It takes only a second for Dongwoo’s hand to cover his mouth, but the words have already been uttered, and Sunggyu has already heard it, although his brain hasn’t quite processed it.

He’s in love with you.

“I said too much,” Dongwoo mumbles, eyes lowering and looking sheepish. He gives a little wave as if it will dismiss what Sunggyu’s still trying to comprehend because surely, surely he must have heard wrongly. He doesn’t get the chance to confirm it though, because Dongwoo’s hurriedly getting up, saying he needs to go for class, and Sunggyu finds himself the only person still sitting at the suddenly empty table, momentarily lost.

If he doesn’t count what Dongwoo just said – and he doesn’t, for various reasons – Sunggyu’s never been confessed to before. Not once in his whole life, although it’s not exactly something he really minds much at this point. Back in high school, he used to think it meant he wasn’t good enough, that he wasn’t popular with the girls the way Woohyun was, because Woohyun had dated a few girls in high school after they confessed to him. The only two times Sunggyu’s ever dated in his twenty-five years of life, he had been the one to confess. It isn’t a big deal. After all, it’s not like the person who confessed will end up being the one more in love, or the one who’s more invested in the relationship. Woohyun had always ended up being the more invested party even if his girlfriend (and sometimes, boyfriend) was the one who initiated the relationship, and Sunggyu’s always been the one less invested in his own relationships even though he’s the one who confessed to his exes. So Sunggyu doesn’t particularly care who confesses first in a relationship, or whether he’ll ever be confessed to. Because he doesn’t think it really matters. And besides, it’s not like he wants to be in a relationship anyway, and getting confessed to tends to get in the way of that.

Sunggyu’s single. Mostly. He’s been single for most of his life, at first because he didn’t know how to get into a relationship, and now because he doesn’t want to be in a relationship. He likes his singlehood, the freedom he gets. It was something he came to realize after dating two different girls in university for a few months each. It had been almost laughable how much he wanted to be in a relationship back in high school until he actually got into a relationship and realize it wasn’t quite the rosy portrait he had imagined it to be. Sunggyu has a tendency to put himself first, not in a narcissistic way, but rather that he values himself as his first priority, and it’s only when he got together with someone did he notice how that trait doesn’t jive well with either of his exes. And by the time he broke up with the second girl, he had decided that perhaps, relationships weren’t right for him, and singlehood might be much better. And so he continues being single.

That Kim Sunggyu is almost certainly always single is as true as saying Nam Woohyun is almost certainly always attached. It’s not so much a comparison as it is a fact. Woohyun had started dating back in high school, back when Sunggyu couldn’t even dream of being in a relationship (not for lack of trying though). When it first started, Sunggyu had been pretty annoyed with Woohyun spending less time with him – him who was Woohyun’s best friend – but he quickly learned to hang out with more friends besides Woohyun, and to control the inevitable trickle of jealousy he has over the fact that Woohyun gets confessed to, and has d