One glance at the sticky note and Myungsoo instantly knew who’d wrote it. He recognized the child like hand writing, having seen it on many notes many times before. This was Lay’s pathetic, subtle, attempt of taking over Myungsoo’s territory. This yellow note now crushed in his hand and thrown in a wastebasket without a second thought. It didn’t matter, she’d call Lay eventually anyway. She didn’t need these reminders and they weren’t really for her to begin with.

‘Oh, Zhang Yixing. You truly are unnecessary,’ Myungsoo thought, unloosing his tie and dress shirt cuffs while walking towards the bedroom. Even when Stephanie and him were just friends, he could tell Lay had liked her. It was obvious by every action he made, it went so deep it was part of himself. Lay didn’t just like her or love her like people like and love other people, he existed for her. If the two of them were to get in an accident, Myungsoo knew Lay would spend the last second of his life, with his eyes open just to see her one more time. And Myungsoo could understand that because Stephanie was…

“Hey,” she said, hearing him enter the room. Her face was somewhat stone but he could still tell she’d be crying, her cheeks were a little puffy and he could hear the cracks in her voice as steady as she’d tried to say the one word. It was a hollow “hey”, like she’d only said it because he might’ve expected it. Because this conversation had happened before and it was deja vu.

The silent entering and the ‘hey’, even though they both weren’t there because she was too busy replaying the scene in the laundry room- when she’d gone through his clothes and smelled the perfume and he was too busy thinking about the girl he’d just left, the latest contact added in his phone list.

“Remember we’re having dinner with my parents this weekend,” he said, sitting on the bed. The dip caused her to slide just enough to rest beside him, her arm brushing his back. He took his socks off one at a time.

She nodded. “Yeah, I called them earlier to make sure it was still fine. They want us to be there around six.”

“I just wanted to make sure you remembered,” he said, raising his chin and ing his shirt, already out of things to say.

She leaned towards the other side of the bed and grabbed her phone, turning it on.

Six new messages.

There were two from Myungsoo and two from Lay and one from her friend, Khloe.

Myungsoo stood up, now in only his pants and tank top, gathering the clothes he’d taken off and left the room as if he’d been the only one in it to begin with. It was easy for them to feel like the other was just a casual ghost that had no reason to be there but didn’t want to leave.

She looked at Myungsoo’s messages first.

“Hey, babe.”

“I might be late tonight. Don’t stay up.”

Then Lay’s.

“Steph, are you up yet? Did you see my note? Call me, I’m worried.”

“We should go out this weekend, just the two of us. I’ll make it fun, I promise!~”

And finally, Khloe’s.

“Text me!!!!!”

Stephanie smiled for the first time in hours, letting a finger brush over the message.

Meanwhile, Myungsoo was in the laundry room, throwing a load in slowly. He knew there was no reason to wash so early, since not much was dirty thanks to Stephanie’s persistent cleaning but the bedroom had felt too suffocating. Like they both knew a secret but weren’t ever going to talk about it.

And that’s when he noticed a particular shirt he’d worn a day or so before, wrinkled and on the ground. He picked it up swiftly and even in the fabric blur caught the red mark on the collar.

It wasn’t even a question of whether or not she’d seen because she’d probably had, but he wondered why she hadn’t brought it up. Why she never brought these events up, she just let him keep going. He threw the shirt in the washing machine with the rest of his clothes, closing the machine door lightly.