Ji-ho.
He picked up.
Didn’t speak.
“Hyung,” Ji-ho hissed, voice thick with disbelief. “What the fuck did you do.”
Seungho blinked. “What.”
“There’s a fox on my couch. Glitter in my carpet. He’s sleeping in my bathrobe and talking in his sleep. I think he threatened to domesticate me before passing out.”
A pause. Seungho listened. The faint sound of something in the background — soft breathing? Pop music?
“He came in like he owned the building. Said he was looking for your darkest secrets. Called me the ‘younger prototype.’ Asked if you wet the bed. Then ate my strawberries and cried at a cologne commercial.”
Another pause.
“I don’t—Hyung, I don’t even know your type. You’ve never had a type. You’ve been a walking briefcase since college. And now this—this boy shows up like a hurricane in designer boots and wants to know if you liked math as a kid.”
Seungho inhaled. Not sharply. Not dramatically. But like someone unaccustomed to breathing where it might be heard.
“…He left.”
His voice was low. Rough with unsaid things.
“I thought he’d stay. He didn’t.”
Ji-ho didn’t reply.
“I didn’t ask him to,” Seungho continued, slower now. “Didn’t tell him to stay. I just… made space. Kept the lights on. Stocked the fridge. Bought tea I don’t drink.”
He paused. “Isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t talk, hyung. You hover. You haunt.”
“I don’t know how to ask for anything,” Seungho said. “Not from someone like… him.”
A ragged breath. “He’s not… safe. But he feels like something I already lost. And I—”
His voice broke, almost imperceptibly.
“I don’t know how to stop waiting.”
Ji-ho was silent for a long time.
Then: “He’s not coming back because it’s safe, hyung. He’s coming back because it’s you.”
A beat. Then, softer:
“He just doesn’t know where the door is yet.”
“He’s not… what I expected,” Ji-ho muttered finally. “He’s too much. All beauty and teeth and glitter and war paint. But he—he didn’t come to break anything. I thought he did. But no. He wanted to know how to get close to you without making you bolt.”
A long beat.
“I didn’t know how to answer,” Ji-ho said, voice quieter. “You don’t talk about yourself. You never let anyone in.”
Silence again.
