The days after what happened with Haneul was... awkward. Painfully, stupidly awkward.
I didn't talk to Haneul, not really. Not unless I absolutely had to; and even then, I kept it clipped, polite, like I didn't remember the way his face had changed when I snapped at him over something completely insignificant.
The truth? I was embarrassed. No, I was mortified.
Not in a catastrophic, world-ending sort of way. Just quietly, personally humiliating. The kind of awkward that follows you around like a bad smell. Every time I so much as breathed near Haneul, I felt it; the shame, the tension, the mortifying awareness that I'd snapped at the one person who never raised his voice, never demanded anything, and definitely hadn't deserved what I gave him.
He hadn't brought it up once, which somehow made it worse. So I did what any emotionally stunted idiot would do: I avoided him like the plague, like my immortal soul depended on it. Which was ironic, considering the state of said soul.
If he was in the room, I suddenly remembered an errand. If he looked like he might say something, I'd talk to literally anyone else. I knew it made things worse, but I couldn't seem to stop.
And then, of course, I had to go and humiliate myself even more.
We were gathered in the lounge one afternoon, reviewing some sketches I'd done; new outfit concepts for each of them, because I was bored and wanted to play fashion designer with the three models I had dragged back from the afterlife. Honestly, I just wanted to get my mind off the disaster that was my personality lately. Sejun had sprawled out on the couch like it was a modeling gig, Daeho leaned against the wall with a bored expression, and Seungyong sat like a statue, as always. Haneul, of course, had taken the far end of the room.
Not that I had noticed or had kept track. Obviously.
I flicked through the sketches on my tablet, pointing things out like a professional who definitely hadn't been spiraling emotionally for three days.
"Sejun, you'd fit modern casual more than athleisure" I said, tapping the screen. "Dark cargo pants, layers. Nothing too flashy."
Then I turned to the next figure. "And Haneul, you'll wear the– wait. No. Not you." My eyes went wide. My brain fumbled. What the hell did I just say?
Panic bloomed in my chest. Why had I said his name? He wasn't even next in the lineup. I waved a finger vaguely in another direction, pretending like this was just a minor slip-up and not a full meltdown.
I tried to correct myself. "Uhhh…"
"Haneul, you'll– wait no, wrong name, sorry– you, uh..."
Oh my god. I was still saying his name. Why was his name in my mouth like a reflex? Like some traitorous tic?
From the corner of my eye, I saw him looking at me— eyebrow raised, kind of bewildered, like a rabbit caught in a thunderstorm.
I tried to salvage it. "Seungyong. I meant Seungyong. Obviously. You'll look good in…" I trailed off. Completely blank. "...in ...something."
Just white noise where my brain used to be.
"Damn it. Damn it! Ugh." I groaned, slapping the tablet shut and turning on my heel towards the door. "I need a drink. I'll be back tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Whenever."
And with that, I walked out. Fast. I didn't look back. I couldn't. And I didn't dare look back to see if Haneul was still watching me. Because knowing him, he probably was. And if I saw the look on his face, I wasn't sure I could handle it. Not when the sound of his name alone sent my brain into full system failure.
Behind me, I could hear the boys murmuring something, low and curious.
I made it to my room without tripping over my own feet, which frankly felt like a miracle considering how fast I was walking. My heart was still racing like I'd just fled a crime scene. In a way, maybe I had.
"I need to disappear," I muttered to myself, yanking out a jacket that made me look marginally cooler than I felt. Something dark, dramatic, maybe a little intimidating. "And I need a drink that tastes like regret and bad decisions."
I was halfway into my makeup when I heard the knock. I didn't even have to look. "If it's Seungyong, I'm not making a mess. If it's Daeho, I'm unarmed. If it's Haneul–"
"It's Sejun," came the reply. "And if it was Haneul, you'd have leapt out the window by now."
"..."
"..."
"Go away," I groaned.
Silence.
Then: click.
Of course the door opened anyway, because apparently privacy meant nothing in this house.
"Go more away," I groaned, not even looking up. "This is my shame cave now. I live here. Tell the others I've retired. And I'm not accepting visitors unless they bring tequila or amnesia."
"You'd settle for a Sejun and a sarcastic remark, right?"
I looked up. He was leaning against the doorframe like it was a photoshoot and he was the reluctant heir to a wine empire. Hair slightly messy in that infuriatingly perfect way. Unbothered as usual.
"Did you seriously follow me just to watch me unravel in real time?" I grumbled, brushing my hair back to tie it up.
"Actually, I followed you to make sure you didn't go full drama queen and vanish for three days with nothing but eyeliner and a grudge."
"Too late," I said. "I'm halfway there already."
Sejun folded his arms, leaned against the wall like this was comedy hour, and gave me a once-over. "You good?"
I snorted. "Do I look good?"
"Honestly, yeah. Absolutely fine. But that's besides the point right now."
"Correct. And I'm drinking something fluorescent and toxic as soon as I get there."
"No," he said, stepping closer. "Not until you stop acting like we didn't all just witness you glitch like a corrupt AI trying to say Haneul's name."
I groaned and flopped onto the edge of the bed. "I knew it was bad, but hearing it out loud somehow makes it worse. I groaned and covered my face again. "God, I sounded like a broken speaker. And he looked so—ugh, like a kicked puppy."
"Yeah," Sejun said with an exaggerated wince. "Poor guy looked like he'd been ghosted in real life."
I peeked at him through my fingers. "Don't joke about it."
"I'm not," he said, but he smiled. "Okay, maybe a little. You said his name. Three times. Then forgot Seungyong's face like he was a blurry NPC. I'm just saying," he went on, now perched on the windowsill like this was a laid-back therapy session, "you could just... talk to him."
I let out a bitter laugh. "Oh, sure. After I spent an entire week pretending he didn't exist and then had a verbal stroke in front of everyone? Yeah, let me just stroll back in there and go, 'Hey Haneul, sorry I've been a flaming trash fire of a person. Want to do a vibe check and start over?'"
Sejun shrugged. "Honestly? He'd probably say yes. He looks confused, not hurt," Sejun said. "Which means it still matters to him. Which means there's time to fix it. If you stop running."
"I'm not great at fixing things," I mumbled.
"No one is. But you're better at avoiding them, so I figured I'd interrupt before you perfected it."
"Spoken like a true master of writing." I rolled my eyes but smiled, softer this time. "Thanks, for checking on me." I tilted my head. "Hey. Come with me."
Sejun raised a brow. "To drink?"
"No," I said, deadpan. "To the nearest confessional booth. Yes, to drink. I need a buffer. Someone to make sure I don't start trauma-dumping to the bartender, or get a spontaneous tattoo."
He laughed softly. "Look, you're clearly spiraling, and I'm your favorite to spiral in front of, so–"
"You heard me. Come out with me. Get a drink. Play distraction duty so I don't spiral into texting Haneul some 2 a.m. apology about misnaming him like a million times." I slid past him toward the mirror, checking if I looked vaguely like someone who didn't just make a complete fool of herself in front of her semi-damned supernatural roommates.
He looked at me for a beat longer—his usual teasing faded into something steadier, calmer. "You really don't want to be alone right now, huh?"
I paused.
"No," I admitted. "Not really."
Something in his face softened. He walked over to my closet, grabbed one of his jackets he left here like he secretly lived in two rooms, and tossed it on.
"Alright," he said. "Let's go make bad decisions you'll remember fondly in the morning."
I smiled, finally. "You're a terrible influence."
"And you're buying the first round."
"Deal."
— — — — —
I told myself I would be careful that night. I told myself I could be a good student of distraction: small indulgences, measured sips, peripheral laughter like a bandage over the bruise that Haneul had become. I told myself things in the bathroom mirror—breaths, pep-talks, a smudge of lipstick to make my face feel like mine again—but the truth pulsed under my ribs even before Sejun's car rolled up. The truth was that I had been rehearsing avoidance so long it had grown calluses. The truth was that I wanted someone to hurtle me into the chaos so hard I couldn't pick the pieces apart anymore.
Sejun had smiled when I told him that. It wasn't a soft smile. It was one of those quiet, precise smiles he saved for the rare times he was deciding something instead of folding into other people's plans. "I'll take care of it," he said, and his voice had the small, dangerous promise of someone who meant to act on a dare.
The club looked like an afterimage the city had left for itself: neon signs smudged into the rain-dark glass, a graffiti of lights that made my shoes reflect colors I had never thought to notice. Music spilled from behind the entrance in waves that pushed my hair back and vibrated my teeth. It was the kind of sound that does not ask for attention—it commandeers it. People leaned like reeds into the rhythm, bodies close enough that strangers' breath ghosted my cheek. The air tasted of cologne and something sweet and sour I couldn't name at first, and then I realized it was the smell of possibility and surrender and cheap perfume.
The bass hit me first. It was a low, relentless thrum that seemed to climb into my ribs and settle there, vibrating through my chest as though my own heartbeat had synced to it. I stopped short at the entrance, blinking at the flood of neon light that spilled out from the club's open doors, painting the pavement in pinks and electric blues.
"This?" I turned toward Sejun, arching a brow. He stood steady, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable but for the faintest curl at his lips. "I didn't think you were the type."
"I'm not." He shrugged, but there was something deliberate in the way his eyes held mine. "But tonight isn't about me."
The words skated down my spine, hotter than the air around us. I swallowed, pulse quickening—not from the music, not from the press of the club, but from him. He pulled me further in, toward the bar that stretched along one wall, its counter gleaming under strips of LED light.
Then he leaned in, elbows on the bar.
"So," he said. "We pretending nothing happened, or…?"
I stared at him, a slight smirk on my lips. "Can we pretend I'm someone else for a night?"
He shrugged. "Sure. What's your fake name?"
"Hmmm… Amelia."
"You don't look like an Amelia."
"I'm in witness protection. Had to change to it." I grinned, playing into character and leaning forward on my elbows with a hushed tone, as if I was spilling some confidential secret.
He grinned. "What'd you do?"
"Crime of fashion. Socks with open toed heels, and they were mismatched too." I whispered, smirking as he grinned.
He actually laughed; loud, warm. The kind of laugh that made you forget for a second that the world had teeth. He had this annoying way of anchoring you to the present without making it feel like a chore. Maybe that's why I'd invited him out instead of just walking off into the night alone like I usually did.
Sejun's drink arrived first, a soda with a lime twist. He sipped like it was a prop, like he knew it would be inconvenient to get drunk and also unnecessary. I watched the light bounce off the glass like watching someone trying to catch a rumor of himself. Then my drink came—sweet, dangerous, pink, an accusation in a coup of color. I raised it to my lips and felt the burn of a tiny rebellion. It tasted exactly like the bar that swallowed Haneul's promises: sharp at first, then fragrant, then sweet to the point of making the world less precise. It numbed the edges of memory in a way that was both salvation and theft.
Sejun didn't blink. "Wow. We're skipping foreplay tonight."
"Foreplay implies something's going to happen after."
"Skipping formalities, then," he corrected himself, sipping his soda. "Just letting you know I have a soft limit at tequila karaoke."
"Seriously," I said, swirling the rest of my drink, "thanks for coming with me. I didn't... I didn't want to be alone tonight."
"You're too tense," Sejun chuckled into my ear. The music made speaking a project; he had to lean close so his words could ride the vibration between us. His breath was warmer than the air, and it scattered the cool that clung to me.
"I'm tense because I let you talk me into this," I replied, but my voice was lighter than my complaint. I told myself I was teasing, but his face didn't change. He took my wrist in a half-turn, then released it, as if he'd checked the pulse and found his approval there.
He had a way of being small and intentional in public—thumbs tucked into the classic pockets of nonchalance while his eyes did the less casual thing of reading me. That night, his eyes catalogued me differently. He looked for the lowered slant of my mouth, the way my fingers curled around the glass, the small, infuriating tremor at the base of my throat. There was something fierce under that observation, a deliberate focus I hadn't felt from him before. He was not merely noticing—I realized with a stomach-fall of a revelation—he was preparing to erase something like someone sweeping chalk off a board.
"Forgetting is a practice," he said softly. "You have to practice not thinking of something."
That silenced me more than the music ever could. I stared down at my drink, the ice cubes clinking as I swirled it once. He didn't have to say who or what he wanted me to forget. When I glanced up, he was watching me with that sharp, steady gaze of his, like he was daring me to deny it, and I couldn't. Not with Haneul's shadow already pressing at the edges of my thoughts, and not with the heat of Sejun's palm still ghosting at my back from earlier.
So I tipped my glass toward him in a mock toast and downed another sip. "Then you'd better try harder."
The corner of his mouth curved again, but this time it wasn't sly. It was intent.
He finished his soda in two easy swallows, then slid his hand over mine on the counter. My skin prickled at the contact, every nerve pulling taut. He took my hand and led me to the dance floor the way someone might lead a drowning person to the shore—firm, unhesitating, with a steadiness that promised to hold me upright even if I could not. Bodies swelled and fell around us like tides, a single organism moving to the command of the DJ. I felt the initial instinct to shrink, to make myself as small as possible and count beats to stay sane. But Sejun's presence was a countercurrent; it pulled me forward.
The floor vibrated beneath my feet even before I fully stepped onto it, a low thrum that seemed to synchronize with the rapid beat of my own heart. Sejun's hand was still in mine, anchoring me even as the lights stuttered and danced across the sea of moving bodies. The moment I felt his grip, I realized he wasn't just guiding me—he was daring me to surrender, daring me to let go of everything I'd been carrying, daring me to forget Haneul, even if just for tonight.
"I don't—" I began, my voice swallowed immediately by the surge of the crowd and the pounding music.
"I know," he interrupted, his tone low, intimate, brushing against my ear as he leaned closer. "You're thinking about him. But you're not allowed to, not tonight. Not with me here."
I glanced down at the dance floor, the crowd a writhing mass of limbs, faces, lights. People were laughing, shouting, moving like the beat itself had possessed them. My instinct was to retreat, to hide at the edges, to hold onto the familiar walls of caution and control. But Sejun's hand tightened around mine, firm and grounding.
I shook my head, half-laughing, half-protesting. "I—I don't dance," I said, my words swallowed by the bass.
"You do now," he replied, sliding his hand around my back, pressing me a little closer. "Just follow me."
The crowd was thicker now, the night deepening as if to emphasize the temporary nature of anything that happened inside it. Sejun looped his arm through mine, a small, private claim that felt both protective and intimate. We danced, and I tried to stay in the moment with the music. When my phone vibrated once in my pocket I didn't pull it out; whatever message it contained could wait. Ignoring it felt like a rebellion and, oddly, a relief.
I leaned in close then and whispered something ridiculous about the DJ's haircut, the words absurd enough to dislodge any shaken feelings for a while. Sejun seemed amused, his lips quirking into a smirk that later evolved from a snicker to a laugh. There were moments—fleeting, merciless—where Haneul's laugh jolted into my head uninvited; the exact timbre of him, the way he laughed at his own jokes to fill an awkward pause.
There were moments when the crowd gave me reprieve. We'd be pushed together in a slow carousel of bodies and some patch of light would catch on his jaw or on the taut line of his throat, and for a second I'd think of Haneul's softer angles—how his laugh lines bowed like parentheses when he smiled, how he kept his hair too long because he said he liked the way it flopped into his eyes. The comparisons were inevitable—two men circling the same set of feelings, different in construction but all of them capable of making me lose track of the present. Sometimes comparing meant I could rationalize my guilt: Haneul had been comfortable; Sejun was deliberate. Haneul had offered me quiet; Sejun offered warmth.
Memories of Haneul tried to creep in like uninvited guests. A text I'd composed and never sent flashed across my mind—three sentences of accusation and apology that I'd folded and hidden because the sending felt like a surrender. The image of a coffee stain on his shirt from months ago bobbed up and then subsided—how ridiculous, how intimate, how normal. Each time those intrusions arrived, Sejun's proximity and the club's lawless noise conspired to smother them. Sometimes he would catch my eyes and, with a tilt of his chin, redirect my focus back to the here and now. Other times he would brush my hair from my face, thumb the corner of my lip, and say a word that had nothing to do with Haneul—some sarcastic joke, an offhand observation about the DJ. The banality of his remarks was their power. It was as though he was replacing my memory with new, louder impressions until the old ones had no space to breathe.
Being with him felt like a performance that required truth: I had to believe, at least for those moments, that Haneul's absence was a hollow echo. But truth kept creeping in at odd angles—the smell of Haneul's cologne on a passing coat, the way a certain song's chorus made my chest tighten because of a memory I hadn't expected. Each time, Sejun nudged me away with something more practical: a ridiculous dare whispered into my ear, the press of his hand at the small of my back, the sudden demand that I order a ridiculous drink and chug it, the way he would laugh at my attempts to visibly let go until I laughed genuinely and without thinking.
"Focus on me," he murmured, but it wasn't a demand. It was a request with an undertone: I want in your head. It was a small, selfish thing and a brash, honorable one. I realized in that instant he didn't just want to make my night; he wanted to be the thing inside my night. The truth was electric and incandescent; it made me both nauseous and giddy.
"You're doing this on purpose," I said quietly, unable to mask the accusation. It wasn't entirely an accusation at him; it was also a confession to myself.
He blinked slowly, then smirked in a way that made my heart falter because it was so fond. "Of course I am. This is my performance of distraction." He tapped the side of his cheek with a finger, theatrically conspiratorial. "Applause optional."
A laugh bubbled out of me, surprising and thin. "Performance of distraction," I echoed. "I should feel insulted."
"No," he said gently. "You should let me do it."
It wasn't the seduction I'd expected. It was pragmatic, like an agreement I could sign and then keep even when the next morning came. The proposition was dangerous because it offered control—a contract of distraction with clear terms. I thought of Haneul and of the sober mornings I'd had to shoulder the weight alone. Tonight, the agreement seemed generous: one night where someone else took over the task of being my amusement, my danger, my keeper.
At one point, when the beat dropped and the lights split the club into shards, I allowed myself to be reckless. I let Sejun pull me into the middle of a crowd where everyone was moving with the same primal intention. My body moved not just with him but because of him: his shoulder guiding, his hand at my waist keeping rhythm like a metronome. There was an abandon to it that felt like a theft—stealing a night from the exact person I shouldn't be stealing it from. I laughed until it was bordering on a sob, the sharpness of it hidden in the music. The thought that prickled then was not for show: if Haneul were here, he would be measuring every gesture. He would be noting my looseness and sewing it into a story that would end badly. Sejun felt different. He wasn't measuring; he was creating.
At some point the crowd thinned around us as people spun off to bathrooms or to more private corners. "Do you need water?" Sejun asked suddenly, as if he'd read the way my tongue darted to the roof of my mouth.
"Yes," I gasped, surprised by my own thirst.
He took my hand and led me through a gap in the crowd that opened like moving curtains. We stumbled into a little pocket near the back where the noise was still a wall but the air tasted less metallic. A server with a tray of plastic cups seemed to materialize just then; Sejun ordered two waters and then, without waiting for them, found a booth that cradled us from behind. The booth was dimmer, the kind of nest that felt private in a place designed to be the opposite. We sat close—too close for mere platonic comfort, close enough that the heat of one transmitted to the other like a current.
The upstairs was quieter; the bass was a memory and the air was cooler. It smelled less of perfume and more of metal and air-conditioning, the sudden absence of the dance floor's heat a slap. The room opened into a mezzanine that overlooked the club—a place for people to breathe without being fully cut off from the music. A handful of others milled about, faces shadowed, hands clasping plastic cups that fogged with condensation.
Sejun guided me to a ledge and we leaned into the rail as if we were spectators at our own night. From this vantage the crowd below looked like an anthill of neon limbs. I could watch the way bodies moved and feel removed, simultaneously participant and observer, which suited me because the world below demanded involvements I wasn't sure I wanted to sustain. Up here the city beyond the windows framed us: an ocean of sodium lights and dark buildings, the skyline more forgiving than the people downstairs.
I took a long drink of water, feeling the cold slide down my chest. The rhythm of my breathing slowed in the humidity of the booth, but the relief was complicated. Sitting there, cushioned and safe, I realized how braided my feelings had become: gratitude for the rescue, shame for needing it, a fierce, confusing warmth toward the man who had engineered my rescue in the first place. Sejun watched me watch the condensation form and run into little rivers along the plastic cup, and I could read him with frightening clarity. When he reached for my hand, he wrapped his fingers around mine in a way that felt like an anchor.
"You're quieter up here," he observed.
"People say that like it's a bad thing," I mumbled, because quiet felt like self-preservation. I swallowed. "You know why I'm quiet."
"No I don't, not really," he shrugged. "But I'm willing to learn."
I remembered Haneul and the way he always knew things without me needing to explain. I remembered the thought of him reading the room and stepping back when I looked like I might collapse. I noticed a faint trembling under my hands, the aftershock of adrenaline. I stared at Sejun's fingers on mine next, and my mind darted again to Haneul—an image of his fingertips drumming gently against a table— and I felt guilty for the way my body responded to Sejun's touch almost reflexively.
I stared into my glass like it held answers. "I think I messed things up with him."
"Haneul?" he asked, though he already knew. I nodded. He was quiet for a moment, then said, "He's not fragile, you know. He won't break from a little distance. Or even a little fire."
"Still," I muttered. "Doesn't mean I wanted to hurt him."
"Then maybe stop running."
I glanced up at him. "Is this tough love time?"
He smiled gently. "No. Just... honesty." He leaned back, quiet for a moment. Then: "You want to stay? Or walk until the city forgets our names?"
"Actually…" I sighed, "I don't want this night to end."
"Yeah?"
"You sure you don't want a real drink instead of your sad little soda?"
He smirked. "Trying to get me drunk now?"
"No," I said, softly. "Trying to get you to stay."
Something flickered across his face, but he didn't pull away, didn't dodge. He reached for the menu again. "One more drink. But if I end up singing harmony to your heartbreak, I'm billing you for emotional damages."
"You'll survive," I smirked, already flagging the bartender down.
He didn't answer. Just smiled.
And I knew, without him saying it, that he wasn't going anywhere.
Not tonight.
The second round arrived with the same tired clink of glass on wood. I pushed Sejun's drink toward him with a glance. He accepted it with a quiet nod but didn't touch it yet. We were both quieter now. Not in a bad way, just in that afterburn of shared silence that follows when you've both said a little more than you meant to.
"He made me feel safe," I said, out of the blue, as if all I needed was to let something off of my chest— and maybe I did need it. Saying it aloud made it more real than a quiet admission in my head. The way the word settled between us had the roughness of an apology I wasn't ready to offer and the truth of a thing I couldn't unwind.
"I know." He exhaled slowly. "And you can miss that and still come with me tonight."
"Is that your plan? To be the opposite of safe?" I asked, half-teasing, half-wounded. The question felt like a test I had no right to give him.
He shrugged, the motion small but deliberate. "I'm not trying to be dangerous. Tonight I'm trying to be…convincing." His thumb brushed the skin above my wrist. "And maybe selfish, too. I like seeing you like this."
Selfishness was a sharp-edged thing, and my mouth twitched at the admission. Part of me wanted to be angry that he admitted it so casually, and part of me wanted to fold into that selfishness like fabric. The pull between the two made my stomach churn. It was intoxicating to be desired like that, to be the object of someone's deliberate attention. It made me feel exposed and alive.
I leaned my elbow on the table, chin in hand. "Are you always this easy to convince, or am I just special?"
He tilted his head, the corners of his mouth twitching. "You're unusually persistent for someone who pretends not to care."
I raised an eyebrow. "I never said I didn't care."
"No," he said, "but you say a lot of things you don't mean." That landed with more weight than I expected. I didn't flinch, but I let my gaze fall to the table.
"I say things I wish I meant," I said softly. "There's a difference."
He didn't respond right away. Just sat back a little, studying me like I was an unsolvable equation he wasn't quite ready to give up on. "Wishful thinking's not a bad place to start," he said.
"Depends on what you're wishing for."
"Depends on what you're afraid of."
I looked away. My drink was almost gone and I hadn't even noticed. That felt like a metaphor for something, but I was too tired to chase it.
I looked at him. Really looked. There was no pity in his face. Just… presence. Steady, like gravity. It was maddening and comforting all at once. "Do you ever get tired of waiting for people to figure themselves out?" I asked.
"Sure," he said. "But then I remember most people are too scared to even try. But you try. Even though it's messy, even though it hurts."
The bartender had one of those faces that had seen too many people break up over too many well drinks. I liked her immediately. She poured with a kind of resigned mercy, and left us alone.
The bar fell into its slow rhythm; the clink of glasses, the low mumble of strangers, the song winding down like a sigh. The world spun gently around us, but we stayed still. Locked in something so quiet and so real I almost forgot we weren't alone.
He smiled then. A soft, heartbreaking thing. "You know," he said, "I used to write these little vignettes. About moments like this."
I raised a brow. "Like this? What is this, exactly?"
He didn't answer. Just smiled, like his gaze would say what he couldn't properly convey with words. "Maybe some things aren't meant to be said aloud."
"Maybe some things aren't meant to be named aloud". I thought about Haneul then, because of course the mind had to be perverse and pick at the scab even as the scab was healing. Maybe my relief was cosmetic, maybe it was honest. Maybe I had simply been papered over with good company. Maybe Sejun's touch had only postponed the reckoning.
Maybe. Maybe.
Those were the kinds of words Haneul had loved—ambiguous, malleable, indefinite. I felt them in my mouth and disliked them. I wasn't sure Sejun would like them either. But if there was a thing I'd learned that night it was this: forgetting is not a single event. It's an accumulation of small moments. It was the DJ who let something familiar loop in at the exactly correct moment. It was the air that tasted like permission. It was someone standing beside me when I finally said the thing aloud and choosing to stay.
I stared at him for a heartbeat. Then another.
"You okay?" he asked, the voice softer than the throbbing bass below us.
"I don't know," I admitted. The honesty came out like the peel of an orange, sticky and slightly embarrassing. "I don't know what I'm supposed to feel tonight."
He watched me for a long time. His thumb rubbed idle circles on my wrist, reassuring and warm. "You're allowed to not know," he said finally. "You don't have to perform being okay."
I wanted to believe it. God, I wanted to believe it. But wanting and believing are different verbs; wanting is warm and immediate, believing is slow and stubborn. Belief would take time. For the moment, I let the jacket settle on my shoulders and felt protective and ridiculous in equal measure.
That pulled something loose in my chest. I didn't know what to do with it. So I changed the subject. "You still down to walk?" I asked, standing, collecting my coat.
He stood too, slower. "Always."