“Are you okay?”

The concerned stare that Yugyeom offered him was unbearably nauseating. If there was one thing Jinyoung was not in the mood for—it was the pity swelling in his younger friend’s eyes.

“Move, Gyeom. I’m fine.” When his lie was acknowledged with a disbelieving frown, he added, “Please.”

He was met with no resistance post-plea, thankfully, despite the reluctance plaguing the maknae’s visage. And soon, Park Jinyoung was walking briskly through a heavy sheet of hissing rain, umbrella-less.

It took a moment for him to collect his thoughts, feet mindless and wandering. They—which is to say, his pensées, had begun to scatter like breeze-kissed petals until he was almost certainly on the verge of losing his wits. But Jinyoung was stubborn, and his pride thick. He refused to lose his mind over a former lover, and he would not give them the satisfaction of watching him crumble.

How lucky for him that petty was laced into the core of his soul.

Perhaps this could be a good thing. His muse had a knack for flourishing under the most terrible of circumstances…and he doubted this moment would be an exception. Maybe a song would birth from the ashes of the day’s inferno, or perhaps he’d dabble in a bit of ventured writing. And although he doubted he could come anywhere near the likes of Fitzgerald, he had never been terrible with words.

Which reminded him: he needed to ask his nitwit of a friend to hand back that book he’d lent out. Being entirely unaware of the ending was eating away at his insides, and now more than ever did Jinyoung need to know if Charlotte had survived the shipwreck. He was facing stormy seas of his own and needed a of hope.

Desperately.

By the time Jinyoung had reached the front door of the studio, he was drenched in ocean and his dragging limbs were flooded with a terrible ache. He hadn’t the slightest clue of what he was doing here, or why his feet had decided he’d needed to be. But that did not stop him from propelling himself forward and opening the door.

He might have appeared like he’d just finished jumping into the Han River for a spontaneous swim, but he hardly cared. Im Jaebeom was not someone he needed to look good for, although it would have been nice to have been rippling with measured confidence instead of sharing the semblance of a half-drowned feline.

“Nyoung,” The older male greeted him mindlessly before snapping his neck back with newfound awareness. This time, his tiny eyes had grown considerably large. “You’re wet…”

“And fish swim,” Jinyoung quipped back playfully, slicking back drenched threads of midnight so his vision was no longer obscured. “What are you working on?”

There was a pause, like Jaebeom was unsure of how to proceed. The younger of the duo could practically see the cogs of Jaebeom’s mind grinding against each other as they worked through the thick of a tired fog.

That’s what being in a studio for six hours did to you. Not th