He wonders when he will ever get tired of being there, waiting for the right time to save her.

She doesn’t even need to be saved. She’s an independent, confident, too smart for her own good woman. And yet, whenever she lands herself in some hot mess, he can’t leave it alone.

He always needs, wants to be there. He wants to feel her safe in his sight of vision, happy and content and oblivious to his existence.

It doesn’t matter that she’s completely unaware, it matters that he can keep her safe.

That for once, he’s good at doing something. For once, he can protect the girl he loves, the girl who appears in whatever fantasies he holds, the girl who captures his attention from the slight nod of her head. The girl with her trim cut, and her ripped jeans, and white sweaters. The girl who he’ll waste nights and drinks and days over.

One day she compliments him, says he’s smart and wonderful, and that he’s such a good friend. She says that any girl would be lucky to have him, says all that bull that people like to buy to use as an iron shield for whatever heartbreak that comes afterwards.

One day she scoffs at a girl, the one who compliments him, and says he’s smart and wonderful, and that he’s such a good friend. She scoffs at the bull people say about how any girl would be lucky to have him, chuckles at his uses of metaphors about shields and heartbreak. She scoffs at herself, her goddamn self, and her inability to ever admit anything.

Because while he’s doing something right, while he’s doing something that matters, she’s in her hell hole of a mess contemplating when she should tell him she knows. She knows that he’s always there to save her, she knows he loves her, she knows she’ll break his heart. Choi Sooyoung knows a lot. She’s intelligent and she’s beautiful, and she’s confident, and she’s also really ing scared.

Shim Changmin is kind, and wonderful, and attractive, and good at everything and he’s also really ing scared.

They both wonder when they’ll stop being scared and own it up.

And then on that one day, the day she scoffs and compliments and says a load of bull she doesn’t believe in, and his bitterness reaches a whole new level, colliding with his stupid, pathetic love, they both run away. Their hearts try and separate, running away with all the power and oxygen in their lungs.

They say running away doesn’t solve any of the world’s problems. That’s where they’re wrong. Maybe fate had it that the hearts to those two would run away to each other.

You can run and run and run, but eventually you’ll find your way back again.

Back to whatever the heart desires the most.