#cinna.nct
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: nct dream and long distance relationships
a/n: a fun 1 year anniversary of cinnajun special :-) also a celebration of broken melodies
wc | 2.6k
from worst to best at handling it
jaemin
i thought about this for a while, and i don't think jaemin would want to be in a long distance relationship at all
he strikes me as someone who really cherishes time spent with his partner, so having to be far away from them would be really hard
he’s also super aware of what he needs in a relationship and he knows that. so, if jaemin is the one going away, he’s going to break up with you
but if it’s you going away, he won’t force it unless he thinks it’s required/needed
if you end up in an ldr with him it means you’re probably not going to be gone for long, maybe a month or so, or you’re some kind of pillar in his life that he can’t afford to lose
being in a ldr with jaemin means he REALLY loves you, so congrats!!! but it’s also probably going to be agonizing
you probably spend most of your free time on the phone with him, and he’s forced you to fill out your weekly schedule on a google calendar so that he can see what you’re doing in his time zone
if you don’t put in the same energy he’s putting in, he will probably break up with you, and he makes that very clear with you before you leave
this is probably the hardest time of jaemin’s life because missing you all the time is something he really hates, and it’s hard for him to sort out those feelings knowing you’re likely off doing something super meaningful
the only thing that holds him together is the fact that he knows you miss him just as much (at least you say it every single time you talk to him)
he’s also probably going to visit you at least once, no matter where you are, if you’re gone for more than a couple of months
and he’s going to regret it right after because of how hard it’ll be to leave again
he just wants you back where he can shower you with love and make sure you’re happy and safe
it’ll be the trickiest part of your relationship with him, but if you can make it through mostly unscathed, it will strengthen your relationship more than you could ever imagine
chenle
similar to jaemin, chenle also wouldn’t want to be in a long distance relationship if given the option not to be
the only reason i’m putting him above jaemin is because he moved away from his family and his home, so he knows how to healthily communicate with the people he loves and continue relationships with them even if they aren’t constantly around him
but i think chenle values coexistence with his partner and would vastly prefer sitting in the same room as you silently rather than sitting on facetime with you silently
it’s really hard for him when you leave and he finds it hard to talk to you when he knows you’re so far away
but if you’re willing to try, so is he
chenle doesn’t need to be on the phone with you every time you’re both free and he doesn’t need to constantly know your schedule but he’d appreciate it i think
i also think chenle would trust his partner pretty unconditionally so he just wants you to update him frequently, even if you’re not doing anything too interesting
just hearing about your day, what shop you discovered or what cafe you went to, is enough for him to get through without feeling too depressed or sad
and hearing you say that you love him at every moment you possibly can
he’s too much of a loser to admit how much he misses you, but you can tell pretty easily lol
you’ll be on the phone and you won’t have spoken in a while and he’ll suddenly go “daegal really misses you” and you’re like “but you don’t?? okay i see how it is”
but chenle doesn’t want to admit he misses you because that means he’s letting the distance between you two get to him :(
chenle knows what it’s like to pursue your dreams away from home and he wants to support you as unconditionally as possible
so don’t worry about him, because he’s fine and he’s comfortable
but he’s going to worry about you 24/7
double standards 🙄
mark
if mark wasn’t who he was he’d be much more okay with it
but he’s a busy guy and it was already hard enough seeing you with his neverending mess of schedules and practices
and of course, for whatever reason you’re going away, he wants to support you really unconditionally so that you don’t feel like staying behind for him you know
but when you tell him you’re going away, he seriously considers breaking it off then and there
it’s less of an “i need to be near you” and more of an “i feel like i’m not going to give you the energy you’re giving me”
but after talking with his members he decides that he’ll give it a shot
tbh being in an ldr with mark might be harder for you than it is for mark you know
he texts you often but can’t call all the time, and your texts often aren’t replied to for hours (as for his too)
so mark comes up with the idea of sending each other care packages back and forth
surprisingly, this works really well
you still text and call as much as you can, but it receiving his poorly put together packages helps out with the yearning more than you can imagine
he’ll send flash drives with recordings of his studio sessions, polaroids of him and the boys, goodies he finds when he’s out and about, really anything you could think of
sometimes he even sends you receipts from when he eats out or gets groceries lol
all of them come with pages upon pages of “diary entries” where mark spells out his days for you, and he sends you his monthly schedule printed out and written in your time zone so you know when he’ll be out of commission and when you’ll be able to talk more (which is rare)
you do your best to match his energy and even buy a polaroid camera so he can see what you see, too
without these packages, you and mark probably would’ve broken up
but he would’ve done anything to keep you in his life, even if you were in space
mark lee i love u
haechan
haechan is pretty much in the same boat as mark except he’s way better at pestering you
i think he’s more online than mark is generally, so when you shared that you were going away for a while, i don’t think he was too panicked about it
the reason he’s not higher is because i think he’d worry about you a lot
like to the point where it started to impact his day to day life
he just doesn’t like being so far away from you because how is he going to save you if something happens??
he’d never consider breaking up with you unless he felt like you were moving away from him, but you’d have to understand that the distance between you is really impacting him
so you’d make little rules for each other so that you’d feel more comfortable with being so far from one another
like you have to call him when you’re taking an uber, and he has to call you every time he’s in a hotel
i also think you’d send each other letters a lot
they wouldn’t be full on care packages like with mark, but they’re just cute little tidbits of your lives on separate sides of the world
haechan would spray perfume on his letters (what a loser)
he’d also put on obnoxious red lipstick so he could kiss the paper (seriously a loser)
on a special day, like a birthday or holiday, you both get a small cake and celebrate together at a time that works for both of you (usually it’s close to midnight for the birthday person)
and you call a lot like it’s really obnoxious
and he texts you every waking moment of the day with even the most minuscule bits of information
“i just saw a gnat on the wall” like ok?? congrats i guess
and the best part is that the dynamic of your relationship barely changes, so you know you’ll come home and absolutely nothing will be different
so, for now, you’ll let him sing you to sleep over the phone and you’ll let him send you cheesy letters that make you cringe <3
renjun
renjun is kind of the opposite of chenle in a way
he obviously values the time you spend together, but he also knows that he did the same thing so he’s not allowed to be picky lol
renjun is the first of the boys who doesn’t consider breaking up even once, i think
i mean with the number of people who would drop dead for him, he’d like to believe that you, among everyone else, would be the worst off without him you know
and he’d be the worst off without you of course
long distance with renjun is actually kind of fun for the both of you
especially if you’ve been in a relationship for a really long time, i think you’d both find it exciting that you get to explore a world renjun hasn’t gotten to experience yet
so he kinda vicariously lives through you LOL
you often find yourselves facetiming when you’re walking throughout whatever city you ended up in, and you’ll show him fun things you find or tell him about the cafes you like as you walk past
renjun will also probably try to visit you as often as possible
whether or not it’s during breaks or making the group take a detour when they’re touring, renjun WILL be seeing you!!!
and he’s also the only boy who won’t get all sad and loserish when he has to leave again
he’s worried of course but like not in the way haechan is
if something is wrong he WILL be able to tell and so far you haven’t given the impression
nor have you ended up in the hospital
so as long as you’re functioning, he’s happy!
the reason he’s not the best at handling it though is because i think renjun would be an awful texter
he tries to get better at it when you leave and even pins your conversations but he lives on do not disturb and often forgets to reply
renjun is absolutely the type of guy to have like 200 unread messages
but he tries his hardest to change the habit for you!!
he even turned on read receipts for you so you could bully him when he ghosts you accidentally </3 he doesn’t have them on for anyone </3
so, to sum it up, being far from renjun isn’t terrible and can actually be fun for the both of you at times, but you still miss him a lot and can’t wait to go home
jeno
chronically online dreamie no. 1
at first jeno is really not on board i think, but he realizes that you’re both good at communicating when he’s off on tour and stuff so he gets over it quick
essentially nothing changes when you leave
the biggest thing though is that he misses you and uses that to his advantage, i think
while the other boys will stew in their sadness about your leaving jeno takes it as an opportunity to get like 30% worse LOL
as a result, most of the things he does that might be strange is just him saying that he misses you
jeno is like haechan in that he is annoying you at every waking moment of the day
in fact i think he’d be worse than haechan … like he is constantly blowing up your phone
if what you’re doing is for work, he’s definitely interrupted meetings before by calling you even though you told him not to
and then you call him back and scold him (while you hide in the bathroom during your lunch break)
if you’re in a country that has a similar time zone, you’re definitely the sleep-on-the-phone type of ldr couple
if not, you’re the on-the-phone-for-as-long-as-physically-possible couple
like once you took a day off on his day off and literally spent 25 hours on facetime … it was that bad
jeno literally slept for 10 of those 25 hours and you barely spoke to one another, too
i can also see you picking up gaming so you can spend more quasi-time with one another
your shared stardew valley world is really cute and pretty </3 except for the fact that he married one of the npcs instead of you with the excuse that “he’s not ready for real marriage”
jeno will also buy your essentials for you ?? it’s weird
you mention that you’re getting low on shampoo and a couple of days later an amazon box is sitting outside your door with a huge thing of your shampoo in it
he’ll also just send random items without telling you
like he sent a bottle of seasoned salt once with a gift note that read “this is good on avocado toast” and you were like ?? sure i guess
conclusion: long distance with jeno is a little strange but fairly easy
jisung
chronically online dreamie no. 2
the reason jisung is the best at handling rather than jeno is because he’s younger and therefore way more attached to you than say jaemin is
like if he were to break up with you he’s convinced the world will end and the rapture will happen
jisung is a little manic about it when you first leave and you can tell
he texts you “i love you” at 6 specific times throughout the day (times he knows you’ll be awake) and also sends like notes app recaps of literally every single thing he did that day
and you do it too because if you don’t it'll make him sad
but after a while, he calms down and things are actually really nice between you two
no matter your time zone, one of jisung’s favorite activities is to call you at a meal time so you can cook together
(cook together = jisung cuts a carrot for jaemin while you actually make a meal, or he is taking an astronomically long time to put his instant ramen together)
just in general, he’s good at long distance communication
he’s good at texting in the way that he never bombards you and never distracts you during the times you need to be focused on whatever you’re doing
he set a time with you every day to call, and, if he can’t he lets you know well in advance so you don’t feel disappointed later on
you have phone dates, you watch movies together on those like joint streaming apps (netflix party or something??), and you call each other while you do little tasks together
like you’ll mop your respective floors together or you’ll do your respective dishes with your phones propped up to show you doing it
he also doesn’t need to know what you’re doing at all times (and the same for you) because he knows you’re probably just doing what you usually did back home
it’s almost like he was built for an ldr idk
but he does what jeno does and just mails you random shit that you don’t have any use for </3 like jisung who needs a heart shaped sponge!!!
but it’s okay because he’s cute …
overall, when you get back, nothing will be different, which is the ultimate goal!! congrats on your successful ldr!!
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream#nct dream x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream headcanons#nct dream reactions#nct dream scenarios#mark x reader#renjun x reader#jeno x reader#haechan x reader#jaemin x reader#chenle x reader#jisung x reader#nct x reader#nct headcanons#nct reactions
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༻¨*:·. atlas cried | ljn
summary | they say your soulmate is your perfect other half—whatever you lack, they have, and whatever they lack, you have. when lee jeno, your academy’s golden boy, approaches you and says you’re his soulmate, you can’t begin to understand how he—rich, gorgeous, never had to work a day in his life—could be the perfect match for you—poor, exhausted, and barely hanging onto the scholarship covering what would be a 65 million won tuition.
genre | high school au (rich boarding school style), soulmate!au, prep!jeno x fem!reader, prep! jaemin & reader (platonic), angst, slow burn, enemies-ish to lovers, kind of academic rivals but in a way that the rivalry is created by other people, im ngl y/n and jeno just don’t like each other, fake dating? au
warnings | did someone say violent academic pressure, heavy isolation, abusive parenting, malicious rumors, everybody is so unhappy, a lot of miscommunication, internalized misogyny, suicide mention (in passing), arson
wc | 24.7k
a/n: hello and welcome to my first long piece ! i hope it's up to your standards :') i'm not sure how i feel about it, as i've never written anything this long so i'm scared there's continuity issues and whatnot. nonetheless, please send me your feedback !! p.s. here is a short playlist comprised of 10 songs i listened to while i wrote this :) p.p.s im sorry for any egregious typos/poorly worded sentences in the last ~9k words, i proofread all of them while i was really tired lol
ft. a few people i made up
i. during the titan war, atlas sided with his fellow titans in battle to defeat the olympians.
THE WIND HOWLED OUTSIDE YOUR DORM BUILDING, rattling the windows of your dorm room and nearly obscuring the study music coming from your speakers. The sky and the wind told of an incoming storm, which made you want to hurry to the cafeteria and get dinner before you were trapped inside. Your homework, however, drowned out the hunger pangs in your stomach and told you that the endless bags of chips hidden under your bed would make a fine dinner.
“You know, they say your soulmate shoulders the weight of the world with you,” your roommate, Suhyeon, sighed, capturing your attention and effectively destroying the deep focus you had on your homework.
“Ok. And?”
She turned over onto her side, a bored expression taking over her face. “Doesn’t that seem scary?”
“I guess?”
“Would you want to share all your problems with someone else? Like, every single one?”
You resisted the urge to strangle her, as well as the urge to remind her that she does not have to keep a top five spot in her class in order to continue going to school. Instead, you spun your desk chair to face her bed, where she lay, staring at your plain white ceiling.
“Want to go get dinner?”
“With this wind? That sounds dreadful,” she replied, looking at you with a bored face. Then, with a sigh, she pushed herself up from the bed and swung her legs over the edge. “I’m not in the mood for another three bags of honey chips.”
To that, you’d have to agree. For the past three-and-a-half days, you and Suhyeon had eaten three bags of chips for dinner, as you were trapped with your head in your textbooks and Suhyeon refused to go to the dining hall without you (according to her, it would look weird to eat alone, and you were her only friend on campus).
“If I had to guess, we’ll be getting a day off tomorrow,” Suhyeon said, swiping her set of keys off her mostly unused desk. You stood up, cringing at the sound of your back cracking as you stretched. Your legs ached from how long you’d been sitting, as well as your back, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as the cramps you felt in your knees. Suhyeon grabbed her coat off the coat hook bolted to your door, slipping it over her uniform and zipping it up promptly.
You shuffled over and did the same, preemptively sliding the hood up so you could begin situating your hair under it. Suhyeon swung the door open and you obediently followed, emerging into the monotonous corridors of the dormitory.
“Are we due for blizzarding?”
“Yes ma’am.” Suhyeon nodded, swinging her arms back and forth as she half-skipped down the hall. “It’s not cold enough today, but, if it storms tonight, I bet we’ll wake up to a classes-have-been-canceled email.”
You sighed, wondering what that would mean for your math exam that you’d been slaving over for the past week and a half. It was the final midterm until you were granted a week off, which you and Suhyeon had excitedly planned to be spent entirely in your bedroom. If there was a snow day, you hoped your teacher would simply postpone it for Friday, rather than move it after the break altogether.
You opened the door to the stairwell, allowing Suhyeon to pass by you and get a head start on the stairs. You quickly followed, wishing you’d done your usual study-stretch schedule today. Your legs nearly gave out as you tried to stay caught up with your roommate, and you were shocked that you managed to make it to the first floor without falling down a flight of stairs.
Another strong gust of wind rattled the building, and you wondered if it was exactly a good idea to make a break for the dining hall.
Suhyeon let out a loud groan, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “I hate the second year-dormitory,” she announced, slowing to a stop in front of the first pair of doors to the outside. “Why do the first years have the indoor path to the dining hall? If anything, they should be the ones in the old, rickety dorms.”
“There’s nothing happy about second year, though. If they put all the depressing stuff halfway in, it won’t be as easy to drop out,” you said, taking the chance to run outside the moment the wind let up a bit. Suhyeon followed close behind you, catching up enough to lace an arm around yours as you ran through the school courtyard.
You practically bulldozed into the dining hall as another burst of wind began, which ended up with you and Suhyeon having to push the door closed as if you were trying to move a broken-down car. The door shut with a satisfying lock, leaving you in the entryway room that consisted of four doors and absolutely nothing else.
Suhyeon sighed, pushing through the second set of doors. The moment they opened, you were hit with the strong smell of spaghetti, which made the hunger pangs worsen substantially. Despite the time, the dining hall was mostly empty, save for a few groups who’d opted to spend their after-school time in there and any third years or first years who’d decided they were hungry.
They didn’t have to make a mad dash across campus to arrive without being blown away. In fact, none of them were even wearing any sort of rain gear.
“Oh god,” Suhyeon mumbled as you approached the serving counter, picking up two trays from the stack they had at the edge.
“What?”
“Golden boys are here.”
You looked up from your tray, turning your head to scan the cafeteria. Sure enough, all six of the golden boys—as they were called—sat at a table in the corner of the room, books littered across the table alongside bowls of spaghetti and an enormous amount of garlic bread. They seemed to be having a good time, laughing and making up essentially all the noise that rattled the room. Suhyeon always told you that there were seven of them, but one had the misfortune of taking a transfer year to some “partner school” off in Shanghai this year, and last year he was still a middle schooler.
You thought the seventh boy might’ve been a ghost that you couldn’t see, though.
One of the cafeteria ladies put a hefty bowl of spaghetti on your plate, along with an oddly gourmet-looking piece of garlic bread. There was a self-serve salad bar and dessert bar further down, but you weren’t too interested in having any of it for right now.
“Awe, they’re sitting a few tables down from our usual spot,” Suhyeon mumbled, stopping to grab a bowl of salad. You waited behind her, staring at the distance between their table of madness and your quaint corner. They were sitting adjacent to the window, likely to survey the weather, and your two-person table was situated in a corner between a false wall that separated the eating area from the first-year entrance. There were about six tables, give or take, between you and them.
“We’ll be fine. It’s not like we’re right next to them,” you said, turning towards her. She was finishing up her salad, placing the bowl on her unbalanced tray, and attempting to get it stable with her now-free other hand. You took that as your chance to begin your stroll to the table, with Suhyeon nervously following behind.
For some reason, she did not like the oh-so-famous golden boys. Any time they entered the conversation, she went silent, and always ended up throwing off the momentum of the conversation with her anxiety; when you tried to ask her about it, she always got defensive, saying she has “nothing to do with them” and “doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
You allowed her to take the corner spot, frowning as she shoved herself into the corner and began picking at her food with her fork. You wondered if it was mean to do this when she so obviously had an issue with it, even if she insisted she didn’t.
“We can sit somewhere else…”
“No, you’re right,” Suhyeon cleared her throat, shaking her head. “It’s not like we’re right next to them. I’ll be fine.”
You took another look at her hidden in the corner, recognizing that she was not going to be fine, but you didn’t push any further. If you had to guess, the last thing she wanted to do was have you make a big deal about her discomfort.
You both ate quietly and quickly, hoping to finish before the oncoming storm hit. Due to the lack of conversation between you two, courtesy of the golden boys being twenty-ish feet away, it wasn’t hard to get through nearly the entire meal within a few seconds.
Your silence also made it quite easy to hear what the golden boys were talking about at their table, added to how easy it was to see them from the corner of your eye.
“I heard Nayeong say we’re getting tomorrow and Friday off,” Zhong Chenle reported, taking a long drink of his water. “They’re just waiting to make it look like it was a last-minute decision.”
“Wow, student council president certified? Must be true, then,” Na Jaemin replied, turning to Lee Donghyuck, who was dejectedly scrolling through his phone. If you had to guess, he’d struggled with the English exam that had taken place earlier that day, seeing as he was notoriously good at Japanese and nothing else. “What's gonna happen with the big math midterm tomorrow, then? I don’t want it to be after break, I’d seriously rather die.”
Donghyuck barely glanced up from his phone before answering. “Rumor has it they’re gonna proctor it in the dorm study rooms. Separate everyone into time slots and stuff. They’re doing it for the third and first years, too.”
Chenle groaned, letting his head dangle on the edge of his chair. Mark Lee, student council vice president and perhaps the second most adored student in the school, didn’t comment on their rumor-spreading. You expected him to be the one they relied on most for information, but
You raised your head slowly, looking over at their table. Mark Lee didn’t comment because he was staring straight at you.
Suhyeon noticed your staring, following your eyesight towards Mark, who was now staring lasers through your head. She dropped her chopsticks into the mostly empty bowl, standing up from her chair suddenly. The movement, along with the clattering of metal, scared you, causing you to snap your head back towards her.
“I don’t feel good.”
Her face was turning pale and her eyes began to water, which was considerably uncharacteristic for her. You looked up at her, glancing down at your half-finished spaghetti and garlic bread. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Can we go back to the dorms, now?” she asked, placing a hand on her chest. “I feel really nauseous.”
“Yeah, of course,” you said, standing up. “We can just leave the plates. Let’s go.”
You glanced over at the golden boys’ table, which had gone quiet. Mark was whispering something to Lee Jeno, who was also staring at you now, arms crossed over his chest and blonde hair (when he showed up blonde at the beginning of the year, everybody lost it) wisped over his forehead.
Gently, you wrapped a hand around her shoulder, hugging her to your side as you made a swift departure from the cafeteria. You got odd looks from other students, but, for the most part, nobody got in the way of your exit. You emerged straight into the dangerous wind, not stopping despite how much it threatened to blow you away.
Being out of sight of the golden boys took a huge weight off your shoulders, one you didn’t know was there. Sometimes you garnered looks given your well-known scholarship student title, but that was mostly from first years who were shocked that could even happen. As far as you were aware, you had nothing to do with the golden boys—not even something as simple as a group project or anything.
Had you done something wrong? Were your grades slipping? Was there something going on concerning your scholarship? The wave of questions washing out your mind was causing you to feel nauseous; you didn’t want Mark Lee looking at you like that. You didn’t want any one of them looking at you like that.
You practically threw the dormitory’s doors open, dodging past anyone who might’ve been in your way. You couldn’t get Mark Lee’s stare out of your mind, because it was unexplainable, because it was unprompted, because it could mean you’d be kicked out of the academy and sent back to your terrible parents who would berate you for forever, telling you that you’re worthless and no better than your freeloading, addict siblings.
You skid to a stop in front of the dorm’s nursing office, knocking three times and not waiting for a response. You pushed Suhyeon inside, grabbing the dorm keys from her jacket pocket and giving the resident nurse an unnerved look.
“She’s not feeling well,” you explained, giving Suhyeon no time to protest you dropping her off in the nurse’s office. Instead, you practically slammed the door shut, staring at the monotonous wood for a moment more.
Your heart was pounding. Your mind was spinning. You could barely breathe.
Quietly, you turned towards the end of the hall, where the stairwell waited for you to climb it. Suddenly, it occurred to you that there was a slim chance you could be climbing it for the last few times beginning today.
As you approached, you wondered what your siblings would do if you lost the scholarship. They’d laugh at you, sneer, and say “I thought you were supposed to be the perfect child?” They’d watch as your parents struck you, yelled at you for being worthless and nothing better than the rest of them. They’d force you to kneel on rice while they “mourned” the loss of their shot at wealth, asking you why you didn’t sleep around with the student body to try and ensure a husband.
“You’ll never be this pretty again,” they would say. “Who cares about your soulmate? Will a soulmate bring you money? Comfort? Look at what happened to your father and I when we chose each other over wealth. Do you want to be like us?”
You slammed the door of your dorm shut behind you, falling onto your knees. You realized that you’d never turned your study music off, or your lights, or anything before you’d left for the dining hall.
You looked down at your arms, letting yourself hold up your right hand. There, in the very center of your palm, was a code that you’d memorized the moment you began to comprehend it: LJN.
You picked yourself off the floor, suppressing the panic tears that threatened to spill over. Instead, you approached your desk, dropping down onto the chair and shoving your math textbook out of the way. You instead chose to focus on the human biology book, long and heavy, that sat underneath it. Weakly, you flipped through the pages, stopping on the first page of a chapter entitled “Soulmates: Biology’s Biggest Mystery.”
The first paragraph read, “the concept of soulmates has long been a pillar of human society. The existence of a ‘soulmate marking’ has purportedly been around since the beginning of time, but the earliest recordings of it come from ancient Mesopotamian tomes depicting a ‘perfect other half’ that ‘completes the human body.’"
You must’ve tattooed these words on your brain when you were studying, but, even then, you couldn’t help but feel mystified every time you read through it. You never cared too much about the whole soulmate craze, considering you were still a teenager and didn’t need to care about “forever” yet, but there was always a sort of comfort that you found in it. The existence of your soulmate confirmed that you would not be chained to your parents for the rest of your life, and, one day, you’d be able to leave them behind for a better, happier life.
You read on, tracing the words of the chapter with your index finger.
“Around 97% of the population have a set of initials written somewhere on their body, one that they’re born with. Their soulmate will have a marking on the same part of their body with the coinciding set of initials. There have been no instances of these initials changing, even upon the death of one’s soulmate, meaning the connection is entirely permanent.”
There was someone out there who would pull you out of this. You were sure of it.
And, when that happened, your life would truly begin anew.
ii. the titans lost the war, and the olympians banished the titans to tartarus.
From beginning to end, your math midterm was a mess.
Sure enough, classes were canceled, but they proceeded with finishing things up before your week-long break began and all information previously learned left your mind. You’d been placed in a 3:30 time slot to take your exam, along with about 15 of your classmates, in the dormitory study room that you’d never once step foot into.
Upon arrival at 3:10, you were faced with the sad truth that both Huang Renjun and Lee Jeno were also in your time slot. Initially, you avoided their gaze, shrinking into the corner of the lounge and hiding behind your phone and wired earbuds. But, you were learning the world would never be kind to you because, the moment Lee Donghyuck emerged from the 1:30 time slot, he had a perfect view of you.
You subconsciously tried to hide once more, hunching down and allowing for your hair to fall over your face. You increased the volume of your music, a random, synthy song you’d fallen in love with some time last week, and tried to ignore how Lee Donghyuck’s gaze made you feel like an internationally wanted criminal.
Once they took note of you, the staring did not cease. Lee Donghyuck left for his dorm while you waited for your proctor to announce things were ready (which happened about a minute and a half after Donghyuck left).
You ripped your earbud out when you saw her appear out of the corner of your eye, jerking up to look at her and wishing your heart would stop beating so fast. “There’s assigned seating, which I will call out now. When you hear your name, please sit behind the person last called. If that person is sitting in the very back, please begin the next row in the front.”
Huang Renjun was called third, which took a small weight off your shoulders. That didn’t stop Jeno from looking at you, stealing glances and sometimes blatantly staring with those terrifyingly cold eyes of his.
“[First] [Last].”
You nearly tripped over your feet getting up, leaving your small bag along with your cell phone and earbuds on the chair you sat waiting on. You held your pen and pencil so tightly in your hand that your knuckles were pale, and you must’ve looked sick to the proctor, given the look she offered you as you passed beside her.
Your eyes narrowed in on the empty seat behind the last girl that was called—the student council secretary, Yeji—and you swiftly approached, half-returning the smile Yeji gave as you walked past.
Huang Renjun was one seat behind you and two rows over, meaning he would barely be able to see you. If you were lucky, Jeno would be the first to start his row, meaning he would be in front of you and therefore it would be impossible for him to look at you.
You weren’t sure why you still relied on luck when pretty much all of it was wasted when you got into this godforsaken school on a scholarship.
The proctor called an Osaki Shotaro, who came and took the seat behind you. Then, a Kim Juyeon who began the next row. Then, a Liu Yangyang who sat next to you.
“Lee Jeno.”
You could’ve shot yourself right then and there, especially as he sauntered over to the seat, dropping into it and immediately beginning to spin his pencil around his fingers. You could practically feel his stare like lasers being shot through the back of your head, unending and unwavering as the proctor called the final girl and shut the door behind her.
“Thank you for arriving smoothly and on time.”
You wished you would have skipped. Skipping might’ve cost you your scholarship and your future, but, if you got Suhyeon on your side and claimed you’d woken up severely ill but couldn’t make it to the nurse because Suhyeon had the 10:30 time slot and you woke up at 11, you might’ve been able to make it to the makeup date.
If only God had been kind enough to warn you about this one.
The proctor began to hand out your answer sheets and tests while droning on and on about rules, her words going in and out of your ears like the pointless documentaries your history teacher enjoyed showing. As if you hadn’t taken five of these exams already, she regurgitated these rules, causing your mind to spin more and your leg to bounce harder.
“You may begin.”
You barely began at all. For the entire test, your mind wasn’t focused on derivatives or any sort of equation you’d spent weeks memorizing—no, your mind was focused on Lee Jeno, Mark Lee, all the golden boys, and why they were suddenly so focused on you. You wrote down numbers and letters, plus signs and square roots, all while thinking about what they could want from you.
With every page flip, with every boxed answer and filled-in bubble, your mind fell deeper and deeper into your panicked trance. At some point, you began writing on autopilot with no mental capacity to tell whether or not what you wrote was correct. A part of you wondered why you cared so much when you were obviously about to become the first-ever scholarship student at the academy to lose their scholarship, to be the first investment that brought a net loss instead of a net gain.
Before you knew it, the test was over, and it was 5:15 pm on the dot. You felt like throwing up, a million spiders crawling up your stomach and throat as you stared at what you wholeheartedly believed to be a failed math test. Your mind spun—math had always been your worst subject, and you’d always teetered on the edge with it. As long as you excelled in other subjects, you’d be fine, but there was an absolute need to ensure you did not fall below rank five.
As long as you were never below five, you would be fine.
The proctor snatched your test up from your desk, taking a once over with a smile. “Congratulations on finishing, Ms. [Last],” she said, a formality she’d repeated to everyone but carried a special weight when she spoke to you.
You wanted to reach for it, take it back and run away with the paper. You couldn’t remember a single question you’d answered, let alone whether or not the answers were right. This would be the first (and last) time you’d drop below rank five in your exams, and you’d be packing up your bags when the grades dropped next week. This was the end of your paradise, all thanks to a few awry looks from the academy’s beloved golden boys.
“All papers have been collected. You are free to return to your dorms,” the proctor announced, placing the stack on her desk. You lingered on for a moment, staring at your hands and focusing on the pressure that weighed your shoulders down every waking moment of the day.
Once, Suhyeon was trying to get you to go shopping with her while you were studying. You refused vehemently, citing your grades as the reason why you couldn’t watch her spend thousands upon thousands on clothes she’d never wear while you cringed at every price tag you saw.
With one of her usual, airy sighs, she collapsed onto her bed, mumbling a hollow statement that stuck in your mind: “[First] [Last], forever crushed by the weight of the world.”
Your self wallowing was cut off by Lee Jeno stopping in front of your desk, looking down at you with his terrible cold stare. You returned his focus, fighting off the urge to curl into yourself and tell him to never speak to you again.
“I need to talk to you,” he said, shoving his hands into his blazer pockets. “I’ll meet you in the library at 8.”
You gave him a look that could only be described as confusion, tilting your head at the notion.
“The library closes at 5 tonight.”
“Does that matter to me?”
He scoffed a bit, not paying you another second. Instead, he sauntered off with Huang Renjun, who gave him a steady slap on the shoulder as he walked out. Renjun followed behind, saying, “You’ve got guts now, huh?” while continuing to hammer on his shoulder and laugh at his “guts.” All you could do was slowly lift yourself from your desk chair, thinking about what you would do upon your return to Jinhae-gu. What your ex-classmates, who’d screamed and cried with you when you received your scholarship notice in the middle of the school day, would say when you walked in, a husk of your former self.
What you’d do when you saw your parents and siblings again.
“Ms. [Last], now that exams are over for second years, I suggest you stop by Miss Choi’s office as soon as possible. I know how much pressure you’re under to retain such perfect grades,” the proctor said, causing you to be torn away from your mind once again.
You smiled weakly at her, nodding. “I will, ma’am. Thank you for your concern.”
“It’s no issue, sweetheart,” she said, dropping a hand onto your shoulder. “We all want to see you succeed.”
You bowed at her as a way to get her to stop touching you, rushing out of the classroom. You’d rather die than go see Miss Choi, who picked you apart too easily in your opinion. You didn’t like the way she seemed to know how you were feeling, how she tried to teach you how to carry the world, because Miss Choi—an alma mater of the academy by paid tuition and not by scholarship—would never know what this felt like, even if she followed you around for three months straight.
With your bag retrieved, you began your march up the stairwell, a new anger brewing in your heart. When you were gone, when there was a lack of honor student to bring up in the interviews and magazine features, when you worked up the nerve to post a forum piece on how the academy destroyed any bit of happiness you had, they’d understand that this wasn’t just academic pressure.
Suhyeon was right—you were forever crushed by the weight of the world because nobody else here wanted to carry their weight and believed there was no one better suited to pick it up other than you.
iii. tartarus was a deep abyss used as a prison for the titan gods,
“You can’t go out right now, the weather is too awful,” Suhyeon insisted, scrambling to reach for your keys. You grabbed them before her, dropping them in the pocket of the jacket you’d draped over your lounge clothes. “It’s dark and the snow is barreling down, [First]. Where could you possibly go right now?”
You bit your lip, staring down at her. She was dressed in her pajamas, practically ready for bed by this point, with a matching Hello Kitty pajama set and a headband pulling her hair away from her face. A pair of glasses sat low on the bridge of her nose, sliding down further the more she tried to discourage you from leaving.
“I just want to take a walk. It stopped snowing a while ago, so there’s no barreling down happening, and I have my snow boots on. Everything should be fine,” you insisted, slipping your gloves on. Suhyeon went to stand in front of the door, blocking your exit to the outside and further delaying your meet-up with Mr. Perfect.
“Promise you’ll be back before room checks.”
You sighed. If whatever Lee Jeno needed to speak to you about was important, he must’ve put something in place to ensure you wouldn’t get in trouble for missing room checks, but you couldn’t be sure. You nodded, waving her out of the way.
“I’ll be back before room checks. Swear on it.”
Uncomfortably, Suhyeon stepped away from the door, allowing you to pass without a word. You slipped out of your room, giving her one last glance before you shut the door behind you and isolated yourself in the dorm corridor. It was cold—everything was cold—and dark, with dim LEDs illuminating the hall floors and nothing else providing any sort of light. It was akin to that of a movie theater's stairs—just lit up enough that you could make it down the stairs without plunging to your doom.
You made your way to the stairwell, cringing as your shoes clicked against the wood of the stairs. You hoped that Jeno had done anything to protect you from the wrath of the late night staff, but you wondered if getting caught meant anything when you’d be gone in a week.
The dorm’s common area (or, more simply, the first floor) was completely devoid of everyone, as aligned with the school rules, which said no students should be out of their rooms past 7:30 on a weekday to avoid issues with student health or student safety. Room checks began at 9, which essentially meant you could be out and about until then, but nobody wanted their parents finding out they were screwing around instead of studying.
You took no time in crossing the common room, weaving through tables and couches in hopes that a teacher didn’t appear and tell you to get back to your room before this “hurt your future,” as they liked to tell you. When the doors to the dorm opened, you could’ve sworn you felt your heart drop into your feet—but, the doors opening did not yield a teacher or any staff member.
It yielded Na Jaemin.
Upon seeing you, he gave you a cordial smile and a nod. Jaemin was Lee Jeno’s second-in-command, his beginning and his end. From what you’d heard from classmates, they’d grown up together, being neighbors from the day they were born and being friends from the day they could speak. You barely saw one without the other, and you couldn’t lie when you said part of you was expecting Jaemin would be in the library along with Jeno tonight.
“Good evening, [First],” he greeted. You offered him an uncomfortable nod back, accompanied by an unsure smile and your shaking hands. “Library’s unlocked.”
You blinked a couple of times, suddenly clueless as to what he was talking about. Na Jaemin was blinding, from the way he smiled at you to the way he even looked at you.
“Ah, um, thanks,” you said, coming to your senses. “Sleep well, or something.”
Jaemin chuckled, nodding. “You too. Good luck!”
He passed by you without another glance, another word, disappearing into the men’s side of the second-year dorms. You watched his figure retreat for a moment, wondering if you’d run into any other golden boys on your way to the library. You hoped Jaemin was the only one.
As you emerged into the cold, night air, stepping onto the snow and sinking in almost immediately, you now found yourself focused on your brief interaction with Na Jaemin.
A while back, you’d heard that he didn’t have a soulmate.
You were just starting out, and, given the nature of your enrollment at the school, you’d had a slight amount of popularity. People hung around you with the idea that you’d somehow trick them into good study habits and unrivaled intelligence (to be honest, people still do), and that inevitably came with you hearing whatever gossip traveled around your class at the time.
“You know Na Jaemin? The boy who started this year and immediately made it in with Mark Lee’s crowd?” a girl asked you, sliding into your study table at the library. Instantly, she’d caught the attention of the other three students who asked to study with you, drawing them away from the math worksheet you were all working on. “Ah, [First], Mark Lee and his crew have been attending the academy since elementary school, so they kinda own the place. They never let anybody in with them until Na Jaemin.”
Upon hearing that, you’d mostly been impressed that somebody could afford that many years of tuition here, let alone send their child into academic hell from the moment they’d learned to read. Suhyeon hadn’t told you that she’d also lived the same life, yet, so this was your first exposure to what most students called the “originals” of the academy.
“He doesn’t have a soulmate.”
A sort of surprise settled in around the table, given how rare it was to be born soulmate-less. There was a “no way” thrown out, along with a couple of gasps of disbelief. You’d felt bad for him, wondering what it was like to live in a world where (mostly) everybody but you had a universally-fated life partner.
Your tablemates didn’t seem to think similarly to you.
“God, my mother would be overjoyed if I was soulmateless,” one of your classmates, Chaeyeon, hummed, leaning back on her chair and resting her elbow on the back of it. You turned to her, shocked that was her first reaction upon hearing about Na Jaemin’s soulmateless-ness. “He must be the golden child of his family.”
“He’s the youngest, too, so he was inevitably going to be the kid they married off. That’s one less person they’ll need to pay off.”
Na Jaemin, whether the rumor was true or not, was your way of finding out that rich people often trapped their younger children in loveless marriages, and paid off their soulmates to keep them from ever forming a relationship. They’d even had a saying for it: “An accomplished father’s best child is the child who can marry for money with no regrets.”
It horrified you because that was how your parents thought. You couldn’t imagine a life where everybody, not just your parents, thought that way.
As quietly as you could, you pushed the door to the library open, finding yourself in the sprawling lobby you were so acquainted with. Despite the academy being a lower grade school, the library was the kind that you’d find articles on and the kind where people would travel just to see it.
Usually, it was locked to the high heavens when it was closed due to its extensive collection of books no high schooler needed to read, but tonight was different. You wondered if Mark stole the keys from Nayeong and gave them to Jeno.
You shuffled towards the stairs, wondering if Lee Jeno was going to make you search for him. Your heart began pounding in your chest once again, thoughts of expulsion (losing your scholarship wasn’t technical expulsion, but it might as well have been) and disappointing everyone you know with a simple 89 on a math test.
The second floor was completely dark, which was creepier than you wanted it to be. Assuming Jeno wasn’t waiting for you in a pitch-black room, you continued up the stairwell, telling yourself Jeno wasn’t going to inform you of your impending doom despite the fact that he was a student, and that he wasn’t even on the student council.
You couldn’t imagine whatever else he wanted to talk to you about, though. You weren’t in the same sphere, hell, even in the same universe as each other—he hung around the golden boys and nobody else, breaking every rule the school had to offer and using his father’s name as an excuse. You hung out with the kids who lived closer to the bottom (whatever bottom meant at this god-forsaken school), the kids whose grades had a real impact on them rather than the ones who went to school to say they did.
The third floor was also completely dark but gave way to the dim lighting that lit up the fourth floor. For some reason, Lee Jeno had decided to taint your preferred study floor with whatever he had to tell you, but you supposed he had no clue that it was your usual study spot. After all, you were in different universes.
Taking the final few steps up to the fourth floor, you noticed that, while it was illuminated, there was no sign of Jeno anywhere. The lights were on and it was dead silent, with not a single movement or noise to even hint at another person being inside; but, from the way one of the tables had its chairs sprawled about and from the light smell of coffee, you could tell people had been in here recently.
If you had to guess who, it was the rest of the golden boys, given your run-in with Jaemin in the lobby of your dorm. You wondered where the rest of them went, particularly Donghyuck and Renjun, who hadn’t ventured through the lounge of the second-year dorm—hopefully, they weren’t still here, as the emptiness was somewhat calming.
You decided to venture further into the fourth floor, walking past the proof-of-life table and entering the rows upon rows of shelves. The fourth floor was the most academic, being the quietest at any given time. Nobody liked scaling four flights of stairs with the sole purpose of studying, so the only people who did were the ones who wanted to avoid the quiet yet prominent chatter on the lower floors.
And the golden boys apparently, but only past closing.
The silence of the room made your heart slow down to a calmer rate, as well as making any panic you were previously feeling dissipate. You were sure that, the moment you found Jeno, it would resume where it left off, but you were grateful for these few moments of calm before the storm you were about to step into.
You continued walking through the shelves, scanning the book’s spines and their titles as if you hadn’t seen them nearly every day for the past two years. You allowed the tips of your fingers to brush along the many different textures and indents of the well-loved books before you. If you were truly at the end of your time here, you ought to write a love letter to this library, thanking it for the countless hours you spent reading and learning in hopes that you, one day, would be a peer of the people around you and not just a spectacle.
At the edge of the shelves, there was another small clearing of desks and then a couple of couches that most students used to take naps during finals season, and that's where Lee Jeno waited for you. The moment you appeared from the woodwork, he noticed you, staring at you from the corner of his eye.
“I was thinking you weren’t going to come,” he said offhandedly. You furrowed your brows, pulling your phone out of your pocket—it was 8:17. You hadn’t even noticed how slowly you were traveling, seeing as you left your dorm at 8:03.
As you’d expected, your heart had begun beating out of its chest, and you, once again, began to prepare for the worst. You slowly approached the couch adjacent to him, sitting down as slowly as you could. You sat like a board, stiff and nervous, waiting for him to explain himself even in the slightest.
Instead, he leaned over to the coffee table in front of you, pushing a small coffee cup towards you. You stared at it for a second, confused and a bit freaked out, but you picked it up nonetheless, thankful he’d thought to get you something warm. He continued to sit in silence, leaving you with a couple of moments to study him thoroughly.
Before today, you’d never really looked at him. Sure, you’d given him a couple of nervous glances, but there was something about Lee Jeno that made you feel inferior. He was the son of a major CEO, one of the biggest conglomerates in all of Korea (and maybe even Asia), somebody you would’ve never even dreamed of meeting three years ago. He was above the rules of the school, above the rules everywhere, dangling his parents’ name and a wad of cash above anyone who tried to tell him no.
His hair was bleached blonde, but it seemed so healthy that you could’ve mistaken it for his natural hair color if you hadn’t known any better. He’d shed all his snow-protectant layers, which were sprawled out along the remainder of the couch next to him. Despite the lack of need for it today, he was dressed in his usual uniform—a black blazer, white turtleneck, and black and green plaid pants—which was a blatant violation of the dress code due to the lack of a polo shirt, but you’d never see him get in trouble for it. He sat with an aura of regality that you could only try and imitate, with his leg lazily crossed over the other and his arm resting on the back of the couch. In his other hand was a cup of coffee like yours, but his was so hot that it was steaming from the lid’s opening.
“I didn’t know your last name until Mark told me,” he finally said, taking a sip of his burning hot coffee. You mimicked his movements, taking a sip from your own, trying to fight off any physical reaction to the bitterness of it.
“What do you mean?”
Jeno sighed, holding up his hand. You stared for a moment, narrowing your eyes in an attempt to make out the small letters on his palm. Then, all too quickly, the truth flooded your mind—the initials on your hand, LJN, and the initials on his, your very own set.
It shocked you so bad that you nearly dropped the cup of coffee. The reveal did nothing to soothe your nerves and, instead, amped up the panic a lot more. Your head spun at the thought, and, while you hated to say it, all you could think about was the negatives.
What would your parents say when they found out your soulmate was Lee Jeno, of all people? The son of a CEO-and-politician, the son of a man who drowned in money, a person who was born rich and would die rich? They’d never leave you alone once finding out, demanding check after check to ensure they never said a word about their relation to the Lees. They’d torment you for the rest of your life, and you’d forever be stuck under their reign of terror, forever their child, forever their moneybag.
On top of that, you’d never have an accomplishment that was fully tied to you again. People would see you as a connection, and they’d give you opportunities based upon that connection rather than based on your natural ability. You’d be respected because of who your soulmate was, not because of who you were, and you’d end up like the women you saw on TV—lifeless dolls with the title of “wife” and nothing else.
You thought meeting your soulmate was supposed to be this fateful encounter under the stars, the moment where you met the one person who would love you most. You expected to be mystified, sent to a world of love and comfort, sent to a world where your problems were nonexistent and the sun was shining and the birds sang tales of love and togetherness. You wanted to feel as though you were being embraced by constellations, struck by Cupid’s arrow as you stared at the person the universe decided was your fateful match.
Instead, you stared at Lee Jeno, and all you could feel was an overwhelming sense of disappointment.
“Well,” you mumbled, unsure of what you should do now. “What now?”
He didn’t seem to have a direct answer, either, simply taking another sip of his coffee. You mentally questioned how he was able to consume something that hot without burning the hell out of his tongue, but that wasn’t something you needed to dwell on.
When he didn’t respond, you took it upon yourself to ask another question and drill until you got all the answers you wanted.
“How long have you known?”
This was something he seemed to know the answer to. Without skipping a beat, he replied, “Mark told me about eight months ago after he saw your name on the award listings.”
To that, you felt your heart dry out a little bit more than it already was. Eight months was a long time to wait after knowing who your soulmate might be, especially considering that, eight months ago, he could’ve easily contacted you before the break between school years began. Wanting more out of him, you stayed silent, still trying to figure out what exactly you were feeling at that moment.
“I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure of it, but Suhyeon told me your initials about three months ago. That’s when my friends found out and started hounding me to tell you.”
Suhyeon? Last you checked, she was horrified by the thought of even being near the golden boys, let alone speaking to them. In what situation would she have been around them without you, especially given that she was talking to them? It seemed Lee Jeno was the sort of person who answered a question by creating more, which was something you didn’t appreciate in the slightest.
“So why now, then? You obviously weren’t in a hurry.”
He took another slow, awkward sip of his coffee, and, if you weren’t insane, it seemed like he was nervous to you. That ignited a sense of pride in you, and you wanted to assume most people would never stress Lee Jeno out in their lives. At the same time, you wanted to hurry things up and leave so that you wouldn’t have to think about him until you needed to.
“I have a family dinner next week, and my dad…my dad wants me to start talking to Lim Nayeong because he thinks I should marry her. No offense to Nayeong, but I’d rather die than marry her right out of high school, and you’re…the only way I can convince him otherwise.”
The room went dead silent. You were unsure how to respond to a declaration like that without being mean, and, with the quirk of your lips, you couldn’t help but allow the flood gates to open.
“I’m sorry, but how in the world am I supposed to help? In what world is marriage to me more advantageous? I'm a random hick from the countryside who got lucky and struck it big. If anything, I’d make your father more inclined to marry you off.” You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing at how ridiculous this was, a hand hovering over your mouth and your eyes filling with laughter-born tears. Jeno stared at you incredulously, not even reacting to your sudden outburst in the slightest.
“I’m sorry man, but you might be better off taking literally anybody else with the same initials as me. I’m not the help you need.”
“So you wouldn't care if your soulmate married someone else?”
The undertone of anger in his voice washed away your laughter in an instant, nearly making you jump. You dropped your hand to your lap, sighing—you wondered if you’d end up pouring out your whole life story to him tonight. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet my soulmate in hopes that they’d be some knight in shining armor. After these midterms, though, I’m thinking my scholarship is going to be revoked and I’ll be back to the land in the poor and underprivileged. Sorry, Jeno, but, once again, you’d be better off picking somebody else to bring along. I'm not going to let myself fall in love with something painfully unrealistic, even if that something is my universal other-half.”
Jeno seemed to be exasperated at every word that left your mouth, and you weren’t sure how you were meant to handle the increasing hostility that was starting to emanate from your supposed soulmate. The more things went south, the more you wanted to laugh and scream at yourself for thinking your soulmate would be some prince from a foreign land. You were so childish, thinking you’d get anything out of the whole ‘soulmate’ ruse—at least you’d be paid off after Nayeong got married to Jeno. Then, you might be able to emancipate yourself with a good lawyer and blackmail the Lees into more money for a nice, Seoul apartment to rent.
“Okay. Let’s make a bet, then. If you score over me in four out of the six subjects, you’ll be in my car on the way to my parents’ house next Friday. Deal?”
Even with your continued top-five status on the class leaderboards, you don’t think you’d ever managed to score above Lee Jeno in four subjects. The only things you consistently dominated in were English, Literature, and History—you’d achieved first place in all three during every single exam season you’d had at the academy—and the rest—sciences, math, anything STEM—you barely achieved the top five rankings that were required of you.
For some reason, you were antsy to receive your test scores, now. You’d never made a bet on whether or not you’d do worse than somebody, ever. It was nearly exhilarating, and you now felt there was a reward to the end of your scholarship: at the very, very least, you wouldn’t have to attend a Lee family dinner with Lee Jeno, who you were finding to be very unpleasant.
“Yeah, sure,” you scoffed, standing up from the couch and looking down at him. “Deal.”
With that, you approached the rows of books, leaving Jeno to consider what he thought he'd accomplish by bringing you along to anything.
iv. and most of the titans would spend eternity there.
Three days into break, and you haven’t done much of anything. Suhyeon was out with her other rich friends, her “very own posse” as she liked to call it, and had spent the past couple of days staying off campus—it left you with a lot of time to think.
For the most part, you wondered what would happen in the unlikely case Jeno won your bet. You’d never had to speak to someone like that, someone who wasn’t a wealthy teacher or classmate—his parents were the real, unbridled deal. People who spent thousands every day, not blinking an eye at four-digit totals or the state of their bank account.
It scared you. A lot.
You could dish out a big word now and then, offer a cordial smile, or impress with your general knowledge of the world, but there was nothing about you that would impress a multi-billionaire. Not even a party trick or a joke you’d spent a million years formulating.
That fear, rivaling the fear of expulsion, was what brought you to your current position in the corner of the campus on a rarely-cleaned picnic table, your head in your arms and your eyes trained towards a rose bush. According to the clock on your phone, class rankings had been posted eleven minutes ago, and you had no intention of checking any time soon.
Win or lose, there was no positive for you, and you didn't like that. In any other circumstance, retaining the ability to attend classes here and gaining letters of recommendation was the best possibility for you, as it would be for anyone else. However, the world had to curse you with an old-money, top-elite soulmate rather than an honest, just-rich-enough-to-afford-tuition soulmate—you seriously had run out of luck when you procured the scholarship.
“Oh? What are you doing out here, Miss Honor Student?” Na Jaemin asked, scaring you at the suddenness of his appearance. You jerked up, looking towards him flustered and a bit embarrassed. He looked at you questioningly, his hands cupped and held near his chest.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I suppose you asking makes more sense,” he laughed, approaching one of the rose bushes you’d been staring at. “I found a bee crawling on the ground. Poor thing has a broken wing,” he hummed, reaching his hands out to a flower. You didn’t try and second guess his words, believing his alibi without needing any proof. Instead, you looked away, your stomach crawling at the thought of carrying a bee across campus like that. “Although, haven’t rankings been posted? Anyone would expect you to be first in line.”
“I’m not worked up over it or anything,” you mumbled, resisting the urge to put your head back down and block him out of your world. “Going now would just yield a bunch of crowding around a tiny bulletin board. It’s too difficult.”
“If you started walking now, I’d bet the crowd’s mostly dissipated,” he suggested, coming back around to where he could be in your line of sight. “Want to walk together?”
Feeling cornered, you stood up, brushing the dust and dirt off the bottom of your bag. Jaemin smiled satisfyingly, offering an arm for you to take. In the most non-discreet way possible, you pretended to not see the offer, brushing past him quickly. He didn’t let the act bruise his ego, though, following behind you in earnest. You wondered if, due to your relationship with his best friend, he felt the need to ensure that you had no ill feelings towards him; or, maybe, he resonated with you, as both of you started at the academy much later than most of your classmates.
“I heard the big reveal didn’t go as nicely as it could have,” he began, keeping pace with you almost perfectly. Your steps were completely in sync, and you couldn’t help but notice how he’d done it on purpose rather than coincidentally. Another thing you’d heard about Na Jaemin was that he was a robot, but most people were joking when they said that—maybe, they could’ve been right.
“Well, we’re not exactly the most chemical pair.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Jaemin said, lightly elbowing you in the arm. “He just doesn’t know how romance works. He’s all antsy right now because he told his dad to not invite Nayeong and her family to their very rare family dinners and used you as the excuse. I told him—I said, ‘Jeno, you can’t use your soulmate to get out of marriage unless you actually know your soulmate.’ And he got all pissy at me. I tried to make him make it the least bit romantic, but it sounds like he didn’t try at all.”
“He got me coffee.”
“Coffee is bitter and unromantic, though. I’d know.” Jaemin giggled, putting his arms behind his head. You approached the entrance to a corridor, which would effectively put you on the path to the bulletin. But, Jaemin took a sharp turn, leading you through the long way to get you there.
“Are you a ladies’ man? Romance-expert, or something?” you asked jokingly, not expecting any sort of genuine response. The closer you got to the truth made you start to get nervous again, words getting stuck at the top of your throat, impossible to speak yet impossible to swallow back down.
“Maybe I am.”
Jaemin looked towards you, giving you a look that you were half sure was him reading your mind and learning everything he possibly could about you. He was incredibly good at blending into you, even if you hadn’t talked much; everything he said coaxed more out of you, and every movement created a new line of conversation.
Every rumor you’d heard about him—so good at befriending people that it’s scary, a perfect speaker, the most eloquent student at the school—was proving to be true. He was monstrous, somebody you surely wouldn’t want to have on your bad side.
“You and I are similar, you know,” he said, tearing his away from you to look towards the door to the main school building. He opened it for you, waiting for you to enter before he did himself.
“How so?”
“My family’s new to this whole ‘rich and famous’ thing,” he began. You looked at him out of the corner of your eye, watching as he looked up to the ceiling. His eyes glittered like stars, reflecting everything they saw to a T. “We’re, like, the ultimate definition of new money. My dad hit it big with Jeno’s dad, got on his good side, and became the chair of a subsidiary…so I’m in a limbo of sorts.”
“God, I wish my dad hit it big with Jeno’s,” you snorted, picking at the nail polish coating your fingers. “Is that why you came in at the beginning of high school rather than earlier?”
“My dad wanted me to experience a little bit of what he did, at the very least. Both my mom and dad thought it’d be too much if they moved me from here to a normal high school, though…thus, the order.”
You nodded, feeling a pang of fear as you turned a corner and a crowd of whispering teenagers came into view. Your conversation with Jaemin ended the moment they did, instead making way for what, no matter what, would be the worst moments of your life so far.
The moment you reached the crowd, people began to stare at you, whispering under their breaths as they passed. It was like being the center exhibit at an expensive art show, being a piece made entirely for public reaction. The more you walked, the more the red sea parted, giving you a clear path to the bulletin board. Within seconds, you’d reached it, scanning from the bottom up.
Number two was Jeno, to no one’s surprise. In order, his rankings had been second for English, second for history, second for literature, first for math, second for science, and second in his elective.
One above him was you.
First in English. First in history. First in literature. Second for math. First for science. First for your elective.
At that moment, you could’ve passed out. You stared at the line of ones (and a single two) in front of you, wondering how in the world you achieve something like that. For the past two years, you’d battled against private tutors and possible instances of cheating, always barely being able to hit the mark for every single subject. You never struggled in any of the humanities, but…second in math after your catastrophe of a test and first in science—physics specifically—felt like an absolute lie to you.
It felt unreal. It felt like you’d become the kids whose parents paid for their grades, who spent hours with private tutors that cost hundreds of thousands of won per hour. It felt like, somehow, you’d hit a peak even though you were only seventeen.
Your ears seemed to open, hearing everything the students around you said. “She’s never let Lee Jeno pass her once,” someone said, whispering to their friend.
“Do you think she gave him math as a pity grade? I heard they were in the same time slot last Thursday.”
You blinked rapidly, trying to figure things out amongst the chatter. Every word that came out of your peers' mouths was a word that clouded your mind, creating new ideas that you’d never once considered.
“She’s a commoner and she’s beating Lee Jeno. That ought to hurt the Lee name, right?”
Since when have you become Jeno’s rival? For a simple stroke of luck on a few tests? You felt like you were going insane, your feet cemented to the floor and your hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline, mixed with an intense and sudden wave of relief, that came with reading your scholarship was intact.
“Protip,” Jaemin said, grabbing your attention with ease. He seemed to drag you back down to Earth, returning you to the pedestal on which you were expected to carry the world. “There’s only one thing that’ll put you above the title of student council president and daughter of a filthy rich tech couple, and that’s this.”
“Nayeong ranks first every year, too. This’ll barely help.”
“I don’t think so,” Jaemin chuckled. You looked at him, raising an accusatory brow; he mirrored your expression, looking down at you with eyes that sparkled with mischief and utter madness. “Miss Nayeong ranked seventh this time around.”
v. unlike his fellow titans, atlas had a different punishment.
There wasn’t a single word to be shared between you and Jeno, and you couldn’t ever see yourself getting to a point where there was.
After he’d sent you a text—where he got your number, you’re unsure—asking for your general clothing measurements, then dropping off a dress with a price tag you never, ever wanted to face again, you hadn’t spoken a word to each other.
Even as you climbed into the sleek, black car that waited for you about a couple of blocks away from campus, he didn’t so much as greet you, deciding that telling the driver to get going was a much better use of his time. For the man who got so upset when you showed little to no care about your soulmate status, you were quite surprised at his unwillingness to speak to you.
A part of you wanted to keep up the silence, to ignore the slight tug in your heart and the fact that you needed to know at least something about him so his parents didn’t get suspicious, but you weren’t going to embarrass yourself with him. Especially not in front of the moneybags that he called parents.
So, when you reached about ten minutes before your estimated time of arrival at a fancy hotel (rather than his house, which was the former location of this family dinner), you began to fiddle with your handbag, pulling out a small, folded piece of paper.
“This is my transcript thus far,” you said, breaking the silence between you two. He looked away from the window, staring down at the hand that carried the paper. “Someone told me your dad was big on grades. Thought it’d be useful for your argument.”
He pulled it from your fingertips, much gentler than you’d assume from Lee Jeno, and his eyes lingered on your hands. You’d painted your nails for the occasion, wiping off the half-chipped coat you previously had on in favor of a nicer, more sophisticated color. It matched the dress well, along with the makeup you’d begged Suhyeon to help you put on without telling her the occasion for it.
“Nice job on the nails,” he commented, looking away from them and putting the folded piece of paper in his pocket. “You look expensive.”
“Is that not the goal?”
“That’s precisely the goal. I need you to look like I dote on you,” Jeno mumbled, dropping his hands into his lap. “Sorry, but I’m going to really play up the scholarship student thing.”
“No worries. I understand not wanting to marry someone you don’t know.”
The more you thought about it, the more you began to pity him. Worrying about a money-based arranged marriage was a very first-world-problems-esque issue to be having, you could respect that it was something he didn’t want. You just wished he was asking you to be his scapegoat as a lie rather than as a reality—you’d feel much better if you were pretending to be his soulmate.
“I don’t think my father will be too interested in the details of our relationship, he’ll just want proof you’ll be able to measure up to Nayeong,” Jeno said, ignoring your earlier comment. “Activities, grades, I don’t care what, play up everything about yourself. He doesn’t care about in-laws, he cares about the money you can bring in.”
“Wow, sounds like a lovely man.”
Jeno cleared his throat, made uncomfortable by your short quip. “He is when he’s not talking about his paycheck.”
To you, it sounded like Jeno was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince you, but you weren’t in the mood to pry. Instead, you looked out the window once again, cringing at how snowy and cold it looked outside. You were going to freeze in this dress, even when you were wearing insulated tights underneath, even when it was long-sleeved and pretty thick.
When the hotel came into view, you embarrassingly recognized it as a place many social media celebrities enjoyed coming to. In your few moments of off time, you were sure you’d seen the outside in a few lifestyle vlogs or food review videos. It was fairly trendy; you had to give Jeno’s parents props for that.
Opposite to your reaction, Jeno scoffed at the sight of the luxury inn, evidently unsatisfied with it. “Of course she’d pick here,” he murmured to himself. You wondered if his siblings—who were going to be attending as you’d learned this morning—had been in charge of picking the restaurant, which would make more sense given its online reputation. He shared that he had two younger sisters and a younger brother, all of whom weren’t in high school yet, so you’d never met them or seen them before.
The driver pulled up to the extravagant porte-cochere—the fancy driveway outside of a hotel, which Suhyeon had taught you the name of—and slowed to a stop, but neither you nor Jeno moved.
“Remember,” he said, putting on the coaching voice he used to relay this to you earlier. “My mom will be the weak spot, so focus on her more than my dad. We both need to fight when my father grows argumentative, but you need to be more tactical and logical. My siblings will be on our side so don’t try to make a case to them.”
“What are their names again?”
“In order, Yeojin, Soeun, and Sunwoo.”
You recited their names, wondering why Jeno had received such an odd name compared to the rest of them. Nevertheless, you made the first move to exit the stationary car, regretting it the moment the night air hit your skin. A deep chill cemented itself in your stomach, and you began to wonder how it managed to be so unimaginably cold at all. Jeno followed behind you, mumbling something else as he joined you outside.
You briefly considered how this was going to go, given you’d never tried to act like you were in love with someone before. You were sure Jeno was a pro at fabricating things, plastering on disingenuous smiles and acting interested in the monetary, arrogant talk of wealthy adults. The most you’d done was work at your local convenience store for a summer.
The moment he joined up next to you, he linked his arm with yours, and you were off. You were thankful for the warmth you received from him, even if it was slightly uncomfortable given your situation. You preferred being warm over being comfortable in most situations.
The doors slid open automatically, leading you into a world entirely separate from your own. You tried to suppress the urge to ogle at everything, to approach the plants that lined the lobby and check if they were real, to run for the sole purpose of hearing your heels clack against the marble floor. You kept your jaw screwed shut and your eyes forward, even if all you wanted to do was “ooh” at the chandeliers on the ceiling.
You’d never forget this moment. Being a customer at a place you’d exclusively seen through rich influencers’ and celebrities’ social media felt ridiculous.
One glance up was all you allowed yourself—a simple, lingering stare—but it put you in last place anyway. When you looked back down, there was a girl, no older than 15, sprinting towards you, a big smile on her face. Jeno dropped your arm and pulled the girl into a hug, a smile blooming on his face as he did. You’d never seen him smile so genuinely in your life.
Another girl came forward as well, but she came slower, more timidly. She was certainly younger than the other girl, maybe around 11 or 12, with her hair done much simpler and her clothes much more juvenile. She passed by Jeno and (who you assumed to be) his sister, stopping in front of you. “Um, hello,” she said. You smiled, assuming this was when your grand performance was to begin.
“Hello there,” you replied, feeling a surge of confidence run through you. “Soeun, right?”
Her eyes practically doubled in size for a moment, and you hoped that meant your leap-in-the-dark guess had been correct. “Um, yeah. You’re [First], right?”
“That would be me, yes.”
Soeun opened her mouth to speak, but Yeojin quickly cut her off by dragging you into a highly unwelcome hug. You ignored the discomfort, reaching your arms around her and giving her a few awkward pats. “It’s so fun to meet you!” Yeojin squealed, and you briefly wondered how long Jeno had been telling his family about you before he directly told you.
“Yeojin,” Jeno said, a warning-esque tone in his voice. “Lay off a bit.”
You felt her freeze and then she immediately let go of you, practically pushing her off. A hand covered her mouth—her nails were perfectly manicured, done much better than your self-painted ones—and she gasped, and now you felt a bit overwhelmed by her. Soeun, to Yeojin’s side, looked away, her eyes shiny and a bit saddened; while she certainly wasn’t living a life anything similar to yours, you could see yourself in her, a bit.
“Sorry, I forget we’ve never met. You’re, like, big news on the lower grade campus,” Yeojin said. “Among the second years, you’re like a superhero or something. First place without a tutor! Rare, one-in-a-million scholarship student! I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity.”
Well, that was certainly something you didn’t want to hear. Yeojin was already the type of person you couldn’t handle well, if the past few minutes were anything to go off of, and she’d shared mildly upsetting information with you already. You didn’t want to be popular among middle schoolers at all.
“That’s nice, I suppose. Maybe a bit worrying,” you joked, and Yeojin seemed to think you were a comedian by the way she laughed. Jeno looked at you both, obviously sensing your lack of social capability. and chose that moment to switch the attention to Soeun.
“Do you want to lead us to our table, Soeun?” he asked, taking your arm into his once again. Now that you were in the warm, heated hotel, the gesture only made you feel uncomfortable rather than warmed. If you were eating outside, maybe you’d be able to handle any skinship he initiated to make your relationship seem more believable—you supposed that either way, you signed up for this.
Yeojin squealed at you two, though, which made everything about this so much less worth it. After being surrounded by high schoolers and adults for two entire years, you’d forgotten how insufferable 14-year-olds were, and, somehow, Yeojin had managed to assume the worst form of 14-year-old possible. You felt bad for her older self, who would, inevitably, look back on this period of her life with misery rather than fondness.
Soeun took the lead as she was asked to do, shuffling her feet across the marble flooring. It didn’t take long for Yeojin to take the lead, beginning to chatter on about something you managed to tune out pretty quickly. You took the time to gaze at the beauty around you, from intricate flower pots to huge pieces of art that lined the walls. This felt fake, almost, and you wondered how you’d managed to get this lucky with the game of fate. If only a future between you and Jeno felt plausible.
Soeun (more so Yeojin) led you up a set of marble stairs, and then, into a long, dimly lit corridor. It was filled with paintings and lined with the most beautifully-installed marble you’d ever seen. Then, you reached the door at the end, which was made of glass and had insanely intricate carvings on it. Along with that, it had the words “The Aviary” engraved onto the one empty spot among the carvings.
You felt faint. For a moment, you wondered how much Jeno’s parents’ bill would be for this meal, and then you decided to mentally scold yourself for even wondering that in the first place. Yeojin pushed the door open, letting both you and Soeun pass.
The Aviary was, quite possibly, the fanciest restaurant you’d ever been in. It had chandeliers everywhere and thin, walkable carpet on the floors, along with more art that lined every inch of the wall it possibly could. Every table had a pure white table cloth and velvet chairs, each one already perfectly set with a million different utensils and candles that lined the span of it. Soeun continued to lead you deeper into the restaurant. past waiters and tables and windows that showed a more elevated view of Seoul than you were expecting.
You must’ve missed scaling such a massive hill when you were on your way here, mostly due to the internal panic you were fighting off the entire time. You tried to suppress your ogling again, looking towards the floor and hoping you didn’t look like an absolute idiot.
Soeun then led you through a door and into another hallway, this one lined with several doors. She approached the one at the edge once again, and Yeojin beat her to the door again, opening it and waiting for you to enter.
You were instantly hit with the view of Lee Jeno’s father, who looked like your biggest fear. Next to him was his wife, Jeno’s mother, and a few chairs down was a boy who seemed to be about 15 as well, absorbed in his phone and dead to the world.
It kind of felt like you were about to undergo the reckoning, and your final opponents were every relevant religious figure. Every breath that escaped Jeno’s parents’ lips was revered and every blink was well documented, every lost eyelash and every slight movement was taken note of. It’d be accurate to say that Jeno’s parents were more important than the prime minister—they brought in the money and held up the economy, while all the prime minister did was sit and twiddle his fingers.
“You must be [First],” Jeno’s mother said, standing. A small smile graced her features, one that looked and felt apologetic. One glance at the man next to her told you all you needed to know about why she might’ve been apologetic.
“Yes,” you nodded, smiling back. You pulled your arm from Jeno’s, giving her a deep bow; most of the time, you’d learned those wealthier (and older) than you enjoyed the robotic, hardly-genuine signs of respect that most other adults in your life had abandoned. When you stood up straight again, you were pleased to see the impressed glint in her eyes.
“I’m Jeno’s mother,” she introduced, although you found it to be a bit redundant.
“It’s lovely to meet you, ma’am. I’ve heard much about you.”
You hoped she didn’t inquire about any knowledge of their family, as, other than basic facts and events, you knew next to nothing about their personal lives. Jeno’s mother took a seat, motioning to the chairs in front of her and her husband. You allowed Jeno to pull your chair out, internally questioning whether or not anyone had ever pulled your chair out for you.
The velvet seats were more comfortable than any seat you’d ever owned, from your desk chair at school to the lousy, old couch back at your parents' house. You couldn’t imagine how much they’d cost the restaurant, given that every single table had a set of at least four. Even if Jeno’s dad stared at you like you were the grossest, most disgusting thing you’d ever seen, at least you’d get to sit in this chair and eat the restaurant’s food.
“It’s lovely to see you again too, dear,” Mrs. Lee said, giving Jeno a new type of smile. This one was much different than the one she’d offered you—everything about this one carried a mother’s warmth, a mother’s love, drenched in such intense care that nothing could shake it. Jeno could’ve entered this restaurant in his unwashed gym clothes and she would’ve offered the same smile, unchanged and unshaken.
“Mother,” Jeno greeted with a nod. Then, he turned to his father and extended a steady glare. His father glared back, and, as Yeojin and Soeun took their seats next to Sunwoo, a subtle air of war settled over the table. There would be nothing pleasant about this dinner, even if the food was perfect and the view was delightful.
You took the moment of silence to remind yourself that this was not much of a dinner, rather, it was a challenge. A test to see if you were worthy to wed to Jeno one day, and a challenge to see if you could keep up the perfect-soulmate act to void any sort of marriage contract to Nayeong.
“Mr. Lee,” you said, taking the initiative to speak to your strongest opponent. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you, as well. Jeno speaks of you very highly.”
When he looked toward you, your blood ran cold. His stare, now protruding into your eyes rather than the side of your head, was icy and unwelcoming like you’d just beat him in a lawsuit or nothing. He was an unbreakable wall, and you told yourself that you only needed to find the single crack that was caused by love for his eldest son as if it would be easy.
“You’re the academy’s charity case for Jeno’s year, correct?”
Ouch. What an obvious insult, among the many he could’ve thrown at you—you were almost impressed that he didn’t even try to hide his hostility. You’d thought that, at the very least, he’d try to maintain his usual TV persona, but maybe you overestimated your worthiness of receiving that sort of respect. Before you could smile and tell him, yes, you are the charity case, Jeno flared up, ready to spit false fire at his father.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn't call my girlfriend a charity case, Father,” Jeno spat, eyes narrowed. You instinctively put a hand on his shoulder, figuring this would be a good, caring gesture given the situation. Being called somebody’s girlfriend felt foreign, but you supposed it wouldn’t be the best idea to disclose that. After all, this would likely be your one chance to impress him, if you had to guess. You were well acquainted with the idea of being a charity case, hell, you agreed.
“No, he’s right. If they didn’t have to maintain their image, they wouldn’t have the scholarship exams at all,” you said, keeping your eyes on Jeno’s father. Slowly, you dropped your hand from his shoulder, leaning back on the chair and ignoring the pounding of your heart. “Nevertheless, I am fully confident in my abilities. I deserve to be at a school like the academy. Even if I must endure a title like ‘charity case.’”
Jeno’s father turned his eyes towards Jeno and then back at you, the glare never faltering. You wondered how a single man harbored so much malice, and how Jeno saw his father in a good light. He seemed bitter and controlling, angry that his son—his next-of-kin, the boy who would one day be the king of his corporate kingdom—refused to marry a woman he did not know, right out of high school.
He did not say anything in return to your response, rather, picking up his delicately folded, fabric napkin and unraveling it to place on his lap. You mimicked his actions, remembering how Suhyeon once mentioned that you shouldn’t do something until the lead of the table has (among many other things she decided to recite to you one late night, so you could’ve been completely off the mark with that one). However, judging by the way everyone else seemed to do the same shortly after you, you assumed you guessed right.
“Jeno shared that you’re quite the prodigy, though, [First]. I mean, to be able to hold your own amongst children who have top-notch private tutors and spend all their time studying…I couldn’t imagine doing something like that,” Jeno’s mom said, trying to salvage what her husband destroyed. “If you weren’t so busy with your own schoolwork, I’d hire you to tutor the girls.”
“I’m honored you’d entrust me with furthering your children’s education,” you smiled, picking up the glass of water that was filled before you came in. You attempted to hold it as daintily as possible, taking the shortest, most sophisticated sip you could muster.
“Is that not what’s expected of her, though?” Jeno’s father was apparently determined to ruin your day, likely to destroy what little confidence you had and remove you from the academy (and Jeno’s life) completely. “It’s not impressive when she is merely fulfilling what is asked of her.”
You pondered what might’ve put his father on edge so quickly. You’d barely spoken to this man at all, let alone been in the same room as him, and he was already determined to get rid of you. Perhaps that was why he moved the dinner location from his home to here—he didn’t want this to be an official “meet-the-parents” event. He wanted it to be a family dinner without your presence at all.
You figured he would be thrilled to hear that you and his son likely had no future together.
“Is she not going above and beyond? If she was just meeting the scholarship requirements, why is she first place instead of fifth?” Jeno questioned, leaning back in his chair. You looked over, and, from the expression on his face, Jeno seemed actually upset. His ears were tinged red and his face was tight, and, with a quick once over, you could see that his fists were clenched and his shoulders were fairly tight.
To be honest, you couldn’t blame him. If you had to listen to your father reject your soulmate in favor of a random girl you barely knew, you’d be pretty pissed off too, no matter your relationship with your soulmate.
“Because she spends every second of the day with her head in a book, Jeno. Not because she has natural talent, or because she’s the prodigy your school claims she is,” he fired back. If you held any respect for Jeno’s father, you’d be utterly destroyed; luckily, you had no respect for any man that ran a company that was hinged on the work of underpaid laypeople, so you were unscathed by his words. “Nayeong is student council president, holds herself in the top five, does service whenever she can…and your little soulmate is relying on her connection to you to make anything of herself.”
You audibly snorted at that, raising an eyebrow. “I am?” you questioned, crossing your legs. A sick sense of amusement filled your chest, along with a burst of confidence. “With all due respect, sir, I did not aim for my scholarship with the intent of striking gold with my soulmate or significant other. I aimed for it because the only way I can make anything of myself is with my grades, because my mother didn’t give birth to me on a bed of cash.”
Jeno began to speak right after you, not granting any time for his father to reply to you. “Besides,” he said, slamming two pieces of paper—unfolded and crinkled—onto the table. “Nayeong got seventh this year.”
His father scanned over the papers, which you realized were both yours and Lim Nayeong’s transcripts. Yours, from where you sat, had nothing but ones, twos, and the occasional three or four, while hers had fours, fives, and even nines, without a single one in sight. Nayeong’s grades were nothing to be ashamed of given how busy she was with everything else, but next to yours, they didn’t measure up in the slightest.
It made you feel embarrassed. It made you want to say, “there is still not much of a difference between Nayeong and me, I just scored a few points more.”
“So compared to a girl with sevens, a student council position, and a respectable family,” Jeno’s father said slowly, returning to his complete ignorance of you. “You’d rather spend the rest of your life with a poor, unsightly girl who has slightly impressive grades, alcoholic parents, and a drug-addicted brother in prison?”
Your blood ran cold. Jeno’s jaw clenched, and his mother gasped, turning towards her husband and slapping his shoulder. “You promised me you wouldn’t bring that up—” she began but was quickly cut off by Jeno standing so suddenly that his chair fell over, banging against the ground and causing everybody to flinch. You looked up at him, an emptiness spreading through your chest.
“Talk to my girlfriend like that again,” he began, clenching his fists so hard that his hands began to shake. “And I will end you.”
He didn’t waste a moment turning towards the door, throwing it open, and marching out. You stood up quickly, albeit much more gracefully, draping the fabric napkin over the back of your chair and racing out of the room without another word. You didn’t look back, keeping your eyes on Jeno’s shrinking figure and walking as fast as you could without speeding up to a run. You sped through the restaurant, out into the lobby and past all the glitz and glamor of the hotel. By the time you caught up to him, Jeno was standing outside in the empty entry area, typing furiously on his phone.
“You—you didn’t have to blow up like that. I mean, we were just acting, and I can’t say I wasn’t expecting him to know.”
Jeno turned towards you, scoffing. “I just don’t get it.”
“Huh?” You tilted your head, wondering why he sounded so…mean. Angry, even.
“You’re perfect,” he said, looking up at the darkened sky. The lighting from the hotel entrance lit up his face, every feature and every imperfection (although scarce) perfectly on display, but you could’ve sworn the stars were what lit up his eyes. They sparkled like fireworks, the kind that was loud and Earth-shaking. “Everything about you. You’re pretty, you’re perfectly intelligent, you know how to speak to people and you know how to get your point across. You know when to smile and when to not. You know how to meet new people and try new things.”
You were confused. He launched compliment after compliment at you, but he sounded almost…bitter about it. Like he was unhappy you were all those things.
‘Um…” you mumbled, but couldn’t find the words to respond. You just stared, waiting for him to say anything, feeling the cold dive deeper into your skin—under your skin—and each shiver become more intense.
“There’s not a single thing you don’t beat me in but money. So what if you have terrible parents and an awful family, because you’re the picture-perfect poster girl—hell, you’re more than that. You have the perfect underdog story too, and he still hates you. He still prefers that—that witch,” he rambled, looking down and kicking a pebble that was next to his feet. “What does that mean for me? If you’re so terrible, so average despite your grades and your reputation, does that not mean I’m a failure of a son?”
“What? Jeno, I think you’re overreacting—”
“Oh, am I?” he turned, shoving his hands into his blazer pockets. “You’ve been ahead of me from the moment you stepped onto that god-forsaken campus, and you’ve given me, what, math as reparations? Every year, I have to use the excuse that I have the scholarship student to compete with, and that’s why I’m not the perfect top of the class, but he views you as obsolete. Doesn’t that mean I’m worse than obsolete? Huh?”
“Well, other than the fact that you’re agreeing with him,” you said, crossing your arms. “What does it matter what he thinks? Even if he gives his business to one of your siblings, you’ll still be drowning in cash. So what if you get married to Nayeong? Just cheat on her, or something, because, if she’s such a witch,” you paused, emphasizing your distaste with his nickname for her, “won’t she do the same?”
“How are you so okay with this?” he asked, raising his voice in the slightest. “You found out I was your soulmate and you didn’t even try to make a connection. You were okay with me using you to sidestep my father’s plans for me, you were okay with him relentlessly insulting you until it had something to do with your private life—why?”
“Why? Would you like it if a man you’d never met brought up your terrible at-home life and decided to equate it to you being terrible? I know my strengths, I know who I am, but it’s not very nice to be compared to 4 siblings who didn’t even attempt university and parents who barely work,” you replied, wondering why he was getting so upset. Minutes ago, he was spewing lines straight out of a drama, but now he was mobilizing against you, too. The worst part was that you couldn’t match his energy at all—maybe it was reactionary to the fact that you no longer had to sit through a dinner with his parents, but you couldn’t bring yourself to feel angry.
You were realizing that Jeno viewed you as a rival, while you never had. Before the past week, he was just another golden boy, one of the boys Suhyeon hated, one of the fancy popular boys you’d never talk to. It seemed as though he’d viewed you as an opponent from your first round of exams.
You felt bad, for some reason—guilty even. As if this was something you were meant to feel guilty for. You couldn’t imagine Jeno had been exactly thrilled when he found out you were his soulmate—judging by how long it took him to tell you, he wasn’t thrilled at all—and yet he was acting like you’d ruined his life.
You didn’t get it.
“You’re ridiculous.” Jeno laughed breathily, pacing around a bit. All you could do was watch, even when a car pulled up in front of you, likely for him to make his grand escape. “Jaemin was wrong. This was never going to work.”
“Did you ever think it was?” you rose a brow, suppressing a shiver that was beginning to creep down your back. “Sorry, Jeno, but we were destined for destruction. Even if we tried to foster something, that wouldn’t stop my parents from approaching the tabloids, and it wouldn’t stop the tabloids from painting me as a money-grabbing asshole. Count your blessings, okay? You’ll have everything and more. A loveless marriage is the least you need to deal with.”
He spun towards you, narrowing his eyes. “Just because I have money or a fancy house does not mean my life will be easy.”
You widened your eyes, nodding slowly. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”
“Just—just get in the car. Leave, please.”
You turned towards the sleek, black car that was parked beside you. Without another word, you walked towards it, throwing the door open and basking in the heat that emanated out of it. You got in, slamming the door behind you, and watched Jeno get smaller and smaller as the driver drove you farther and farther away.
vi. instead of being banished to tartarus,
Suhyeon knows.
You can tell by the way she interacts with you, by the way she avoids you in the halls and stays out of the dorm until she absolutely can’t anymore. You can tell by the way she doesn’t interrupt your incessant studying, reignited by the end of break and the beginning of a new term, with mindless hypotheticals and useless facts. You can tell by the way she slips into her fight-or-flight persona when she speaks to you, the same person when she’s near the golden boys.
Reasonably, you’ve also begun to believe she’s not telling you something. Maybe you’ve always believed that, but it’s to a much larger extent now; there’s something important she’s not telling you. You’ve also concluded she was aware Jeno was your soulmate, but, for whatever reason, she chose not to tell you.
You can’t bring yourself to feel angry, no matter what you do, no matter how much you think about it. It stresses you out, how numb you feel in regards to your situation, how numb you’ve felt for the past two years or so. All your energy, and, by extension, all your emotions, have been poured into your grades and your social standing among professors and academic greats. There’s nothing left over to feel something for your own misgivings, unless it’s about school or your future.
It’s miserable here. Everything is miserable. But, if you give up, if you stop going, you’ll be trapped under the thumb of your parents forever, and you cannot live like that. No matter what, you cannot live like that.
“I see what you’re saying, [First],” Dr. Choi hummed, writing a few things down on her clipboard. “If you want me to be entirely honest with you, there’s not a single student on this campus that’s gone through anything as tough as you’re going through. Even if they’re being forced into an arranged marriage, even if they’re underestimated and outcasted by their parents. At the end of the day, unless they’re kicked out—which they won’t be—nobody here will ever know ‘struggle’ like you do.”
You want to feel vindicated by Dr. Choi’s words, but you simply can’t. You feel tired, overworked and underappreciated, and want nothing more than to return to your dorm room and go to bed.
“But, this ‘numbness’ you’re feeling…you say you’ve felt like this for a while?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m not one to deny things—it’s not my job to deny things—but I can safely say that’s likely not the case. Before last week, you had a good work-life balance…mostly…and you were happy. You never came to my office because you didn’t need to,” Dr. Choi said, causing you to look up at her from the coffee table between you. Her gaze was distressing, halfway implying she knew something you didn’t.
“What do you mean?”
“It feels similar, sure, because the only thing stressing you out then was school. Now, there’s two things, but only one is stressing you out…and you say you can’t feel anything else. It’s because you’re rejecting your soulmate.”
“Excuse me?”
“As far-fetched as it sounds, it’s true. Biologists like to say the concept of soulmates is nigh useless, and that the only thing denoting it is the little marking on your body, but…cognitive science says otherwise. Think of Jeno as half of your brain—the feeling part of your brain—and you’re the functioning part. He’s feeling too many emotions right now, and you’re feeling none, while he’s likely having trouble finding the motivation to do much of anything,” she explained. “It’s certainly not impossible to live without your soulmate, but rejecting them is a bit different. You’ll get over it one day, or you won’t, but for now it’ll be awful.”
You stayed silent, looking back down at the coffee table. You supposed it made sense, and she was right, you hadn’t worried about much other than your grades for the past two years. Your parents and family were always buzzing in the background, heightening your school stress by proxy, especially right now.
You didn’t like seeing Dr. Choi because it felt like she could never understand you, but perhaps she was making a solid point right now.
“So I just have to wait?”
“Yes. But, if you want my honest opinion, I don’t think anyone should attempt to reject their soulmate at 17,” she sighed, writing something else down on her clipboard. “You don’t know what love is, or what this is supposed to feel like. You feel like the world is ending because you’re not having the ‘love at first sight’ situation the TV tells you about. Try to form a relationship with him, even if it’s just a friendship, and don’t cut him out entirely. You’ll probably regret it later on.”
You doubted that, but you nodded like you were agreeing with her. She put her clipboard down on the table, allowing you to see your printed name and then tons of incomprehensible scribbles that only Dr. Choi could read. “Time’s up for today, unfortunately, as I have another student coming in. Don’t tell her I said she doesn’t know what struggle is, okay?”
You smiled hollowly, nodding. You stood up from the couch, picking up a hard candy from the bowl she kept on the table, considering that to be your reward for coming into the counselor’s office in the first place.
It was too bad you’d disregard all of her advice. At the end of the day, you were a teenager, and anything an adult said felt like an utter lie. You approached the office door, sliding it open and emerging into the hall. You wished the counselor’s office hadn’t been so far across campus, because now you had a far walk through the cold courtyard back to the dorm.
If they’d just put it in one of the class buildings rather than in the faculty building, your life would be much easier.
“Oh, [First]?”
You froze, turning your head to see the one-and-only Na Jaemin behind you. He sped up a bit, stopping as he reached your side. “Long time no see, genius. How are you?”
“Fine.”
You proceeded walking, as did he, keeping himself in step next to you. “Out of the counselor’s office? I heard once that they require you to go at least once a month for, y’know, academic stress. Rumor has it a scholarship student once offed himself because everything got too difficult.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the rumor. It’s not required but every teacher encourages it more than I’d like them to,” you explained, unwrapping the pink hard candy and popping it in your mouth. Behind you, you heard the telling squeak of the counselor’s office door, and, out of curiosity, you turned to see who was going in after you.
Lim Nayeong. The coincidence could’ve made you laugh.
“It’s required for the student council, though. I guess being the quasi-leaders of the school is a bit harder than being the public reputation,” you joked, feeling the slightest bit relieved hearing Jaemin laugh in response.
“I guess so,” he replied, stopping you both at the elevator rather than the stairs. You sighed, suppressing the urge to say the stairs were always faster as he’d already pressed the shiny ‘down’ button. You could’ve walked off without him, but you weren’t an asshole, and if he wanted to walk with you, he could. The doors opened quickly, letting off a monotonous ‘ding’ as a result. Jaemin held his arm out, waiting for you to step inside before he did.
He was very gentlemanly, and you briefly considered that he was showing you his TV persona as an apology for not getting to receive Jeno’s father’s. Or, maybe, he was extending an apology from his own father, who somehow heard about how terribly you were treated.
“Look, Jeno didn’t mean it. He’s stressed about the thought of being tied down the moment he graduates, and he’s looking for every single way out. He thought you were a fool-proof plan, but he underestimated how far his father could go, and…well…”
It was more reasonable for Jaemin to be apologizing for Jeno. You weren’t very surprised that this was his main reason for talking to you, but you’d wished it would’ve been something more fulfilling than a secondary apology from Jeno.
“I don’t care. He can do what he wants, I’m not going to tell him how he can and can’t feel.”
“Okay, I’m gonna cut straight to the point,” Jaemin said, turning so that his whole body could face you. You gave him a judgmental look, wholly uninterested in whatever he was going to say to you. “Don’t reject Jeno now, all right? Wait until summer or something. For you, you just feel a little off, or, rather, you feel nothing at all, but this is practically overhauling everything in Jeno’s life. He nearly unfriended Donghyuck earlier because of a simple quip, and he can barely do anything without getting upset over it.”
“Do you think I can just…stop? I don’t feel any connection to him,” you said, hoping the elevator would hurry up. You cursed it for being so slow and old. “I don’t know what to tell you. I…I just don’t know.”
The lights on the elevator went off, and it jerked to a stop. You looked up, eyebrows furrowing. “You’re kidding me. Holy shit. You’re kidding me.”
You pressed your back to the wall of the elevator, sliding down to the floor. Jaemin didn’t say anything, but he pulled his phone out pretty quickly, typing frantically. You slid yours out as well, shocked to see a couple of texts from Suhyeon.
“hey where are you rn? we were just called down into the lounge,” read the first text. “god are you at the counselor’s office still? they’re not telling us what’s going on.”
You typed a quick response, saying you were still in the faculty building but the power went out as you were in the elevator. You hoped she didn’t question your elevator usage, putting your phone back into your pocket and ignoring the buzzing that ensued.
Jaemin was typing furiously from what you could see, the light from his phone being the only thing illuminating the elevator. He furrowed his brows, turning to look down at you. “Have you heard anything about what’s happening from anyone? None of my friends know, but they’ve all been gathered together for a while.”
“All I heard was that nobody was saying what’s happening.”
The moment you stopped talking, the lights flicked on, and the elevator began moving. You stood up, furrowing your brows as the floor counter turned from a “2” to a “1.”
When the doors opened, you were hit with a wave of heat and pure, black smoke. You began choking on the air, but Jaemin was fast acting and began to jam the “close door” button, along with the third floor button—where you’d just come from. The doors didn’t close fast enough, and the smoke began to spread into the elevator, making your eyes water and your lungs hurt. By the time the doors finally closed, there was enough smoke to keep you coughing, even if your shirt was haphazardly thrown over your mouth and nose.
The elevator began moving up, and a wave of panic blew through you. It broke through whatever invisible filter that had been causing you to feel numb for the past week or so, and a self-composed prayer fell past your lips, between coughs, over and over again: “please, go up, please, go up.”
The elevator seemed to move at a snail’s pace, but, as long as it was moving, you didn't care. Given how you’d just been up on the third floor, there was absolutely no way the fire had spread that far—the only issue was that there wasn’t exactly a staircase leading from the third floor down to the ground of the snowy outdoors.
“Someone’s setting the school on fire,” Jaemin said between coughs. “Some guy. Most everybody’s evacuated, but they apparently forgot us.”
“Maybe because they couldn’t get inside?” you shot back, feeling a wave of relief—not nearly strong enough to overpower the panic—when the “4” appeared on the screen. “Why the fuck didn’t the fire alarm go off?”
“Because this building is ancient and they’ve never thought to replace it,” Jaemin half-hissed. The doors opened to reveal a smokeless third floor, but, upon walking out, you learned the heat had reached the floor along with the scent of smoke.
“The counselor’s door is still closed,” you pointed out, not wasting a moment to begin walking that way. “They’re either still in there, or they found a way out.”
You refused to consider that they’d left and closed the door behind them, not wanting to believe you were stuck in a burning building with no way out. Suddenly, Jaemin slipped in a way that he slid, falling straight onto his back. You looked down at the floor, realizing it had been completely doused in what you could only assume was oil.
“No time to wait!” you exclaimed, bending down and grabbing Jaemin’s arm. You practically yanked him up from the floor, dragging him along with you while he stumbled trying to keep his footing. You made it to the counselor room’s door, throwing it open and rejoicing to the heavens that there was an open window.
You rushed towards it, letting go of Jaemin, who went back and slammed the door shut. You looked out of it, noticing Dr. Choi on the roof below it, helping Lim Nayeong get down to the ground. “Doctor!” you screeched, grabbing her attention. She looked up the moment Nayeong had made it to the ground, standing and turning towards you.
“Come on!” she yelled, waving her hands at you. Jaemin came up behind you, beginning to help you shove yourself through the small window in front of you. You mentally thanked him for lifting you up, allowing for you to go feet first rather than head first. You let yourself fall down to the rooftop, cringing at the pain in your ankle as you landed. You
Dr. Choi rushed towards you, looking up at Jaemin, who began to extract himself from the building as well.
“What’s going on?” you asked, coughing out more of the smoke you inhaled earlier.
“Someone’s trying to burn down the school and they started with the faculty building first,” she said, a little too calm for the situation at hand. Jaemin landed in front of her, also wincing at the pressure it put on his legs. “We need to keep going. Come on.”
Nayeong was waiting at the bottom, standing next to a teacher you’d never seen before. The ground seemed far, too far for you to be happy about it, but you were assuming the way Nayeong made it down was thanks to the bushes that would’ve cushioned her fall.
“You’re just coming down from the second story!” Nayeong yelled, reaching up at you. Dr. Choi gave you a slight push on the shoulder, to which you looked back at her like she was crazy. Jaemin didn’t wait, lowering himself to the roof. You watched as he, facing towards you, slid himself off, hanging onto the edge for a second. Nayeong rushed over, reaching up to help him safely get down to the ground.
“Kill me,” you mumbled, walking over to the edge. Slowly, you repeated Jaemin’s steps, feeling like you could barely move.
“You can do it, [First]!” Nayeong yelled, and you hoped she was holding her hands up like she had been before. You pushed yourself off, feeling the edge of the roof dig into your fingers as you began to hang off the edge. As fast as you’d begun hanging, though, two hands were on your calves, beckoning for you to let go.
So, you did. You hit the ground with a quiet crunch thanks to the snow, but an unexpected shooting pain traveled up your ankle and calf, causing you to nearly fall over into the snow. Jaemin caught you, but Nayeong looked at you, furrowing her brows.
“Are you okay?”
“I think my ankle is sprained,” you mumbled hoarsely, steadying yourself and pushing yourself away from Jaemin. You took your phone out of your pocket, staring at a wave of texts you’d received from Suhyeon, begging you to tell her you were okay and that you’d made it out. You shakily typed a short “I’m fine” before shoving your phone back into your coat.
Dr. Choi made it down from the roof, and both her and the teacher began walking in the direction of the parking lot. “Come on!” Dr. Choi yelled, leading you all away from the building that was still going up in flames. Your legs shook as the panic began to subside, and a mere glance back held an aura of complete death. The first two floors of the faculty building were covered in flames, likely not an ounce left of what once was in there.
The three students—you, Nayeong, and Jaemin—were led into Dr. Choi’s car, while the other teacher went and found his own. Jaemin sat in the front while you awkwardly sat next to Nayeong, trying to process what you had just gone through.
“I cannot believe,” Dr. Choi began, starting her car and wasting no time in flooring it out of the parking lot. As you drove out onto the street next to the school, you caught sight of a fire truck in the distance, speeding towards the school. “They didn’t even try to tell us. I thought you were gone for good, [First]. Oh my god.”
Nayeong didn’t say anything, keeping her hands in her lap and her eyes out the window. You wondered what would happen to your belongings, but you weren’t nervous about it reaching the second year building when it was on the farthest edge of campus.
Dr. Choi asked Jaemin to dial a number on her phone, to which he politely obliged. You took your phone out again, which yielded several texts from Suhyeon once again and a single text from someone else.
The moment the recipient of Dr. Choi’s call picked up, she began to scream at them, but you were easily able to drown out the yelling with your focus on the text on your phone.
“Are you okay?”
You wondered, briefly, where Jeno got your number.
“I’m fine.”
vii. zeus enslaved atlas
It took a total of two hours to arrive at the hotel in which the school evacuated all the students too, and you wondered why they had to pick a fancy hotel rather than one of the respectable ones that were actually near campus. You were met with a personal greeting from the principal, who was trying to save his ass after essentially leaving the four of you (and more, most likely) for dead.
Dr. Choi didn’t waste a second to begin screaming at him some more, but you blew past her with Nayeong, who still hadn’t spoken to you but was sticking to your side practically. There was a sort of trauma-bonding between you two now, apparently, which was a bit ironic given both of your situations.
You’d been placed in a hotel room with Suhyeon, as according to your current rooming arrangements, and were told to wait in your rooms until there was more information to be distributed amongst the students. Nayeong parted from you when this happened, taking her key and disappearing off into a corridor. You chose to take the other one, walking past several students who had disregarded the plea to stay in the rooms and were now gossiping in the halls.
“I heard they might have to close the school down for a year,” somebody whispered, causing you to pause and nearly stop walking. Instead of stopping in the middle of the hall, you slipped your phone from your pocket, leaning against a wall and scrolling through random apps.
“Seriously? I guess that won’t be an issue, most of us can just transfer to another private school, but what about international and scholarship students?”
“I’m sure international students will be fine, but rumor has it the school might drop scholarship students—partial and entire. They’re scrambling to make sure their library is still intact, and, if it isn’t, they’ll need hundreds of thousands of won to restore it. They’ll never keep some upper middle class loser if it means they can keep their pride and joy safe and sound.”
There was a certain ache in your heart at that, but you were tired, and you felt like collapsing. It was funny how, just a couple weeks ago, you were panicking over your finals and doing anything to hang onto your 65-million scholarship, but, now, you didn’t feel anything. At least if you got dropped, it wouldn’t be a quasi-expulsion. You’d still have kept your pride, and your parents could complain to the school about how they had to actually pay for you, now.
You continued through the corridor, skipping the elevator for the stairs. You’d halfway forgotten what floor you were on—you’d either been told room 314 or room 414—but you weren’t too opposed to simply checking both. Holding your key up to the scanner would be enough to know, and it was unlikely the occupants of the other room would even know you tried.
Upon your ascent up the stairs, you were forced to remember the slight pain in your ankle, which had subsided greatly over the past few hours, and part of you wished you had used the elevator. The other part of you said you’d never take an elevator again, even if a gun was to your head. Each step was a testament to what you’d experienced over the past couple of years, culminating in these fleeting moments in which you had nothing left.
In a week, you supposed your dorm would be cleaned out, and you’d be hugging Suhyeon goodbye for the last time. Maybe a reporter would approach you, ask why the closing seemed so sudden, and you would tell them you almost burnt to death because they were too lazy to fix their smoke alarms. You’d tell them that the conditions to meet your scholarship were ridiculous, not because their students were too smart, but because their student’s parents had a million personal tutors at their beck and call.
You emerged onto the third floor, hit in the face with a strong scent of detergent and cleaning supplies, and began trudging through the halls. Given the couple of familiar faces—classmates you’d never spoken to before—standing next to a decorative table, you hoped the 300s were the second year floor and you didn’t have to walk up another flight.
The space between rooms was insane, and you couldn’t imagine what might be inside. A kitchen, a couch, and an entire fireplace, anything that a rich person required in their hotel room. They were much bigger than the dorms that people paid millions to live in, and this was all paid for by the school. For a brief moment, you considered your fancy, rich-person academy to be a scam—it was, you always knew it was—and wondered why they couldn’t build dorms like this. As you walked through the corridor, you realized how you barely had made it past five rooms, and wished they had picked a normal hotel for you to temporarily live in as they figured out how to break the news of your removal from the school.
You turned a corner, admiring a pretty bouquet in a terrible intricate vase that brought a smile to your face. You stopped, reaching your hands out to feel whether or not they were real and letting out a gasp of surprise when they actually were. The flowers were vibrant, yellows and purples and pinks all tied together with a wisp of baby’s breath, and perfectly taken care of; they couldn’t have been cut more than a day ago. The hotel must’ve had some sort of private gardens, as there was no way these were bought from a random flower shop down the street.
“[First]?”
The flowers lost their color, all at once. You stood up straight, looking towards Lee Jeno, who’d just so happened to find you right now.
“Jeno.”
He stared at you for a moment, his hair messy and his roots just beginning to show. He was dressed in lounge clothes, a t-shirt and black, baggy pants that looked about three sizes too big. If he didn’t say anything soon, you’d continue your trek to room 314, brushing past him and leaving him to stare at the blank wall behind you.
“Can we talk?”
“Okay.”
You turned towards him completely, crossing your arms over your chest. He cleared his throat, looking down at the floor for a moment. “Like, not in the hallway. My room…is just down the hall.”
“All right then.”
He stared at you for a moment more, halfway shocked you agreed. Maybe it was a side effect of the events of today—for a brief moment, you realized you didn’t know what time it was—from your counseling to the hours-long car ride you endured after what was likely the most traumatic moment of your life. You wanted to disappear, fall into a rabbit hole and wake up in Wonderland, where nobody would know who you were.
When he began to walk down the hall, turning his back to you, you followed, bidding your pretty bouquet goodbye. You walked deeper into the corridor, stopping at a room labeled “309.” It was at the edge of the corridor, with another hall connecting to it. You assumed 314 was down there, so it would at least be a short trip to your assumed hotel room.
Jeno tapped his keycard on the lock, a loud click accompanied by a green light resounding through your ears. He pushed the door open, heading inside and holding it open for you. As you walked in, you noticed an unfamiliar presence on the couch—Lee Donghyuck, the only golden boy you’d met before. During your first year, you’d done a group project together, you’d let him off for not doing any of his work, and you ended up vouching for him in front of the teacher; as a result, he’d gifted you a couple of candy bars and a swift thank you. “I’ll return the favor at some point,” he’d said, walking off without another word.
“Out,” Jeno said, keeping eye contact with Donghyuck. He stared up at his friend, eyebrow raised, before glancing at you.
“‘Sup, fire girl,” he said, standing from the couch. Donghyuck turned his attention to Jeno, giving him a stern, very-unlike-him glare. “You promised me.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.”
“Do you?”
With that, Donghyuck brushed past Jeno and you, emerging out into the corridor. The door slammed behind him, causing you to flinch somewhat. Jeno took a seat on the couch, right where Donghyuck was sitting, and motioned to the seat next to him. You obliged, sitting as far away from him as you possibly could and staring at him until he spoke.
“Are you doing okay?”
“No.”
“I’m…sorry you got left behind. I won’t lie, Suhyeon started crying so hard she needed to take her own car, and that worried me. A lot. I thought about things.”
“And?”
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, looking down at his hands. “I wasn’t nice. I overreacted and was overly jealous. It’s my fault, so I apologize.”
“I understand,” you nodded. “If it’s any consolation, I’m jealous of you too.”
You leaned back into the couch, sighing. “Your family is so…picture perfect,” you began, trying to find the words to articulate your thoughts. “Sure, you have altercations, peculiar ones at that, but I could tell you were close. From the way you hugged Yeojin, to the way your mother looked at you…you’re living a dream I could only hope to have one day.”
He stayed silent, letting you talk. You figured you deserved as much, given how your day has been. “My parents are awful. I was the kid they didn’t want, and all my siblings are a lot older than me. As your dad said, one of them ended up in jail. I depend on this school to keep me away from them, so I can have a better life now rather than when I move out. Even then, I know they’ll harass me forever if I end up with a nice job with good money. You’ll never experience that.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, but you shook your head, rejecting it.
“No reason to be. I can’t change who my family is, but I can change the direction my life goes. That’s all that matters.”
You felt Jeno’s eyes on you, and, when you looked over, you found him looking at you. He was pretty, as he’d always been, even when he was dressed for bed. His hair fell into his eyes, and you mentally visualized him with black hair—he looked nice no matter what.
“You’re a very beautiful person, [First].” The comment brought heat to your cheeks and caused your heart to skip a beat, and you contemplated whether or not this was what Dr. Choi meant by not rejecting him. “If…if there’s any way, I’d like to make this work. I’d like to make us work.”
You sighed, biting the inside of your cheek. “I suppose that would be nice. I was unreasonable before, mostly because I don’t want people lessening my achievements because of who my soulmate is. Sorry.”
“I get it. My mom always told me that would happen if my soulmate ended up to be somebody ‘fiery,’ but I guess you aren’t really that,” he hummed. “You’re nice. Warm. I see why people speak so kindly about you.”
“Well…thanks. I guess.”
You looked forward, and a thought crossed your mind. Your heart dropped slightly as you deliberated whether or not it would be smart to tell him what you heard in the halls. Realizing that you’d likely be very far away from him if it ended up to be true, you knew that you absolutely had to if you wanted to create a relationship with your soulmate.
“Rumor has it the school’s gonna be canceling scholarships to bring more money in for repairs and reconstruction.”
“What? They wouldn’t cancel yours, right? I mean, you’re the only full-scholarship on campus—they can’t just kick you, can they?” he asked, scooting a bit closer to you unconsciously.
“Rumor says they’re going to cancel everybody’s scholarships,” you whispered, suddenly realizing the weight of that statement. “I’ll probably try to move in with my aunt in Seoul, go to fancy-yet-free prep school…if they do cancel it. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around.”
Jeno went quiet, and you desperately held back the tears that were now pooling in your eyes. “I worked so hard for this, and it’ll all go to waste. Every bit of it.”
You hated how choked up you got at the thought of it, how pathetic you felt. But, Jeno didn’t seem to mind, as he hesitantly pulled you into a hug. For a moment, you both stayed there, basking in the fulfillment that came with being with your soulmate. You wondered if this is how your parents were before they grew into the monsters they were today—a couple of teenagers in love, happy with just being with one another.
“It’s okay,” he said, rubbing your back softly. “We’ll get through it together. I’ll spend any amount of money to see you frequently, I’ll get out of class, whatever we need to build. I’d pay for your tuition, but…I don’t think you’d like that.”
“Not really, no,” you mumbled, shoving your head into the crook of his neck. “I just want to feel stable, for once in my life.”
“And you will, one day. I promise you will.”
You pulled away from him, staring at him for a moment. With a heavy sigh, you stood up, with him following close behind you. “I need to go see Suhyeon,” you said. The moment you said that, there was a sudden change in the air of the room—Jeno looked nervous, almost, as if you’d caught him in the act of something. “Go do that. I’ll see you soon.”
“See you.”
You walked towards the door, giving Jeno one last look before emerging into the hall. You made sure to stop the door from slamming behind you, cushioning it with your hands. As you did, though, Lee Donghyuck appeared back in the hall, stopping when he saw you. The door clicked closed, and you both stared at each other, waiting for someone to speak.
He was wearing his uniform, but it was half taken apart, with a couple of his buttons unbuttoned and his tie loosened around his neck. His shirt was untucked and his blazer was nowhere to be found, and you assumed he’d done it pretty recently, given the lack of wrinkling. He held a bag of M&Ms that he likely got from a vending machine somewhere in the hotel.
“Did he tell you?”
“You mean apologize? Yeah.”
Donghyuck sighed, popping a couple M&Ms in his mouth. “Okay, don’t get mad at me for being the bearer of bad news. Jaemin was convinced Jeno shouldn’t tell you, but this might be the one time Jaemin is in the wrong. I know you’ve had the worst day of all worst days, but you cannot go any farther without knowing this. ‘Kay?”
You furrowed your brows, a sudden feeling of anxiety overtaking you. “What? What are you talking about?”
Even Donghyuck looked nervous, from how he fiddled with the hem of his shirt with his open hand to the way he shifted his weight between his feet.
“Until about six months ago, Suhyeon and Jeno were a thing.”
All the air was sucked out of your lungs at once, and your brain shut down immediately.
“She found out you two were soulmates about a year ago, but didn’t back down until Jeno’s dad shut it down because of his new deal with Nayeong’s family.”
You didn’t say anything. You just stared at him, wide-eyed and shocked. “They still talked until a month-and-a-half ago, when Jeno decided to shut it down himself. Chenle knocked some sense into him, and Suhyeon was essentially taken out of our circle. She did everything in her power to not let you know about her friendship with us, and avoided the shit out of us whenever you were around. When pale in the face and all that shit.”
You stayed quiet. A feeling of betrayal began to bubble in your stomach.
“Don’t…blame her or anything, though. Even if she was being an asshole, even if what she did was the worst possible thing she could’ve done, she and Jeno had been fostering it for nearly three years. Love—if you could even call it that—makes people stupid. She wasn’t thinking, and neither was Jeno, until Chenle snapped at him.”
Were you a rebound, or a way for him to stay close to Suhyeon without his dad knowing? Were you his way of getting over what you had stolen from him? How could Suhyeon do this to you, after forcing her fixation with soulmates on you for so long?
You turned away from the corner that you assume led to yours and Suhyeon’s room, walking past Donghyuck with a newfound speed. You wracked your mind for her room number, assuming that she must’ve been in 414 given the likely year-separation of the floors.
You heard Donghyuck’s voice echo through the halls, a quiet “what the fuck is wrong with you, man?” and the loud slamming of his hotel door. You followed it up by yanking the door to the stairs open, letting it fly shut behind you as you began a rapid ascent. You ignored the pain in your ankle, the way your legs wanted to shut down, and practically burst onto the fourth floor.
You followed the same path you had before, and, sure enough, the corridors followed the same pattern. You took turn after turn, saw identical-bouquet after identical-bouquet, before stopping in front of room 414.
Three swift knocks, and a step back.
The door opened.
“[First]?” Nayeong said, furrowing her brows. Traces of crying were left on her face, from mascara-lined tear stains to red cheeks and puffy eyes. Seeing her ignited something in you, an intense sort of emotion that you hadn’t felt in so, so long.
And, as you burst out into tears, Nayeong dragged you into a hug and began sobbing with you.
viii. to hold up the earth on his shoulders for all eternity.
The dress you were wearing was absolutely, irrevocably uncomfortable.
Several hidden wires dug into your torso, a product of the bodice of the thing, and you swore you were bleeding in an area where the fabric rubbed against you wrong. Nevertheless, you wore it proudly, hair done up and makeup perfectly complimenting your features. After all, it wasn’t every day you got to attend the wedding of your soulmate—to someone other than you, that is.
Lee Donghyuck sat next to you, dressed in a matching suit to your dress and his leg crossed over the other. A toothpick hung out of his mouth, and he anxiously chewed on it, tapping his fingers against his knee as he waited. You’d both come in support of the couple and to try and masquerade as a couple to Jeno’s father, who was apparently very displeased when he saw your name on the invite list.
“Nayeong told me she’s considering eloping with her girlfriend,” you hummed, once again adjusting your sitting position so that your dress stopped trying to kill you. “Disappearing into a small, European country. Changing her name and getting married. Apparently, her girlfriend has the tickets bought and everything.”
“And why doesn’t she?”
“She doesn’t want to force the marriage-of-convenience role onto her sister,” you sighed, shaking your head. “What a superhero she is.”
“You know, if you’d had another year at the academy, you probably would be the bride here,” Donghyuck suggested, turning towards you. You received a glare from the woman sitting a couple seats to your left, who then whispered something to her husband.
“Not so loud. We’re gonna get kicked out.”
“I’m not lying, though. Since Jaemin nearly beat me up, I’ve never been yelled at more in my life—I had to help Jeno with his comeback plan. We got it done and then we went to Suhyeon’s room and you weren’t there and she looked at Jeno like he was satan’s incarnate.”
“Suhyeon and I weren’t going to last as friends anyway. Too different. We clung to each other too much, too. Recipe for disaster.”
“Right? Anyway, if the school hadn’t been so quick to decide to cut you off, you’d be the bride. Hundred percent.”
“Where is Jaemin, anyway?” you asked, cutting the conversation topic short. According to Nayeong’s perfectly curated seating chart, he was meant to be sitting next to you right now, blabbing away about how Donghyuck ruined Jeno’s one chance at happiness by telling you about Suhyeon rather than letting Jeno do it.
“Jaemin is right here,” he said, taking the seat next to you. You and Donghyuck looked over at him, instantly picking up on the panickedness he seemed to be exuding. “And nobody can find the bride and groom. Jeno’s dad is on a warpath right now, along with Nayeong’s mother.”
“Ooh, Europe worked out,” you joked, holding up your fist. Donghyuck bumped yours against his, chuckling as well.
“Made me call him a million times, and he didn’t pick up. I suggested getting you to call Nayeong, but they looked so appalled at the suggestion that I could’ve told them I was in love with Jeno and we got married in Vegas last night.”
“That was descriptive. Did you?”
Jaemin scoffed, not getting a straight answer. Instead, he tucked his phone in his blazer pocket, focusing on you. “Nayeong’s probably on the plane by now, but we don’t know where Jeno is.”
“Okay. And?”
“He’s suggesting you should go find him, dumbshit,” Donghyuck clarified, flicking your shoulder. You put your hand on it, pretending like he’d just stabbed you in the arm, but Jaemin quickly slapped your shoulder to avoid you causing a bit of a scene.
“I don’t even know his number. Deleted it from my phone about twenty minutes after Donghyuck broke the Jesu news to me.”
Donghyuck snorted, leaning back into his chair. In passing, he said, “No way you gave them a ship name,” but Jaemin ignored his comment pretty readily.
“Good news! I have it memorized. Give me your phone.”
Jaemin didn’t wait for you to hand it to him, simply snatching it up off your lap and unlocking it (you weren’t sure where he got the password, but you wouldn’t question it). He began typing what you assumed to be his phone number without even thinking about it.
“You sure you didn’t get married in Vegas?”
“Positive,” Jaemin said, handing the phone back to you. He scooped up your purse from the ground, shoving it into your arms and proceeding to point towards a set of doors off to the side of the banquet hall. “Go out there and down the hall. Door at the end goes to the back parking lot, where Jeno parked earlier. He’s either out there or waiting for someone worth it to call him, and someone worth it would be you.”
“And what am I gonna say?”
“I don’t know,” Jaemin said, acting like you’d asked him the most insane question in the world. “Figure it out yourself. Update me. Hyuck and I will hold down the fort until we hear from you.”
You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to focus on you for a moment. A part of you wished you’d faded into oblivion after high school; being who you were, your merit reached about every end of the world. You lived in an academic spotlight, gaining the attention of universities both near and far. Jeno never came to visit you at your aunt’s house like he had shallowly promised, right before he missed his one chance to tell you the truth.
You stood up, and began your power walk to the door. Now that his fiancé was on her way to a small, European country and likely had all the assets she needed to become untraceable, Jeno would have to deal with the wrath of his father, who would feed him the same “I’m not mad, just disappointed” spiel.
You pushed the door open, hanging your bag off your shoulder and wishing your dress wasn’t so uncomfortable. Sure enough, a text came in from Nayeong—a selfie of her and her girlfriend, whom you had never met, in a plane. She was still fully prepared for marriage, only missing the wedding dress; her hair was perfectly done, the tiara was still there, and her makeup was untouched. Her girlfriend looked much more relaxed, makeupless and hair spread about.
They looked happy. So, as a result, you were happy, and could only hope she would tell you which small, European country she was living in so you could visit. Another text came in, this one from your mother, but you ignored it and continued out into the parking lot.
There was only one car that was running, and it was parked in a corner. It was black and the windows were tinted to high heaven, and you could only assume that would be where the missing groom was. You marched through the parking lot, repeating a mantra of self-support in your mind. This was one of those situations where you should’ve been anxious, but you couldn’t feel a thing; you’d grown used to not feeling anything over the years, but, in situations like these, it always felt uncomfortable.
You stopped a little bit before the car, making sure you were out of sight. You stared for a moment, blinking a couple of times and trying to muster up any sort of anxiety, but you could only manage a small kick in the bottom of your stomach. With a sigh, you approached.
You opened the car door, which was shockingly unlocked, and got into the passenger’s seat. Jeno didn’t turn to look at you, just drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring forward. “Can you take me to my apartment? If the wedding isn’t happening, I don’t want to sit in this dress any longer.”
He didn’t waste a moment to put the car in reverse, backing out of the spot with ease. He put a hand on the back of your seat, turning his whole body to look out of the back window even though he had one of those backup cameras. You wondered if he was trying to impress you, but found it unlikely given how unhappy he seemed.
When he managed to back out completely and was forced to turn his focus to the road, you took the chance to give him a once-over. You hadn’t seen Jeno since a banquet two years ago, where you’d been invited after one of your professors insisted you had to share your paper. You’d mingled with people in much higher places than you, smiling and discussing things you didn't care about, barely speaking about your academic ventures. Jeno had been there, too, hanging off Nayeong’s arm like he’d once done to you.
They spent the whole night gossiping, sitting together and whispering about things you couldn’t imagine. Back then, when he was 20 years old, his hair had still been blonde and he had still carried that gold boy demeanor he loved so much. Now, his hair was pitch black, and he gave off the energy of someone who was completely and utterly in control of his life.
Judging by the way he blatantly ignored the people who’d begun running after his car, you assumed the energy mirrored the truth. He turned out onto the street, speeding away from the banquet hall that had a million cars around it. “Lots of presents oughta be returned tonight, huh,” you mused, adjusting your sit once again. “I bet it’s annoying and relieving all at once.”
“My dad’s gonna blame this all on me,” he sighed, continuing to drum his fingers on the steering wheel. “Where do you live?”
“Trimage Towers. Anyway, he can’t blame it all on you if Nayeong’s a lesbian. I mean, it’s not like you had any jurisdiction over that.”
Jeno hesitated for a moment, slowing down for a red light. Thanks to the location of the fancy banquet hall, the towers were already in sight, and you could practically feel the relief of taking this awful dress off.
“You really can’t feel anything, huh.”
“I can feel things, just not a lot. I’d be able to feel things if you would’ve gotten over me,” you hummed, looking out the passenger window. “I’m serious, Jeno. Find a new girl. Pick her over me. We will both be happier that way.”
“So you’re rejecting me over a relationship that started when I was in middle school?” he asked, and, at that moment, you understood it was a bit ridiculous. You were sure you’d see it in a more intuitive way had you retained your emotions, but such was the price of rejecting one’s other half.
“I don’t know. I haven’t felt anything since then. I’m content with it now, so I don’t really feel like I can love anyone. Make a decision based on love. Who knows,” you replied, feeling your phone buzz. You picked it up—another text from your mom. This time, though, she called you a couple of names for ignoring her texts and not sending her any money.
Jeno suddenly took a sharp turn, pulling into an empty parking lot next to an office building, which you assumed to be empty because it was Saturday. He pulled around to the back, parking in a spot next to a few trees. It was well hidden, likely a tactic for avoiding anyone chasing him.
“What can I do to fix it?” he asked, a hint of desperation in his voice. “I’m serious. I’ll do anything. Anything at all.”
The slightest bit of sympathy graced your heart, but not enough to change anything. You sighed, looking up at the ceiling of the car. “Not sure.”
“What, should I confess my love to you?” he asked, which caught your attention. You looked over, biting the edge of your lip. “I barely know you, [First], yet I am deeply in love with you. Every time I hear something about you from Nayeong, or from Donghyuck, or from Jaemin, I feel the most intense regret that I decided to ignore Donghyuck’s advice and trust Jaemin more. All I could tell you about yourself are things everyone else knows and whatever my friends have told me, yet I’d still pick you over anybody else.”
Your heart sped up, but you still felt numb to the world. Maybe Dr. Choi had been right—maybe it wasn’t worth it to lose all feeling when you were 17. Maybe, if things had gone better, you would have been the bride today.
“Okay.”
“Is there any way? Any way at all that we could try? I know I’ve asked before, and I was disingenuous then, but I’m not a kid anymore. Neither are you. Things could be different.”
“Could they?” you finally bit into the conversation, letting out a disbelieving laugh. “I just—I can’t comprehend it. I’m a work machine. I walk into the office and stay for hours, reviewing my coworker’s pieces and writing my own based on what I’m given. I’m told that one day, I’ll be one of the greats of journalism thanks to my ability to work until I give out. Will that go away if I let this happen? Will I lose opportunity if I let myself love? I’m not really sure.”
“What makes you think that?” Jeno shot back. “What makes you think a little emotion would destroy your career?”
“Most, if not all of my superiors are soulmate-less or have purposefully gone out of their way to reject their soulmates. It’s standard.”
“You can break the standard, then.”
A bit of anger began to bubble in your stomach. “Could I? I already have it worse by having absolutely no nepotism to back me up, and I’ve got a world of expectation on me based on how I graduated at the top of everything, in every year of schooling I’ve ever had. I have a bad family to keep under wraps, and I have to pay them off to keep them quiet. I can’t afford to be pushing any stereotypes when I’ve got a million other things to work through.”
“I can be your credible, important connection, then. How easy is that?”
“I’d rather die than be a nepotism baby.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
“Nothing, Jeno! I’m looking for nothing!” you finally exclaimed, the anger bubbling over the top. “I’m looking to leave this behind us and separate ourselves from each other! I’d rather die than keep living a life that orbits around you! I just—I just want to be myself.”
“Then I’ll orbit around you. I’ll stay out of it and I’ll treat your every beck and call—”
“Shut up, Jeno.”
“I’ll be the one who’s connected to you. I won’t be Lee Jeno, son of that one guy who got to live easy because of his grandfather’s work—”
“Jeno, please.”
“And I’ll dedicate my everything to you, master journalist, the most goddamn successful person in the world, all thanks to herself—”
You’re unsure what came over you at that moment. In your fit of anger, wanting Jeno to just shut up, you grabbed the sides of his face, and you kissed him. There was a moment where you couldn’t believe yourself, where you truly thought you’d open your eyes and be back in the banquet hall, discussing where Jaemin was with Donghyuck. In that moment, Jeno would walk out, make his way to the altar, and Nayeong would follow.
They would look miserable. You would know they were miserable. You would know you could’ve prevented their misery. You’d feel nothing. You’d go home, Donghyuck driving you, and you’d go to bed, ready to go into work the next day.
One opening of your eyes revealed to you that you were, in fact, kissing Lee Jeno. He didn’t seem to mind the suddenness of it—obviously—reaching over the center console to lace his fingers into your perfectly wavy hair. He smiled into the kiss, as if he was the most satisfied man in the world, as if he was the only man in the world.
You closed them again, and felt fireworks burst within you. Although they hadn’t returned like you thought they would, you felt a mixture of very mellow emotions pooling in your stomach, and you realized maybe Jeno, Jaemin, and Donghyuck had a plot.
You pulled away from him, dropping your hands from his face. He did not try to separate himself from you, though, waiting for you to recite the words he’d be wanting you to recite. “An academic article by psychologist Kim Sowol. The best way to incite emotion in someone who’s rejected their soulmate is to anger them.”
He dropped his hands now, too, laying them on top of yours. “Nayeong sent it to me.”
You stayed quiet, narrowing your eyes at him. “I hate you. Never speak to me again.”
Jeno put his hands back on the wheel, reversing the car once more and taking you back out onto the road. “Yeah, okay. Next stop, your apartment. Text Jaemin that it worked for me, would you?”
You scoffed. “No. Shut up.”
“Your wish is my command, my dear.”
thank you for reading!
tags:
@dziewoja07 @pewpewpwe00 @mings-cafe @yutensoul @iioyous @shepeelsoranges @loeycity @misakiise @000rpheus @eunbi4eva @jenonoon @travelleratheart101 @hesbambi @minchoco @swagzombiefart @eunbi4eva @wonluvrbot
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream au#nct dream imagines#nct dream oneshots#jeno x reader#lee jeno x reader#jeno x you#jeno x y/n#nct dream angst#soulmate au#jeno imagines#jeno angst#jeno scenarios#nct x reader#nct x you#nct x y/n#nct imagines#nct scenarios#nct dream fluff#nct fluff
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: sun and moon | lhc
summary | your childhood best friend, donghyuck, claims he loves you. given his other friends and who he is as a person, you don’t believe him.
genre | lee haechan x fem!reader, high school seniors! au, childhood best friends to lovers, angst, fluff at the end, hyuck + the rest of 7dream are canonical assholes
warnings | high school parties (i.e. underage drinking)
wc | 6.1k
a/n: got a little carried away w this one, so thanks to the anon who requested it! anywho, i listened to tek it by cafune on repeat while writing this, so if u want a song rec ^^ imagine black haired glimo hc for this one <33 (p.s., if you want to play the game reader describes, this is the link) (p.p.s ignore their high school classes this is fanfic logic)
ft. sungchan, loona’s gowon, le sserafim’s chaewon
IT’S A SATURDAY AFTERNOON, and Donghyuck is laying down on your bed, watching you play whatever stupid video game you were infatuated with now. He didn’t come over often, not since your first year, so there was a slight bit of awkwardness between you two.
Nevertheless, you allow him to lay there, dressed in the tacky cool-guy getup that he seemed to love so much.
Outside, rain poured, and you knew that was the chief reason he was in your bedroom right now. If there wasn’t a flash flood warning, he’d be out and about with Mark Lee, Na Jaemin, and the rest of them, ruining people’s days left and right for the fun of it.
You wanted to consider Donghyuck to be your best friend, still. Given who he was now, the reputation he harbored, and the lack of time spent with one another, you didn’t feel like he was.
“I don’t understand the game,” he said, catching your attention fairly easily. You turned your head, giving him a dirty look for interrupting your flow. “You just look like you’re putting lines and boxes on a screen, but there’s a score.”
“You’re supposed to make paths. You close them off with the little dots,” you mumbled, turning back to your screen. The sound of Donghyuck sliding off your bed and kneel-walking to your side filled your ears but was mostly drowned out by the rain and the sound of the music coming through your speakers.
He stopped his kneel-walk adjacent to you, squinting at the screen. You didn’t slow down or try to explain your moves, simply placing each piece you were given in a way that most made sense.
“I seriously don’t get it. Is there a strategy to this?”
“No.”
“So you just…play for fun?”
“U-huh.”
“Man,” he mumbled, leaning his chin on the edge of your desk. You continued playing, clicking your shapes around into places they most fit, ignoring the way Dongyuck seemed to stare at you, now, rather than the game. “Who’ve you been hanging out with, these days?”
That question struck a chord. Briefly, you remembered the week-and-a-half where you stuck to Donghyuck as he began growing close with his current friends, and how left out you felt through the whole experience. It was, quite possibly, the worst week of your life.
“Sungchan from the grade below, Chaewon, and Gowon,” you replied, wondering if he’d even know who they were. From the way he didn’t respond, you assumed he didn’t, which hurt a little bit. “Uh, Chaewon is—”
“The girl with the short hair. Yeah, Renjun had a bit of a thing for her a while ago,” he cut you off with some unprompted information, which shocked you. If you remembered correctly, Chaewon had a massive crush on him for about a year; the new information made you wonder if he’d pursued her and dropped her the moment he’d found a better target.
“Really? Huh,” you hummed, glancing down at him. You made eye contact for a split second, but you broke it off the moment you realized how intense his stare was.
“So, how do you play this game?”
A small sigh escaped your lips, short in duration yet heavy in weight. You pointed at one of the boxes on the screen, turning to him once again. “You want to put the little circles in the boxes. Using the ‘X’ shapes, parallel lines, and the single lines, you want to connect all the boxes together to make paths. You put the little circles on the end of empty lines, too. You get points depending on how many circles you put in the boxes and how many circled-off paths you make.”
“Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense,” he scoffed. You were glad his attention was on the screen again. A bright flash of light broke through your bedroom windows, followed by a floor-shaking boom shortly thereafter. “You were always smarter than I was.”
“Not a chance. You just never tried hard enough.”
Silence fell between you two, and the only noise in the room turned into soft clicks and the droning of your music. It was nice being able to pretend like he wasn’t there, although you couldn’t help but wonder when you started feeling so…averse towards him. Maybe it was a product of the leftover hurt of his abandonment last year, or maybe it was because of how different his presence was.
When you were little, your mom always called him the sun and you the moon. He was bright and happy, always dressed in vibrant colors and ready to stand up for you whenever anyone did or said anything mean. He loved it when you and your mom took him to the beach, in the same way you loved it when he and his mom took you up into the countryside.
You were opposites as a kid, in the way that you were puzzle pieces that easily fit together. At some point, though, other pieces were added to that puzzle, and you both were torn apart by pieces that just fit better.
“[First]! Donghyuck!” Your mom called, her voice barely comprehensible above the pouring rain and the music. “Dinner!”
You picked up your phone, paused the music, and unplugged your phone from its charger. But, before you could stand up, Donghyuck put a hand on your knee, sending a shiver down your spine. You gave him a look, mentally saying “what the hell?” but he quickly explained himself.
“Can we talk? Just for a second.”
You gave him another look but complied. “One second, Mom!” you yelled, hoping she heard. “Just finishing up a game!”
He pushed himself off the floor, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. You spun around in your desk chair, pulling your knees up to your chest and chewing on the inside of your cheek. He cleared his throat as if he was nervous, which would be surprising given his personality.
You never thought you’d see the day when both you and Donghyuck were nervous to talk to each other.
“You don’t hate me or anything, right?”
You wished you knew the answer to that.
“What? No,” you replied, shaking your head. “Why would I hate you? We just grew apart, it’s not the end of the world. It was bound to happen.”
“Yeah, well,” he mumbled, looking off to the side. There was a pause in his sentence, then he cleared his throat again. “I’m in love with you.”
The whole room seemed to freeze over. You were utterly speechless.
“Pardon?”
“I love you. A lot. Like, love you.”
Letting your mind move faster than your mouth, you replied faster than you would’ve wanted to.
“No, you don’t.”
That seemed to stun him, as his eyes widened and his lips parted ever-so-slightly. You watched as hurt filled his expression, but you couldn’t help but stick with your response. He didn’t move to say anything else, so you stood up, stretching your arms into the air.
“Look, we’re friends and all, but you don’t love me, Hyuck. You can’t love someone when you barely know them.”
Saying that probably hurt you more than it hurt him, but you stood by it nonetheless. “How do I barely know you?” he asked, standing and walking to block your path. “Did I imagine the past fifteen years or something? I practically know everything there is to know about you.”
“I’m not sixteen anymore, dude. We’re practically eighteen. The last time we talked frequently was the end of our first year,” you said, crossing your arms. “If you told me you were in love with me back then, I might’ve believed you. But, as things stand right now, you are not.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he replied, frowning at you. “A year isn’t going to change everything about you, [First]. I knew you were weird about this, but that’s—that’s just ridiculous. Don’t you realize how ridiculous that is?”
“It’s not very ridiculous when I spent three months wondering if we were even friends anymore. You realize it took you three months to even text me back? You ignored me, pretended like I wasn’t there, and now you expect me to think you’re in love with me? Give me a break.”
“Maybe I ignored you because I was trying to get rid of the part of me that was hopelessly in love with you because I didn’t want to destroy the decade and a half of friendship we’ve built. Ever consider that? I bet not because you’re always so goddamn unreasonable with this. God forbid anyone gets too close, huh? God forbid the one person who knows you best get too close.”
“I let you get close, Donghyuck,” you spat, narrowing your eyes. “I put my whole trust into you, my entire life was you. I was nothing if not yours, and then you threw me to the curb the moment you found better people. I’m not upset about that, it was bound to happen, but—”
“But what?”
“But you didn’t even apologize.”
He scoffed at that, crossing his arms. “Oh my god, it’s not like I told you to fuck off and never talk to me again, did I? Back then even looking at you was difficult, but, for the entire three months, my friends—who you so vehemently hate—kept telling me to reach out. I thought that if you disappeared, if I pretended like I never let my feelings go that far, things would go back to normal, but they didn’t. They still haven’t.”
“Why now, then? Why now, after I already decided that our friendship was pretty much over, huh? Why did you wait? Why not after those three months? Why not any time other than now?”
You side-stepped past him, opening the door to your bedroom and approaching the stairwell. You didn’t hear him follow, but you didn’t care to look back or check what he was doing. Instead, you ran downstairs, cringing when your mom’s face turned into one of confusion.
“Where’s Donghyuck, sweetie?”
“He’ll be down in a second,” you said nonchalantly, assuming your normal seat at the dinner table. “He just needed to deal with something quickly.”
-
The summer sun beamed down on you and your friends, and you lamented the lack of clouds, or really anything, blocking the sun. You sometimes wondered why you and your friends had decided to eat lunch at the very corner of the school’s soccer field, but, when the weird time between summer and autumn hit, you were sure to remember.
“It’s so god damn hot,” Sungchan panted, flopping onto the grass. The green seemed to cradle him in a way that made him look a bit majestic, even with your ugly uniforms. Chaewon hummed in agreement, shoveling noodles in her mouth; she, like you, always brought lunch from home.
“Where’s Gowon?” you asked, glancing down at him. He put a hand over his eyes, covering the painful gaze of the sun. “Did you see her in the lunch line?”
“She’s not walking over yet?” Sungchan asked, turning his head towards you. Chaewon waved away a fly that was getting too close to his uncovered lunch, mumbling something about how bugs in the summer were always so terrible. “She wasn’t too far behind me in line. I dunno where she would’ve gone.”
“Hm.”
You scanned the field, looking for any sign of her, but she was nowhere to be found. Chaewon turned her whole torso around to look as well, looking for any sign of her. “She might’ve gotten caught up with somebody. I’ll go check, just to make sure.”
She hopped up from the grass, running in the direction of the building’s doors. You looked at Sungchan, who didn’t move at all. “Dude, P.E. wrecked me today. I can barely feel my legs.”
“You wouldn’t have to take P.E. if you had taken a music course.”
“Oh, shut up, not everybody is as perfect and lovely as you, [First],” he huffed, pushing himself off the grass. You reached out and brushed a blade of grass out of his hair, but he didn’t thank you for the gesture at all. “You’re quiet today. Is everything good?”
No, my childhood best friend, who I didn’t think even liked me as a friend anymore, confessed his love for me, you thought.
“Yeah, just a bit tired. We had a big English test today.”
“Gross,” he replied, finally picking up his tray and beginning to eat. “Man, I can’t imagine having to start preparing for my CSATs. Do you ever go home?”
“I don’t study often. I’m gonna study enough to get into a college and get a degree.” You shrugged, taking a bite out of the fruit sandwich your mom had made you after you woke up incredibly late. Suddenly, in the distance, the doors to the school building burst open, revealing Chaewon, who was dragging Gowon behind her. Gowon barely had a steady handle on her lunch tray, keeping it balanced enough that it wouldn’t spill everywhere as they ran.
“Jesus,” Sungchan muttered, taking a bite of whatever they served for lunch that day.
Gowon and Chaewon made it to you both at record speeds, with Chaewon practically sliding into her previous sitting spot. “Dude,” she began, huffing and puffing from the running she did. Gowon practically crumbled onto the floor, taking three big swigs from her water bottle. “What in the world happened between you and Donghyuck?”
“What?”
“I found Gowon, like, surrounded by his little gang as he talked to her. She looked like she was going to faint, but he pretty clearly asked where you were,” she giggled, reaching out and slapping your shoulder. “So? What is it?”
“He told me he was in love with me yesterday.”
Chaewon practically shrieked with joy, to the point where it almost made you feel bad for the outcome of his stark leap. “And? And?”
“I told him that he didn’t love me and that he doesn’t know me very well anymore.”
Gowon choked on her water, covering her mouth and trying not to spit it all out. Instead, she just coughed to the side, barely able to swallow it all down. Sungchan stared at you in complete shock, and Chaewon’s excited face morphed into a sad and confused one.
“Excuse me?” Gowon breathed out. “You what? You, [First] [Last], known for your compassion and kindness, said what?”
“I mean, he doesn’t love me. He loves who he knew a year ago, when we were still attached at the hip and he still wore that stupid yellow bomber jacket that I bought him in middle school,” you sighed, taking another bite of the sandwich. “I’m not—I’m not the same, you know? I like different things, I do different things, and I hang out with different people. He’s not the same either. It wouldn’t…it just wouldn’t work.”
“Bullshit.” Sungchan laughed dryly, giving you a sour look. “You can’t just say that to someone confessing their love to you, no matter how well you know them. I mean, imagine if you worked up the courage to confess to someone and they immediately invalidated your feelings?”
“It’s not like I don’t know that my approach was bad, but it’s the truth. We just aren’t compatible as we are now.”
“But…but weren’t you two…? I mean don’t you still hang out?” Chaewon asked, frowning.
“When he can’t make it to his other friends, yes. Snow days, the flash flood yesterday, when we had that huge dry lightning storm and the power went out. I’m his backup entertainment, and, even when we do hang out, we usually just watch movies in silence or do our own things.”
“I agree with [First].” Gowon nodded, her voice hoarse from the coughing fit she just escaped. “She has a point. I mean, you guys remember what he was like first year…nothing like he is now, y’know?”
“But it was mean to do that,” Chaewon argued, crossing her arms. “You can’t just say stuff like that. You need to apologize, [First].”
“I’ll apologize when I feel like I need to. For now,” you paused, taking a final bite of your sandwich. “I am not going to talk to him about it.”
“[First], don’t be an asshole,” Sungchan replied.
“Oh, I’m the asshole? Shall I recount when he left me in the dust last year? Or when he forgot my birthday and skipped out on my birthday dinner, which both of his parents attended, because he was going to Incheon with Na Jaemin and Lee Jeno? Or when he blew me off every single time I tried to keep our friendship going?” you scoffed, turning towards him. Gowon, who’d been the first person to befriend you after you lost Donghyuck, kept quiet, but she placed a hand on your shoulder in support. “I don’t owe him anything for being a dick, and then deciding he wants to date me. It’s a miracle I even keep him around.”
Chaewon frowned, laying off, but Sungchan didn’t seem to like your answer. Instead, he picked up his tray, pushed himself off the ground, and began a tantrum-ish march to the school building. Nobody tried to stop him.
“I didn’t know,” Chaewon muttered, twiddling her thumbs. “Sorry.”
“No harm, no foul,” you hummed, packing up your lunch box. “Sungchan’ll get over himself.”
-
Once again, rain poured outside, trapping you and your classmates in your classroom while everyone waited for the principal to announce it was safe to leave. For the most part, it was quiet, with mostly everybody parked at their desk and studying or napping. You were watching some random Japanese drama from 2008, laying your head on a quasi-pillow (your bunched-up sweater) that rested on your desk.
Everyone was tired. Of course they were, as it was a Thursday, and nobody wanted to be at school past 4 pm on a Thursday.
The sound of the classroom door being thrown open seemed to grab everyone's attention. You glanced up, cringing when you saw who was invading your peaceful, little classroom. They instantly caused everyone (who was awake, that is) to start whispering back and forth as if the visitors were the president and his men.
You were lamenting the fact that the boy who sat in front of you wasn't at school today.
Donghyuck pulled the chair in front of you closer to your desk, taking a seat so that he’d be facing you rather than the chalkboard. You didn’t move, trying to focus on the subtitles of your new show. But, it seemed he wasn’t very deterred by your current activity, as he easily plucked your earbud from your ear.
Sighing, you paused your show, pushing yourself up from the uncomfortable position. Your back creaked as you did, causing a few sharp pains to travel up your spine.
“Did you need to bring your entire posse with you? you mumbled suppressing a yawn. He shrugged, leaning his elbow on your desk and putting his head in his hands.
“My birthday’s tomorrow,” he said, glancing down at your little setup before looking back up at you. “I’m having a party tonight, though. I’d like for you to come.”
Last year, you missed his birthday party, simply dropping off a gift with his mother before it began. You remember looking out your window, staring at the lights protruding from his house at the end of the street, the kids in the front yard, and the cars parked down the street. The neighborhood you lived in was a nice one—your house was one your mom inherited, which was the only reason you lived somewhere that nice—so houses were spread out to the point where he could get away with a party.
Plus, neither his mom nor his dad seemed to care what was happening. After you dropped the gift off, you watched them drive off together, and they didn’t seem to return until the next Sunday.
You remember thinking how much you would hate to go to a party like that.
“I’m not really into stuff like that,” you replied. “I’ll drop off your gift again and say hi, or something, but I’d rather not go to a party.”
“What if I said you could lock yourself in my room and hang out there the entire time?”
You scrunched your nose up, thinking about what your mom would do if she saw the party happening again while you lazed around in your bedroom. “No studying, no partying, just useless,” she’d tell you, pinching your cheek. “At least do something.”
“I guess,” you mumbled, looking around to see everybody staring at you. In the doorway stood Huang Renjun and Zhong Chenle, both watching you converse a little too intently.
At your response, a warm smile blossomed on Donghyuck’s face. “Great. See you tonight.”
He pushed himself up from the chair, leaving it where it was rather than tucking it in. He shoved his hands into his pockets, pushing past Renjun and Chenle, who stayed and stared at you for a second more. Chenle said something, but you couldn’t hear what it was; after that, he walked off, Renjun following.
You laid your head back down, putting your earbud back in your ear, but you didn’t go to play your drama. Instead, you sat there, staring at the rain pour, slamming into the window faster than you’d ever seen it go.
You hoped he’d leave you alone after this. Getting over the loss of the person you spent nearly your whole childhood with would be difficult, but you’d muscle through it—you always did.
-
Chaewon and Gowon sat on your couch, watching you fail at wrapping the gift you’d prepared for Donghyuck. They were dressed casually for the event so that you didn’t feel out of place as you walked in and beelined for the upstairs.
“So, you’re…regifting him something?”
“Yeah,” you mumbled, ripping tape out of the dispenser. “It’s a little keychain he got me two years ago, along with a ring I put on a chain. He likes necklaces…I think. It’ll be a good way to say, ‘let’s not see each other for a while,’ you know?”
You ignored the tugging at your heart and the way your throat seemed to close at the thought, focusing on how best to wrap the small box in a way that didn’t look ugly. Because of your intense focus, you were lost on the way Chaewon and Gowon looked at each other as if they somehow picked up on the way you were feeling.
“You’re sure there’s no way you could be in love with him too, right?” Chaewon suddenly asked, causing you to perk up. You furrowed your brows at that, your heart lurching in your chest at the question. It made you nervous.
“What? No.” You shook your head, placing a final piece of tape on the gift. You held it up and examined the poor wrapping job you did, frowning at it. For a temporary-last gift, it sucked. “Not a chance.”
“Should we go then? It’s 8, we’re already an hour late.”
“Yeah,” you nodded, standing up with the box. “Now or never, I guess. Have you heard from Sungchan?”
“He’s probably there already. Heard he’s friends with Zhong Chenle and never told us,” Gowon said. You looked at her, eyes widened.
“Really? I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Yeah, well, now’s the time for learning, I guess,” she said. The three of you approached the door, slipping on shoes and putting on jackets. The moment you opened the door, you were hit with a blast of wet, hot air.
“I hate summer,” you mumbled, stepping outside. Your friends followed, and, together, you made the small trek to Donghyuck’s house. It was surrounded by cars and kids, and the sound of loud music accompanied by bright lighting filled the air. You were glad you didn’t live in a packed area, because, if you did, you were sure this would’ve gone a lot worse.
You pushed past all the already-drunk people outside, grabbing onto Chaewon’s hand for support. “This doesn’t look like a gift-giving party,” you whispered, to which Chaewon rolled her eyes, squeezing your hand.
“And you’re close to him, so you’re expected to get a gift.”
Gowon opened the door and, instantly, you were hit with the scent of alcohol and sweat, which wasn’t pleasant at all. Donghyuck’s house, having been renovated when you were kids, was the perfect location for a party like this one, with people roaming about and searching for something to do. The music drowned out anything you could hear, so you hoped Gowon would follow as you moved ahead, slipping past several people you knew (and, many people you didn’t).
The stairwell wasn’t far from the door, and you made it easily. Jaemin and Mark were lingering near it, seemingly making sure nobody tried to sneak up there and potentially steal something. You nodded your head at Jaemin the moment you made eye contact, but he didn’t step out of the way.
“I can take the gift,” he half-yelled, holding his hand out. Despite the volume of his voice, you could barely hear him and were a bit confused when he took the box out of your hands. You leaned closer to hear him, but you halfway wished you hadn’t. “Only you’re allowed up.”
You lurched back, looking at Chaewon and Gowon, who both nodded at you reassuringly. Chaewon released your hand, giving you a small smile before linking arms with Gowon. You sighed, running up the stairs as fast as you could. As promised, it was much quieter upstairs—as quiet as it could be given the surroundings—and much emptier. The upstairs looked just as you remembered it looking, with the only difference being a couple of newer pictures placed along the walls.
This felt like your childhood. A bit of nostalgia squeezed your heart as you walked down the hall, staring at pictures of the Lee family that you knew so well. Donghyuck’s parents were beautiful—unsurprising given how beautiful their son was—and that was made known by their wedding pictures, which sat framed at the edge of the hall.
You approached them, examining the bundles of photos they had put up. You remembered the several times you, as a small kid, told Donghyuck’s mother how you wanted to look just like her when she got married, with her gorgeous white gown and veil.
How ironic.
You turned the corner, approaching the final door in that section of the corridor. It was closed, and a small “do not enter!” sign was plastered on it. You blatantly ignored the directions, turning the knob and pushing inside.
His room looked different from the last time you were here.
It was darker, more mature, with more posters and less empty wall space. It looked like the teenage boy's room you’d see on a TV show, especially with the fancy computer and three monitors he had sitting on the desk. You shut the door behind you—it was kind of shocking how his room blocked out all the sound from downstairs—looking around at all he had up.
On his dresser were a few framed pictures, all of which were pictures of you two. The first one was one when you were little, two kids smiling on a playground with no worries in the world, dressed in matching sun and moon outfits. Then, there was a picture of you two at a class performance you had to do in second grade, dressed in tacky outfits that your parents had made together.
The third was a picture of you two in middle school, dressed in your uniforms roaming Lotte World, eating ice cream and laughing at whatever joke was shared between you two. You look back on that day fondly, remembering how much fun you’d had. That was where Donghyuck had gotten the keychain you were gifting back to him.
The final picture was one from your first year of high school. This one was much more robotic than the rest, both of you smiling for the picture and not just to smile. You stood far apart from each other, holding onto your school bags and looking mildly uncomfortable. Your hair was messy from a long day, and there were prevalent bags under Donghyuck’s eyes.
He looked unhappy, in a way. So did you.
Sighing, you approached his bed, taking a seat on the floor and leaning your back against it. You slid your phone from your jacket pocket, scrolling through various notifications you had. Most were from Chaewon, who was using her phone to have her and Gowon communicate with you.
“On an adventure to find a bathroom and lock ourselves insides,” read the first one, along with a couple of random emojis she tacked on.
“Sungchan is all up close and personal with some of Donghyuck’s posse. Who’d have thought they were friends when he’s such a loser lol.”
And, finally, a “Hiding in a non-crowded corner!! Only one bathroom was open, but we will survive by people watching!!”
You typed back a swift response, confirming you were in Donghyuck’s bedroom and feeling quite tired. If you had to guess, this night would end without you seeing Donghyuck at all, and you’d fall asleep on his bedroom floor, only to be woken up by Gowon and Chaewon, who’d snuck upstairs after everyone passed out drunk.
“Gowon here, and I think Donghyuck opened your gift. He doesn’t look pleased, I think. Storming towards the stairs. Fighting!”
Okay, so maybe you spoke too soon. You looked towards the door, wondering what he would have to say to you about it; maybe he’d reject it, giving it back to you and telling you to fuck off, or maybe he’d be reasonable about it, let you talk through things.
Considering the way the door opened, you assumed it to be the former.
Donghyuck practically slammed the door shut behind him, holding up the small white box that you’d put the ring-necklace and keychain in. He stared at you for a second, and you stared back, waiting for him to say something.
“What is this?”
You shrugged, looking at the box. “The sun keychain you got me a few years ago and—”
“The ring you liked to wear all the time in middle school. Yes, I know, I’m aware, but that’s not what I meant.”
You knew what he meant, but you didn’t want to. “Okay, then what did you mean?”
He narrowed his eyes, dropping to the floor in front of you. He stared at you, trying to gauge what exactly you were trying to accomplish by acting clueless. “Why are you giving it back?”
“Because I feel like we need to separate for a bit longer. Like, actually separate this time. Not the not-see-each-other-for-three-weeks routine anymore. A few months without being sun and moon, and just being two different people.”
He put the box down, crossing his legs. Donghyuck didn’t say anything, assuming the same hurt face he had when you told him he didn’t love you. “This is exactly why I never wanted to tell you,” he finally said, letting his head drop to the floor. “One chance your perfect bubble is disrupted and you’ll freak out and shut down.”
Your mouth dropped open, and you were a bit shocked at his response. You had nothing to say, nothing to defend yourself with other than the pitiful look you gave.
“But I’m going to say no to that, [First]. You can’t run every single time something doesn’t go your way. So we either figure this out right here and now, or I don’t think we’ll make it much farther as friends.”
You didn’t want to lose your friendship with him. He was the closest thing to you, the closest person to your secrets, the closest person to your happiness. You were okay with a break for a few months, maybe more, but you did not want to unfriend him for forever.
The way your heart hurt, the way your head spun, the way you found it hard to look him in the eyes and say “but we need this” was taking a toll on you. And, as you went through the motions, a little voice in your head began to say “Maybe you are in love with him, just a little bit. Maybe you have been for a while.”
“I’m sorry for ghosting you last year,” he continued, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I didn’t consider how you would feel and put myself first. I ejected you from a big change in my life, and I just assumed you’d be there to come back to after it was all said and done. You didn’t deserve it.”
You bit your lip in an attempt to keep your emotions squared off and invisible. Even hearing the apology made you want to fall apart, after waiting so long to hear anything of the sort. You remembered how lost you felt without him around, how hurt you felt when you sent text after text and yielded no response.
“Okay, I forgive you.”
It was short, but it got the point across without you bursting into tears at Lee Donghyuck actually apologizing to you. He took another deep breath, closing his hands into a fist.
“One more time, then. [First], I am in love with you.”
You sharply inhaled, looking down at the floor. “Okay. I could be, too. Maybe a little bit.”
It went silent between you, and you refused to look up from the ground. Gently, you reached out and began tracing little drawings on the floor, ones that you visualized in your mind. Saturn, the moon, the stars, the sun, you and Donghyuck, in constant orbit with each other, up in a boundless space you would never reach.
Suddenly, he got onto his knees, causing you to look up. Faster than you would’ve imagined, he shuffled over to you, encasing your face with his hands and pulling you into a soft yet heavy kiss. It left you stunned, but you didn’t seem to mind it that much.
Like the sun, Donghtuck was warm, from the way his hands managed to warm up your already burning cheeks or the way he practically emulated heat, as you felt from the close contact. He tasted like sour lemonade, perfect for a hot, summer day that had you trapped outside for the majority of the day. In a way, he was summer, carefree and bright, ready to ditch all responsibility and run off into the sunset.
When he pulled away from you, he seemed a bit embarrassed, sitting back on his feet and looking off to the side. “Sorry,” he mumbled, clearing his throat. “I didn’t ask if I could do that. Sorry.”
“I…didn’t mind too much,” you responded, looking down at the floor for the white box that held the keychain and the ring necklace. You opened it, picking up the chain and sliding the ring off it. You grabbed his hand, hoping it would at least fit on his pinky (which it did, thankfully). “Happy birthday.”
He looked down, a small scoff escaping his lips. “What, are you proposing? It hasn’t even been a minute, I mean, are you that obsessed with me?”
“Oh, yeah, For sure.” You rolled your eyes, dropping his hand so you could leave a small punch on his shoulder. “Let’s date, Lee Donghyuck.”
He repeated your idea with a high-pitched, mocking voice, and you could tell he was incredibly embarrassed. It made you giggle, and flick his forehead, to which he lurched back and gave you an incredulous look.
“Get over yourself.”
“If I do, will you take the keychain back?”
“Oh, shut up, loser.”
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream angst#nct dream fluff#nct dream x reader#nct dream scenario#nct dream imagine#nct 127 x reader#haechan x reader#lee haechan x reader#donghyuck x reader#lee donghyuck x reader#nct dream au#nct x reader#nct fluff#nct angst#nct scenarios#req
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: aftermath | ljn
summary | you're sick—it's unavoidable, you can't be healthy all the time. unfortunately, the night before you came down with the fever, you had a massive fight with your boyfriend, who is the only person available to take care of you.
genre | a bit of angst and fluff
wc | 1.3k
a/n: i don't think i've ever had a worse parasocial relationship than my one with jeno <3 peace and love hope u enjoy
jaemin's ver
SOMETIMES, you seriously think the world is out to get you.
As you lay in bed, curled up into a ball and coughing out a lung every couple of minutes, you wonder if you did something to deserve the past 24 hours of your life. You’d felt just fine yesterday, running every errand under the sun and having a genuinely productive day up until dinner.
Jeno was a good boyfriend, and your relationship was a good one—he never missed an anniversary, you didn’t fight often at all, and you had a good understanding of boundaries between one another. Of course, that didn’t mean you’d never experience a bump in the road, you just wish it hadn’t been so inconveniently timed.
You don’t even remember what you were arguing about at this point, all you know is that it was mostly your fault, and it wasn’t too kind of an argument. It ended with Jeno storming out of your apartment and disappearing into the city, leaving you to cry your eyes out for the rest of the night. Then, you woke up this morning with a high fever and weak lungs, and—with no one else to turn to—you sent Jeno a pathetic text about your current state of being.
Despite all your misgivings, the mean words you threw and the general lack of reasoning behind your actions the night before, Jeno showed up about 15 minutes after your initial text with a bag of various medicines and the biggest bottled water you’d ever seen in your life.
Right now, he was sitting in bed next to you, using your TV to play some random game with Jaemin and Renjun. You hadn’t outright talked to him for most of the day, but you’d laid right next to him for hours, and he got you every single thing you needed.
When it was time to eat, he made you soup and insisted that you ate it. He made sure you were drinking water. He kept tissues next to you at all times, and wet towels for you to place on your forehead. He took your temperature every few hours. He cleaned up your kitchen and bent at your will whenever you needed him to.
Even though you were so, so terrible to him the day before.
Quietly, you pushed yourself up from your curled position, sitting on the edge of the bed for a sec.
“Need something?” Jeno asked, a hint of concern seeping through the flat tone he’d been trying to keep up all day. You just shook your head, slowly standing up and trying not to pass out from the sudden wave of dizziness that hit you.
“Restroom,” you croaked back, cringing at the pain in the back of your throat. Your steps were slow and uncoordinated, to the point where Jeno kept his eyes on you for the entire time you approached the doorway. Faintly, you could hear Renjun yelling at him to play the game, and Jaemin giggling about it at the same time.
Once you made it out into the hall, you just about burst into tears. This was seriously the worst day you’d ever lived in your life—your head hurt, hell, your whole body hurt, you couldn’t go five minutes without coughing up a storm, you felt nauseous and dizzy and overwhelmed by the sickness your body was fighting. On top of that, your boyfriend was practically ignoring you, even if he was tending to your every need.
You took your final steps into the bathroom, flicking on the light and quietly closing the door behind you. Now feeling too weak to keep standing, you slid down the wall adjacent to the sink, shoving your face into your hands. You allowed the tears to flow, crying over how you felt, how awful the last day had been, and how guilty you felt towards your beloved boyfriend. All you wanted was a hug and reassurance that you’d be better soon, but all you got was cold stares and detached care, all of which was your fault.
If you had the energy, the voice to apologize, you would’ve ages ago, but with the knives in your throat, you could barely utter more than one word at once.
A sob escaped your throat, the pain ricocheting down your neck, and it only made you cry harder. You wanted to disappear yourself and never come back out if it meant you could just stop feeling like this.
Of course, Jeno knew you better than anyone else. He could always tell when something was wrong, and he always knew when to leave you alone or when to offer his help. Three knocks resounded on the bathroom door, rhythmic and slow, informing you of Jeno’s presence.
“Can I come in?” he asked, finally losing the monotony he’d carried throughout the day. Unsure of what you wanted at that moment, you just knocked on the door back, mimicking him. He took that as a yes, opening the door just a crack and slipping through it.
Wallowing in your self-pity, you brought your knees up to your chest and kept your eyes trained on the floor. You’d rather die than look at him right now.
Jeno sat down on the floor across from you with his back pressed up against the cabinets under your sink. For a moment, both of you sat there in silence, waiting for one or the other to fill the quiet void.
“Why are you crying?”
If you’d been in better spirits, the easy response would’ve been “why do you think?” but the thought of angering him more made you feel even sicker than before.
“I’m sorry,” you managed to croak out, trying to suppress the oncoming wave of tears you felt bunching at your eyes. If you cried any harder, you would’ve coughed a bit more than your lungs out.
Jeno let out a quiet scoff, making your stomach drop to the floor. This was the part where he broke up with you, or something, telling you to get a friend to come to take care of you. He’d take all of his stuff out of your apartment, from his extra gaming laptop to all of his workout stuff, and leave without a trace, leaving you on the bathroom floor.
“Come here,” he muttered, gently grabbing your wrist and tugging at your arm, waiting for you to comply. You didn't budge, but he just kept tugging, quietly nagging for you to listen. Slowly, you gave in to his request, pushing yourself across the floor and moving to sit next to him. “Not what I meant.”
With a quick pull, Jeno had you sitting up against him, arms draped around your waist and his head on top of yours. “I’m not mad right now. You don’t need more stress.”
There were a few more beats of silence, and, when Jeno confirmed to himself that you weren’t going to talk, he continued. “We were mean to each other last night. You weren’t the only offender—I started the whole thing. If anyone should apologize, it’s me. Especially for how I’ve treated you since this morning. I’m sorry.”
“You took care of me, though.”
“It doesn’t matter what I did, I wasn’t nice about it. Okay? Now everything is settled, and it’s all back to normal, and you can stop feeling worse than you need to.” Jeno leaned down and placed a kiss on your neck, squeezing your waist in the process. “We can watch a movie or something. And, when you feel better, we can talk about things if you want. But for now, rest up, and let me take care of you more."
thank you for reading! <3
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#jeno x reader#lee jeno x reader#jeno scenarios#jeno imagines#nct dream imagines#nct dream scenarios#nct x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream angst#jeno fluff#nct imagines#nct scenarios#req
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: can i have a hug? | hrj
summary | a series of routines between you and your boyfriend, renjun, shortly after moving in with each other.
genre | huang renjun x fem!reader. non-idol! au. angst with a cute ending, renjun is a bit protective
warnings | a lot of self doubt, jaemin’s girlfriend is awful and mean, y/n and renjun overset boundaries (if that’s a thing)
wc | 3.7k
a/n: renjun is the love of my life and i would do anything for him even w the military cut amen thank you god also suhyun isn’t based off anyone
TO BE HONEST, it would be a lie to say you weren’t expecting this. Despite that, there was a glimmer of hope, an all-consuming glimmer, that made you believe your moving into Renjun’s apartment would be more than it actually was.
Renjun values his alone time, and you know that. You’ve respected it for your whole relationship, and, honestly, it wouldn’t be too far off to say you held the same sentiments. You would even say that was half the reason you both fit together so well.
When you first brought up moving in together, you’d suggested separate bedrooms, claiming it might be better for both of you. It was Renjun who rejected the idea, saying it would just drive a wedge between you two and how much you hung out.
You were overjoyed then, but not so much now.
Glancing at your clock, which read 1:03 am, you were upset that you couldn’t fall asleep. You were exhausted, with your eyes hurting at every movement and your limbs stuck to the mattress, but closing your eyes and letting your mind run made everything worse.
You were on the left corner of the bed, and Renjun had squared himself all the way to the right. He hadn’t so much as touched you, only offering you a small “good night” and a smile. He’d fallen asleep quickly, too, as he always did, not giving you a second thought.
Renjun wasn’t very touchy (and, once again, you weren’t either). Still, a part of you had also hoped that he’d initiate even the slightest bit of skinship, whether it be hand-holding or even the slightest bit of proximity between you two. But, no, he was at least a foot away from you, maybe more, tucked into himself.
As you were realizing, it felt…bad. Even if he normally slept like this, even if you both weren't big into skinship, it felt awful. It felt like he was afraid to touch you, uncomfortable with touching you, even though you lived together.
You’d get over it, soon enough. You knew Renjun loved you—he’d let you move into his apartment, for free no less, for god’s sake—but, in little moments like these, it’s hard to wrap your mind around.
-
Usually, you like hanging out with Renjun’s friends. They’re a fun group of people, always having something to bicker over or joke about, and you never leave without laughing until your cheeks hurt.
Tonight, though, was terrible.
Jaemin had invited his girlfriend—a rare occurrence from him, as they’d only started dating recently—and he had no issue with any sort of affection, even in front of so many people. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, practically dragged her onto his lap, and hugged her for nearly the entire night, all of which were things you would hate to happen to you.
Still, you couldn’t help but compare them to how you felt now.
Meanwhile, the rest of Renjun’s friends were going on and on about your new living situation, poking fun at how you came in the same car and left in the same one. Haechan particularly teased you both, referring to you as the first married couple in the relationship. At one point, he assumed a mocking old-lady voice, asking “when are you planning to have kids?” which drew a long sigh from both you and Renjun.
Unfortunately, the lovey-dovey jokes on top of Jaemin and Suhyun made you want to drive a drill into your skull more than ever.
You were particularly quiet on the ride home, staring at the moon from the car window. You wondered if the moon felt lonely orbiting the Earth, in the way you somehow managed to feel lonely in the most loving relationship you’d experienced in your whole life.
Of course, Renjun picked up on your quietness almost immediately. “Are you feeling okay?” he had asked, linking your pinkies together as he drove. The touch, as simple and as common as it was in your relationship, sent an uncomfortable sensation down your arm.
“I’m okay,” you replied, trying to sound as chipper as possible. “They tire me out.”
He didn’t press more, humming in response. You knew he didn’t believe you, but Renjun also trusted that, if something was wrong and you didn’t share, you would know how to handle it.
When you got home, you practically slid into bed almost immediately. Your skincare routine was cut short and you put on your warmest pajamas, mostly in hopes that they’d make you feel more loved at night than Renjun did.
You were in bed before him, but, once again, you couldn’t sleep. Instead, you kept your eyes closed, even when Renjun was talking on the phone with Mark in a hushed voice, even when he pressed his hand to your forehead and told Mark “no, she doesn’t have a fever,” even when he crawled into bed next to you (yet still so far away) and whispered a quiet “good night,” even though he thought you were sleeping.
-
You thought things wouldn’t get worse than they already were. You convinced yourself this was temporary, this was okay, that you’d get over it soon enough.
Renjun’s friends had other plans, though.
Living with him meant seeing them a lot more. Renjun held a lot of importance to making sure his friends knew you, and that you knew his friends. Skipping out on their get-togethers often would make him upset, and you didn’t want to make him upset.
Hanging out with his friends, however, was starting to make you upset, ironically enough.
Somehow, Mark had come upon a large amount of very illegal fireworks (his friend Johnny had given them to him, which upset Haechan a fair amount, for some reason). Now, you were sitting in Chenle’s backyard—his huge, multi-acre backyard—lighting them off.
The only issue was Jaemin inviting his girlfriend again, and them being all over each other, as per usual. You and Renjun were sitting next to each other, sure, but you were about half a foot apart and hadn’t touched each other since Renjun helped you onto the ledge you both sat on.
The moment Jaemin and Suhyun arrived, she was sitting in his lap, and he was whispering stuff in her ear, and she was marveling at the colors, and Jaemin was looking at her like she was the world. The only issue was that you knew that you’d hate it, once again, but you couldn’t help but yearn for what they had, what she had.
Mark dropped his phone onto the grass once a big group of fireworks went off, evidently done recording that round. He looked at Chenle, saying something to him (which you couldn’t hear), just before running off towards where the rest of the fireworks were.
As silence overtook the group, Suhyun turned towards your ledge, suddenly staring you down. It made you more anxious, and it took everything in you to stand your ground and not twiddle your thumbs in discomfort.
You began to open your mouth to comment on the fireworks, but Suhyun filled the silence before you could.
“So you two are dating?” she asked, looking between you and Renjun. He looked over at her, giving her a wary look you could only describe as his signature just-shut-up look.
“Uh, yeah,” you nodded, wondering if she’d miraculously forgotten that you both were introduced to her as a couple. She hummed in recognition, nodding and biting her lip. She looked as though she was plotting something, a certain emotion you couldn’t pinpoint flashing behind her eyes.
With the small upturn of her lips, she asked, “For how long?”
You weren’t looking at him directly, but you could’ve sworn Renjun rolled his eyes at her question. He looked annoyed that she even decided to speak to you, hell, he just looked annoyed.
“Three years,” he replied. Usually, when someone asked how long you’d been together, he was excited to answer, as if he was proud of the length of time. Now, he looked unhappy and angry, like he wanted nothing more than for Suhyun to shut up.
“Really?” she suddenly replied, her eyes widened and her brows lifted. This whole situation was off-putting; more often than not, when people responded to “three years” with “really?” their tone of voice was impressed, but hers felt surprised in a not-so-kind way.
You heard Haechan, who sat next to you, suck in a breath, like he was going to start speaking, but he never got the chance.
“Sorry, it just doesn’t look like you guys even like each other.”
The words were nails screeching on a chalkboard, a violin’s strings violently snapping in the middle of the song, a hammer flying through a glass door.
Your stomach tightened, and you tensed immediately. Without skipping a beat, Renjun said, “Excuse me?” with the most malicious tone you’d heard out of him in a while. She shrugged, looking back towards Mark and Chenle. Jeno hopped off the ledge instantly, looking back at Renjun and Haechan before jogging out towards the two stragglers.
“Hey,” Jisung suddenly piped in from his blanket on the grass, face contorting into one of apprehension. “Maybe let's talk about something else.”
Jaemin looked a bit shocked, his eyes widened and his mouth slightly ajar, but he didn’t try to say anything. In the tense silence, Haechan let out a loud scoff, drawing you to look at him. He had the same expression as Renjun—intense dislike, maybe even hatred—and you felt like you were missing something.
“What the fuck do you know?” Haechan spat, crossing his arms. “Just because they aren’t making out every second of the day doesn’t mean they don’t like each other.”
“What I want to know,” Renjun began with a tight voice, and, suddenly, you were scrambling, realizing he was very upset by the question, and Renjun was not easy to deal with when angry. You put your hand over his, cringing at the unconsented touch, but still hoping it would help in the slightest. “Is why you think you know anything about my relationship when you’ve met my girlfriend once before today? I suppose I’m not following.”
The sort of politeness in his voice was one you were accustomed to. When he was especially upset, he took on a sort of condescension, yet he lowered his chin to look up at whoever he was talking to. Jaemin, definitely not thinking straight, jumped to Suhyun’s defense at the sight of Renjun’s offense.
“Dude, chill out,” he said, visibly tightening his arms around Suhyun’s stomach. “She didn’t mean it like you think she did.”
Suhyun looked towards the speed-walking Mark, Chenle, and Jeno, puffing her lips out into an unassuming pout.
“No, I think she did mean it like that. Just like she’s meant everything else,” Renjun replied, and then the blame had shifted.
“Renjun,” you whispered, squeezing his hand. “It’s fine. Just ignore it.”
Instead, he ignored you. Haechan did too, apparently, coming to Renjun’s defense.
“I guess she didn’t mean it, though, huh? When she called Mark a loser, or when she told me to go waste my time pining over another one of my friends.” He laughed dryly, rolling his neck in a circle. “Get a grip, Jaemin. Holy shit.”
“Guys.” Mark “the mediator” Lee appeared, but he’d shown up all too late. Renjun returned your hand-holding, but he did so to pull you off the ledge with him. Abruptly, you were exiting the firework hang-out, Haechan following close behind.
“Guys!” Mark called out once again, but Renjun didn’t look back, not until you were in the car.
-
Upset Renjun had made things worse at home.
When you’d gone to bed, he opted to stay up with Haechan in the living room. You’d never seen him so worked up, not like this. Part of it made you feel good, feel loved, but the other part of it made you feel worse than before.
You knew the reason she’d said that was your lack of couple-presenting activities, or, more simply, PDA. She hadn’t heard an ‘I love you’ or anything similar once, and, if you had to guess, the first time she’d seen you touch Renjun was when you were trying to calm him down.
In a way, she was right. It was bad to even consider it, but she was kind of right.
The sound of your front door opening and closing was loud, but you were glad Haechan was gone and Renjun was coming to bed. Taking one last look at the moon, you squeezed your eyes shut, curling into yourself. If you were lucky, sleep would come easy tonight, but this was one of the unluckiest nights of your life, so far.
Renjun opened the door to your bedroom a little too roughly, but he closed it very gently, so as not to disturb your fake sleep. There was the sound of clothes rustling, of belts being taken off and sweatpants being put on, but it seemed like he would be bypassing his usual, extensive nighttime routine.
Instead, he got under the covers right beside you, tugging you into his chest. Your eyes flew open, followed by a small “Renjun?” that escaped from your throat.
“Go back to sleep,” he mumbled into your neck, causing goosebumps to sprout down your arms. “I love you. Good night.”
And, for the first time in about two weeks, you fell asleep with ease.
-
Nothing had changed. You were hopeful it had, after that night, but once Renjun calmed down, everything was the same, and you were back to feeling the sinking feeling in your stomach all too soon.
There was something that had shifted, though, and that is how you ended up sitting across from Mark at a small cafe in the city. He was nervous, you could easily tell from the way he spoke to the way he walked. When he texted you, he was sure to inform you that this was about Renjun and Jaemin, nothing more, nothing less.
“I don’t know what to do,” he sighed, putting his head in his hands. “They’re at each other’s throats, even though this should be something they get over easily. Hyuck is taking Renjun’s side, and so is Jeno, but the rest of us are pretty much neutral. It’s causing a lot of drama. I don’t know.”
“In the kindest way possible,” you began to respond, taking a big gulp of your coffee. “The problem here seems to be Suhyun and not Jaemin or Renjun.”
“I guess so, but…was the comment really that bad?”
In a burst of sudden discontent, you frowned. “I think…I think the issue is that she was a little too right.”
Mark furrowed his brows, suddenly confused. “I mean, right about what? You and Renjun orbit each other like…like two colliding stars, or something—god, that was a little cringy of me. But, seriously, I can’t see how she was right.”
Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you decided, at the moment, Mark was someone you could trust. He would know how to drag you out of the situation you were in, you were sure of it. “Can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“Renjun and I, like, barely even touch each other. The last time we even kissed was three days ago, and it was only because he was going to be gone for a long while. It’s like…moving in with each other made us afraid of each other,” you lamented, looking down at your hands. “We share a bed, but he sleeps as far as he possibly could from me. Like, the other night, I felt uncomfortable even holding his hand. We are stepping over boundaries we had set like two weeks into our relationship. I guess Suhyun must’ve picked that up somehow, but…I don’t know.”
Mark was quiet for a minute, and, when you looked up, he seemed to be deliberating something. “That’s why you’ve been so out of it, then? Not because you're feeling bad or something is going on at work?”
“…Yeah, that would be why.”
“I get it. It makes sense now, why he got that angry and why things have been weird. I’m not saying I like Suhyun, she seriously is awful, but it makes sense.”
“What—what should I do?”
Mark thought for a minute more, tapping his chin. “Okay, here’s our plan. I break Jaemin and Suhyun up using Jeno, and you ask Renjun for a hug. How about that?”
-
You and Renjun used to ask each other for hugs a lot. Back in the first year of your relationship, it was commonplace for you both, and the answer was always yes. Then, during your second year, there was less asking and more just-doing. The third year brought a weird type of hesitation that came with living with someone else for the first time, not in the way of a roommate, but in the way of a lover.
You didn’t expect to be nervous to ask Renjun for a hug ever.
You were coming home from a movie you’d planned on seeing in the Cinema weeks in advance. You were quick to shed your wet raincoat, hanging it on the hooks next to your front door. Your shoes came off and you stretched your arms out, glad to be inside your warm apartment and no longer out in the rainy cold.
This was when you decided you’d ask Renjun for a hug. Even if you were so nervous you could die, you would ask him for that hug, no matter what.
When you put your purse down, you began hyping yourself up internally, screaming at yourself to just go for it, that he was your boyfriend, and you’d done much worse than a hug before. So, with a brave pivot, you stared at Renjun with conviction, and he stared back with confusion.
“Yes?” he asked, dropping the keys in the little bowl you had for them.
“Can I have a hug?” you forced out, ignoring how your throat tightened and you oddly felt like crying. He stared at you for a moment, before his mouth turned up into a big smile.
“What? You don’t have to ask me for a hug, loser,” he said, approaching you. He drew you into the allotted hug, rocking you back and forth with him. “We stopped asking so long ago. What prompted that?”
“I don’t know,” you lied, squeezing his waist as hard as you could. You couldn’t lie—Renjun gave very good, very warm hugs. He smelled of wood and the ocean, like the quiet beach town you’d both fantasized about living in. His sweaters were always warm and soft, engulfing you into a blanket-like embrace.
“You could…hug me more, you now. Maybe at night, and stuff. Like couples in a movie,” you suggested, burying your face into his neck. Renjun suddenly went quiet as you rocked around the room.
“Oh,” he finally erupted, squeezing you back. “Oh, I get it now. That was it.”
You didn’t say anything, even as Renjun erupted into a fit of little giggles. Through his chuckles, he said, “God, we are so stupid. I thought you were about to break up with me. I thought I’d done something. No, we were just being dumb. I have to tell Mark.”
“We aren’t dumb, we just respect each other too much. Isn’t that a good thing?”
Renjun unwrapped his arms from your waist, taking your face into his hands. “I guess, but not when it was driving us severely apart,” he mused.
Gently, Renjun pulled you into a kiss. It was reminiscent of the first few kisses you’d both shared, all of which were well-timed and disgustingly romantic. It was slow and soft, with no ill-intent behind either of your actions. It was filled with unspoken love and minty undertones, the softness of his lips and the warm feeling of his hands on your cheeks.
When he pulled away, you couldn’t help but feel a bit blue. You’d unknowingly deprived yourself of your boyfriend for so long under the guise of “respecting his boundaries,” and now you just wanted to spend your time with him eternally.
“I love you,” he spoke in a sing-songy voice. It was much happier than the last time he’d told you he loved you.
“I love you too,” you replied with the same tune, smiling like an idiot. “Also, Mark is going to try to break Suhyun and Jaemin up.”
“Thank god,” Renjun breathed out, leaning his forehead against yours. “Did you know she practically harassed Chenle to set them up? She’s seriously awful. But, I’m going to text him to wait, so I can make out with you in front of her right before Jaemin leaves her for good.”
“I’d hate that,” you laughed. “Maybe we can hold hands or something.”
“No, she’s going to have to sit and watch. Just to prove a point.” Renjun planted another short kiss on your lips, pulling away for good this time. You followed after him, realizing he was just going to start dinner and wasn’t going to do anything special. “You can have a hug whenever you like, my dear. Just say the word, and I’m there.
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream imagines#nct dream scenarios#nct dream fluff#nct dream angst#renjun x reader#huang renjun x reader#renjun imagine#renjun scenario#renjun fluff#renjun angst#nct x reader#nct imagine#nct scenario#nct fluff#nct angst
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: napping with nct dream
a/n: i am a nap enthusiast so this was fun to write <3 enjoy! (also sorry for being 54 mins late lol)
wc | 1.8k
mark
naps with mark are few and far between—he’s a bit of a workaholic—but that’s okay because you’ll take what you can get. you absolutely nap more frequently than he does, even if you’re not a frequent napper. i see mark taking most of his naps in the morning, maybe around 11am. it’s a sunday, he’s worked nonstop for the past week and a half, and his sleep schedule is a jumbled mess. after you get home from a brunch with friends (because you’re adults, now) he’s practically falling into bed, dragging you with him. he likes to hold your hand during your treasured morning naps instead of a traditional cuddle; he doesn’t want to get all hot and sweaty for a twenty-minute-long escape to dreamland. yet, during those twenty minutes, he holds your hand like it’s his tether to the earthly world, like you’ll disappear any second and he’ll be trapped in his dreams. when mark stumbles upon you napping, though, maybe after getting off work early, he’ll lay down with you, dragging you into his arms. your head will be buried in his chest, and he’ll have an arm comfortably draped around you with his phone in his hands, scrolling through whatever mark lee scrolls through, waiting for you to wake up to him being home.
renjun
i see renjun as a reactionary napper, to be honest. you definitely nap more than him, but if you nap around him, so will he. you’ll be watching a movie together on a weekend, or something, probably around 3 in the afternoon. he won’t feel tired in the slightest until your head falls onto his shoulder and he realizes you’re completely down for the count. he tries to go back to the movie, but you subconsciously wrap your arms around his waist like he’s your teddy bear, and now he’s all warm and comfortable. he fights off his eyes drooping, but he can’t help but begin to fall asleep as he focuses on the rhythm of your breathing, the relaxing atmosphere you’re giving off, and he’s out. naps with renjun are long because they’re never planned, and you always intend to be doing things instead of sleeping. you wake up with neck pain because two people sleeping on a couch is never comfortable, but you’ll also wake up laying on renjun’s chest, feeling his warmth all around you. naps with renjun are the kinds where you wake up feeling a bit sick, but that never stops either of you from sharing what weird, outlandish dreams you might’ve had. when you both stand up from the couch, your knees nearly give out and your back is screaming in pain, but you appreciate the naps you get to have with renjun :)
jeno
i’m gonna say it—while jeno isn’t the expert napper of the group, any sort of nap with him might be the most comforting. whether you’re on a couch, in bed, healthy or sick, jeno is just really great to lay around with. if i had to guess, naps are common between you both, but they only happen after dinner. jeno is a gamer, so he’s always up pretty late, but sometimes he gets tired before he’s ready to sleep. his solution? a thirty-minute nap at 10pm. you’re never opposed, though, because he's really great to nap with. he lays down next to you and stares at you until you look away from your phone, or tablet, or whatever. you get the memo pretty easily, turning over to put your phone on your nightstand, and that’s when he attacks. jeno drags you into his chest, keeping a firm grip around your waist and nuzzling into the crook of your neck. he sets an alarm, so you never get to actually go to sleep as a result of your naps. instead, just as you’re about to enter your sleep cycle, you’re jolted awake by the awful sound of a default apple alarm. you grumble something about how you were about to fall asleep, but jeno only chuckles, giving your middle a light squeeze. “i’m sorry, you can go back to sleep now,” he’ll say, detaching himself from you and returning to his computer. mentally, you promise yourself that you’ll make him go to sleep next time, but, for now, you’re too tired to fight back.
haechan
lee haechan hates napping, i’m sure of it. he’s a bit of a workaholic, so he has things he wants to get done, even if he’s so tired he can barely keep his head straight. so, if lee haechan is taking a nap, it means one thing: he’s sick. one day, you’ll notice how his cheeks are a bit red, how he’s moving a little slower than usual, and you’ll practically attack him with the thermometer. once your suspicions are confirmed, you’re dragging him to his bedroom, ignoring his claims of “i’m fine” and “it’s just a cold.” once you get him all nicely tucked in, and you’ve supplied a nice, cool compress for his head and some medicine for his symptoms, you’re sure to sit next to him. you both look like two old people when this happens, sitting against the headboard and bickering about whatever he can bicker with you over, but it’s always successful. usually, you have to trick him into sleeping, and that’s usually accomplished by forcing him to watch a boring hallmark movie with you. similar to renjun (although the opposite, this time), his head will fall on your shoulder, and you’ll trap him in a comforting hug. moments later, you’re asleep too, and then you’re waking up in a dark room, disoriented because you went to sleep at 4 and woke up at 9. you’re holding onto him tightly, and he’s sound asleep, with his head comfortably nestled just below your neck. and, while you’d love to skip dinner, he needs to eat something so he can make a quick recovery. so, you quietly slip out of bed, disappearing into the kitchen while he finally begins to wake up.
jaemin
in case you were wondering, jaemin is absolutely the champion napper out of the group. he naps so often that he knows the best times to nap to not disturb nightly sleeping, and how long he should be napping for. it’s no surprise that, about 99% of the time, jaemin will make you nap with him, claiming that you’ll be more refreshed too. so, every day at 1:30 pm, expect to be dead to the world for an entire 90 minutes. you’ll both get dressed into comfortable clothing (he will force you to wear more comfortable clothing so the nap is more comfortable for him, or so he claims), and you’ll climb under the covers with the ac blasting and the fan at its highest speed, ready for your daily dream-escapade. jaemin likes to trap you in a koala hug while he naps, wrapping both his arms and legs around you and trapping you against him. he also prefers to be facing you for reasons he won’t tell you outright (although, you already know). jaemin has been doing these daily naps for a lot longer than you have, so his body is perfectly attuned to the sleep-and-wake-up timer he’s mentally set. so, more often than not, you’ll awaken to jaemin pressing light kisses all over your face, which you’ve essentially equated to being your alarm. “good morning,” he’ll say in a sing-song voice, tinged with a bit of hoarseness. “i’ve missed you.”
chenle
hot take, i think chenle is nct dream’s #2 when it comes to napping. does he have it as planned out as jaemin? absolutely not, no, but he still takes a lot of them. you probably noticed this very early into your relationship, as, when you’d come over to hang out or to do something, he’d tell you he’d rather nap than do anything else, and then pester you until you agreed. similar to mark, i don’t think he’d necessarily cuddle you or even hold your hand while napping, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you around. chenle finds comfort in your mere presence, and would rather just skip a nap than not have you around for it. he’s a light sleeper, and he’ll probably wake up if you try to sneak away, so do not try to leave when you’re napping with chenle. he’ll feel very loved if you do something as simple as falling asleep next to him, so allow yourself to doze off parallel to him, with daegal curled up in the space between you. chenle will wake up after you as well, and he prefers that you wake him up yourself. find a creative way to do it, and he’ll wake up with the prettiest smile on his face, excited to see you first thing. if he stumbles upon you napping, chenle will gladly join you, and sure enough, you’ll nearly have a heart attack when you wake up to him mere inches away from you. (p.s.: if you want chenle to cuddle you while you nap, tell him you’re having a bad day, and he’ll snuggle right up).
jisung
you and jisung have never taken a planned nap, ever. and, when you do nap, it’s always in the most awkward places. on a road trip with the rest of the dreamies, the both of you had been banished to the way-back, and you slept on each other for nearly the entire ride (much to chenle’s dismay, as he was also in the way-back). when you woke up, your neck was screaming in pain, and your head hurt from how long you’d kept it on his shoulder. you went to see a movie, one of those pretentious, fancy-award-winning movies, and you both fell asleep about twenty minutes in and woke up to the cinema attendant informing you that the movie was well past finished. you and your friends went to an amusement park, but the both of you started getting tired, so you went and found a shady bench to sit on and then slept on each other for an hour while your friends panicked trying to find you. you were his date to a family member’s wedding, but you ended up missing the whole ceremony because you fell asleep in one of the dressing rooms and the bride/groom thought you were too cute to wake up. naps with jisung always result in you waking up disoriented and confused, sometimes with an awful sunburn or a strong pain in your shoulder, but you always think it’s fun; who knows where you two will end up?
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream scenarios#nct dream fluff#nct dream headcanons#nct dream#mark x reader#renjun x reader#jeno x reader#haechan x reader#jaemin x reader#chenle x reader#jisung x reader#nct x reader#nct headcanons#nct fluff
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: like clockwork | njm
summary | fights with jaemin are impossible because he never takes them seriously. so, when you get into a relationship-ending fight with him, you decide on an ultimatum: if he doesn’t apologize first this time, you're going to cut the string of fate.
genre | non-idol! jaemin x fem reader. angst and a little fluff like at the end (if you consider it that)
warnings | over-dependence (from both sides), generally just a toxic relationship whoops sorry jaemin
wc | 2.1k
a/n: this is like a part two? i guess? to nct dream after a fight, except i don’t think jaemin is very nice when it comes to arguments
jeno’s ver
YOU’VE BEEN SITTING in your ex-roommate’s living room for three hours, crying into her blankets while she tried to console you. You weren’t sure what to feel—anger, sadness, confusion, or maybe all three—at this point.
Jaemin was, in all senses of the phrase, a perfect boyfriend. Your friends fawned over him and his consideration, the way he bought you bouquets and little teddy bears from time to time, the way he agreed with you on everything you said. They fawned over the way he planned out your whole future, from beginning to end, as if you were never going to break up.
And, to be honest, you thought there’d never be a chance you would break up. Seriously, you’d started dating in your last year of high school, and you’d never gotten close to breaking up in the years that followed.
Now, you weren’t so sure.
You had to fight sometimes. No matter how unargumentative he was, how he never cared about how late you stayed out or who you were friends with, there were always going to be bumps.
Your roommate helped you realize that, after every single fight, you were the one to apologize. Without fail. An hour ago, you’d gone through every single argument you had (you could count the number on one hand), and, no matter who started it, you always had to be the one reaching out for forgiveness.
None of those fights were as big as this one, but you knew it would stay the same.
Today was your fifth anniversary of being with him. You’d spent weeks saving up for a gift for him, working extra hours and budgeting so he wouldn’t notice such a big purchase in your shared expenses. It was simple, a thin bracelet with a few fancy gemstones and his initials engraved onto it, but it meant a lot to you.
Jaemin didn’t get you anything.
You’d never especially celebrated anniversaries, at least not with presents, but you had made it clear that five years was a big deal to you. On the day of, today, you spent hours preparing your apartment, even taking the day off so you could prepare.
Then, at around 5, Jaemin sent a text saying he was going to get drinks with Donghyuck. Then, you hinted that you’d prepared dinner. Then, he asked you to put some in a tupperware for him so he could savor it the next day.
By that point, you were near tears, and the only thing you managed to type out was: what about our anniversary?
He caved at that, saying he was on his way home. By that point, though, the night had been ruined for you; maybe you should’ve let him go so you could calm down, take a few deep breaths, and complain to your friends. But, something in that naive mind of yours said this could be fixed, and you believed that inkling.
Jaemin returned home looking annoyed. You watched as his face morphed from mild discontent to shock as he stared at your decorated kitchen, with flowers everywhere and a cute sign you’d spent the whole morning making.
“Babe, when did we do stuff like this?” was the first thing he asked. At that moment, you saw concern, guilt, but that was the only time that night you saw remorse at all.
“We didn’t,” you agreed briefly, taking a sad bite of the cookies you had made. Your dinner was cold now, uneatable by your standards. “But five years isn’t a short amount of time, Jaemin, and I have been talking about it for months.”
The rest of the fight was a blur. When your voice raised, he implored you to calm down, to just listen to him. He kept a level head throughout the whole thing, spitting logic and reasonability at your emotional outburst. Things about how he hadn’t budgeted for gifts, how he never thought it would be this big of a deal, how you never told him it would be this big of a deal.
The way he spoke to you was condescending, as if he had everything under control, everything figured out, everything according to his wants. You recognized his tone of voice well because it was nearly identical to the tone your superiors, male superiors, took when they spoke to you at work. You knew he felt like he was the rational one, and that you were overreacting.
Nothing was fixed. You remember grabbing your jacket, slinging it over your shoulders, all while Jaemin told you to stay and “figure yourself out.” You didn’t listen, yanking one of the kitchen drawers open and pulling out the small, velvet box where the bracelet lay. In your anger, you threw it at him, leaving him to stare while you took yourself (and the pretty dress you’d put on) elsewhere.
“I think you need to tell him to apologize,” your ex-roommate suggested, handing you a bowl of popcorn intermixed with M&Ms. “I’ve never heard of Jaemin acting like that much of an asshole.”
That night, you set an ultimatum. If Jaemin couldn’t take your concerns seriously, your needs seriously, then you obviously couldn’t be together. If he could not take this seriously, then you would not be together.
So, you sent a text:
If you aren’t the one to apologize this time, we need to have a talk about our relationship. I’ll give you a week.
-
Four days pass, and you’re regretting it. Jaemin has been your entire adult life, and you’re not sure if you can live without him.
All your friends are on your side, telling you that, if this is the end, they’ll be here to help you recover. They give you tips on separating your bank accounts (when you and Jaemin decided to do that about a year ago now, you had been giddy, thinking this meant marriage was now in the picture), how to find an apartment on your own, ways you can keep yourself safe and sound when you were home alone.
Still, you were nervous. His only response to your text had been a small “okay,” all lowercase, with no emotion behind it. You hadn’t even opened the text at your ex-roommate’s behest, as she claimed “opening it means he knows you’re thinking about him.”
You were going to regret this, one part of you said. The other part insisted this was good for you, that you couldn’t live your whole life dependent on someone who wasn’t dependent on you. That your relationship with Jaemin might’ve been toxic anyways, maybe even suffocating, because who wants their entire life planned out at 22?
Deep down, you know that your breakup will destroy your life. You’d probably go back to your parents for a bit, wondering if Jaemin talked to his friends about how you always told him that you’d never been too fond of them. You’d watch as his life sailed on perfectly fine without you, always planned to a T, always ready for an unexpected iceberg or two.
Jaemin’s life was like clockwork: constant, yet moving forwards with no chance of looking back. No matter the clock he was adorned by, his ticking would not end until the clock was destroyed beyond repair.
Yours was not. Yours was planned around his planning, every move decided upon with his opinion, every decision made with his watchful eye leading you through.
You were his clock.
No clockwork could exist without a clock, though.
-
You stood outside your apartment door, key in hand, ex-roommate parked outside. Part of you didn’t want to go inside, didn’t want to face reality if reality meant the end of your life’s only constant. But, a week had passed, and you would not let yourself fall now.
You shoved the key into the doorknob, clicking it open with the slow turn of your wrist, and pushing it open. Jaemin was sitting on the floor, scratching the chin of your shared cat.
“Are you ready to talk now?” he asked, not turning his attention away from the cat. He assumed the tone of voice he’d kept that night, a tone that made your stomach churn.
“I don’t think you understand this, honestly,” you replied, slipping your shoes off and trudging farther into the apartment. He rose from the floor, following you into the living room, where he’d sorted your flowers into one of the many vases he’d bought a couple of ago.
“Enlighten me, then. Let me understand,” he replied, sitting down on the sofa. You sat in the single chair across from him, leaning your elbows on your knees.
“I took extra shifts to buy you that bracelet, Jaemin. I talked about our anniversary for months, and you pretended to listen to every word I said, but, down to the wire, you don’t even acknowledge it,” you breathed out, trying to keep yourself as level-headed as he presented himself to be. “You didn’t even plan on coming home for dinner.”
“Who said I was pretending? Listen, [First], your months of talking were just little ideas and hints. You never said anything outright, so I didn’t think it would be such a big deal—”
“I’m not here to fight again,” you cut him off, clenching your fists and biting back the tears in your eyes. “I’m here for an apology, and if you can’t give me something as simple as that, I am going to break up with you.”
Jaemin’s eyes widened as if that was the last thing he expected to hear. The whole room went silent, save for the quiet meows of your cat, who was currently rubbing her back against your leg. Jaemin didn’t seem like he knew what to say, or what to do, which was the last situation he wanted to be in in most cases.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He squeezed his eyes shut, covering his face with his hands, as if he was in some sort of shock. Not wanting to speak until he decided on his response, you just leaned back in the chair, staring at him.
Jaemin dropped his hands from his face, staring at the coffee table. Your cat took off elsewhere, blissfully unaware of the gravity of your situation.
Finally, he said, “You can’t do that.”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t break up with me now,” he repeated, looking up at you. “Not after—”
“After what? You planned out my entire future for me, to fit your tastes?”
“Not after I planned my whole life around you.”
You went quiet at that. Something in that statement didn’t feel right, at least not to your mind. There was no way Na Jaemin’s perfect life plans had you in mind, not at all. He was the center of the universe, and you were the stick threatening to pop his perfect balloon. In what world had everything been planned around you?
“If an apology is what you need, I will give it, but you have to promise you won’t leave now. Not over something like this,” he continued, letting his voice crack. A single tear fell down his face, and, you swear to god, you have never seen him panic like this. “I’m sorry, [First]. It’s my fault your anniversary plans fell through, and it’s my fault I didn’t think the ideas were anything more than ideas. I loved the bracelet and will never treasure anything more in my entire life. Okay? Is that enough?”
You didn’t know what to say. Jaemin immediately began wiping at his tears, sniffling, trying to get himself in order, trying to keep the clock ticking. Slowly, you stood up, approaching the sofa. You took an awkward seat next to him, trying to hold back the reactionary tears at him crying.
So, instead of verbally agreeing, you wrapped your arms around his waist, holding him tightly. He kept wiping at his tears, desperately striving to return to his usual calm self. After a few seconds, though, he gave up, returning your embrace in earnest. He buried his head in your shoulder, repeating “I’m sorry” every few moments.
“It’s okay,” you whispered, shocked that he was just as scared as you were. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he responded, pulling you closer. “Our sixth anniversary will be the most extravagant thing you’ve ever seen. Same with our twelfth, our eighteenth…”
“I can’t wait,” you hummed.
At the end of the day, you learned that, although they are separate in theory, a clock can’t work without its clockwork, and the clockwork has no function without a clock.
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream scenarios#nct dream imagines#nct dream angst#jaemin x reader#na jaemin x reader#jaemin x you#jaemin imagines#jaemin scenarios#jaemin angst#nct x reader#nct imagines#nct scenarios#nct x you
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: ghosting | njm
summary | na jaemin is your soulmate; having known for about eight months now, you’ve been able to come to terms with the fact that you’re never, ever going to let him know it. (OR, a series of events in which you're forced to face your fate.)
genre | soulmate au. non-idol au.angst & some fluff at the end, y/n kinda destroys jaemin’s week. fear of commitment is strong and y/n has social anxiety. mentions of alcohol. some nsfw implications (conversation) but nothing explicit. quick/unreliable narration.
wc | 7.6k
a/n: the fic that was the inception of this blog! it’s based upon a mini fic i had planned out for beomgyu of txt, but i twisted a bit for this (obviously). i’m not as happy with this as i could be, but i think it’s good enough lol
ft. aespa's karina/winter, itzy's ryujin.
JUNE 21, 14 YEARS AGO. You’re seven years old when you first ask your mom about the little sun on your right wrist, curious about what lies behind the blue, swirled lines. She seemed so amused, at the time, staring at you with such admiration that remembering it made you feel sick.
“When you’re older,” she said, kneeling on the floor to be level with you, “you’re gonna meet someone with a matching mark on their left wrist.”
Gently, she picked your hand up, your palm facing the sky. “Right here.” She pointed at a spot on the corner of your wrist. “Maybe a moon, or a storm cloud, or a planet…whoever has the other half will be clear to you. You’ll recognize it. And that person will be your perfect other half.”
To a seven-year-old, who watched princess movies every day and dreamt of a prince to sweep them off their feet, the mark was dazzling. The thought of someone tailor-made to be your companion was dazzling.
You wish you still thought the same way.
FEBRUARY 18, 3 YEARS AGO, and you’re graduating high school. You spent your days sitting in the library with your friends, inhaling information as if it was more vital to you than water. You hadn’t started trying to cover the mark, then—in fact, you were infatuated with a friend’s relationship with her soulmate, and wanted so desperately to have the same link they did.
The ceremony was long, and you fought off falling asleep for most of it, but you were so proud you had done it. It, as in graduate high school with an impressive university to go to and recognition from your father, who never seemed to care what you were doing.
Then, university seemed like a dream. You remember your mom saying, “Hey, what if you meet your soulmate there?” and you remember the giddiness you felt at even the notion of that. Your life was beginning, now, and it made you feel excited.
That was the first time you’d felt truly excited about something in years. There were no more CSATs, no more disapproving stares when you got less than a 95 on a test, no more endless homework assignments and sleepless nights.
You wished it would’ve turned out like you thought it would in your brain.
SEPTEMBER 01, 3 YEARS AGO, and you’re in a psychiatrist’s office, spiders crawling up and down your throat as you struggle to find comfort. It’s so…artificial, in the way that calming art prints and fake plants line the room, in the way that the couch you sat on felt new and unused, in the way it smelled faintly of mint and lavender.
“It’s something we see a lot in first-year university students,” the doctor explained, obviously trying to reassure you. “I mean, kids like you spend their entire high school experiences with their noses in their books, and then they just don’t know how to handle the real world. With some good therapy and exposure, you’ll be right up to speed, okay?”
Nothing was going how you envisioned it. You had two friends, one of which had practically adopted you after you gave him your homework answers, and one being an acquaintance from middle school. You didn’t go to Itaewon every weekend, you didn’t make out with random strangers, and you didn’t drink until you couldn’t breathe. Instead, you watched space documentaries in your apartment and ordered delivery for dinner every night.
“I’m just going to ask some personal profile questions to grasp what we might deal with, and then I can refer you some to good help, okay?”
You should’ve seen this coming. It had always been one of your mom’s biggest worries after one of your cousins ended up dropping out of university and becoming an embarrassing recluse, even though he’d been ranked first in his high school class.
There was no way you were going to drop out—you knew that well enough—but even so much as edging towards that fate made you feel like a failure. Sure, you were at Seoul National University, and sure, you essentially had a job waiting for you the moment you graduated, but that didn’t mean you were happy. Not at all.
“Have you met your soulmate?”
This question was unexpected. Your eyes shot up from your lap, your facial expression morphing into one of confusion. “Uh, no. Not yet.”
The doctor scribbled something down on his notepad, which confused you even further. “A lot of kids your age freak out when they meet their soulmate and often cut them off completely. If you ever find yourself doing that, consult a professional, okay?”
You wished you’d heeded his advice a bit more.
DECEMBER 21, EIGHT MONTHS AGO. This year would be the first year you celebrated Christmas without your family, but you weren’t too worried; you had three roommates, your closest friends, to spend it with, and Ryujin’s girlfriend.
December 21st is a day you’d like to remember fondly. You spent the majority of the day shopping, with Jimin blowing through a huge bonus she’d received at her job. You laughed and screwed around, making a mess out of the world around you.
“Jeno is streaming again,” Minjeong had said, looking down at her phone. “Looks like he’s with Jaemin and Donghyuck.”
Jeno was one of Minjeong’s close friends in high school, but they’d fallen out with each other during their first year of university. After that, she’d gone off to eight million fashion internships and he’d started a successful streaming career, and they lost all common ground they had.
Sometime in the past year, though, she’d become fixated on rekindling their friendship, claiming that she missed being his friend more than anything in the world. However, you knew better—you knew why Minjeong wanted him back in her life so bad.
“Holy shit, turn it on,” Jimin said, slapping Minjeong’s shoulder. “Quick! Put it on the TV so we can all watch.”
The 10-hour-long fireplace video they’d been watching suddenly transitioned to a Lee Jeno and Lee Donghyuck wrestling each other for the other’s Wii remote, all while Na Jaemin, SNU’s resident heartthrob and student council secretary, sat on a couch with a stupid smile on his face. Minjeong and Jimin were fascinated with him, as were most people—honestly, you included—you met.
The chat rolled down the right corner screen, calling for either Jeno or Donghyuck to win the fight. A few demanded that Jaemin proceed with the game, leading you to assume the monstrosity of the Mii up to bowl was his.
“What do you think? Should I go? Will Jeno sabotage me like he did Hyuck?” Jaemin asked, standing and approaching the camera. Soon enough, his face was essentially the only thing you could see on the camera feed. He seemed to be staring at the chat, which now was filled with people telling him to move so they could see the fight. “Wow, you guys are mean.”
“Just go!” Zhong Chenle’s voice appeared, although he wasn’t on the screen. You were mesmerized by how quickly the viewers accustomed to new environments presented to them; if you were a frequent stream-viewer, you don’t think you could do the same.
“I’ll demo my bowl, okay? Ready?” Jaemin stepped back from the camera, exaggeratedly swinging his arm back and forth. And then, the storm started.
“Pause it!” Jimin shrieked, leaning over to grab the remote. “Pause it! The mark is on his wrist!”
For some reason, a chill ran down your back, and your stomach began to churn. At that moment, you were perplexed—it was incredibly unreasonable for you to think that Na Jaemin was your soulmate. The wrist was the most common place to have your soulmate mark by far, only followed by your shoulder and the base of your neck; the odds of you two matching up were few and far between.
Still, you couldn't shake the nerves. Minjeong was now less than a foot away from the TV, and, from where they paused the stream, it seemed the chat was also freaking out about the mark. One message stood out to you, and it made your blood run cold.
“It’s pink! Na Jaemin has a pink soulmate mark, are you kidding me?”
Suddenly, you were staring at your wrist. A blue swirl accompanied by short, blue lines jutting out of it—a little doodle of the sun—was on the center of your right wrist, opaque and clear. People had always told you that the mark was perfect, including Ryujin, who confessed how jealous she was of you when you’d first met.
“It’s a little doodle of Saturn,” Jimin finally announced, just as the chat had. Suddenly, you couldn’t breathe. This moment was something you’d looked forward to for your whole life, but now that it was finally happening, you felt nauseous.
Looking up, you tried to see around Jimin and Minjeong, who mostly covered the screen. If it was on his right wrist, if he was playing with his right hand, you’d be in the clear.
For a moment, you felt relieved. To you, it looked like it was his right hand, but a few seconds of thinking yielded to you the truth. Your wrist began to tingle.
There was no way. Seriously, there was no way that Na Jaemin—
“You good, [First]?”
The sudden calling of your name made you jump, with your hand flying to cover the mark on your wrist. Ryujin rounded the sofa you sat on, taking refuge next to you. “Oh, yeah, I’m good. Thanks,” you mumbled weakly.
No, you weren’t. That was a lie.
Na Jaemin was your soulmate, and you didn’t want him to be.
JANUARY 29, SIX MONTHS AGO, and Jimin is loudly proclaiming how Minjeong is currently having coffee with Jeno and should be back soon. You both sit at your dining table, along with Ryujin, who seemed to be more entranced in her phone than the conversation.
“If we play our cards right…” Jimin began, though she didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she started giggling and hitting Ryujin’s shoulder in what seemed to be delight. “Imagine the parties we’ll be invited to and the people who will be at our house! Imagine Huang Renjun on our couch, Ryujinnie!”
“I have a girlfriend,” Ryujin spoke slowly, refusing to drag her eyes away from her phone. “Speaking of, Chaer wants to know if she can borrow those light blue shoes you have, [First].”
Glad the conversation had been derailed, you said, “Of course, I don’t mind at all.” Ryujin nodded slowly, beginning to furiously type what you assumed to be a text to Chaeryeong.
“Okay, back to Jeno and Minjeong. I mean, what if one of them is mine or [First]’s soulmate—” you shuttered, though neither of them noticed— “or something? Zhong Chenle is rich and gorgeous, I’d love to be his soulmate.”
“Aren’t Chenle and you friends?” Ryujin suddenly asked, looking up at you. For a moment, you were confused, but a few memories from your first year came rushing into your head.
“We were for a bit during our first year. After the class we shared ended, we lost touch.” You nodded, twiddling your thumbs. “He was one of my only friends until I met you, Ryujin. Definitely not my soulmate. In the seven months he dragged me everywhere with him, I would’ve found out.”
Jimin gasped, covering her mouth with her hand and staring at you like you’d just killed her mom. “You were friends with Zhong Chenle?”
“Until he was in Lee Jeno’s crowd, yes. I met Ryujin and he met Mark. We stopped talking right around there.”
Before you could process what she was doing, Jimin had reached across your table, snatching the phone up. The action even caused Ryujin to look up from her phone in shock, but she didn’t move to stop Jimin as she made a beeline for the bathroom.
“What the hell?” you exclaimed, getting up to follow after her. You barely took three steps before the bathroom door slammed shut and the sound of the lock clicking into place filled your ears. “Jimin, give me my phone back, please.”
You approached the bathroom door, knocking on it. “Seriously dude. This isn’t funny.”
Jimin was completely silent, to the point where it was debatable whether or not she was even in there. Ryujin had gotten up and was standing a little behind you, staring at the door as well. Quicker than you would’ve imagined, the lock clicked once again, and the door opened slowly.
Jimin stood with her arm stretched out, your phone in hand. There was a smug look on her face that made you feel a bit nervous, reasonably enough, and you didn’t really want to take your phone back.
“What’d you do?” Ryujin asked, snatching the phone up for you. She scanned the screen, frowning the moment she did. “Jimin, come on. You know—”
“They were friends, right?” she asked, shrugging. “Shouldn’t be an issue.”
Tired of not having your phone, you took it back, finally able to look at what you were dealing with.
Jimin had dug up Chenle’s contact, and sent him a simple message: hey, want to meet up?
And, Chenle, being the fast responder he was, had already begun typing.
FEBRUARY 03, SEVEN MONTHS AGO. You sit in Zhong Chenle’s apartment, owned and paid for by his parents, in the center of Seoul. The thing is huge—bigger than your apartment, which is shared by four different people.
As far as you were aware, Chenle was the only person living in the house now, but it was possible his mom and aunt still visited frequently. When you’d been friends, his mom had been pretty adverse to you, so you were glad she wasn’t there anymore.
Chenle had asked you to watch Daegal while he went to go get both of you dinner, which he insisted was “his treat.” He seemed so excited to finally be talking with you again, which just made you feel terrible that Jimin had to force you into going.
When you arrived at his apartment, he’d given you a bone-crushing hug, accompanied by one of the kindest smiles you’d seen in a while. After that, you spent an hour sitting on his couch, getting acquainted with his new dog and talking about all you’d been doing. To no surprise, Chenle was changing the world and trying everything under the sun, while you were sitting alone in dark rooms and staring through telescopes.
Happily, you scratched behind Daegal’s ear, enjoying the attention you were getting from the dog. You wish you would’ve heard the faint sound of the front door unlocking, but the layout of Chenle’s apartment was unreasonable and blocked any noise coming from that far. You wished you would’ve heard footsteps, or been able to hear an unwelcome guest calling out for the owner of the apartment.
“Oh, hello.”
The voice was familiar, it was dangerous. You gasped, head snapping to the side at the sudden surprise. Daegal seemed overjoyed to see the visitor, leaping off the couch and running towards him. Daegal’s distraction gave you just enough time to yank your sleeve down before he fully entered the room.
“Am I interrupting anything?” Na Jaemin asked, bending down to pet the dog. He glanced up at you—Minjeong would be crying if she was you right now—and offered a cordial smile.
“Not at all,” you stuttered, clearing your throat to try to get rid of the violent discomfort you felt. “I was good friends with Chenle during our first year, so we’re just catching up…”
“Oh.” Jaemin seemed to be thinking as he scooped up Daegal and went to sit on the seat across from you. “[First], then? Chenle talks about you a lot.”
For Chenle’s sake, you were just going to ignore that he said that and focus on the issue at hand. He didn’t seem to be acting odd, as if he felt any sort of “connection” like your mom insisted would happen. In fact, he was so nonchalant that, if you weren’t painfully aware of your connection, you might’ve felt calm too.
“That would be me, yes.”
The moment Jaemin sat, Daegal leaped off his lap, sprinting out of the room. You wished, so terribly, that the dog would’ve stayed.
“I’m Na Jaemin,” he introduced himself, though you were sure it was only out of formality. Apparently, all your luck had run out, because Jaemin extended his left arm out, intending for you to shake it. Clearly visible was that little, pink Saturn on his wrist, which he felt absolutely no shame in displaying.
You tried your best to ignore it, keeping your right arm completely obscured and shaking his hand like normal. “It’s nice to meet you, Jaemin. Thanks for all you do for the school, it’s very admirable.”
MARCH 12, SIX MONTHS AGO, and Zhong Chenle is suddenly back in your life. Minjeong has been seeing Jeno frequently, and now, your reclusive, little friend group is suddenly in the spotlight. Jimin gained a good hundred followers on Instagram since people saw her and Lee Donghyuck together, and, all of a sudden, Minjeong and Jimin are the it-girls of the school. Just like how Lee Jeno and Na Jaemin are the it-boys.
It was obvious how much both you and Ryujin detested the sudden attention. To both of you, it felt like your whole life was suddenly on display thanks to your two other roommates. Now, they were interested in throwing parties and drinking until they dropped—which, to be fair, you both didn’t care about the getting drunk and partying part—but you and Ryujin wanted to keep your home quiet and unsuspecting.
“Okay, so, we throw the party. Let our neighbors know, ‘hey, this is happening.’ [First] and I go to Chaeryeong and Chaeyeon’s apartment for the night. Then, two drunk idiots wander into my bedroom and have sex on my bed. A couple others throw up all over [First]’s. What then?” Ryujin asked, taking an angry bite of her tteokbokki. “Party all you want, okay, but you are not going to throw a party here.”
You sat quietly at the edge of the dinner table, watching the three of them go back and forth with no end in sight. You hadn’t offered any sort of input, but you were on Ryujin’s side…you didn’t want your home to get trashed, and you didn’t want noise complaints or police there, either.
“I just don’t see why not. You pay the least amount of rent, Ryujin, so why should you get to choose?” Jimin shot back, crossing her arms.
“And you know who pays the most?” Ryujin asked, her arm jutting out across the table. “[First] pays over half. Ask her.”
You cringed at that. You were thankful for your very, very nicely paying internship, but you rather wouldn’t make a decision that was causing your only friends to argue tooth and nail. Suddenly, all eyes were on you, and you could only trace lines on the table.
“Um, can’t you just…go to a club or something? I’d rather not destroy the house…we rent it, so it’s fees upon fees out of our pockets…”
Minjeong sighed, resting her head on her hands. “[First] has a point. I don’t want that hag to scream at us like she did when we took a chunk out of the wall. Let’s just go to a club. Or we can coerce Jeno into throwing a party. His and Jaemin’s apartment is nice.”
Silence took over. Jimin, obviously upset, stood up and stormed off, leaving the three of you alone. Minjeong seemed to feel some sort of guilt, but she didn’t move to follow Jimin. The house went quiet again, and you wondered if something bad was starting up.
APRIL 14, FIVE MONTHS AGO, and things are starting to go very wrong. Chaeryeong, Ryujin’s girlfriend, met her soulmate, and now they’re trying to figure out if they should break up or not. Ryujin, who doesn’t have a soulmate mark, hadn’t left her room for two days, only taking water bottles and meals you, Jimin, and Minjeong were leaving outside her room.
Now, you were birthday present shopping with Minjeong and Chenle, and Jaemin was supposedly going to show up soon. You sat at a booth in some random restaurant, tucked into the back corner, watching Minjeong bicker with Chenle about whether or not Jaemin would want one of Chenle’s “stupid” (in Minjeong’s terms) friendship bracelets.
You had your left hand practically wired to your wrist, and your stomach felt like it was eating itself. You’d done a fantastic job at avoiding any event Jaemin went to, and none of your friends had noticed it yet. Not even Chenle, who seemed to know just about all of your mannerisms (he’d learned them well back during your first year).
“I think he’s gonna like it,” you decided to input, smiling at Minjeong across the table. She shook her head jokingly, sizing you up at the same time. Chenle laughed to your left, reaching into his pocket and fishing around for a sec.
“You’re in luck, Minjeong, because…” he said, yanking a small, silver chain out of his pocket. “I made one for you too!”
Happily, Chenle slid out of the booth and slid onto Minjeong’s side, grabbing her wrist. She bitterly let him put it on, although it seemed like he was struggling. You smiled as they laughed with one another, happy that your friends were getting along.
“Sorry I’m late—” It was crazy how easily anxiety triumphed over joy— “the pharmacy took a million years. But, I’m here now!”
Jaemin, unaware that Chenle was originally next to you, sat down beside you. His arm pressed against yours, and you swear you felt lightheaded, but you chose to ignore it. Chenle didn’t seem too bothered and decided to stay where he was.
Minjeong seemed to notice your sudden stress, giving you a weird look. You shook your head, smiling weakly, but she didn’t seem to trust you too much. “How are you, [First]? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
You looked to your side, laughing awkwardly. “I’ve been okay. Staying up late and getting up early, all the same routine,” you explained, trying your best not to panic even though he looked into your eyes so intently.
“That’s good, that’s good.”
As Jaemin took his coat off, he once again let his mark show, and you (once again) did your very best to not focus on it.
“And how are you, Minjeong?”
Deeming your short conversation to be over, you turned your head to the side, looking out the window. Clouds bunched up in the sky, maintaining a dark gray color that made you think it was going to start storming soon.
Letting your guard down, you unwrapped your hand from your wrist, simply making sure that your sleeve kept it covered and you didn’t use your right hand much (despite the fact you were right-handed).
“I feel like I don’t know much about you, but everyone always talks about you, [First],” Jaemin suddenly mused. Keeping yourself calm and collected, you turned in his direction, shrugging a bit.
“I’m not the most social person, I guess.”
“I think I’ll ask you a question every time I see you,” he declared, turning his attention to both Chenle and Minjeong. “What’s a good question to ask?”
Both of them seemed caught off guard, looking at each other in slight shock. “Um,” Chenle started, pausing to see if Minjeong would speak. “You could ask about her major?”
Jaemin looked back at you, waiting for your response. Knowing this was something you couldn’t lie about, you swallowed your discontent, ready to accept your new, question-answering fate.
“Astrophysics. With a minor in classical music.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, you and the rest of your roommates sit in the living room, watching one of the ridiculous reality shows Jimin ate up. Ryujin had even come out of her room to partake in the fun, but her eyes were still red, and her face was still cemented into a frown.
It was late into the night now, and Minjeong and Jimin were practically asleep on each other, struggling to stay awake for the remainder of the episode. Given the nature of your internship, you were used to staying up too late, so you weren’t tired at all. It didn’t seem like Ryujin was either, and, if you had to guess, it was because she’d probably slept the day away.
“Why don’t you guys just go to bed?” Ryujin asked, hugging one of the throw pillows to her chest. “You look like you barely know what’s happening.”
“We have to know who gets eliminated,” Minjeong slurred, followed by a huge yawn. “Before we go to bed.”
“Man, I don’t agree,” Jimin huffed, snatching the remote up from the coffee table. She paused the show, exiting back out onto the Netflix home screen. “I’m going to bed. I have an 8 am tomorrow.”
“Come on, Jiminie! This is your thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care.” Jimin stood, stretching her arms out and groaning. “Night.”
Minjeong mumbled a string of incoherencies before she stood and trudged behind Jimin, disappearing from the living room. Not ready to go to bed, you leaned forward and grabbed the remote, beginning to scroll through the documentaries Netflix had to offer.
Ryujin seemed a bit uncomfortable, but you didn’t feel the need to inquire. Even when she began staring at you, you just kept scrolling, reading descriptions and skipping over ones that seemed boring.
“I just don’t get it,” Ryujin hesitated, her voice sounding uneven and shaky. You assumed she was going to start talking about Chaeryeong, and how she had more to offer than her soulmate ever did. “Help me understand, [First]. Seriously.”
“Understand what?”
“Why won't you tell him?”
Your whole body froze. Suddenly, the remote felt like a block of iron, and your whole body felt like a brittle table about to break. At that moment, your mind was completely blank. It felt like you were mentally resetting, desperately searching for an answer to give.
Instead of being reasonable, you immediately jumped to defend yourself. “You wouldn’t get it,” you said, returning to scroll through the documentaries. You couldn’t ignore how your heart was pounding, how your chest felt tight, or how you felt like crying now as well.
“No, no, I think I do. Are you going to ruin one of his relationships too? When you decide you feel ready enough to break the news?”
“This is none of your business, Ryujin. Drop it.”
“It is every bit of my business,” she shot back, taking the remote from your hands. You snapped your head towards her, your face twisting into one of bitterness. “You blow off Minjeong and Jimin all the time because of him, even though he is literally your universal match. You spend hours painting foundation on your wrist just for it to be unrecoverable for god knows what reason. You wear long sleeves no matter how hot it is, or you put a bandaid over it. What about Na Jaemin is so bad that you, notoriously lazy, can barely comprehend confessing to him?”
“I’m telling you, you won’t get it, so just drop it. This has nothing to do with what happened between you and Chaeryeong, and it isn’t the least bit similar, because Jaemin will never know it’s me. Okay?”
“One slip up and he’ll see it. He’ll know you’ve been lying, because I’ve been to a few hangouts, and he doesn’t try to cover it at all. He’ll know you’ve known, and he won’t understand why you didn’t tell him, and all you’ll have done was hurt him. How could you do that, [First]? How could you?”
“Do you know what it’s like, Ryujin?” you asked, finally letting loose on your emotions. “To be afraid of the person the world has paired you up with? To think they’d be disappointed in you? Not to mention I’d be widely hated for something I can’t control—for god’s sake, when it got out that Jeno had found his soulmate, somebody sent her a dead bird in the mail. Do you think I want that?”
“Yeah, but Jaemin isn’t an internet celebrity with a bunch of psychopath fans,” Ryujin argued back. “Stop being such a bitch and tell him. Or I will.”
“If you tell him anything, Shin Ryujin, I will kick you out of this house and never speak to you again. Do you hear me?”
Tears began spilling from Ryujin’s eyes now, likely from the residual sorrow of Chaeryeong finding her soulmate. “If you ruin somebody’s life like somebody ruined mine, I will never, ever forgive you.”
“I’m not looking for your forgiveness, Ryujin. I am telling you that my situation is different from yours, so you should keep yourself up and out of it. I’m just not meant for the world’s formula, okay? You are, even if you don’t have a soulmate mark. So is Chaeryeong. You will find happiness, but your happiness does not hinge on my decisions,” you rationalized, sitting back on the couch. Ryujin stood up slowly, pausing for a moment in front of the couch.
“My point still stands. If you don’t tell him, I will. Even if you kick me out and never speak to me again.”
You didn’t take Ryujin’s warning seriously.
APRIL 23, FIVE MONTHS AGO, and you’re hiding. The past hour or so has essentially torn down your entire life as you know it, and now, you’re not sure what to do. So, you hide, as you have since you were a kid, as you have since you walked into the psychiatrist’s office three years ago.
It began fine. Jeno’s birthday dinner was something you and your friends had been looking forward to since the end of March (mostly because Jeno would be paying for the dinner and you’d be simply attending). Chenle had let you tack your name onto his card, as you didn’t know Jeno very well, so you’d seriously paid nothing for this.
By now, you and Ryujin had made up and were sitting next to each other near the end of the table. You didn’t know many people here, so Chenle had been nice enough to sit himself and Renjun across from you both. You were having a good time, save for when you had to avoid the pointing glare of Jeno’s camera (he announced to everyone that his fanbase had been pretty ardently asking for a birthday vlog, and to just move out of frame every time he brought the camera out).
It was a nice dinner, seriously. The food was good and the atmosphere was nice and homey, and Jaemin was all the way across the table from you. It wasn’t stressful for you at all.
You did, however, notice the girl who’d been staring at your table pretty intensely. She and her friends were having hushed conversations, throwing glances at Jeno’s side of the table and pointing ever so often. You pointed it out to Chenle, who brushed it off saying “that’s what usually happens.”
Then she got up. Then her friends pushed her toward the table. Then, she was tapping Jaemin on the shoulder, twiddling her thumbs, and the table had gone silent.
“Um, I think…I think you’re my soulmate?” she said, and your heart dropped. Ryujin tensed up visibly next to you, watching Jaemin jump up from his seat in shock. Jeno had already gotten the camera out, quietly recording the girl showing a little, green Earth on her right wrist.
Jaemin seemed a little shocked, taking her wrist to stare at it. And, as a smile began to form on his face, Ryujin grabbed your wrist and wrenched you both out of your chairs. You looked at her with a face of shock, a face of betrayal, as she began to speak.
“No, you are not,” Ryujin exclaimed. Jeno kept recording, although now he seemed surprised. Minjeong and Jimin stared at you both in shock and half-embarrassment, with Jimin already about to stand and tell Ryujin to shut up.
Meanwhile, the girl looked like a deer in headlights, and her friends had their hands over their mouths. You wanted to run, apologize and say Ryujin was drunk, but you could barely move from your spot. Your hands began to shake, and your breathing began to grow unsteady.
“Excuse me?” Jaemin finally spoke, looking shocked as well.
“[First] is.” Ryujin held up your wrist, yanking your sleeve down to reveal the small, doodled sun on your wrist. Something flashed across Jaemin’s face, likely the recognition your mother had told you about as a child, and that is when you regained yourself.
You wrenched your wrist from Ryujin’s grasp, not waiting another second for anything else to happen. Instead, you yanked your purse from the edge of your seat and nearly ran out of the restaurant, not paying any mind to the calling of your name, or Jimin and Minjeong’s hurt faces.
You were running. Where you were running to, you were unsure, but you were running.
You left your phone on the table.
APRIL 25, FIVE MONTHS AGO, and you’ve been off the grid for two days. Nobody could contact you due to your lack-of-phone, which was nice, yet stressful at the same time. You haven’t gone to any of your classes, but you at least managed to find housing and grab your computer from your apartment. In your panic, you’d shown up at your old friend’s apartment—your old middle school acquaintance—and asked for refuge.
Luckily, he had agreed, pretty quickly in fact. And, being the person who forced you into your first psychiatrist appointment, listened to your predicament and semi-sided with you, which made you relieved.
Minjeong had figured out pretty quickly that you were staying with Sungchan, but she didn’t know his address, and only knew his phone number. He’d answered about three of her calls, telling her to screw off and to let you recover from the panic you felt nearly every second of the day.
“While I agree it was selfish to decide you were never going to tell him,” he would tell you, over dinner or while you grocery shopped, “it wasn’t nice for Ryujin to out your secret before you were ready.”
Sungchan was kind to you, as he always had been, having no issue allowing you to reset and rewind. You could stay for as long as you liked, and you could return to the real world whenever you were ready.
APRIL 26, FIVE MONTHS AGO. Na Jaemin isn’t sure what he’s done wrong, nor does he know how to fix it. Minjeong swears she has it under control, swears she knows where you are and what you’re doing, but Chenle hasn’t looked more stressed in his life, and Jeno said you haven’t shown up to classes since his birthday.
Jaemin was confused. He felt impulsive and angry, angry at you, angry at Ryujin, angry at everyone. He’s spent every waking moment rethinking every one of your interactions, the last moments he saw you, wondering what exactly happened.
He’d talked to all of your friends, but only Ryujin seemed to have a clue. When they talked, she revealed when you’d figured it out, stating that “Minjeong and Jimin were watching one of Jeno’s streams on the TV and paused when your mark was visible, and that’s when she’d realized.”
Not once in his life did Jaemin think his soulmate would reject him. He’s been popular his whole life, and he’s always done his best to put himself out there. He’s been on SNU’s student council since his freshman year, and he’s done copious amounts of volunteer work with Jeno. Did you somehow think he was a bad person? That he’d hurt you?
Whatever was going on, he just didn’t understand it. But, without you around, he couldn’t ask, and, at this point, he didn’t think he was ever going to know.
APRIL 27, FOUR MONTHS AGO, and Jaemin’s just received a text that you’ve come home. It was from Jimin, and it was short—we set an ultimatum and she came back, we are talking it out now, will call you later—but it was enough.
Jeno seemed to believe you were some kind of awful person for what you did, but Jaemin knew you weren’t. Even now, as Jeno listed out all the times you’d met and never said anything, he knew you weren’t.
“We don’t know the whole story,” Jaemin insisted, bouncing his leg up and down. “I mean, would Jimin go through these lengths for anybody? She wouldn’t.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that she lied.”
“She didn’t lie, though.” Jaemin stole a glance at his phone, but the only new notification was one from Amazon, saying his package shipped. “We just don’t know enough, Jeno. We just don’t know.”
Jeno kept quiet after that, picking up his phone and beginning to scroll through god knows what. Jaemin kept staring at his phone, waiting for anything from Jimin, whether it be a “we came to a conclusion” or “things aren’t looking good” text.
APRIL 28, FOUR MONTHS AGO. Jimin sits in front of Jaemin at a café next to his house, and it’s very awkward. Jimin seems to not know what to say as she sits there, twiddling her thumbs and staring at her hands.
“She just wasn’t ready,” Jimin finally spoke, sighing. She seemed to almost deflate in her seat, as if the fact was some big secret. “If you aren’t already aware, she’s not the most…social person, right? And the whole soulmate thing is a big commitment. And, from a social standpoint, you are really, really scary.”
Jaemin frowned, lacing his fingers around his coffee mug. “And then, of course, Ryujin was going through a bad breakup because her girlfriend found her soulmate, and she was upset that [First] had something she didn’t. Right? She just malfunctioned. Think of it as a breakdown, or something, but it freaked her out,” Jimin finished, biting the inside of her cheek. Jaemin pondered for a second, wondering what might be the best course of action.
“So is she going to meet with me, or?”
“She agreed to meet with you next week. That’s about as much as we could drag out of her.”
Just a bit longer, Jaemin thought, before I can figure things out for myself. Before I can fix things.
MAY 03, FOUR MONTHS AGO. You sit at a table in the back corner of a convenience store, slurping up a big vat of instant ramen you’d purchased. At the same time, you feel like throwing up from how nervous you were, but that didn’t matter as much as how good the ramen you were eating.
The past few weeks of your life had been awful. From nearly unfriending Ryujin to Chenle uncomfortably hinting that Lee Jeno, who had over a million subscribers on YouTube and many loyal fans, hated you, everything was completely terrible.
Not to mention the sudden week you’d taken off from your internship or the number of classes you’d missed from the breakdown. If Sungchan hadn’t been taking most of the same classes as you, thanks to your shared major, you might’ve died.
On top of that, Na Jaemin was late to your meet-up, even though Jimin insisted he was the one who wanted it. You’d been sitting here for nearly twenty minutes, nervously eating and checking your phone every three seconds.
If this had been any other sort of meet-up, you’d have just left, but the angel on your shoulder insisted he wouldn’t stand you up for this kind of meeting, right?
And you would be right. Jaemin burst into the convenience store, drawing the eyes of nearly everyone inside (an old woman waiting out the rain and the teenage cashier). You felt embarrassed for yourself and him, but you kept your eyes on your food.
“Sorry I’m late,” Jaemin panted, sitting down across from you. He was dripping wet, but his hair had been kept perfectly intact thanks to his hood (which he wrenched off the moment he got inside). “Jeno found out his soulmate was lying. Found another mark on her back.”
The news caused you to choke on your ramen, and for you to drop the chopsticks into the bowl. You went to cover your mouth, swallowing the rest as fast as you could. “Wow, are you okay? Sorry, didn’t think it would be that shocking.”
“Hasn’t—” you coughed again— “hasn’t it been, like, a year? She’s managed to lie for that long?”
“Completely. To be honest, I had my suspicions, but I never said anything. Good news is, he doesn’t hate you anymore!” Jaemin smiled, giving you jazz hands. “Yay! Celebration! He agrees that lying about it is worse than hiding it!”
You frowned at him, picking your chopsticks back up. “Woohoo, because that’s what I was worried about.”
You took another bite of your food, and silence came between you. Uncomfortably, Jaemin cleared his throat. “Uh, can I see it?”
Sighing, you dropped your chopsticks for the second time, lifting your shirt sleeve up. You laid out your wrist onto the table, allowing for Jaemin to see the little sun on your wrist. Gently, he slid his hand under your own, brushing over the mark with his thumb. The little, blue sun tingled at the touch, and it made you feel giddier than you would’ve liked to.
Jaemin lifted his left arm, putting it next to yours. Sure enough, the Saturn and the sun lined up perfectly, and the style of the doodles matched perfectly.
“I figured it out a while ago,” you said after you’d swallowed, staring at your wrists side-by-side. “I’m Saturn, you’re the sun. I orbit around you, from far away.”
“Is that so?” Jaemin asked, letting go of your wrist. You pulled your arm back and placed it on your lap, chewing at your lip. “I’d rather you orbited close by me.”
You nearly cringed at that, feeling your ears burn at the sentiment. “Yeah, well.”
“So,” Jaemin paused for a second, sniffling. “How…can we do this? In a way that makes you comfortable. I can tell you don’t want to escalate quickly, not like Jeno and…yeah. No escalating.”
“Well, my mom will want to meet you. I don’t think my dad would care,” you mumbled. “But I want to, like, know you before you meet my mom.”
“So how do you want to get to know me?”
“Let’s just…um, go with the flow? I guess, yeah. We can be, like, friends. For now.”
You could tell that Jaemin didn’t like the title of “friend,” but that didn’t matter to you much. This was for you, and, no matter how fast he wanted to go, your consent mattered more.
Despite his displeasure, Jaemin smiled, nodding his head. “Okay, friends. I’m okay with that. For now.”
AUGUST 28, RIGHT NOW. You and Jaemin sit in the car outside your mom’s house, going over all the things he needs to know to make a good impression on your mom. He already attempted to wear a suit to your very casual family dinner, which you quickly explained wouldn’t help your case.
“When Jeno met his ex’s parents it was a train wreck,” Jaemin regurgitated, going a bit pale in the face. “He came home and looked dead. Like he was going to pass out. I don’t want that to happen.”
“My mom will just be happy you’re attractive, all right? You don’t need to be scared of her. My dad is awful, so he won’t care and will just ask about your job plans. Your answer will be—”
“Right, surgeon, I know. Student council president. Whatever. I don’t care about your dad, either, just your mom.”
“Jesus, that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that.”
You shifted your body fully to the left, facing Jaemin completely. You raised your hands and placed them on both sides of his face, leaning in very closely. “My mom is very nice. She will not care about what you do or say, as long as you are attractive and will give her—”
Suddenly, you paused, not wanting to finish your sentence. Jaemin’s lips twisted into a sinister smile. “Will what, huh? My attractive face will give her what?”
“Shut up.”
“Anything for you,” he said, leaning in and pecking you on the lips. “I think we are good to go, yeah? Since I just need to be attractive. And a doctor.”
“For sure,” you grumbled, pushing the car door open and stepping out. “Let’s just go.”
Jaemin smiled to himself, turning the car off. “Anything for you.”
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#na jaemin x reader#jaemin x reader#jaemin fluff#jaemin angst#jaemin one shot#jaemin imagines#nct dream x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream angst#nct dream scenarios#nct dream soulmate au#soulmate au#nct imagines#nct x reader#nct dream imagines#jaemin scenarios
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: how nct dream give you butterflies
a/n: this close to making a longer ver of renjun's
wc | 1.0k
mark
it drives you insane how attentive mark is towards you. no matter what he’s doing, no matter how important it is, there is always time in mark’s schedule for you. sure, he might not be good at the whole flirt-and-fluster routine that haechan and jaemin are so good at, but he’s almost too good at making you feel loved. when he puts his phone on do not disturb, it’s programmed to make sure he still receives your messages; when he’s on an important call and you need something, he mutes and makes sure he fulfills your request; when you talk to him about anything (even if it’s a conversation both of you don’t want to be having), he will maintain perfect eye contact and pay attention to every single word that leaves your mouth. no matter what, mark will ensure you feel listened to—that's how mark gives you butterflies.
renjun
renjun isn’t a dance fanatic or anything, not like jisung, but he does like to slow dance with you. it’s rare that he does, seeing as he’s always so busy, but given the right time…you’ll be swaying around the living room in a comfortable silence. usually, these nights follow a nice date or a particularly difficult day, and they never last long, but you treasure them more than anything. they bring comfort and joy, and make any hardships better in an instant. sometimes, you’ll have really quiet, meaningless conversations about things that will never matter, and you’ll laugh and smile together, and you’ll share quiet kisses under the soft glow of the moon. most of all, renjun always plays the music you like, as if he’s gone through your spotify and picked every single slow song on it—that's how renjun gives you butterflies.
jeno
have you ever seen a smile as pretty as jeno’s? the answer is no, no you have not. there’s something about his smile that makes your head spin, and just about everybody knows it. whenever you accompany him on outings with his friends, he always worries about how quiet you are—in reality, you’re just staring at him laugh and beam at their antics. however, when he smiles at you specifically, it gets even worse than it did before. when he asks about your day, he smiles at every little exaggeration or hyperbole about whatever happened (as long as you didn’t have a bad day, of course). jeno just thinks you’re adorable, and he really can’t help how much he smiles because of you, but you seriously wish he could. most of all, every joke that spills from your mouth earns a full laugh from him, and with that comes his mind-bending smiles—that’s how jeno gives you butterflies.
haechan
you’re sure of it–haechan treats you softer than everyone else he knows. usually, you don’t go out with him and his friends (they can be a bit much), but when you do, it becomes painfully obvious that haechan is in love with you. you can’t help but feel a bit flustered every time he makes sure you’re part of the conversation, or when he picks up on how much seem to want to go home. most of all, your stomach absolutely erupts with butterflies when he takes your side on just about everything. your relationship with him is filled with tons of bickering and play-arguing when you’re alone, but, when you’re with anybody else, you can always be sure that he will back you up on just about everything, even if he’s disagreed with you before—that’s how haechan gives you butterflies.
jaemin
you might be considered jaemin’s personal stuffed animal at this point. no matter where you are or what you’re doing, he has to have a hand on you at all times. when you’re out in public, it’s little displays of affection—holding hands, linked arms, and, on rare occasions, an arm around your waist. when you’re with close friends, it’s almost always an arm hung over your shoulder or his legs splayed over your lap, trapping you in your seat. and, when you’re alone, he’s practically attached to you. on the couch? he practically has you in his lap, arms locked around your waist and his head on your shoulder. during shared naps or general lounging on a bed, he’s trapped you in a koala hug, or is straight up sleeping on top of you. most of all, he never crosses your boundaries, and always knows when to back off–that’s how jaemin gives you butterflies.
chenle
there is no one more willing to try things with you than zhong chenle. he’s done a lot of things in his life, from performing “memory” at a diplomatic concert in austria to showing up on china’s got talent, and anything you ask him to do will never hold a candle to what he’s already done. despite that, he is always accommodating of anything you ask of him, no matter how miniscule it is. chenle is up for anything, especially if you’re the one asking—in fact, if you’re the one asking, chances are he will pay for all of it, too. he never makes you feel embarrassed for anything you want to attempt, and is always the first person behind you, even if you’re jumping out of a plane. most of all, if you decide you want to do something alone, chenle is your first (and, sometimes, your only) supporter—that's how chenle gives you butterflies.
jisung
there’s just something about you that makes jisung nervous. he cares so deeply about your opinion of him, whether it be on his dancing to something as stupid as an email he’s asking you to proofread, and will get visibly upset if you show any sort of dissatisfaction with it. so, when jisung kisses you, he’s almost always a nervous mess. you can always tell when he’s thinking about it; there’s a certain face he makes, a certain glint in his eyes, when he starts giving himself the mental pep talk. the best part? every single time, the anxiety that exudes from him starts to make you nervous too, to the point that, when he finally does say screw it and goes in for the kill, it’s more meaningful than it would’ve been. and, when you reciprocate his affections, there’s an intense wave of relief that just flows off of him in waves—that’s how jisung gives you butterflies.
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream#nct dream x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream scenarios#nct dream headcanons#renjun x reader#mark x reader#jaemin x reader#jeno x reader#haechan x reader#jisung x reader#chenle x reader#nct imagines#nct dream imagines
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: hard to let go | hrj
summary | your high school friend group had an ambiguous and messy end, and you never got any closure for anything. two years later, and lee donghyuck’s girlfriend lives on the same floor as you, and you’re forced to face huang renjun, whose abandonment hurt you the most.
genre | huang renjun x fem!reader, haechan & reader (platonic, also incredibly negative), most intense situationship ever, non-idol! au, college!au, angst
warnings | alcohol, throwing up, haechan (and jaemin) are terrible people, victimization, villainization, toxic friendships, a bad fight between y/n and her mom is briefly depicted
wc | 4.3k
a/n: huang renjun marry me please i’m free thursday and every thursday after that i also don’t have classes on monday if you would like to hang out then.
ft. people i made up
THERE IS NOTHING GOOD ABOUT LOVE, OR COLLEGE.
You should’ve realized how much you hated school before you’d gone and put your all into college applications, but it was too late now, and you were already here. The clock was getting closer and closer to 3 am, and you had an 8 am lecture you needed to be up and prepped for.
The equations in front of you didn’t care about your 8 am lecture, though.
As you took a deep breath, resolving to take one more stab at the gibberish in front of you, the door to your dorm room flew open. You practically jumped out of your seat, your pencil flying out of your hands. A boy you’d never seen before stood behind her, gently trying to lead her into the room.
“Oh my god, Koeun,” you said, standing up from your desk chair. You had to stop for a moment, brushing off the wave of dizziness caused by your exhaustion. Then, you walked over to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and taking her away from the poor boy who’d gotten her here.
She tried to push you away, but you’d dealt with this more times than you could count; you grabbed her wrists as she tried to push you, pulling her over to her bed and practically pushing her onto it. The moment she laid down, she passed out and slumped over onto the hard, university-complimentary mattress.
“I’m so sorry for the trouble,” you said frantically, rushing back up to the boy. “I’ve got it from here, so you can go ahead and go home. Thank you so much for bringing her back.
“Uh, no problem.”
The boy looked down at you with a confused look on his face, chewing on his lip as he did so. He smelled like cigarettes and alcohol, more than Koeun did—it was impressive to meet someone who bested her in that.
“Do I know you?” he asked, furrowing his brows. “I swear, you look so familiar.”
“Sorry, but I don’t recognize you at all,” you replied, suddenly wanting him to leave a lot more than you originally did. “Have a good night.”
You slammed the door on his face, glad to be free from the smell of illegal parties. Koeun rolled over on the bed, letting out a loud snore, and all you could do was thank the lord above that you wouldn’t have to deal with her puking all over the room.
A sigh escaped your lips as you approached your desk, flopping back down onto your desk chair. What a bore this was—while Koeun went out and got drunk every night, you were here, bogged down by the pressure of your chemistry homework.
You wanted to scream and cry and jump around the room, rip your hair out strand by strand, cry until you couldn’t read the problems on the page; Koeun wanted to frolic in flower fields and go to expensive cafés to take pictures.
“You wanna know something, [First]?”
The sound of Koeun’s slurring made your previous relief vanish in the second, so you pushed yourself up from your chair, seeking out the bucket you recently bought.
“What do I want to know, Koeun?”
She giggled, grabbing the bucket from your arms and hugging it to her chest. “Kim Yeona lives on our floor.”
You raised your eyebrows. “Yup, she does. Two doors down.”
“Kim Yeona is dating Donghyuck.”
You felt yourself tense, and your knees weakened substantially. That was a name you hadn’t heard since three years ago, when you were a bright-eyed, seventeen-year-old girl who floated through life like a duck on a pond.
Yeona was a sweet girl—you could see why Donghyuck would choose her of all the people who probably threw themselves onto him. But, you couldn’t help but wonder if he had known, if he knew what dating Yeona would do to you. He’d been a main offender in the end, and you were unsure he ever got the closure he truly wanted.
“Is she?”
“Mhmm…Yeona doesn’t know about you. Nobody’s told her. Donghyuck—” Koeun hiccuped, and you cringed, hoping she wouldn’t open the floodgates. “Donghyuck hasn’t told her what he did to you. He knows Yeona would break up with him. But—get this—he said he doesn’t regret it, [First]. I heard it with my own ears, as I chugged another glass off…um…whatever I chugged, and—he was there, [First]. In the flesh. He was there. And he ignored me, too. He pretends like he never did anything wrong.”
You took a step back, mind racing and heart pounding. He said he doesn’t regret it. What a joke that was—how could he not regret it? In what world could someone be so heartless?
“Go to bed, Koeun. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She hiccuped, reaching out towards you. “Renjun—” she slurred, exhaustion lacing her voice. “Renjun should’ve chosen you.
You wished Lee Donghyuck had just killed you—pushed you out a window, thrown you out of a car, accidentally tripped you off the side of a pier—before he’d begun the campaign to destroy your existence.
“Oi, [First],” Donghyuck called, catching up to you in the hallway. The sound of students chattering and doors sliding filled your ears, nearly drowning out his calls, but you could hear them just enough to stop and turn. He half-smiled, draping a loose arm around your shoulder when he caught up to you. “D’ya got the answers to the calc homework?”
“When have I ever done the calc homework?” you snorted, hugging your books closer to your chest. Donghyuck sighed so heavily you could feel his chest expand into your shoulder, causing your heart to speed up a bit. You weren’t into Donghyuck—not in the slightest, given the situation you’d found yourself in—but he always made you a bit nervous.
You could never tell what he was thinking. You’d been friends since your first year of high school, so you’d watched him build people up just to drag them down with the same hands he’d used to build. It was scary. Sometimes, you wondered if you were next, but from the way he treated you and the way Mark insisted you weren’t, you knew that wasn’t the case.
“I wish we were friends with more people in our class. I feel stupid every time I walk in ‘cause I always gotta do the homework as she’s walking around to collect it.”
“Yeah, well, our class is stuck-up city. Bunch of rule-follower teachers' pets. Plus, Haeun hates me, so she’d never give you answers.”
“Haeun, hm,” he hummed, forcefully turning you towards the front doors of the school. “We’re skipping today, by the way.”
“What?”
“You never skip with us,” he said, so nonchalantly you could have thrown up. Your boundaries had officially been crossed; you ducked down, losing Donghyuck’s arm from your shoulders and causing him to stop and turn.
“That’s because my parents will kill me, Hyuck. Skipping class would get me grounded for weeks,” you replied, frowning. “Sometime after exams, I will, but for now…I just need to be consistent. Okay?”
“What about if I had Renjun come get you?” he asked, taking another step towards you. The presence of your classmates in the halls began to fade, with more and more people returning to their classrooms as lunch approached its end. “If I had star student Na Jaemin take you to the nurse? Or would you still turn it down?”
“I—”
“I feel like I’m losing you, [First]. We never hang out, not like we used to. We never talk. You never meet up with us after school, no matter how much we invite you. Even Koeun comes with us, but never you. Even Mark came with us last year, and he’s more stingy than you. Do you even care about us anymore?”
“Of course I care, Donghyuck. I just need to think about the future for a bit.”
“What future is there to think about if you’ll marry Huang Renjun and get a cut of Chenle’s dad’s billions?”
You looked at him, hurt building up in your heart. You didn’t want to be an extension of Renjun and Chenle; you wanted to be yourself, wholly, with a life you built by yourself. Not a life built by Chenle’s birth luck and Renjun’s family-friend status.
That didn’t overtake your pure want to be accepted by Donghyuck.
“Go get Jaemin, then.”
He smiled a devious smile, lips curling up and eyes sparkling with mischief. “Sounds good. Wait here.”
It only took a day for you to see him on campus. He was across the main quad, sitting on a picnic blanket with your neighbor, Yeona, and feeding her strawberries.
His smile was so genuine it made your heart want to shrivel up into nothing, his happiness was so real it made you want to march over and ruin it. Lee Donghyuck made you feel a lot of emotions—anger, sadness, betrayal, nostalgia—but you couldn’t pull one ahead of the others, and that was the reason you couldn’t fight back against him way back when.
Part of you hoped Koeun heard him wrong. That she mistook the does regret it for doesn’t regret it. That, if he could, he would apologize, and he would give your new number to Jaemin so he could apologize, too. “Mark got through to me,” he’d say, referencing the boy who protected you from Lee Donghyuck’s meaningless wrath until he couldn’t anymore. “I wasn’t in the right place.”
You looked away when Yeona saw you staring, rushing towards the sciences building with tears already building in your eyes. You knew you didn’t miss Donghyuck—you could never miss him, after what he did to you—and that you were missing someone close to him, but an apology from Donghyuck meant an apology from him.
An emotional one. A pleading one. A “please, let’s finish what we started” apology that could only be given to you.
It would never happen. You hoped Yeona either broke up with him or moved out soon.
You felt like your stomach was caving in on itself.
You hated skipping class; the more you pushed, the closer you got to your parents finding out. The nurse never questioned the fabricated fever on the thermometer, not when Na Jaemin was behind you, frowning and patting your shoulder. But, the more you feigned sickness, the more likely it was going to be for the nurse to call your parents and ask how you were doing at home.
They’d find out after that. Even if you used Donghyuck’s lie, which was telling her you didn’t want to get in trouble so you’d been staying at his house during the school day. Not only would you be destroyed for going to a boy’s house without permission, but you’d also be destroyed after your mom took you to the hospital and found nothing was wrong.
Nevertheless, you kept coming. Like today. You sat on a cold, large rock next to Renjun, who was smiling and laughing with the rest of the group. Koeun and you were sitting back to back as she slept, head resting on your shoulder.
Despite how people surrounded you, you still felt cold.
“I just don’t get why she thought it would be a good idea to ask me out. I mean, if she wasn’t so ugly, I’d say yes, but…” Jaemin sighed, throwing a rock at Jeno, who was also nodding off and for good reason. According to Koeun, after you left early last night to make sure your parents didn’t suspect anything of you, they’d all stayed up together until Jeno caught a shooting star on camera. You felt left out, but it was for your self-preservation, so you didn’t care too much.
Jeno jerked awake as the rock hit his knee, a loud yelp escaping his lips. “What the fuck, Jaemin? That fucking hurt, holy shit,” Jeno swore, holding his knee. Jaemin just laughed, which was followed by Donghyuck and Chenle joining in. Jeno hopped up, beginning to run towards Jaemin, who also pushed himself off the ground and began to run.
Mostly everyone followed, except for Renjun, who stayed next to you, and Koeun, who stayed asleep. Renjun looked at you, taking your mostly-alone-ness to cover your hand with his and initiate a conversation.
“Are you okay, [First]?”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” Renjun said, immediately calling you out on your bluff. Koeun shifted against you, and you could tell she was awake now, but you didn’t say anything. “You don’t like skipping—I know you don’t. You don’t have to come with us, you know. You care about school a lot more than the rest of us do, and that’s okay. We’re still your friends.”
“But Donghyuck said—”
Renjun cut you off by squeezing your hand, a lot tighter than you would’ve liked him to. “You did this with Mark, too, but Mark was nicer and less of a tyrant,” he said, turning to make sure none of the other boys were coming back. Koeun shifted again, firmly pressing her back against yours. “[First], just because Donghyuck is our quasi-leader now that Mark is in college doesn’t mean you need to follow his word like it’s sacred scripture. He does not decide how things go around here. Don’t risk your parents getting mad just to sit in a park and do nothing all day, okay?”
“Okay.”
Maybe you should’ve noticed how jealous Renjun was, and how it was already too late.
“I’d rather see you after school and on the weekends than never see you at all because your parents grounded you, [First].”
The unspeakable was going to happen at some point, no denying it, so maybe you should’ve tried to prepare for it more.
You had an empty laundry bag draped around your arm as you descended the stairs from the fifth floor of your dorms, where the laundry room was. The sound of quarters jingled in your pocket, excited for when you’d go back up to move your laundry from the washer to the dryer.
You had headphones on your head, music blasting loudly. You whistled the tune, taking the lanyard off your neck to unlock your door as you emerged into the third-floor corridor and found yourself opposite Lee Donghyuck.
His eyes widened as you skidded to a stop, almost running into him. Yeona stood behind him, purse on her shoulder, and you assumed you were running into them as they were about to leave.
How unlucky were you?
The difference between Yeona’s and Donghyuck’s facial expressions was palpable, so much so you could’ve laughed. His eyes were filled with malice, mixed with a sick sense of accomplishment; nevertheless, he looked disgusted. Yeona looked overjoyed to be seeing you.
“[First]!” Yeona exclaimed, stepping in front of Donghyuck. She drew you into a tight hug, a smile drawn on her face. “I haven’t seen you in a while! How’s Orgo treating you?”
“Miserably,” you mumbled, clearing your throat. “Not to rain on your parade, but I’ve got an online class in a few minutes…”
“Oh, before you go, let me introduce—”
“I know him,” you cut her off, ignoring how Donghyuck’s smile seemed to grow at your discomfort and Yeona’s seemed to fade. “We went to high school together.”
And you brushed past her, marching towards your room and not looking back.
“Mom, you can’t do this to me!” you screeched, lunging and just barely managing to grab your phone out of her hands. “Take away my free time, my stuffed animals, whatever you want, but you can’t take my phone.”
“Why not, huh?” she yelled back, getting in your face. “Your awful friends are who did this to you! They’re ruining my daughter, [First]! I should be able to take away your friends if they’re getting in the way of your education!”
“I will not let you isolate me again! I’ll never leave the house outside of school, hell, you can pick me up and drop me off, but I will not let you isolate me!”
“Fine! Let’s see what happens when that awful Lee Donghyuck unfriends you because you can’t destroy your future, and you have no friends at all because he’s the leader of the pack! You’re better off rotting away in your room than you are talking to him.”
Koeun sat on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest and giving you the most pitiful look she’d ever given you.
“I should’ve punched him. Gotten myself expelled. I should’ve beat the shit out of Lee Donghyuck,” she finally said. “Renjun, too.”
You frowned. “Renjun didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Since when was abandoning your almost-girlfriend the right decision, [First]? Do you remember what you told me after you snuck out with him that night? You said you could spend the entire rest of your life with him, and he left you the next day—just like that. Stop forgiving his mistakes without an apology.”
You stayed quiet, listening to the commotion in the hall. They were out there—at least three or four of them—hanging out with Yeona. You’d heard them call it a “first meeting,” meaning Yeona was new, and there was no way she’d known anything.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” you heard Yeona say, giggling as she did. There was a beat of silence, and then a chorus of loud ews and get a rooms, which you assumed meant Yeona and Donghyuck had shared a quick kiss.
“Be back soon, baby.”
Your stomach churned, and Koeun angrily got up and stomped over to where her headphones were charging. A few more beats of silence occurred as Koeun put the headphones over her ears, drowning out the noise of your ex-friends.
“Is that really [First] and Koeun’s room?”
“Watched [First] walk into it. Pathetic, right? How uncomfortable they must be knowing I’m dating their neighbor,” you heard Donghyuck say, laughing as he spoke. “If they were here right now, I’d suggest we pop in for a visit, but I doubt it. Koeun’s an alcoholic and [First] is obsessed with her books.”
“Are they popular, or something?”
“Incredibly. [First] is a campus favorite, according to Yeona—”
You shoved your airpods in your ears, pressing play on the first song you saw.
The night sky was so pretty during the winter. It was clear and cloudless, a break from the constant snow and clouds that seemed to assault Seoul.
This was, quite possibly, the first time you’d felt comfortable sneaking out. When you skipped school with Donghyuck, you always felt so unsafe, like your mom would show up and scream at you any minute. But, when you were with Renjun, you felt safer than you ever had.
“I wish it was easier to take pictures of the stars,” Renjun sighed, reaching his hand up to the sky. You both laid on a random blanket he managed to unearth from a closet in his house, out in a field near your house. You’d managed to sneak pillows out, too, making a makeshift bed on the open, grassy land. It was calm and quiet, the only noise being whatever you two decided to say.
“Maybe it’s better for it to be difficult. The night sky is best viewed in real life, you know.”
You picked up your phone, checking the time—2:03 am. You had another hour with Renjun until your dad could possibly wake up, and you didn’t want to risk getting caught because your dad decided to do his morning workout an hour early.
“I take a lot of pictures of you,” Renjun began, turning over on his side to look at you. You turned over as well, feeling your heart warm up at the proximity between you. “But you’re best viewed in real life, too.”
“How cheesy,” you giggled, staring at him. Renjun smiled back at you, shuffling closer so he could rest your forehead on yours and wrap his arms around you. It was uncomfortable to lay on his arm—you’re sure it was the same for him—but you would rather have him closer than not.
“I wish I could hang out with just you more,” Renjun sighed, his breath tickling your face. “Everyone’s so much work. You remind me of home.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“I’m honored,” you smiled, cupping his face with your hands. “I want to spend more time with you, too.”
“If only exams could come faster,” Renjun said, inching closer to you. “Then, we can spend as much time with each other as we want.”
With that, Renjun did what he had done many, many times before. He pressed a kiss to your nose, and then pulled you into a kiss. Renjun’s kisses were soft and sweet, like kissing a cloud. His chapstick was berry flavored, so you’d grown used to a slight blackberry taste mixed in with mint—it always lingered on your lips afterward.
You liked kissing Renjun. A lot.
But, as fast as it began, it ended, and he suddenly looked a lot more conflicted than he had before. With a furrowed brow and worried eyes, you asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I know we planned to stay out until 3,” he began, removing his arms from you entirely. He sat up, almost in a panic—like you’d slip through his fingers at any second. “But I don’t want you to get into more trouble. Okay? Next time, we can stay out later.”
You sat up, frowning. You should’ve rejected Donghyuck, through and through.
“Okay. We can leave. That’s okay.”
You wondered which of the boys told Renjun where you lived.
If you had to guess, it was probably Jeno. He’d always felt bad—you could tell from the way he looked at you at graduation—but never had the guts to do anything about it; maybe this was him doing something about it.
“You’ve got ten seconds before I slam the door in your face,” you said, mustering the most malicious look you could. It wouldn’t be a lie to say you never let go of Huang Renjun—he’d been your first love. He’d ruined every other date you’d gone on since because nobody would ever manage to be better than him. He was, in many ways, your everything, and with your lack of end, it always felt wrong to move on.
“Please, let’s just talk. Okay? We’re grown up now. We can talk about this rationally.”
“One good reason why?”
“Because I want closure, [First]. That’s all I want.”
It was all you wanted too.
Knowing Koeun was at a party, you stepped to the side, allowing Renjun to enter your dorm albeit hesitantly. He looked around, standing awkwardly as you returned to your seat on the bed, next to your laptop and phone.
You stared as he gently pulled your desk chair away from the desk, positioning it across from you, and sat down. Silence overtook you both, and you figured this was your only chance to have the first word.
“You left me. You didn’t even talk to me, Renjun, you just stopped picking up your phone and answering my texts. Avoided my daily route at school. Everything you could to not see me, you did.”
“You’re right, yes.”
“Not even an I’m choosing you over Donghyuck text. Nothing.”
“And I’m sorry. I was stupid and selfish. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Oh, for sure,” you replied, narrowing your eyes. “He forced me out, Renjun. Told people petty lies to look at me in a bad way. Slowly stopped talking to me, but not before constantly shoving how boring I was down my throat all the time. Not before Jaemin told me I was the worst friend he’d ever had. And you just watched.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Renjun finally snapped, his voice nearly cracking. “I didn’t know what to do; I asked Mark for help, but he never responded, and I—I felt so alone. Jeno didn’t know what to do either. Donghyuck was a tyrant, but he’s not anymore. Mark beat his ass when he found out.”
“Seems like you’re still friends, though, and they still have it in them to talk shit about me. What’s your point?”
“What? I didn't know they—that’s beside the point. What I’m saying is…can we just end things here and now? Forget about each other after I say this? I just want to move on.”
“Meaning you want to get rid of your guilt, yes.”
“Whatever you want to call it, I’ll agree. I don’t care. I just want you to know that I really, truly was in love with you, [First],” Renjun said, clenching his fists. “Once upon a time, you were my entire world. My whole life revolved around you, and when Donghyuck led you into that trap—I felt like I’d been lured, too. Every day without seeing you was painful, and I thought things would get better if I tried to forget as Donghyuck phased you out. I never forgot, and things only got harder. I was wrong.”
“So you were.”
“I don’t expect anything from you,” Renjun continued, sighing. “Nothing at all. I just needed you to know it was never fake. I was never fake. The only time I’ve truly understood what it was like to love someone was when I was with you. I’d move mountains for you—I still would. Even now.”
You would never say it, but you would too.
“That doesn’t change what happened. So, thanks for letting me know, but never come back here. And let Donghyuck know I’ll spill everything to Yeona if he ever comes back here.”
Renjun stood, understanding you were essentially telling him to get out. “I will.”
“Thanks.” You stood too, approaching the door and opening it. “I’ll see you, maybe.”
“I’ll see you too.”
Renjun stepped out of your room, hesitating as you kept your door open. And, with a surge of idiocy and confidence mixed into some sort of mystery potion, you spoke.
“By the way,” you paused, sucking in a deep breath. “I loved you too.”
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream angst#nct dream scenarios#nct dream headcanons#renjun x reader#huang renjun x reader#renjun angst#renjun scenarios#renjun imagines#renjun x you#renjun x y/n#nct x reader
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: a kiss on the cheek | lhc
summary | you’ve only been dating haechan for a month now, and you haven’t even considered the chance of your first kiss happening yet. until one of your boyfriend’s friends mentions how much he likes kisses.
genre | lee haechan x fem! reader, high school! au, fluff
wc | 1.4k
a/n: here’s a lil something as i work on other stuff! i wrote it as i was really tired so it might suck, but i hope you enjoy nevertheless <3
SPENDING TIME WITH your boyfriend and his friends was still a new thing for you, but you couldn’t say you didn’t like it. They were a fun group of people, and always had a new experience to recount or game to play.
Plus, they were very good at including you in the conversation, most likely at Haechan’s request.
Most of your time with them was spent at a little alcove in town, a little clearing surrounded by evergreen trees and overgrown grass. Hidden in the grove was a small, abandoned park, which your boyfriend said they visited the most. Today was no different, except for a little fact.
“So, one month?” Jaemin asked you, tugging at the uniform tie that was secured around his neck. Once it was adequately loosened, he lifted himself onto the edge of the flimsy bridge that connected one side of the play structure to the other. Jeno hopped on after, taking a spot next to his friend.
You and Haechan shared a spot on the center of the teeter-totter, balancing it out so it would stay perfectly straight. It was something you both had grown pretty good at over the past month; in a way, you considered it to be a token of your relationship.
“One month,” Jeno affirmed, taking a clean bite off the popsicle he’d bought from the corner store. “Wanna know how I know?”
“How do you know, Lee Jeno?” Jaemin asked, raising his eyebrow. Haechan seemed to pick up on what they were going to say, because he instantly dropped his happy attitude, opting for a more annoyed one.
“Guys, don’t—”
“It has been one month,” Jeno cut Haechan off, spreading his arms out. “Since Lee Haechan has tried to kiss me, or Jaemin, or anybody else!”
Your eyes widened to the size of saucers, and you were quick to snap your head in Haechan’s direction. You felt a bit embarrassed, mostly because Jaemin and Jeno didn’t know that you and Haechan hadn’t kissed yet; nevertheless, here they were, acting like you had filled up his kissing quota.
You were a bit embarrassed, and heat was quick to pool on your cheeks. You could only hope Jaemin and Jeno wouldn’t notice your embarrassment, but, judging by how their attention was on Haechan right now, you didn’t think they would.
“Shut up,” Haechan grumbled, summoning a pencil from his pocket and chucking it at Jeno. It hit his chest, falling somewhere into the grass, and Jeno didn’t seem to care too much. Instead, he just laughed, taking another bite of his popsicle.
“Aw, so embarrassed,” Jeno teased. In response, you just scoffed, crossing your legs.
“Why the hell are you biting the popsicle? What’s the point of a popsicle if you’re going to bite it?” you asked, derailing the conversation completely. The faster you could stop thinking of the prospect of your first kiss, the better; too much time spent and you’d be giggling in your bedroom tonight, thinking about Haechan rather than doing your math homework.
Haechan agreed, sticking his tongue out at Jeno. He just waved you off, taking another entire bite from the popsicle. “I’m not in the mood to let it melt today.”
“But you’re in the mood to let your teeth freeze off?” Haechan quipped. Before Jeno could respond, though, the sound of Mark yelling at you four distantly caught your attention. Haechan looked over at where the sound was coming from, which (coincidentally) happened to be in your direction.
On the other hand, you stared at him, catching his gaze. For a moment, you both simply stared at each other, but you broke off your quasi-staring-contest with a small smile and the turning of your head in Mark’s direction.
-
As always, you and Haechan were the last people on your route home. Usually, he’d be one of the first off, but he didn’t want you to walk home alone when it was dark out. So, he’d taken to skipping his street, walking all the way to your home with you before turning back.
It was endearing, cute, and very unHaechanlike. You liked it a lot.
Now that you were close to your home, though, you had a little mouse on your shoulder, telling you to bring up what Jeno had said earlier. Before you began dating, you were vaguely aware of how touchy he was with his friends, but you hadn’t been aware of the whole kissing thing. You both had never even gotten close to a kiss on the cheek, let alone anywhere else, so to hear he was fond of it was almost shocking.
You felt like tonight would be a good night to kiss him One month of dating, one month of poorly planned dates, two weeks of holding hands, and one week of hugs and linked arms. Things weren’t developing too fast, not like some of your friends’ current-and-past relationships, and now would be as good a time as ever.
It would make things more special, too.
When your house came into sight, just down the street from where you were, Haechan squeezed your hand, sighing.
“It sucks our one-month was on a Tuesday,” he said, now swinging your hands back and forth as you walked. “We couldn’t do anything fun or embarrassing. Not when everything is so hard right now.”
“I get it. I don’t mind at all,” you hummed, taking a few steps in front of him and pivoting to face him. You stood in front of your house, now, which was all lit up from the bright, fluorescent lightbulbs your dad had installed a couple of days ago. “I’m just glad we spent time together.”
“Yeah, with my idiot friends,” he grumbled. Haechan seemed pretty upset by your lack of anniversary date, as well, which made the shoulder-mouse’s squeaking even worse. Awkwardly, you both stared at each other, all while you went back and forth between the options in your mind.
To kiss or not to kiss, that was the question.
As far as you were concerned, none of your family members were near the windows, and nobody was out right now. It was just you two and the empty neighborhood, with the occasional dog bark or tree rustle. It was the perfect setting for a first kiss, right in the dead of May, when the temperatures were beginning to pick up and summer rain was preparing to fall.
Why not? What’s stopping you? It’s not like a full-on kiss, just a kiss on the cheek. Nothing serious, nothing stressful, only a simple kiss on the cheek.
Placing a hand on his shoulders, you lifted yourself onto your tip-toes, planting a small peck on his left cheek. A huge smile blossomed on his face at the action, which you took pleasure in seeing as you returned to your normal height.
“You’re cute,” he giggled, which was also very unHaechanlike. Nevertheless, you enjoyed it, returning his smile with your own stupid one. Once again, it went quiet, and neither of you moved to leave or say goodbye.
“Can I kiss you?” Haechan not-so-suddenly asked, draping his hands around your waist. You raised your eyebrows in feigned shock, forming a small ‘O’ shape with your lips.
“Why, of course, you can.”
So, he leaned in, leaving a quick peck on your lips. You were the one to giggle this time, enjoying his warmth under the moon. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Haechan smiled, bringing you into a full hug. You returned it happily, squeezing him with everything you had.
“Same here.”
And, Haechan pulled away, giving you a small wave before he turned around and began his trek back to his street, leaving you to spend the rest of the night kicking your legs in delight and calling all of your friends to tell them about your silly, meaningless relationship developments.
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream scenario#nct dream drabble#lee haechan x reader#haechan x reader#haechan fluff#haechan scenario#haechan drabble#nct x reader#nct scenario#nct drabble
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: something new | ljn
summary | in a freak chance, your boss’ top makeup artist falls ill right before new york fashion week, and you’re the only intern who could even begin to take over for her. so, you spend a couple of days as lee jeno’s personal makeup artist.
genre | lee jeno x fem! reader, idolverse/real world, nyfw! jeno x makeup artist! reader, (emotional) fling-ish…i realized i didn't tag this w an actual genre its like angst-ish with a bit of fluff lol
warnings | there’s like one suggestive line, y/n had an embarrassing kpop phase in high school
wc | 4.4k
a/n: i literally need to be sedated. his heels … his heels … HIS HEELS … i need a lobotomy rn fr. shout out to my bff for life rin for getting me through the past two days
ft. people i made up
YOU FELT LIKE PASSING OUT.
Thank god you were relatively close with Stella, because, if you weren’t, you’d probably have been trampled a long time ago. It had taken nearly an hour to even get into the hotel due to the scale of fame most of its residents had, and, even after you’d made it in, making it to the room where you’d be working was even harder. Being an intern makeup artist for a fashion brand was fun, up until you’d actually had to go to an important event.
Quickly, you took out your bottle of water, taking a few sips before you really did throw up. When you’d originally been told about this, about your emergency subbing in, you’d felt over the moon—now, you wanted nothing more than to go to your dingy little apartment in Newark and watch a random reality TV show.
“I want to go home.”
“I want to go home.”
“Oh, come on,” Stella groaned, looking at you. You envied her nonchalance, but her lowballing of your anxiety upset you quite a bit—she’d been doing this for ten years, and you were an intern who’d been doing it for four months. “Bossman said he was going to give you someone easy, yeah? Probably a guy. Someone who only needs light foundation and enhancement. Be glad you aren’t Yuri.”
Yuri, one of your other superiors, was taking over for the best makeup artist in your lineup. Two days ago, she’d produced a shiny, new, positive COVID test, leaving your entire team in shambles—and, given the short amount of time, they had to fall back on the interns. They had to fall back on you.
Finally, you made it to your destination—the front of a line to get into the hotel room. The security guard motioned to see your IDs, which both you and Stella produced with ease. The moment he verified, he stepped out of the way, allowing you to enter a world of absolute, utter chaos. People ran around with safety pins and eyeshadow pallets, and you could’ve sworn you heard yelling.
Luckily, your boss had been waiting for you both, it seemed. “Girls!” he exclaimed, coming up and placing a hand on both of your shoulders. “So glad you’ve arrived. Welcome to your first fashion week, [First]! Play your cards right and you can get a permanent hire, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah,” you said, laughing nervously. Your boss patted your shoulder twice, giving you an almost nostalgic smile.
“Stella, you’re over with the women, as always. Have fun! [First], you speak Korean, right?”
You furrowed your brows, wondering why this was relevant. “Uh, yeah?”
Your boss removed his hand from your shoulder, clapping excitedly. “Lovely! I’m giving you a very, very special job that not even Miss-COVID-Positive could pull off.”
He sidestepped past you, and you paused, blinking a couple times before you spun around and rushed to catch up with him. He walked right out the door you’d just waited nearly twenty minutes to enter, strutting down the hall in red-bottomed heels and the most expensive suit you’d ever seen. You struggled to keep up, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the less-than-fancy clothes you were wearing (black sweats that looked like dress pants and a loose t-shirt); then again, Stella had looked worse for wear than you had.
“Where are we going?”
“Peter Do has a very special guest this year, and we need a Korean speaker to follow him around and make sure he looks perfect during the whole event. There’s worry he might not have the easiest time making it around as most of the models do.”
You wondered what that meant. Jokingly, you asked, “Is an idol coming, or something?”
Your boss didn’t respond, he just kept walking, stopping once you reached the elevator. He swiftly pressed the “up” button, waiting for the elevator to finally appear. You stopped next to him, more nerves rising in your stomach. “Sir, please don’t tell me I’m going to have to follow a k-pop idol around.”
“Why? Is that bad?”
You cringed, remembering your high school days—you’d been obsessed, listening to every group under the sun and spending your free time tweeting about those same groups. As such, you knew more than a little bit about how idol lives were, and what they had to endure.
“People are taking pictures of them for every single second they’re out and about,” you said, beginning to overthink as you stepped into the elevator. Your boss pressed the 15th-floor button, but you barely cared, at that point. “One mistake, one slightly-off line, and it’ll be documented forever. Forever, boss. What do I do then? Sit and cry? I’ll never survive that. And if people see me with them? What if there are, like…weird rumors?”
“You’re overreacting,” your boss said. The elevator doors slid open faster than you could comprehend that you were going up, and, suddenly, your boss was emerging into the hall. You, once again, nearly got left behind, stumbling out of the elevator to try and stay with him. This floor was incredibly quiet, with not a single sound echoing through the halls. It was eerie. You would’ve thought it would make you feel better, but it hadn’t—at all.
He stopped in front of room 1567 and knocked. You stood behind him, almost hiding as the door swung open to reveal a woman in her early 30s if you had to guess. “Come, come!” she exclaimed, stepping out of the way to let you in. You followed your boss, a sense of dread overtaking you.
And then you made eye contact with Lee Jeno.
He was standing in the middle of the room in front of a huge mirror, with three people fussing over his outfit. You stood there in shock, flashbacks of being a 16-year-old girl and fussing over “Chewing Gum” filling your mind, and your very short time as an NCT fan. He was just as gorgeous as you’d remembered him being, with jet black hair and a physique any man would die for. You looked over his outfit, impressed with what Peter Do had done, and—
He was shirtless.
You looked away almost instantly, feeling your cheeks burn at the realization. You decided to tune into your boss’ conversation with who you’d assumed to be Jeno’s manager as they talked vigorously. “[First] is our best intern, and is essentially already part of our team, so I wouldn’t worry. She’s also fluent in Korean, something Stella was not, and will be able to heed anything the client wants or doesn’t want. I wouldn’t worry at all.”
“Lovely,” his manager said, turning to you. “We have a little area for you to get set up if our preliminary setup wasn’t to your liking. We have a few instructions for what the designer is looking for as well. After his appearance tonight, we’d like you to demo tomorrow’s look so that we can accept or deny anything. He’s nearly done with outfitting, so it shouldn’t be long.”
It was standard protocol, stuff you’d heard every time you shadowed Stella or Yuri at similar events, yet you felt like you didn’t understand a thing. Nevertheless, you smiled and nodded, bidding goodbye to your boss and following her to your station.
They’d set it up perfectly, allowing everything to be easily grabbed among a sea of products and tools. There was a sleek, black chair in front of you, and you were easily able to lower it to a better height for you. His manager left, and you sat in the bathroom, alone.
The first thing you did was take out your phone and enter a mostly unused group chat that hailed from your high school days. The last time someone had talked was last year, and it was discussing how an old classmate was already married with two kids—they were not gonna believe this one.
“My client for New York Fashion Week is Lee Jeno from NCT.”
Instantly, texts began flooding in, ones of disbelief and shock.
“No fucking way, you liar!!!”
“Make him fall in love with you!!!”
“Kiss him for me omg.”
You smiled, giggling at your phone. Then, the sound of heels clacking on the ground like mini-earthquakes caused you to practically throw your phone on the counter. You dropped your purse next to it, standing up straight and hoping you didn’t look too much like a deer in headlights. He walked in, wearing the most intense heels you’d ever seen and, once again, not wearing a shirt.
“Hello,” he greeted, and your mind immediately switched over to Korean-mode. You hoped you wouldn’t fail at speaking it, given you hadn’t spoken it much since you’d started working this job.
“Hi!” you exclaimed, hoping you didn’t sound too idiotic. “Um, go ahead and sit down, and we can start.”
He nodded, following your orders to the T. His manager stepped in, leaning against the door while she scrolled on his phone. You picked up a piece of paper, reading over what today’s directions were.
Natural with a slight enhancement of features, exactly like Stella had said. You could do that easy-peasy.
“Is there anything in particular you want me to focus on?” you asked, picking up the sheerest foundation they had. It was certainly a shade too light—you nearly frowned at this, but kept your composure—but you hoped the transparency of it would obscure that.
Jeno thought for a moment before shaking his head, smiling at you. “Do whatever you think is best.”
“All right,” you nodded. “Oh! By the way, I’m [First], and I’m your main makeup artist for this week.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” he replied, relaxing in the chair. “I’m glad I’ll have one familiar face around.”
“Me too.” You began to paint the foundation onto his face, basking in the moment of shock you went through. You were doing Lee Jeno’s makeup—Lee Jeno, who you’d fawned over and loved all throughout your high school years.
“You’re new to this?” he asked, looking at you while not moving his face at all. You swear your heart palpitated at his question, even if it was a meaningless formality more than it was actual curiosity.
“Um, I guess? I’ve been interning for about eight months now. Hoping for an official position once the year-long residency is up,” you said, laughing nervously for the ninetieth time today. “You’ve been doing this for six years now, right?”
Jeno’s eyes widened for a split second, and you wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. You doubted he wanted to hear that you were an NCT fan way back when, given how awful the sasaeng presence was for his group.
“Wow, you know?” and a smile blossomed on his face, causing your heart to beat even faster. “I didn’t think I’d run into anyone who knew NCT while I was here.”
“Oh, give me a break,” you said, putting your foundation brush down and picking up an eyeshadow palette. “NCT are huge. Up there in terms of international fame. I’ll bet most—if not all—people here know who NCT are or have heard the name. Plus, a bunch of people will come to see you. Promise.”
God, you probably sounded immature and awful as you said that. You finished lightly outlining his natural features with a very light brown, uncomfortably setting down the palette. Suddenly, an idea came to you, and you hoped it didn’t look too stupid.
“I guess you’re right,” Jeno finally said, his smile dropping in the slightest. He must’ve been nervous; you would have been too. In a new country, alone, with none of the seven people you’d spent your whole adolescence with…you’d be horrified too.
You scoured the cart for any sort of brown eyeliner, feeling a bit calmer knowing Jeno didn't think you were an embarrassing idiot. Taking the brown eyeliner, you paused, biting your lip.
“Um, would you mind if I kind of…held your face for a second? It would just be a second, not too long or anything.”
“No, no.” Jeno shook his head. “Go right ahead.”
Softly, you pressed your fingers against his face, trying to keep your hand as steady as possible. You gently pulled his skin, widening the range in which the eyeliner could reach. His skin was impossibly soft, and you could only begin to wonder how long his morning routines must have been. He was perfect.
As cleanly as possible, you pressed the tip of the eyeliner to the beauty mark right under his eye, filling it in as dark as possible. That was his most noticeable and memorable feature, in your opinion, and having it stand out seemed ideal to you.
You pulled away, staring at his face for a second. He almost looked better before you’d started, but you shook off the feeling and smiled. “I’m just gonna put on some tinted lip balm and you’ll be on your way.”
You picked up the small tube, twisting it up so that the slightest bit would protrude from it. You placed your fingers on his face to steady your hands once again, gently brushing on the light pink gel.
If you were insane enough, you would have kissed him.
“You’re all good!” you announced, smiling. “Go out there and wow the world in your 90cm heels.”
He chuckled at your joke, standing and instantly towering over you. You practically had to look straight up to see him comfortably. “I’ll see you soon, [First].”
He and his manager left the room, leaving you alone. You assumed you should just wait until he returned, so you sat down in the makeup chair, basking in the warmth he’d left behind.
—
To no one’s surprise, you’d fallen in love—or, had a really intense crush on—with Lee Jeno over the two days you’d worked for him.
Every time you were left alone with him, taking his makeup off or retouching it before he went back out into the world, he fired questions at you and you fired them back. You felt like you’d known Jeno for years, even if it had only been two days.
When he left, you knew he’d stop thinking about you, too—in a world surrounded by the country’s most beautiful people, you didn’t stand a chance at occupying even a sliver of his mind. Or, maybe you did; maybe your absolute unremarkableness in a sea of greats stood out to him.
You saw him walk in through his reflection in the mirror, alone, manager not in tow. He wasn’t supposed to be here, so you didn’t move from the makeup chair, simply looking up from your phone and staring at him through his reflection. “Did something happen?” you asked, finally looking towards him. A simple sweep of his face showed no flaws in his makeup, so he had no reason to be here. “I don’t see anything wrong.”
“Will you meet with me tonight?” he finally asked, looking at you with a sort of desperation in his eyes. “I want to see you before I leave. I won’t be back in tonight. My manager’s about to come tell you that you’re free to go home, but…please don’t go home.”
You sighed, thinking about how idiotic it would be to ride the train home, alone, to Newark at night. If you were thinking reasonably, you should’ve said no. If you were thinking reasonably, you would’ve considered the chance that all eyes were on Jeno right now, and being caught sneaking into his hotel room past 7pm would have resulted in your face all over the internet.
“What time?”
“If you’re okay waiting, I’m staying at this hotel, so…I could let you into my room after my manager tells you. Room 1911 on the nineteenth floor. Okay?”
You should’ve said no. You really should’ve said no.
Instead, you nodded, mumbling a quiet “okay.” The smile that appeared on his face after that was brighter than you’d ever seen him smile over the past two days, and, with that, he disappeared from the room. You picked your phone up off your lap, wondering what your friend would say to you after hearing all of that.
“Girl, bring a pen,” she joked, causing you to roll your eyes.
“Nothing’s gonna happen. I won’t be signing any NDAs. I’m not going to initiate anything, and I won’t let him initiate anything. We live thousands of miles away from each other, and I don’t want to kill myself with emotion.”
“You say that…” your friend trailed off, giggling. “Well, I guess I should hang up then. Seems like the manager is coming to let you down gently—d’ya think she knows?”
“I hope to god she doesn’t.”
The line went dead, and you slowly lowered your phone from your ear, staring at the wall. If you could sit down in a room with your sixteen-year-old self and tell her, “In six years, you’ll be having an emotional fling with Lee Jeno from NCT,” she’d laugh and call you too lame for that.
Just like it was forewarned, Jeno’s manager came in with a smile on her face and a small, pink gift bag in her hands. “[First],” she began, watching as you stood up from the chair to face her. She handed you the small bag, which had an interesting sort of heft to it—you wondered what it was. “I’m happy to let you know that we’re done for today, and you’re officially relieved of your duties. I’ve let your boss know that you did a wonderful job for us and for Jeno, and to certainly consider upping your position from intern to an official employee.”
“Thank you so much,” you smiled, half-bowing. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity, and I had a wonderful time working for you.”
“Well then,” she said, wiping her hands together. “You’re off! Have a safe trip home, and treat yourself well!”
“Thank you!”
And you slipped out the door, practically running towards the elevator. You bobbed and weaved through people in the halls and realized it would be a better idea to take the stairs up, so that’s exactly what you did. The sheer adrenaline of sneaking up to a top idol’s room fueled you to keep going up and up, even if it felt like the air had been suffocated from your lungs.
Each new step made you feel more insane. This bond you’d formed with a boy you barely knew—it felt ridiculous. It felt dangerous. Nevertheless, you kept going—up, and up, and up. Up, towards an impending doom you could’ve avoided.
Reaching the door with the big nineteen on it must’ve been what people felt like when they reached an oasis in the desert. You pushed the door open with ragged breaths and a weak physique, trudging down the hall with heavy legs. You counted the numbers on the doors, finding yourself at the one in the middle of a dead-end hall.
1911. You knocked twice, and the door was thrown up—Jeno grabbed your arm and tugged you inside, slamming the door shut behind you. “Not to hold you captive or anything,” he said sheepishly, looking through the peephole of the door. “But you need to stay here until, um, 7ish? You can watch TV or something. The room’s already been swept for bugs, so feel comfortable…okay? I’ll be back.”
Someone knocked on the door, and you wondered whether or not you would’ve been dead meat if you hadn’t been fueled by pure adrenaline as you walked up the stairs.
“Jeno! We need you now!”
Jeno ushered you out of sight from the door, grabbing his keycard off the decorative table that sat near the door. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, half-nodding at you. You both stared at each other for a second, with you still trying to catch your breath from your 7-flight hike up here.
Then, without any warning, Jeno walked up to you, grabbed your shoulders, and pressed a feathery kiss to your lips. It was fast, chaste, too quick for you to understand what was happening before someone was banging on the door again and he was rushing out to meet them.
The door slammed shut behind him, and you stood there, wondering what in the world you’d done to deserve this.
–
It was 7:30 now, and Jeno hadn’t shown up. You were beginning to get antsy, making sure the curtains obscured the whole room every twenty minutes and attempting to focus on the TV show you decided on. Of course, it never worked, and you were constantly picking up your phone and trying to find anything to keep yourself occupied.
So, when the door opened and a boy with 5-and-a-half-inch heels stepped inside, you felt a sudden wave of relief rush through you in waves. You stood up from the bed, letting your phone fall onto the duvet as you watched him walk deeper into the room. Jeno practically ripped the shoes off, sighing in relief now that he was finally free from the heels.
“Sorry,” he said, a bit out of breath. You would be too if you had to walk in those heels.
“For what?”
“Earlier.” You mentally took yourself through those chain of events, remembering the first 30-minutes of alone time in which you had attempted to process it, and then the succeeding 3-and-a-half hours in which you had tried to forget it. “I didn’t ask.”
“Um, it’s okay,” you said, trying not to shrink into yourself. “I didn’t mind that much.”
If you were more honest, you would’ve said, “It haunted me a bit, but then I learned to live with the shock.” Were you angry? Not at all. Was being kissed by a celebrity, an idol with a manicured personality, that you were in love with in high school shocking and hard to process? Yes.
You sat down on the edge of the bed, turning away as Jeno pulled his fancy polo shirt over his head and opted to change into an SM Town concert t-shirt. When the rustling of clothes was over, you looked to see him in complete lounge wear rather than just a new shirt, and now you were thinking about how Lee Jeno changed in the same room as you.
He took a seat next to you on the edge of the bed, and it was silent again. You could practically feel the warmth radiating off of him, or maybe it was your mind making it up simply because you were so close to him. Your heart was beating out of your chest, and you felt like shoving your face into a pillow and screaming like a teenage girl.
“Look,” he started, suddenly turning towards you. You half-mimicked his action, knowing that, if you looked him in the eye, you’d practically melt. “I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ve known you my entire life. I feel like I was always meant to cross paths with you, like—like it was destined, or something. I know it’s only been two days, and I know I’m flying across the world tomorrow, but can we please keep in touch?”
You cleared your throat and, inexplicably, you felt like crying. This felt impossible—no amount of bad sleep schedules and bad planning would keep you two in the know with each other. And, every time he came back to New York, you’d repeat this cycle over and over again. Even then, you couldn’t bring yourself to say no.
“I guess, but…” you felt bad feeling him relax and then immediately tense up again beside you. Mustering up all of your courage, you turned towards him completely, locking eyes. “You have to promise me you won’t forget about me and leave me cold turkey, okay? My life isn’t like yours. It’s slower. It’s easier to build connections. So, if you…if you just promise—”
“I promise,” he cut you off, faster than you could even comprehend it. Once again, he cupped your face in his hands, looking at you with such gorgeous eyes that you could’ve passed out right then and there. He was the son of Aphrodite, the living manifestation of pure and unbridled beauty, the type you can't contest even if you wanted to. He was everything you were not, and, yet, he still seemed so infatuated with you.
“Okay.”
Jeno pressed his forehead against yours, and for a moment, you just stood there. You draped your arms around his neck, and, for a moment, you just sat there. Basking in the presence of each other, something you wouldn’t get for a long time after tonight. If there even was an “after tonight,” that is—there was always the chance that you’d never hear from Lee Jeno again after this, and you’d fade away into nothing but a memory in his mind.
Or, maybe it was the opposite. Maybe you’d talk every day, sending pictures and calling when viable. Maybe you’d look at makeup artist listings at SM Entertainment without telling, applying and destroying the whole world you’d worked so hard to build here in New York. Maybe you’d send him a picture of you on a plane and a time, and you’d fly, and you’d land, and you’d be met with him in his full glory.
Maybe you’d have one of those romance-movie moments, the type of moment you’d see on a Hallmark Christmas movie, where you ran and hugged each other, where he lifted you off the ground and spun you around. Where you kissed amongst a huge crowd of people, trying to get to their final destination and glaring at you stopping in the middle of the walkway.
Or, maybe you were delusional. You didn’t care, because, as Jeno connected his lips with yours for the second time tonight, much slower and more thought out, you couldn’t help but think that maybe—just maybe—this was something new.
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#lee jeno x reader#jeno x reader#jeno fluff#jeno angst#nct dream x reader#nct dream angst#nct dream fluff#nct x reader#nct fluff#nct angst#jeno x you#jeno x y/n#ljn x reader#nct dream scenarios#jeno scenarios#nct scenarios
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: together (again) | ljn
summary | for your performance at mama, your management decided to invite various idols to join in your performance. and, to your luck (or misfortune), they somehow manage to procure your (very new) boyfriend.
genre | idol! jeno x idol (soloist)! fem reader, fluff, maybe angst if u consider it like that
wc | 2k
a/n: this was fun to write <3 jeno is very fun to write <3 ideal man <3 also yewon is just someone i made up lol
COULD YOU BE AWKWARD with your boyfriend? Even having a boyfriend implies that there’s little to no awkwardness between you two, but you learn new things every day, you supposed.
Since your debut three years ago, you haven't dated anybody. It was mostly out of fear of what may happen, of the people who took pictures of you in convenience stores and at nail salons, so even having a boyfriend was a bit awkward for you. On top of that, you weren’t even sure how you ended up dating; it started backstage at Inkigayo (how cliché of you) and ended about two weeks ago at the Asia Artist Awards, where he’d formally asked you out as you crossed paths backstage.
Now, you waited for him in an SM Entertainment practice room, with your backup dancers helping you warm up and your heart pounding at the thought of performing with him. A part of you was sure people would be able to tell something was up between you two during the performance, probably because you wouldn’t be able to keep up your usual pretty-and-clumsy idol personality.
Plus, none of your backup dancers knew, nor did your manager. All of which were also in this practice room, making small talk and discussing your MAMA performance.
“You’re so incredibly stiff today,” one of your dancers, Yewon, pointed out, pressing down on your back a bit harder. You immediately went forward, swearing at the sudden stretch you were forced into. “You good today? Is something stressing you out?”
“Daesang nominations,” you lied, keeping your eyes fully focused on the door. “Going home to feed my cats.”
“If you just expect to lose to a boy group, you might be able to perform better,” Yewon snickered, letting up on your stretches. “When’s the last time a woman won a daesang? That wasn’t IU.”
You let out a groan at that, frowning. She had a point, and now you felt a little ridiculous over your lie. Maybe you should’ve kept it to the cats.
To your terror, the door to the practice room opened, and in came your boyfriend and his manager. Instantly, Yewon was standing, dragging you up with her. Out of respect, all of you bowed, to which you received one back.
“Thanks for coming on short notice,” Jeno’s manager said, walking towards your manager. They launched into conversation, and all your dancers went back to what they were doing. You made eye contact with Jeno, who smiled at you, causing your face to burn up. You instantly flopped back onto the floor, stretching out your legs once more.
Yewon snorted, joining you in your distraction-stretches. “Have a crush, hm?”
“Eat shit, Yewon.”
“Yeah, okay,” she giggled. Your managers kept chit-chatting away, and Jeno had begun stretching with your dancers, who instantly let him join. This was terrible, in the way you made eye contact every few seconds, in the way you had to suppress little lovesick giggles every time you did, in the way Yewon definitely saw your every interaction.
You’d never seen Jeno in a practice setting before, save for when you binged every single NCT Dream dance practice video in a night. To see it in real life, right in front of your face, knowing you’d be performing together, was wild.
You wonder if anybody else experienced what you were going through (briefly, Hyuna and Dawn flashed through your mind, with memories of Triple H accompanying) as a result of this.
“I trust everyone here knows the general gist of the song,” your head dancer began speaking, gathering everyone’s attention. “For anyone who needs a refresher, it’s a solo dance you sync up with a group of other people, right? Spacing is important, as well as synchronization. We’ll go until I see fit.”
At least your music wasn’t very romantic.
-
Somehow, you and Jeno had ended up in the practice room alone. The rest of your crew had gone out for lunch, but Jeno had asked for a little more practice time so you’d be especially ready for the award show next week.
What a lie. You were beginning to realize how good idols were at lying.
As of right now, you sat shoulder-to-shoulder against the practice room mirror, scrolling through your phones and chit-chatting casually. His leg was draped over yours, and your leg was starting to ache a bit, but you didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t think your choreography was as difficult as it is,” he confessed nonchalantly, putting his phone down on the floor. “And, well, it’s not, but you’re so good at staying in time with everyone.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just routine,” you shrugged, typing a text out for one of your childhood friends. “The guy I originally collaborated with choreographed it. It took me like three weeks to get it down. I’m not a dancer.”
The song you were performing was a special song you’d written with a Japanese artist, a collaboration your manager had called “a reach for non-domestic popularity and the chance for a special stage at an award show.” Both of those things had happened, and while you were glad about it, you still thought performing with your boyfriend would be awkward.
“I think you’re a good dancer.” Jeno poked your shoulder, frowning. “Don’t discount yourself. I don’t think I’d be a very good soloist.”
“I guess we’re both discounting ourselves today, because I think you’d be a lovely soloist,” you hummed, putting your phone down as well. You looked up at Jeno, realizing you both were still very much in your honeymoon phase (if that could happen at the beginning of non-marriage relationships).
“Have you told anyone?” you asked, curious to know if anybody knew about…you two.
“Jaemin knows, because he told me to ask you out. That’s it,” Jeno responded, tapping you on the nose. It was a cringeworthy gesture, but it just made you smile more. “You?”
“No, but Yewon thinks I have a crush on you.”
“Thinks?” he questioned, tilting his head. “Well, I’d hope you have a crush on me.”
“Shut up,” you said, slapping his shoulder. “You have a crush on me. Not the other way around.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Jeno laughed. You leaned your head on his shoulder, sighing. Just as you were going to say something else, though, the door to the practice room swung open, revealing Yewon holding a styrofoam box of what you assumed to be leftovers.
She opened her mouth to speak, but upon realizing what she was looking at, paused and let her mouth hang open. Slowly, you lifted your head off Jeno’s shoulder, and he slid his leg off the top of yours.
“Damn,” she finally said, sliding into the room and closing the door behind her. She seemed a bit dumbfounded, likely because she’d been planning ways to bully you about a crush on Jeno, not a relationship with Jeno. Yewon repeated, “Damn.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” you spoke up, picking up your phone and pushing yourself off the floor. “What’d you bring?”
“Why in the world would I tell anyone? This is not any of my business.” Yewon put the styrofoam box down on a small table that was in the practice room. “I brought you lunch. Thai.”
“You’re too kind,” you thanked, turning back to Jeno, who was typing something on his phone. “Do you want some?”
He glanced up, nodding. “If you wouldn’t mind.” He got up as well, stretching his arms up in the air.
“I’m gonna head back out,” Yewon said, giving you a thumbs up. “I’ll call when everybody’s on their way back, so…you know. You know.”
And, just like that, Yewon was gone. Jeno came up behind you and snaked his arms around your waist, watching as you messed with the box of noodles and various vegetables. “That brings the count up to two,” he mused, poking your sides. “Let’s not share with anyone else for a while longer.”
“Agreed,” you nodded, mixing through the noodles with your chopsticks. “I’d rather avoid Dispatch, for now.”
-
You’d learned a lot over the past week. Specifically, you’d learned a lot about how lucky you were to have a stage with your boyfriend this early, or at all. Yewon, who’d been doing this longer than you (just as a dancer), shared how she’d only ever seen it happen once, and the couple got outed almost immediately.
“Just be careful,” she insisted. “I don’t care who you date or how you sneak around, as long as you’re careful.”
And, you were. You planned out when you’d split ways throughout the week, and how you’d meet up discreetly. You spent time in an NCT-only meeting space and in your personal studio, where you thought up and crafted most of your music.
You spent time messing around in the practice room itself, sharing small kisses and basking in the attention from each other, but you hadn’t considered how much it would hurt once this was over. It wasn’t like you were breaking up, not at all, but you’d see each other less and less. He’d go on tour and film reality shows with his group members while you went on variety show after variety show, building an IU-like reputation for yourself.
You didn’t want to end up like those idol couples who fell out of love because they never saw each other, because they never really knew each other in the first place. You wanted to have a true, fulfilling relationship with Jeno, not a short-lived and hard-to-remember one.
Now, as you and your dancers practiced for one last time the night before MAMA, you wondered when your next chance to perform with Jeno would be, if ever.
As the dance was so ingrained into your mind, practically tattooed on your brain, you regurgitated the moves with precision you’d built up over months of performing, focusing on Jeno’s reflection in the mirror. He moved as well as you did, despite only having learned the dance in the last month, despite never meeting a single one of your dancers before this.
You admired him a lot. You wished you could perform with him for the rest of your career, spending day after day in the studio, in the practice room, everywhere.
But, that wasn’t the case, and would likely never be the case. So, you would just have to treasure these few moments, side by side with him, struggling to keep the air in your lungs, feeling your legs burn with every step you took.
You’d treasure it over every memory you’d ever had.
-
Yewon was never one to look at audience feedback for her performances. Usually, she’d have to scroll through hundreds of hate comments directed at the main performer before she saw any true opinions, but this was a special occasion.
Right now, she sat across the room from you and Jeno, trying to avoid staring at you two acting all lovey-dovey and focusing on keeping the door firmly shut. She pressed her back into the cool metal of the door, staring down at her phone.
Not once had she ever seen such a positive reaction to a performance. It was like a breath of fresh air, for her care for you and your relationship. There was no speculation at all, only talks about your “performance chemistry” and “visual attack.”
Yewon smiled, satisfied. You were okay, your relationship was okay, and your performance was warranted.
“You both have about two minutes before one of you has to go back out into the artist area,” she called, not glancing up from her screen. “Hurry up.”
Yewon was happy, you were happy, everything was happy. Even if you were all sweaty and gross, you were happy.
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct dream scenarios#nct dream fluff#nct dream imagines#jeno x reader#lee jeno x reader#jeno scenarios#jeno imagines#jeno fluff#nct x reader#nct imagines#nct scenarios#nct fluff#req
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: our kitchen | lhc
summary | moving in with your boyfriend is a great idea—just don't forget to ask him if he knows how to build furniture (or how to build anything, really).
genre | fluff, a bit of unseriousness
wc | 1.1k
a/n: the glimo digipack jeno pc i bought shipped 💪 anyways shocked im managing to post before 12am in my timezone (and semi proud of myself?) anyways, i hope you enjoy !!
THERE WERE MANY THINGS you were looking forward to when you and your boyfriend decided to move in together.
Apartment searching had been at the top of that list. It seemed so…idyllic, walking through empty rooms and imagining what pieces of furniture would go where. Sitting at a restaurant and discussing pricing, location, what you needed and didn’t care for—and, of course, being able to even discuss that with someone. Plus, you and Donghyuck had nearly identical tastes in housing, so it had been a breeze finding what you needed.
Of course, after that, there was the cheesy couple stuff you’d both watched your friends do, time and time again. Donghyuck had been insistent on doing dumb photoshoots in the vacant rooms and taking a picture of you two holding the keys to your new home. He’d even made you think up a witty caption together, and you don’t think you’ll ever forget the smug face he made as he pressed the ‘post’ button.
After that came time for you both to pack up your old apartments. It was a lot easier for him than it was for you, as he had multiple roommates, so most of his stuff was only in his room. You, however, had glassware to wrap and sofas to sell, so your packing experience took much longer than his. Donghyuck, in his excitement, helped every step of the way, doing essentially all the heavy lifting (which you were very thankful for).
Then, you had to get furniture.
Initially, you thought that would be the most exciting part of your move. And, to an extent, it was; you must’ve spent hours in miscellaneous furniture stores around town, sitting on possible couches and inspecting about a million refrigerators. You’d bought pretty much everything you needed, and most of it was under your budget, so your pockets weren’t hurting much, either.
Furniture, most of the time, needed to be put together. And, not wanting to waste money, you and Donghyuck mutually agreed that you’d assemble everything yourselves, rather than hiring a bunch of people to do it for you.
That was fine, seriously. You’d assembled mostly all of the furniture in your old apartment, and you figured Donghyuck had probably put a few things in his lifetime.
Wrong. He hadn’t. In fact, he’d never even looked at an instruction manual before he handed his buildable stuff off to Jeno. Even when he was a kid, he had no interest in legos or building blocks—Lee Donghyuck hadn’t built a thing in his life.
Which leads you to right now. So far, you’d put together the TV stand, your bed frame, and two nightstands you’d bought off the internet, all by yourself. Initially, you’d thought that he’d at least be able to help you through reading out directions and handing you things, but that might’ve been silly of you. With Donghyuck’s inability to keep his mouth shut—this trait was helpful, most of the time—he found joy in twisting directions and handing you the wrong things.
To be fair, the antics had been funny and almost endearing at first, but, now, you want your constant building to be over. Of course, you can only get him out of the apartment ever so often, which means he’ll be right next to you until you finish building this desk.
“I don’t get these instructions,” he said, snatching up the pamphlet from next to you. He was pushing you to your limits today, pressing every visible button and sprinkling salt into every wound. Donghyuck was lucky you loved him as much as you did. “Why aren’t there any words? It’s just confusing pictures.”
Putting down your screwdriver, you snatched the directions out of his hands, returning them to where you could see them. “They’re not confusing when you start from the beginning.”
“Whatever,” he hummed, leaning his head on your shoulder. For the whole time you’d been building the desk, he’d sat right next to you, periodically nudging you or laying on you in an attempt to get attention. “So, where is this going? Did we decide mutually or was it a decision you made?”
Sighing, you went back to lining up the desk’s legs with the appropriate screw-holes, wrenching them to the base-wood with as much force as you could muster.
“Bedroom.”
“Oh, really? I heard working in your bedroom can hurt your sleep schedule. Are you sure we don’t have anywhere else to put it?”
“Pretty sure.”
Unfortunately, Donghyuck had already pulled up an article about the subject, beginning to read it aloud for his personal enjoyment. “Working in the bedroom establishes unhealthy associations between your bed and work, making it difficult to mentally disconnect when you’re trying to fall asleep. Additionally—”
“Hyuck. My favorite person. Love of my life. Boyfriend,” you finally said, dropping the screwdriver once again. As kindly as you could, you took him by the chin and raised his head. Donghyuck looked a bit confused, staring at you with an air-headed look that you loved a lot.
“What’s up?”
“Please, for the love of god, shut up. Just until I finish this.”
He frowned at that, grabbing your wrist and lifting you off the floor with him. “All you’ve done for this entire week is build. I get wanting to be done with this, or whatever, but take a break for a bit,” he said, dragging you into the living room. You offered little resistance, knowing that, once you’d stopped, you wouldn’t want to go back to it.
“Finish it tomorrow. Let’s go out to dinner and do something fun instead of sitting in our kitchen messing with a pile of wood.”
He turned to face you, placing his hands on your shoulders. You smiled at him, feeling a bit giddy now.
“Our kitchen,” you repeated, dragging him into a hug.
“Our apartment.”
Even if he’d driven you to the brink of insanity this week, he was still your beloved Lee Donghyuck, your beloved boyfriend, and, now, your beloved roommate. You would enter a new era of your life, side-by-side, moving through the years together. Even if you had to build all the furniture in your shared apartment.
“Okay, we can go to dinner,” you agreed, half-pulling away from him. “Or, we could make dinner together. In our kitchen.”
thank you for reading!!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#haechan x reader#lee donghyuck x reader#donghyuck x reader#haechan scenarios#haechan imagines#haechan fluff#donghyuck fluff#nct dream imagines#nct dream scenarios#nct dream fluff#nct x reader#nct imagines#nct scenarios
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: if we were in a drama | pjs
summary | as always, you and your friend, jisung, plan a sleepover to begin a new drama together. and, as always, you have to pause halfway through the second episode so you can go through your new-drama-ritual.
genre | park jisung x reader, friends-but-not-friends in the romantic way, fluff
wc | 1.1k
a/n: rn i’m really into the whole you’re more than friends but not dating trope…also does anyone else do this when they watch dramas
GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY, you were sure Jisung would kill you right now. He would rip your phone out of your hands, throw it against the wall, and push you off his seventh-story balcony.
“Googling it spoils it for me too, you know!” he exclaimed, reaching for your phone as best he could. You jerked your hand back, rolling over onto your stomach and half-dangling off the bed. With a sigh, he gave up on his conquest, but that didn’t cease his complaining. “I mean, come on, who googles the first-kiss episode every single time they watch a drama?”
“Me, I do,” you said, frantically typing ‘when do they kiss’ into the search bar, followed by the name of the drama. Instantly, several YouTube videos and articles popped up, each with ‘kiss scene’ in the title. “Aha! Episode—”
“Shut up!” Jisung exclaimed, wrapping his arms around your waist. With a tug, you were sitting up on the bed again, pressed up against his chest. You mumbled a string of incoherencies, wrenching yourself from his grasp and turning to face him.
“I don’t see your issue. I mean, it’s not like the kiss episode spoils the plot or anything, so why lose your mind? It’s setting a precedent, a goal to achieve before we stop watching and go to bed,” you argued, frowning. He gave you an unimpressed look, rolling his eyes. You scoffed, crossing your arms. “Plus, the timing of the kiss scene is important. I mean, nobody wants to see one two episodes in, but nobody wants to wait for ten episodes. Right?”
“Right, okay, but wouldn’t you rather be surprised?”
“No, because I’ll be disappointed when the perfect-kiss-threshold passes and no kissing has happened yet. I need to know if this’ll be worth my time.”
“Oh yeah? When’s the perfect-kiss-threshold?”
“End of episode six to episode eight, obviously. Any earlier and things are no fun, and any later and things are boring,” you replied, talking as if this was some sort of scholarly information and that everybody should know your opinions on the pacing of dramas.
Jisung stared at you for a moment, a small smile forming on his face. His cheeks began to tinge a red color, and his ears were bright red, but that didn’t stop him from reaching for his goal.
“So, if we were in a drama, when would our kiss scene be?”
Ignoring the implications of the question, mostly for the sake of avoiding melting into a puddle of lovey-dovey-ness, you took it more seriously and genuinely contemplated it.
“Well, assuming you’d ever measure up to be the main male lead,” you mused, tapping your chin a couple of times. “I think we’d pass the threshold. God, we probably wouldn’t kiss until, like, eleven or twelve. We’d have a terribly boring drama.”
Jisung seemed appalled at your answer, maybe even a bit offended. “Seriously? What gives you that impression?”
Before you could stop yourself, you answered, “I mean, look at our relationship now.”
“What about it?”
“Are you kidding me? We’ve done just about every couple thing other than kiss. We go grocery shopping together, we hold hands whenever we walk anywhere together, we watch dramas and cuddle up together for hours at a time. We’d be the drama couple that goes fast but doesn’t want to admit it. The type to act like a married couple before we even called each other boyfriend and girlfriend.”
God, you wished you could keep your mouth shut. The moment you finished your tangent, you could feel your cheeks burning up, and you could see Jisung blushing even worse than before. He reached up and scratched his neck as if he was unsure how to respond to your slightly-too-real analysis of your relationship.
He shuffled around on the bed, returning to his position under the covers with his back against pillows propped up by the headboard. You stared at him for a second, loathing the silence between you before you did the same, feeling a sudden awkwardness with being near him.
“I mean, did you want to be boyfriend and girlfriend? Because, like, I’m not opposed, but…”
“I dunno, it’s kinda fun just being us, labelless and happy. Right? A couple of friends, pretending like they do normal friend things on a daily basis.”
Jisung slung an arm over your shoulder, pulling you closer to him. You leaned your head on his shoulder, cuddling up against his side and feeling comfortable in his warmth. “I mean, a kiss carries a lot of meaning. A lot of commitment.”
“No, you’re right. We’d have to be, like, really sure if we were gonna go that far,” Jisung agreed, flinching slightly when you wrapped your hands around his waist. There was something nice about not being in a relationship but still being romantically involved with one another. Especially since you were tied up in the same friend group and would be teased to high heaven if things became official.
It made you happy, being with him and living in the moment. Never rushing, never going too fast, just being wrapped up in your togetherness.
“I think we’d make a bad drama,” you finally said, focusing on the soft-yet-nervous pattern of Jisung’s breathing. “It’d be too indecisive and slow.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” he agreed, picking up the remote that he’d put down on his bedside table. “So, what episode do they kiss?”
“Seven. Right in the middle of the threshold,” you said, a deep sense of satisfaction pooling in your stomach. You could’ve giggled out of happiness for your current situation if you were brave enough. “I think we could make it by three in the morning if we played our cards right. It’s, what, 10? Yeah, three in the morning.”
“Is that factoring in differing episode lengths?”
“No, just rough estimates.”
“Well, let’s promise that we’ll go to sleep at three,” he suggested, leaning his head atop your own. “And we’ll forget about this ever happening. Deal?”
“Absolute deal.”
Jisung pressed play on the episode, but you weren’t lost on him turning his head ever-so-slightly, planting a small kiss on your forehead to signify just a little bit of commitment. To plant a little hope that, one day, you’ll reach your episode twelve and take the full leap. But, for now, you’d watch your drama and be happy as “friends.”
thank you for reading!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream scenario#nct dream imagine#park jisung x reader#jisung x reader#jisung x you#jisung fluff#jisung scenarios#jisung imagines#nct scenarios#nct imagines#req
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ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: nct dream as fanfic tropes
a/n: i'm writing smth kinda long rn but i didn't want to go too long without posting so here this is!! if you have any shorter things/hcs you want me to write, feel free to request them as i slowly work through my other project :))
wc | 1.5k
mark
it’s 12:30 a.m, and your friend has just fallen asleep. you’d fallen into a habit of sleeping over at her place recently, and, without fail, she fell asleep before you every single night. this was a bonus to you because when she fell asleep it meant one thing, and one thing only: you could hang out with mark. you can’t remember how long you and your best friend’s brother have been sneaking around, and, by this point, all you want is for it to be something more. you want to finally tell your friend that you and mark go on dates every saturday in a town an hour away, that you facetime every night you’re not at her house, that you drive around the city at three in the morning and visit little spots mark and his friends used to go to. you want to tell her about the trip to the french riviera that you and her brother have planned out, the future you’ve planned out. but, for now, you’ll have to settle for your secret outings until the time is right. maybe that time will never come upon you, but at least you’ll always have mark when your friend falls asleep.
renjun
it’s your last year of high school, something you’ve been looking forward to since you started three years ago. you’ve spent the previous few years slaving over your textbooks, getting 100 after 100 on your tests, and ranking within the top two in your entire school. but, this third year seems to be your unlucky one. not only are you in the same class as your academic rival, but you also sit right next to him. what’s worse than that is that you are absolutely, utterly smitten with him. you’d never really spoken to huang renjun before this year, but now, you wish you had. the way he smiles at you, lends you pencils when you need them, explains to you the concepts you can’t grasp…it’s exhilarating. you thought you would hate him to pieces, but all you are is enamored with him. and now, as you sit next to him in the library, you wonder what his hugs would be like, what his kisses would be like, what you both could be if you dared to ask him out. it truly is a shame that you don’t notice the way his friends tease him when you come around or the way he so desperately wants you to understand that he feels the same way about you, too.
jeno
you’re not exactly the most popular person. in fact, you might be the exact opposite of the word popular. your friend group is small, your university prospects are wide, and your weekends are, for the most part, free. so, when lee jeno, the captain of the football team, asks you out on a date, you can’t say you’re not a bit shocked. so shocked that your only response was “what?” and a confused stare until he gave you a time and location. for the next few days, you drowned in absolute embarrassment while your friends lost their minds over the fact that the lee jeno had asked you out. they rocket-launched questions at you, things like “have you ever had a class together?” or “have you ever spoken before?” to which the answers were always no. even now, waiting uncomfortably at the designated meeting spot—a park in the middle of seoul—you were drowning in a pool of embarrassment and confusion mixed. meanwhile, jeno is across the street with haechan, getting the most intense pep talk he will ever receive in his life. he’s had a crush on you since your first year, and, to be honest, he’s a little shocked you even showed up. but, he won’t let this chance go to waste; after being in love with you for years, he’s not going to let this fade without at least three dates.
haechan
your childhood best friend is a lot of things: annoying, stupid, boring, a loser, and other such adjectives. so, when you and he started to escalate to being more than friends…you were a bit surprised. after promises upon promises saying you would never, ever fall in love with him, you even felt a bit guilty. maybe those promises are the reason you both haven’t made a move to make anything official, even after all the kisses you’ve shared and the sickening pet names you call each other. or, maybe it’s the fact that neither of you wants to admit that, yes, you’re actually in love with one another, because what if it ruins the decades of friendship you’ve built? the unbreakable trust you’ve fostered? what if you have a bad breakup, and your only support system falls away because of stupid, youthful decisions? you don't want to confront that, not now, not ever. so, until the day lee jeno catches you two being a little too comfortable with each other, you’ll ignore the talk you need to have, and pretend like most friends are madly in love with one another.
jaemin
summer vacations are supposed to be fun. they’re the place you meet friends you’ll never see after august 21st and live a life that’s not truly yours, where you shed all worldly attachments in favor of those few people you met three days ago. you’re not supposed to begin one of those cheesy, romance-novel summer flings where both people end up agonizing and depressed in the end. except, that’s exactly what has happened between you and na jaemin. the clock is ticking, and you’re both due to return to your respective homes in two weeks, but neither of you has acknowledged it. instead, you’ll act like nothing is wrong, and you’ll spend every waking moment with one another, cuddling on the beach and watching sunset after sunset. you’ll share room service meals and sit at the edge of the closed pool, quietly wondering what will happen when this is all over. you might have each other’s socials and phone numbers, but that doesn’t mean this will last after july ends. so, you’ll try to make the most of each other while you have the time, knowing that this is all finite and your chances of surviving together rather than separate are slim to none.
chenle
your life over the past few years has been insane. not only did you—a normal, commoner nobody—manage to receive a scholarship to the richest private school in south korea, but you also somehow ended up dating the richest boy at that school, zhong chenle. things happened so fast that you’re unsure as to how or why it might’ve happened, but, now, you spend time with him and his friends doing the most insane stuff. meaning, he’ll sometimes whisk you off on a plane to god knows where, happy to know that you’re there and with him. he gives you sweet presents you could never afford and treats you paying for meals like it's a sin to the highest degree. he’s almost perfect, to you, showering you with compliments and never letting you feel out of place in high-society situations. he holds your hand through every stressful event and helps you with everything you’d ever need. his parents love you, shockingly, and everybody he introduces you to seems to love you as well. he’s living a life with rose-colored glasses, and he’s letting you see into that life as well. so, while you think it’s too early to definitively say it, you’re somewhat sure zhong chenle is going to be the boy you marry, and you don’t think you can ever let him go.
jisung
you don’t like coffee. it’s bitter and gross, and it only tastes good when it's 90% sweet, vanilla cream and sugar packs. however, the boy behind the coffee shop counter must be the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen. so sweet that you can drink any amount of plain, black coffee you need to in order to keep seeing him. your friends make fun of you for your infatuation with the barista boy, but you really can’t help it. he smiles so politely and always makes kind small talk with you while you wait for your drinks since you’ve grown accustomed to coming in while the shop isn’t busy. he’s memorized your order now, and you’ve noticed the way his eyes seem to light up whenever you come into the café, even when he’s not taking orders at the counter. and, every day your conversations get a little bit deeper, a little bit more personal, you deliver the news to your friends with a smug look on your face. one day, park jisung will be yours, you’re sure of it. as long as you keep pushing, keep coming up with the $5.50 it costs to get your drink every day, he’ll hold the title of your boyfriend in no time. for now, you just need to persist—you swear you taste your coffee getting sweeter every new time you order it.
thank you for reading !!
#cinna.nct#nct dream x reader#nct x reader#nct dream imagines#nct dream hcs#nct dream headcanons#nct dream fluff#mark x reader#renjun x reader#jeno x reader#haechan x reader#jaemin x reader#chenle x reader#jisung x reader#nct imagines#nct scenarios#nct dream scenarios#nct dream
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