(Yijeong POV)

You wake up to shouting. At first, you think it's coming from outside the window, but then you hear his voice and notice his absence in bed next to you. "You can't just barge in here! This isn't your place, you know," you hear him say. "Then why did you give me a key? You've been ditching me for weeks, who are you hiding in there?" another voice responds, unfamiliar to you but you have a feeling you know exactly who she is. You entertain the idea of climbing down the fire escape for a moment, but this day has been coming for a long time, and you need to face it head on or you'll have to keep dreading it until the next time. 

You open the bedroom door slowly and take a breath before walking out into the living room. Her eyes land on you first and she laughs harshly, the sound echoing off the mostly empty walls of his apartment. "A guy? Incredible. I had no clue," she says before turning to leave. He turns around to face you and glances from you to the front door and back to you, but you know what his choice will be, because you're not stupid and you knew this day would come. He looks at you and says, "I'll be back soon," but he knows as well as you do that you won't be here when he returns. He runs after her and you hear him shout, "Jieun, I'll explain if you give me the chance!" and that's all the reason you need to leave. You gather your things from his room and delete your number from his phone because you've caused a hell of a lot more trouble than you're worth and you knew it'd catch up to you someday. 

You start to walk home in the blinding sun, to clean yourself up and get ready for work. She looked genuinely surprised, that's the part that you can't stop replaying in your head. How would you have felt if your roles had been reversed? If you had been the one to find him with her? She had been completely blindsided and you regret the fact that you didn't pressure him into telling her sooner, even though that would have meant the end for you too. She seemed nice from the two stories he'd accidentally told about her when he was tired, she didn't deserve to find out like that, even if he had been avoiding her for the better part of three months. It's not exactly your fault, but that doesn't matter because you've spent years feeling guilty all the time and that's not something that is going to change. 

Your mind is not on your work and your manager decides you must be hungover, so he lets you off a little early, but you don't really know where to go. You figure he's probably patched things up with her by now, lied to her about what you were to each other, or maybe he told her the truth—that you didn't mean anything to him, that from now on it would always be her. Either way, you'd probably never see him again. You hoped you wouldn't have to, it would be too hard to watch him with someone else. You're not drunk but you probably look drunk, wandering around aimlessly through the streets and you know that makes you into a target, but that's what you feel like right now, like there's some kind of arrow pointing to you and letting everyone know that you're an easy person to mess with. 

The next thing you know, you're antagonizing a group of muscly bikers by kicking at one of their motorcycles and it only takes one rather painful punch to the handlebars for six hands to land on you and shove you against a chain link fence. After a few seconds, you don't feel the hits anymore, but they just keep coming until you taste blood in the back of your throat and think you should probably play dead since you can't really be bothered to wind up in a sketchy emergency room tonight. The leader of the group gives you one last kick to the chest before his friends drag him away from you. "He's not worth it," they say to him, and you wonder how these men got to be so perceptive. You lay on the ground for at least five minutes before attempting to sit up, but no one seems to notice your predicament, so you give yourself enough time to be able to breathe again. 

You're still a couple of miles from your apartment, and more than a little unsteady on your feet, so you attempt to hide your bruised and bloodied face and climb into a bus. It's only two stops to your place, but you almost lose track of time until the bus driver turns to look at you and says, "Isn't this your stop, hon?" You didn't realize she recognized you, but you nod and drag yourself to your feet. "Be careful getting home," she calls before you step off the bus because she knows just as well as everyone that you're a target, they just don't know that you've brought all of this on yourself. 

You collapse on your floor as soon as you lock the door behind yourself and you know you should clean yourself up, but you can't bring yourself to. It's nothing too serious, except your swollen face, and you get tired of looking at how pathetic you are so you swallow three aspirin and strip off your clothes and try to fall asleep, try not to think of him or his eyes or the way he sometimes says your name like a prayer. You definitely don't think about her, or how they're probably together right now, or how you should have ended this the moment you found out about her. You close your eyes and you breathe shallowly because your ribs are aching and you don't cry, because you don't deserve to feel sorry for yourself. 

You're not sure how many hours it takes before you finally pass out, four or five but it could be more, and you roll over about 11am, look at the clock, close your eyes again because it's Saturday and you'd call in sick to work if it wasn't, because you feel sick so it wouldn't really be a lie. You doze for a while, in and out of consciousness, dreams colliding with reality so you feel unsure of what it real and what is not. That's probably why it takes you a couple minutes to realize that someone is banging on your door. You hear his voice, begging you to let him in. You rub your eyes and rise to your feet slowly, pull on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt before unlocking the chain on your front door and cracking it open so he'll come in on his own and you sit back down on your bed because your head hurts and it's hard to breathe again, maybe because your ribs are bruised or perhaps because you thought you'd never see him again and you were obviously wrong. 

He looks like more of a mess than you do, like he hasn't slept or showered in a week,  even though you last saw him yesterday morning, and you think he must still be totally out of it as he stumbles around, mumbling nonsense and apologies, but his eyes sober up the moment they land on you. "What happened to you?" he asks, his voice panicky and rough. "I was asking for it," you mutter, trying to sound unaffected by him, by everything that's happened. He plops down next to you on the mattress, lifts your arm toward him painfully and you wince as he examines the scrapes and newly purpled bruises. He moves on to your other arm and your nerves sting beneath his touch. Finally, he moves on to your face, holds your jaw gingerly in his hand and runs his thumb across your cheekbone. You're not sure what he'll say, his expression blank, but a look of anger washes across his features and he stands up from the bed, jostling your bruised limbs. "Tell me who did it," he demands, "tell me who I have to kill."

"You're not killing anyone," you say, your voice shaky because you know it's probably not an empty threat. "You don't get to tell me what to do," he snaps. "I do today." You plant your feet on the ground, gather enough leverage to stand. "Don't you think I've at least earned that?" That seems to stop him, to pull him back to reality for a moment. "I made the wrong choice," he whispers, his eyes wet with emotion, and you know what he means. He means he should have stayed with you instead of racing after her, but that hardly matters now, and you're pretty sure it wasn't a choice at all. 

"What did she say?" He sniffles quietly. "What do you think? I can't even blame her for anything she said, she didn't do anything wrong." You nod, swallow hard and cross your arms protectively across your rib cage. "You didn't either. I screwed up," he explains, reaching toward you tentatively, like he'll startle you if he doesn't move slowly. "What about... your family?" He shakes his head. "I can't face them, I'll never be able to. My dad might come around, but my mom—" he breaks off, his eyes trained on yours. "But it doesn't matter because I don't need them anymore, not if I have you."

"Don't lie," you tell him, because you can't the chance that he'll leave like that again. "I'm not." You sigh heavily, your ribs aching as you do. "I can't replace your family, no one can." Least of all me, you think solemnly. "If they can't accept me like this, then I don't want them anymore." You think he might still be drunk, or high off something he scored in a club, but you're tired and bruised and battered and you want to let yourself believe that things will be different from now on. No more sneaking around, no more relegation to second place, no more uncertainty. Unlikely, but alluring. 

"Can you promise me that you won't run out on me again?" He moves closer to you, his eyes sad and unfocused. "Let me prove it to you." This is why you're in this situation, this is why you can't get over him, because of the look in his eyes when he promises to be better, the look that seems to suggest that you might be as important to him as he is to you. You're not sure what he's thinking about, but you can see him trying to decide what to do next. "You're a mess, I bet you didn't even give yourself first-aid," he says finally and you shake your head. "Sit down," he instructs, "I'll get the kit."

He returns a moment later with a first aid kit and an ice pack. You hold the ice up to your face and he starts to clean the abrasions on your knuckles. You're sure he must take that as a sign that you fought back, that you didn't lay down on the ground and let yourself be beaten over and over again, and you're probably just going to let him believe it. "It stings," you complain and he apologizes, leans closer to blow on your broken skin before moving on to the scrapes on your arms. "Better?" he asks when he's finished. "A little." He replaces the items he used in the kit before resting a hand on your bruised ribs and you immediately wince and bat his hand away. You didn't want him to know about those injuries yet, but he rolls back your shirt and takes a moment to look at you, his frown deepening. You look down at yourself, embarrassed at what you'd done. "It looks worse than it is, I promise," you assure him, but he doesn't seem to believe you. "Maybe, but it's still my fault." You shake your head, set your arms loosely around his waist. "I should have trusted you to come back. I shouldn't have left." 

"I'm so sorry," he whispers, leans his forehead down to rest against yours. "It's okay," you whisper back. He leans back and rolls your shirt back over your bruises, gets up to carry the first aid kit back across the room. You lay back on your pillows and close your eyes. He climbs into bed next to you when he returns and he scoops you into his arms so gently you can hardly feel his skin against yours and he places his free hand on top of yours, helps you hold the ice pack to your eye and runs his thumb across your fingers. 

You've been holding back tears for days that feel like years, but you feel them start to leak out beneath your tightly closed eyelids and you can't do anything to stop them. You can feel the exact moment he realizes, removes his hand from where it rests on top of yours and swipes your tears away with the pad of his thumb. "If it hurts that much, I can go buy something..." he tries, but you bundle up the hem of his shirt in your fist to tell him not to go. He waits patiently for you to regain enough control to speak, his hand on your waist reassuringly. 

Finally, you feel strong enough to speak, release your hold on the fabric of his clothes. "I thought I'd never see you again," you confess, tears welling up in your eyes again as you look up at him. "I'm sorry," he replies weakly, "I wasn't thinking. Staying would have meant accepting that this is what I want." He pauses, leans down to kiss your forehead tenderly. "You're what I want. I just hadn't admitted it to myself yet." 

"Are you ready to admit it now?" He nods quickly, too quickly, too desperate to convince you he's sure. "If you knew we'd end up like this," he begins, "would you still have come up to me at the bar that night?" He probably thinks you're silent because you're trying to decide if you would, but it's actually because you're thinking of that night, three months ago. Is it only three months? It feels like more. 

What was it about him that made you approach him? You'd never done that before, you'd always waited for someone to come up to you, to sneak you off to somewhere romantic like an alleyway or a bathroom stall. Was it because you knew he'd never notice you if you didn't? Why were you so intent on getting his attention even though you knew nothing about him? Maybe you just got lucky, because there's no way you could have known that he was the type of drunk to take you to his apartment, the type to make sure you felt safe and satisfied, the type to make you guilt pancakes the next morning before he left for work. You hadn't even known that type existed. You shouldn't have gone with him, trusted him, you could have ended up dead in one of those alleys, or much, much worse, but you trusted him anyway, even though you gave up on trust what feels like centuries ago. 

You left your number on his kitchen counter after you washed his dishes and even though you thought about tearing it up when you accidentally saw a picture of him and some girl on the refrigerator, you left it anyway, because maybe there was some possibility that you'd left half the impression he'd left on you. It only took him three days to call you and ask you if you were ever going back to that club because he hadn't seen you for three nights in a row. You didn't plan on frequenting that particular club, but you ended up there every night for two weeks so the two of you could pretend that it wasn't planned, that you were still two strangers who'd gone out in search of a quick fix, that you wouldn't end up in his bed every single time. 

"I'm not the first guy you've hooked up with," you'd told him one morning. "You can tell? I'll take that as a compliment," he'd replied. "What about Refrigerator?" you'd asked, because you weren't ready to know her name. "Refrigerator? Oh. When did you find it?" He looked surprised that you hadn't brought it up before. "The first time. So... feeling tied down or just bored?" He sighed, rolled away from you. "Families expect certain things. I'm sure you know that." You shook your head. "Family? I don't have one," and you'd left it at that. He didn't need to hear about the way your father had kicked you to the curb at sixteen, that your mom never even checked up on you even once, that they'd probably forgotten all about their disgraceful son by now. You didn't need any more of his pity. "Oh. Well, I'm sure you've heard my brand of sob story a thousand times, so I won't bore you."

"Does she know?" He'd almost choked in surprise. "About you? You'd know if she did." You nodded because knew what you were doing was wrong, you knew he'd make things right with that girl eventually and forget about you but when it actually started to happen, you felt like the ground beneath your feet was crumbling and you went out looking for a beating.

"If you wouldn't do it over again, maybe don't tell me," he says anxiously, breaking you out of your nostalgia. "I would. I wouldn't be able to help it. And who knows? Maybe it'll become a story to tell our ki—friends someday," you stutter because you don't dare to dream up a future that unlikely for the two of you. No need to freak him out anymore. "Do you really think our... friends should know that you seduced me in a club and slept with me the first night we met?" You roll your eyes. "The edited version, we'd tell them the edited version." He laughs openly. "How do you edit that down? Whatever way you look at it, I was supposed to be a one-night stand."

"So was I!" you counter indignantly. "Is that what you think? Maybe I was just there for all the free drinks?" You roll your eyes. "Yeah, right." He scoffs. "Yeah. Right. Maybe I was about to go home where I belonged when a tipsy, short and desperate guy in skinny jeans tried to throw himself at me!" he adds. "Short?" you chirp, confused as to why you find that more offensive than the word 'desperate' when both adjectives are equally true. "I did not throw myself at you. I was barely tipsy." He shakes his head. "Believe whatever you want, I know when somebody wants in my pants." You cross your arms awkwardly. "Whatever," you mutter, "you're the one who cooked breakfast for his one-night stand."

"Touché," he acknowledges. "And you're the one who called me," you remind him. "Only because you gave me your number! You wouldn't have done that if you didn't want me to use it." You sigh. "Fine, we'll just steal a first meeting from a movie or something." He nods. "I'm glad you're starting to see this my way. Now, please excuse me while I pass out because I haven't really slept in two days." He rolls you against his chest and wraps his arms around you gently. "You should sleep too, your eye will heal faster," he recommends. "Yeah, yeah," you grumble, because your heart is filling up with emotions you don't feel confident enough for and tears are pricking the backs of your eyes and you don't know what you did to deserve him returning to you, but you're going to spend the rest of your days making the most of your luck. 

When you wake up the next time, it's almost dark outside and he's snoring softly on his back next to you, his hand still resting on your abdomen. You slide his hand away from you, rise to your feet slowly, even though you know he always sleeps through this part, the part when you can't sleep and his presence weighs on you heavily. You retreat outside, lean on the railing and survey the streets below. 

He finds you on the balcony after half an hour or so. You hear him approach from behind as you stare at the city beneath your feet, the rush of traffic and blinding lights. "I thought you might have left," he says softly after a moment. "You and I both know I've got nowhere to go." He wraps his arms around your waist and presses his lips into your hair. "What now?" he mumbles against your scalp. "We should order dinner." He shakes his head slowly. "Bigger picture," he clarifies. "I don't know." He tightens his hold on you, leans closer to you. "Can we figure it out in bed?" he asks, like there's any possibility that you'll turn him down. You rotate in his arms to face him, kiss him quickly. "Does that mean yes?" You nod and he reaches for your hand and leads you back inside. 

"Do you know how I realized I loved you?" he asks after a moment of silence, his hand on your back and your face against his chest. Your breath catches, he's never used that word in this kind of context, not when he was sober and mostly clothed. "No," you answer weakly. "It was that day you came to pick me up at work. You brought an umbrella and a bag from my favorite burger shack and it was raining so hard and you looked so nervous, like I wouldn't be happy to see you or something, and I just... knew I was in love with you." He chuckles. "You didn't know about this side of me, did you?"

"You're in love with me?" you have to ask because your ears have deceived you before. "I am... so far beyond in love with you," he confirms. "Because I bought you food?" you say as a joke, but your throat feels tight and painful and wrong. "I guess it's because you came to find me even though you thought I might be upset. No one... else ever did. Lots of other reasons too, but I'll save them for later." You don't know what to say, how to react to a confession of that magnitude, so you decide the best course of action is to confess something yourself. "I fell in love with you the night you showed up drunk and asked me to hold you," you admit softly, unsure of why something like that makes you feel so ashamed. "You loved me because I was drunk?" You shake your head, press a kiss against his ribs. "You were totally wasted and you only wanted me to hold you. You wanted me specifically, and that was it for me."

"Can I tell you a secret?" You hum in agreement and he leans down to whisper, "I wasn't actually that drunk." His words ring in your ears and he explains, "I was just too scared to want you sober." You're not sure how to accept anything he's said because everything feels surreal, like you dreamt him up because he'll never actually come back, like your mind invented him in the first place because that is the only reason you can think of that explains why someone like him is giving everything up for someone like you. "And what about now?" He crinkles up his nose and it makes him look about ten years younger, and ten times cuter, and you have to stop yourself from making an audible noise of awe. "I haven't had a drink since last night." You shake your head because he often has a hard time figuring out what you mean. "Are you still scared?" you ask instead, your heart beating a thousand times a minute. "Sure, but I'm not scared of you. I'm scared of everything out there," he gestures to the world outside of your four drab apartment walls, "but not this," he states, motioning to the little space in between the two of you. "Are you scared?"

"I'm... not scared of you. I'm a little scared of me, but only because I don't know if you want me as much as I want you." He rubs lazy circles against your back and you can tell he's still exhausted. "I guess I'll have to prove that to you too." You reach up to squeeze his elbow gently. "Don't give up your family, okay? It's not worth it. You have to stand up to them, you have to fight for them, got it? If they love you—" you stop, because your voice is shaky and you're thinking about your own parents again and you promised yourself you wouldn't do that anymore. You take a deep breath and continue with your sentence. "If they love you, they won't want to lose you." If he loses his family because of you, he'll resent you for it someday and that is one future that you can't live with. "They have to try too."

"But you should try first. Promise?" He leans down to kiss you, but you turn away and he squawks in disappointment. "Promise first," you demand. "I promise," he says begrudgingly, but you accept it anyway and sit up next to him. "What are you doing?" You reach for your cell phone next to your bed. "I'm hungry. I'm ordering food. Want any?" He nods. "Get chicken. Oh, and beer." You glare at him. "Okay, just chicken?" he compromises and you give him a thumbs up. You order a little too much food because you've seen him eat and you hang up your phone. "How am I ever gonna stay awake until the food comes?" he teases you. "You could try a shower. You smell like smoke and something else that I don't want to guess."

"Great idea," he says, reaching for your hand and dragging you somewhat gently to the bathroom. "They said the food will be here in less than an hour." He turns the tap on full blast. "Babe, I think you underestimate me," he quips and you definitely don't blush, not even a little, and your insides definitely don't turn to jelly. Pet names = relationship, it's as simple as that, and you've never dared to dream of an actual relationship with him. He probably loved Jieun, he probably still does, he could make it work with her at any moment if he wanted, but he seems to have decided he doesn't want to if he can be with you, and that's something that's hard for you to trust. 

"Babe?" you say after a moment, as he slides his t-shirt off over his head. "What, you don't like that one? I can think of something else." You shake your head and he drags you closer by your waistband, works your shirt away from your skin. "No, I... I like it, I'm just not sure about all this," you tell him softly. "Sure about what? About me?" He stops, lets your shirt fall back to your hips. "I know you probably don't want to label this or whatever, but I kind of need to know. 'Cause I still don't really know what I... am. To you." He smiles down at you and it's a little unnerving because you don't know what he's thinking. "What label do you prefer? Partner?" You shake your head and he grins wider. "How about lover?" he suggests with emphasis. "Gross, don't say it like that." He chuckles. "So, boyfriend then?" That's it. That's the one. That's what you've wished you could be for months, even though it seemed impossible. 

"But does that mean you'll call me your boyfriend or that I actually am y—" He cuts you off in the middle of your sentence by dropping his lips to meet yours, and you think you know what that means, even if you still can't believe it. "I mean you're my boyfriend, deal?" You nod, feeling strangely lightheaded and warm. "Deal," you whisper. "Thanks to you," he complains, reaching for the hem of your shirt and successfully removing it this time, "we only have 45 minutes, so don't blame me if that's not enough time." You shrug. "The hot water only lasts for 30." He rolls his eyes dramatically and shakes his head. "From now on, you're coming over to my place."