Chapter Text
One smile from Sieun’s lips is all it takes for Suho to want to give him his life.
Some might say he’s exaggerating—maybe he is. Who knows?
Halmoni always said he never did things halfway.
Not in stupid things like games or bets.
And certainly not when it came to the people he cared about—
his Halmonie, Sieun, Sieun, Sieun… Sieun.
Yeah. You get the idea.
Suho’s simple-minded way of seeing the world had gotten him into trouble more than once.
But it also made it surprisingly easy to accept the big stuff.
Like: yeah, you’re in love with your best friend.
He’s a boy too.
And he probably doesn’t feel the same way about you.
So what?
Suho didn’t feel all that different after realizing it.
If anything, it was like his heart had always known—
like his body had been humming the same quiet truth for months, and his mind had finally caught up.
Like something inside him had clicked into place.
If Suho kept a diary, he’d probably write something painfully dumb, like:
“Today, Sieun smiled at me after he brought me ox bone soup, and I realized I love him. No big deal.”
And then unconsciously doodle little hearts in the corners.
He doesn’t have a diary, of course. That’d be ridiculous.
But he does have a calendar.
And he marked the day anyway.
Not with hearts.
Not with words.
Just a small, simple dot.
A silent before and after
The beginning of what would quietly become his life’s greatest purpose:
make Yeon Sieun smile.
Again.
Because Sieun smiling was like the sun breaking through after the longest night.
So rare that Suho had to blink twice just to make sure it was real.
Because Yeon Sieun smiling wasn’t just beautiful—
it was breathtaking.
A phenomenon that deserved to be studied, documented, replicated a thousand times over.
Because when Sieun smiled,
the world made sense in a way it didn’t before.
And Suho, simple as he was, decided that if he could make it happen even once more—that would be enough to make everything worth it.
And when he finally did—when Sieun smiled for real,not polite, not tired, not forced—he’d tell him.
He didn’t know how yet.
Or when.
Or with what words.
But he knew this much:
He wanted to confess on a day when Sieun was happy.
When the sun was out.
When his eyes were bright.
When his smile was honest.
Only then.
So it wasn’t exactly surprising to find Suho,
in the middle of math class, scribbling on the back of his textbook instead of taking notes.
In messy, slanted handwriting,
he wrote the title of what would soon become
his quiet, ridiculous, very serious project:
“What Makes Yeon Sieun Smile” by Ahn Suho.
Suho paused, pen tapping lightly against his chin.
Then he looked up from his desk—eyes drifting toward the back of Sieun’s head, a few rows ahead.
Sieun’s eyes were glued to the board, focused on whatever the teacher was explaining, expression carefully blank.
Suho smiled to himself.
He was going to figure it out.
Every little thing.
No matter what it took