Chapter Text
Gahye is born unlucky.
Stuck in Ssangmundong with nothing to her or her mother’s name.
No other adjective fits her well enough, no other word encapsulates the weight of a life spent dodging misfortune like a stray cat avoiding the cold. She learns early that survival is a game of endurance, and luck is a currency she’s never had the privilege to trade in.
Her mother works herself into exhaustion, fingers raw from scrubbing other people’s floors, lungs heavy with sighs she never lets out. Gahye spends her childhood drifting between cracked sidewalks and cheap convenience store meals, her stomach never quite full, her mind never quite at ease. School is an obligation rather than a sanctuary, a place where she exists rather than belongs.
And then there’s Sangwoo.
She meets him on a humid summer evening, the kind where the air clings to skin like a second layer. The fluorescent lights outside a corner store flicker, buzzing like dying fireflies. She’s counting coins in her palm, trying to figure out if she can afford both a meal and a bus fare home, when a voice cuts through her focus.
“You’re short.”
She looks up, eyes narrowing. The boy in front of her is clean-cut, sharp-eyed, and carrying an air of quiet calculation. He’s holding a can of water, fingers tapping idly against the aluminum.
“So?” she bites back.
Sangwoo tilts his head, assessing her the way one might evaluate a flawed business proposition. Then, without a word, he tosses a crumpled bill onto the counter, enough to cover the difference.
“Consider it a loan,” he says, already turning away.
Gahye scowls, pride prickling like a fresh wound. But hunger wins over dignity, just this once. She takes the money, not bothering to thank him.
It’s not until much later that she realizes—this is how he operates.
Gahye doesn’t think about him again.
At least, she tells herself she doesn’t.
The boy is younger than her—barely noticeable at first, but it becomes obvious the second time they cross paths. This time, it’s outside a cram school in the late evening, her mother’s latest part-time job keeping her out later than usual. Gahye leans against a rusted railing, staring at the city lights that feel too far away to ever belong to her, when a familiar voice breaks the silence.
“You should be inside.”
She turns her head, and there he is. Sangwoo, uniform crisp despite the humidity, books tucked neatly under one arm. His face is unreadable, but there’s something about the way he stands, the way he looks at her like he’s already made some unspoken calculation.
She scoffs. “You should mind your own business.”
“I do,” he says simply. “But you’re in the way.”
It’s then that she notices—the railing she’s leaning on is right in front of the cram school’s entrance. Students trickle out, throwing curious glances at her, at him. Her presence lingers like an ink stain on the pristine picture Sangwoo has carefully curated for himself.
So that’s what this is.
She pushes off the railing, stepping closer, watching as his jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “Did I embarrass you, little genius?”
His expression doesn’t change, but she catches it—the smallest flicker in his eyes, a moment of irritation he doesn’t let fully surface. Gahye smirks, slow and knowing.
“You don’t belong here,” he says, voice measured.
“Neither do you,” she counters.
Sangwoo exhales through his nose, something dangerously close to a sigh. Then, instead of arguing, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a folded bill, and presses it into her palm before she can react.
“Another loan,” he says, turning away before she can throw it back at him.
Gahye glares at his retreating figure, fingers curling around the money.
It should bother her more, how easily he dismisses her. How he acts like she’s another problem to be solved, another equation to balance.
But instead, she just watches him go, a strange thought settling in the back of her mind.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe neither of them belong here.
Gahye doesn’t give the money back.
She tells herself it’s because she doesn’t have time to chase after some cram school brat, but the truth is, she doesn’t want to. Maybe it’s curiosity, maybe it’s something else, but she holds onto it, tucked between the pages of an old notebook like a bookmark she keeps meaning to throw away but never does.
The third time they meet, it isn’t a coincidence.
She finds him behind the school, where the alley dips into a quieter part of the neighborhood. He’s sitting on the concrete steps, flipping through a textbook with that same infuriatingly composed expression. Gahye doesn’t bother with pleasantries—she just drops the crumpled bill onto the page he’s reading.
“Paid in full.”
Sangwoo barely glances up. “Took you long enough.”
She clicks her tongue, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets. “I wasn’t in a hurry to see you again.”
“Sure.” He folds the bill neatly, tucking it away without argument. She expected him to push back, to insist on another debt, another game, but he just turns the page, uninterested.
That should be the end of it.
But Gahye lingers.
She doesn’t know why, only that the silence between them isn’t uncomfortable, and it’s been a long time since she’s had that with anyone. She leans against the stair railing, watching him work through some complicated equation she doesn’t bother trying to understand.
“You always study this much?” she asks eventually.
“Some of us don’t have a choice.”
She frowns. It’s the first thing he’s said that sounds real. A sharp reminder that he might be smarter than the rest of them, but he’s just as trapped.
She tilts her head, eyeing him. “You wanna get out of here that bad?”
Sangwoo finally looks at her, just for a second, and there’s something unreadable in his gaze before he looks away.
“Yes.”
Gahye exhales, tilting her head back to stare at the sky, where the city lights drown out the stars.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Me too.”
That’s where it starts.
Not with some dramatic gesture, not with some grand realization—just two kids who want more than what Ssangmundong has to offer.
They don’t talk much after that, but they don’t have to. Sometimes she finds him studying outside the store where she gets her cheap dinners, and she sits across from him, picking at her food while he works through formulas. Sometimes he sees her waiting for her mother’s shift to end and drops a can of water next to her without a word.
Slowly, without either of them really noticing, it becomes a habit.
Gahye doesn’t know when they start walking home together.
Maybe it happens the first time she sees him leaving cram school late, his uniform neat but his shoulders stiff with exhaustion. Or maybe it’s the night she’s sitting on the curb outside the convenience store, waiting for her mother’s shift to end, when he drops into the spot next to her without a word. Either way, at some point, it just becomes routine.
They live close enough that it makes sense—Ssangmundong isn’t big, but it’s easy to feel small here. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, where the weight of their families’ debts and struggles presses down on them like an unspoken curse.
At first, Gahye likes to talk way too much, but Sangwoo never says more than necessary. But after a while, he warms up to her.
One evening, as they turn onto the narrow street where their apartments sit, Gahye finally asks the question.
“Do your parents ever fight about money?”
Sangwoo doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t even glance at her, but she sees his fingers tighten around the strap of his bag.
“All the time,” he says.
She exhales, nodding. “Yeah. Same.”
He doesn’t ask why she brought it up, and she doesn’t offer an explanation. They just keep walking, the dim glow of streetlights casting long shadows against cracked pavement.
Their apartments are close—hers is on the third floor of an old building with peeling paint, his in a slightly newer complex just down the road. Sometimes, when she can’t sleep, she wonders if he’s awake too, staring at the ceiling like she is, counting problems they don’t have solutions for.
One night, as they reach the point where they usually part ways, Sangwoo hesitates.
“You should take a different route home,” he says.
Gahye raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“There were some guys hanging around the alley near your building.”
She scoffs. “And?”
His jaw tightens, eyes flickering with something sharp. Not quite concern, not quite indifference—something in between.
“Just don’t be stupid,” he mutters.
Gahye smirks, shoving her hands into her pockets. “What, are you worried about me?”
“No,” he says too quickly. Then, quieter, “It’s just annoying when people don’t think ahead.”
She doesn’t call him out on it.
Instead, the next night, she finds herself waiting for him outside the cram school again, falling into step beside him without a word.
Sangwoo doesn’t comment on it, but she catches the slight exhale, the way his shoulders relax just a little.
Years pass, but some things don’t change.
Gahye grows into herself like a wildfire—untamed, burning too brightly for the gray streets of Ssangmundong.
She isn’t the type to fade into the background. She talks too much, laughs too loud, and knows too many people. It doesn’t matter where they go—there’s always someone calling her name, waving her over, pulling her into some conversation, some plan, some moment. She has a way of belonging everywhere, even in places that never belonged to her.
And Sangwoo—Sangwoo watches.
He’s taller now, sharper around the edges, but the same. The distance between them never quite disappears, not because she pushes him away, but because he keeps himself at arm’s length. Always waiting.
But he follows her home every night.
Not because he has to, not anymore. But because Gahye lets him, and Sangwoo never says no to things she lets him have.
Sometimes, when she smiles at him—really smiles, bright and effortless like it costs her nothing—he forgets to breathe.
She doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t know.
How could she, when she treats him the same way she treats everyone else? Like she was always meant to be there, like he was always meant to be there too.
But he knows.
He knows because he notices things about her that other people don’t.
Like the way she tucks her dark brown hair behind her ear when she’s listening intently. The way she chews the inside of her cheek when she’s nervous. The way she lingers outside her building on nights when she doesn’t want to go home yet, stretching time like it’s something she can hold in her hands.
The way she never stops moving.
Gahye is a force—messy, unpredictable, too much for most people.
It starts as a joke.
Gahye gets a secondhand bicycle from a cousin who outgrew it, the paint chipped, the chain a little loose, but she loves it anyway. It gives her freedom—real freedom—the kind that makes her feel like she could outrun every bad thing waiting for her back home.
The first time she offers Sangwoo a ride, it’s because she catches him running late.
“C’mon, little genius,” she grins, kicking up the bike stand. “You’ll never get into college if you’re late to class.”
He glares at her, adjusting the strap of his bag. “I’m not late.”
“You will be in five minutes.” She pats the seat behind her. “Hop on.”
He exhales through his nose, like she’s the most insufferable person alive, but he doesn’t argue. Just mutters something under his breath about how reckless she is before swinging a leg over the bike.
The first few times, he sits stiffly, gripping the seat like the entire thing might collapse under them. Gahye laughs at him every time, zigzagging playfully just to hear him curse at her.
But eventually, he gets used to it.
At some point, without either of them noticing when it starts, he stops holding onto the seat and starts holding onto her instead.
He keeps his hands light at first, barely touching, fingers grazing her waist as if he’s afraid she might notice. But Gahye is too busy talking, too busy laughing, too busy pedaling them forward to pay attention.
And Sangwoo lets himself be selfish for once.
Because when else does he get to be this close to her?
When else does he get to pretend—even just for a few minutes—that she’s his to hold onto?
So he takes the rides. Even when he doesn’t need them. Even when he could walk just fine.
And every morning, as the wind rushes past them, as Gahye chatters about things he doesn’t always care about but always listens to anyway, Sangwoo convinces himself that this is enough.
That even if she never looks at him the way he looks at her, even if she never realizes—
This is enough.
Until it isn’t, of course.
He leaves, and she stays.
The morning Sangwoo leaves for university, Gahye is the one who sees him off. His mother is crying—her hands gripping his sleeves, her voice thick with the weight of everything she’s sacrificed for this moment. His bags are packed neatly, his acceptance letter tucked safely in his pocket.
He should feel excited. Or relieved. Or something.
But all he can think about is how much he will miss her.
Gahye leans against her bicycle, arms crossed, watching the whole scene unfold with a lazy smirk. She doesn’t cry. Of course she doesn’t. That’s not who she is.
“So,” she says when he finally walks over. “Off to become some fancy Seoul National student, huh?”
Sangwoo exhales, adjusting the strap of his bag. “That was the plan.”
She grins, pushing at his shoulder. “I give you six months before you come crawling back.”
He scoffs. “I’m not coming back.”
Gahye just laughs, like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. Like she doesn’t believe him.
She doesn’t say anything about herself, and he doesn’t ask. But they both know—she’s not going anywhere.
She never studied the way he did, never cared for numbers and exams and futures mapped out on crisp sheets of paper. School was just another obligation, another place to exist rather than belong.
Her world has always been here.
Still, when she hands him a can of water—his usual, the same one she’s been leaving next to him since they were kids—he hesitates.
“What?” she teases. “Scared I’ll forget you?”
He scoffs, but his fingers tighten around the can. “No.”
“Good,” she says, swinging a leg over her bike. “Because I won’t.”
And just like that, she’s off, pedaling down the street, hair whipping behind her as she disappears into the tangled maze of Ssangmundong.
Sangwoo watches her go, the words pressing against his throat—words he’s never said, words he’s never allowed himself to say.
But he swallows them down.
Because he leaves, and she stays.
That’s just how it is.
Sangwoo leaves.
Gahye always knew he would.
She knew it the way you know winter will come after autumn, the way you know a coin flipped into the air has to land eventually. Some things are inevitable.
And Sangwoo leaving Ssangmundong? That was always part of the plan.
Not hers, of course. She never had a plan.
She isn’t built for them, for the kind of life that follows straight lines and carefully laid-out steps. She lives moment to moment, riding through the streets like she owns them, spending her evenings with whoever makes her laugh that day, scraping by on odd jobs and favors.
Sangwoo was always different. Focused. Sharp. Someone meant for something bigger than this place.
She knew all of that.
So why does it still feel strange to wake up and know he’s not here?
At first, it’s little things.
She gets on her bike in the mornings and realizes she has nowhere to be. She finds herself buying an extra can of water before remembering there’s no one to give it to. She walks home alone, and the silence presses in at the edges, sharp and unfamiliar.
She’s always had people. Friends, acquaintances, the kind of easy connections that come and go. But none of them were ever Sang-woo.
None of them sat stiffly behind her on her bike like the world might collapse if they let go.
None of them scolded her for being reckless, then silently waited outside the convenience store to make sure she got home safe.
None of them looked at her the way he did—like he saw more than she ever meant to show.
But he’s gone now.
She should get used to it.
She should move on, find new routines, new distractions. And she does, for the most part. She works, she laughs, she lives.
But some nights, when she’s pedaling home and the city lights blur into something soft and distant, she catches herself glancing over her shoulder—
Half-expecting to see him still there, holding on.
Time doesn’t stop just because someone leaves.
Gahye learns that quickly.
She gets older. She works, she dates, she makes bad decisions and good ones and bad ones again. Life moves forward, not in a straight line, but in the messy, winding way it always has for her.
She dates a guy from the auto shop down the street—Donghyun, broad shoulders, easy grin, hands that are always a little stained with grease. He makes her laugh, takes her on long rides through the city, lets her rest her head on his shoulder when they watch cheap movies in his tiny apartment.
For a while, it’s nice.
For a while, she almost forgets.
Sangwoo doesn’t call.
Almost never.
Once, maybe twice a year. Always short, always practical. A stiff “How’s your mom?” or a clipped “Still alive, I assume?” Nothing real, nothing that feels like the boy who used to sit behind her on her bike, hands gripping her waist like he was afraid to fall.
Not that it matters.
She doesn’t need him to call. She has a life, she has people, she has things to do.
So when he calls one night, out of nowhere, she almost doesn’t pick up.
But she does.
And when his voice comes through the receiver—low, familiar, just a little hoarse—something in her chest tightens.
“Gahye,” he says, and it’s not a question, not a greeting. Just her name, like he hasn’t said it in years and is testing the weight of it on his tongue.
She leans against her counter, fingers tightening around the phone. “Sangwoo. What, did you finally remember I exist?”
There’s a pause. A long one.
Then—softly, like he doesn’t want her to hear it—
“I never forgot.”
And just like that, she’s seventeen again, riding too fast down the cracked streets of Ssangmundong, laughing into the wind, with Sangwoo right behind her—always there, always holding on.
But that was a long time ago.
And he let go first.
However, the call doesn’t end as quickly as it should.
It should’ve been like the others—short, detached, another reminder that whatever thread still connects them is fraying. But this time, he doesn’t hang up right away.
Instead, there’s a pause, heavy and uncertain.
Then, Sangwoo speaks.
“Come see me.”
Gahye stills, blinking. “What?”
“Come to Seoul.” His voice is careful, too measured, like he’s already anticipating her refusal. Like he’s bracing himself for the fact that she might not want to. “Just for a day. I’ll show you around campus.”
She snorts, shifting her weight. “Why? You wanna give me a tour of all the libraries you practically live in?”
Silence.
And then, softer than she expects—
“I just want to see you.”
Something about the way he says it makes her grip the phone a little tighter.
Because her friend isn’t the type to say things like that.
Not without calculation, not without a reason. He’s the type who waits, who measures, who never reaches for something unless he knows it’s within his grasp.
But here he is. Asking.
Gahye exhales, staring at the ceiling like the answer might be written there. “Sangwoo, it’s been years.”
“I know.”
“You never call.”
“I know.”
“So why now?”
Another pause. She hears him inhale, slow and controlled. Like he’s forcing himself to say something he’s not used to saying.
“Because I thought you wouldn’t pick up.” He exhales sharply, almost like a laugh. “And now that you have, I don’t want to waste it.”
Ga-hye leans against the counter, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek. He sounds different. Not completely—still calm, still composed, still the same stubborn kid who always thought two steps ahead.
But there’s something else. Something unsteady.
Something real.
She should say no. She should tell him she has work, a life, a boyfriend.
But then she remembers—for the first time in years, he’s the one asking her to come closer.
So she sighs, rolling her eyes even though he can’t see it. “Fine, little genius. One day.”
She hears the shift of breath on the other end, the slightest hint of relief.
“I’ll send you the address.”
“Yeah, yeah. You better buy me lunch.”
Another pause, then—soft, almost amused—
“Of course.”
And just like that, they are something again.
Not kids. Not quite strangers.
Something in between.