“No,” Haneul snapped. “Not until you stop being weird. You didn’t even look at me when I walked in. And don’t pull the CEO routine—I’ve seen you pretend just fine before.”
Seungho’s eyes darkened. Something flickered in his jaw. But all he said was:
“I have meetings. Don’t be late to class.”
Then he turned and walked out of the kitchen.
??????
It bothered Haneul all the way to campus.
No, infuriated was more accurate.
He shoved his hands into his pockets as he stomped toward the studio building, braid swinging behind him like a fuse. The morning sun was too bright, the trains too loud, and every footstep on the pavement felt like a personal insult.
Who the hell did Seungho think he was, acting like that?
He’d just kissed him. Held him. Dragged him down into the sheets like he couldn’t breathe without him. Whispered things—looked at him like he meant them. Haneul wasn’t imagining that. He wasn’t.
When I see you, it feels like I’ve lost something I didn’t know I had.
He remembered every word of that stupid post-party confession. It had crawled under his skin and nested there. He’d believed it. He wanted to believe it.
And now—what?
He gives the man a kiss and one night tangled in each other’s arms, and suddenly Seungho was stone-faced again? Cold? Pushing him away like Haneul had imagined the whole thing?
Was this it?
Was this how it was going to go?
A moment of tenderness, a flash of vulnerability, and then—walls?
No. Absolutely not.
Haneul kicked a pebble hard enough to send it skidding across the sidewalk. A few students turned. He didn’t care.
If Seungho thought he could ghost behind suits and silence again, he had another thing coming.
You don’t get to kiss me like that and then act like nothing happened.
He stormed into the building, sat down harder than necessary, and yanked open his sketchbook. The lines that followed were anything but calm.
He didn’t mean to draw him. He never meant to draw him.
But the pencil moved anyway.
First the outline of shoulders. Then the turn of a neck. The slope of a nose he knew too well.
Then… something shifted.
His hand darted, fast. Like it was remembering something before his mind caught up.
The hair wasn’t down this time—it was tied up, tight and severe. A war-knot. His usual suit dissolved into layered robes of crimson-black, edged with silver ash. Seungho’s chest was bare beneath, and pulsing at the center—just beneath the sternum—was something not anatomical.
A core. A shard. A sun. A flame, coiled and burning like a second heart.
Haneul blinked down at it.
