didn’t you know?

myungsoo/naeun → 1623w

all good things end.

Naeun can hear the guests talking quietly and milling around, and the sound of wedding music playing in the background. It’s unsettling and frightening. She is quiet as she sits there in the hidden storage room she found earlier in the day, alternating between biting her lip nervously and looking at the clock.

She’s starting to feel better when the door suddenly bursts open.

“Is this where you’ve been?” he asks.

She looks up at him. “You aren’t supposed to see me before the wedding, silly.”

“I don’t care,” he replies with a grin. He sits down next to her and suddenly Naeun finds herself fidgeting. She can’t help but drum her fingers against her knees and play with the hem of her dress. He does that to her.

When she reaches up to make sure her hair hasn’t been messed up, she feels his fingers wrap around her wrist. He tugs her arm down until it rests at her side and when she turns to look at him, he gives her a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry so much,” he tells her, and his eyes shine and he sounds so confident that it only makes her anxiety worse.

Naeun nods slowly. She takes in his dark hair and the dimple next to his smile.

He gently rests his hand over hers, both to stop its frantic moving and to calm her. Everything about him is gentle. She feels his other hand under her chin, and he tilts her head up until all she can see is him.

“It’s going to be fine,” he continues. “Better than fine.”

She nods, the fluttering in her stomach almost too familiar for her to bear.

Kim Myungsoo still remembers the day he first laid eyes on Naeun.

It had been at freshman orientation, where his group just happened to come across hers at the college library. They were all given a break time –Myungsoo had taken this time to walk aimlessly up and down the aisles, trying to pass away the time.

She had been looking at books, of course, debating between which one to borrow. When he had stumbled across her, he immediately noticed her height and her long, long hair. He didn’t really think much of her until she turned around to look at another shelf, accidentally making eye contact with him in the process.

A smile was all it took.

It was shy and hurried and uncertain. But all the same, it brought out her round cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. It disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared, but Myungsoo stood there for a few more seconds, completely captivated.

Three days later, on the first day of class, Myungsoo walked in late. He chose a random seat in the back and settled down, prepared to sleep for the first half, when the teacher started roll call. He thought nothing of it, calling out “here” when his own name was called, until Mr. Park said, “Son Naeun,” and the girl – the girl from the library with the long hair and pretty smile – raised her hand from the third row.

Son Naeun. That was when Myungsoo decided she was his fate, and he hers.

“Very funny,” she says, rolling her eyes. Naeun reaches up with a napkin and dabs delicately at the ice cream covering her chin. He helps when he’s finished laughing, tracing her jaw with his thumb as he wipes away a streak of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

“Ice cream looks good on you,” he replies with a playful grin that matches his playful personality. He leans his chin on his hand and looks at her, just looks at her, and then the immature grin fades, replaced by a small half-smile that suddenly makes Naeun breathless.

Her entire stomach fills with butterflies. She imagines that they have iridescent wings, covered in swirling designs. They flutter around erratically, and she brings a hand to her abdomen, as if that would calm them down.

Naeun wants to ask him what this is, what they are, but she isn’t sure what she wants to hear. She isn’t sure about anything at all anymore, because she hadn’t expected someone like Myungsoo to suddenly drop into her life. She still remembers the day she met him, when he accidentally left his notebook behind in the lecture hall and she came across it. Naeun returned it to him the next day in an exchange filled with timid smiles and somehow – she still had no idea how, exactly – he slipped easily into her life and her heart.

 “Did you do the biology homework yet?” Myungsoo asks, snapping her out of her daze. Naeun looks at him and nods. She doesn’t volunteer any more words and Myungsoo doesn’t press for more conversation, seeming content to sit there in the comfortable silence.

But Naeun is anything but comfortable. Her chest feels tight and a strange rushing sounds in her ears. It feels almost like she’s drowning. She tries to shake it off and quickly turns to Myungsoo in an effort to make it go away.

“Did you?” Her voice squeaks as she asks the question, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“No. Can you help me with it later?” he replies, turning to her as well.

Naeun opens to answer, but no sound comes out. She finds that she’s unable to say anything, unable to even move now. As she sits there, frozen in place, she feels those butterflies in her stomach morph into bubbles that float up into her chest, her lungs, , tingling as they brush against her heart and pop.

That’s the moment she realizes she’s in love with him.

They share their first kiss in front of the dorm room Naeun lives in with Chorong and Yookyung. It’s unplanned and unexpected and in that moment, the careful maybe-friends, could-be-lovers line between the two of them dissolves into a hundred tiny little pieces. Naeun’s mind is filled with nothing else but the scent of Myungsoo’s cologne, and she can’t think of a smell she’s ever liked more. They’re pressed to close together that she wonders if he can feel her heart racing. It lasts for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, and she’s breathless when they pull apart.

Myungsoo grins sheepishly. “I – sorry – I probably shouldn’t have – “

Naeun swallows nervously at those words, because she isn’t sure how badly it’ll hurt if he pretends that nothing happened.

“Do you – do you want me to go?” he asks her, and his smile is gone now and he looks nervous too.

She hesitates, because she’s not sure if she’s capable of spelling her feelings out for him. She’s never had that kind of courage. And she’s not sure if she should take the risk, not when it could lead to so much heartbreak.

In a split-second decision, Naeun decides to be completely honest with both Myungsoo and herself. She clears and she looks at him and then she says in a faltering voice before she has a chance to change her mind, “Don’t you know that I like you?”

Her words hang in the air between them for three long heartbeats.

Then Myungsoo smiles a smile so brilliant that Naeun feels like she’s inhaled the sun. “Good,” he says, stepping forward to close the distance between them. “Because I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now.” And then he kisses her again and everything feels just right.

On their one year anniversary, Myungsoo gives her flowers and chocolate and a fancy diamond necklace that he makes her promise to never take off.

She promises.

They have a two year anniversary and a three year one too, but in the end nothing works out.

“It’s going to be fine,” he tells her again, and this time Naeun feels tears well up in her eyes. She tries to keep her expression neutral and she tries to pretend she’s fine, but he notices. His expression is pained too.

“Why did you even come?” Her words sound like an accusation. She wants to tell him that she doesn’t mean for it to come out that way, but she can’t find her voice.

He thinks about this. His eyes drop to her neck and she knows he can see the diamond sitting there, just a little ways under her collarbones. 

“How could I not?” he finally says. “Sungyeol’s my best friend.” He pauses. “And I wanted to see you.”

Naeun looks at him. “I don’t want to see you.”

His answering smile is amused and a little sad. “You’re a terrible liar.” 

She leans her head on his shoulder and her eyes grow wet again. “I don’t want to marry Sungyeol.”

Myungsoo repeats her words from all those months ago to her now. “You need to help your parents. And their company. And he’s a good guy. He treats you well.”

“I know,” she says. “I know. But we’re both unhappy and Yookyung must be out there somewhere and I just – “

She can’t let herself finish her sentence. A ding comes from Myungsoo’s pocket and he pulls out his phone.

“I have to go,” he says, standing up. The warmth of his body next to hers immediately dissipates and it hurts like it hurt eleven months ago when they left each other for the first time. There’s so much she wants to say, so much that she can’t say anything at all.

Myungsoo turns to her. “Does it make it any better if I tell you that I’m unhappy too?” He leans in close one last time and she feels his lips on her forehead. “I don’t think I’ll ever be happy if I’m not with you.”