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cinnajun · 2 years

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༻¨*:·. atlas cried | ljn

summary | they say your soulmate is your perfect other half—whatever you lack, they have, and whatever they lack, you have. when lee jeno, your academy’s golden boy, approaches you and says you’re his soulmate, you can’t begin to understand how he—rich, gorgeous, never had to work a day in his life—could be the perfect match for you—poor, exhausted, and barely hanging onto the scholarship covering what would be a 65 million won tuition.

genre | high school au (rich boarding school style), soulmate!au, prep!jeno x fem!reader, prep! jaemin & reader (platonic), angst, slow burn, enemies-ish to lovers, kind of academic rivals but in a way that the rivalry is created by other people, im ngl y/n and jeno just don’t like each other, fake dating? au

warnings | did someone say violent academic pressure, heavy isolation, abusive parenting, malicious rumors, everybody is so unhappy, a lot of miscommunication, internalized misogyny, suicide mention (in passing), arson

wc | 24.7k

a/n: hello and welcome to my first long piece ! i hope it's up to your standards :') i'm not sure how i feel about it, as i've never written anything this long so i'm scared there's continuity issues and whatnot. nonetheless, please send me your feedback !! p.s. here is a short playlist comprised of 10 songs i listened to while i wrote this :) p.p.s im sorry for any egregious typos/poorly worded sentences in the last ~9k words, i proofread all of them while i was really tired lol

ft. a few people i made up

i. during the titan war, atlas sided with his fellow titans in battle to defeat the olympians.

THE WIND HOWLED OUTSIDE YOUR DORM BUILDING, rattling the windows of your dorm room and nearly obscuring the study music coming from your speakers. The sky and the wind told of an incoming storm, which made you want to hurry to the cafeteria and get dinner before you were trapped inside. Your homework, however, drowned out the hunger pangs in your stomach and told you that the endless bags of chips hidden under your bed would make a fine dinner.

“You know, they say your soulmate shoulders the weight of the world with you,” your roommate, Suhyeon, sighed, capturing your attention and effectively destroying the deep focus you had on your homework.

“Ok. And?”

She turned over onto her side, a bored expression taking over her face. “Doesn’t that seem scary?”

“I guess?”

“Would you want to share all your problems with someone else? Like, every single one?”

You resisted the urge to strangle her, as well as the urge to remind her that she does not have to keep a top five spot in her class in order to continue going to school. Instead, you spun your desk chair to face her bed, where she lay, staring at your plain white ceiling.

“Want to go get dinner?”

“With this wind? That sounds dreadful,” she replied, looking at you with a bored face. Then, with a sigh, she pushed herself up from the bed and swung her legs over the edge. “I’m not in the mood for another three bags of honey chips.”

To that, you’d have to agree. For the past three-and-a-half days, you and Suhyeon had eaten three bags of chips for dinner, as you were trapped with your head in your textbooks and Suhyeon refused to go to the dining hall without you (according to her, it would look weird to eat alone, and you were her only friend on campus).

“If I had to guess, we’ll be getting a day off tomorrow,” Suhyeon said, swiping her set of keys off her mostly unused desk. You stood up, cringing at the sound of your back cracking as you stretched. Your legs ached from how long you’d been sitting, as well as your back, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as the cramps you felt in your knees. Suhyeon grabbed her coat off the coat hook bolted to your door, slipping it over her uniform and zipping it up promptly.

You shuffled over and did the same, preemptively sliding the hood up so you could begin situating your hair under it. Suhyeon swung the door open and you obediently followed, emerging into the monotonous corridors of the dormitory.

“Are we due for blizzarding?”

“Yes ma’am.” Suhyeon nodded, swinging her arms back and forth as she half-skipped down the hall. “It’s not cold enough today, but, if it storms tonight, I bet we’ll wake up to a classes-have-been-canceled email.”

You sighed, wondering what that would mean for your math exam that you’d been slaving over for the past week and a half. It was the final midterm until you were granted a week off, which you and Suhyeon had excitedly planned to be spent entirely in your bedroom. If there was a snow day, you hoped your teacher would simply postpone it for Friday, rather than move it after the break altogether.

You opened the door to the stairwell, allowing Suhyeon to pass by you and get a head start on the stairs. You quickly followed, wishing you’d done your usual study-stretch schedule today. Your legs nearly gave out as you tried to stay caught up with your roommate, and you were shocked that you managed to make it to the first floor without falling down a flight of stairs.

Another strong gust of wind rattled the building, and you wondered if it was exactly a good idea to make a break for the dining hall.

Suhyeon let out a loud groan, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “I hate the second year-dormitory,” she announced, slowing to a stop in front of the first pair of doors to the outside. “Why do the first years have the indoor path to the dining hall? If anything, they should be the ones in the old, rickety dorms.”

“There’s nothing happy about second year, though. If they put all the depressing stuff halfway in, it won’t be as easy to drop out,” you said, taking the chance to run outside the moment the wind let up a bit. Suhyeon followed close behind you, catching up enough to lace an arm around yours as you ran through the school courtyard.

You practically bulldozed into the dining hall as another burst of wind began, which ended up with you and Suhyeon having to push the door closed as if you were trying to move a broken-down car. The door shut with a satisfying lock, leaving you in the entryway room that consisted of four doors and absolutely nothing else.

Suhyeon sighed, pushing through the second set of doors. The moment they opened, you were hit with the strong smell of spaghetti, which made the hunger pangs worsen substantially. Despite the time, the dining hall was mostly empty, save for a few groups who’d opted to spend their after-school time in there and any third years or first years who’d decided they were hungry.

They didn’t have to make a mad dash across campus to arrive without being blown away. In fact, none of them were even wearing any sort of rain gear.

“Oh god,” Suhyeon mumbled as you approached the serving counter, picking up two trays from the stack they had at the edge.

“What?”

“Golden boys are here.”

You looked up from your tray, turning your head to scan the cafeteria. Sure enough, all six of the golden boys—as they were called—sat at a table in the corner of the room, books littered across the table alongside bowls of spaghetti and an enormous amount of garlic bread. They seemed to be having a good time, laughing and making up essentially all the noise that rattled the room. Suhyeon always told you that there were seven of them, but one had the misfortune of taking a transfer year to some “partner school” off in Shanghai this year, and last year he was still a middle schooler.

You thought the seventh boy might’ve been a ghost that you couldn’t see, though.

One of the cafeteria ladies put a hefty bowl of spaghetti on your plate, along with an oddly gourmet-looking piece of garlic bread. There was a self-serve salad bar and dessert bar further down, but you weren’t too interested in having any of it for right now.

“Awe, they’re sitting a few tables down from our usual spot,” Suhyeon mumbled, stopping to grab a bowl of salad. You waited behind her, staring at the distance between their table of madness and your quaint corner. They were sitting adjacent to the window, likely to survey the weather, and your two-person table was situated in a corner between a false wall that separated the eating area from the first-year entrance. There were about six tables, give or take, between you and them.

“We’ll be fine. It’s not like we’re right next to them,” you said, turning towards her. She was finishing up her salad, placing the bowl on her unbalanced tray, and attempting to get it stable with her now-free other hand. You took that as your chance to begin your stroll to the table, with Suhyeon nervously following behind.

For some reason, she did not like the oh-so-famous golden boys. Any time they entered the conversation, she went silent, and always ended up throwing off the momentum of the conversation with her anxiety; when you tried to ask her about it, she always got defensive, saying she has “nothing to do with them” and “doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

You allowed her to take the corner spot, frowning as she shoved herself into the corner and began picking at her food with her fork. You wondered if it was mean to do this when she so obviously had an issue with it, even if she insisted she didn’t.

“We can sit somewhere else…”

“No, you’re right,” Suhyeon cleared her throat, shaking her head. “It’s not like we’re right next to them. I’ll be fine.”

You took another look at her hidden in the corner, recognizing that she was not going to be fine, but you didn’t push any further. If you had to guess, the last thing she wanted to do was have you make a big deal about her discomfort.

You both ate quietly and quickly, hoping to finish before the oncoming storm hit. Due to the lack of conversation between you two, courtesy of the golden boys being twenty-ish feet away, it wasn’t hard to get through nearly the entire meal within a few seconds.

Your silence also made it quite easy to hear what the golden boys were talking about at their table, added to how easy it was to see them from the corner of your eye.

“I heard Nayeong say we’re getting tomorrow and Friday off,” Zhong Chenle reported, taking a long drink of his water. “They’re just waiting to make it look like it was a last-minute decision.”

“Wow, student council president certified? Must be true, then,” Na Jaemin replied, turning to Lee Donghyuck, who was dejectedly scrolling through his phone. If you had to guess, he’d struggled with the English exam that had taken place earlier that day, seeing as he was notoriously good at Japanese and nothing else. “What's gonna happen with the big math midterm tomorrow, then? I don’t want it to be after break, I’d seriously rather die.”

Donghyuck barely glanced up from his phone before answering. “Rumor has it they’re gonna proctor it in the dorm study rooms. Separate everyone into time slots and stuff. They’re doing it for the third and first years, too.”

Chenle groaned, letting his head dangle on the edge of his chair. Mark Lee, student council vice president and perhaps the second most adored student in the school, didn’t comment on their rumor-spreading. You expected him to be the one they relied on most for information, but

You raised your head slowly, looking over at their table. Mark Lee didn’t comment because he was staring straight at you.

Suhyeon noticed your staring, following your eyesight towards Mark, who was now staring lasers through your head. She dropped her chopsticks into the mostly empty bowl, standing up from her chair suddenly. The movement, along with the clattering of metal, scared you, causing you to snap your head back towards her.

“I don’t feel good.”

Her face was turning pale and her eyes began to water, which was considerably uncharacteristic for her. You looked up at her, glancing down at your half-finished spaghetti and garlic bread. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Can we go back to the dorms, now?” she asked, placing a hand on her chest. “I feel really nauseous.”

“Yeah, of course,” you said, standing up. “We can just leave the plates. Let’s go.”

You glanced over at the golden boys’ table, which had gone quiet. Mark was whispering something to Lee Jeno, who was also staring at you now, arms crossed over his chest and blonde hair (when he showed up blonde at the beginning of the year, everybody lost it) wisped over his forehead.

Gently, you wrapped a hand around her shoulder, hugging her to your side as you made a swift departure from the cafeteria. You got odd looks from other students, but, for the most part, nobody got in the way of your exit. You emerged straight into the dangerous wind, not stopping despite how much it threatened to blow you away.

Being out of sight of the golden boys took a huge weight off your shoulders, one you didn’t know was there. Sometimes you garnered looks given your well-known scholarship student title, but that was mostly from first years who were shocked that could even happen. As far as you were aware, you had nothing to do with the golden boys—not even something as simple as a group project or anything.

Had you done something wrong? Were your grades slipping? Was there something going on concerning your scholarship? The wave of questions washing out your mind was causing you to feel nauseous; you didn’t want Mark Lee looking at you like that. You didn’t want any one of them looking at you like that.

You practically threw the dormitory’s doors open, dodging past anyone who might’ve been in your way. You couldn’t get Mark Lee’s stare out of your mind, because it was unexplainable, because it was unprompted, because it could mean you’d be kicked out of the academy and sent back to your terrible parents who would berate you for forever, telling you that you’re worthless and no better than your freeloading, addict siblings.

You skid to a stop in front of the dorm’s nursing office, knocking three times and not waiting for a response. You pushed Suhyeon inside, grabbing the dorm keys from her jacket pocket and giving the resident nurse an unnerved look.

“She’s not feeling well,” you explained, giving Suhyeon no time to protest you dropping her off in the nurse’s office. Instead, you practically slammed the door shut, staring at the monotonous wood for a moment more.

Your heart was pounding. Your mind was spinning. You could barely breathe.

Quietly, you turned towards the end of the hall, where the stairwell waited for you to climb it. Suddenly, it occurred to you that there was a slim chance you could be climbing it for the last few times beginning today.

As you approached, you wondered what your siblings would do if you lost the scholarship. They’d laugh at you, sneer, and say “I thought you were supposed to be the perfect child?” They’d watch as your parents struck you, yelled at you for being worthless and nothing better than the rest of them. They’d force you to kneel on rice while they “mourned” the loss of their shot at wealth, asking you why you didn’t sleep around with the student body to try and ensure a husband.

“You’ll never be this pretty again,” they would say. “Who cares about your soulmate? Will a soulmate bring you money? Comfort? Look at what happened to your father and I when we chose each other over wealth. Do you want to be like us?”

You slammed the door of your dorm shut behind you, falling onto your knees. You realized that you’d never turned your study music off, or your lights, or anything before you’d left for the dining hall.

You looked down at your arms, letting yourself hold up your right hand. There, in the very center of your palm, was a code that you’d memorized the moment you began to comprehend it: LJN.

You picked yourself off the floor, suppressing the panic tears that threatened to spill over. Instead, you approached your desk, dropping down onto the chair and shoving your math textbook out of the way. You instead chose to focus on the human biology book, long and heavy, that sat underneath it. Weakly, you flipped through the pages, stopping on the first page of a chapter entitled “Soulmates: Biology’s Biggest Mystery.”

The first paragraph read, “the concept of soulmates has long been a pillar of human society. The existence of a ‘soulmate marking’ has purportedly been around since the beginning of time, but the earliest recordings of it come from ancient Mesopotamian tomes depicting a ‘perfect other half’ that ‘completes the human body.’"

You must’ve tattooed these words on your brain when you were studying, but, even then, you couldn’t help but feel mystified every time you read through it. You never cared too much about the whole soulmate craze, considering you were still a teenager and didn’t need to care about “forever” yet, but there was always a sort of comfort that you found in it. The existence of your soulmate confirmed that you would not be chained to your parents for the rest of your life, and, one day, you’d be able to leave them behind for a better, happier life.

You read on, tracing the words of the chapter with your index finger.

“Around 97% of the population have a set of initials written somewhere on their body, one that they’re born with. Their soulmate will have a marking on the same part of their body with the coinciding set of initials. There have been no instances of these initials changing, even upon the death of one’s soulmate, meaning the connection is entirely permanent.”

There was someone out there who would pull you out of this. You were sure of it.

And, when that happened, your life would truly begin anew.

ii. the titans lost the war, and the olympians banished the titans to tartarus.

From beginning to end, your math midterm was a mess.

Sure enough, classes were canceled, but they proceeded with finishing things up before your week-long break began and all information previously learned left your mind. You’d been placed in a 3:30 time slot to take your exam, along with about 15 of your classmates, in the dormitory study room that you’d never once step foot into.

Upon arrival at 3:10, you were faced with the sad truth that both Huang Renjun and Lee Jeno were also in your time slot. Initially, you avoided their gaze, shrinking into the corner of the lounge and hiding behind your phone and wired earbuds. But, you were learning the world would never be kind to you because, the moment Lee Donghyuck emerged from the 1:30 time slot, he had a perfect view of you.

You subconsciously tried to hide once more, hunching down and allowing for your hair to fall over your face. You increased the volume of your music, a random, synthy song you’d fallen in love with some time last week, and tried to ignore how Lee Donghyuck’s gaze made you feel like an internationally wanted criminal.

Once they took note of you, the staring did not cease. Lee Donghyuck left for his dorm while you waited for your proctor to announce things were ready (which happened about a minute and a half after Donghyuck left).

You ripped your earbud out when you saw her appear out of the corner of your eye, jerking up to look at her and wishing your heart would stop beating so fast. “There’s assigned seating, which I will call out now. When you hear your name, please sit behind the person last called. If that person is sitting in the very back, please begin the next row in the front.”

Huang Renjun was called third, which took a small weight off your shoulders. That didn’t stop Jeno from looking at you, stealing glances and sometimes blatantly staring with those terrifyingly cold eyes of his.

“[First] [Last].”

You nearly tripped over your feet getting up, leaving your small bag along with your cell phone and earbuds on the chair you sat waiting on. You held your pen and pencil so tightly in your hand that your knuckles were pale, and you must’ve looked sick to the proctor, given the look she offered you as you passed beside her.

Your eyes narrowed in on the empty seat behind the last girl that was called—the student council secretary, Yeji—and you swiftly approached, half-returning the smile Yeji gave as you walked past.

Huang Renjun was one seat behind you and two rows over, meaning he would barely be able to see you. If you were lucky, Jeno would be the first to start his row, meaning he would be in front of you and therefore it would be impossible for him to look at you.

You weren’t sure why you still relied on luck when pretty much all of it was wasted when you got into this godforsaken school on a scholarship.

The proctor called an Osaki Shotaro, who came and took the seat behind you. Then, a Kim Juyeon who began the next row. Then, a Liu Yangyang who sat next to you.

“Lee Jeno.”

You could’ve shot yourself right then and there, especially as he sauntered over to the seat, dropping into it and immediately beginning to spin his pencil around his fingers. You could practically feel his stare like lasers being shot through the back of your head, unending and unwavering as the proctor called the final girl and shut the door behind her.

“Thank you for arriving smoothly and on time.”

You wished you would have skipped. Skipping might’ve cost you your scholarship and your future, but, if you got Suhyeon on your side and claimed you’d woken up severely ill but couldn’t make it to the nurse because Suhyeon had the 10:30 time slot and you woke up at 11, you might’ve been able to make it to the makeup date.

If only God had been kind enough to warn you about this one.

The proctor began to hand out your answer sheets and tests while droning on and on about rules, her words going in and out of your ears like the pointless documentaries your history teacher enjoyed showing. As if you hadn’t taken five of these exams already, she regurgitated these rules, causing your mind to spin more and your leg to bounce harder.

“You may begin.”

You barely began at all. For the entire test, your mind wasn’t focused on derivatives or any sort of equation you’d spent weeks memorizing—no, your mind was focused on Lee Jeno, Mark Lee, all the golden boys, and why they were suddenly so focused on you. You wrote down numbers and letters, plus signs and square roots, all while thinking about what they could want from you.

With every page flip, with every boxed answer and filled-in bubble, your mind fell deeper and deeper into your panicked trance. At some point, you began writing on autopilot with no mental capacity to tell whether or not what you wrote was correct. A part of you wondered why you cared so much when you were obviously about to become the first-ever scholarship student at the academy to lose their scholarship, to be the first investment that brought a net loss instead of a net gain.

Before you knew it, the test was over, and it was 5:15 pm on the dot. You felt like throwing up, a million spiders crawling up your stomach and throat as you stared at what you wholeheartedly believed to be a failed math test. Your mind spun—math had always been your worst subject, and you’d always teetered on the edge with it. As long as you excelled in other subjects, you’d be fine, but there was an absolute need to ensure you did not fall below rank five.

As long as you were never below five, you would be fine.

The proctor snatched your test up from your desk, taking a once over with a smile. “Congratulations on finishing, Ms. [Last],” she said, a formality she’d repeated to everyone but carried a special weight when she spoke to you.

You wanted to reach for it, take it back and run away with the paper. You couldn’t remember a single question you’d answered, let alone whether or not the answers were right. This would be the first (and last) time you’d drop below rank five in your exams, and you’d be packing up your bags when the grades dropped next week. This was the end of your paradise, all thanks to a few awry looks from the academy’s beloved golden boys.

“All papers have been collected. You are free to return to your dorms,” the proctor announced, placing the stack on her desk. You lingered on for a moment, staring at your hands and focusing on the pressure that weighed your shoulders down every waking moment of the day.

Once, Suhyeon was trying to get you to go shopping with her while you were studying. You refused vehemently, citing your grades as the reason why you couldn’t watch her spend thousands upon thousands on clothes she’d never wear while you cringed at every price tag you saw.

With one of her usual, airy sighs, she collapsed onto her bed, mumbling a hollow statement that stuck in your mind: “[First] [Last], forever crushed by the weight of the world.”

Your self wallowing was cut off by Lee Jeno stopping in front of your desk, looking down at you with his terrible cold stare. You returned his focus, fighting off the urge to curl into yourself and tell him to never speak to you again.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, shoving his hands into his blazer pockets. “I’ll meet you in the library at 8.”

You gave him a look that could only be described as confusion, tilting your head at the notion.

“The library closes at 5 tonight.”

“Does that matter to me?”

He scoffed a bit, not paying you another second. Instead, he sauntered off with Huang Renjun, who gave him a steady slap on the shoulder as he walked out. Renjun followed behind, saying, “You’ve got guts now, huh?” while continuing to hammer on his shoulder and laugh at his “guts.” All you could do was slowly lift yourself from your desk chair, thinking about what you would do upon your return to Jinhae-gu. What your ex-classmates, who’d screamed and cried with you when you received your scholarship notice in the middle of the school day, would say when you walked in, a husk of your former self.

What you’d do when you saw your parents and siblings again.

“Ms. [Last], now that exams are over for second years, I suggest you stop by Miss Choi’s office as soon as possible. I know how much pressure you’re under to retain such perfect grades,” the proctor said, causing you to be torn away from your mind once again.

You smiled weakly at her, nodding. “I will, ma’am. Thank you for your concern.”

“It’s no issue, sweetheart,” she said, dropping a hand onto your shoulder. “We all want to see you succeed.”

You bowed at her as a way to get her to stop touching you, rushing out of the classroom. You’d rather die than go see Miss Choi, who picked you apart too easily in your opinion. You didn’t like the way she seemed to know how you were feeling, how she tried to teach you how to carry the world, because Miss Choi—an alma mater of the academy by paid tuition and not by scholarship—would never know what this felt like, even if she followed you around for three months straight.

With your bag retrieved, you began your march up the stairwell, a new anger brewing in your heart. When you were gone, when there was a lack of honor student to bring up in the interviews and magazine features, when you worked up the nerve to post a forum piece on how the academy destroyed any bit of happiness you had, they’d understand that this wasn’t just academic pressure.

Suhyeon was right—you were forever crushed by the weight of the world because nobody else here wanted to carry their weight and believed there was no one better suited to pick it up other than you.

iii. tartarus was a deep abyss used as a prison for the titan gods,

“You can’t go out right now, the weather is too awful,” Suhyeon insisted, scrambling to reach for your keys. You grabbed them before her, dropping them in the pocket of the jacket you’d draped over your lounge clothes. “It’s dark and the snow is barreling down, [First]. Where could you possibly go right now?”

You bit your lip, staring down at her. She was dressed in her pajamas, practically ready for bed by this point, with a matching Hello Kitty pajama set and a headband pulling her hair away from her face. A pair of glasses sat low on the bridge of her nose, sliding down further the more she tried to discourage you from leaving.

“I just want to take a walk. It stopped snowing a while ago, so there’s no barreling down happening, and I have my snow boots on. Everything should be fine,” you insisted, slipping your gloves on. Suhyeon went to stand in front of the door, blocking your exit to the outside and further delaying your meet-up with Mr. Perfect.

“Promise you’ll be back before room checks.”

You sighed. If whatever Lee Jeno needed to speak to you about was important, he must’ve put something in place to ensure you wouldn’t get in trouble for missing room checks, but you couldn’t be sure. You nodded, waving her out of the way.

“I’ll be back before room checks. Swear on it.”

Uncomfortably, Suhyeon stepped away from the door, allowing you to pass without a word. You slipped out of your room, giving her one last glance before you shut the door behind you and isolated yourself in the dorm corridor. It was cold—everything was cold—and dark, with dim LEDs illuminating the hall floors and nothing else providing any sort of light. It was akin to that of a movie theater's stairs—just lit up enough that you could make it down the stairs without plunging to your doom.

You made your way to the stairwell, cringing as your shoes clicked against the wood of the stairs. You hoped that Jeno had done anything to protect you from the wrath of the late night staff, but you wondered if getting caught meant anything when you’d be gone in a week.

The dorm’s common area (or, more simply, the first floor) was completely devoid of everyone, as aligned with the school rules, which said no students should be out of their rooms past 7:30 on a weekday to avoid issues with student health or student safety. Room checks began at 9, which essentially meant you could be out and about until then, but nobody wanted their parents finding out they were screwing around instead of studying.

You took no time in crossing the common room, weaving through tables and couches in hopes that a teacher didn’t appear and tell you to get back to your room before this “hurt your future,” as they liked to tell you. When the doors to the dorm opened, you could’ve sworn you felt your heart drop into your feet—but, the doors opening did not yield a teacher or any staff member.

It yielded Na Jaemin.

Upon seeing you, he gave you a cordial smile and a nod. Jaemin was Lee Jeno’s second-in-command, his beginning and his end. From what you’d heard from classmates, they’d grown up together, being neighbors from the day they were born and being friends from the day they could speak. You barely saw one without the other, and you couldn’t lie when you said part of you was expecting Jaemin would be in the library along with Jeno tonight.

“Good evening, [First],” he greeted. You offered him an uncomfortable nod back, accompanied by an unsure smile and your shaking hands. “Library’s unlocked.”

You blinked a couple of times, suddenly clueless as to what he was talking about. Na Jaemin was blinding, from the way he smiled at you to the way he even looked at you.

“Ah, um, thanks,” you said, coming to your senses. “Sleep well, or something.”

Jaemin chuckled, nodding. “You too. Good luck!”

He passed by you without another glance, another word, disappearing into the men’s side of the second-year dorms. You watched his figure retreat for a moment, wondering if you’d run into any other golden boys on your way to the library. You hoped Jaemin was the only one.

As you emerged into the cold, night air, stepping onto the snow and sinking in almost immediately, you now found yourself focused on your brief interaction with Na Jaemin.

A while back, you’d heard that he didn’t have a soulmate.

You were just starting out, and, given the nature of your enrollment at the school, you’d had a slight amount of popularity. People hung around you with the idea that you’d somehow trick them into good study habits and unrivaled intelligence (to be honest, people still do), and that inevitably came with you hearing whatever gossip traveled around your class at the time.

“You know Na Jaemin? The boy who started this year and immediately made it in with Mark Lee’s crowd?” a girl asked you, sliding into your study table at the library. Instantly, she’d caught the attention of the other three students who asked to study with you, drawing them away from the math worksheet you were all working on. “Ah, [First], Mark Lee and his crew have been attending the academy since elementary school, so they kinda own the place. They never let anybody in with them until Na Jaemin.”

Upon hearing that, you’d mostly been impressed that somebody could afford that many years of tuition here, let alone send their child into academic hell from the moment they’d learned to read. Suhyeon hadn’t told you that she’d also lived the same life, yet, so this was your first exposure to what most students called the “originals” of the academy.

“He doesn’t have a soulmate.”

A sort of surprise settled in around the table, given how rare it was to be born soulmate-less. There was a “no way” thrown out, along with a couple of gasps of disbelief. You’d felt bad for him, wondering what it was like to live in a world where (mostly) everybody but you had a universally-fated life partner.

Your tablemates didn’t seem to think similarly to you.

“God, my mother would be overjoyed if I was soulmateless,” one of your classmates, Chaeyeon, hummed, leaning back on her chair and resting her elbow on the back of it. You turned to her, shocked that was her first reaction upon hearing about Na Jaemin’s soulmateless-ness. “He must be the golden child of his family.”

“He’s the youngest, too, so he was inevitably going to be the kid they married off. That’s one less person they’ll need to pay off.”

Na Jaemin, whether the rumor was true or not, was your way of finding out that rich people often trapped their younger children in loveless marriages, and paid off their soulmates to keep them from ever forming a relationship. They’d even had a saying for it: “An accomplished father’s best child is the child who can marry for money with no regrets.”

It horrified you because that was how your parents thought. You couldn’t imagine a life where everybody, not just your parents, thought that way.

As quietly as you could, you pushed the door to the library open, finding yourself in the sprawling lobby you were so acquainted with. Despite the academy being a lower grade school, the library was the kind that you’d find articles on and the kind where people would travel just to see it.

Usually, it was locked to the high heavens when it was closed due to its extensive collection of books no high schooler needed to read, but tonight was different. You wondered if Mark stole the keys from Nayeong and gave them to Jeno.

You shuffled towards the stairs, wondering if Lee Jeno was going to make you search for him. Your heart began pounding in your chest once again, thoughts of expulsion (losing your scholarship wasn’t technical expulsion, but it might as well have been) and disappointing everyone you know with a simple 89 on a math test.

The second floor was completely dark, which was creepier than you wanted it to be. Assuming Jeno wasn’t waiting for you in a pitch-black room, you continued up the stairwell, telling yourself Jeno wasn’t going to inform you of your impending doom despite the fact that he was a student, and that he wasn’t even on the student council.

You couldn’t imagine whatever else he wanted to talk to you about, though. You weren’t in the same sphere, hell, even in the same universe as each other—he hung around the golden boys and nobody else, breaking every rule the school had to offer and using his father’s name as an excuse. You hung out with the kids who lived closer to the bottom (whatever bottom meant at this god-forsaken school), the kids whose grades had a real impact on them rather than the ones who went to school to say they did.

The third floor was also completely dark but gave way to the dim lighting that lit up the fourth floor. For some reason, Lee Jeno had decided to taint your preferred study floor with whatever he had to tell you, but you supposed he had no clue that it was your usual study spot. After all, you were in different universes.

Taking the final few steps up to the fourth floor, you noticed that, while it was illuminated, there was no sign of Jeno anywhere. The lights were on and it was dead silent, with not a single movement or noise to even hint at another person being inside; but, from the way one of the tables had its chairs sprawled about and from the light smell of coffee, you could tell people had been in here recently.

If you had to guess who, it was the rest of the golden boys, given your run-in with Jaemin in the lobby of your dorm. You wondered where the rest of them went, particularly Donghyuck and Renjun, who hadn’t ventured through the lounge of the second-year dorm—hopefully, they weren’t still here, as the emptiness was somewhat calming.

You decided to venture further into the fourth floor, walking past the proof-of-life table and entering the rows upon rows of shelves. The fourth floor was the most academic, being the quietest at any given time. Nobody liked scaling four flights of stairs with the sole purpose of studying, so the only people who did were the ones who wanted to avoid the quiet yet prominent chatter on the lower floors.

And the golden boys apparently, but only past closing.

The silence of the room made your heart slow down to a calmer rate, as well as making any panic you were previously feeling dissipate. You were sure that, the moment you found Jeno, it would resume where it left off, but you were grateful for these few moments of calm before the storm you were about to step into.

You continued walking through the shelves, scanning the book’s spines and their titles as if you hadn’t seen them nearly every day for the past two years. You allowed the tips of your fingers to brush along the many different textures and indents of the well-loved books before you. If you were truly at the end of your time here, you ought to write a love letter to this library, thanking it for the countless hours you spent reading and learning in hopes that you, one day, would be a peer of the people around you and not just a spectacle.

At the edge of the shelves, there was another small clearing of desks and then a couple of couches that most students used to take naps during finals season, and that's where Lee Jeno waited for you. The moment you appeared from the woodwork, he noticed you, staring at you from the corner of his eye.

“I was thinking you weren’t going to come,” he said offhandedly. You furrowed your brows, pulling your phone out of your pocket—it was 8:17. You hadn’t even noticed how slowly you were traveling, seeing as you left your dorm at 8:03.

As you’d expected, your heart had begun beating out of its chest, and you, once again, began to prepare for the worst. You slowly approached the couch adjacent to him, sitting down as slowly as you could. You sat like a board, stiff and nervous, waiting for him to explain himself even in the slightest.

Instead, he leaned over to the coffee table in front of you, pushing a small coffee cup towards you. You stared at it for a second, confused and a bit freaked out, but you picked it up nonetheless, thankful he’d thought to get you something warm. He continued to sit in silence, leaving you with a couple of moments to study him thoroughly.

Before today, you’d never really looked at him. Sure, you’d given him a couple of nervous glances, but there was something about Lee Jeno that made you feel inferior. He was the son of a major CEO, one of the biggest conglomerates in all of Korea (and maybe even Asia), somebody you would’ve never even dreamed of meeting three years ago. He was above the rules of the school, above the rules everywhere, dangling his parents’ name and a wad of cash above anyone who tried to tell him no.

His hair was bleached blonde, but it seemed so healthy that you could’ve mistaken it for his natural hair color if you hadn’t known any better. He’d shed all his snow-protectant layers, which were sprawled out along the remainder of the couch next to him. Despite the lack of need for it today, he was dressed in his usual uniform—a black blazer, white turtleneck, and black and green plaid pants—which was a blatant violation of the dress code due to the lack of a polo shirt, but you’d never see him get in trouble for it. He sat with an aura of regality that you could only try and imitate, with his leg lazily crossed over the other and his arm resting on the back of the couch. In his other hand was a cup of coffee like yours, but his was so hot that it was steaming from the lid’s opening.

“I didn’t know your last name until Mark told me,” he finally said, taking a sip of his burning hot coffee. You mimicked his movements, taking a sip from your own, trying to fight off any physical reaction to the bitterness of it.

“What do you mean?”

Jeno sighed, holding up his hand. You stared for a moment, narrowing your eyes in an attempt to make out the small letters on his palm. Then, all too quickly, the truth flooded your mind—the initials on your hand, LJN, and the initials on his, your very own set.

It shocked you so bad that you nearly dropped the cup of coffee. The reveal did nothing to soothe your nerves and, instead, amped up the panic a lot more. Your head spun at the thought, and, while you hated to say it, all you could think about was the negatives.

What would your parents say when they found out your soulmate was Lee Jeno, of all people? The son of a CEO-and-politician, the son of a man who drowned in money, a person who was born rich and would die rich? They’d never leave you alone once finding out, demanding check after check to ensure they never said a word about their relation to the Lees. They’d torment you for the rest of your life, and you’d forever be stuck under their reign of terror, forever their child, forever their moneybag.

On top of that, you’d never have an accomplishment that was fully tied to you again. People would see you as a connection, and they’d give you opportunities based upon that connection rather than based on your natural ability. You’d be respected because of who your soulmate was, not because of who you were, and you’d end up like the women you saw on TV—lifeless dolls with the title of “wife” and nothing else.

You thought meeting your soulmate was supposed to be this fateful encounter under the stars, the moment where you met the one person who would love you most. You expected to be mystified, sent to a world of love and comfort, sent to a world where your problems were nonexistent and the sun was shining and the birds sang tales of love and togetherness. You wanted to feel as though you were being embraced by constellations, struck by Cupid’s arrow as you stared at the person the universe decided was your fateful match.

Instead, you stared at Lee Jeno, and all you could feel was an overwhelming sense of disappointment.

“Well,” you mumbled, unsure of what you should do now. “What now?”

He didn’t seem to have a direct answer, either, simply taking another sip of his coffee. You mentally questioned how he was able to consume something that hot without burning the hell out of his tongue, but that wasn’t something you needed to dwell on.

When he didn’t respond, you took it upon yourself to ask another question and drill until you got all the answers you wanted.

“How long have you known?”

This was something he seemed to know the answer to. Without skipping a beat, he replied, “Mark told me about eight months ago after he saw your name on the award listings.”

To that, you felt your heart dry out a little bit more than it already was. Eight months was a long time to wait after knowing who your soulmate might be, especially considering that, eight months ago, he could’ve easily contacted you before the break between school years began. Wanting more out of him, you stayed silent, still trying to figure out what exactly you were feeling at that moment.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure of it, but Suhyeon told me your initials about three months ago. That’s when my friends found out and started hounding me to tell you.”

Suhyeon? Last you checked, she was horrified by the thought of even being near the golden boys, let alone speaking to them. In what situation would she have been around them without you, especially given that she was talking to them? It seemed Lee Jeno was the sort of person who answered a question by creating more, which was something you didn’t appreciate in the slightest.

“So why now, then? You obviously weren’t in a hurry.”

He took another slow, awkward sip of his coffee, and, if you weren’t insane, it seemed like he was nervous to you. That ignited a sense of pride in you, and you wanted to assume most people would never stress Lee Jeno out in their lives. At the same time, you wanted to hurry things up and leave so that you wouldn’t have to think about him until you needed to.

“I have a family dinner next week, and my dad…my dad wants me to start talking to Lim Nayeong because he thinks I should marry her. No offense to Nayeong, but I’d rather die than marry her right out of high school, and you’re…the only way I can convince him otherwise.”

The room went dead silent. You were unsure how to respond to a declaration like that without being mean, and, with the quirk of your lips, you couldn’t help but allow the flood gates to open.

“I’m sorry, but how in the world am I supposed to help? In what world is marriage to me more advantageous? I'm a random hick from the countryside who got lucky and struck it big. If anything, I’d make your father more inclined to marry you off.” You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing at how ridiculous this was, a hand hovering over your mouth and your eyes filling with laughter-born tears. Jeno stared at you incredulously, not even reacting to your sudden outburst in the slightest.

“I’m sorry man, but you might be better off taking literally anybody else with the same initials as me. I’m not the help you need.”

“So you wouldn't care if your soulmate married someone else?”

The undertone of anger in his voice washed away your laughter in an instant, nearly making you jump. You dropped your hand to your lap, sighing—you wondered if you’d end up pouring out your whole life story to him tonight. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet my soulmate in hopes that they’d be some knight in shining armor. After these midterms, though, I’m thinking my scholarship is going to be revoked and I’ll be back to the land in the poor and underprivileged. Sorry, Jeno, but, once again, you’d be better off picking somebody else to bring along. I'm not going to let myself fall in love with something painfully unrealistic, even if that something is my universal other-half.”

Jeno seemed to be exasperated at every word that left your mouth, and you weren’t sure how you were meant to handle the increasing hostility that was starting to emanate from your supposed soulmate. The more things went south, the more you wanted to laugh and scream at yourself for thinking your soulmate would be some prince from a foreign land. You were so childish, thinking you’d get anything out of the whole ‘soulmate’ ruse—at least you’d be paid off after Nayeong got married to Jeno. Then, you might be able to emancipate yourself with a good lawyer and blackmail the Lees into more money for a nice, Seoul apartment to rent.

“Okay. Let’s make a bet, then. If you score over me in four out of the six subjects, you’ll be in my car on the way to my parents’ house next Friday. Deal?”

Even with your continued top-five status on the class leaderboards, you don’t think you’d ever managed to score above Lee Jeno in four subjects. The only things you consistently dominated in were English, Literature, and History—you’d achieved first place in all three during every single exam season you’d had at the academy—and the rest—sciences, math, anything STEM—you barely achieved the top five rankings that were required of you.

For some reason, you were antsy to receive your test scores, now. You’d never made a bet on whether or not you’d do worse than somebody, ever. It was nearly exhilarating, and you now felt there was a reward to the end of your scholarship: at the very, very least, you wouldn’t have to attend a Lee family dinner with Lee Jeno, who you were finding to be very unpleasant.

“Yeah, sure,” you scoffed, standing up from the couch and looking down at him. “Deal.”

With that, you approached the rows of books, leaving Jeno to consider what he thought he'd accomplish by bringing you along to anything.

iv. and most of the titans would spend eternity there.

Three days into break, and you haven’t done much of anything. Suhyeon was out with her other rich friends, her “very own posse” as she liked to call it, and had spent the past couple of days staying off campus—it left you with a lot of time to think.

For the most part, you wondered what would happen in the unlikely case Jeno won your bet. You’d never had to speak to someone like that, someone who wasn’t a wealthy teacher or classmate—his parents were the real, unbridled deal. People who spent thousands every day, not blinking an eye at four-digit totals or the state of their bank account.

It scared you. A lot.

You could dish out a big word now and then, offer a cordial smile, or impress with your general knowledge of the world, but there was nothing about you that would impress a multi-billionaire. Not even a party trick or a joke you’d spent a million years formulating.

That fear, rivaling the fear of expulsion, was what brought you to your current position in the corner of the campus on a rarely-cleaned picnic table, your head in your arms and your eyes trained towards a rose bush. According to the clock on your phone, class rankings had been posted eleven minutes ago, and you had no intention of checking any time soon.

Win or lose, there was no positive for you, and you didn't like that. In any other circumstance, retaining the ability to attend classes here and gaining letters of recommendation was the best possibility for you, as it would be for anyone else. However, the world had to curse you with an old-money, top-elite soulmate rather than an honest, just-rich-enough-to-afford-tuition soulmate—you seriously had run out of luck when you procured the scholarship.

“Oh? What are you doing out here, Miss Honor Student?” Na Jaemin asked, scaring you at the suddenness of his appearance. You jerked up, looking towards him flustered and a bit embarrassed. He looked at you questioningly, his hands cupped and held near his chest.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I suppose you asking makes more sense,” he laughed, approaching one of the rose bushes you’d been staring at. “I found a bee crawling on the ground. Poor thing has a broken wing,” he hummed, reaching his hands out to a flower. You didn’t try and second guess his words, believing his alibi without needing any proof. Instead, you looked away, your stomach crawling at the thought of carrying a bee across campus like that. “Although, haven’t rankings been posted? Anyone would expect you to be first in line.”

“I’m not worked up over it or anything,” you mumbled, resisting the urge to put your head back down and block him out of your world. “Going now would just yield a bunch of crowding around a tiny bulletin board. It’s too difficult.”

“If you started walking now, I’d bet the crowd’s mostly dissipated,” he suggested, coming back around to where he could be in your line of sight. “Want to walk together?”

Feeling cornered, you stood up, brushing the dust and dirt off the bottom of your bag. Jaemin smiled satisfyingly, offering an arm for you to take. In the most non-discreet way possible, you pretended to not see the offer, brushing past him quickly. He didn’t let the act bruise his ego, though, following behind you in earnest. You wondered if, due to your relationship with his best friend, he felt the need to ensure that you had no ill feelings towards him; or, maybe, he resonated with you, as both of you started at the academy much later than most of your classmates.

“I heard the big reveal didn’t go as nicely as it could have,” he began, keeping pace with you almost perfectly. Your steps were completely in sync, and you couldn’t help but notice how he’d done it on purpose rather than coincidentally. Another thing you’d heard about Na Jaemin was that he was a robot, but most people were joking when they said that—maybe, they could’ve been right.

“Well, we’re not exactly the most chemical pair.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Jaemin said, lightly elbowing you in the arm. “He just doesn’t know how romance works. He’s all antsy right now because he told his dad to not invite Nayeong and her family to their very rare family dinners and used you as the excuse. I told him—I said, ‘Jeno, you can’t use your soulmate to get out of marriage unless you actually know your soulmate.’ And he got all pissy at me. I tried to make him make it the least bit romantic, but it sounds like he didn’t try at all.”

“He got me coffee.”

“Coffee is bitter and unromantic, though. I’d know.” Jaemin giggled, putting his arms behind his head. You approached the entrance to a corridor, which would effectively put you on the path to the bulletin. But, Jaemin took a sharp turn, leading you through the long way to get you there.

“Are you a ladies’ man? Romance-expert, or something?” you asked jokingly, not expecting any sort of genuine response. The closer you got to the truth made you start to get nervous again, words getting stuck at the top of your throat, impossible to speak yet impossible to swallow back down.

“Maybe I am.”

Jaemin looked towards you, giving you a look that you were half sure was him reading your mind and learning everything he possibly could about you. He was incredibly good at blending into you, even if you hadn’t talked much; everything he said coaxed more out of you, and every movement created a new line of conversation.

Every rumor you’d heard about him—so good at befriending people that it’s scary, a perfect speaker, the most eloquent student at the school—was proving to be true. He was monstrous, somebody you surely wouldn’t want to have on your bad side.

“You and I are similar, you know,” he said, tearing his away from you to look towards the door to the main school building. He opened it for you, waiting for you to enter before he did himself.

“How so?”

“My family’s new to this whole ‘rich and famous’ thing,” he began. You looked at him out of the corner of your eye, watching as he looked up to the ceiling. His eyes glittered like stars, reflecting everything they saw to a T. “We’re, like, the ultimate definition of new money. My dad hit it big with Jeno’s dad, got on his good side, and became the chair of a subsidiary…so I’m in a limbo of sorts.”

“God, I wish my dad hit it big with Jeno’s,” you snorted, picking at the nail polish coating your fingers. “Is that why you came in at the beginning of high school rather than earlier?”

“My dad wanted me to experience a little bit of what he did, at the very least. Both my mom and dad thought it’d be too much if they moved me from here to a normal high school, though…thus, the order.”

You nodded, feeling a pang of fear as you turned a corner and a crowd of whispering teenagers came into view. Your conversation with Jaemin ended the moment they did, instead making way for what, no matter what, would be the worst moments of your life so far.

The moment you reached the crowd, people began to stare at you, whispering under their breaths as they passed. It was like being the center exhibit at an expensive art show, being a piece made entirely for public reaction. The more you walked, the more the red sea parted, giving you a clear path to the bulletin board. Within seconds, you’d reached it, scanning from the bottom up.

Number two was Jeno, to no one’s surprise. In order, his rankings had been second for English, second for history, second for literature, first for math, second for science, and second in his elective.

One above him was you.

First in English. First in history. First in literature. Second for math. First for science. First for your elective.

At that moment, you could’ve passed out. You stared at the line of ones (and a single two) in front of you, wondering how in the world you achieve something like that. For the past two years, you’d battled against private tutors and possible instances of cheating, always barely being able to hit the mark for every single subject. You never struggled in any of the humanities, but…second in math after your catastrophe of a test and first in science—physics specifically—felt like an absolute lie to you.

It felt unreal. It felt like you’d become the kids whose parents paid for their grades, who spent hours with private tutors that cost hundreds of thousands of won per hour. It felt like, somehow, you’d hit a peak even though you were only seventeen.

Your ears seemed to open, hearing everything the students around you said. “She’s never let Lee Jeno pass her once,” someone said, whispering to their friend.

“Do you think she gave him math as a pity grade? I heard they were in the same time slot last Thursday.”

You blinked rapidly, trying to figure things out amongst the chatter. Every word that came out of your peers' mouths was a word that clouded your mind, creating new ideas that you’d never once considered.

“She’s a commoner and she’s beating Lee Jeno. That ought to hurt the Lee name, right?”

Since when have you become Jeno’s rival? For a simple stroke of luck on a few tests? You felt like you were going insane, your feet cemented to the floor and your hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline, mixed with an intense and sudden wave of relief, that came with reading your scholarship was intact.

“Protip,” Jaemin said, grabbing your attention with ease. He seemed to drag you back down to Earth, returning you to the pedestal on which you were expected to carry the world. “There’s only one thing that’ll put you above the title of student council president and daughter of a filthy rich tech couple, and that’s this.”

“Nayeong ranks first every year, too. This’ll barely help.”

“I don’t think so,” Jaemin chuckled. You looked at him, raising an accusatory brow; he mirrored your expression, looking down at you with eyes that sparkled with mischief and utter madness. “Miss Nayeong ranked seventh this time around.”

v. unlike his fellow titans, atlas had a different punishment.

There wasn’t a single word to be shared between you and Jeno, and you couldn’t ever see yourself getting to a point where there was.

After he’d sent you a text—where he got your number, you’re unsure—asking for your general clothing measurements, then dropping off a dress with a price tag you never, ever wanted to face again, you hadn’t spoken a word to each other.

Even as you climbed into the sleek, black car that waited for you about a couple of blocks away from campus, he didn’t so much as greet you, deciding that telling the driver to get going was a much better use of his time. For the man who got so upset when you showed little to no care about your soulmate status, you were quite surprised at his unwillingness to speak to you.

A part of you wanted to keep up the silence, to ignore the slight tug in your heart and the fact that you needed to know at least something about him so his parents didn’t get suspicious, but you weren’t going to embarrass yourself with him. Especially not in front of the moneybags that he called parents.

So, when you reached about ten minutes before your estimated time of arrival at a fancy hotel (rather than his house, which was the former location of this family dinner), you began to fiddle with your handbag, pulling out a small, folded piece of paper.

“This is my transcript thus far,” you said, breaking the silence between you two. He looked away from the window, staring down at the hand that carried the paper. “Someone told me your dad was big on grades. Thought it’d be useful for your argument.”

He pulled it from your fingertips, much gentler than you’d assume from Lee Jeno, and his eyes lingered on your hands. You’d painted your nails for the occasion, wiping off the half-chipped coat you previously had on in favor of a nicer, more sophisticated color. It matched the dress well, along with the makeup you’d begged Suhyeon to help you put on without telling her the occasion for it.

“Nice job on the nails,” he commented, looking away from them and putting the folded piece of paper in his pocket. “You look expensive.”

“Is that not the goal?”

“That’s precisely the goal. I need you to look like I dote on you,” Jeno mumbled, dropping his hands into his lap. “Sorry, but I’m going to really play up the scholarship student thing.”

“No worries. I understand not wanting to marry someone you don’t know.”

The more you thought about it, the more you began to pity him. Worrying about a money-based arranged marriage was a very first-world-problems-esque issue to be having, you could respect that it was something he didn’t want. You just wished he was asking you to be his scapegoat as a lie rather than as a reality—you’d feel much better if you were pretending to be his soulmate.

“I don’t think my father will be too interested in the details of our relationship, he’ll just want proof you’ll be able to measure up to Nayeong,” Jeno said, ignoring your earlier comment. “Activities, grades, I don’t care what, play up everything about yourself. He doesn’t care about in-laws, he cares about the money you can bring in.”

“Wow, sounds like a lovely man.”

Jeno cleared his throat, made uncomfortable by your short quip. “He is when he’s not talking about his paycheck.”

To you, it sounded like Jeno was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince you, but you weren’t in the mood to pry. Instead, you looked out the window once again, cringing at how snowy and cold it looked outside. You were going to freeze in this dress, even when you were wearing insulated tights underneath, even when it was long-sleeved and pretty thick.

When the hotel came into view, you embarrassingly recognized it as a place many social media celebrities enjoyed coming to. In your few moments of off time, you were sure you’d seen the outside in a few lifestyle vlogs or food review videos. It was fairly trendy; you had to give Jeno’s parents props for that.

Opposite to your reaction, Jeno scoffed at the sight of the luxury inn, evidently unsatisfied with it. “Of course she’d pick here,” he murmured to himself. You wondered if his siblings—who were going to be attending as you’d learned this morning—had been in charge of picking the restaurant, which would make more sense given its online reputation. He shared that he had two younger sisters and a younger brother, all of whom weren’t in high school yet, so you’d never met them or seen them before.

The driver pulled up to the extravagant porte-cochere—the fancy driveway outside of a hotel, which Suhyeon had taught you the name of—and slowed to a stop, but neither you nor Jeno moved.

“Remember,” he said, putting on the coaching voice he used to relay this to you earlier. “My mom will be the weak spot, so focus on her more than my dad. We both need to fight when my father grows argumentative, but you need to be more tactical and logical. My siblings will be on our side so don’t try to make a case to them.”

“What are their names again?”

“In order, Yeojin, Soeun, and Sunwoo.”

You recited their names, wondering why Jeno had received such an odd name compared to the rest of them. Nevertheless, you made the first move to exit the stationary car, regretting it the moment the night air hit your skin. A deep chill cemented itself in your stomach, and you began to wonder how it managed to be so unimaginably cold at all. Jeno followed behind you, mumbling something else as he joined you outside.

You briefly considered how this was going to go, given you’d never tried to act like you were in love with someone before. You were sure Jeno was a pro at fabricating things, plastering on disingenuous smiles and acting interested in the monetary, arrogant talk of wealthy adults. The most you’d done was work at your local convenience store for a summer.

The moment he joined up next to you, he linked his arm with yours, and you were off. You were thankful for the warmth you received from him, even if it was slightly uncomfortable given your situation. You preferred being warm over being comfortable in most situations.

The doors slid open automatically, leading you into a world entirely separate from your own. You tried to suppress the urge to ogle at everything, to approach the plants that lined the lobby and check if they were real, to run for the sole purpose of hearing your heels clack against the marble floor. You kept your jaw screwed shut and your eyes forward, even if all you wanted to do was “ooh” at the chandeliers on the ceiling.

You’d never forget this moment. Being a customer at a place you’d exclusively seen through rich influencers’ and celebrities’ social media felt ridiculous.

One glance up was all you allowed yourself—a simple, lingering stare—but it put you in last place anyway. When you looked back down, there was a girl, no older than 15, sprinting towards you, a big smile on her face. Jeno dropped your arm and pulled the girl into a hug, a smile blooming on his face as he did. You’d never seen him smile so genuinely in your life.

Another girl came forward as well, but she came slower, more timidly. She was certainly younger than the other girl, maybe around 11 or 12, with her hair done much simpler and her clothes much more juvenile. She passed by Jeno and (who you assumed to be) his sister, stopping in front of you. “Um, hello,” she said. You smiled, assuming this was when your grand performance was to begin.

“Hello there,” you replied, feeling a surge of confidence run through you. “Soeun, right?”

Her eyes practically doubled in size for a moment, and you hoped that meant your leap-in-the-dark guess had been correct. “Um, yeah. You’re [First], right?”

“That would be me, yes.”

Soeun opened her mouth to speak, but Yeojin quickly cut her off by dragging you into a highly unwelcome hug. You ignored the discomfort, reaching your arms around her and giving her a few awkward pats. “It’s so fun to meet you!” Yeojin squealed, and you briefly wondered how long Jeno had been telling his family about you before he directly told you.

“Yeojin,” Jeno said, a warning-esque tone in his voice. “Lay off a bit.”

You felt her freeze and then she immediately let go of you, practically pushing her off. A hand covered her mouth—her nails were perfectly manicured, done much better than your self-painted ones—and she gasped, and now you felt a bit overwhelmed by her. Soeun, to Yeojin’s side, looked away, her eyes shiny and a bit saddened; while she certainly wasn’t living a life anything similar to yours, you could see yourself in her, a bit.

“Sorry, I forget we’ve never met. You’re, like, big news on the lower grade campus,” Yeojin said. “Among the second years, you’re like a superhero or something. First place without a tutor! Rare, one-in-a-million scholarship student! I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity.”

Well, that was certainly something you didn’t want to hear. Yeojin was already the type of person you couldn’t handle well, if the past few minutes were anything to go off of, and she’d shared mildly upsetting information with you already. You didn’t want to be popular among middle schoolers at all.

“That’s nice, I suppose. Maybe a bit worrying,” you joked, and Yeojin seemed to think you were a comedian by the way she laughed. Jeno looked at you both, obviously sensing your lack of social capability. and chose that moment to switch the attention to Soeun.

“Do you want to lead us to our table, Soeun?” he asked, taking your arm into his once again. Now that you were in the warm, heated hotel, the gesture only made you feel uncomfortable rather than warmed. If you were eating outside, maybe you’d be able to handle any skinship he initiated to make your relationship seem more believable—you supposed that either way, you signed up for this.

Yeojin squealed at you two, though, which made everything about this so much less worth it. After being surrounded by high schoolers and adults for two entire years, you’d forgotten how insufferable 14-year-olds were, and, somehow, Yeojin had managed to assume the worst form of 14-year-old possible. You felt bad for her older self, who would, inevitably, look back on this period of her life with misery rather than fondness.

Soeun took the lead as she was asked to do, shuffling her feet across the marble flooring. It didn’t take long for Yeojin to take the lead, beginning to chatter on about something you managed to tune out pretty quickly. You took the time to gaze at the beauty around you, from intricate flower pots to huge pieces of art that lined the walls. This felt fake, almost, and you wondered how you’d managed to get this lucky with the game of fate. If only a future between you and Jeno felt plausible.

Soeun (more so Yeojin) led you up a set of marble stairs, and then, into a long, dimly lit corridor. It was filled with paintings and lined with the most beautifully-installed marble you’d ever seen. Then, you reached the door at the end, which was made of glass and had insanely intricate carvings on it. Along with that, it had the words “The Aviary” engraved onto the one empty spot among the carvings.

You felt faint. For a moment, you wondered how much Jeno’s parents’ bill would be for this meal, and then you decided to mentally scold yourself for even wondering that in the first place. Yeojin pushed the door open, letting both you and Soeun pass.

The Aviary was, quite possibly, the fanciest restaurant you’d ever been in. It had chandeliers everywhere and thin, walkable carpet on the floors, along with more art that lined every inch of the wall it possibly could. Every table had a pure white table cloth and velvet chairs, each one already perfectly set with a million different utensils and candles that lined the span of it. Soeun continued to lead you deeper into the restaurant. past waiters and tables and windows that showed a more elevated view of Seoul than you were expecting.

You must’ve missed scaling such a massive hill when you were on your way here, mostly due to the internal panic you were fighting off the entire time. You tried to suppress your ogling again, looking towards the floor and hoping you didn’t look like an absolute idiot.

Soeun then led you through a door and into another hallway, this one lined with several doors. She approached the one at the edge once again, and Yeojin beat her to the door again, opening it and waiting for you to enter.

You were instantly hit with the view of Lee Jeno’s father, who looked like your biggest fear. Next to him was his wife, Jeno’s mother, and a few chairs down was a boy who seemed to be about 15 as well, absorbed in his phone and dead to the world.

It kind of felt like you were about to undergo the reckoning, and your final opponents were every relevant religious figure. Every breath that escaped Jeno’s parents’ lips was revered and every blink was well documented, every lost eyelash and every slight movement was taken note of. It’d be accurate to say that Jeno’s parents were more important than the prime minister—they brought in the money and held up the economy, while all the prime minister did was sit and twiddle his fingers.

“You must be [First],” Jeno’s mother said, standing. A small smile graced her features, one that looked and felt apologetic. One glance at the man next to her told you all you needed to know about why she might’ve been apologetic.

“Yes,” you nodded, smiling back. You pulled your arm from Jeno’s, giving her a deep bow; most of the time, you’d learned those wealthier (and older) than you enjoyed the robotic, hardly-genuine signs of respect that most other adults in your life had abandoned. When you stood up straight again, you were pleased to see the impressed glint in her eyes.

“I’m Jeno’s mother,” she introduced, although you found it to be a bit redundant.

“It’s lovely to meet you, ma’am. I’ve heard much about you.”

You hoped she didn’t inquire about any knowledge of their family, as, other than basic facts and events, you knew next to nothing about their personal lives. Jeno’s mother took a seat, motioning to the chairs in front of her and her husband. You allowed Jeno to pull your chair out, internally questioning whether or not anyone had ever pulled your chair out for you.

The velvet seats were more comfortable than any seat you’d ever owned, from your desk chair at school to the lousy, old couch back at your parents' house. You couldn’t imagine how much they’d cost the restaurant, given that every single table had a set of at least four. Even if Jeno’s dad stared at you like you were the grossest, most disgusting thing you’d ever seen, at least you’d get to sit in this chair and eat the restaurant’s food.

“It’s lovely to see you again too, dear,” Mrs. Lee said, giving Jeno a new type of smile. This one was much different than the one she’d offered you—everything about this one carried a mother’s warmth, a mother’s love, drenched in such intense care that nothing could shake it. Jeno could’ve entered this restaurant in his unwashed gym clothes and she would’ve offered the same smile, unchanged and unshaken.

“Mother,” Jeno greeted with a nod. Then, he turned to his father and extended a steady glare. His father glared back, and, as Yeojin and Soeun took their seats next to Sunwoo, a subtle air of war settled over the table. There would be nothing pleasant about this dinner, even if the food was perfect and the view was delightful.

You took the moment of silence to remind yourself that this was not much of a dinner, rather, it was a challenge. A test to see if you were worthy to wed to Jeno one day, and a challenge to see if you could keep up the perfect-soulmate act to void any sort of marriage contract to Nayeong.

“Mr. Lee,” you said, taking the initiative to speak to your strongest opponent. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you, as well. Jeno speaks of you very highly.”

When he looked toward you, your blood ran cold. His stare, now protruding into your eyes rather than the side of your head, was icy and unwelcoming like you’d just beat him in a lawsuit or nothing. He was an unbreakable wall, and you told yourself that you only needed to find the single crack that was caused by love for his eldest son as if it would be easy.

“You’re the academy’s charity case for Jeno’s year, correct?”

Ouch. What an obvious insult, among the many he could’ve thrown at you—you were almost impressed that he didn’t even try to hide his hostility. You’d thought that, at the very least, he’d try to maintain his usual TV persona, but maybe you overestimated your worthiness of receiving that sort of respect. Before you could smile and tell him, yes, you are the charity case, Jeno flared up, ready to spit false fire at his father.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn't call my girlfriend a charity case, Father,” Jeno spat, eyes narrowed. You instinctively put a hand on his shoulder, figuring this would be a good, caring gesture given the situation. Being called somebody’s girlfriend felt foreign, but you supposed it wouldn’t be the best idea to disclose that. After all, this would likely be your one chance to impress him, if you had to guess. You were well acquainted with the idea of being a charity case, hell, you agreed.

“No, he’s right. If they didn’t have to maintain their image, they wouldn’t have the scholarship exams at all,” you said, keeping your eyes on Jeno’s father. Slowly, you dropped your hand from his shoulder, leaning back on the chair and ignoring the pounding of your heart. “Nevertheless, I am fully confident in my abilities. I deserve to be at a school like the academy. Even if I must endure a title like ‘charity case.’”

Jeno’s father turned his eyes towards Jeno and then back at you, the glare never faltering. You wondered how a single man harbored so much malice, and how Jeno saw his father in a good light. He seemed bitter and controlling, angry that his son—his next-of-kin, the boy who would one day be the king of his corporate kingdom—refused to marry a woman he did not know, right out of high school.

He did not say anything in return to your response, rather, picking up his delicately folded, fabric napkin and unraveling it to place on his lap. You mimicked his actions, remembering how Suhyeon once mentioned that you shouldn’t do something until the lead of the table has (among many other things she decided to recite to you one late night, so you could’ve been completely off the mark with that one). However, judging by the way everyone else seemed to do the same shortly after you, you assumed you guessed right.

“Jeno shared that you’re quite the prodigy, though, [First]. I mean, to be able to hold your own amongst children who have top-notch private tutors and spend all their time studying…I couldn’t imagine doing something like that,” Jeno’s mom said, trying to salvage what her husband destroyed. “If you weren’t so busy with your own schoolwork, I’d hire you to tutor the girls.”

“I’m honored you’d entrust me with furthering your children’s education,” you smiled, picking up the glass of water that was filled before you came in. You attempted to hold it as daintily as possible, taking the shortest, most sophisticated sip you could muster.

“Is that not what’s expected of her, though?” Jeno’s father was apparently determined to ruin your day, likely to destroy what little confidence you had and remove you from the academy (and Jeno’s life) completely. “It’s not impressive when she is merely fulfilling what is asked of her.”

You pondered what might’ve put his father on edge so quickly. You’d barely spoken to this man at all, let alone been in the same room as him, and he was already determined to get rid of you. Perhaps that was why he moved the dinner location from his home to here—he didn’t want this to be an official “meet-the-parents” event. He wanted it to be a family dinner without your presence at all.

You figured he would be thrilled to hear that you and his son likely had no future together.

“Is she not going above and beyond? If she was just meeting the scholarship requirements, why is she first place instead of fifth?” Jeno questioned, leaning back in his chair. You looked over, and, from the expression on his face, Jeno seemed actually upset. His ears were tinged red and his face was tight, and, with a quick once over, you could see that his fists were clenched and his shoulders were fairly tight.

To be honest, you couldn’t blame him. If you had to listen to your father reject your soulmate in favor of a random girl you barely knew, you’d be pretty pissed off too, no matter your relationship with your soulmate.

“Because she spends every second of the day with her head in a book, Jeno. Not because she has natural talent, or because she’s the prodigy your school claims she is,” he fired back. If you held any respect for Jeno’s father, you’d be utterly destroyed; luckily, you had no respect for any man that ran a company that was hinged on the work of underpaid laypeople, so you were unscathed by his words. “Nayeong is student council president, holds herself in the top five, does service whenever she can…and your little soulmate is relying on her connection to you to make anything of herself.”

You audibly snorted at that, raising an eyebrow. “I am?” you questioned, crossing your legs. A sick sense of amusement filled your chest, along with a burst of confidence. “With all due respect, sir, I did not aim for my scholarship with the intent of striking gold with my soulmate or significant other. I aimed for it because the only way I can make anything of myself is with my grades, because my mother didn’t give birth to me on a bed of cash.”

Jeno began to speak right after you, not granting any time for his father to reply to you. “Besides,” he said, slamming two pieces of paper—unfolded and crinkled—onto the table. “Nayeong got seventh this year.”

His father scanned over the papers, which you realized were both yours and Lim Nayeong’s transcripts. Yours, from where you sat, had nothing but ones, twos, and the occasional three or four, while hers had fours, fives, and even nines, without a single one in sight. Nayeong’s grades were nothing to be ashamed of given how busy she was with everything else, but next to yours, they didn’t measure up in the slightest.

It made you feel embarrassed. It made you want to say, “there is still not much of a difference between Nayeong and me, I just scored a few points more.”

“So compared to a girl with sevens, a student council position, and a respectable family,” Jeno’s father said slowly, returning to his complete ignorance of you. “You’d rather spend the rest of your life with a poor, unsightly girl who has slightly impressive grades, alcoholic parents, and a drug-addicted brother in prison?”

Your blood ran cold. Jeno’s jaw clenched, and his mother gasped, turning towards her husband and slapping his shoulder. “You promised me you wouldn’t bring that up—” she began but was quickly cut off by Jeno standing so suddenly that his chair fell over, banging against the ground and causing everybody to flinch. You looked up at him, an emptiness spreading through your chest.

“Talk to my girlfriend like that again,” he began, clenching his fists so hard that his hands began to shake. “And I will end you.”

He didn’t waste a moment turning towards the door, throwing it open, and marching out. You stood up quickly, albeit much more gracefully, draping the fabric napkin over the back of your chair and racing out of the room without another word. You didn’t look back, keeping your eyes on Jeno’s shrinking figure and walking as fast as you could without speeding up to a run. You sped through the restaurant, out into the lobby and past all the glitz and glamor of the hotel. By the time you caught up to him, Jeno was standing outside in the empty entry area, typing furiously on his phone.

“You—you didn’t have to blow up like that. I mean, we were just acting, and I can’t say I wasn’t expecting him to know.”

Jeno turned towards you, scoffing. “I just don’t get it.”

“Huh?” You tilted your head, wondering why he sounded so…mean. Angry, even.

“You’re perfect,” he said, looking up at the darkened sky. The lighting from the hotel entrance lit up his face, every feature and every imperfection (although scarce) perfectly on display, but you could’ve sworn the stars were what lit up his eyes. They sparkled like fireworks, the kind that was loud and Earth-shaking. “Everything about you. You’re pretty, you’re perfectly intelligent, you know how to speak to people and you know how to get your point across. You know when to smile and when to not. You know how to meet new people and try new things.”

You were confused. He launched compliment after compliment at you, but he sounded almost…bitter about it. Like he was unhappy you were all those things.

‘Um…” you mumbled, but couldn’t find the words to respond. You just stared, waiting for him to say anything, feeling the cold dive deeper into your skin—under your skin—and each shiver become more intense.

“There’s not a single thing you don’t beat me in but money. So what if you have terrible parents and an awful family, because you’re the picture-perfect poster girl—hell, you’re more than that. You have the perfect underdog story too, and he still hates you. He still prefers that—that witch,” he rambled, looking down and kicking a pebble that was next to his feet. “What does that mean for me? If you’re so terrible, so average despite your grades and your reputation, does that not mean I’m a failure of a son?”

“What? Jeno, I think you’re overreacting—”

“Oh, am I?” he turned, shoving his hands into his blazer pockets. “You’ve been ahead of me from the moment you stepped onto that god-forsaken campus, and you’ve given me, what, math as reparations? Every year, I have to use the excuse that I have the scholarship student to compete with, and that’s why I’m not the perfect top of the class, but he views you as obsolete. Doesn’t that mean I’m worse than obsolete? Huh?”

“Well, other than the fact that you’re agreeing with him,” you said, crossing your arms. “What does it matter what he thinks? Even if he gives his business to one of your siblings, you’ll still be drowning in cash. So what if you get married to Nayeong? Just cheat on her, or something, because, if she’s such a witch,” you paused, emphasizing your distaste with his nickname for her, “won’t she do the same?”

“How are you so okay with this?” he asked, raising his voice in the slightest. “You found out I was your soulmate and you didn’t even try to make a connection. You were okay with me using you to sidestep my father’s plans for me, you were okay with him relentlessly insulting you until it had something to do with your private life—why?”

“Why? Would you like it if a man you’d never met brought up your terrible at-home life and decided to equate it to you being terrible? I know my strengths, I know who I am, but it’s not very nice to be compared to 4 siblings who didn’t even attempt university and parents who barely work,” you replied, wondering why he was getting so upset. Minutes ago, he was spewing lines straight out of a drama, but now he was mobilizing against you, too. The worst part was that you couldn’t match his energy at all—maybe it was reactionary to the fact that you no longer had to sit through a dinner with his parents, but you couldn’t bring yourself to feel angry.

You were realizing that Jeno viewed you as a rival, while you never had. Before the past week, he was just another golden boy, one of the boys Suhyeon hated, one of the fancy popular boys you’d never talk to. It seemed as though he’d viewed you as an opponent from your first round of exams.

You felt bad, for some reason—guilty even. As if this was something you were meant to feel guilty for. You couldn’t imagine Jeno had been exactly thrilled when he found out you were his soulmate—judging by how long it took him to tell you, he wasn’t thrilled at all—and yet he was acting like you’d ruined his life.

You didn’t get it.

“You’re ridiculous.” Jeno laughed breathily, pacing around a bit. All you could do was watch, even when a car pulled up in front of you, likely for him to make his grand escape. “Jaemin was wrong. This was never going to work.”

“Did you ever think it was?” you rose a brow, suppressing a shiver that was beginning to creep down your back. “Sorry, Jeno, but we were destined for destruction. Even if we tried to foster something, that wouldn’t stop my parents from approaching the tabloids, and it wouldn’t stop the tabloids from painting me as a money-grabbing asshole. Count your blessings, okay? You’ll have everything and more. A loveless marriage is the least you need to deal with.”

He spun towards you, narrowing his eyes. “Just because I have money or a fancy house does not mean my life will be easy.”

You widened your eyes, nodding slowly. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”

“Just—just get in the car. Leave, please.”

You turned towards the sleek, black car that was parked beside you. Without another word, you walked towards it, throwing the door open and basking in the heat that emanated out of it. You got in, slamming the door behind you, and watched Jeno get smaller and smaller as the driver drove you farther and farther away.

vi. instead of being banished to tartarus,

Suhyeon knows.

You can tell by the way she interacts with you, by the way she avoids you in the halls and stays out of the dorm until she absolutely can’t anymore. You can tell by the way she doesn’t interrupt your incessant studying, reignited by the end of break and the beginning of a new term, with mindless hypotheticals and useless facts. You can tell by the way she slips into her fight-or-flight persona when she speaks to you, the same person when she’s near the golden boys.

Reasonably, you’ve also begun to believe she’s not telling you something. Maybe you’ve always believed that, but it’s to a much larger extent now; there’s something important she’s not telling you. You’ve also concluded she was aware Jeno was your soulmate, but, for whatever reason, she chose not to tell you.

You can’t bring yourself to feel angry, no matter what you do, no matter how much you think about it. It stresses you out, how numb you feel in regards to your situation, how numb you’ve felt for the past two years or so. All your energy, and, by extension, all your emotions, have been poured into your grades and your social standing among professors and academic greats. There’s nothing left over to feel something for your own misgivings, unless it’s about school or your future.

It’s miserable here. Everything is miserable. But, if you give up, if you stop going, you’ll be trapped under the thumb of your parents forever, and you cannot live like that. No matter what, you cannot live like that.

“I see what you’re saying, [First],” Dr. Choi hummed, writing a few things down on her clipboard. “If you want me to be entirely honest with you, there’s not a single student on this campus that’s gone through anything as tough as you’re going through. Even if they’re being forced into an arranged marriage, even if they’re underestimated and outcasted by their parents. At the end of the day, unless they’re kicked out—which they won’t be—nobody here will ever know ‘struggle’ like you do.”

You want to feel vindicated by Dr. Choi’s words, but you simply can’t. You feel tired, overworked and underappreciated, and want nothing more than to return to your dorm room and go to bed.

“But, this ‘numbness’ you’re feeling…you say you’ve felt like this for a while?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m not one to deny things—it’s not my job to deny things—but I can safely say that’s likely not the case. Before last week, you had a good work-life balance…mostly…and you were happy. You never came to my office because you didn’t need to,” Dr. Choi said, causing you to look up at her from the coffee table between you. Her gaze was distressing, halfway implying she knew something you didn’t.

“What do you mean?”

“It feels similar, sure, because the only thing stressing you out then was school. Now, there’s two things, but only one is stressing you out…and you say you can’t feel anything else. It’s because you’re rejecting your soulmate.”

“Excuse me?”

“As far-fetched as it sounds, it’s true. Biologists like to say the concept of soulmates is nigh useless, and that the only thing denoting it is the little marking on your body, but…cognitive science says otherwise. Think of Jeno as half of your brain—the feeling part of your brain—and you’re the functioning part. He’s feeling too many emotions right now, and you’re feeling none, while he’s likely having trouble finding the motivation to do much of anything,” she explained. “It’s certainly not impossible to live without your soulmate, but rejecting them is a bit different. You’ll get over it one day, or you won’t, but for now it’ll be awful.”

You stayed silent, looking back down at the coffee table. You supposed it made sense, and she was right, you hadn’t worried about much other than your grades for the past two years. Your parents and family were always buzzing in the background, heightening your school stress by proxy, especially right now.

You didn’t like seeing Dr. Choi because it felt like she could never understand you, but perhaps she was making a solid point right now.

“So I just have to wait?”

“Yes. But, if you want my honest opinion, I don’t think anyone should attempt to reject their soulmate at 17,” she sighed, writing something else down on her clipboard. “You don’t know what love is, or what this is supposed to feel like. You feel like the world is ending because you’re not having the ‘love at first sight’ situation the TV tells you about. Try to form a relationship with him, even if it’s just a friendship, and don’t cut him out entirely. You’ll probably regret it later on.”

You doubted that, but you nodded like you were agreeing with her. She put her clipboard down on the table, allowing you to see your printed name and then tons of incomprehensible scribbles that only Dr. Choi could read. “Time’s up for today, unfortunately, as I have another student coming in. Don’t tell her I said she doesn’t know what struggle is, okay?”

You smiled hollowly, nodding. You stood up from the couch, picking up a hard candy from the bowl she kept on the table, considering that to be your reward for coming into the counselor’s office in the first place.

It was too bad you’d disregard all of her advice. At the end of the day, you were a teenager, and anything an adult said felt like an utter lie. You approached the office door, sliding it open and emerging into the hall. You wished the counselor’s office hadn’t been so far across campus, because now you had a far walk through the cold courtyard back to the dorm.

If they’d just put it in one of the class buildings rather than in the faculty building, your life would be much easier.

“Oh, [First]?”

You froze, turning your head to see the one-and-only Na Jaemin behind you. He sped up a bit, stopping as he reached your side. “Long time no see, genius. How are you?”

“Fine.”

You proceeded walking, as did he, keeping himself in step next to you. “Out of the counselor’s office? I heard once that they require you to go at least once a month for, y’know, academic stress. Rumor has it a scholarship student once offed himself because everything got too difficult.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the rumor. It’s not required but every teacher encourages it more than I’d like them to,” you explained, unwrapping the pink hard candy and popping it in your mouth. Behind you, you heard the telling squeak of the counselor’s office door, and, out of curiosity, you turned to see who was going in after you.

Lim Nayeong. The coincidence could’ve made you laugh.

“It’s required for the student council, though. I guess being the quasi-leaders of the school is a bit harder than being the public reputation,” you joked, feeling the slightest bit relieved hearing Jaemin laugh in response.

“I guess so,” he replied, stopping you both at the elevator rather than the stairs. You sighed, suppressing the urge to say the stairs were always faster as he’d already pressed the shiny ‘down’ button. You could’ve walked off without him, but you weren’t an asshole, and if he wanted to walk with you, he could. The doors opened quickly, letting off a monotonous ‘ding’ as a result. Jaemin held his arm out, waiting for you to step inside before he did.

He was very gentlemanly, and you briefly considered that he was showing you his TV persona as an apology for not getting to receive Jeno’s father’s. Or, maybe, he was extending an apology from his own father, who somehow heard about how terribly you were treated.

“Look, Jeno didn’t mean it. He’s stressed about the thought of being tied down the moment he graduates, and he’s looking for every single way out. He thought you were a fool-proof plan, but he underestimated how far his father could go, and…well…”

It was more reasonable for Jaemin to be apologizing for Jeno. You weren’t very surprised that this was his main reason for talking to you, but you’d wished it would’ve been something more fulfilling than a secondary apology from Jeno.

“I don’t care. He can do what he wants, I’m not going to tell him how he can and can’t feel.”

“Okay, I’m gonna cut straight to the point,” Jaemin said, turning so that his whole body could face you. You gave him a judgmental look, wholly uninterested in whatever he was going to say to you. “Don’t reject Jeno now, all right? Wait until summer or something. For you, you just feel a little off, or, rather, you feel nothing at all, but this is practically overhauling everything in Jeno’s life. He nearly unfriended Donghyuck earlier because of a simple quip, and he can barely do anything without getting upset over it.”

“Do you think I can just…stop? I don’t feel any connection to him,” you said, hoping the elevator would hurry up. You cursed it for being so slow and old. “I don’t know what to tell you. I…I just don’t know.”

The lights on the elevator went off, and it jerked to a stop. You looked up, eyebrows furrowing. “You’re kidding me. Holy shit. You’re kidding me.”

You pressed your back to the wall of the elevator, sliding down to the floor. Jaemin didn’t say anything, but he pulled his phone out pretty quickly, typing frantically. You slid yours out as well, shocked to see a couple of texts from Suhyeon.

“hey where are you rn? we were just called down into the lounge,” read the first text. “god are you at the counselor’s office still? they’re not telling us what’s going on.”

You typed a quick response, saying you were still in the faculty building but the power went out as you were in the elevator. You hoped she didn’t question your elevator usage, putting your phone back into your pocket and ignoring the buzzing that ensued.

Jaemin was typing furiously from what you could see, the light from his phone being the only thing illuminating the elevator. He furrowed his brows, turning to look down at you. “Have you heard anything about what’s happening from anyone? None of my friends know, but they’ve all been gathered together for a while.”

“All I heard was that nobody was saying what’s happening.”

The moment you stopped talking, the lights flicked on, and the elevator began moving. You stood up, furrowing your brows as the floor counter turned from a “2” to a “1.”

When the doors opened, you were hit with a wave of heat and pure, black smoke. You began choking on the air, but Jaemin was fast acting and began to jam the “close door” button, along with the third floor button—where you’d just come from. The doors didn’t close fast enough, and the smoke began to spread into the elevator, making your eyes water and your lungs hurt. By the time the doors finally closed, there was enough smoke to keep you coughing, even if your shirt was haphazardly thrown over your mouth and nose.

The elevator began moving up, and a wave of panic blew through you. It broke through whatever invisible filter that had been causing you to feel numb for the past week or so, and a self-composed prayer fell past your lips, between coughs, over and over again: “please, go up, please, go up.”

The elevator seemed to move at a snail’s pace, but, as long as it was moving, you didn't care. Given how you’d just been up on the third floor, there was absolutely no way the fire had spread that far—the only issue was that there wasn’t exactly a staircase leading from the third floor down to the ground of the snowy outdoors.

“Someone’s setting the school on fire,” Jaemin said between coughs. “Some guy. Most everybody’s evacuated, but they apparently forgot us.”

“Maybe because they couldn’t get inside?” you shot back, feeling a wave of relief—not nearly strong enough to overpower the panic—when the “4” appeared on the screen. “Why the fuck didn’t the fire alarm go off?”

“Because this building is ancient and they’ve never thought to replace it,” Jaemin half-hissed. The doors opened to reveal a smokeless third floor, but, upon walking out, you learned the heat had reached the floor along with the scent of smoke.

“The counselor’s door is still closed,” you pointed out, not wasting a moment to begin walking that way. “They’re either still in there, or they found a way out.”

You refused to consider that they’d left and closed the door behind them, not wanting to believe you were stuck in a burning building with no way out. Suddenly, Jaemin slipped in a way that he slid, falling straight onto his back. You looked down at the floor, realizing it had been completely doused in what you could only assume was oil.

“No time to wait!” you exclaimed, bending down and grabbing Jaemin’s arm. You practically yanked him up from the floor, dragging him along with you while he stumbled trying to keep his footing. You made it to the counselor room’s door, throwing it open and rejoicing to the heavens that there was an open window.

You rushed towards it, letting go of Jaemin, who went back and slammed the door shut. You looked out of it, noticing Dr. Choi on the roof below it, helping Lim Nayeong get down to the ground. “Doctor!” you screeched, grabbing her attention. She looked up the moment Nayeong had made it to the ground, standing and turning towards you.

“Come on!” she yelled, waving her hands at you. Jaemin came up behind you, beginning to help you shove yourself through the small window in front of you. You mentally thanked him for lifting you up, allowing for you to go feet first rather than head first. You let yourself fall down to the rooftop, cringing at the pain in your ankle as you landed. You

Dr. Choi rushed towards you, looking up at Jaemin, who began to extract himself from the building as well.

“What’s going on?” you asked, coughing out more of the smoke you inhaled earlier.

“Someone’s trying to burn down the school and they started with the faculty building first,” she said, a little too calm for the situation at hand. Jaemin landed in front of her, also wincing at the pressure it put on his legs. “We need to keep going. Come on.”

Nayeong was waiting at the bottom, standing next to a teacher you’d never seen before. The ground seemed far, too far for you to be happy about it, but you were assuming the way Nayeong made it down was thanks to the bushes that would’ve cushioned her fall.

“You’re just coming down from the second story!” Nayeong yelled, reaching up at you. Dr. Choi gave you a slight push on the shoulder, to which you looked back at her like she was crazy. Jaemin didn’t wait, lowering himself to the roof. You watched as he, facing towards you, slid himself off, hanging onto the edge for a second. Nayeong rushed over, reaching up to help him safely get down to the ground.

“Kill me,” you mumbled, walking over to the edge. Slowly, you repeated Jaemin’s steps, feeling like you could barely move.

“You can do it, [First]!” Nayeong yelled, and you hoped she was holding her hands up like she had been before. You pushed yourself off, feeling the edge of the roof dig into your fingers as you began to hang off the edge. As fast as you’d begun hanging, though, two hands were on your calves, beckoning for you to let go.

So, you did. You hit the ground with a quiet crunch thanks to the snow, but an unexpected shooting pain traveled up your ankle and calf, causing you to nearly fall over into the snow. Jaemin caught you, but Nayeong looked at you, furrowing her brows.

“Are you okay?”

“I think my ankle is sprained,” you mumbled hoarsely, steadying yourself and pushing yourself away from Jaemin. You took your phone out of your pocket, staring at a wave of texts you’d received from Suhyeon, begging you to tell her you were okay and that you’d made it out. You shakily typed a short “I’m fine” before shoving your phone back into your coat.

Dr. Choi made it down from the roof, and both her and the teacher began walking in the direction of the parking lot. “Come on!” Dr. Choi yelled, leading you all away from the building that was still going up in flames. Your legs shook as the panic began to subside, and a mere glance back held an aura of complete death. The first two floors of the faculty building were covered in flames, likely not an ounce left of what once was in there.

The three students—you, Nayeong, and Jaemin—were led into Dr. Choi’s car, while the other teacher went and found his own. Jaemin sat in the front while you awkwardly sat next to Nayeong, trying to process what you had just gone through.

“I cannot believe,” Dr. Choi began, starting her car and wasting no time in flooring it out of the parking lot. As you drove out onto the street next to the school, you caught sight of a fire truck in the distance, speeding towards the school. “They didn’t even try to tell us. I thought you were gone for good, [First]. Oh my god.”

Nayeong didn’t say anything, keeping her hands in her lap and her eyes out the window. You wondered what would happen to your belongings, but you weren’t nervous about it reaching the second year building when it was on the farthest edge of campus.

Dr. Choi asked Jaemin to dial a number on her phone, to which he politely obliged. You took your phone out again, which yielded several texts from Suhyeon once again and a single text from someone else.

The moment the recipient of Dr. Choi’s call picked up, she began to scream at them, but you were easily able to drown out the yelling with your focus on the text on your phone.

“Are you okay?”

You wondered, briefly, where Jeno got your number.

“I’m fine.”

vii. zeus enslaved atlas

It took a total of two hours to arrive at the hotel in which the school evacuated all the students too, and you wondered why they had to pick a fancy hotel rather than one of the respectable ones that were actually near campus. You were met with a personal greeting from the principal, who was trying to save his ass after essentially leaving the four of you (and more, most likely) for dead.

Dr. Choi didn’t waste a second to begin screaming at him some more, but you blew past her with Nayeong, who still hadn’t spoken to you but was sticking to your side practically. There was a sort of trauma-bonding between you two now, apparently, which was a bit ironic given both of your situations.

You’d been placed in a hotel room with Suhyeon, as according to your current rooming arrangements, and were told to wait in your rooms until there was more information to be distributed amongst the students. Nayeong parted from you when this happened, taking her key and disappearing off into a corridor. You chose to take the other one, walking past several students who had disregarded the plea to stay in the rooms and were now gossiping in the halls.

“I heard they might have to close the school down for a year,” somebody whispered, causing you to pause and nearly stop walking. Instead of stopping in the middle of the hall, you slipped your phone from your pocket, leaning against a wall and scrolling through random apps.

“Seriously? I guess that won’t be an issue, most of us can just transfer to another private school, but what about international and scholarship students?”

“I’m sure international students will be fine, but rumor has it the school might drop scholarship students—partial and entire. They’re scrambling to make sure their library is still intact, and, if it isn’t, they’ll need hundreds of thousands of won to restore it. They’ll never keep some upper middle class loser if it means they can keep their pride and joy safe and sound.”

There was a certain ache in your heart at that, but you were tired, and you felt like collapsing. It was funny how, just a couple weeks ago, you were panicking over your finals and doing anything to hang onto your 65-million scholarship, but, now, you didn’t feel anything. At least if you got dropped, it wouldn’t be a quasi-expulsion. You’d still have kept your pride, and your parents could complain to the school about how they had to actually pay for you, now.

You continued through the corridor, skipping the elevator for the stairs. You’d halfway forgotten what floor you were on—you’d either been told room 314 or room 414—but you weren’t too opposed to simply checking both. Holding your key up to the scanner would be enough to know, and it was unlikely the occupants of the other room would even know you tried.

Upon your ascent up the stairs, you were forced to remember the slight pain in your ankle, which had subsided greatly over the past few hours, and part of you wished you had used the elevator. The other part of you said you’d never take an elevator again, even if a gun was to your head. Each step was a testament to what you’d experienced over the past couple of years, culminating in these fleeting moments in which you had nothing left.

In a week, you supposed your dorm would be cleaned out, and you’d be hugging Suhyeon goodbye for the last time. Maybe a reporter would approach you, ask why the closing seemed so sudden, and you would tell them you almost burnt to death because they were too lazy to fix their smoke alarms. You’d tell them that the conditions to meet your scholarship were ridiculous, not because their students were too smart, but because their student’s parents had a million personal tutors at their beck and call.

You emerged onto the third floor, hit in the face with a strong scent of detergent and cleaning supplies, and began trudging through the halls. Given the couple of familiar faces—classmates you’d never spoken to before—standing next to a decorative table, you hoped the 300s were the second year floor and you didn’t have to walk up another flight.

The space between rooms was insane, and you couldn’t imagine what might be inside. A kitchen, a couch, and an entire fireplace, anything that a rich person required in their hotel room. They were much bigger than the dorms that people paid millions to live in, and this was all paid for by the school. For a brief moment, you considered your fancy, rich-person academy to be a scam—it was, you always knew it was—and wondered why they couldn’t build dorms like this. As you walked through the corridor, you realized how you barely had made it past five rooms, and wished they had picked a normal hotel for you to temporarily live in as they figured out how to break the news of your removal from the school.

You turned a corner, admiring a pretty bouquet in a terrible intricate vase that brought a smile to your face. You stopped, reaching your hands out to feel whether or not they were real and letting out a gasp of surprise when they actually were. The flowers were vibrant, yellows and purples and pinks all tied together with a wisp of baby’s breath, and perfectly taken care of; they couldn’t have been cut more than a day ago. The hotel must’ve had some sort of private gardens, as there was no way these were bought from a random flower shop down the street.

“[First]?”

The flowers lost their color, all at once. You stood up straight, looking towards Lee Jeno, who’d just so happened to find you right now.

“Jeno.”

He stared at you for a moment, his hair messy and his roots just beginning to show. He was dressed in lounge clothes, a t-shirt and black, baggy pants that looked about three sizes too big. If he didn’t say anything soon, you’d continue your trek to room 314, brushing past him and leaving him to stare at the blank wall behind you.

“Can we talk?”

“Okay.”

You turned towards him completely, crossing your arms over your chest. He cleared his throat, looking down at the floor for a moment. “Like, not in the hallway. My room…is just down the hall.”

“All right then.”

He stared at you for a moment more, halfway shocked you agreed. Maybe it was a side effect of the events of today—for a brief moment, you realized you didn’t know what time it was—from your counseling to the hours-long car ride you endured after what was likely the most traumatic moment of your life. You wanted to disappear, fall into a rabbit hole and wake up in Wonderland, where nobody would know who you were.

When he began to walk down the hall, turning his back to you, you followed, bidding your pretty bouquet goodbye. You walked deeper into the corridor, stopping at a room labeled “309.” It was at the edge of the corridor, with another hall connecting to it. You assumed 314 was down there, so it would at least be a short trip to your assumed hotel room.

Jeno tapped his keycard on the lock, a loud click accompanied by a green light resounding through your ears. He pushed the door open, heading inside and holding it open for you. As you walked in, you noticed an unfamiliar presence on the couch—Lee Donghyuck, the only golden boy you’d met before. During your first year, you’d done a group project together, you’d let him off for not doing any of his work, and you ended up vouching for him in front of the teacher; as a result, he’d gifted you a couple of candy bars and a swift thank you. “I’ll return the favor at some point,” he’d said, walking off without another word.

“Out,” Jeno said, keeping eye contact with Donghyuck. He stared up at his friend, eyebrow raised, before glancing at you.

“‘Sup, fire girl,” he said, standing from the couch. Donghyuck turned his attention to Jeno, giving him a stern, very-unlike-him glare. “You promised me.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

“Do you?”

With that, Donghyuck brushed past Jeno and you, emerging out into the corridor. The door slammed behind him, causing you to flinch somewhat. Jeno took a seat on the couch, right where Donghyuck was sitting, and motioned to the seat next to him. You obliged, sitting as far away from him as you possibly could and staring at him until he spoke.

“Are you doing okay?”

“No.”

“I’m…sorry you got left behind. I won’t lie, Suhyeon started crying so hard she needed to take her own car, and that worried me. A lot. I thought about things.”

“And?”

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, looking down at his hands. “I wasn’t nice. I overreacted and was overly jealous. It’s my fault, so I apologize.”

“I understand,” you nodded. “If it’s any consolation, I’m jealous of you too.”

You leaned back into the couch, sighing. “Your family is so…picture perfect,” you began, trying to find the words to articulate your thoughts. “Sure, you have altercations, peculiar ones at that, but I could tell you were close. From the way you hugged Yeojin, to the way your mother looked at you…you’re living a dream I could only hope to have one day.”

He stayed silent, letting you talk. You figured you deserved as much, given how your day has been. “My parents are awful. I was the kid they didn’t want, and all my siblings are a lot older than me. As your dad said, one of them ended up in jail. I depend on this school to keep me away from them, so I can have a better life now rather than when I move out. Even then, I know they’ll harass me forever if I end up with a nice job with good money. You’ll never experience that.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, but you shook your head, rejecting it.

“No reason to be. I can’t change who my family is, but I can change the direction my life goes. That’s all that matters.”

You felt Jeno’s eyes on you, and, when you looked over, you found him looking at you. He was pretty, as he’d always been, even when he was dressed for bed. His hair fell into his eyes, and you mentally visualized him with black hair—he looked nice no matter what.

“You’re a very beautiful person, [First].” The comment brought heat to your cheeks and caused your heart to skip a beat, and you contemplated whether or not this was what Dr. Choi meant by not rejecting him. “If…if there’s any way, I’d like to make this work. I’d like to make us work.”

You sighed, biting the inside of your cheek. “I suppose that would be nice. I was unreasonable before, mostly because I don’t want people lessening my achievements because of who my soulmate is. Sorry.”

“I get it. My mom always told me that would happen if my soulmate ended up to be somebody ‘fiery,’ but I guess you aren’t really that,” he hummed. “You’re nice. Warm. I see why people speak so kindly about you.”

“Well…thanks. I guess.”

You looked forward, and a thought crossed your mind. Your heart dropped slightly as you deliberated whether or not it would be smart to tell him what you heard in the halls. Realizing that you’d likely be very far away from him if it ended up to be true, you knew that you absolutely had to if you wanted to create a relationship with your soulmate.

“Rumor has it the school’s gonna be canceling scholarships to bring more money in for repairs and reconstruction.”

“What? They wouldn’t cancel yours, right? I mean, you’re the only full-scholarship on campus—they can’t just kick you, can they?” he asked, scooting a bit closer to you unconsciously.

“Rumor says they’re going to cancel everybody’s scholarships,” you whispered, suddenly realizing the weight of that statement. “I’ll probably try to move in with my aunt in Seoul, go to fancy-yet-free prep school…if they do cancel it. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around.”

Jeno went quiet, and you desperately held back the tears that were now pooling in your eyes. “I worked so hard for this, and it’ll all go to waste. Every bit of it.”

You hated how choked up you got at the thought of it, how pathetic you felt. But, Jeno didn’t seem to mind, as he hesitantly pulled you into a hug. For a moment, you both stayed there, basking in the fulfillment that came with being with your soulmate. You wondered if this is how your parents were before they grew into the monsters they were today—a couple of teenagers in love, happy with just being with one another.

“It’s okay,” he said, rubbing your back softly. “We’ll get through it together. I’ll spend any amount of money to see you frequently, I’ll get out of class, whatever we need to build. I’d pay for your tuition, but…I don’t think you’d like that.”

“Not really, no,” you mumbled, shoving your head into the crook of his neck. “I just want to feel stable, for once in my life.”

“And you will, one day. I promise you will.”

You pulled away from him, staring at him for a moment. With a heavy sigh, you stood up, with him following close behind you. “I need to go see Suhyeon,” you said. The moment you said that, there was a sudden change in the air of the room—Jeno looked nervous, almost, as if you’d caught him in the act of something. “Go do that. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you.”

You walked towards the door, giving Jeno one last look before emerging into the hall. You made sure to stop the door from slamming behind you, cushioning it with your hands. As you did, though, Lee Donghyuck appeared back in the hall, stopping when he saw you. The door clicked closed, and you both stared at each other, waiting for someone to speak.

He was wearing his uniform, but it was half taken apart, with a couple of his buttons unbuttoned and his tie loosened around his neck. His shirt was untucked and his blazer was nowhere to be found, and you assumed he’d done it pretty recently, given the lack of wrinkling. He held a bag of M&Ms that he likely got from a vending machine somewhere in the hotel.

“Did he tell you?”

“You mean apologize? Yeah.”

Donghyuck sighed, popping a couple M&Ms in his mouth. “Okay, don’t get mad at me for being the bearer of bad news. Jaemin was convinced Jeno shouldn’t tell you, but this might be the one time Jaemin is in the wrong. I know you’ve had the worst day of all worst days, but you cannot go any farther without knowing this. ‘Kay?”

You furrowed your brows, a sudden feeling of anxiety overtaking you. “What? What are you talking about?”

Even Donghyuck looked nervous, from how he fiddled with the hem of his shirt with his open hand to the way he shifted his weight between his feet.

“Until about six months ago, Suhyeon and Jeno were a thing.”

All the air was sucked out of your lungs at once, and your brain shut down immediately.

“She found out you two were soulmates about a year ago, but didn’t back down until Jeno’s dad shut it down because of his new deal with Nayeong’s family.”

You didn’t say anything. You just stared at him, wide-eyed and shocked. “They still talked until a month-and-a-half ago, when Jeno decided to shut it down himself. Chenle knocked some sense into him, and Suhyeon was essentially taken out of our circle. She did everything in her power to not let you know about her friendship with us, and avoided the shit out of us whenever you were around. When pale in the face and all that shit.”

You stayed quiet. A feeling of betrayal began to bubble in your stomach.

“Don’t…blame her or anything, though. Even if she was being an asshole, even if what she did was the worst possible thing she could’ve done, she and Jeno had been fostering it for nearly three years. Love—if you could even call it that—makes people stupid. She wasn’t thinking, and neither was Jeno, until Chenle snapped at him.”

Were you a rebound, or a way for him to stay close to Suhyeon without his dad knowing? Were you his way of getting over what you had stolen from him? How could Suhyeon do this to you, after forcing her fixation with soulmates on you for so long?

You turned away from the corner that you assume led to yours and Suhyeon’s room, walking past Donghyuck with a newfound speed. You wracked your mind for her room number, assuming that she must’ve been in 414 given the likely year-separation of the floors.

You heard Donghyuck’s voice echo through the halls, a quiet “what the fuck is wrong with you, man?” and the loud slamming of his hotel door. You followed it up by yanking the door to the stairs open, letting it fly shut behind you as you began a rapid ascent. You ignored the pain in your ankle, the way your legs wanted to shut down, and practically burst onto the fourth floor.

You followed the same path you had before, and, sure enough, the corridors followed the same pattern. You took turn after turn, saw identical-bouquet after identical-bouquet, before stopping in front of room 414.

Three swift knocks, and a step back.

The door opened.

“[First]?” Nayeong said, furrowing her brows. Traces of crying were left on her face, from mascara-lined tear stains to red cheeks and puffy eyes. Seeing her ignited something in you, an intense sort of emotion that you hadn’t felt in so, so long.

And, as you burst out into tears, Nayeong dragged you into a hug and began sobbing with you.

viii. to hold up the earth on his shoulders for all eternity.

The dress you were wearing was absolutely, irrevocably uncomfortable.

Several hidden wires dug into your torso, a product of the bodice of the thing, and you swore you were bleeding in an area where the fabric rubbed against you wrong. Nevertheless, you wore it proudly, hair done up and makeup perfectly complimenting your features. After all, it wasn’t every day you got to attend the wedding of your soulmate—to someone other than you, that is.

Lee Donghyuck sat next to you, dressed in a matching suit to your dress and his leg crossed over the other. A toothpick hung out of his mouth, and he anxiously chewed on it, tapping his fingers against his knee as he waited. You’d both come in support of the couple and to try and masquerade as a couple to Jeno’s father, who was apparently very displeased when he saw your name on the invite list.

“Nayeong told me she’s considering eloping with her girlfriend,” you hummed, once again adjusting your sitting position so that your dress stopped trying to kill you. “Disappearing into a small, European country. Changing her name and getting married. Apparently, her girlfriend has the tickets bought and everything.”

“And why doesn’t she?”

“She doesn’t want to force the marriage-of-convenience role onto her sister,” you sighed, shaking your head. “What a superhero she is.”

“You know, if you’d had another year at the academy, you probably would be the bride here,” Donghyuck suggested, turning towards you. You received a glare from the woman sitting a couple seats to your left, who then whispered something to her husband.

“Not so loud. We’re gonna get kicked out.”

“I’m not lying, though. Since Jaemin nearly beat me up, I’ve never been yelled at more in my life—I had to help Jeno with his comeback plan. We got it done and then we went to Suhyeon’s room and you weren’t there and she looked at Jeno like he was satan’s incarnate.”

“Suhyeon and I weren’t going to last as friends anyway. Too different. We clung to each other too much, too. Recipe for disaster.”

“Right? Anyway, if the school hadn’t been so quick to decide to cut you off, you’d be the bride. Hundred percent.”

“Where is Jaemin, anyway?” you asked, cutting the conversation topic short. According to Nayeong’s perfectly curated seating chart, he was meant to be sitting next to you right now, blabbing away about how Donghyuck ruined Jeno’s one chance at happiness by telling you about Suhyeon rather than letting Jeno do it.

“Jaemin is right here,” he said, taking the seat next to you. You and Donghyuck looked over at him, instantly picking up on the panickedness he seemed to be exuding. “And nobody can find the bride and groom. Jeno’s dad is on a warpath right now, along with Nayeong’s mother.”

“Ooh, Europe worked out,” you joked, holding up your fist. Donghyuck bumped yours against his, chuckling as well.

“Made me call him a million times, and he didn’t pick up. I suggested getting you to call Nayeong, but they looked so appalled at the suggestion that I could’ve told them I was in love with Jeno and we got married in Vegas last night.”

“That was descriptive. Did you?”

Jaemin scoffed, not getting a straight answer. Instead, he tucked his phone in his blazer pocket, focusing on you. “Nayeong’s probably on the plane by now, but we don’t know where Jeno is.”

“Okay. And?”

“He’s suggesting you should go find him, dumbshit,” Donghyuck clarified, flicking your shoulder. You put your hand on it, pretending like he’d just stabbed you in the arm, but Jaemin quickly slapped your shoulder to avoid you causing a bit of a scene.

“I don’t even know his number. Deleted it from my phone about twenty minutes after Donghyuck broke the Jesu news to me.”

Donghyuck snorted, leaning back into his chair. In passing, he said, “No way you gave them a ship name,” but Jaemin ignored his comment pretty readily.

“Good news! I have it memorized. Give me your phone.”

Jaemin didn’t wait for you to hand it to him, simply snatching it up off your lap and unlocking it (you weren’t sure where he got the password, but you wouldn’t question it). He began typing what you assumed to be his phone number without even thinking about it.

“You sure you didn’t get married in Vegas?”

“Positive,” Jaemin said, handing the phone back to you. He scooped up your purse from the ground, shoving it into your arms and proceeding to point towards a set of doors off to the side of the banquet hall. “Go out there and down the hall. Door at the end goes to the back parking lot, where Jeno parked earlier. He’s either out there or waiting for someone worth it to call him, and someone worth it would be you.”

“And what am I gonna say?”

“I don’t know,” Jaemin said, acting like you’d asked him the most insane question in the world. “Figure it out yourself. Update me. Hyuck and I will hold down the fort until we hear from you.”

You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to focus on you for a moment. A part of you wished you’d faded into oblivion after high school; being who you were, your merit reached about every end of the world. You lived in an academic spotlight, gaining the attention of universities both near and far. Jeno never came to visit you at your aunt’s house like he had shallowly promised, right before he missed his one chance to tell you the truth.

You stood up, and began your power walk to the door. Now that his fiancé was on her way to a small, European country and likely had all the assets she needed to become untraceable, Jeno would have to deal with the wrath of his father, who would feed him the same “I’m not mad, just disappointed” spiel.

You pushed the door open, hanging your bag off your shoulder and wishing your dress wasn’t so uncomfortable. Sure enough, a text came in from Nayeong—a selfie of her and her girlfriend, whom you had never met, in a plane. She was still fully prepared for marriage, only missing the wedding dress; her hair was perfectly done, the tiara was still there, and her makeup was untouched. Her girlfriend looked much more relaxed, makeupless and hair spread about.

They looked happy. So, as a result, you were happy, and could only hope she would tell you which small, European country she was living in so you could visit. Another text came in, this one from your mother, but you ignored it and continued out into the parking lot.

There was only one car that was running, and it was parked in a corner. It was black and the windows were tinted to high heaven, and you could only assume that would be where the missing groom was. You marched through the parking lot, repeating a mantra of self-support in your mind. This was one of those situations where you should’ve been anxious, but you couldn’t feel a thing; you’d grown used to not feeling anything over the years, but, in situations like these, it always felt uncomfortable.

You stopped a little bit before the car, making sure you were out of sight. You stared for a moment, blinking a couple of times and trying to muster up any sort of anxiety, but you could only manage a small kick in the bottom of your stomach. With a sigh, you approached.

You opened the car door, which was shockingly unlocked, and got into the passenger’s seat. Jeno didn’t turn to look at you, just drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring forward. “Can you take me to my apartment? If the wedding isn’t happening, I don’t want to sit in this dress any longer.”

He didn’t waste a moment to put the car in reverse, backing out of the spot with ease. He put a hand on the back of your seat, turning his whole body to look out of the back window even though he had one of those backup cameras. You wondered if he was trying to impress you, but found it unlikely given how unhappy he seemed.

When he managed to back out completely and was forced to turn his focus to the road, you took the chance to give him a once-over. You hadn’t seen Jeno since a banquet two years ago, where you’d been invited after one of your professors insisted you had to share your paper. You’d mingled with people in much higher places than you, smiling and discussing things you didn't care about, barely speaking about your academic ventures. Jeno had been there, too, hanging off Nayeong’s arm like he’d once done to you. They spent the whole night gossiping, sitting together and whispering about things you couldn’t imagine. Back then, when he was 20 years old, his hair had still been blonde and he had still carried that gold boy demeanor he loved so much. Now, his hair was pitch black, and he gave off the energy of someone who was completely and utterly in control of his life.

Judging by the way he blatantly ignored the people who’d begun running after his car, you assumed the energy mirrored the truth. He turned out onto the street, speeding away from the banquet hall that had a million cars around it. “Lots of presents oughta be returned tonight, huh,” you mused, adjusting your sit once again. “I bet it’s annoying and relieving all at once.”

“My dad’s gonna blame this all on me,” he sighed, continuing to drum his fingers on the steering wheel. “Where do you live?”

“Trimage Towers. Anyway, he can’t blame it all on you if Nayeong’s a lesbian. I mean, it’s not like you had any jurisdiction over that.”

Jeno hesitated for a moment, slowing down for a red light. Thanks to the location of the fancy banquet hall, the towers were already in sight, and you could practically feel the relief of taking this awful dress off.

“You really can’t feel anything, huh.”

“I can feel things, just not a lot. I’d be able to feel things if you would’ve gotten over me,” you hummed, looking out the passenger window. “I’m serious, Jeno. Find a new girl. Pick her over me. We will both be happier that way.”

“So you’re rejecting me over a relationship that started when I was in middle school?” he asked, and, at that moment, you understood it was a bit ridiculous. You were sure you’d see it in a more intuitive way had you retained your emotions, but such was the price of rejecting one’s other half.

“I don’t know. I haven’t felt anything since then. I’m content with it now, so I don’t really feel like I can love anyone. Make a decision based on love. Who knows,” you replied, feeling your phone buzz. You picked it up—another text from your mom. This time, though, she called you a couple of names for ignoring her texts and not sending her any money.

Jeno suddenly took a sharp turn, pulling into an empty parking lot next to an office building, which you assumed to be empty because it was Saturday. He pulled around to the back, parking in a spot next to a few trees. It was well hidden, likely a tactic for avoiding anyone chasing him.

“What can I do to fix it?” he asked, a hint of desperation in his voice. “I’m serious. I’ll do anything. Anything at all.”

The slightest bit of sympathy graced your heart, but not enough to change anything. You sighed, looking up at the ceiling of the car. “Not sure.”

“What, should I confess my love to you?” he asked, which caught your attention. You looked over, biting the edge of your lip. “I barely know you, [First], yet I am deeply in love with you. Every time I hear something about you from Nayeong, or from Donghyuck, or from Jaemin, I feel the most intense regret that I decided to ignore Donghyuck’s advice and trust Jaemin more. All I could tell you about yourself are things everyone else knows and whatever my friends have told me, yet I’d still pick you over anybody else.”

Your heart sped up, but you still felt numb to the world. Maybe Dr. Choi had been right—maybe it wasn’t worth it to lose all feeling when you were 17. Maybe, if things had gone better, you would have been the bride today.

“Okay.”

“Is there any way? Any way at all that we could try? I know I’ve asked before, and I was disingenuous then, but I’m not a kid anymore. Neither are you. Things could be different.”

“Could they?” you finally bit into the conversation, letting out a disbelieving laugh. “I just—I can’t comprehend it. I’m a work machine. I walk into the office and stay for hours, reviewing my coworker’s pieces and writing my own based on what I’m given. I’m told that one day, I’ll be one of the greats of journalism thanks to my ability to work until I give out. Will that go away if I let this happen? Will I lose opportunity if I let myself love? I’m not really sure.”

“What makes you think that?” Jeno shot back. “What makes you think a little emotion would destroy your career?”

“Most, if not all of my superiors are soulmate-less or have purposefully gone out of their way to reject their soulmates. It’s standard.”

“You can break the standard, then.”

A bit of anger began to bubble in your stomach. “Could I? I already have it worse by having absolutely no nepotism to back me up, and I’ve got a world of expectation on me based on how I graduated at the top of everything, in every year of schooling I’ve ever had. I have a bad family to keep under wraps, and I have to pay them off to keep them quiet. I can’t afford to be pushing any stereotypes when I’ve got a million other things to work through.”

“I can be your credible, important connection, then. How easy is that?”

“I’d rather die than be a nepotism baby.”

“Then what are you looking for?” “Nothing, Jeno! I’m looking for nothing!” you finally exclaimed, the anger bubbling over the top. “I’m looking to leave this behind us and separate ourselves from each other! I’d rather die than keep living a life that orbits around you! I just—I just want to be myself.”

“Then I’ll orbit around you. I’ll stay out of it and I’ll treat your every beck and call—”

“Shut up, Jeno.”

“I’ll be the one who’s connected to you. I won’t be Lee Jeno, son of that one guy who got to live easy because of his grandfather’s work—”

“Jeno, please.”

“And I’ll dedicate my everything to you, master journalist, the most goddamn successful person in the world, all thanks to herself—”

You’re unsure what came over you at that moment. In your fit of anger, wanting Jeno to just shut up, you grabbed the sides of his face, and you kissed him. There was a moment where you couldn’t believe yourself, where you truly thought you’d open your eyes and be back in the banquet hall, discussing where Jaemin was with Donghyuck. In that moment, Jeno would walk out, make his way to the altar, and Nayeong would follow.

They would look miserable. You would know they were miserable. You would know you could’ve prevented their misery. You’d feel nothing. You’d go home, Donghyuck driving you, and you’d go to bed, ready to go into work the next day.

One opening of your eyes revealed to you that you were, in fact, kissing Lee Jeno. He didn’t seem to mind the suddenness of it—obviously—reaching over the center console to lace his fingers into your perfectly wavy hair. He smiled into the kiss, as if he was the most satisfied man in the world, as if he was the only man in the world.

You closed them again, and felt fireworks burst within you. Although they hadn’t returned like you thought they would, you felt a mixture of very mellow emotions pooling in your stomach, and you realized maybe Jeno, Jaemin, and Donghyuck had a plot.

You pulled away from him, dropping your hands from his face. He did not try to separate himself from you, though, waiting for you to recite the words he’d be wanting you to recite. “An academic article by psychologist Kim Sowol. The best way to incite emotion in someone who’s rejected their soulmate is to anger them.”

He dropped his hands now, too, laying them on top of yours. “Nayeong sent it to me.”

You stayed quiet, narrowing your eyes at him. “I hate you. Never speak to me again.”

Jeno put his hands back on the wheel, reversing the car once more and taking you back out onto the road. “Yeah, okay. Next stop, your apartment. Text Jaemin that it worked for me, would you?”

You scoffed. “No. Shut up.”

“Your wish is my command, my dear.”

thank you for reading!

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