Archive of Our Own

Sunoo read the whole thread twice before Jungwon came back from the bathroom, and then he locked his phone and slid it under his notebook with the calm, neutral expression of a man who had absolutely nothing to hide.

It didn't work. It never did, not with Jungwon. "You've been on the same page of that article for twenty minutes," Jungwon pointed out, without so much as glancing up from his textbook.

Sunoo turned the page anyway, even though he hadn't read a single word of it, and let out a sigh he hoped sounded academic. "Someone saw him buying flowers."

"Did he buy you flowers?"

"Yeah, tulips." The corners of his mouth twitched before he could stop them. "They're on my windowsill. They smell nice."

That was when Jungwon finally looked up, and Sunoo knew immediately that he wasn't going to like whatever came next, because it was the look – the piercing, scrutinizing one he'd been on the receiving end of since they were sixteen, the one that meant Jungwon was about to say something true. "You know this whole thing would stop if you just let him hold your hand in public one time."

"This whole thing would start," Sunoo corrected, "and then it would never stop. I've seen what they do. Don't you remember what happened last year when they found out Heeseung was dating Jake? They made a fan account for him. A fan account, Jungwon."

"He got a lot of followers, though. And Jake's the student council president. He's fine."

"Jake is built different. I'm not."

It was the same argument Sunoo had been making since the day Park Sunghoon asked him out – fresh out of practice, hair still wet and falling into his eyes, cheeks flushed red from either shyness or the practice, Sunoo honestly couldn't tell. He'd said yes. And then, in the very same breath, but nobody can know. Sunghoon had blinked at him, confused, and Sunoo had watched him work through it slowly, before nodding and agreeing in a small, careful voice. He had kept his word every single day since.

The only reason Jungwon knew was because Jungwon had known him since their first year of high school, and there was very little Sunoo had ever managed to hide from him. Also, admittedly, because Sunoo had been a little careless – showing up at Jungwon's door one night in April wearing a jersey that was clearly too big for him, with no good explanation for it. Jungwon hadn't even asked. He'd just looked at the number on the back and let him in.

Keeping it quiet was easier than Sunoo had expected – almost insultingly easy, considering how much he'd worried about it. They went to the same university, technically, but Sunghoon lived in the gym and the sports building and Sunoo lived in the chemistry labs on the complete opposite side of campus, and the only place those two worlds really overlapped was the cafeteria at lunch – Sunoo with Jungwon by the windows, Sunghoon with the team at the long table in the middle of the room, surrounded by people who just wanted to be near him. Some days they didn't see each other at all until the evening. Other days they passed each other in the library hallway, and Sunghoon would glance at him for exactly half a second, and Sunoo would feel it all the way down to his toes, and they would both just keep walking.

Outside of campus, it was even easier. Seoul was big enough that nobody was looking.

His phone buzzed under his notebook.

Sunoo pressed his lips together, hard, and turned his face toward the window so Jungwon wouldn't see.

Park Sunghoon, whose name was written in marker on the wall of the women's bathroom in the humanities building, who had a fan account run by at least a handful of freshmen, who went viral several times for just drinking his water during games, spent a truly unreasonable amount of time worrying about how to turn people down gently. Hard to believe, right? He even had a note on his phone full of drafts. Sunoo had seen it, even helped draft some of them. One of them started with I'm really honoured, but and then went on for a whole page.

Sunoo didn't reply right away. He looked back down at his lab notes and made himself read the same paragraph over and over, absorbing absolutely none of it, before giving up and typing ok with a small, stupid smile he could feel pulling at his entire face.

"You look stupid," Jungwon informed him.

"Study your book."

Jungwon didn't even look up from his textbook. "Go. I'm timing you."

The back stairwell of the library was the fire exit nobody ever used – cold concrete and a flickering green sign and one window so dusty the afternoon light came through it grey – and it sat almost exactly halfway between the gym and the chemistry building, which Sunghoon had once called fate and Sunoo had called urban planning.

Sunghoon was already there, leaning against the railing on the landing in his practice hoodie with his bag at his feet, and he straightened up the second the door swung shut behind Sunoo.

"You have practice."

"In twelve minutes." He was already reaching for him, fingers hooking into the front pocket of Sunoo's hoodie to tug him closer. "I'll run."

"Hoon, you can't just–"

He could, apparently. He kissed him quickly the first time, barely more than a brush of lips, and then again, slower, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Sunoo's neck and Sunoo forgot about the twelve minutes and the dusty window and the fact that anyone at all could open that door, and curled both hands into the front of Sunghoon's hoodie and kissed him back until he had to stop to breathe.

Somewhere above them, a door banged open.

They sprang apart so fast that Sunoo's back hit the wall. Footsteps on the stairs, followed by a rattling, squeaking sound, and the head librarian appeared on the landing above them – sixty years old, reading glasses on a beaded chain, pushing a trolley of returned books toward the service lift with grim determination. She stopped and looked down at them over the top of her glasses.

Sunghoon bowed deeply. "Good afternoon."

Her eyes moved to Sunoo, pressed flat against the wall with his face on fire, and stayed there for one long second. Then she sniffed, wheeled her trolley into the lift, and the doors closed on her with a tired little ding.

Neither of them moved until the lift had gone all the way down. Sunghoon dropped his forehead onto Sunoo's shoulder and started shaking with silent laughter, and Sunoo hit him in the ribs, and soon he was laughing too – breathless and stupid and so happy he could hardly stand still, his heart going a mile a minute and his lips still tingling.

"Go," he hissed. "You're going to be late."

Sunghoon quickly gave a peck on his lips and went, taking the stairs two at a time, and at the bottom he turned around and walked backwards for a few steps just to look at him. The door swung shut behind him, and he was gone.

Sunoo went back to his table with his hair a mess and sat down and opened his notes as if nothing had happened.

"Four minutes," Jungwon remarked, taking a look at him. "Your shirt is rumpled."

Sunghoon's apartment smelled like garlic and sesame oil when Sunoo let himself in with the spare key, and there was a faint shimmer of pink glitter on the floor by the door, trailing all the way into the kitchen like evidence at a crime scene.

"You weren't joking."

"I would never joke about this."

Sunghoon was standing at the stove in a faded t-shirt, hair still damp from the locker room showers, and he didn't turn around – just reached back with his free hand, and Sunoo walked straight into it without even thinking, letting Sunghoon's arm settle around his waist and pull him close against his side.

"I missed you."

"Me too." Sunoo leaned his cheek against his shoulder. "There's glitter in your eyebrow."

"I know. I've accepted it."

Laughing, Sunoo reached up to brush it away with his thumb, and Sunghoon went still under his hand and let him, eyes half closed, the pan hissing quietly in front of them. It was always a little strange, these first few minutes. The Sunghoon who walked across campus with his hood up and his face carefully blank could melt so easily into this one – into someone who hummed while he cooked and somehow got flour on his elbows whenever he tried to make pancakes on Sunday mornings.

Nobody else got to see this version of him. Only Sunoo.

"Did you talk to the girl who gave you the letter?"

The noise Sunghoon made in response was nothing short of pained. "I told her I was seeing someone. She said she figured, because of the twitter thread."

"She saw it too?"

"Everyone's probably seen it. Even I've seen it." He turned the heat down and finally looked at Sunoo properly, and there was something tired in his face underneath all the fondness – something Sunoo had been noticing more and more often lately, and had been trying very hard not to think about.

"Heeseung asked me again today, at practice. Said he's going to stop passing to me until I tell him who it is."

"He won't do that. You'd lose."

"He says he doesn't care." Sunghoon went back to stirring. "And Jay says he's already narrowed it down to a shortlist, but he wouldn't tell me who."

Sunoo's stomach did a small, unpleasant flip. "Am I one of them?"

"I don't think so." A crooked smile tugged at Sunghoon's mouth. "Jay thinks you don't even know I exist. He said, and I quote, the student council secretary Jake's always with has never looked at a basketball in his life."

"I've looked at a basketball."

"You've looked at me with a basketball in my hands."

"Well." Sunoo shrugged. "You look hot with it."

That got him a laugh – a real one, bright and unguarded, the kind that made Sunghoon's eyes disappear completely – and Sunoo shoved him for it and promptly got distracted by how nice he looked in the warm kitchen light, and that sort of ruined the effect. The rice was a little burnt by the time they finally ate it on the floor in front of the couch, knees bumping under the low table, Sunghoon's phone buzzing face down next to his plate four separate times with messages from the team group chat that he didn't bother to check.

When it buzzed a fifth time, Sunghoon finally flipped it over, glanced at the screen and let out a sigh so deep it seemed to come straight from his soul. Without a word he handed the phone to Sunoo.

It was his Instagram. More specifically, it was his message requests – and there were one hundred and twelve of them.

"Oh my god."

"Some of them are nice," Sunghoon offered weakly.

Some of them were nice, but most of them were just straight up insane. Sunoo scrolled through them with growing delight, reading the best ones out loud between bites of burnt rice. hi i'm not usually like this but. bro no homo but how do you shoot like that, please teach me, i'm begging. One from a middle-aged woman who wanted him to know that her daughter was a very good cook, and also single. One from a guy in the engineering department that just said marry me and absolutely nothing else. And one that said i know i can treat you better than he can.

"You should answer that one," Sunoo decided. "Claims he can treat you better than I do."

"I'm not answering any of them."

Sunghoon took his phone back, locked it, and put it face down on the table again. He leaned over and stole the last piece of egg off Sunoo's plate, as if that settled the matter.

Later, they ended up on the couch with a true crime documentary playing that neither of them was really watching, Sunghoon's head resting heavy on Sunoo's chest, and it was only when the episode was halfway over that he mumbled, very quietly, "The final's in six weeks."

"I know." Sunoo ran his fingers slowly through his hair and found one last speck of glitter hiding behind his ear. "I've got it in my calendar."

"Are you coming?"

"I always come."

"I mean…" Sunghoon hesitated, and Sunoo felt him take a breath against his ribs. "Are you going to sit where I can see you?"

Sunoo had done that exactly once. Back in the spring, at one of the first home games after they'd gotten together, he'd sat in the front row like a normal person, and Sunghoon had spotted him right in the middle of a free throw and missed it by almost a full metre. Afterwards, in the car, he'd turned to Sunoo with his ears bright red and told him, very seriously, that he was not allowed to sit anywhere Sunghoon could see him ever again. It had been a joke, mostly. But Sunoo had sat in the top corner by the exit ever since – partly because of that, and mostly because nobody ever looked up there.

He didn't answer right away. On the screen, the music had gone low and strange, a detective walking through an empty house with a flashlight while the narrator explained how the killer had been in the room the whole time, standing just out of frame, and nobody had noticed until it was far too late.

"Maybe," he said eventually.

Sunghoon didn't push, never did. He just nodded against Sunoo's chest and went quiet, and within ten minutes he was asleep, breathing slow and even, one hand curled loosely in the fabric of Sunoo's shirt.

Sunoo stayed awake for a long time after that, watching the detective, letting it distract him from the thoughts begging to be acknowledged.

Heeseung had not, in fact, stopped passing to him. He had, however, started passing a lot harder.

"Ow," Sunghoon grumbled, catching the third ball of the drill against his chest with a dull thump that echoed across the entire gym.

"Oh, sorry," Heeseung called, sounding not even a little bit sorry. "Did that hurt? Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to talk about anything? Maybe your feelings? Maybe the person you've been lying to us about for eight months?"

"I haven't been lying." He passed the ball back – a normal pass. "I told you I was seeing someone."

"You told us that last semester," Jay shot back from the other end of the line, arms crossed, face arranged in the exact expression he usually saved for referees who'd made bad calls. "And then you never said anything else. Not a name, not a single picture. We don't even know what they study."

"You don't need to know what they study."

"I want clues, dude." Jay turned to Riki, the first year who had joined the team this season. "Riki, am I wrong?"

Riki just looked confused. "I don't care."

Jay tsked. "Still in his teen phase."

Coach blew the whistle before Sunghoon had to come up with an answer, and for the next forty minutes there was nothing but suicide sprints and the squeal of sneakers against the floor, something Sunghoon was more grateful for than he would ever admit out loud. Running was easy, it didn't ask him any questions.

It was only practice, but the bleachers weren't empty. A cluster of girls from the dance team had claimed the third row, phones out, pretending to do homework. Two guys from the engineering department were sitting near the top, discussing Sunghoon's shooting form very loudly and very seriously, as if they were professional scouts and not two second years skipping their lab. Someone had even brought a banner. Every time Sunghoon so much as touched the ball there was a ripple of noise from the stands, and every time he missed there was a sympathetic little awww that was somehow even worse.

He’d learned to tune it out over the years, but the part that came after was the real hurdle.

By the time the coach finally let them go, there was a handful of people waiting by the gym doors. There was a girl holding a paper bag of homemade cookies and a boy from the photography club who just wanted to get a few shots, for the yearbook, very professional. And a first year from the soccer team who asked, very earnestly, if Sunghoon would sign his cast.

Sunghoon thanked the cookie girl. He told the photography boy that he'd have to ask coach. He looked down at the soccer kid's outstretched cast with the expression of a man who had never in his life been more confused.

That was when Heeseung appeared at his side, hooked an arm around his neck, and started steering him firmly toward the locker room.

"So sorry, he has a team meeting," he announced cheerfully, to nobody in particular. "Very urgent. Very important. Thanks for coming, guys, love the support, bye!"

"We don't have a team meeting," Sunghoon muttered.

"We do now."

Heeseung's rescue, it turned out, came with a price.

He was halfway through pulling his shirt over his head when Heeseung sat down on the bench to his left and Jay sat down on the bench to his right, the rest of the team trickling out around them until it was just them and Riki – who was taking an unreasonably long time to change his clothes, earbuds in, completely uninterested in anything that wasn't on his phone. By the time Sunghoon's head emerged from the fabric, both of his teammates were just looking at him. Calm and patient. Entirely unwilling to leave. Sunghoon felt shivers down his spine.

"No."

"We haven't said anything yet," Heeseung pointed out.

"You're going to."

"We are," Jay agreed, already pulling out his phone. "Okay. I have three suspects. I'm going to say each name, and you just have to not react."

"Jay."

"Suspect number one." He scrolled with great ceremony. "Jang Wonyoung from the dance team. Sits in the second row at every home game and has been seen wearing a grey hoodie a statistically suspicious number of times."

Sunghoon pulled on a clean shirt and leaned back against the lockers, already so over this.

"Suspect number two. The TA, Sung Hanbin, from your sports psychology class. The one who always gives you extensions."

"He gives everyone extensions. He's just nice."

"He's also dating the Chinese exchange student," Heeseung cut in. "Zhang Hao, I think."

"Oh. Well. Let's move on, then." Jay narrowed his eyes. "Suspect number three. Someone from another university. Long distance. That's why you leave campus the second practice is over, so you can facetime them, and that's also why you're always tired."

"I'm always tired because coach makes us run kilometres a day."

"Or," Jay whispered darkly, "because you're up in the middle of the night talking to your secret partner."

Through most of this, Heeseung had stayed quiet, but now he leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at Sunghoon properly – and there was no teasing in his face anymore, only a kind of worn, honest curiosity that was somehow so much worse. Sunghoon could handle Jay's conspiracy theories in his sleep. He had never once, in all the years they'd known each other, managed to lie well to Heeseung.

"We're not trying to be annoying." Heeseung paused, picking his next words carefully. "Okay, Jay is trying to be annoying but I'm not. It's just weird, Hoon. You tell us everything – even things we'd honestly be better off not knowing. And now there's this whole person in your life, and it's like we're not allowed to know them."

Sunghoon looked down at his hands. "It's not about you guys," he sighed. "It's not my secret. That's all."

"They don't want anyone to know?"

"They don't want everyone to know. And you know how it is here. If I tell one person, it's on the thread by dinner."

"We wouldn't tell," Jay assured him – and then, when they both turned to look at him, "Okay, I probably wouldn't tell."

Despite everything, Sunghoon laughed, and the tight feeling in his chest loosened a little. "They're really smart," he heard himself say, before he could stop it. "And funny. Way funnier than me. And h– they're really good at making me feel less stupid about stuff I don't understand."

It was a small stumble. Barely half a syllable, and he covered it fast. But Jay's head snapped up, eyes going wide, and Sunghoon could only watch as the realization spread slowly across his entire face.

"Did you just say he?"

"No."

"You did. You said h."

"I said they."

"You said h and then you said they," Jay insisted, jabbing his phone in Sunghoon's direction. "Heeseung. He said h."

"I heard it." A slow, delighted grin was spreading across Heeseung's face now. "Hoon. Is it a guy?"

Sunghoon picked up his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked directly out of the locker room without another word – and he could hear Jay yelling THAT'S A YES behind him all the way down the hallway.

Jake was waiting outside the sports hall with two bubble teas and an expression of pure, vibrating excitement when Heeseung and Jay finally came out twenty minutes later – and so, apparently, were three girls from the bleachers, who had clearly decided that if they couldn't have Sunghoon, the point guard would do just fine.

They got to Heeseung before Jake did. One of them was holding out a water bottle he very obviously didn't need, another was telling him that his pass in the second drill had been so good, and the third had her hand resting on his forearm in a way that suggested she had no intention of moving it any time soon. Heeseung, who had never in his life known how to end a conversation with someone who was being nice to him, just stood there smiling politely and nodding along, eyes darting to Jake.

Jake watched all of this from the bottom of the steps with his head tilted to one side.

He handed both bubble teas to Jay without looking at him, walked straight up the steps and through the middle of the little group, took Heeseung's face in both hands, and kissed him.

It wasn't a peck. It was slow and deliberate and just a little too long for the front steps of a university building in broad daylight, Jake up on his toes with his thumbs resting along Heeseung's jaw, and by the time he pulled back, Heeseung looked as though he had forgotten his own name, the hand on his forearm was gone, and so was most of the colour in the third girl's face.

Jake turned to them with the sweetest, most angelic smile he could muster – one he used to get student council stuff signed.

"Thank you so much for coming to support the team," he told them warmly. "It really means a lot to us."

“Oh... Yeah, always.” The girls left quickly after that. One of them forgot her water bottle on the railing.

"You're terrifying," Jay muttered, holding a bubble tea in each hand.

"I'm friendly." Jake took his drink back, poked the straw through the lid, and turned to Heeseung, who was still standing exactly where he'd been left, red from his collar to his ears and a dazed smile gracing his face. "Hi, babe. Good practice?"

"Yeah," Heeseung managed. "Great. Really great."

And then Jake remembered why he was there in the first place, and the vibrating excitement came back all at once. "Is it true?" he demanded suddenly. "Is it really a guy?"

"How do you even know that?" Jay looked surprised. "It's been twenty minutes. Who even heard it?"

"No idea." Jake handed Heeseung his bubble tea and turned to Jay with his hands clasped together as if in prayer. "So? Is it true?"

"He said h," Jay confirmed gravely.

Jake gasped so loudly that a pigeon took off from the railing behind him. Heeseung looped an arm around his waist and sighed into his hair. "Babe. Please don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't do what you're about to do."

"I'm not about to do anything," Jake lied, pulling out his phone, opening a brand new note and typing MISSION: FIGURE OUT SUNGHOON'S BOYFRIEND at the top in capital letters. "Okay, I'm doing something, but it's for his own good. He's clearly really in love, and he's clearly really sad about hiding it, and if we figure out who it is, then maybe he'll stop being sad."

"Or maybe he'll be really mad at us."

"He's never been mad at me. He's physically incapable of being mad at me. I'm his best friend."

"Don't you have a student council meeting in an hour?" Heeseung tried instead. "You know. The whole thing you're the president of?"

"I have my dear Sunoo."

"Sunoo does all your work."

"Sunoo is a gift," Jake declared, still typing. "So. What do we know? He's a guy. He doesn't want people to know. Probably not an athlete, because we'd know."

"Yeah," Jay agreed, getting drawn in completely against his will. "He'd never. Coach would kill him."

"So he's from some other department." Jake chewed thoughtfully on his straw. "As the student council president, I naturally know a lot of people. But I need to delegate."

"Jake, no," Heeseung pleaded, already knowing exactly where this was going. Jay just looked confused, eyes darting between the two of them.

"Jake, yes."

"Baby, he already has a lot on his plate with all the student council stuff."

The pout arrived immediately. "Are you trying to insinuate that I've got nothing on mine? That I don't do anything as the president, that I let my secretary do all the work, that I'm useless and you're going to break up with me?"

"You know that's not what I meant."

"Then let me do what I need to do."

Heeseung had survived years of coach's suicide sprints, two sprained ankles and one very regrettable haircut, but he had never once survived that pout. He looked at it for exactly two seconds before he felt his resolve crumble.

"How is Sunoo even going to help us?" Heeseung asked. "He doesn't even know Sunghoon."

"Exactly! He's neutral! He doesn't care about basketball at all, so he won't tell anyone! And I'll have an extra helping hand, because you two are useless."

He was already scrolling through his contacts.

The sigh Heeseung let out was long and defeated – the sigh of a man who had lost this argument before it even started. "Sure. Go for it."

Jake planted a kiss on his cheek, and Heeseung smiled so stupidly that Jay pretended to gag.

"Jake, you scare me," Jay admitted, looking mildly astonished. "I get why you're the president."

Jake just let out an evil little chuckle and pressed call.

Sunoo was sitting cross-legged on his bed with his laptop open and a highlighter between his teeth when his phone lit up with Jake across the screen.

He stared at it for several rings before answering, because Jake had never once called him unless he wanted something.

"Sunoo! My favourite person!"

Sunoo took the highlighter out of his mouth. "What do you need now?"

"Nothing! Or, I mean, not nothing, but it's not related to the student council." Jake's voice dropped to a whisper, so low Sunoo could barely make it out. "Help– Sungho– mission–"

"Jake, why are you whispering? I can't understand a word you're saying."

A throat cleared on the other end of the line. "Okay. Listen. I need your help with something, and it's a little weird, but I think you're the perfect person for it." A pause, a deep breath. "Do you know who Park Sunghoon is?"

Very slowly, Sunoo closed his laptop.

"Who doesn't?"

"Okay, so, he's on my boyfriend's team, and he's secretly dating someone, and we think it's a guy now, and definitely not an athlete. And you naturally know a lot of people, so I wanted your help to figure out who it is. You can think of it as a fun little side quest! And honestly, it might be good for you. You need a hobby."

"Wow. Thanks."

"You're welcome," Jake went on, gathering speed. "I was thinking you could maybe keep your ears open? Just a little? Like, if you hear about anyone who's been acting weird, or disappearing after seven, or wearing a basketball hoodie, or saying they have a boyfriend but won't say who. And then you could tell me, and we could figure it out together. I'll take some of your student council stuff off your plate. And I'll buy you coffee. For the whole semester."

Sunoo's eyes drifted across his room. The yellow tulips on his windowsill had started to droop a little at the edges. Draped over the back of his desk chair was a grey hoodie with a faded university crest on the chest and PARK printed in small block letters just above the hem, where only someone who was looking for it would ever notice.

"The whole semester?" he repeated, sceptical.

"The whole semester."

He closed his eyes. This was a terrible idea. This was, objectively, the worst idea anyone had ever had. "Sure, Jake. I'll help."

"Oh my god, you're the best. Okay, I'm adding you to the group chat, it's me and Heeseung and Jay, we're calling it the Task Force–"

Two minutes later he hung up, face in his hands, his phone buzzing nonstop with messages from a group chat called SUNGHOON TASK FORCE – until it buzzed once more, a different name at the top.

Sunoo dropped his phone on the bed, lay back against his pillows and stared up at the ceiling, and for a long moment he couldn't stop laughing – quietly, helplessly, the sheer absurdity of it all pressing up out of his chest. Then his phone lit up again next to his head, Jungwon's name glowing in the half dark.

The home game that weekend was against Kyunghee, and Sunoo sat where he always sat – the very top row, in the corner by the exit, half hidden behind a concrete pillar that blocked a fifth of the court and every single camera.

From up there, the whole gym was laid out underneath him. He could see the student section packed shoulder to shoulder in blue, and the girls in the second row with a 12 painted on each of their cheeks, and the boy halfway down who had glued a printout of Sunghoon's face onto a stick and waved it in the air every time he touched the ball. He could see the photography club boy from practice crouched by the baseline with a lens as long as his forearm. Jay had his own fans, a row of first years with a glittery banner that said JAY'S #1 WIFE, and Heeseung had his, though they'd gotten noticeably quieter and much more polite ever since the day Jake had walked into practice a few months after they’d just begun dating, kissed Heeseung on the mouth in front of the entire bleachers, and walked back out again without a word.

Every time Sunghoon got the ball, the whole building leaned forward. Every time he scored, the noise came up through the floor and into the soles of Sunoo's shoes. Somebody started chanting his name in the second quarter, and it never really stopped after that.

Sunoo watched all of it from behind the pillar with his bag in his lap and his hood half up, the way he had at every home game since they got together.

Jeon won by fourteen, Sunghoon scoring twenty-two. And with a minute left on the clock and the game long decided, standing at the free throw line, he looked up – just once, quickly, at the top corner by the exit – and his face did the small, soft thing it only ever did for Sunoo. In the second row, the girls with painted cheeks screamed, because they thought he was looking at them.

He made both free throws.

And for one warm, strange second, Sunoo let himself think it. I could go down there. Not tonight, obviously, but one day. The fourth row, maybe, close enough that Sunghoon wouldn't have to look up to find him. Maybe it wouldn't even be that bad.

"Honestly, whoever it is has to be gorgeous," a girl one row below him was telling her friend, her phone already up to film the handshake line. "Model gorgeous. He's not going to date down, like look at him."

"Imagine being the boyfriend," her friend agreed, "and having to stand next to him in pictures."

They both laughed. Sunoo pulled his hood the rest of the way up, and stayed exactly where he was until the gym had emptied out.

A few days later, Park Sunghoon walked into the cafeteria with a hickey on his neck. Again.

In Sunoo's defence, it wasn't entirely his fault. Sunghoon had asked him to be mean in person and, well. Sunoo fulfilled his wish. But he did clearly warn him that it might not fade for days, and Sunghoon had told him very clearly that he owned four turtlenecks.

He was not wearing a turtleneck. He was wearing a faded practice t-shirt with a stretched-out collar, and he made it exactly as far as the drinks machine before Jay spotted it.

Sunoo saw the whole thing from his table by the window. He saw Jay freeze with a carton of banana milk halfway to his mouth, choke on it, and lean across the table to hiss something at Heeseung with his eyes very wide, pointing at his own neck with one trembling finger. Heeseung looked and put down his chopsticks.

It didn't take long for the tables around them to notice, either.

Heeseung was already on his feet, trying to tug Sunghoon's collar up with both hands, and Sunghoon was standing very still and staring at a fixed point on the ceiling with the expression of a man waiting for death.

Sunoo inhaled his soup.

Jungwon patted him on the back without saying a single word, in a way that somehow said absolutely everything.

"Turtleneck?" he asked eventually, once Sunoo could breathe again.

"He said he'd wear one," Sunoo wheezed.

Sunoo kept his eyes firmly on his soup for the rest of lunch, and his face stayed hot all the way through his afternoon lab.

The whole thing had started because Sunoo couldn't sleep the night before his midterm.

At quarter to one he'd texted Sunghoon a single line – i'm going to fail and become a farmer – and five minutes later Sunghoon had texted back what kind of farmer, and ten minutes after that he'd been standing outside Sunoo's building in a black cap and a puffy jacket thrown over his pyjamas, jingling his car keys and asking if Sunoo wanted ramen. The convenience store had been completely empty, except for one sleepy cashier and, apparently, one person Sunoo hadn't noticed at all, standing somewhere behind the shelves of chips with their phone out.

They had been so careful for so long. And it had been the smallest, most ordinary moment – Sunghoon telling him some stupid story about Jay falling off the bench in the middle of a team meeting, Sunoo laughing into the steam of his cup noodles – and somehow, that had been enough.

He saw the photo at seven in the morning, still half asleep, and sat bolt upright so fast he smacked his head on the wall. In a panicked rush he called Jungwon.

"It's seven," Jungwon groaned, voice thick with sleep. "Someone had better be dead."

"Someone posted a photo."

He heard a pause, followed by some rustling. When Jungwon spoke again he sounded much, much more awake. "Oh no."

"It's the back of my head. It's just the back. But the bag, Jungwon. The keychain."

For a moment there was only silence on the line, and the faint sound of Jungwon scrolling. "Okay," he began slowly. "Okay. It's not that bad. It's blurry, and nobody knows what the back of your head looks like."

"Jake has seen my bag at least forty times."

"Jake thought we were twins when he first met us."

That did make Sunoo feel a little better. It lasted about fifteen minutes – right up until the group chat woke up.

Sunoo stared at the message for a very long time. On the floor beside his bed, his bag sat slumped against the desk, and hanging from its strap, bright green and slightly chipped at one edge, was the little frog. Jungwon had one exactly like it. They'd bought them together in their last year of high school, two for one from a stall outside the school gates, and Jungwon had clipped his onto his keys that same afternoon and never taken it off.

Sunoo got out of bed, unclipped the frog, and buried it in the top drawer of his desk under a stack of old lab reports. Then he picked his phone back up.

He went to class that morning with the keychain in his drawer and his bag looking unusually bare, and Jake was already sitting in their usual row with his chin propped in one hand, holding his phone a few centimetres from his face with the other.

"Morning," Sunoo offered carefully, and sat down.

"I've been zooming in for an hour," Jake huffed, not even looking up. "I think the frog has a little crown on it. Does that mean anything to you? A frog with a crown?"

"Not really." Sunoo got out his laptop and very deliberately did not look at anything.

Eventually Jake did look up, and his gaze drifted sideways to the bag hanging off the back of Sunoo's chair, and Sunoo watched him look at it for one second, then two, a small frown forming between his eyebrows.

"Huh." Jake tilted his head.

Sunoo did not breathe.

"Your bag's the same as the one in the photo."

"They're popular."

"Yeah." The frown didn't go anywhere. "It's just… I feel like yours used to have something on it."

And that was when the door at the back of the lecture hall banged open, and Jungwon walked in five minutes late with his hair still damp and his bag slung over one shoulder – and hanging from the zip of its front pocket, swinging slightly with every step and catching the fluorescent lights, was a small green frog wearing a tiny gold crown.

Jake's head turned so fast Sunoo actually heard his neck crack.

Jungwon made his way down the steps, sat down on Sunoo's other side, and started unpacking his pens with the serene, unbothered calm of a person who had not just made the biggest sacrifice of their entire friendship.

"Jungwon," Jake whispered, leaning across Sunoo's desk. "Jungwon."

"Yes?"

"Your keychain."

Jungwon glanced down at his bag as if noticing it for the very first time. "Oh. Yeah. I've had it since high school."

"You have?"

"Mhm." He uncapped a pen. "Got it on sale at Ikea."

Sunoo looked down at his notebook and pretended to be extremely interested in the date he'd written at the top of the page, because he didn't know what to do with the feeling in his chest – gratitude, mostly, and something underneath it that he didn't really want to name. Jungwon had clipped that frog to his keys in their last year of high school and never taken it off. Not once, in four years. And now it was hanging off his bag in the middle of a lecture hall for everyone to see, because Sunoo had shoved his own in a drawer.

Meanwhile, Jake was staring at Jungwon with his mouth slightly open. "Were you at the GS25 the night that photo was taken?"

"I was in Suwon. At my grandma's birthday." Jungwon didn't even look up. "There's an Instagram story where I'm holding a cake."

Jake checked. There was, indeed, an Instagram story of Jungwon holding a very large strawberry cake with his grandmother beaming beside him, timestamped eleven thirty that same night, two hours' drive from campus.

"Oh." Jake visibly deflated. "Okay. Sorry. I just got excited."

"That's okay. It's a very popular frog."

Much to Sunoo's delight, Jay did, in fact, sprint.

According to the update posted the next evening, a member of the university basketball team had been spotted running full speed across the main quad in his practice shorts at 7:02 p.m., shouting wait at a very confused man in a hooded parka – who turned out to be a forty-five year old physics professor on his way to pick his daughter up from swimming lessons.

"I'm losing my mind," Sunghoon whined.

He was lying face down on Sunoo's bed with one arm hanging off the edge, and Sunoo was sitting next to him eating cold tteokbokki straight out of the plastic container, trying very hard not to laugh.

"Jay's okay. Professor Kim isn't pressing charges."

"Jay's ashamed. He hasn't said a word since practice. He just keeps sighing." With a groan, Sunghoon rolled over onto his back and dragged his hands down his face. "I can't believe you sent him after a physics professor."

"I didn't send him after anyone! I just said a guy in physics leaves at seven. I didn't know he was going to run a marathon about it."

"You know Jay. He's always been a bit of a showman."

Setting the tteokbokki down on the nightstand, Sunoo lay back beside him, shoulders pressed together in the narrow single bed, and for a little while neither of them said anything. Outside, the streetlight flickered on and off in the slow, uneven rhythm Sunoo had stopped noticing a long time ago.

"Jungwon," Sunghoon said eventually. "He really did it for you."

"He did."

A soft smile crossed Sunghoon's face, but it faded just as quickly, and when Sunoo turned his head he found him staring up at the ceiling with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"You took yours off."

Sunoo's chest tightened. "It's in my drawer. It's safe."

"I know." For a moment Sunghoon was quiet. "It's just… that's how I found you on campus. Even from far away, even when I couldn't come over and say hi, I'd see that stupid frog on your bag and I'd know it was you." He swallowed. "And now it's in a drawer. And Jungwon's walking around with his on his bag like it's nothing, because he's braver than both of us."

"That's not fair."

"It is, though." His voice was very quiet. "People are going to ask him about it. Not you. Him."

"He said it's fine."

"Right." He didn't sound as if he believed it, and Sunoo didn't either. "Sorry. I'm not mad at you. I'm just tired."

Sunoo didn't answer. He reached down between them instead, found Sunghoon's hand and laced their fingers together, and Sunghoon held on tight – and neither of them said anything about what was really weighing down on both of them, or the fact that everything had been so much easier back when nobody had been looking.

After a while Sunghoon fell asleep, and Sunoo got up very quietly and opened his desk drawer and looked at the frog sitting on top of his old lab reports, its tiny gold crown catching the light from the street.

He didn't put it back on. But he didn't close the drawer either.

A few days later, Jake sent Sunoo to the sports building with a folder of travel reimbursement forms for coach, because Jake was, in his own words, spiritually allergic to that building and its smell (read: he was just mad at Heeseung for not giving him his good morning kiss).

Coach's office was empty when he got there. The hallway was quiet except for the squeak of sneakers and the thud of a ball echoing through the double doors from the court, and Sunoo had just bent down to slide the folder under the office door when a hand closed around his wrist and pulled him sideways into the equipment room.

"Are you insane?" he whispered.

"Water break." Sunghoon was flushed and a little sweaty, hair pushed back off his forehead, grinning at him in the half dark between two shelves of folded mats. "I’ve got a few minutes."

"Your entire team is thirty metres away."

"Then be quiet."

He kissed him up against a rack of basketballs – quick and greedy, still breathing hard from the drills, one hand flat on the shelf beside Sunoo's head – and Sunoo grabbed a fistful of his jersey and kissed him back with his heart hammering in his ears, half because he wanted to and half because of the door, the thin wooden door with no lock, and somehow that only made it worse in the best possible way. He could hear coach's whistle on the other side of the wall as well as Jay yelling something about a rebound. Sunghoon was smiling against his lips.

Then his elbow knocked against the rack, and a basketball dropped out of it and bounced across the concrete floor – once, twice, three times, impossibly loud in the small room – and they both froze.

"Hoon?" Heeseung's voice, right outside the door. "Coach wants you. Did you get lost looking for the pump?"

Sunghoon grabbed the ball pump off the nearest shelf, pressed one finger to his lips at Sunoo, and slipped out the door. Sunoo heard Heeseung through the wood. "Found it?"

"Found it."

"Why are you so red?"

"It's hot in there."

Their footsteps faded down the hallway. Sunoo counted to sixty with his back against the shelves and his hand over his own mouth, and slipped out of the equipment room – and walked straight into Riki, who was coming out of the locker room with a towel over his head.

Riki looked at him, glancing at the equipment room and then him again.

"Student council," Sunoo blurted. "I’ve got forms. For Coach."

"Okay," Riki said, and kept walking.

Sunoo laughed about it the whole way back to the chemistry building. He laughed about it in the lab, and in the shower, and that night in bed with his face pressed into the pillow – and somewhere in the middle of it, for the first time in weeks, he let himself think about it again. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe if people found out, they'd just laugh about it too, the way he and Sunghoon had in the equipment room.

The next morning, he found out exactly how people would laugh.

Sunoo was in the library before his nine o'clock lecture, at his usual table in the back corner, when two girls and a guy sat down on the other side of the bookshelf. He didn't recognise any of them. He wouldn't have listened at all if one of them hadn't lowered her voice in the particular way people did right before they said something about Park Sunghoon.

"Okay, don't laugh. I swear I saw him in the back stairwell last week. The fire exit one with a guy."

"What? Who?"

"That's the thing." There was a suspenseful pause. "I think it was the student council guy? The one who's always with Jake. Kim Sunoo, I think his name is."

Sunoo stopped breathing.

There was a beat of silence on the other side of the shelf. Then both of her friends burst out laughing.

"Kim Sunoo?"

"Babe. You need to sleep more."

"No, I'm serious, they were standing really close–"

"He was probably asking him to sign a petition," the second friend wheezed. "He's the secretary. That's his whole thing."

"You also thought Sunghoon smiled at you in the cafeteria last week," the first one reminded her, and that set them off all over again, and after a moment the girl who had seen them started laughing too, a little embarrassed.

"Okay, yeah. No. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Park Sunghoon and Kim Sunoo," her friend repeated, still giggling, as if it was the punchline to a joke she wanted to remember for later.

Shortly after they moved on to a midterm, and that was it.

Sunoo sat very still with his pen hovering over the same line of his notes. He waited all day for it to show up somewhere – a tweet, a reply, a single question mark at the bottom of the thread. It never did. Nobody posted about it, nor did they ask. It didn't even turn into a rumour, because it wasn't believable enough to be one.

He should have been relieved. He told himself he was.

The cafeteria was always worse on the days the team had morning practice.

Sunoo had never been able to figure out exactly why. Maybe it was because they all came to lunch at once, loud and starving and still a little sweaty, or maybe it was because those were the days the university account posted its weekly highlights, and Sunghoon was always, without fail, in them. Either way, by twelve fifteen, the long table in the middle of the room had turned into something closer to a fan meeting.

A boy from the first year dance team came over to Sunghoon inviting him to their dance showcase, which Sunghoon said he would think about (he never went). A group of girls from the next table took turns walking past him to the drinks machine, even though it was very clearly not on the way to anywhere. A girl at the table behind Sunoo's had his class schedule saved as her lock screen. Nobody seemed to find that strange.

He watched all of it from the window, spoon frozen halfway to his mouth.

"You're staring," Jungwon noted.

"Everyone's staring."

"Yeah, but everyone isn't sleeping with him."

Sunoo kicked him under the table.

Suddenly, a girl sat down next to Sunghoon.

Not across from him, nor at the end of the table, where the fans usually hovered. It was right next to him, in Jay's seat, right after Jay got up, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Sunoo was fairly sure she was a second year from the business department, Park Minseol – long hair tied back with a ribbon, a laugh he could hear all the way from the window. She said something that made Heeseung snort into his soup. Without missing a beat, she reached over, picked up a piece of fried chicken from Sunghoon's tray with her own chopsticks, and held it up to his mouth.

Sunghoon leaned back so fast his chair scraped against the floor.

He was polite about it – of course he was. Sunoo could see him being polite about it from across the room, that careful, slightly frozen smile, the way he took the chicken from her chopsticks with his fingers instead and put it back down on his tray and said something short that only made her laugh again. But she didn't leave. She stayed right there, turned toward him, her knee nearly touching his under the table, and she pulled out her phone and held it up for a selfie – and Sunghoon, who could not say no to anyone to save his life, leaned in just enough to be in the frame.

Sunoo put his spoon down.

He wasn't jealous. That would be stupid. Sunghoon had pulled away and had put the chicken back. Sunghoon had a note on his phone full of drafts on how to turn people down gently, and Sunoo knew exactly whose apartment he went home to every single night.

"They look good together, though," someone at the next table remarked, not even quietly. "If it's not Minseol, it's probably someone like her."

Sunoo looked down at himself – at the sleeves of his hoodie hanging past his fingertips, at the small bleach stain on the cuff from last week's lab. He looked back at his soup, suddenly not having an appetite anymore.

Across the room, Sunghoon looked up. His eyes found Sunoo's over the girl's shoulder, and for a second there was something almost desperate in his face – an apology, maybe, or a question – the same half-second glance from the library hallway that used to make Sunoo feel it all the way down to his toes.

This time, it was Sunoo who looked away first.

He picked his spoon back up and stared down at his soup and didn't look up again for the rest of lunch, even though he could feel Sunghoon's eyes on him the entire time.

His phone buzzed ten minutes later.

He turned his phone face down on the table and finished his soup. It had gone cold.

The first person came up to their table at lunch the very next day.

She was a second year with a bright pink phone case and a nervous smile, holding her tray against her stomach at the end of their table, and she was looking at Jungwon with an expression Sunoo recognised immediately – because he'd seen it on the face of every single person who had ever worked up the courage to walk up to Sunghoon in a hallway.

"Sorry," she began, hesitant. "This is so random… but are you dating Park Sunghoon?"

Jungwon looked up from his kimbap. He chewed slowly. Swallowed.

"No."

"Oh. Okay. Sorry. It's just that the thread–"

"I'm not dating anyone," Jungwon told her, very calmly. "I have three lab reports due this week, and I'm dating all of them."

She laughed, a little uncertainly, and left – and Sunoo sat very still across from him with his chopsticks frozen halfway to his mouth, something cold and heavy settling slowly in the pit of his stomach.

"Jungwon," he muttered.

"It's fine."

"It's not fine."

"It's one girl. It's fine." Jungwon picked up another piece of kimbap. "Eat your lunch."

Two tables away, at the long table in the middle of the cafeteria, Sunghoon was sitting between Heeseung and Jay with his tray untouched in front of him, looking directly at them and the second Sunoo met his eyes, he looked down at his food so fast he nearly knocked over his water.

It was the first time Sunghoon had ever been the one to look away.

A few people at the next table saw it happen. Sunoo watched one of them pull out her phone.

As it turned out, Jungwon had spoken a little too soon. Because it certainly wasn't just one girl.

Within a couple of days, there were people waiting outside the chemistry building in the mornings, standing in little clusters by the bike racks with their phones out, and whenever Jungwon came up the path with his headphones on, they'd all go quiet at once and watch him walk the whole way to the door. Soon after that, someone posted his class schedule in the replies, and four first years Sunoo had never seen before in his life sat in the back row of their thermodynamics lecture and whispered to each other for the entire hour. And at the end of the week, Jungwon found a folded note tucked into the front pocket of his bag, right next to the frog. It said you're so lucky in round, careful handwriting with a little heart drawn above it – and on the back, someone else had scribbled something much, much less kind.

Jungwon read both sides, folded it back up, and dropped it in the recycling bin by the lab door without a word.

"You should report that," Sunoo burst out, frustrated.

"Report it to who? The thread police?" Jungwon pulled on his lab coat. "It's fine. It'll blow over."

"How are you so chill about this?"

Instead of answering, Jungwon adjusted his goggles and for a second, just a second, Sunoo saw how tired he was underneath all that calm. The faint shadows under his eyes, along with the tension sitting in his jaw. "People get bored. They'll find a new theory next week."

That evening, Sunoo sat on the floor of his room with his back against the bed and scrolled through the thread for an hour and a half, reading every single reply. When he was done, he opened his chat with Jungwon and scrolled all the way back up to the photo of the frog hanging off Jungwon's bag, with the caption i've got ur back underneath – and he stared at it until his eyes started stinging.

He had done this. Not the thread, not the people waiting outside the building, not whoever had written that note. Him. This was Sunoo's fault, and Jungwon was the one paying for it, and Jungwon would never once complain about it, because that was just who Jungwon was.

Practice the next day was a disaster.

Riki passed Sunghoon the ball twice in a row, and he missed both. Then he went up for a layup in the scrimmage and came down wrong on his ankle – not hard enough to actually hurt himself, luckily, but hard enough for coach to blow the whistle and send him to the bench with an ice pack and a look that promised they'd be having a conversation about his head later.

Heeseung sat down next to him during the water break and didn't say anything for a while. He just handed Sunghoon a bottle, drank from his own, and watched the rest of the team run drills, the squeak of shoes loud and constant under the high ceiling.

"It's not Jungwon, right?"

Sunghoon didn't look at him. "No."

"Didn't think so." Heeseung turned his bottle slowly in his hands. "You'd never let someone you loved sit alone in the cafeteria getting stared at for a week. You'd have walked over there the very first day."

Sunghoon's throat felt tight. "I can't walk over there."

"Why not?"

"Because it would make it worse."

"For who?"

Sunghoon didn't have an answer for that. Across the gym, Jay sank a shot from deep and spun around to celebrate, and when he realised nobody was watching, he slowly put his arms back down and jogged back to the line with a small, embarrassed shake of his head.

"Whoever it is," Heeseung went on quietly, "I hope they know how miserable you look right now. Because you look really miserable, Hoon."

The team afters that weekend were mandatory, according to coach – who had announced, in front of everyone, that it would be nice if their star player showed up to at least one team event this season – so Sunghoon went.

Sunoo stayed home. He was in bed by eleven with his laptop balanced on his knees and a lab report he wasn't writing, and he had told himself, very firmly, that he was not going to look at anyone's stories tonight.

He lasted until eleven forty.

Jay's story was first – a blurry video of the whole team crammed around a table at a barbecue place, everyone shouting over each other, Heeseung wearing a paper crown for reasons Sunoo couldn't begin to guess. Then Jake's, fourteen stories long, almost all of them Heeseung. The next story was one from someone Sunoo didn't know, reposted by someone he did, and there was Sunghoon in the corner of the frame, laughing at something – with a girl perched on the armrest of his chair.

It was the same girl, Minseol. The update account had found her Instagram within an hour of the cafeteria selfie.

Sunoo watched it four times. He watched her lean down to say something in Sunghoon's ear, watched Sunghoon laugh and lean away – just slightly, just enough that only someone who knew him would notice – and watched everyone else at the table notice absolutely nothing.

He knew it didn't mean anything. He knew it with his entire chest, and it still made him feel like the smallest person in the world – lying in bed in the dark, in a hoodie with someone else's name printed on the hem, watching his boyfriend's life through somebody else's phone.

Before, Sunghoon would have sent him the story himself. He would have sent a screenshot of the thread with fourteen crying emojis, or a blurry picture of the barbecue with this is so boring come save me, or a photo of Jay asleep face first on the table. He always used to.

Tonight, Sunoo's phone had been quiet all evening.

At 12:52, it finally buzzed.

Sunoo looked at it for a long time. He typed me too, but deleted it. Instead he typed out i saw the story, which he deleted even faster.

He watched the little read appear underneath it. Watched the typing bubble appear, and disappear, and appear again – and then disappear for good.

Sunoo put his phone face down on the nightstand, pulled the hoodie up over his nose, and lay there in the dark for a long time without sleeping.

A few days after that, Sunoo was on the second floor of the chemistry building, washing glassware at the sink by the window, when he heard it. It wasn't loud, exactly – just a low, restless murmur of voices – but it was the kind of sound that made you look up, and when he did, he saw them. Fifteen, maybe twenty people clustered at the bottom of the front steps, more than there had ever been before, and every single one of them had a phone raised.

Jungwon was on the steps. He'd stopped halfway down, headphones around his neck, standing very straight and very still, looking out at the crowd with the careful blankness of someone trying very hard not to show that he wanted to turn around and walk straight back inside.

Somebody called out a question. Sunoo couldn't make out the words.

He was already moving before he'd decided to – peeling off his gloves, dropping them in the sink, taking the stairwell two steps at a time – and he burst out through the heavy front doors just in time to see Park Sunghoon cut straight through the middle of the crowd.

He was still in his practice clothes. He must have come straight from the gym, because his hair was damp and his face was flushed and he was breathing hard, and the crowd parted around him with a collective gasp, every phone swinging toward him in the same instant.

Sunghoon walked up the steps until he was standing next to Jungwon. He didn't touch him. He just turned around, and faced them.

"He's not my boyfriend."

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried. It was the voice he used on the court when he was calling a play – low and firm and completely certain.

"He's not dating me, and he's never dated me. He barely knows me." His jaw was tight. "So you can all stop waiting outside his building, and putting notes in his bag, and posting where his classes are. He hasn't done anything. Leave him alone. It's getting creepy."

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then a boy near the front, still filming, called out, "Then who is it?"

Sunghoon didn't answer. But his eyes lifted, just for a second, over the heads of the crowd and up the steps, past Jungwon, to the open doorway of the chemistry building where Sunoo was standing with wet hands and his lab coat still on, his heart hammering so hard he thought he might actually be sick.

It was half a second. Nobody else noticed.

But Sunoo saw what was in his face, and he knew exactly what Sunghoon was asking him. And he stood there in the doorway, with the whole crowd between them, and did not move.

Sunghoon looked away. He turned to Jungwon and said something too quiet to hear, and Jungwon nodded, and Sunghoon walked back down the steps and through the crowd the same way he'd come, and nobody tried to stop him.

An hour later Sunoo’s phone lit up with a notification from Jungwon.

Sunoo stared at the message. He didn't know what to write back.

Sunghoon didn't come over that night.

It wasn't anything. It was the same thing he texted every single night, word for word. Sunoo still lay awake for a long time looking at it, at the empty space underneath where come over or i miss you would usually have been, and told himself it was just midterms nearing.

Within a few days, the crowd outside the chemistry building was gone. The thread had moved on, mostly – to whether Sunghoon had been lying to protect him (according to the loudest half of the replies) or just being a decent person for once in this website's life (according to the other half), and, inevitably, to whether Yang Jungwon was single now. Jungwon dealt with that by muting forty-seven different words and refusing to tell Sunoo which ones.

One afternoon, Sunoo passed Sunghoon in the library hallway.

It was the same half-second glance as always, the same careful nothing on both their faces. But as they passed each other, Sunoo saw Sunghoon's hand move, just slightly, toward his – the small, automatic reach that used to end with Sunghoon's fingers hooked in his sleeve and the two of them disappearing into the back stairwell for four minutes – only to stop halfway, and go into his pocket instead.

Sunoo kept walking. He didn't look back. When he passed the door to the back stairwell, it was closed, and the green exit sign above it had finally burnt out.

Sunoo really did not want to go to the party.

He had made this very clear. He'd made it clear when Jake first texted about it, and again the next day, and once more that afternoon when Jake called him on speaker while Jungwon was sitting at the end of his bed and that was how Sunoo found himself outnumbered.

"I need my secretary there," Jake insisted. "It's networking. The dance club president is going to be there, and we still need her signature on the budget."

"It's a party, Jake. Nobody signs budgets at parties."

"Exactly! She’s probably gonna be a bit tipsy and will just sign it off so I can leave her alone."

"You are a devil in disguise."

"You're going," Jungwon cut in. "You've been staring at that desk drawer all week. You need to see other human beings."

Sunoo stared at him, betrayed. "You want to go to a party? After the past two weeks?"

"I'm not going to hide in my room because of those stupid twitter threads." Jungwon said, completely unbothered. "And neither are you."

"Jungwon's coming too!" Jake added brightly through the speaker. "It'll be fun. I promise it'll be fun. Have I ever lied to you?"

"Yes. Constantly. You told the dean the budget report was late because your printer was possessed."

"And he believed me, so what does that make him?" Jake shot back, very proudly, and hung up before Sunoo could say no a fifth time.

The dance club house was already packed when they got there, music thumping through the floorboards, every room full of people holding red cups and shouting over each other. Somebody had strung fairy lights across the living room ceiling, and half of them had already fallen down.

Jungwon got asked if he was single twice before they'd even made it past the hallway. He said no both times, which was a lie, and which Sunoo decided it would be kinder not to point out.

Jake found them by the door in under a minute, with a tall, sleepy-looking boy trailing behind him as a very large shadow.

"You came!" Jake threw his arms around Sunoo's neck, then Jungwon's, and pulled back to gesture grandly at the boy behind him. "You know Riki, right? First year, on the team? Our moms are best friends. I've known him since he was in diapers."

"Hyung." Riki's voice was completely flat. "Can you stop introducing me to people like this?"

"But you were so cute in them!"

"I'm going to leave."

He didn't leave. He stood right there at Jake's elbow, the way he apparently did everywhere, and when Jake reached up to fix the collar of his jacket, Riki let him, with the long-suffering patience of someone who had been mothered by Jake for nineteen years and had simply given up resisting.

"Did you eat dinner?" Jake asked him.

"Yes."

"What did you eat?"

"…Chips."

"Riki."

"You sound like my mom."

"Your mom told me to sound like your mom." Jake turned back to Sunoo and Jungwon, eyes suddenly bright with purpose. "Okay. Task force update. I'm going to use tonight to observe Sunghoon in his natural habitat. If his mystery boyfriend is here, I'll find him."

Riki looked down at him. "Hyung, you couldn't find your phone yesterday. It was in your hand."

"Sshh. We do not speak of that mishap."

Riki only shook his head, and wandered off toward the kitchen to look for food, and Jake watched him go with the exasperated fondness of an older brother.

It took Sunoo about fifteen minutes to find Sunghoon, and about fifteen seconds to wish he hadn't.

He was in the living room, leaning against the wall by the window with a cup in his hand, and he was surrounded. There was no other word for it. A girl from the volleyball team was telling him a story with a lot of hand gestures. Two guys Sunoo vaguely recognised from the business building were hovering at the edge of the group, clearly waiting for their turn. And standing right next to him, close enough that her shoulder was nearly touching his arm, was Minseol.

Sunghoon looked polite, as usual but Sunoo knew him well enough to see the careful way he was holding his cup, the way he kept shifting half a step to the side every time Minseol drifted closer, the way his eyes kept moving over everyone's heads toward the door, searching for something.

Then they found Sunoo, and stopped.

It didn't last long. Sunghoon's face did something small and startled and gentle, the corner of his mouth twitching before he could stop it, and Sunoo felt it hit him squarely in the chest – until Minseol touched Sunghoon's biceps to get his attention, and he looked away, and the moment was gone.

Sunoo went to the kitchen and poured himself a drink he didn't want.

From there, at least, he had a good view. He watched the volleyball girl finish her story, watched one of the business guys finally work up the courage to step forward and say something that made Sunghoon's ears go red, and Sunoo didn't need to hear it to know exactly what kind of thing it was. He watched Sunghoon shake his head, smiling apologetically, and say something Sunoo could read on his lips from all the way across the room.

I'm seeing someone.

The business guy said something back. Sunghoon nodded.

Yeah. I'm sure.

Minseol laughed, and leaned in, and said something with her hand on his arm again, and Sunoo could practically hear it. Are you really, though? He’s not even here.

Sunghoon opened his mouth to answer her but out of nowhere Heeseung materialised as he apparently always did, slung an arm around his neck, and announced to the group that he desperately needed Sunghoon's help with something very important in the other room. The something very important turned out to be Heeseung standing by the snack table eating pretzels while Sunghoon leaned against the wall next to him with his eyes closed, looking about ten years older than he had that morning.

Sunoo watched all of this with his drink pressed to his lips and something hot and ugly sitting in his chest that he didn't want to look at too closely.

"Hey. You're in Professor Min’s organic chem lab, right?"

He turned, startled. A boy he vaguely knew was standing next to him by the counter – Han Jiho, they did a group project a couple of semesters ago and occasionally Sunoo helped him out with stuff he didn’t understand. He had a nice smile and very straight teeth and was clearly at least two drinks in.

"Oh. Yeah. Hi."

"You saved my life on the last report," Jiho told him earnestly. "I was going to fail. You explained it in, like, two sentences. So, I've been meaning to thank you."

"It's fine, really."

"No, seriously. Let me get you a drink. A better one, I mean, that one looks terrible."

Sunoo laughed, a little surprised, because it was terrible. "It is. Somebody put pomegranate juice in the beer."

"That should be illegal," Jiho agreed solemnly, and took the cup out of his hand, and Sunoo laughed again – and it was only when he glanced up, still smiling, that he saw Sunghoon watching them from across the room.

He wasn't leaning against the wall anymore. He was standing very straight next to the snack table, and the cup in his hand had been crushed so completely that it was barely a cup anymore, red plastic crumpled in his fist, beer dripping slowly onto his shoes.

Next to him, Heeseung had stopped eating pretzels.

He was looking at Sunghoon. Then, slowly, he followed Sunghoon's eyes across the room, past the dancing and the fallen fairy lights, all the way to the kitchen counter. To Sunoo.

For one long second, Heeseung just looked at him.

Sunoo's heart stopped. He was sure of it. It stopped dead in his chest and didn't start again until Heeseung blinked, smiled very faintly, and looked away. He took the crushed cup out of Sunghoon's hand, threw it in the bin, and handed him a fresh one, not uttering a single word.

Sunoo stood very still by the counter and tried to remember how breathing worked.

It was nothing. It had to be nothing. Heeseung had probably just been looking at the drinks.

By one in the morning, somebody had suggested truth or dare, and somehow Sunoo ended up in the circle.

He wasn't entirely sure how it happened. One moment he'd been standing near the bookshelf trying to look busy, and the next Jake had grabbed his wrist and dragged him down onto the living room rug between himself and Jungwon, and now there were fifteen of them sitting in a lopsided ring around an half empty soju bottle, most of them some degree of tipsy and all of them some degree of loud. Heeseung was next to Jake. Jay was next to Heeseung, already rubbing his hands together with the energy of a cartoon villain. Sung Hanbin – the sports psychology TA who gave everyone extensions – had been pulled in by somebody from the team and was sitting cross-legged with his sleeves pushed up, and Zhang Hao had refused to play on the grounds that he was an exchange student and didn't understand the rules, which nobody believed, and was perched on the arm of the couch behind him instead, chin resting on top of Hanbin's head. Riki had refused too, with no excuse at all, and was lying on the couch with his phone held above his face. Jake had allowed it on the condition that he at least watch.

And Sunghoon was sitting directly across from Sunoo, with Minseol on one side and the business guy on the other.

Karina was there too, two spots down from Jay, sitting cross-legged with her chin in her hands. Sunoo had never once seen her dance at a party. She just always seemed to be wherever something was about to happen, and she always knew everything first – who was dating who, who had failed what, which professor was getting divorced – and she was very clearly here for the gossip more than the music. Every time the bottle slowed down anywhere near Sunghoon, she and half the circle leaned in at once, and every time it didn't stop on him, somebody groaned and somebody else whispered something that made the people around them giggle.

The rules were simple. You answered the truth, or you did the dare, or you drank – and drinking meant one of the tiny paper cups of homemade vodka lined up in the middle of the rug, which a guy called Euijoo had brought from his grandpa's house and which smelled faintly of paint thinner. If you drank, the next time the bottle landed on you, it had to be a dare. No drinking, no exceptions.

The first few rounds were harmless. Somebody had to do an impression of coach. Somebody admitted to walking in on two professors making out, adamantly not giving any names. Jungwon was asked to name his biggest turn-off, thought about it for a moment, said people who breathe too loudly, and refused to elaborate.

Then Karina spun the bottle, and it landed on Heeseung, and she sat up very straight, and Sunoo saw Jake's eyes narrow in warning.

"Truth or dare, Heeseung?"

"Dare," Heeseung answered, because Heeseung was a fool.

Karina grinned. It was not a good grin. "Kiss Jake like nobody's watching. Thirty seconds, I'm timing it."

"Everybody's watching," Heeseung pointed out.

"That's the dare."

The circle erupted into whistles. Heeseung turned to Jake, opening his mouth – probably to negotiate, or to ask, because Heeseung was a gentleman – but Jake didn't give him the chance. He just climbed straight into Heeseung's lap in one smooth, terrifyingly confident motion, settled his knees on either side of his hips, took his face in both hands, and kissed him.

The whistling turned into screaming.

It started out as a joke. Sunoo was fairly sure of that. It was all teeth and laughter for the first few seconds, Jake grinning against Heeseung's mouth, Heeseung's hands hovering awkwardly in the air as if he wasn't sure where he was allowed to put them in front of fifteen people. But then Jake tilted his head, and pressed closer, and made a small, quiet sound low in his throat – and Heeseung's hands stopped hovering. One of them landed on Jake's neck and stayed there. The other slid around to the small of his back, fingers slipping just under the hem of Jake's shirt, and pulled him in until there was no space left between them, and Jake's hands moved from his face into his hair, and it very quickly stopped looking like a joke at all.

"Ten seconds!" Karina called out.

Nobody was listening to Karina.

"Twenty! Twenty-five! Thirty – okay. Okay, that's thirty. That's thirty seconds. GUYS."

They did not stop. If anything, Heeseung's grip on Jake got tighter.

"Oh my god," someone whispered reverently.

From the couch, Riki put his phone face down on his chest and pressed both hands over his eyes. "I'm literally a baby. This is my brother. I'm going to throw up."

Jay threw a cushion at them. It bounced off the back of Jake's head, and only then did they finally break apart – Jake's lips red and swollen, his hair a complete mess from Heeseung's fingers, Heeseung looking stupefied and slightly unfocused in a way Sunoo had never seen on him before.

“You’re so disgusting.” Jay said, eyes darting between Heeseung and Jake, his expression turning sour.

“Want me to kiss you senseless too?” Jake asks with a laugh, still a little dazed.

“Ew! Fuck off.”

Jake climbed off Heeseung's lap, sat back down on the rug, smoothed his shirt, and handed the bottle to him with perfect composure. "Your turn to spin, babe."

Karina just stared at him, fanning her pink cheeks with one hand. "I need to lie down."

"You're welcome," Jake told her sweetly.

Sunoo couldn't stop laughing. He had his face in Jungwon's shoulder and his whole body was shaking with it, because this – this was exactly why Jake had a fan account. This was exactly why Jake could survive the comments, the opinions and Sunoo couldn't. Jake had just made out with his boyfriend in front of fifteen people and acted like nothing had happened.

Heeseung spun the bottle, and it wobbled slightly before stopping on Sunoo.

His laughter died very quickly.

"Sunoo!" Jake sat up, delighted. "My secretary. My right-hand man. Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Sunoo answered immediately, because he had just watched what a dare could do to a person in this circle.

Jake rubbed his hands together. "Okay. Okay. Are you seeing anyone?"

The circle went ooooh. Sunoo didn't talk about himself much, and most of these people only knew him as the boy who sat behind Jake at student council meetings taking notes, so of course they were interested. Even the volleyball girl leaned forward.

Across the circle, Sunghoon went very still.

Sunoo didn't look at him. He looked at the bottle, and the rug, and his own hands, and he felt fifteen pairs of eyes on him and one pair in particular. The truth was sitting right there in his mouth. So was the lie. He'd told it a hundred times, to Jake and to his mother and to the girl in his lab who'd asked if he wanted to be set up with her cousin – just no, light and easy, one small word. He opened his mouth to say it.

It wouldn't come out. Not with Sunghoon sitting right there.

So he reached into the middle of the circle instead, picked up one of the little paper cups, and drank.

It burned all the way down. It burned so badly his eyes watered and he had to press the back of his hand against his mouth to keep from coughing, and the circle exploded.

"HE DRANK!"

"OH MY GOD, HE'S HIDING SOMETHING–"

"Sunoo!" Jake grabbed his arm with both hands and shook it. "Sunoo! Are you seeing someone? Since when? Why didn't you tell me? I tell you everything!"

"I just wanted a shot," Sunoo wheezed.

"Leave him alone, Jake." The volleyball girl was laughing, but not unkindly. "He probably just didn't want to say no in front of everyone. It's embarrassing."

That got laughs rippling around the circle – two girls by the bookshelf leaning their heads together to whisper, a few of the other guys snorting into their cup, somebody murmuring bless him in a voice that wasn't nearly as quiet as they thought it was.

Karina didn't laugh. She looked around at the people who were, one after another, with a small, irritated crease between her eyebrows. Jake had stopped shaking Sunoo's arm and was giving the volleyball girl a long, flat look, and on Sunoo's other side, Jungwon was giving the guys the exact same look he usually saved for people who breathed too loudly.

The bottle moved on and Sunoo sat there with his throat on fire and the strange, hollow feeling of having been let off the hook for the wrong reason. Nobody had even considered it. Not for a second.

Sunoo let himself glance at Sunghoon, just quickly and saw the way Sunghoon had looked down at the cup in his hands and stayed that way, his thumb moving slowly back and forth along the rim.

The bottle went around a few more times. Somebody had to lick someone else's elbow. Hanbin had to sing the first verse of a ballad of the circle's choosing, and did it so well that Hao, still perched behind him, looked insufferably proud. Eventually, the bottle stopped on Sunghoon.

The noise in the room doubled.

"Truth or dare, Sunghoon!"

"Truth," he answered, after a moment, because truth was the one you could always drink your way out of.

Minseol had clearly been waiting for this all night. She tilted her head at him, her smile deceivingly sweet. "Who are you dating?" A small pause. "If there even is someone."

A few people laughed.

Sunghoon looked at her for a second. Then he reached into the middle of the circle, picked up one of the little paper cups, and drank it without a single change of expression.

"That's what I thought," she said lightly, over the chorus of boos, and the girl next to her hid a laugh behind her hand. "You know the rules. Next time, it's a dare."

After that, every single spin felt like a countdown. The bottle landed on Jungwon, who was dared to text his lab supervisor i know what you did last summer and did it without hesitation, then locked his phone. It landed on one of the business guys, who had to let Jay draw on his face. It landed on Karina, who picked truth and admitted, without a trace of shame, that she had once followed two professors into a café across town just to confirm they were dating. ("I was right," she added. "They're engaged now.") Sunoo watched the bottle every time it spun. Every time it slowed down near Sunghoon, his stomach dropped, and every time it didn't stop, he couldn't tell if it was relief.

The bottle never landed on Sunoo again that night. It was the only luck he had.

On the fourth round, it stopped on Sunghoon.

He didn't even wait for anyone to ask. "Dare."

"Mine," Minseol announced, before anyone else could open their mouth.

"Kiss someone." She glanced around the circle as she said it, and then back at him, and she didn't need to add me for everyone in the room to hear it. "Anyone here. I'm sure your boyfriend won't mind."

She leaned on the word boyfriend just slightly, as if it came with quotation marks, and a few people snickered.

The scream that went up was so loud that someone in the kitchen dropped a glass.

"Can I do something else?" Sunghoon asked, almost pleading.

"Rules are rules!" one of the business guys called from across the rug.

"It's just a dare, Sunghoon, relax–" someone else added, and a few people laughed.

"C'mon," a girl near the bookshelf whined, "it's just a kiss."

The whole circle seemed to agree with her, voices overlapping from every side until it was impossible to tell who was saying what anymore. So he didn't argue. Sunoo watched him look around the circle very slowly – at Minseol, at the business guy, at the empty paper cup in front of him – and he knew, a whole second before it happened, exactly where his eyes were going to stop.

They stopped on him.

It was a question. Sunoo could see that it was a question, the same one from the steps, the same one from the cafeteria and the library hallway and every single time they'd ever been in the same room as other people, and he heard himself answer it under his breath, in the same light, careless voice everybody else was using.

"It's just a dare."

Something flickered across Sunghoon's face, too quick to name. Then he got up.

The noise faltered as the circle realised where he was going, which turned into a confused, rising shriek – wait, who? Who is he– – and Jake's head whipped around so fast he nearly fell into Heeseung's lap again. Sunghoon crossed the rug in four steps and crouched down in front of Sunoo, close enough that Sunoo could smell the beer on him, and the cologne Sunoo had once told him he liked, months ago, and that he'd worn every day since.

"Okay?" he breathed, so quietly that nobody else in the room could possibly have heard it.

Sunoo nodded.

It was quick. One hand came up to his jaw, warm and a little unsteady, the thumb resting just under his ear the way it always did – and Sunghoon's mouth was on his, soft and careful, gone before Sunoo had even properly closed his eyes. One second. Maybe two. Just long enough for the shrieking and the music and the fifteen faces around them to go somewhere very far away, just long enough to taste the beer on his lips and feel his thumb press once against Sunoo's skin, small and secret, something meant for only one of them.

He pulled back, and stood up, and walked back to his spot on the rug. For a moment, the circle was completely silent.

Sunghoon sat down. He picked his cup back up and turned it in his hands. When he looked up at Minseol, his voice was very calm.

"You were right. He doesn't mind."

Somebody whistled, and somebody else laughed, and Euijoo yelled that a peck didn't count. By the bookshelf, the two girls had their heads together again, and Sunoo caught the words why him and a burst of giggles before the bottle was already spinning again.

Sunoo let out a small chuckle too. His mouth was still tingling. He pressed his cup against his lips, trying to act unaffected. After all it was just a dare and you were just Jake's secretary, and next to him Jungwon was one of the few people in the entire circle who wasn't laughing at all.

Heeseung wasn't laughing either, though Sunoo was far too busy to notice. He was looking at the expression on Sunghoon’s face and then across the circle at Sunoo, and when Jake turned to him, still giggling, he just found Jake's hand on the rug and squeezed it and said nothing at all.

And on the arm of the couch, Zhang Hao hadn't laughed once all night. He had watched Sunghoon cross the room, crouch down, and ask before he did it, so quietly that almost no one in the circle could have heard. Now he was looking from Sunghoon to Sunoo and back again, chin still resting on top of Hanbin's head, with the small, unbothered smile of someone who had figured out the ending months ago and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up. He didn't say anything.

Sunoo escaped to the kitchen twenty minutes later, when the circle had dissolved into somebody arguing about whether a peck counted as a kiss, and the music had come back up, and he couldn't sit there with his heart in his throat for one more second.

The kitchen was empty. He filled a glass with water from the tap, drank half of it, and pressed the cold glass to his cheek.

"You okay?"

He knew the voice before he turned around. Sunghoon was standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame, his hair falling into his eyes.

"Fine," he managed. "The vodka."

Sunghoon came in. He didn't come close – he stopped by the fridge, a good metre away, leaning back against it with his hands in his pockets, the way a stranger might. Anyone walking past the door would see two people who barely knew each other, waiting for the same tap. But his eyes were on Sunoo the whole time, steady and dark and a little too intense.

"You drank," he murmured.

Sunoo's chest went tight. "What was I supposed to say?"

"Nothing. I know." Sunghoon looked down at the floor, then back up. "I know. I just didn't love watching it."

"I didn't love watching people hitting on you the whole night either."

That got a small, surprised huff out of him, but for a split second something on his face softened before he composed himself again.

Sunoo set the glass down on the counter and took in a deep breath. "You kissed me. In front of fifteen people."

"You said it was just a dare."

"I know what I said."

"I wasn't going to kiss anyone else." The words came out simple and quiet, without any weight on them at all. "Not even for a dare, Sunoo."

Sunoo didn't know what to do with that. He looked down at the glass, at the water still trembling a little on the surface, and when he spoke again he tried to make it sound like a joke.

"Nobody even thought twice about it. They just laughed and spun the bottle again."

Sunghoon frowned. "They're idiots."

"No, it makes sense." He shrugged one shoulder, still smiling, still light. "Who would ever think it was me? That's why it worked."

Sunghoon opened his mouth to argue – Sunoo could see it coming, the crease between his eyebrows, the way he straightened up off the fridge – but he seemed to change his mind about something, and closed it again, and when he spoke it was about something else entirely.

"That guy," he said, very quietly. "From your lab."

"Jiho?"

"He took your drink."

"It had pomegranate juice in it."

"He took your drink, Sunoo."

And there it was again – that same flash Sunoo had felt watching Minseol touch Sunghoon's arm, only this time it was on Sunghoon's face, plain as anything, and it was so unexpected that Sunoo almost laughed. "Are you jealous?"

"Yes," Sunghoon answered simply.

For a second, Sunoo just stared at him, but before he could stop it something sharp and tired came up in his throat.

"Well. Now you know how it feels." It came out quieter than he meant it to, and meaner. "That's every day for me, Hoon. Every single day. Minseol and her chopsticks, and the letters in your locker, and hundreds messages in your inbox, and every guy and girl who suddenly needs something when you are in close vicinity–"

"I know. And I’m sorry." Sunghoon's jaw tightened. "But I'm not the one who wanted to keep it a secret, Sunoo."

Neither of them said anything after that. The music thumped on through the wall, and the light over the stove buzzed, and Sunoo stood there with his hands gripping the edge of the sink, and he didn't have an answer, because there wasn't one.

Sunghoon pushed himself off the fridge, and took one step forward, then another, and Sunoo didn't move, couldn't move, and the metre between them shrank to half a metre, and then less–

The kitchen door swung open.

They sprang apart so fast Sunoo knocked his glass into the sink. Riki walked in, yawning, his phone in one hand. He didn't look at either of them. He opened the freezer, took out a handful of ice, dropped it into his cup, closed the freezer, and walked back out again without saying a single word.

The door swung shut behind him.

Sunoo let out a shaky breath. Sunghoon dragged a hand down his face.

"I'm going home," Sunoo announced.

"Text me when you're there."

"Mhm."

He walked past Sunghoon toward the door, and for one second, just as he passed, Sunghoon's fingers brushed against his – quick and light, nothing anyone could have seen even if they'd been looking straight at them. Sunoo walked outside and he was standing out on the cold street with his hand still tingling and his heart beating so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

Sunoo read them at four in the morning, lying in bed in fresh clothes he’d just changed into.

He didn't mean to read them, really, he knew better. The only reason he’d opened the app was to see if anyone had posted a video of Jake and Heeseung, so he could send it to Jungwon and they could laugh about it, but he was in the replies, and he couldn't stop. He read every single one, read the nice ones and the stupid ones and the ones defending him, and when he got to the end, he went back up and read the other ones again, slowly, one at a time.

the one guy who'd never be a threat.

it's the nerdy student council kid.

probably never been kissed in his life.

He took screenshots. He didn't really know why. He sent them to Jungwon before he could think better of it.

Sunoo put his phone face down on the nightstand. A minute later it buzzed again, and he turned it back over.

He didn't answer that one.

The next afternoon, there was one more.

Sunghoon came over at ten that night. He let himself in with the spare key, but he didn't take off his shoes or his jacket, and he didn't come all the way into the room either – just stood by the door with his hands in his pockets and his cap pulled low, and for the first time since the day he'd asked Sunoo out, Sunoo couldn't read his face at all.

"You didn't come down that day. I mean, the day with Jungwon."

It wasn't an accusation. His voice was too quiet for that. It sounded more like someone finally setting something heavy down after carrying it a very long way.

Sunoo opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Sunghoon nodded slowly, as if he'd answered anyway. He looked down at the floor, at the faded rug by the door, and when he looked back up, his eyes were red.

"I can't keep doing this, Sunoo."

The room went very quiet after that.

Sunoo was sitting on the edge of his couch with his knees pulled up, one hand still resting on the textbook he'd been pretending to read for the past two hours, and suddenly he could hear everything – the hum of the old fridge in the corner, the flicker of the streetlight, the faint sound of someone's television through the wall. He could hear his own heartbeat.

He knew exactly what Sunghoon meant. But he still asked, hesitant. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I can't keep pretending I don't know you."

Sunghoon pulled his cap off and pushed a hand through his hair, and he looked so tired standing there by the door, still in his practice jacket with the university crest on the chest, that Sunoo's throat ached.

"I can't keep walking past you in the hallway as if you're nobody." His voice was steady, but only just. "The other day I reached for your hand in the library. I didn't even think about it, it just happened, and I had to put it in my pocket before anyone saw. You didn't even look back."

Sunoo's fingers tightened on the edge of the textbook.

"And last night I kissed you in front of fifteen people, and you told me it was just a dare."

"You looked at me. What was I supposed to–"

"I looked at you because I wanted you to say something. I don't know what. Anything." Sunghoon's jaw was tight. "Anything that wasn't it's just a dare, in the exact same voice as everyone else in that room."

Sunghoon let out a shaky breath.

"I stood on those steps in front of twenty people and said I barely knew Jungwon. About the one person who actually helped us and the person I actually love was standing right there in the doorway, and I couldn't even look at him for longer than a second." He laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. "Do you know how that felt?"

Sunoo felt that last part land somewhere in the middle of his chest.

"I didn't ask you to do that," he blurted instead, and hated how small his own voice sounded.

"I know you didn't. That's not the point." Sunghoon took a step into the room and then stopped, as if he wasn't sure he was allowed to come any closer. "Jungwon got notes in his bag, Sunoo. People were waiting outside his classes, and he didn’t even have anything to do with this. And every day I sat in that cafeteria two tables away from you and watched it happen and couldn't do anything about it, because doing anything would have meant–"

"Meant what?"

"Meant people finding out about you." His voice cracked, just slightly. "And you'd rather let your best friend get harassed than have that happen."

It was the unfairness of it that hurt the most – because it wasn't fair, and it also wasn't entirely wrong.

"That's not what happened." Sunoo was standing now, without quite remembering deciding to. "You think I wanted that? You think I liked watching Jungwon get harassed like that? I spent every single night reading the things they say, Sunghoon. Every reply. I know what they said about him. I know what they'd say about me. What they say about me."

"What would they say about you?"

"You know what they would say."

"I don't," Sunghoon pressed. "Tell me."

Sunoo stared at him. He could feel his eyes starting to burn and he hated it – hated that he couldn't have this argument without crying, hated that Sunghoon was looking at him with that open, confused hurt, as if he genuinely didn't understand.

"They’d say it doesn't make sense. They already are saying it. You read the replies last night, Sunghoon. The one guy who'd never be a threat. The nerdy student council kid. Somebody said I've probably never been kissed in my life." His lower lip had started trembling. "They'd look at you, and then they'd look at me, and they'd say him? Park Sunghoon, the campus crush, he picked the boring student council secretary in the huge hoodies who eats lunch with the same person every day and doesn't even know how basketball works.”

His voice was shaking now, but he couldn't stop.

“I've worked so hard here. I've got my lab position, and my thesis, and people actually know me for something. And the second everyone finds out, I'm not going to be Kim Sunoo anymore. I'm just going to be Park Sunghoon's boyfriend, who doesn’t even deserve him."

“That’s not–”

"Did you know someone saw us at the fire exit? She told her friends, and they didn't believe her. They laughed at her, Sunghoon. As if I was some kind of joke."

"What?" Sunghoon stared at him. "When did that happen? You never told me anything about it."

"Why would I?" It came out sharper than Sunoo meant it to, and he couldn't take it back. "So you could tell me it doesn't matter? So you could look at me exactly the way you're looking at me right now, as if you don't understand why it would?" He shook his head, and the tears he'd been holding back finally spilled over. "It's easy for you."

"Sunoo–"

"And you'll be fine," Sunoo went on, and now he really couldn't stop. "You'll be fine, because you're used to it. You don't even have to care what they say. You're Park Sunghoon. Everyone already loves you."

Sunghoon flinched as if he'd been hit.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Somewhere down the hall a door slammed, footsteps passing outside, and it was quiet again.

"You think I don't care what they say." When Sunghoon finally spoke, his voice was very low. "Sunoo, I read what they say about me too. I read what they wrote when I missed that shot against Yonsei last year. I read the one about how I'm cold and fake and only nice to selected people. I read every single post about who I'm dating, and every time someone said it was probably some pretty dancer, or some girl from another school, I wanted to reply and tell them it's the smartest person I've ever met – that he laughs at his own jokes before he even finishes telling them, and he makes me flashcards at midnight when I'm too stupid to understand my own homework."

"You're not stupid."

"That's not the point." Sunghoon's eyes were wet now, too. "The point is, I'm not hiding you because I'm scared of what they'll say about you. You're hiding me, because you're scared of what they'll say about you. And I've been okay with that. For eight months I've been okay with it, because I thought you'd get there eventually. I've been okay with you sitting in the top corner by the exit, and with walking past you in the library, and with watching Minseol sit down in a chair I'm not even allowed to offer you. But it just keeps piling up, Sunoo. The steps. The hallway. Last night – you drinking instead of answering, and Minseol asking me if there even was someone, and me wanting to point at you so badly my hands were shaking, and drinking instead because I couldn't. And then you telling me it was just a dare." He swallowed. "And I finally got it."

He looked Sunoo straight in the eyes. "You're never going to be ready. Are you?"

That's not true, Sunoo wanted to say. The words got stuck somewhere in his throat.

Something in Sunghoon's face closed, then, and he put his cap back on.

"I think I need a few days."

"Sunghoon…"

"I'm not–" He stopped, pressing his lips together. "I'm not breaking up with you. I don't want that. I'm just so tired of being careful all the time, and I don't know how to stop being careful without hurting you. So I need to think. And I think you do too."

For a moment neither of them moved, the only sounds in the room their breathing and Sunoo's heartbeat, fast and uneven, and when he looked down at his hands they were trembling. Sunghoon was the first to break eye contact. He turned around, bent down to fix his shoes, and left, closing the door very gently behind him, the way he always did, so it wouldn't slam and wake Sunoo's neighbours.

Somehow, that small, careful gesture was the part that broke Sunoo completely. He sat down on the floor right there and cried until his face hurt and his lungs ached, and when he was finished, he just stayed there in the dark, listening to the fridge hum.

The next few days were the quietest Sunoo had ever known.

He went to his classes. He went to lunch with Jungwon and sat at the same table by the window, and two tables away Sunghoon sat between Heeseung and Jay with his hood up and his tray untouched, and for the first time in eight months, neither of them looked up. Not once. Not even for half a second. Sunoo hadn't known how much of his day had been built around that half second until it was gone.

His phone stayed quiet. No home?, no goodnight. But he still checked it out of habit – in the lab, in the queue at the cafe near campus, in bed at two in the morning with the brightness turned all the way down – and every time there was nothing, and every time he opened the twitter instead.

"Break up my ass," Sunoo muttered to himself, sitting up and throwing his phone onto his bed.

It bounced once and landed face up next to his feet at the end of the bed, still open on Twitter, and he glared at it from across the room with his arms crossed. They hadn't broken up. Sunghoon had said so. I'm not breaking up with you. I don't want that.

He just hadn't said anything else since.

Sunoo picked the phone back up. He opened their chat and scrolled past their last messages, all the way back to when Sunghoon still sent him blurry photos of Jay asleep face first on tables and screenshots with crying emojis. He typed i miss you. He looked at it for a long time. Then he deleted it, one letter at a time.

Before he could put the phone down, it buzzed in his hand.

Sunoo looked at the message for a very long time.

A few days later, Jungwon showed up with two cups of coffee and let himself in without knocking. He took one look at the state of Sunoo's room – the unopened textbooks, the empty ramen cups, the blanket pulled all the way over Sunoo's head – and set his jaw.

"Okay. Get up."

"No."

"Get up, Sunoo. I brought you an iced chai latte. The one Sunghoon always gets you."

Sunoo pulled the blanket down just far enough to glare at him. "That's low."

"I got stared at by twenty people with phones on the chemistry steps last week. I'm allowed to fight dirty." Jungwon sat down on the edge of the bed and held the cup out until Sunoo gave in, sat up, and took it. "Talk."

So Sunoo talked. He told Jungwon everything – the fight, letting Jungwon get harassed, the part about being Park Sunghoon's boyfriend and nothing else – and when he got to the part where Sunghoon had asked you're never going to be ready, are you and he hadn't been able to answer, his voice gave out entirely and he had to stop.

Jungwon listened to all of it without interrupting. When it was over, he was quiet for a moment, turning his own coffee slowly in his hands “I–”

"Before you say anything, can I add one more thing?" Sunoo interrupted.

"Go ahead."

Sunoo hesitated, fiddling with his fingers, before he made himself look Jungwon straight in the eyes. "I'm sorry. For everything that happened."

Jungwon only smiled at him and put his hand on top of Sunoo's. "I know you are. You look really miserable right now."

That pulled a small, wet laugh out of Sunoo, and Jungwon squeezed his hand just once. And that was it.

"Okay. My turn." Jungwon let go and sat back. "Can I say something mean now?"

“You’re going to either way.”

"Yeah. You’re a coward." Jungwon looked at him. "You're not protecting yourself, Sunoo. You're just hiding. Those are two different things."

Sunoo didn't say anything.

"I had almost two weeks of it, you know?" Jungwon went on. "People staring and whispering and posting my schedule. And it was horrible, I'm not going to lie. But I'm still here. I still went to my classes and I still turned in all three reports. Nobody took anything away from me. I'm still exactly who I was."

He paused, trying to figure out how to say the next part. "And Sunghoon walked up those steps in front of all those people for me. What do you think he'd do for you?"

Sunoo stared down into his drink. The ice had started to melt, the edges of it turning pale and watery.

"They're going to say it doesn't make sense," he whispered. "Him and me."

"Some of them, probably." Jungwon shrugged. "And some of them are going to write a forty page thread about how you're the love of his life and they always knew it. And you know what? None of them are going to be there when he makes you rice at eleven at night. None of them get a vote. It's just you and him."

He nudged Sunoo's knee with his own.

"It's always just been you and him."

Across campus, in an apartment with pink glitter still stuck to the kitchen floor, Sunghoon was sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees when Heeseung and Jay let themselves in with a key he genuinely didn't remember giving them.

They didn't ask anything. Jay just dropped a bag of fried chicken on the coffee table and put on a basketball game neither of them was really watching, and Heeseung sat down close enough for their shoulders to touch, and for a long time they just sat there in the blue light of the television.

"I think I messed up."

"Did you do something bad?" Jay asked, mouth full of chicken.

"Yes? No? I don't know…" Sunghoon scrubbed his face with both hands. "I just know I shouldn't have left. Not when he was about to break down like that."

Heeseung was quiet for a moment. "Then maybe that's the part you fix first."

On the television, the buzzer went off to end the quarter, the crowd roaring, and Sunghoon watched the numbers on the scoreboard change without really seeing any of them.

The days after Jungwon's visit went by slowly and strangely. Sunoo finished his report and turned it in a whole day early, and his supervisor looked at him with open surprise and asked if he was feeling alright.

One morning, before class, he opened his desk drawer and took out the frog.

He held it in his palm for a while, turning it over. One corner of the gold crown was chipped where it had knocked against a door frame over the summer, and there was a tiny scratch across the frog's left eye that he'd never managed to buff out. Then he clipped it back onto the strap of his bag, exactly where it had always been.

And nobody noticed.

He walked across the whole campus with it – past the student centre and the bike racks and the front steps of the chemistry building where the crowd had stood two weeks ago – and not one single person looked twice. People had moved on to arguing about the final and also whether Jang Wonyoung was dating someone from Yongwan (according to Karina it was the leader of Yongwan’s dance team, someone called Yujin). Jungwon's frog was old news. His own was just a small green keychain on a very ordinary bag, and for the first time it struck Sunoo how little anyone was actually looking at him at all, and how much of what he'd been so afraid of had only ever really lived inside his own head.

Jungwon saw it at lunch. He didn't say anything – just raised his eyebrows very slightly and went back to his soup – but Sunoo could tell he was trying very hard not to smile.

The next night, Sunoo sat down on his bedroom floor with a stack of blank index cards, a pack of coloured pens and the official university basketball rulebook open on his laptop, and he did something he had never done before in his entire life.

He studied basketball.

It took him hours. By the end of it he'd made forty-three flashcards. He learned what a shot clock was and why it mattered, why a foul during a shot gave you free throws, what a double dribble was, and why everyone got so upset about travelling – privately, he'd always thought that was a strange word for it. He also learned that the hoop was exactly 3.05 metres off the floor and had been since the eighteen hundreds, and that nobody was ever going to make it bigger, no matter how much Sunoo thought they should.

At the bottom of the stack, on the very last card, he wrote something that wasn't about basketball at all.

The night before the final, Sunoo went to Sunghoon's apartment.

He didn't text first. He didn't want to give himself the chance to back out, and he didn't want to give Sunghoon the chance to say he was busy, so he just took the bus across town with the flashcards in his coat pocket, walked up the stairs to Sunghoon's door, and stood outside it for almost five whole minutes before he finally knocked.

When the door opened, Sunghoon was wearing an old grey t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair sticking up on one side as if he'd been lying down, and he looked so surprised to see Sunoo standing there that for a second he didn't say anything at all.

"Hey."

"Hey." It came out hoarse. Sunghoon cleared his throat. "I didn't– you didn't text."

"I know. I'm sorry. I can go if you're–"

"No." It came out too fast – Sunghoon winced a little at himself – but he stepped back and held the door open wider. "No. Come in. Please."

The apartment smelled like laundry detergent, so distinctly Sunghoon that it made something in Sunoo's chest pull tight. He took off his shoes by the door, and they walked into the living room and just stood there, awkward, neither of them sitting down.

"You have the final tomorrow. You should be sleeping."

"I was trying." Sunghoon rubbed the back of his neck. "It wasn't going great."

Sunoo nodded. He'd rehearsed this on the bus, practised every single sentence, and now all of it was gone – and he was just standing in the middle of Sunghoon's living room, feeling his heart beat somewhere in his throat.

"I made you something," he managed finally, and pulled the stack of flashcards out of his pocket.

Sunghoon took them slowly. He looked down at the first card, then started flipping through the rest one by one, with growing confusion, and Sunoo watched his face change as he realised what they were.

"These are basketball rules." He looked back up, puzzled.

"Forty-three of them."

"Why did you make me basketball flashcards?"

"They're not for you. They're for me." Sunoo swallowed. "I wanted to actually understand what's happening tomorrow. I wanted to know when to cheer properly, not just when you have the ball. And I was going to ask you why they don't just make the hoop bigger, but I know now. It's a historical standard."

Sunghoon laughed. It was small and wet and it cracked right down the middle, but it was a laugh, and Sunoo hadn't heard it in almost two weeks, and it made something in his chest unclench so suddenly he had to take a breath.

"I'm sorry."

Sunghoon looked up from the cards.

“I'm sorry I didn't come down, and I'm sorry I drank instead of answering. I'm sorry about what I said, about you not caring what they say, because that wasn't fair – I know you care, and I know it hurts you too. I just didn't want to think about it, because if you were hurting too, then I'd have to actually do something."

He was talking faster now, the words spilling out of him before he could stop them.

"And you were right. I wasn't protecting myself. I was just scared. I was so scared of what they'd say about me that I stopped thinking about what it was doing to you. And to Jungwon. And I'm sorry."

Sunghoon didn't say anything. He just took him in – Sunoo's hair unkempt from the wind, his cheeks flushed, the t-shirt under his coat very obviously not his own.

For a long moment he just stood there. Then, carefully, he set the flashcards down on the arm of the couch, crossed the room in two steps, and pulled Sunoo into his arms so hard that Sunoo's feet nearly left the floor – and Sunoo buried his face in the soft grey t-shirt and held on and cried, and he could feel Sunghoon shaking too, his breath coming uneven against the top of Sunoo's head.

"I love you," Sunghoon murmured into his hair, over and over, as if he'd been saving it up. "I love you. I love you. I'm sorry I left."

"You needed to."

"I didn't want to."

"I know."

Later, they ended up on the floor with their backs against the couch and their legs tangled together, and Sunghoon went through every single flashcard one by one – reading them out loud, correcting Sunoo's spelling on two of them, and laughing so hard at his drawing of a shot clock that he had to put his head down on his knees.

When he got to the last card, he stopped laughing.

He read it silently. Then he read it again. He turned to Sunoo with his lips parted and his eyes very, very wide.

On the last card, in careful blue ink, Sunoo had written:

Q: Where is Kim Sunoo sitting at the final?

A: Front row. Where you can see him.

"You don't have to." Sunghoon's voice had gone quiet. "I mean it. I don't need you to do that for me."

"I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it because I want to. I want to watch you play and not hide in the top corner by the exit. I want to cheer for you. I want to know when to cheer." He tapped the stack of cards. "I studied for hours, Park Sunghoon. Don't waste my research."

That got another laugh out of him, softer this time, and Sunghoon leaned over to press his forehead against Sunoo's temple and stayed there.

"If I miss every shot tomorrow," he murmured, "it's your fault."

"You won't."

"I missed a free throw by a metre the last time you sat where I could see you close up."

"That was months ago. You've had more than enough time to get used to my face."

"I'm never going to get used to your face."

He said it so simply, so honestly, that Sunoo had to look away.

After a moment, Sunghoon lifted his head. "Can I ask you something?"

"Mm."

"After the game–" He hesitated. "If we win… can I–"

"Even if you lose."

Sunghoon looked at him for a long moment before he leaned in and kissed him – unhurried and gentle, his hand warm against Sunoo's jaw – and for the first time in almost two weeks, the knot in Sunoo's chest finally let go.

Sunoo changed his clothes three times before he left the apartment.

First, he put on the grey hoodie – the one with PARK printed in small letters above the hem – took one look at himself in the mirror and pulled it straight back off again, because it was too much, and too obvious, and he wasn't ready for that level of commitment. Second, he tried a plain white t-shirt and a denim jacket, and looked so much like someone trying very hard not to be noticed that Jungwon, who was sitting on his bed eating chips and supervising, threw a pillow at him and said, "Absolutely not."

The third time, he put on a soft navy sweater his mother had knitted him two winters ago, with slightly uneven sleeves and a small hole near the left cuff that he kept meaning to fix. It was blue. And Sunghoon liked this one, so.

"You look cute in it."

"You didn't even look."

"I'm looking now. It's cute." Jungwon got up and brushed the chip crumbs off his jeans. He was wearing a blue university sweatshirt, and hanging from the keys clipped to his belt loop, slightly crooked, was the frog – right back where it had always been.

Sunoo picked up his bag. His own frog swung from the strap, the chipped gold crown catching the light from the window.

"Are you scared?"

He thought about it honestly. His hands were cold and his stomach felt as if he'd swallowed something alive. And every few minutes, some small, familiar voice at the back of his head kept whispering you could still sit in the top corner, nobody would ever know.

"Yeah," he admitted, eyes dropping to his hands. "I'm really scared."

Jungwon put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, once.

"It's going to be fine."

Sunoo crossed his fingers.

The gym was so packed by the time they got there that they had to squeeze their way through the crowd sideways. Sunoo saw plenty of familiar faces, but a lot of new ones too – students, obviously, but parents and grandparents as well as little kids, a whole sea of people, and the game hadn't even started yet.

He'd been to every home game this season, but always alone, always up in the top corner by the exit, where the noise reached him muffled and softened by the distance. Down here, it was a wall. It hit him the second they walked through the doors – a solid roar of voices and stomping feet and a drumline somewhere in the student section pounding out a rhythm so heavy he could feel it in his ribs – and everywhere he looked there was blue. Blue shirts and blue face paint and blue foam fingers and a giant blue banner stretched across the upper balcony that said LET'S BRING IT HOME!

Jake found them near the entrance to the lower stands and nearly knocked Sunoo over with the force of his hug.

He pulled back to hold Sunoo at arm's length. "You look so nice. Is that hand knitted? Jungwon, you came too! Oh my god, you're both wearing frogs. Is that a trend now? Should I get a frog?"

"Yes," Jungwon told him.

"No," Sunoo said at the exact same time.

Tucked under Jake's arm was a piece of blue poster board, and when he caught Sunoo looking at it, he flipped it around proudly. In big white letters, carefully outlined in glitter, it said GO JEON UNI 💙 – and underneath, in much smaller letters squeezed into the corner, #1 TASK FORCE.

"I kept it small," Jake told him. "Like you asked."

Sunoo thought about the pink glitter still stuck in the corner of Sunghoon's entryway and had to bite the inside of his cheek very, very hard.

Their seats were in the front row, directly behind the home bench – so close to the court that Sunoo could have reached out and touched the back of the nearest chair. He sat down between Jake and Jungwon with his bag in his lap, knees pressed together, hands clenched tight around the strap. The polished wood gleamed under the lights, the painted lines crisp and bright, and it hit him all at once that this was it. This was where Sunghoon would be able to see him.

He took a deep breath in, and tried very hard to calm his nerves.

Then the doors at the far end of the gym burst open, the team ran out, and the noise doubled. Sunoo hadn't even known that was possible. The whole building seemed to lift off its foundations, the drumline went wild, and the student section was screaming names he could barely make out – HEESEUNG, JAY, RIKI – and above all of them, louder than anything, SUNGHOON, SUNGHOON, SUNGHOON.

Sunghoon came out fourth. White home jersey, blue number twelve, warm-up jacket, earbuds in, his face set in that blank, focused expression Sunoo had seen in a hundred blurry photos on the thread. He jogged to the rack of balls under the basket, picked one up and turned toward the bench, and his eyes swept across the front row – trying very hard to look nonchalant, and very clearly looking for him.

The moment their eyes locked, Sunghoon's whole body went still, the ball held loosely against his hip, his lips parting slightly.

Sunoo lifted one hand off his bag strap and gave him a very small wave.

The last time Sunoo had sat where Sunghoon could see him, he'd missed a free throw by a metre. This time, he didn't miss anything. He just stood there with the ball against his hip and smiled – the real one, wide and beaming and completely unguarded, in front of two thousand people – and then he turned around and sank a shot from the corner without even looking.

"Did you see that?" Jake grabbed Sunoo's arm. "Did you see him smile? He never smiles in warm-ups. Oh my god. The secret boyfriend must be here. He must be somewhere in the stands."

"Must be," Jungwon agreed.

Yongwan was good.

Even Sunoo could tell within the first five minutes, and it wasn't only because of the flashcards. Their players were fast and tall and relentless, moving the ball around the court in sharp, precise passes, and by the end of the first quarter, Jeon was down by seven and the student section had gone noticeably quieter. By halftime, they were down by twelve.

He spent the entire first half leaning forward in his seat with his heart in his throat, and he discovered something he hadn't expected at all – he actually understood what was happening. Not everything, obviously, but enough. When the referee blew the whistle and made a strange rolling motion with his hands, Sunoo shouted "travelling!" at the exact same moment as half the gym, and Jake turned to stare at him in open astonishment.

"How do you know what travelling is?"

"Who doesn't?" Sunoo didn't even look away from the court.

Jungwon just shook his head, entirely over him.

At halftime the team came off the court and straight past the front row toward the locker room, heads down, faces tense, and Sunghoon was the last one. He slowed down as he passed the bench – didn't look directly at Sunoo, only glanced at him sideways for a second, jaw tight, hair soaked through, something tired in his eyes – and Sunoo leaned forward and spoke, quietly enough that only he could hear it.

"You've got this."

Sunghoon's steps faltered, just slightly, and Sunoo caught the hint of a smile on his lips before he disappeared through the tunnel.

Jake, who had been busy trying to take a selfie with his sign, noticed none of this.

Something was different in the second half.

Sunoo couldn't have said exactly what. Maybe it was something their coach had said in the locker room, or maybe it was something else entirely – but when the team came back out, they played as if they'd forgotten how to be tired. Heeseung stole the ball in the first thirty seconds and sent it long to Sunghoon, who went up alone for a dunk so hard the backboard shook. Jay hit two threes in a row. Their section came back to life all at once, the drumline pounding and the whole building stamping its feet until the bleachers trembled, and slowly, painfully, point by point, they started to close the gap.

Down by nine. Down by six. Down by four.

With two minutes left, it was tied, and the noise was so loud Sunoo couldn't hear himself breathe.

With fifty seconds left, Yongwan scored on a fast break, the away section erupted, and they were down by two.

With twenty-eight seconds left, Jay drew a foul and made one of his two free throws. Down by one.

With nineteen seconds left, Yongwan missed a shot, Heeseung came down with the rebound, and the entire gym rose to its feet at once.

Sunoo was standing too, now – one hand gripping Jake's arm and the other gripping Jungwon's, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his fingertips – and on the court, Heeseung was dribbling up past half court with eleven seconds left, then ten, searching for an open man.

Yongwan had two players on Sunghoon. They'd had two players on him the entire game.

Eight seconds.

Heeseung drove toward the basket, and both of Sunghoon's defenders shifted half a step to block him and in that half step, Sunghoon slipped out to the corner behind the three-point line. Directly in front of the bench. Directly in front of the front row.

Six seconds. Heeseung spun, and passed.

It was the most perfect pass Sunoo had ever seen, quick and clean and landing exactly in Sunghoon's hands at chest height, and Sunghoon caught it and rose up in one smooth motion with a defender flying at him – and for a fraction of a second, at the very top of his jump, Sunoo could have sworn his eyes flicked to the front row.

Then he let go.

The ball arced high and slow over the defender's outstretched hand, and the entire building held its breath, two thousand people gone completely silent at once – and the buzzer went off while the ball was still in the air.

It dropped through the net without even touching the rim.

For one second after the ball dropped, nothing happened at all. Then the whole gym went up at once – the student section on its feet and screaming, the drumline crashing, the bleachers shaking under two thousand pairs of stamping feet. The students were pouring over the barriers onto the court in one big blue wave, and Jake was screaming and jumping and hitting Sunoo on the shoulder with his sign, and Jungwon was laughing, actually laughing with his whole face, and out on the court the team was piling on top of each other near centre court in a heap of white jerseys.

Except for one.

Sunghoon had come down from his shot and stayed right there, standing alone in the corner in front of the bench, breathing hard, arms at his sides. The team was calling for him. The crowd was calling for him. Someone was trying to hand him a towel.

He wasn't looking at any of them. He was looking at the front row.

Sunoo let go of Jake's arm.

He didn't think about it. He didn't think about two thousand phones, or what anyone would say. He didn't think at all. He just stepped over the low barrier in front of the bench and onto the court and Sunghoon was already moving, closing the last few metres between them, and then Sunoo was being lifted clean off the ground, his feet leaving the floor as Sunghoon wrapped both arms around him and held on so tightly he could barely breathe, spinning him once and then again, and Sunoo buried his face in his sweaty neck and laughed.

"You made it," he yelled into Sunghoon's shoulder, over the noise. "I'm so proud of you!"

"You were right there." Sunghoon was breathless. "I could see you the whole time."

He set Sunoo down, but he didn't let him go. He brought both hands up to Sunoo's face instead, cupping his jaw, thumbs brushing over his cheeks. Sunghoon looked at him for one long second, a question in his eyes even now. Even here, in the middle of the court, with everyone watching. Are you sure?

Sunoo answered it by kissing him first.

He had to go up on his toes to do it, fingers fisting in the front of Sunghoon's jersey to pull him down, and it wasn't graceful – their noses bumped, and Sunghoon made a small, surprised sound against his mouth, as if he hadn't actually believed Sunoo would do it until it was already happening. Then his hands tightened on Sunoo's face, and he kissed him back.

It wasn't like any of the other times. It wasn't like the quick ones by the front door, or the lazy ones on the couch with a documentary playing, or the careful, quiet ones in the dark where nobody could see. Sunghoon kissed him as if he'd been waiting eight months to do it somewhere with the lights on – slow at first, almost disbelieving, and then deeper, one hand sliding back into Sunoo's hair to tilt his head, the other dropping to the small of his back to pull him in until there was no space left between them at all. Sunghoon tasted like salt and sports drink and something that was just him. His jersey was soaked through and he was still breathing hard from the game, chest heaving against Sunoo's, and Sunoo could feel his heart pounding – or maybe that was his own. He honestly couldn't tell anymore.

Around them, the gym had gone quiet.

Not completely, and not everywhere – but in the section nearest the bench, people had stopped celebrating to turn and look, and from there it spread outward across the court in a slow wave, phones swinging around one by one, someone near the front letting out a gasp loud enough to cut through everything else. For almost five full seconds, two thousand people just stared.

The noise came back twice as loud as before.

Sunoo didn't hear any of it. He had his fingers curled in the front of Sunghoon's jersey and Sunghoon's hand at the back of his head, and Sunghoon was smiling into the kiss now, so wide it was barely a kiss anymore, and for the first time in eight months, Sunoo wasn't thinking about who was watching.

When they finally pulled apart, Sunghoon was smiling so hard his eyes had disappeared completely. He pressed his forehead to Sunoo's and said, just loud enough for him to hear, "Thank you."

Sunoo didn't trust himself to say anything back. So he just kissed him again instead – softer this time, quicker, a little clumsy because neither of them could stop smiling.

And then, somewhere behind them, near the front row, there was a loud clatter.

They broke apart and turned. Jake was standing at the barrier with his mouth hanging open, his sign fallen out of his hands and lying face up on the floor, #1 TASK FORCE glittering up at the ceiling. Next to him, Jungwon was holding his phone up perfectly steady, filming the whole thing with an expression of deep, peaceful satisfaction.

"Finally," Jungwon said.

"SUNOO?!" Jake shrieked, looking utterly betrayed.

Near centre court, the pile of players had come apart. Jay was standing frozen with his arms still raised halfway above his head, staring at them across the floor, his face going through something complicated and painful.

"WHAT? SUNOO?"

A few metres away, Heeseung had stopped with the game ball still tucked under his arm. He didn't look shocked at all.

"YOU WERE IN THE TASK FORCE!" Jake had climbed over the barrier by now and was pointing at Sunoo with one accusing, trembling finger. "YOU WERE IN THE TASK FORCE! YOU SENT JAY AFTER A PHYSICS PROFESSOR!"

"I did say I'd help."

"I CHASED A PROFESSOR," Jay bellowed, arriving at a jog, his face still stuck halfway between horror and joy. "Across the quad, in my goddamn shorts!"

"That's on you," Sunghoon shot back. "You shouldn't chase random people."

Jake whirled around and grabbed Heeseung's arm. "Did you know? Tell me the truth. Did you know?"

Heeseung only shrugged. "I knew it wasn't Jungwon."

"That's not the same thing!"

"I clocked it a while back, but it wasn't my secret to share. And I didn't want to ruin your fun. Sorry, babe."

Jake smacked him on the shoulder and called him a traitor, but Heeseung just pinched his cheek in return. He held the game ball out to Sunghoon – who took it, turned, and pressed it into Sunoo's arms – and Sunoo stood there in the middle of the court holding the ball from the winning shot, while confetti started raining down from somewhere up in the rafters, blue and silver, catching in his hair and in Sunghoon's hair and all over Jake's fallen sign.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Put it on your windowsill. Next to the tulips."

Sunoo looked at him, and Sunghoon looked back, confetti stuck in his eyelashes and his whole heart right there on his face. All around them, people were holding their phones up in the air – and Sunoo realised he didn't care at all.