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The team had moved that morning into a townhouse they would share for the summer break after MSI 2027.
By midnight, filming had ended and the cameras in the common rooms were off. Most of the boxes had reached roughly the correct floor, though several remained sealed and some of the furniture had already been moved twice.
Min-hyeong left his room with three percent battery and no memory of where he had packed his charger.
The room beside his was still lit.
Geon-woo sat at his desk, carefully aligning two mousepads until their edges met without the slightest gap. His room looked almost settled compared to the rest of the house. Clothes had been folded into the wardrobe, cables lay in neat loops beside his laptop, and the empty boxes had been stacked against one wall according to size.
Min-hyeong leaned against the open doorway, one shoulder pressed to the frame, phone dangling loosely from his fingers. He tipped his head back a little and crossed one ankle over the other. “You know, you can still change rooms.”
Geon-woo kept his eyes on the desk. “Why would I?”
“You’re going to spend the whole month complaining that I’m too loud.”
“That’s why I picked the room with the thick walls.”
“Fine, but if your snoring comes through them, I’m recording it.”
“I don’t snore.”
“You do.”
Geon-woo crossed his arms. “You’ve never slept beside me.”
“I have standards,” Min-hyeong replied immediately, raising an eyebrow.
“Buy earplugs, then.”
“I shouldn’t have to suffer because you chose the room beside mine.”
Geon-woo finally looked at him. The corner of his mouth lifted, just barely. “I chose first. You’re the one who moved in next door.”
“I chose the better room.”
“You spent ten minutes praising the other one.”
“I was being polite.”
“To an empty room?”
“It had potential.”
Geon-woo stood and crossed towards the doorway. Min-hyeong remained where he was, one shoulder against the frame.
“What are you doing?” he asked as Geon-woo approached.
“Turning that off.”
The hallway was still orange.
Min-hyeong stayed where he was, so Geon-woo reached around him for the panel. As Geon-woo leaned in, his chest brushed Min-hyeong’s shoulder.
Min-hyeong narrowed his eyes a little. “You know, you could say, ‘excuse me’.”
“And you could stop standing there.”
A rattle came from the table football downstairs. Woo-je laughed, followed by Jin-hyeok’s voice.
“Wait, I wasn’t ready!”
Geon-woo paused with his hand beside Min-hyeong’s shoulder, listening. Then he switched the hallway light to white and stepped back.
“Go and help Jin-hyeok hyung.”
“Why me?”
“You wanted to make the house legendary.”
Woo-je’s laugh reached them again. Min-hyeong pushed away from the doorframe.
Geon-woo expected him to head towards the staircase.
Instead, Min-hyeong walked straight into the room without slowing down. “I need a charger.”
Geon-woo looked at the phone in his hand. “Where’s yours?”
“In one of the boxes.”
“Which one?”
“No idea. I’ll find out tomorrow.”
Geon-woo returned to the desk and opened the top drawer. He took out a charger, unwound the cable and passed it over.
The nearest outlet was beneath the desk, just beside the bed. Min-hyeong plugged in his phone and left the spare length of cable across the desk before sitting on the edge of the mattress. He waited for the battery symbol to change, bounced one heel against the floor once, then stopped.
“You brought two?” he asked.
“One’s a spare.”
“You expected me to lose mine?”
“I expected mine to break.”
“Yeah, you keep doing that.”
Geon-woo sat down again.
Min-hyeong had already placed one leg on the mattress and opened the team chat as though the matter was settled. The corner of his mouth was still tilted up.
Woo-je posted a photograph of the table-football score: five–two.
Min-hyeong held the screen towards Geon-woo. “Woo-je says he won.”
“Did Jin-hyeok hyung agree?”
A new message appeared beneath the picture.
JIN-HYEOK: That one was practice.
Min-hyeong laughed under his breath. “Hwan-joong’s given it a thumbs-up.”
“Which message?”
Min-hyeong checked. “Oh, both.”
Geon-woo smiled and turned back to the desk.
The house gradually quieted around them. A tap ran briefly downstairs, followed by the closing of a cupboard and footsteps moving towards the staircase. A door shut somewhere on the floor below.
Min-hyeong watched Geon-woo struggle to fit his laptop’s charging cable into a clip behind the desk. “There’s another clip underneath.”
“There’s already a cable in it.”
“Yeah, just move it left.”
Geon-woo crouched, shifted the first cable and clipped the second beside it.
Min-hyeong smiled down at his phone, the expression lingering.
“What?” Geon-woo asked.
“Nothing.”
“You were watching.”
“You were taking a long time.”
Geon-woo sat upright. “It fits.”
“Of course it does.”
Min-hyeong’s battery reached twenty percent.
He stayed.
“You really wanted the quietest room?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You left the door open.”
“I was unpacking.”
“You could do that with it closed.”
Geon-woo looked over his shoulder. “And why were you checking?”
“I wasn’t—it’s just that my room is beside yours.”
“The stairs are the other way.”
Min-hyeong’s thumb paused over the screen. “I saw the light.”
Geon-woo held his gaze for a moment, then returned to the drawer without asking anything else.
Min-hyeong shifted farther onto the bed. The wall beside the headboard was cool against his shoulder, so he pulled one of the pillows behind his back and settled against it with a small, satisfied exhale.
Geon-woo noticed.
“You have two,” Min-hyeong said before he could speak.
Geon-woo closed the drawer.
The pillow remained where Min-hyeong had put it.
They talked less after that.
Min-hyeong’s phone reached thirty-seven percent. He stopped checking, leaving it on the mattress beside his thigh. His shoulders had dropped. The foot that had been resting on the floor now hung loosely over the edge of the mattress.
Geon-woo finished putting away the spare cables and reached for the packet of screen wipes.
The phone lit when a message arrived.
Fifty-two percent.
Min-hyeong was no longer looking at the screen. His head had tipped slightly toward the wall.
Geon-woo’s hands stilled on the wipes for a second. “Hey, you’re falling asleep.”
“I’m listening.”
“To what?”
Min-hyeong opened his eyes halfway. “Whatever you were saying.”
“I wasn’t saying anything.”
“Well, then I heard all of it.”
His eyes closed again. The tension had left his jaw.
Geon-woo turned off the ceiling light, leaving only the lamp beside the desk.
Min-hyeong did not react.
Another fifteen minutes passed. When Geon-woo stood, Min-hyeong had shifted onto his side, lying properly along one edge of the bed with his head on the pillow. He remained on top of the blanket, clothes creased from the day, one sock partly twisted at the ankle. His mouth was slightly open. One hand had curled loosely near his chest.
His phone showed seventy-six percent.
Geon-woo touched his shoulder. “Min-hyeong-ah.”
Min-hyeong made a quiet sound without opening his eyes.
“Go to your room.”
“Five minutees.”
“Your room is next door.”
“Then I’m almost there.”
Geon-woo waited, but Min-hyeong’s breathing had already settled again.
He touched his shoulder once more.
Min-hyeong moved away from the pressure, shifting closer to the wall and leaving the other half of the mattress open. The movement was slow.
Geon-woo stood beside the bed for several seconds.
Then he moved the phone onto the bedside table, leaving it plugged in. As he drew more cable off the desk, it caught the corner of a mousepad and dragged it out of line.
Geon-woo looked at it.
Min-hyeong breathed softly into the pillow. His eyelashes cast short shadows against his cheek. The twisted sock had slipped even lower.
He left the mousepad where it was.
The blanket came free with some difficulty from beneath Min-hyeong’s legs. Geon-woo pulled it over him carefully, watched the way Min-hyeong’s shoulders settled under the weight, and only then turned off the lamp.
The bed was wide enough.
Geon-woo lay down on the empty side, leaving a careful stretch of mattress between them.
For several minutes the room remained completely still.
Then Min-hyeong made a low, uneven sound in his sleep.
Geon-woo opened his eyes and turned his head.
Min-hyeong’s face was partly buried in the pillow, mouth slightly open. A faint crease sat between his brows and then smoothed out again. One hand had drifted closer to the empty space between them.
Geon-woo looked at the hand for a moment. He shifted his own a little closer across the sheet, stopping just short of touching, then looked at Min-hyeong’s face again.
Only then did he close his eyes.
Min-hyeong woke when his phone vibrated against the bedside table.
He reached towards it, found unfamiliar sheets beneath his hand, and opened his eyes.
The wall was on the wrong side.
Geon-woo lay beside him, already awake, scrolling slowly through his phone.
Min-hyeong stopped moving. His fingers tightened once around the edge of the blanket before he forced them to relax.
The phone vibrated again.
“Turn it off,” Geon-woo murmured, not looking up.
Min-hyeong silenced the alarm and checked the battery.
One hundred percent.
He unplugged the phone and set it back on the bedside table. The tips of his ears were faintly pink. “You snore.”
“You were asleep first.”
“Maybe I woke up?”
“You didn’t.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because you were the one snoring this whole time.”
Min-hyeong stared at him. “I don’t snore.”
“You’ve never slept beside yourself.”
Min-hyeong’s mouth opened, then closed again. He sat up a little too quickly and pushed the blanket aside.
Geon-woo kept scrolling for another second before he got out of bed.
Morning light reached the desk, falling across the two mousepads. Their edges no longer met.
Min-hyeong followed his gaze. “You left them crooked.”
“Mhm, the charger caught.”
Geon-woo unplugged the charger from the wall and began winding the cable around his hand. He did not straighten the mousepads.
Min-hyeong looked from them to Geon-woo, but whatever he had been about to say remained unspoken. He got up and smoothed the front of his shirt twice before collecting his phone.
At the doorway he paused between their neighbouring rooms. His weight shifted once from one foot to the other.
“Try not to shout through the wall,” Geon-woo said.
Min-hyeong looked back at him. The pink had faded from his ears. The usual tilt returned to the corner of his mouth.
“You didn’t complain when I was closer.”