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hehemechief · 7 days ago

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I KNEW IT, I KNOW YOU - p.sh ₊˚⊹ ᰔ

𓂃۶ৎ PAIRING : high school student!sungho x f!reader 𓂃۶ৎ GENRE(S) : romance, angst, fluff, coming-of-age 𓂃۶ৎ WARNING(S) : emotional repression, major character death, mentions of graves, mild existential themes 𓂃۶ৎ WORD COUNT : 2.6k words 𓂃۶ৎ PLAYLIST : I knew it, I know you - Gracie Abrams

“Come on! It's just a little fun! He's been here for two years and no one's ever seen him smile.”

“Fifty thousand won says you can't get him to fall for you by graduation.”

“What's the harm in trying? It's not like he has feelings anyway.”

Those were the words your friends spoke, their voices light with the carelessness of those who have never known what it felt like to be truly alone. Their laughter echoed in the school corridor as they nudged you towards accepting the challenge—a simple bet that would irrevocably alter the tapestry of your existence.

That was how you found yourself walking beside Park Sungho, the silence between you as vast and impenetrable as the night sky.

Sungho moved like a shadow—tall and elegant, yet somehow existing just outside the periphery of everyone's attention. His features seemed carved by marble, high cheekbones that caught the light in ways that made him appear almost otherworldly, dark eyes that revealed nothing of the thoughts behind them, and lips that rarely moved except to answer direct questions from teachers. His uniform was always impeccable, as if disorder could not touch him.

In the weeks since the bet began, you had tried everything. You'd dropped your books near his desk (he'd picked them up without a word), asked for help with calculus problems (he'd solved them efficiently without a single unnecessary explanation), even "accidentally" spilled water on his sleeve (he'd simply dabbed it dry, his expression never changing). You'd left snacks on his desk, written notes about class, and deliberately sat beside him in the library. Each attempt met with the same polite indifference that had earned him his reputation.

Tonight was different. Your study session had run later than usual, the library's fluorescent lights harsh against the gathering darkness outside. He had insisted on walking you home—not from kindness, he'd clarified, but “practical safety concerns given the hour.”

His voice, as always, was devoid of inflection.

“You know, you could just say you wanted to,” you said, brushing your shoulders against his lightly.

He didn't look at you. “And lie? That would be off-brand.”

You snorted, shaking your head. The cool night air felt like a welcome shift from the library’s stale hum.

As you stepped outside, the silence of the night stretched thin between you two, neither of you quite sure if it was the moment to break it.

"Are you always this... detached?" you asked after a pause, trying to mask the curiosity that flickered inside.

"I'm not detached. I just don't... see the need for filler."

You nodded, but your gaze stayed on him, trying to decipher the layers underneath his words.

The air around you felt suddenly still. You noticed the way the cool breeze picked up, how the faintest scent of something earthy seemed to shift in the air. The weight of the quiet was thicker now, pressing against you both, and you couldn’t help but feel like the world was holding its breath.

You cleared your throat. "It's... kind of eerie out here, isn't it?”

He didn't reply immediately, his gaze fixed straight ahead, his footsteps unhurried.

“It's always like this when something’s about to change,” he said, his voice low, almost thoughtful. “You get the sense the world's bracing itself.”

You weren't sure what he meant, but before you could ask, there was a subtle brush against your skin.

You paused, fingers brushing against your cheek as you looked up. The sky had darkened even more, the clouds gathering with a heaviness.

Streetlights diffused into halos of amber light. The rain fell in ever-changing patterns, as if the sky itself were breathing.

Sungho produced an umbrella from his bag—always prepared, always controlled. He held it over you both, the small space forcing you closer together.

“We should hurry—”

Before he could complete his sentence, something within you rebelled against his practicality, against his perpetual retreat from sensation. You stepped away from him and the umbrella's protection, into the full embrace of the rain.

The water rushed over you with startling intimacy—tracing the contours of your face, seeking the hollow of your throat, threading through your hair until it hung heavy against your neck. Your uniform darkened, clinging to your skin.

There was something profoundly liberating in this surrender, in becoming one of the elements rather than fighting against them.

You closed your eyes, feeling droplets catch on your eyelashes before sliding down your cheeks. The rain held no judgement, demanded no performance, expected no victory. In its presence, you could just be.

You opened your eyes to catch Sungho watching you. His gaze held a careful blankness replaced by a tension you couldn't name. He stood perfectly still beneath his umbrella, a solitary figure bisecting the boundary between chaos and control.

“What are you doing?” His voice only carried genuine bewilderment, as if you were a language he'd never learned to speak.

“Living,” you answered, raising your arms in the sky in a gesture of surrender and celebration. “Just for a moment.”

“You'll get sick.” His concern was devoid of emotion, but the intensity in his gaze belied his tone.

"Maybe," you conceded, spinning slowly in place, letting the rain embrace you fully. "But isn't that part of being alive? The risk? The possibility?"

You moved through the rain-drenched street as if it were a ballroom, the puddles your partners in an improvised dance. Water splashed around your ankles, soaked through your shoes, wicked up the hem of your skirt. You felt weightless, boundless, as if the rain had dissolved the barriers between your body and the world.

"Don't you ever wonder what it would be like?" you called to him over the sound of the downpour. "To let go of all that control, just for a moment?”

A shadow of longing flickered across his face, so brief you might have imagined it. “I can't afford to wonder.”

The words hung between you, heavy with implication. Not “I don't wonder”, but “I can't afford to wonder”—as if curiosity itself was a luxury beyond his reach.

“Everyone can afford one moment,” you replied, moving closer to him, close enough to see the raindrops collecting on the umbrella, falling in rhythmic patterns around him but never touching him. “Even you, Sungho.”

His knuckles whitened where they gripped the umbrella handle. “This is childish.”

“Then be childish with me.” You extended your hand towards him, water running in rivulets down your arm. “Just this once.”

“I don't know how.” The admission seemed wrenched from him, raw and unintended.

“You don't need to know how. That's the point. You just need to feel.”

He looked at your outstretched hand, as if it were both a temptation and threat. The rain continued to fall, creating a curtain that seemed to separate you both from the rest of the world.

“Please,” you said softly. “Try.”

Time hung between you, taut and uncertain. He stood motionless, his eyes never leaving yours, knuckles tightening against the umbrella's handle. In his gaze, a war waged between lifelong restraint and newfound longing.

A heartbeat passed.

And another.

The universe held its breath.

With deliberate grace—he lowered the umbrella.

The rain claimed him instantly, darkening his hair to ink, streaming down the severe planes of his face. He blinked rapidly as water caught in his eyelashes, ran along the perfect line of his jaw, soaked the shoulders of his uniform. For a moment, he looked affronted, as if the rain had personally betrayed him.

"There," he said, voice tight. "Are you satisfied?"

You weren't.

Not even close.

You craved more than this reluctant surrender, this bare minimum. You ached to shatter that perfect composure, to break through the walls he'd built so carefully, brick by brick. You needed—with an intensity that frightened you—to discover if anything human and warm pulsed behind those eyes that reflected everything and revealed nothing.

“Dance with me,” you said impulsively, moving closer.

“I don't dance.”

“Everyone dances. Even if they don't know it yet.”

Before he could protest further, you caught his hand. His skin was cold against yours, like touching a marble statue beginning to warm in the sun. You pulled him gently towards you, feeling the initial resistance in his frame.

“There's no one watching,” you reassured him. “Just the rain.”

Something shifted in his expression then—a loosening around his eyes, a softening at the corner of his mouth. Not surrendering exactly, but perhaps considering the possibility. You guided his hands to your waist, placed your own on his shoulders, and began to move.

There was no music except the rain itself. His movements were stiff at first, mechanical, as if he were solving an equation rather than dancing. But gradually, his grip on your waist loosened. His steps lost their rigidity, moving with quiet instinct instead of thought.

You moved together through the rain-silver night, creating patterns in the falling water. The streetlights caught the droplets in his hair, transforming them into a temporary crown. Water ran between your joined hands, cool and intimate.

Perhaps it was the way you stumbled, just barely, on the slick pavement, or how your laugh—genuine, unguarded—rang out, catching him off guard. Perhaps it was how he steadied you with an ease that felt almost foreign to him. Or perhaps it was the sheer weight of the moment: the rain, the quiet, the two of you existing in a space where everything else fell away.

The lines of his face, usually so controlled, began to soften, losing their harshness, the corners of his mouth tugging upward as if pulled by something you couldn’t name. His expression unraveled just enough to reveal the warmth, the quiet tenderness, he’d been hiding.

A smile.

Time suspended as you witnessed this revelation. The rain seemed to slow around you as his smile broke through the walls he'd built around himself. Your heart collided against your ribs with such force you gasped—a jagged and exquisite agony that hollowed you from within.

This wasn't the petty satisfaction of winning a bet, it was far more devastating.

Recognition.

You knew it, you know him—Not the mask he wore for the world, but the rawness beneath—layered, fragile, and alive. The realization crashed through you like thunder, reverberating in spaces you hadn't known existed within yourself.

This boy who had moved through life untouched suddenly stood before you utterly exposed, the rain revealing what words never could.

“Oh,” you breathed, the sound barely audible above the rain.

His smile faltered at your reaction, vulnerability flickering across his face. “What?”

“You should do that more often,” you said, your voice hushed with reverence.

“Do what?”

“Smile, it suits you.”

“I haven't had much reason to.”

“We could change that,” you spoke without thinking, driven by an impulse deeper than thought. “I could help you find reasons.”

His eyes widened at your words. For a second, he didn't speak, just looked at you like he couldn't believe the words that left your lips. His hands tightened on your waist, and you thought—you hoped—he might pull you closer.

Instead, he looked away, loosening his grip around your waist, stepping back into the version of himself the world expected. The space between you cooled, though the warmth of his touch still lingered on your skin.

You didn’t say anything—you just stood there, a breath caught in your throat, wondering if you'd imagined the shift in him. If the moment had meant as much to him as it did to you.

"We should get you home," he said finally, his voice different now—softer, warmer, as if something had thawed in him. "Before you catch pneumonia."

He retrieved his abandoned umbrella, but didn't open it. Instead, he walked beside you through the rain, allowing it to touch him as it touched you.

At your gate, he paused, raindrops glistening in his hair like stars caught in darkness.

"Thank you.”

“For what?”

The smile returned, smaller this time, but more genuine than any version of it you'd seen before—unpolished, a little sad, but unguarded.

"For the memory," he murmured, almost as if to himself. "For reminding me what it feels like to want to stay, even just for a night.”

Your heart stuttered, tripping over his words. They landed too softly to be dramatic. You didn’t know what to say. only that you didn’t want the moment to slip away.

"Sungho, I—”

But he was already turning, already walking back into the rain, leaving the words you couldn't say hung in the air, thick and unspoken.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

“But that's impossible! I was with him last night!”

The pitying looks from your classmates. The concerned touch of your teacher's hand on your shoulder. The gentle way your friends suddenly spoke to you, as if you might shatter.

"Y/N, Sungho died last Saturday night," your teacher had explained gently. "He was walking home in the rain when a car lost control on the wet road.”

Last Saturday night. The same night you had danced in the rain together. The same night he had smiled—that smile.

The same night he had finally let himself be known.

The memories came flooding back to you—his cold hands, the way he seemed to materialise and vanish without warning, how no one ever acknowledged him when you spoke his name in public. The flickering of streetlights as he passed beneath them. The curious stares you'd receive when you sat alone at “his” desk in the library, speaking softly to an empty chair.

Now, standing before his grave a week later, you watched as others placed flowers on the fresh earth. White chrysanthemums, proper and formal.

Nothing like him at all.

You thought of the wild blue delphiniums that grew behind the school greenhouse, the ones he'd pause to study when he thought no one was watching. The ones whose petals he'd once brushed with his fingertip, so gentle it made your heart ache to witness.

You watched them depart—teachers who'd only known him for his perfect grade, classmates who'd whispered about his strangeness, friends who'd pushed you into that fateful bet.

The bet.

If you had never accepted their challenge, if you had never approached him, never walked home with him that night, never pulled him into the rain... would he still be here? Would he have taken a different route home, missed the car that lost control on the wet road? Would he be sitting in class tomorrow?

The weight of this possibility crushed against your chest—that in trying to prove he had feelings, you might have inadvertently orchestrated his end.

You knelt as mud seeped into the fabric of your knees. The stone bearing his name was still bright with newness.

How unfair that you'd only glimpsed him in those final moments, in a smile that had lasted seconds but had somehow rearranged everything inside you.

"I saw you," you whispered, your words dissolving into the silence of the cemetery.

"I knew you.”

You pressed your palm against the cold stone, feeling the sharp edges of engraved letters beneath your fingers. A breath hitched in your throat, catching on the sob you refused to let rise.

He had given you his smile—his first and last real smile—and you would carry it like a treasure, a light against darkness.

You rose slowly, ready to leave, but paused as a sudden breeze lifted the strands of your hair—cool as his fingertips had been against yours. You could almost believe he was there, dancing with you still in the endless rain.

You didn’t turn around. Maybe because you knew if you did, the illusion might shatter. So you simply smiled, and stepped forward into the quiet.

Sometimes, on rainy nights when the streetlights flicker, you still see his smile—hesitant and beautiful—as if he's still watching you dance in the rain, learning to feel again long after his heart had stopped beating.

@coriihanniee 💌

˖➴ reblogs are appreciated! ty for reading! <3

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#this hit me straight in the feels #it's always the sungho fics man #had to close my phone after reading for a few seconds #this was such a good read

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