notoriously picky. He wanted a roommate to experience "normal college life," but he had zero tolerance for the typical campus crowd.
Roksoo hadn't known who Cale was. He didn't care about the Henituse name, the rumors of a volatile temper, or the high-society expectations. Roksoo had walked in, looked at the pristine kitchen, noted the lack of mold, and stated his budget with complete transparency.
He had expected to be laughed out of the room. Instead, Cale had leaned against the kitchen island, crossed his elegant arms, and looked Roksoo up and down through a curtain of vibrant red bangs.
"You don't talk too much, do you?" Cale had asked, his voice sharp, carrying the bratty, haughty edge of a young master.
"Only when it's necessary," Roksoo had replied flatly.
"Good. The last guy cried when I threw a pillow at him. You're quiet, you don't smell like cheap cologne, and you look like you'd rather sleep than start drama. Pay the deposit by Friday."
Just like that, Kim Roksoo had moved in.
For the first few weeks, they had existed like ghosts in parallel dimensions. They shared a roof, a refrigerator, and an internet connection, but their interactions were limited to brief, polite nods in the hallway.
Roksoo was a sophomore drowning in economics textbooks; Cale was a freshman dealing with the sudden, crushing weight of independent life. They were two fiercely guarded people who didn't know how to bridge the gap.
The ice hadn't just broken; it had shattered entirely during the fourth week of the semester, courtesy of a certain tyrannical professor in the Humanities department.
Roksoo had been sitting at the kitchen island, nursing a lukewarm cup of instant coffee, when Cale had slammed the front door behind him. The younger man’s crimson hair was disheveled, his jaw set in a tight, furious line. Without a word, Cale had dropped his leather messenger bag onto the floor, marched straight to the counter, and let out a string of sharp, biting curses that would have made a sailor blush.
"If that man asks me to format a bibliography according to his personal, unwritten whim one more time," Cale had hissed, his eyes flashing with a dangerous fire, "I am going to buy the department building just to fire him."
Roksoo hadn't even looked up from his notebook. He had simply taken a sip of his terrible coffee and murmured, "Is it the one with the elbow patches and the twitchy eyebrow?"
Cale had paused, his rant cutting off mid-sentence. "Yes!"
"He gave me a C-minus last semester because my thesis statement was 'too pragmatic,'" Roksoo had said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, though a dangerous glint mirrored in his dark eyes. "The man is a menace to society. His lectures are a cure for insomnia."
Cale had stared at him, the tension slowly draining from his shoulders, replaced by a sudden, sharp spark of amusement. A small, genuine laugh had escaped his lips—the first real sound Roksoo had heard from him.
After that, they clicked. The polite nods turned into shared rants over the kitchen counter, and the parallel dimensions finally folded into a shared domestic routine.
But clicking didn't mean the communication was perfect. In fact, it remained a beautiful structural disaster.
Now, three months into their arrangement, Roksoo sat at the kitchen island, a spreadsheet of his monthly grocery metrics open on his laptop. Across the counter, Cale was buried under a thick Business Administration textbook, wrapped in a silk robe that cost more than Roksoo’s entire tuition for the semester.
Cale was currently scowling at a chapter on corporate law, his pale fingers aggressively tapping against the desk.
"You're staring," Cale muttered without looking up from his page, his aristocratic scowl deepening. "If you're judging my study habits, Sunbae, I can easily raise your rent to 800,000 won."
"I'm not judging," Roksoo said, his voice dropping into its usual deadpan, low register. He took a slow sip of his black coffee, his dark eyes tracing the sharp, beautiful line of Cale’s jawline.
Beneath his pragmatic exterior, Roksoo was making a completely different kind of calculation. He looked at Cale’s flushed cheeks, the elegant curve of his neck, and the way his vibrant red hair caught the soft morning light. He had spent the last three months observing this "volatile" landlord, and he had come to a very definitive, unscientific conclusion.
Cale Henituse wasn't a crazy landlord. He wasn't malicious, and he wasn't broken. He was just fiercely lonely, hiding behind a mask of bratty arrogance so no one would see how deeply he craved stability.
And more importantly, as Roksoo watched Cale unconsciously bite his lower lip in frustration over a legal term, a quiet, heavy warmth settled in his chest.
He’s exactly my type. Roksoo liked quiet spaces, efficiency, and things that were built to last. But looking at Cale—this beautiful, high-maintenance, prickly red-headed storm of a person—Roksoo realized his type wasn't about convenience. It was about Cale. He liked the sharp edges. He liked the sudden, hidden moments of softness when Cale thought no one was looking, like how Cale always bought the expensive brand of orange juice just because he noticed Roksoo preferred it.
"I was just thinking," Roksoo murmured, closing his laptop screen halfway.
Cale finally lifted his head, his sharp brown eyes locking onto Roksoo, defensive walls immediately shifting into place. "Thinking about what? A budget crisis?"
"Thinking that 500,000 won is a steal for this view," Roksoo said, a faint, incredibly rare ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, his gaze holding Cale’s with a sudden, heavy intensity that made the room feel entirely too small. "And I'm thinking I'd like to extend my lease permanently."
Cale’s ears instantly flared a brilliant, treacherous shade of crimson. He slammed his textbook shut, his aristocratic mask fracturing under the sheer weight of Roksoo’s steady, unwavering gaze.
"You... you brainless pragmatist," Cale stammered, his voice losing its haughty edge, turning flustered and soft. He stood up, grabbing his coffee mug to hide his face. "The lease is month-to-month. If you keep looking at me like that, I'll evict you."
"You won't," Roksoo said softly, his dark eyes tracing Cale's retreat toward the kitchen sink. "You hate doing paperwork."
Cale let out a helpless, frustrated hum, but he didn't argue. He just stood by the counter, his ears burning pink, completely unaware that the pragmatic economist had already calculated the rest of their lives together—and the margins were perfect.
By the end of the sophomore semester, the pressure of finals had reached an all-time high. Cale was falling apart behind a wall of absolute silence. His default setting, deeply ingrained from a lifetime of being labeled the difficult, troublesome "Trash" of his social circles, was to assume that any sign of weakness made him a burden.
If he wasn't perfect, he was a nuisance. If he took up too much space, people would eventually regret having him around.
So, when the stress became too much, Cale shrank. He survived entirely on iced Americanos, skipped dinners, and hid in his room, convinced that his foul mood would drive Roksoo away.
Kim Roksoo, on the other hand, was experiencing a completely different brand of internal crisis.
Roksoo was deeply, passionately, and entirely unequippedly in love with his roommate. He had been for months. He loved the sharp, witty way Cale’s mind worked. He loved the soft, vulnerable look Cale wore when he thought no one was watching; he loved the quiet comfort of having Cale in his space.
But Roksoo was a man of utility and survival. He didn't know how to write poetry, he didn't know how to make grand declarations, and his face was physically incapable of displaying standard romantic emotions.
To Roksoo, love was an action. It was a calculation of caloric intake and survival metrics.
When he noticed Cale’s wrists getting sharper, his skin turning a translucent, ghostly pale, and his diet consisting entirely of bitter caffeine, Roksoo’s internal alarm systems went into absolute panic.
He’s going to collapse, Roksoo’s mind screamed. He’s starving himself. Fix it. Now.
But his mouth didn't get the memo.
On a chilly Tuesday evening, the kitchen island was a battlefield of loose-leaf paper, heavy textbooks, and the bitter, sharp scent of cold espresso.
Cale hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. His eyelids felt like sandpaper, his throat was dry, and his brain was processing his study guides at the speed of a dying hard drive. He was hovering over his notes, a yellow highlighter gripped tightly in his ink-stained fingers, desperately trying to blink away the fuzziness in his vision.
Behind him, the kitchen was quiet, save for the rhythmic, steady thud... thud... thud of a knife hitting a wooden cutting board.
Kim Roksoo was aggressively chopping carrots.
Internally, Roksoo was tracking every single shift in Cale's posture. He was hyper-aware of how thin Cale’s wrists looked beneath his oversized sweater, and how that terrible, black instant coffee was the only thing keeping him upright.
Roksoo had spent the last two hours meticulously prepping a high-quality beef stew, terrified that his stubborn roommate was going to collapse from malnutrition right in the middle of midterms. He wanted to tell him to rest. He wanted to tell him he'd taken care of everything.
Instead, a heavy, exhausted sigh escaped Roksoo's lips, and he dropped the knife a little too hard onto the cutting board.
To Roksoo, it was a sigh of pure, desperate worry.
To Cale, it sounded like the final snap of a roommate’s frayed patience.
Cale's highlighter stopped mid-line. A familiar, cold weight dropped into his stomach. He’s tired of me, Cale thought, his defensive walls instantly flaring up to shield the sudden ache in his chest. He was already drowning in academic stress, and now he was clearly being a nuisance, taking up the entire kitchen counter with his mess.
“You know,” Roksoo said, his voice coming out flat, dry, and gravelly from lack of sleep, “starving yourself doesn’t actually save time.”
Cale didn't look up from his papers. His grip on the pen tightened until his knuckles turned white. “I’m not starving.”
“You look like a Victorian orphan.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Roksoo mentally cursed himself. A Victorian orphan? Really? He had meant to say Cale looked delicate and dangerously pale, but his sleep-deprived brain had scrambled the execution entirely. He watched, panicked, as Cale’s shoulders went rigid.
“…That’s rude.”
“It’s accurate,” Roksoo muttered. He turned back to the stove to hide the sudden, frustrated heat rising to his face, aggressively sliding the carrots into the sizzling pot. “You think I spend money on groceries because I’m being polite?”
Cale weakly mumbled, his voice dropping into a small, defensive murmur. “Well… you complain a lot.”
“That’s because groceries are expensive.”
Roksoo meant it as a general complaint about inflation and their nonexistent college budgets. He had literally skimped on his own lunch that day just to afford the organic broth Cale liked.
But to Cale, the words sliced right through his remaining defenses. He's keeping track of how much I cost, he thought, a wave of intense humiliation washing over him. The old, ugly doubts from his past flared up instantly.
He regrets moving in with me. I'm just a burden.
“…Oh,” Cale whispered, his voice cracking slightly as he began gathering his papers with trembling hands. “I'm sorry.”
The apology hit Roksoo like a physical blow. He completely froze.
Why is he apologizing? Roksoo’s mind scrambled, a cold dread washing over him as he saw the raw, wounded look on Cale’s face. Cale looked like he was about to pack his bags and vanish.
The realization that his clumsy, dry tongue had deeply hurt the person he cared about most sent Roksoo into an absolute internal panic. He had to fix this. Right now.
Roksoo clicked the dial, lowering the stove's heat. The sudden silence in the kitchen made the atmosphere incredibly heavy. He turned around fully, gripping the edge of the counter so hard his own hands shook.
“I don’t cook for people I dislike,” Roksoo said. His voice was raw, stripped entirely of its usual deadpan sarcasm, coming out strained and desperate.
Cale blinked, his defensive retreat halting. “…Oh.”
“In fact,” Roksoo muttered, his dark eyes locking onto Cale’s with an intensity that made Cale’s breath hitch, “I barely cook for people I like.”
He had basically just confessed. Roksoo could feel his heart hammering frantically against his ribs, his cheeks burning a faint, uncharacteristic pink. He felt entirely exposed, standing in the dim kitchen light, praying Cale wouldn't walk away.
Cale stared at him, completely stunned.
Roksoo looked strangely tense. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders stiff, and he looked entirely out of his comfort zone. Cale’s mind, fried from midterms, tried to process the heavy gravity of the words. Doesn't he dislike me? He's doing all of this... because he likes me?
For Cale, navigating the sudden, raw honesty on Roksoo's face felt infinitely harder than any exam he had ever taken.
The kitchen fell completely quiet, save for the low, gentle hum of the simmering pot behind Roksoo. Cale’s ink-stained fingers remained frozen over his stacked textbooks. He looked down at the highlighted lines, his mind spinning, then back up at his roommate’s stubborn, intensely flushed face.
He likes me. It wasn't a calculation. It wasn't an obligation. Roksoo was a stingy, pragmatic sophomore who hated manual labor, yet he was standing there with a knife in his hand at midnight, sweating through a silent panic attack just because Cale hadn’t eaten a real meal in two days.
Cale swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. The defensive armor he usually wore felt completely useless against something this genuine. He didn't know what to do with a care that didn't demand anything in return. It made his chest ache in a completely different, terrifyingly sweet way.
"You're a lunatic," Cale murmured weakly, though the bite was entirely gone from his voice. His ears were burning a fierce, brilliant red.
Roksoo let out a slow, ragged breath, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch as the immediate terror of rejection passed. "I'm a broke student who doesn't want his roommate dying on him. There's a difference."
"Right." Cale picked up his laptop, tucking it under his arm alongside his notes. He couldn't look Roksoo directly in the eyes anymore, not because he felt hated, but because if he stayed under that dark, heavy gaze for one more second, he was going to short-circuit completely. "The stew smells good."
Roksoo blinked, caught off guard by the sudden compliment. "It... it needs another twenty minutes."
"Call me when it's done," Cale said quietly. He turned toward the hallway, his steps slower this time, grounded. He paused right at the threshold of the kitchen light, not looking back, but his voice carried clearly through the quiet apartment. "And stop sighing like that. I thought you were mad at me."
Before Roksoo could scramble to find an answer, Cale slipped down the hallway and quietly clicked his bedroom door shut.
Inside his room, Cale didn't collapse in a spiral of self-hatred. Instead, he carefully set his books on his desk, walked over to his bed, and buried his face directly into his pillow. His heart was hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against his ribs. He felt dizzy, completely overwhelmed by the warm, domestic gravity of the man outside his door.
He barely cooks for people he likes.
Cale curled his fingers into his blanket, a small, helpless, and entirely involuntary smile pressing into the fabric of his pillow.
Out in the kitchen, Roksoo stood entirely paralyzed for a full sixty seconds. He stared at the empty space where Cale had just been standing, his brain slowly registering the final words.
Call me when it's done.
I thought you were mad at me.
A sudden, breathless laugh escaped Roksoo’s lips. He turned back to the stove, his hands still a little shaky as he picked up the wooden spoon to stir the broth. The internal panic was still there, but it was melting into something fiercely, intensely protective.
He hadn't ruined it. Cale was waiting for him.
Twenty minutes later, a soft, rhythmic knock sounded on Cale’s bedroom door.
Cale lifted his head from his pillow, his red hair a little messy from his brief retreat. He opened the door to find Roksoo standing there, completely stripped of his defensive, stiff posture. He had a giant, oversized ceramic bowl in each hand, steam rising between them, carrying the rich, savory scent of perfectly simmered beef and root vegetables.
"The table is still a mess," Roksoo said, nodding his head toward the living room. "Let's move to the couch."
Cale didn't argue. He followed Roksoo into the living room, where the older man set the bowls on the coffee table and immediately grabbed the TV remote, surfing through a streaming menu until he found a mindless, low-stakes movie to use as background noise.
They sat down on the worn fabric of the couch, balancing the warm bowls in their laps. The heat seeping through the ceramic instantly chased away the lingering chill of the night. Cale took his first bite, and a quiet, involuntary sigh of sheer appreciation escaped his lips. The beef was incredibly tender, melting instantly, the broth rich and comforting.
"It's good," Cale murmured, his eyes fixed on the television screen to hide the sudden, soft curve of his lips. "Exceeded expectations."
"Of course it did," Roksoo muttered, taking a large bite of his own food. "I don't make mistakes when it comes to survival metrics."
For a few minutes, the living room was quiet, save for the dialogue of the movie and the soft clinking of spoons against ceramic. The heavy, suffocating anxiety of the upcoming final exam—the looming deadline that had been crushing both of them for weeks—suddenly felt miles away.
Sitting together on the couch, wrapped in the warmth of real food and an unspoken, mutual understanding, the rest of the world just drifted into background noise.
Cale swallowed a potato, his gaze drifting toward the kitchen island where his massive stack of flashcards sat untouched. "We still have the Humanities final at nine in the morning."
Roksoo didn't even look over. He calmly scooped up another piece of beef. "Failing is always an option."
Cale let out a sudden, bright laugh, the sound clear and echoing in the small room. "You're a terrible influence, Kim Roksoo."
"I am a realist," Roksoo corrected deadpan, though his dark eyes softened significantly as he watched the vibrant, healthy color finally returning to Cale's cheeks. "We’ve been studying for three weeks. If we don't know it by midnight, we aren't going to know it by 9:00 AM. Sleep is a better investment of our remaining resources."
"Is that your economic theory?"
"It's my life theory."
Roksoo set his empty bowl down on the coffee table and leaned back against the cushions. Cale finished his own broth a minute later, setting the bowl down beside Roksoo's. The heavy exhaustion of the past thirty-six hours was finally catching up to him, but it was no longer a cold, miserable fatigue. It was a warm, heavy drowsiness.
As the movie played on, Cale's eyes grew heavy. He didn't think about drawing boundaries anymore. He didn't think about being a burden. Slowly, almost unconsciously, his head began to tilt, his movements slow and soft with sleep, until his head rested gently against Roksoo's shoulder.
Roksoo froze, his breath catching in his throat. His internal logic completely short-circuited again, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs as he stared down at the crown of vibrant red hair tucked against his collarbone. He's so close. He's actually sleeping on my shoulder!
Cale didn't pull away. He let out a soft, sleepy hum, shifting his weight until he was leaning fully against Roksoo's side, completely dead to the world.
Slowly, carefully, Roksoo relaxed his shoulders. He reached over to grab the thick fleece blanket resting on the back of the couch, gently draping it over Cale's legs. Then, with a gentleness he rarely showed the rest of the world, Roksoo rested his arm along the back of the couch, his fingers lightly curling around Cale's shoulder, anchoring him close.
"Goodnight, Cale," Roksoo murmured into the dark room.
They stayed like that—tangled in the quiet warmth of the living room, completely ignoring the looming threat of tomorrow's exams, finally grounded in each other.
They ended up passing the exam, barely, surviving on sheer luck and the leftover energy of a good meal.
Over the next few weeks, the new routine became an unbreakable law. The apartment was no longer a place of quiet, parallel lives; it was theirs. Cale stopped skipping meals, Roksoo stopped grumbling about the price of groceries without clarifying he was just being cheap, and they slowly began navigating the sweet, clumsy waters of being a domestic, exclusive pair. They had a perfect, quiet system on that couch.
Until the semester break hit.
And until Lee Soohyuk and Choi Jungsoo—the chaotic, fiercely protective high school best friends Roksoo had left behind in his old apartment—discovered that their notoriously stoic, anti-social friend was not only living with a ridiculously beautiful freshman, but was also aggressively domesticating himself for him.
The quiet haven was about to be completely invaded.