Trying to understand.
Tryingto reach.
Then Ji-ho called. At three in the morning.
Talked too fast.
Sounded like someone who had met God and been handed a feral stray instead.
He wanted to know how to reach you, Ji-ho had said. And I had no fucking clue what to tell him. You don’t talk, Hyung. You don’t open. You don’t let anyone close enough to even guess.
That had stayed.
You don’t open.
Seungho thought he had. In bits. In gestures.
But maybe he hadn’t offered a door — just a window. One Haneul had thrown himself through without hesitation.
And now—
Now he was back.
With no answers. No apology. No request.
Just a bag dropped like a gauntlet and a declaration about stealing closets.
Like it was obvious.
Like he belonged.
Seungho stared into the steam rising from the rice pot, something inside him going quiet and cold.
Not fear. Not joy either.
Something deeper. Older. The sense that the world had just turned slightly — a tilt in gravity he wouldn’t recover from.
??????
The closet-turned-bedroom was barely six feet wide. But Haneul moved in like a territorial feline. Dropped a floor mattress. Taped paper stars to the wall. Hung his jacket on a lamp and called it ambience.
He didn’t offer any explanation or apology, just tape, stars, and a mattress dragged over the floor like a battle line
But—he also didn’t avoid the kitchen.
He padded in ten minutes later, barefoot, hair still damp, shirt changed. He moved with that twitchy pride that always preceded an outburst. But instead of snarling—
He dropped his wallet onto the counter.
And then a folded slip of paper.
Seungho looked up.
Haneul didn’t.
“My rent,” he said flatly. “Eighty percent of what I make at Velvet. Non-negotiable. I keep the rest for food, metro, and uni shit. But you don’t get to house me like a pet. I’m not staying for free.”
Seungho blinked.
