The hallway between the classrooms always smelled faintly of dust, sun-warmed floorboards, and teenage exhaustion. Students drifted in clusters, some loud, some quiet, some half-asleep. Ha Yoon was pulling her notebook from her locker when she noticed a figure heading straight toward her.
Jung Hae-min.
The school's golden boy.
Soccer captain.
Shameless heartbreaker with a smile that worked harder than most part-time jobs.
He lifted a hand in a small wave.
"Hey."
His voice carried that effortless confidence that made half the girls stumble over their own bags. But with her, he sounded softer. Almost unsure.
"Hey," she replied, smiling without thinking.
He shifted his weight, scratched the back of his neck, and avoided her eyes in a way that felt strangely boyish.
"Uh… I wanted to invite you to our match today," he said. "It's the inter-school game. Big deal and all that. I… hope you can come."
His fingers drifted to his neck again, his nervous tic.
She nodded immediately.
"Sure. No problem. I'll come. I'll drag my bestie Eunji with me."
Relief washed over his face like someone had finally handed him oxygen.
"Really? Okay. Great. See you there."
He left with a grin he tried and failed to hide.
The next afternoon, the school field pulsed with noise. Cheerleaders shook their pompoms, parents fanned themselves with program sheets, and students shouted chants they barely remembered the words to. The sun was fierce, bouncing off the aluminum benches, but the energy in the air made it bearable.
"Where is he?" Eunji asked, scanning the field like a hawk hungry for gossip.
"He's literally the one wearing number seven," Ha Yoon muttered.
"Oh," Eunji said, eyes widening. "He's cuter up close."
"You're impossible."
The whistle blew, and the match unfolded in a frenzy of kicks, passes, shouts, and skidding cleats. Hae-min moved across the field like the grass belonged to him fast, precise, almost too confident for his own good. The crowd roared every time he got close to the goalpost.
When his team scored the winning point, the screaming was loud enough to shake dust from the stadium lights.
After the handshake lines and chaotic congratulations, girls swarmed around him, shoving water bottles into his hands, fighting for his attention. He ignored every one of them.
Instead, he walked straight to Ha Yoon.
"Ha Yoon," he said, slightly breathless, sweat clinging to the edges of his hairline. "Can I get some water?"
She blinked.
"You… want from me? But those girls literally—"
"Yours," he confirmed.
"Oh. Okay."
She opened the bottle and passed it to him, still confused.
He drank, wiped the corner of his mouth, then did something no one expected.
He removed the gold medal hanging around his neck and gently placed it over hers.
"It looks good on you."
Her cheeks warmed instantly.
"It looked good on you too," she muttered, eyes dropping.
"Awwww," Eunji cooed loudly behind her.
"Shut up," Ha Yoon hissed, elbowing her.
They were too distracted to notice the figure standing far from the crowd, half-hidden behind the bleachers. Min Seon-woo watched them silently, his expression unreadable, the wind tugging at his hoodie sleeves. He said nothing. He always said nothing.
But something in his shoulders tightened.
That night, Hae-min walked home with the medal gone and his heart lighter. His family lived in a neighborhood far quieter than Yeonhwa Street, cleaner sidewalks, newer buildings, fewer stray cats.
As soon as he stepped inside, his stepmother looked up from the living room couch.
"Well," she said with a curl of her lip, "finally you did something decent."
He didn't reply.
He never replied to her barbed comments; silence hurt less than engagement.
His eyes caught a picture frame lying facedown on the floor. He picked it up and wiped the dust off the glass. The photo showed him at age ten, grinning beside his biological mother, both holding ice cream cones.
His stepmother's eyes flicked to the frame.
She said nothing.
She didn't need to.
"Come eat," his father called from the dining table, voice flat as usual.
Hae-min joined them. The table was set neatly, dishes placed with care, but the atmosphere was cold enough to stiffen rice.
"We have a dinner tomorrow," his father said without looking at him. "A business acquaintance. You're coming with me."
There was no question in his tone.
Only expectation.
"Yes," Hae-min murmured, eyes fixed on his bowl.
He finished eating quickly, even though he barely swallowed more than two bites.
"I'll go to bed," he said. "I'm full."
"Good night," his father said.
His stepmother only rolled her eyes.
In his room, he sat on the floor and held the picture of him and his mother. The smile in the photo felt like a memory from someone else's life, someone softer, freer, untouched by pressure.
He lowered his head, letting the quiet wrap around him like a blanket he didn't choose.
Across the city, Yeonhwa Street buzzed with its usual evening chaos.
Ha Yoon was working her shift at Mr. Wang's store again, bouncing between restocking shelves and scribbling something in the small notebook she carried around. She pretended she wasn't thinking about the medal around her neck. She pretended she wasn't replaying the moment over and over.
Each time she opened the door for a customer, the scent of rain-wet pavement drifted inside. She breathed it in, imagining what Seon-woo thought when he saw the medal on her. The thought made something twist in her chest.
Yet she didn't know what to call it.
At the same moment, in a small, cramped one-room apartment on the other side of town, Hae-won. her classmate sat hunched over his CSAT prep books.
His house was a battlefield of noise.
His father and drunk friends sat in the living room, shouting over a gambling match, bottles clinking against the floor.
The walls in their apartment were thin.
Too thin.
Hae-won rubbed his temples, trying to drown the noise with equations, but the shouting seeped through every page.
Finally, he exhaled deeply, grabbed his backpack, and stood.
Studying here was hopeless.
He climbed the narrow stairs to the rooftop. The air was cooler there, the sky open, the stars scattered like shy witnesses.
He settled with his textbooks under the flickering rooftop light.
The city hummed below him.
But up here, he could finally breathe.
He looked at the night sky and whispered to no one
"One more year. Just one more year. I can get out of here."
Down below, the lives of these three teens, Ha Yoon, Seon-woo, and Hae-min, moved quietly, unaware that their paths were beginning to tangle in ways none of them could yet see.