Then: “Hyung. This kid… he doesn’t know how to knock. But he wants to come in.”
Click.
??????
Chapter 25 – The Way Back In
The penthouse door slammed open like it had been kicked, with no warning.
Just a gust of cold air and a boy with a backpack slung off one shoulder, Skate laces trailed behind him, soles still damp from pavement — like he’d come straight through the night without stopping.
Seungho looked up from the kitchen.
Haneul didn’t meet his eyes.
He dropped the bag onto the polished floor with a graceless thunk, shrugged off his jacket, and peeled his hoodie over his head in one twitchy motion, leaving his braid messy and his t-shirt clinging to his ribs. He looked wired. Underfed. Beautiful in a way Seungho had never been able to explain.
“I’m taking the closet,” he said, walking straight past the islandcounter, socks skidding a little on the marble. “The one near the window.”
Seungho blinked. “That’s not a room.”
“Not yet.”
He didn’t elaborate.
Just vanished down the hallway like a storm deciding where to settle. There was the sound of a door opening, a suitcase zipper being uncoiled, and the thump of something fragile being tossed onto a shelf.
Seungho didn’t move.
Didn’t ask where he’d been, nor mention the ribbon.
Instead, he turned back to the stove, hand tightening slightly around the chopsticks he’d been using to stir rice.
Didn’t realize until he looked down that his wrist was trembling.
He had known it might happen.
Jaewan had warned him. Half amused, half fond, like he was talking about a bomb with legs and glitter in its teeth.
He’s trying, Jaewan had said. In his own way.
Seungho hadn’t believed it.
Not because Haneul wasn’t capable — he was. God, he was. Of cruelty, of honesty, of survival without apology. But also of return.
The boy had walked into this penthouse months ago with nothing but trauma and spit and a thousand unsaid things. He’d stayed. He hadn’t run. Not really.
Until he did.
Until that night with the ribbon and the cracked voice and the bag he didn’t even take.
Haneul had never left like that before.
Which meant he’d never come back from it either.
Not like this, bruised and humming and bold enough to claim a closet without flinching.
Not after going to Jaewan. To Ji-ho, after doing something so terrifyingly foreign to both of them — trying.
