"But who?" Heesung asks, his voice dropping to a theatrical whisper that carries perfectly in the tense silence. "We don't have many of those in the Visual Design department. In fact... I can only think of one."
I break through the second-to-last row of people just as Heesung turns.
He doesn't look at the stage. He doesn't look at the crowd.
He looks straight at me.
His eyes lock onto mine, bright with malicious triumph. He smiles, a sharp, satisfied curve of his lips, and raises his eyebrows.
"Isn't that right, Donghwa?"
The silence that follows Heesung’s accusation isn’t empty. It’s heavy, pressurized, like the air in a room right before the windows blow out.
Two hundred heads turn.
It’s a ripple effect, a wave of motion that starts at the front and crashes backward until every single pair of eyes in the vicinity is fixed on me. I feel the weight of them physically, a suffocating blanket of curiosity and judgment. The whispers stop. The music from the distant stage seems to fade into a dull, thumping headache.
I don’t move. I don’t flinch. I don’t give Heesung the satisfaction of seeing me scramble.
I stand perfectly still, hands in my pockets, my expression bored, even as my heart hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs—not from fear, but from a sudden, violent spike of adrenaline.
Heesung is watching me, his eyebrows raised, waiting for the confession. He thinks he’s trapped us. He thinks he’s playeda masterstroke that will topple the hierarchy and leave him standing on the rubble.
I ignore him. I ignore the crowd. I ignore Soyoung’s hand tightening on my arm.
I look past them all, straight up to the platform.
Sihwan is trembling.
It’s not the shivering of someone who’s wet and cold. It’s a deep, structural vibration, like a building about to collapse. He’s pressed back against the blue vinyl of the booth, his chest heaving, his face drained of so much blood it looks grey under the harsh festival lights. His hand is still clamped over his shoulder, fingers digging into his own flesh so hard the knuckles are white, trying desperately to hide the evidence of what we did. Of whatIdid.
He meets my gaze, and the bond between us snaps taut, vibrating with a frequency that makes my teeth ache.
I don’t just see the terror in his eyes; I feel it. It tastes like bile and ash. It’s a drowning sensation.
In his mind, this isn’t just a rumor or a bit of college drama. This is the end. I can see the spiral playing out behind his dilated pupils. He’s seeing his reputation incinerated. He’s seeing the whispers, the snickers, the loss of his status. He’s seeing his father’s disappointment, his mother’s critiques, the confirmation of his deepest, darkest insecurity: that he is weak. That he is lesser. That he is a fraud who has finally been exposed.
He looks at me, and for the first time since we met, there is no challenge. No fire. No arrogance.
He looks at me like a man begging for his life.
Please,his eyes scream, wide and wet and terrified.Don't.
My anger evaporates.
All the frustration I’ve felt over the last week—the annoyance at his cowardice, the irritation at his hiding—it all vanishes,replaced by a cold, protective rage that settles in my gut like a stone.
He’s an idiot. He’s vain, insecure, and obsessed with things that don't matter. But he’smine.
And nobody gets to break what’s mine.
The silence stretches, thin and brittle, ready to snap.
I make a choice. It isn't a hard one.
I look at Sihwan, really look at him, trembling against that blue vinyl backdrop like a man facing a firing squad. I see the absolute, crushing certainty in his eyes that his life is over. He thinks I’m going to let him burn. He thinks I’m going to stand here and let everyone know that the great Oh Sihwan, whimpered and begged and took me deep inside him until he couldn't see straight.
He values this—this cheap, plastic applause, this fragile hierarchy—more than anything. I valuehim.
