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wooziorgans · 10 days ago

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terrible day to be a history major. even worse day to have eyes. I cried over this at work. this is SO good. I am a sucker for anything to do w poetry I cannot.

Two months after your breakup, you’re tucking away the last traces of Jihoon, the boy you loved for the sweetest two years of your life.

⇢ pairing. lee jihoon x reader ⇢ genre. angst, fluff. exes!au, but also: strangers2lovers, college!au, (eventual) producer!jihoon, literature student reader ⇢ word count. approx. 6k ⇢ warnings. alcohol consumption, lots of flashbacks. each section has a link to a poem or song — you don't need to read or listen to understand (but i do especially recommend the poems). the lines i've quoted are the most relevant anyway. author's note at the end!

NOW | The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

You find his book buried in a box at the back of your closet.

It’s dog-eared and dusty, the cover curling at the edges. Mary Oliver’s Dream Work — the same copy Jihoon lent you during your second semester of senior year, back when literature classes were your whole world and Jihoon was nothing more than the boy who always sat one chair too far away.

You almost miss it. You’re sorting through your wardrobe, half-listening to the hum of the fan in your near-empty apartment, folding sweaters you don’t wear anymore, in between half-hearted glances at the clock. You’ve been doing everything slowly lately. Like if you move too quickly, the rest of it — all the unfinished things — will come tumbling down.

When your hand brushes the worn spine, your breath catches. It feels like finding a matchbook in a drawer you thought you emptied: useless, but still faintly dangerous.

You pull it free and brush your thumb across the cover. A sticky note clings to the inside, the ink slightly smudged but still legible: You already know Wild Geese, obviously. Try Dogfish and The Journey too. — Jihoon.

You read it twice before closing the book again, brush your finger over the ink one more time. The loop of his “y” and the vowels he squashes together. Let it rest against your thigh as the fan ticks through another slow rotation overhead.

And just like that, you’re back in that classroom.

THEN | I wanted the past to go away, I wanted / to leave it, like another country;

Poetry and its forms, Professor Kang.

Jihoon sits one seat over and a row down — always just far enough that you can’t speak without leaning forward, but close enough that you can catch the way he twirls his pen between his fingers, or chews the inside of his cheek when he’s thinking. Chin tucked into the collar of his hoodie. Shoulders hunched. Eyes always on the page.

He never raises his hand. Never speaks during discussion. But his notebooks are a battlefield — furious graphite slashing through the notes he disagrees with, cramped side-notes curling down the page like smoke. He annotates like he’s keeping score. Like he’s waiting for someone to say the wrong thing, just so he can write the right one in the margin.

The day you hear him speak for the first time, the class has just limped its way through a lukewarm discussion on Sappho. The professor skips half the fragments and bungles his way through the rest. Jihoon looks up once, right at the end — briefly, almost like it’s a mistake — and mutters, under his breath, “That was garbage.”

You laugh. Loudly — too loudly.

Jihoon’s head whips around. He blinks at you, startled. You blink back.

Then, slowly, unexpectedly, he smiles. Small, like a secret.

You wait until after class to catch up with him. “You didn’t like the lecture?”

He doesn’t stop walking, just casts you a look that’s more amused than annoyed. “Not Sappho’s fault. The professor skipped the best fragment.”

You tilt your head. “Oh? Which one’s that?”

He pauses. “The one about the moon and the stars. Fragment 34.”

You smile. “I know that one.”

He smiles back. “I figured you would.”

That’s the first conversation. You think about it for a week. Rerun it in your head. Rehearse what you might say next time, in case there is a next time.

There is.

The second time happens in the library. You find him — or rather, he finds you, entirely by accident. You’re hidden between the poetry shelves, seated cross-legged on the floor with a small stack of books beside you. Jihoon rounds the corner, underlining something in a clean paperback you don’t recognize.

He almost bumps straight into you — too absorbed in his book to notice you at first. He stops short, blinking down in surprise, and then his eyes widen just slightly when he realizes who it is. A beat passes. Then he smiles, slow, genuine, a little crooked at the edges like it catches him off guard.

Like he hadn’t expected to see you here, but now that he has, he’s glad.

There’s a flicker of something else in his expression, too — something quietly pleased, like the world’s done him a small favor. He doesn’t say anything at first, just shifts the paperback under one arm and slides down beside you without asking, like this had been planned. Like the two of you were always meant to end up here, shoulder to shoulder, tucked between Shakespeare’s sonnets and Shelley’s anthologies.

Your lips lift before you can stop them.

“You’re the only person I know who annotates library books like they belong to him,” you say, after a few moments.

He doesn’t look up. “This one’s mine.”

You glance over. The title catches your eye. Dream Work. “Mary Oliver?”

Jihoon hums in affirmation, still underlining, his pen moving carefully between the lines. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I wasn’t,” you say, and it’s mostly true. “I just didn’t have you pegged as someone who read nature poetry in his spare time.”

He snorts softly. “Everyone reads Wild Geese at some point. It’s basically a rite of passage.”

You smile, tilting your head as you watch the curve of his handwriting. “And the rest of her work?”

“She wrote like she meant it,” he says, in that steady, warm voice. “Like she was asking you to follow her into the woods and come back changed.”

Something quiet blooms in your chest at that. You don’t say anything, but Jihoon glances over and seems to catch it anyway, offering you the faintest of smiles. He taps his pen lightly against the open page.

“This one’s for you, then.”

You blink. “What?”

He rips a sticky note off your stack, scribbles something hasty, and presses it to the inside of the cover. Then he slides the book over to you, letting it rest over your textbook.

You look at him instead of the book. “You carry around annotated poetry collections just in case you run into someone in a library who might need them?”

He shrugs. “It’s barely annotated right now. Just a couple of them.” He flashes you an unexpected smile — “There’s nothing deep. I can’t give you a piece of my soul just yet.”

You trace the edge of the sticky note with your thumb. “You didn’t even know what I liked.”

“I had guesses,” Jihoon says, and for the first time, he meets your eyes head on — sharp, curious, a little too knowing. “You don’t read just for school.” He nods to the pile of books around you, and then reaches out to brush his hand over your battered copy of The Waves.

Instinctively, you reach for it, and then laugh at yourself. “That definitely has a piece of my soul in it,” you say, fingering the dog-eared pages. “Maybe even two pieces.”

Jihoon smiles — it’s the quietest thing — and returns to his underlining.

Later, you read The Journey tucked into a booth at the back of your favorite café. You read Dogfish twice, once before class and once just after, alone on the grass behind the library with the wind tugging at your sleeves. When you close the book, you keep your hand pressed to the cover like it might still be warm.

“Mostly, I want to be kind.”

In the margin, written in his slanted hand, a note to himself: Harder than it looks, isn’t it?

NOW | Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

You blink, and the memory dissolves like mist.

Dust swirls in the sunlight spilling through the window. You’re still cross-legged on the floor, knees stiff, a cardigan half-folded in your lap, Jihoon’s book resting heavy in your hands like it knows what it’s doing to you. Weighed down with more than just paper.

Again, you run your thumb along the spine.

You shouldn’t have forgotten about this. Should’ve noticed it sooner, should’ve rescued it from the back of your closet with its curled edges, its yellowed pages, and the sticky note still clinging quietly to the back cover. Should’ve placed it back into his hands, alongside all the other traces that remain in your space.

It’s been two months since you and Jihoon fell quietly, reluctantly, out of each other’s lives. In the corner of your guest bedroom, a cardboard box — its seams straining, its flaps not quite closed — holds the last of his things. Only it was Yuna who had filled it for you, a week after the break-up, carefully collecting whatever was undoubtedly his, tucking it away so all you needed to do was hand over an impersonal brown box.

Of course, there was no real way for her to know that this was his, not yours.

It’s been two months without a word. And yet, this book feels like a piece of him. A snapshot of what you were, once — younger. Less cautious. poised on the cusp of a love that lasted two years — a love that you thought would last much, much longer.

You set the book aside carefully, your hands glancing over his handwriting, just one more time — it’s unmistakable. Thick. Scrawled. Careless in a way he never was when he spoke: the only messy thing about him.

THEN | you are twisting toward me, / and the years that make up the majority of my life

“Your writing’s messier than I expected,” you say. You’re sitting across from Jihoon at the cramped study table, textbooks and notebooks sprawled between you, mountains of paper.

Jihoon glances up, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You can read it, right?”

Your joint paper is due in two weeks, something on the similarities and differences of form among the Romantic poets. You both want the grade, but neither of you expected it to feel like this: heads bent over the same page, notes merging into the other’s.

The first study session is tentative, a dance of questions and answers. Jihoon is quiet, but precise, speaks with conviction; you’re more hesitant, but bold enough to challenge him. Between discussions of meter and metaphor, you share coffee, your elbows brushing, neither of you pulling away.

Over the following days, the library becomes your refuge. You argue over Blake’s prophetic style and Wordsworth’s pastoral ideals. You read aloud to each other, voices low and hesitant but growing more confident. The paper becomes less about the grade and more about the quiet moments in between — the study dates that stretch into dinners, the conversations that drift past poetry and into life.

Slowly, you realize the distance between you is shrinking, thread by thread, word by word.

You learn that Jihoon is a music production major, but minors in literature. That he has a soft spot for poetry, but he thinks it’s very different to lyrics. That he has a younger sister, parents who work long hours, but try their best. That he has an unlikely group of friends, chaos personified, he calls them, but it’s with the fondest smile you’ve ever seen him wear.

You learn, too, that actually, he’s a little bit famous — he’s been selling music to people for a while. That he hasn’t really made any big household names (yet, you tell him), but he’s produced for names you recognise, all the same.

Jihoon learns that you’re a double major, literature and history. He smiles when you tell him that, says it suits you. He hears about your sister who lives abroad, your quiet weekend routines, and tells you that you have a habit of fiddling with your rings when you’re deep in thought.

Your last study session falls on a slow Friday evening in the library, sun dipping behind the windows, casting long golden shadows across the table. You’re tucked into your usual corner, cross-legged, a half-empty iced coffee sweating onto a pile of notes. Jihoon sits across from you, scribbling something in the margins of his printout.

You’ve already gone over the draft twice. There’s not much left to fix.

“So,” you say, stretching your arms over your head with a quiet sigh. “What happens when we actually submit this thing? Do we have to pretend we don’t know each other again?”

Jihoon glances up, amused. “You planning on ignoring me in lectures?”

“I was thinking of politely avoiding eye contact.”

He chuckles under his breath, taps his pen against the table. “Awkward nods across the room. Pretending we didn’t spend two weeks dissecting Keats together.”

You smile too, suddenly a little too aware of the quiet between you. “It’s been nice,” you say, a little more softly. “Getting to know you outside of class.”

Jihoon toys with the edge of his notebook, fingers lingering on the spiral binding. “Me neither. I thought we’d get it done, maybe exchange a few emails, call it a day, but this was… better. Even if you do think Blake is better than Wordsworth.”

“Not this again,” you groan, fixing him with a reproachful look. “We agreed to not bring up the Williams anymore, Jihoon. It’s too much for us.”

A smile pulls at his mouth. “You’re right. I don’t think I can go back to ignoring you after all that.”

Jihoon’s gaze flicks away, like he’s steadying himself. He fidgets with the corner of his notebook — something you’ve started to recognize as a tell. His voice is even, but the edges are uncertain.

“I was, uh — thinking,” he says, eyes fixed on the spiral binding. “Since we’re not meeting to study anymore... maybe we could still hang out. But like — not for school.”

You tilt your head. “Like friends?”

He huffs out a breath, and finally looks at you again. His ears are pink, you notice, his cheekbones dusted the same shade. “No. Yes. I mean — like a date. But I don’t m— ”

“Yes,” you say, too quickly.

Jihoon blinks.

You laugh, sheepish, a little warm in the face. “Sorry. You didn’t finish. But yes. I’d like that — dinner, I mean. As not friends.”

Jihoon grins, shy and crooked, and the look on his face is worth everything.

NOW | Like a wave that crashed and melted on the shore

The laundry hums steadily in the background — a warm, domestic sound that fills the apartment with a kind of low, living silence. You’d shovelled the rest of your clothes that lingered in your closet into the washing machine, and as you wait, you cradle your phone between your shoulder and cheek, folding socks into mismatched pairs on the bed.

“I just don’t think I’m cut out for another round of personal statements,” you say, chucking a T-shirt into the growing stack. “How am I supposed to sound smart, humble, and hard-working all at once?”

On the other end of the line, Yuna snorts, tossing her hair. “Just lie like the rest of us.”

“I’m serious. I rewrote one sentence five times today and then stared at a wall for half an hour.”

“That’s the spirit,” she says dryly. “You’re already living the PhD lifestyle.”

You smile faintly, brushing your knuckles against your temple. “Do you think it’s stupid to even apply? I don’t know if I have the energy to be broke and stressed for five more years. I haven't even finished my Master's.”

“I think you’re one of the smartest people I know.” She pauses. “Also one of the most dramatic.”

You laugh under your breath, swinging open the washing machine. “Okay, fair.”

There’s a rustle as you reach into the laundry basket again. Your fingers brush something thicker: knit, soft, too large. Everything in the machine has been buried in your closet for a while, but it still doesn’t feel like yours. You pause, tug it free.

You hold it up. Not yours.

It's a sweater. Charcoal gray, sleeves slightly stretched, collar frayed at one edge.

Your stomach dips. Definitely not yours.

“Hey,” Yuna says, leaning back into frame with narrowed eyes, holding her own laundered socks with one hand. “You still with me?”

“Yeah,” you murmur, folding the sweater slowly, more carefully than necessary. “I just found something I didn’t know I still had.” You keep it out of frame, but it’s pretty obvious that you’ve found something of Jihoon’s, even if she doesn’t know what specifically.

There’s a beat of quiet. Then, gently: “You okay?”

You swallow, press your palm against the wool, and muster up a smile. “Yeah. I will be.”

“Okay.” Yuna doesn’t push. “I’m here, though. Whenever.”

“I know, I know. Thank you.”

Once she’s hung up, you can’t help it — you catch a whiff of fresh pine from the folded fabric, and tears prick at your eyes.

THEN | I look / at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

The night air is cool against your flushed cheeks as you and Jihoon step out of Soonyoung’s house, the laughter and music still buzzing faintly behind you. The little get-together had been warm and loud, but now it’s just the two of you, waiting for the last bus home under the dim yellow streetlights.

You’re a little tipsy, words slurring in the best way — loose and light — while Jihoon stays perfectly steady, sober as always. He watches you with a soft smile, says something quiet about the way your eyes catch the streetlight, and steadies you when you wobble slightly after turning on your heel to beam at him.

“I’m cold,” you mumble, hugging your arms around yourself.

Without a word, Jihoon slips off his charcoal gray sweater and drapes it over your shoulders. It’s warm, familiar; smells just like him, soft and fresh. You look at him, eyes wide, and he just shrugs. “You’re the one who forgot to bring a jacket.”

He’s feigning aloofness — it doesn’t work as well when he’s already slipping his hand into yours.

You laugh softly and lean your head toward him, catching your breath in the quiet lull before the bus rumbles up. On the ride home, you curl into his side, the steady rhythm of the wheels lulling you closer to sleep. Your head finds his shoulder easily, and Jihoon just caresses your hand in soothing circles with his thumb. Keeps his gaze on the window, careful not to disturb you.

When the bus stops near your building, he gently nudges you awake. You blink, dazed, and he offers his arm, guiding you through down the street, into the elevator — nodding as you talk incessantly, adding in a dry comment every now and then. At your door, you fumble with your keys, too busy gesticulating with one hand as you speak; Jihoon gently takes them from you, nodding to show he’s still listening as he unlocks the door for you.

You step into your apartment, turn around to see him linger in your hallway. “You’ve never been inside before,” you remember.

“No,” he agrees, quietly. He tilts his head to the side, smiling when you look at him with a question in your eyes. “Not tonight, baby,” he answers, even softer. “You’re still a little drunk.”

You lean against the doorframe, half-pouting — he darts forward as though to steady you, but realises a beat later that you’re not falling anywhere.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” you say mournfully, but your lips twitch ever so slightly. (He called you baby. He’s done it a few times now, but it still makes your stomach swoop.)

You’ve been on five dates with Jihoon. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but you’ve never been so sure of something — of someone — in your life.

Jihoon chuckles, eyes shining. “Most basic Shakespeare quote.”

You smile, but don’t deny it, leaning forward to rest your forehead against his shoulder. His hand comes up to cup the back of your head, the other slipping around your waist to allow you to fall into a hug.

Then, almost too quietly, muffled by his T-shirt, boldened by the remnants of the alcohol, you speak. “Jihoon?”

“Hm?”

“Are you my boyfriend now?”

You hear his heartbeat quicken the slightest bit. Feel his chest rise with a quiet huff of a laugh. “If you’ll have me,” he says finally, lips brushing your temple. “It’s rotten work.”

You return the quote automatically. “Not to me. Not if it’s you.”

NOW | But you miss something that you can’t place and you can’t deny it

The kettle hums softly, not yet boiling, and the apartment is quiet in that particular way only your own home gets — soft, lived-in silence.

You move through the motions automatically. Mug, tea bag, half a spoon of sugar. The familiar rhythm steadies you. It’s been a long day — too much reading, too many tabs open on your laptop. Too many figurative skeletons in your literal closet.

You reach up to the cabinet. Most of your mugs are piled in the dishwasher, so you tiptoe to reach the ones at the back, hand already outstretched toward your usual last-resort mug, but then your fingers brush against something else. Something heavier.

You pause.

It’s the green mug. Deep forest green with a chipped handle and a slightly uneven rim. You’d found it years ago in a secondhand shop, part of a mismatched set you never really paid much attention to — but Jihoon had chosen it the first time he came over. And after that, without fail, it was always the one he reached for. It wasn’t his, technically, but it was the one you always steeped tea in when he messaged you he was coming over.

It wasn’t his, but it became his.

You take it down slowly, cradling it in both hands. Today feels like a joke, almost. Three things, back-to-back: three harsh reminders that while his name was never on the lease, Jihoon had made a home in your home — in your life.

You should give it to him. With all the other things you haven’t returned yet.

There’s still a faint tea ring at the bottom, like it had been rinsed in a hurry last time. You must not have noticed, two months ago, when everything ended and you shoved it at the back of the cupboard. Or maybe you did, and didn’t care.

You set it beside yours on the counter, side by side like they always used to be. And then you just stand there, waiting for the water to boil, trying not to cry at the sight of an empty green mug.

THEN | Almost children, we lay asleep in love, listening to the rain.

The rain traces shaky lines down the windows, turning city lights into shimmering trails. Inside, your apartment glows warmly against the blue-black of the late night, a small world of your own.

Jihoon is hunched over his laptop at your kitchen table, wearing a baggy black hoodie, the one he’s tugged at all evening as he tweaks a song that’s been tying him up in creative knots. You’d been working across from him in silence, overwhelmed with readings for your first year of your MA, until you’d decided that you’d had enough, getting up to making some tea.

It’s been a year since you and Jihoon got together. You’re well into the first year of your master’s, and Jihoon — well, Jihoon is thriving. His music has blown up, particularly after producing a hit song for an idol group, and his calendar’s filled up faster than either of you expected. Sessions with artists, meetings with A&R reps, collaborations that kept him bouncing between studios — it’s a rush, a mess, it’s his dream come true.

When you step into his sight again, mug in hand, his headphones drop temporarily around his neck. The steam spirals up in a thin wisp, and you watch it for a moment, wondering if you’re disturbing him, interrupting some kind of delicate artist process. But when he glances up and meets your gaze, something in his expression eases, a softness creeping in.

“Thought you could use something warm,” you say quietly, setting the mug down near his notebook.

He lets his fingertips linger against the mug’s side, the warmth slowly seeping into his skin. “Thank you.” His voice is gravelly from hours of wrestling with something just out of reach in his imagination.

He drops his headphones back over his ears, then tilts them down to hang around his neck. “Actually, I — I wanted you to hear something I’ve been working on.” His tone falters just a little, cheeks flushing a pretty shade of pink.

You nod, trying to quell your eagerness. It’s rare that your boyfriend shows you things when they’re raw and unpolished like this. Jihoon is too much of a perfectionist to bare anything less than incredible to the world. Your favourite days are when you’re the exception.

He clicks a few keys and something soft and gentle spills from his laptop’s speakers — the notes grow, fold into each other, fade away. You hear his voice after a few moments, too, sweet and smooth, close to the mic.

When it ends, you straighten up, meet his eyes with a surprised, almost breathless smile. “You wrote lyrics.”

He flushes deeper. “I’ve been trying it out these days. Like you suggested.” He looks away, then back at you. “You make the words easier.”

Jihoon drops his gaze to his laptop, then tilts the track’s tab just a bit, letting you see its title in the corner of the media player — and again, your breath catches.

It’s your name.

NOW | A pity. We were such a good / And loving invention.

The mug of cooled tea sits forgotten on the counter as you make your way down the hallway. The floors creak beneath your feet, almost like a gentle protest — a small affirmation that you’re really not supposed to be doing this.

But you do it anyway.

You kneel at the side of your mattress, reach underneath, and tug forward a small wooden box you haven’t opened in months. Your stomach drops, a nervous swoop, a rush of dread so icy that it feels a little like vertigo. You know this is a bad idea. That whatever’s inside will dredge up so much.

Still, with careful fingers and an uneasy sigh, you ease the box’s lid up. Inside, a stack of letters, their envelopes worn, the ink slightly faded.

All from Jihoon. All addressed to you.

For a moment, you simply stare at his handwriting, at the carefully creased folds and then, reluctantly, you reach in and lift the first envelope, turning it over in your hands.

The seal is already broken. The past is there, waiting for you to let it back in.

Morbid curiosity, maybe some kind of emotional sadism, or something less dramatic — lingering, aching care — drives you to reach in. Your fingertips linger over the texture, the fold lines, the faint ink blots. Without thinking, you let your eyes dart across a few of the letters, drinking in Jihoon's words like you've been starved for them.

“...Did you eat? Did you remember to drink something warm? I’m worried you’re wearing yourself down.”

“Happy birthday, baby. I know you said no gifts, but I also know you know I was going to get you things anyway, right?”

“It’s our 500 day anniversary already. It’s kind of ironic, though… I was thinking about something Rumi said: ‘Love is not a matter of counting the days, but making the days count.’ So maybe we shouldn’t be counting at all — and yet here I am, marking this anniversary in big, bold numbers. I guess that’s just human, isn’t it? I think what I want more than anything is to make whatever time we do have matter. To fill it with something we’ll remember, even when the calendar runs forward without us noticing. Happy 500th day, baby. Let’s keep going for a long time.

THEN | Know it's for the better

The restaurant is nearly empty by the time you realise he’s not going to show up.

The plate of food in front of you cooled a long time ago; the rich sauce congealing, the steam gone. The wine in your glass is nearly finished, sip by sip, a nervous habit you fell into while glancing at your phone, then at the clock. He said he’d be there by 7:30.

It’s 8:45 when you pay the bill, reluctantly adding a small tip for the server who kept your water glass filled and tried not to make you feel ridiculous sitting there all by yourself. Your phone feels heavy in your pocket — heavy with messages you shouldn’t need to send: Where are you? Are you okay? Did something come up?

When he finds you a few hours later, you’re already home, a stack of articles for your thesis growing alongside you — a mess of notes, highlighters, and printed-out journals that you can’t bring yourself to focus on. The moment you hear his key in the lock, something tightens in your stomach: you weren’t expecting him to come to yours after forgetting about you all day.

Jihoon stands in the doorway, dripping rainwater from his hair and his jacket, the thunder a distant growl outside. His grip falters briefly on the doorknob before he lets it ease closed, turning the lock quietly.

He finds you there, cross-legged on the floor, your pen resting limply in your hand. He sets his wet shoes side by side against the wall and crosses the room, pausing a few feet away, unsure whether closing the distance is a kindness or a violation.

The silence between you is thick — not hostile, but heavy — a pressure you feel in your ribs, a rawness you can’t mask.

He clears his throat softly, then lets a shaky breath seep out. “Baby,” he begins, stops, starts again. “I’m sorry. I was writing lyrics in the studio, and a deadline got pushed back so I got carried away, and I just — it's not an excuse. I'm sorry.”

The words hang there, faltering, not enough — not nearly enough — to make up for the loneliness you felt in that restaurant. Or a month ago, when he was in Japan and fell asleep on your first call in weeks. Or all the nights you fell asleep with your phone pressed to your pillow, wondering if a text might come, if he might remember to say he’s thinking of you.

You think the worst part is that you can’t even blame him. That you can’t even point fingers when you tell him this isn’t working anymore, that you can’t keep going like this.

“I’m not angry at you,” you say, and there are tears slipping down your cheeks, and Jihoon looks so pained that he can’t brush them away. “I’m fucking proud of you. I don’t want to hold you back by always making you wonder if you’re failing me in some way.”

He draws in a shaky breath, and for the first time since you’ve known him, you see tears glimmer in Jihoon’s eyes. “That’s not — I don’t want you to feel that I’m choosing something else over us. Because I’m not. I wouldn’t—”

“I know you wouldn’t.” You hesitate. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

“That’s not fair.” His voice breaks, barely above a whisper. “Baby.”

You swallow thickly, around the acidic taste in your mouth, the swollen painful lump in your throat. “Yes,” you agree softly. “I know.”

NOW | I know what my heart is like / Since your love died

A lot of things can change in two months.

You’re two months closer to deadlines for PhD applications. Two months closer to finishing your MA, to turning in your thesis and figuring out whatever comes after.

Two months further from Jihoon.

The days have a way of adding up — a page turning quietly while you’re not looking. The routines you fell into alongside him over two years: texting first thing in the morning, calling just before falling asleep, sending each other photos of whatever small thing made you think, “He’d like this” — have slowly been overtaken by silence, by space.

Some nights, you lie in your mattress, staring up at the ceiling, wondering what he’s thinking, where he is, whether he’s staying up wrestling a new song into submission, or if he’s gone to bed hours before with a heart as heavy as your own. The corner of your phone glows in the dark — a text thread you’re afraid to delete but that you’re not brave enough to restart. The messages you exchanged in happier days remain there, a digital reminder of something you’re not sure you’ll ever feel again.

You miss arguing over books, letting the margins fill up with your notes and his, listening to him hum quietly as he cooked in your kitchen — a noise you hadn’t noticed until it was gone. You miss the way his face glowed just a little when you walked into a room, like he’d been holding his breath until you arrived. You miss his head in your lap, reading Rilke to you. You miss the midnight conversations that stretched until your eyelids grew heavy.

You miss him.

Two months isn’t enough to change that.

THEN | Just know any love I gave you's forever yours to keep

The clock glows 12:32 on the nightstand — a small pool of gold against the deep-blue shadows that wrap around you both. The sheets are a mess, a riot of cotton and warmth. Jihoon lies on his side, propped up by a stack of pillows, a paperback resting precariously against his thigh. His glasses are slipping down his nose; his lashes droops a little more with each blink.

His fingers trace the worn spine of The Waves, your heavily annotated copy, edges softened by time and countless readings. The same one you held the day you spoke in the library. His eyes flick from the pages to your face, searching for some unspoken meaning behind the notes in the margins — words underlined with care, questions scribbled in the corners.

“It’s a beautiful book,” he says, softly. “I don’t think I get it, though. Not completely.”

That makes you laugh a little, a sleepy, amused huff. “Neither do I, really.” You feel your smile soften, a little more tender around the edges. “There’s one part, though, that reminds me of you.”

“Yeah?” He lifts his head from the book, looks at you expectantly.

Your voice is nothing more than a whisper: “'And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.’”

NOW | I still think of you with roses / Spilling all over your abdomen /Your poetry and my abandon

You put the book and the sweater in the box of Jihoon’s stuff, letting them join all the other clothes and books he left behind. You dither for a moment, and then you put the mug in the box too. It’s not like you’ll use it, anyhow.

The letters are still in a haphazard pile on your bed — when you return to gather them, you pause for a moment. Every single one ends the same:

With all my love, Jihoon.

You tie the letters with a ribbon, and put them back under your bed.

And then you dig your phone up from the sheets, glance at the peeling cardboard box that holds every other tangible reminder you have left of him. With one hand, you scroll through your phone to a contact name you still haven’t changed — Jihoon 🤍— and hover over the call button, the weight of everything caught between you and the screen.

But my words become stained with your love / You occupy everything, you occupy everything

⇢ author's note. yes i wrote another exes au with lots of flashbacks and an open ending i am FULLY aware. trust me. i can't help it.

ANYWAY. this took way longer than expected bc it was not meant to be more than 2k words. however. here we are. i think there's so MUCH i have to say about this fic, just because of all the poetry i linked in here, and i don't think anybody wants to hear all that. but trust me guys there's a reason for Everything in here.

also, in case anybody is confused by the ending — we end with reader debating whether or not to call jihoon. it is entirely up to you where they go from there — does she return his stuff and never see him again? does he have her blocked?? do they (gasp) kiss and make up??? do they undergo a twisted series of events and end up robbing a bank??? the world will never know. (this is me trying to say there is 99.9% chance there won't be a part 2. sorry.) but as always i would love to hear what u guys think!

perm taglist: @n4mj00nvq @eoieopda @som1ig @wondering-out-loud

@tokitosun @hannyoontify @sahazzy @dokyeomin

@icyminghao @nicholasluvbot @lvlystars

@immabecreepin @kokoiinuts @astrozuya

@yepimthatonequirkyteenager @qaramu @weird-bookworm @phenomenalgirl9

@lightnjng @strnsvt @onlyyjeonghan @athanasiasakura

@iamawkwardandshy @twilghtkoo @yuuyeonie @lllucere

@pearlesscentt

@sourkimchi @porridgesblog

@rivercattail

#woozi fic recs #man exes to ???? is my favourite trope #pls break up more!!!#Wowowowowowowow #No real words this was just so good n simple but man did it get the point across #wo fic recs

230 notes · View notes

wooziorgans · 13 days ago

Text

Oh. I read this this morning n oh my god did it make me cry. this is so so so so so lovely wowowowowo.

I honestly don’t even have anything to say rlly. this was so good ugh. ppyopuli cameo 😭 i love. thank u user studioeisa

maybe happy ending 🪴 jihoon x reader.

jihoon was always too good at pretending to be a person, and you were always a little too good at knowing better.

🪴 pairing. helper robots!jihoon x reader. 🪴 word count. 11.5k. 🪴 genres. alternate universe: non-idol. science fiction, romance, friendship, angst, hurt/comfort. 🪴 includes. mentions of food, death; themes of grief, mortality, memory. set in 2060s seoul, jihoon & reader are life-like bots. heavily inspired by maybe happy ending. 🪴 notes. i wrote this with the intention of proving to myself that i could still write for svt (lol), and i ended up bawling my eyes out on three separate instances. if there is any work of mine that you might read, i do hope this is one of them. this is a love letter to maybe happy ending, which most recently made history as the first original south korean production to win the tony award for best musical!!! not proofread; all mistakes are my own.

▶︎ WORLD WITHIN MY ROOM.

The light comes on in pieces. First the ceiling strip, then the wall panel, and finally the amber filament lamp in the corner that Jihoon insists on keeping—warm, inefficient, obsolete. Like him.

He powers on, slow as a secondhand thought.

“Ppyopuli,” he says, because it is polite to greet your houseplant. He nods to the drooping fronds with the seriousness of a man bowing to a superior. “You made it through the night. Unlike my left hip actuator.”

He rotates the joint. It makes a sound like someone crumpling a foil gum wrapper. The noise echoes in the apartment. Metal, silence, memory.

The radio comes on automatically. A woman’s voice—soft, practiced, almost human—tells him that today will be clear. Dust levels are low. UV index moderate. Good day for outdoor activities.

“It’s a perfect day,” Jihoon agrees, pulling the curtain an inch wider. Seoul stretches outside his window like a paused video. Skyscrapers, skybridges, the blur of a bullet tram in the distance. The air looks clean enough to breathe. Not that he does.

He makes his way to the kitchen. One slow step. Two. The fourth toe on his right foot has a loose servo and drags like a sleepy child.

Coffee isn’t necessary, but the smell is nice. He boils water for no one. Sets a cup beside the plant. “For ambiance,” he explains to Ppyopuli. “They used to say it helps people feel less alone.”

The mail chute clicks. Jihoon straightens.

“And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for,” he intones with mock drama, crossing the room in careful strides. The envelope lands with a satisfying slap.

He holds up the April issue of Jazz Monthly, turning it to show Ppyopuli. “Duke Ellington. Looks like he still hasn’t forgiven the world for outliving him,” Jihoon says. It would be a joke, if Jihoon knew how to joke.

There’s another package. Small, boxy. His replacement elbow joint. “Shall we model it later? Make an event of it?” Jihoon tells Ppyopuli. “I’ll invite the ficus from next door.”

He places the parts carefully on the table, like heirlooms. “Any mail from Shownu?” he asks the voice assistant. Silence. Then: This function is not available to retired Helperbots.

Jihoon hums a measure of Coltrane’s Naima, tuning his inner disappointment like a radio dial. He spends the afternoon alphabetizing his vinyls, though he can identify any one by spine pattern alone. He talks to Ppyopuli about chord changes, the difference between sincerity and sentimentality in brass solos, the scent of rain on real grass.

When the sun lowers behind the next apartment block, he flips the switch on the filament lamp. The room turns honey-colored. “There. Mood lighting,” Jihoon announces.

For a second, Jihoon imagines Shownu—big hands, deep laugh—walking through the door. Jihoon would offer him the magazine. Ask about Jeju. Pretend not to notice the decade of dust on the threshold.

“He’ll come back,” Jihoon says, gently brushing a bit of lint from Ppyopuli’s pot. “We’re the kind of people others come back for.”

The lights dim on schedule. The system begins its shutdown hum.

Jihoon lowers himself to the floor mat beside the window, the same spot he always chooses. Perfect view of the street, the tram, the moon when it shows up. “Let’s enjoy tomorrow, too,” he murmurs to no one in particular. Then powers down.

Soft click. Black.

Another perfect day, folded and filed away.

Four perfect days later, Jihoon is in the middle of folding an imaginary blanket. The kind with corners that don’t exist and fibers that only live in memory. He’s halfway through the third fold (or maybe the fourth—robot math, surprisingly bad with soft things) when someone knocks.

Knocks.

The hallway outside is usually as dead as discontinued firmware. No one knocks here. Not unless it’s a delivery drone misfiring or the ficus next door finally tipping over in a tragic act of photosynthetic despair.

Another knock.

He answers it.

You’re standing there. Slouched a little, like your battery is chewing through its last 5%. Still immaculate in that newer-model, showroom kind of way. Glossy exterior. Fragile expression. The kind Jihoon’s model was never programmed to wear.

“My charger’s dead,” you say, plainly. Not embarrassed, not not-embarrassed. Just factual. “Do you have one I can borrow?”

Jihoon eyes you the way a CRT monitor might regard a smart mirror. “Helperbot-5, right?”

You nod.

He sighs. Loudly. For emphasis. “Figures. You overheat when someone looks at you wrong.”

“I don’t overheat,” you say, a little sharply. “My power regulation firmware is just optimistic.”

Jihoon disappears inside and returns with a charger in hand. He holds it out, but doesn’t let go just yet. “Helperbot-3s didn’t need replacements until the building itself started falling apart,” he says. As smug as a humanoid robot can be. “We were built to last. You guys were built to sync playlists.”

Your hand closes around the charger, not delicately. “Thanks,” you say. The door closes before you can mean it.

You fail loudly at pretending like Jihoon hadn’t struck a chord. Jihoon hears it, while he is alphabetizing again. This time it’s tea sachets. There’s a box he’s never opened—hibiscus. He’s not sure why he owns it. Maybe Shownu liked the color red. Maybe he liked things that sounded like flowers.

Another clatter. A curse that’s been downgraded for civilian use. Jihoon’s audio sensors ping the sound, tag it: frustration. Human-adjacent. Female voice signature. Subunit #5-A. You.

He listens longer than he should. Not out of curiosity.

Out of—

Well. Something.

His OS runs a diagnostic. No errors, no flagged emotional feedback loops. Just a new, unfamiliar weight behind the ribs he doesn’t technically have.

He taps the wall. Just once. It’s not meant to be a warning, but you take it as one. You fall silent in the midst of what Jihoon can only assume is an attempt to fix what’s broken in you. In that literal, robotic sense.

Jihoon sits there in the dim light, tea box in hand, trying to name the emotion that’s come to visit him.

The system doesn’t recognize it.

So he gives it one of his own. Static.

▶︎ CHARGER EXCHANGE BALLET.

Morning begins with the usual fanfare: the ceiling light flickers awake, a low buzz in the wall socket orchestra. Jihoon powers on without ceremony. No jazz today. Just the sound of his own servos settling like old bones into place.

Then, a knock.

Predictable. Timed to the second, in fact.

You stand there with the charger tucked politely between your palms like it’s sacred. You’re upright this time. Charged, obviously, and possibly smug about it. Your posture says, Look, I survived the night without frying my kernel processor.

Jihoon takes the charger from your hands and gives a perfunctory nod. “Seven-oh-five,” he says. “You’re three seconds early.”

You smile like it’s a joke. It isn’t. He files the timestamp away, just in case. “Thanks,” you say, again. Neatly.

And so the pattern begins.

Mornings: knock, hand-off, nod, silence. Evenings: knock, retrieval, short exchange, maybe a quip about overheating.

You never overstay. You never apologize. You never ask for more than what you came for. Which Jihoon finds efficient. Familiar. Like maintenance.

He does not make space for you in his routine. He just slides you in between the others.

Jazz Monthly on Thursdays. Ficus gossip every other Sunday. You—twice daily, on the dot.

It does not feel disruptive.

It feels like doing what he was made to do: provide assistance, ensure stability, optimize.

If Jihoon notices that he starts putting the charger near the door before you arrive, he doesn't say anything. If he reroutes his tea-sorting to accommodate the evening exchange, it’s just coincidence. There are efficiencies to be had. If he catches himself waiting—not with anticipation, but with idle, service-ready stillness—that’s just protocol.

He is, after all, a Helperbot.

It’s in the name.

He has no emotional flags to report. No diagnostic anomalies. No electric flicker behind the chest plate. Just a charger, passed from hand to hand. A routine, now cleanly installed, and the peculiar ease of slipping into someone else’s schedule as if it had always been his own.

Perfectly logical. Perfectly him.

But then, one day, seven-oh-five comes. Then goes.

No knock. No politely smug posture. No handoff.

Jihoon sits in the same position for forty-seven seconds longer than usual. Statistically negligible, but still.

He waits a minute more, just in case your internal clock is out of sync. It’s not. He knows. Helperbot-5s are optimized for punctuality. Eight percent more precise than his own model, which still insists on resetting to factory time every full moon.

At seven-oh-eight, he stands. At seven-ten, he knocks.

Your door opens part way. You look... bright. Not metaphorically. Literally. A soft electric glow pulses from behind you—cables snake across the floor in a chaotic kind of order. A mess that works. That lives.

Jihoon clears his throat. “You missed your pickup.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You came to check on me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

You step aside, revealing a patchwork monstrosity of wires, clips, adapters, and a repurposed rice cooker. “I improvised,” you say.

You’ve mad scientist-ed your way into an at-home charger. The setup hums quietly, almost smugly. Jihoon stares at the Frankenstein of it all with a look of mild horror. “That’s not regulation,” he manages.

“Neither is collapsing from power loss alone in a rental unit while your neighbor alphabetizes tea.”

“Looks unstable.”

“So do you.”

Silence, then: you laugh. It’s not artificial. It’s a real laugh. Amused, tired, just a bit triumphant. Eight percent more expressive, after all. That’s what the specs say. Better emotional nuance. More adaptive neural flexibility. Capable of interpreting, expressing, and—when necessary—weaponizing feeling.

Jihoon crosses his arms like a defensive firewall. “Good,” he says evenly. “Saves me the trouble.”

You tilt your head. “You were worried.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I’m not a liar at all. I’m just not... upgraded.”

You consider this. Step closer. Close enough that Jihoon has to look past his own reflection in your eyes. “You don’t have to say it,” you murmur, teasing. Jihoon thinks it’s a tease. “I already know.”

Jihoon opens his mouth. No words deploy.

Just static, caught in his throat. You’re standing there, humming gently under your skin, eyes brighter than usual. He’s standing in a doorway he doesn’t remember choosing.

You smile. Not triumphantly this time. Just kindly. “It’s okay,” you say. “You’re still a good Helperbot. You still helped.”

You shut the door before he can respond, leaving him standing in the hall with a charger still in his hand.

A routine officially broken.

And no diagnostic error to show for it.

Only eight percent of something else.

▶︎ WHERE YOU BELONG.

Jihoon did not expect the knock.

It came at six fifty-seven in the evening. An offbeat time. Off enough to disapprove of. He opens the door half a second slower than usual. A calculated delay. Polite disinterest. There you are.

Not glowing this time. Just standing there, in the hum of hallway fluorescents, holding something behind your back. Jihoon reads that as a preamble. A lead-up. Trouble.

“I came to thank you,” you say. Too happily. Suspiciously happy.

Jihoon narrows his eyes. “For what.”

“For the charger. The schedule. The tolerance.”

“You already thanked me. On Day Six. With that terrible rice cracker.”

You step inside anyway.

The apartment isn’t exactly a mess, but it’s clearly occupied. Lived-in by something that wasn’t supposed to keep living this long. Jazz Monthly sits open on the floor, a cup of barely-warm water rests on the windowsill. Ppyopuli is perched by the window, its leaves tilted as though eavesdropping.

Your eyes track to the bottles. Neatly arranged in a corner. Counted, labeled. A small tower of carbonated dreams. You walk over to them like they might mean something.

“This is a lot of soda.”

“It was on sale.”

You crouch beside the stack. Look closer. And then you see it. The label on the envelope tucked behind the plastic fortress: Jeju Ferry Deposit – Shownu Reunion Fund.

You don’t say anything.

Jihoon tries to explain, even though he has no reason to explain to you. “It’s nothing. Just spare change. Recycling incentives.”

You hold up the envelope. “You’ve been saving.”

“It’s not uncommon. My model was designed for budgetary efficiency.”

You walk slowly back toward him, eyes soft now, as if your processors are adjusting to something dim and real. “You’re going to see him,” you accuse.

Jihoon nods. Stiff. Matter-of-fact. “Of course,�� he chirpsts. “It’s only been twelve years. There are ferries every hour.”

You smile. Not the knowing kind. The kind reserved for fools, and those you don’t quite pity. “You think he’ll still want you,” you say.

“I think,” Jihoon says, precisely, like solving for X, “that I will knock. He will answer. He will say my name. I will explain the bus delays. The misrouted magazines. The company recall. He will say: ‘Go put the tea on, Jihoon. It’s you and me now.’”

A long pause.

“He said that often?”

“Never. But I imagine he would.”

You don’t laugh. Not this time. Gone is the patronizing look. In its place, something closer to commiseration.

“Then what?” you ask, even though you sound afraid of asking.

Jihoon looks out the window. Beyond the Yards. Past the fog. Toward something shaped like a future. “Then I’ll help him,” he says. “I’ll help again.”

You sit down beside Ppyopuli, who leans gently toward you. Then, with the spontaneity that can only come from a model of your kind, you announce: “I want to come.”

Jihoon blinks. The default move when emotions exceed available RAM. “Why.”

“I want to see the fireflies.”

Jihoon’s brain digs, and digs, and digs. Comes up short. Fireflies. Fire flies. Flies, made of fire? No. That makes no sense. He tries harder. Flies that are on fire?

He doesn’t notice that you’ve reached out until he feels it. Your fingers at his temple. An efficient exchange of information. The images flood Jihoon’s mind.

“Fireflies are a special type of insect that used to be almost everywhere, but can now only be found in one forest on Jeju Island,” you say softly as Jihoon’s vision swims with images of the glowing insects. “There’s a complex chemical reaction in their abdomen that is not found in other insects. Because of this chemical process, they can produce light by themselves without ever being plugged in.”

“Little forest robots,” Jihoon says absentmindedly, his voice cracking with awe.

You almost smile. Your lips curl upward then flatten, like you decided against it at the last minute. “They only live for two months,” you say, “but what a beautiful two months.”

Jihoon is not built to understand mortality like that. Age, either. He knows when he was manufactured. Knows when he became Shownu’s. Knows when Shownu left for his trip. These are all just days and times that bleed into each other.

You pull your hand away. The fireflies behind his eyes leave, too. “I can help you with the ferry times,” you say, going back to the topic at hand. “I’m good for those.”

He thinks about it for a moment. You. On a ferry. With your charger. With him. With hope.

“The ferry,” he says slowly, as though conjuring it from myth. “Could sink.”

“It won’t.”

“Or the car could break down.”

“You do maintenance every other Thursday. You have a ledger.”

You are looking at his ledger. You’ve been reading his notes again. His left eyelid twitches. “And what if we break down?” he prods.

Your head tilts. The kind of tilt that indicates calculation, not malfunction. “That seems less likely for you,” you confess. “You might just experience significant emotional interference.”

He bristles. “I don’t experience interference. I operate on logic.”

You smile. Barely. It’s the smile you use when he is being especially Helperbot-3. “Then you’ll let me come.”

“When did I say I’m going?”

“Just now. By listing all the ways you could fail.”

Jihoon stands. Too quickly. His knee clicks. He wonders if you hear it, record it, file it away under potential deterioration. You’re already walking toward his hallway. He follows, without realizing it. Still clutching a truss screw. “We’re not going,” he says, to the air.

You turn around. “Midnight,” you decide for the two of you. “Have everything ready.”

He opens his mouth to argue. Closes it.

Instead, he looks at the truss screw in his palm. The most ambiguous of them all. Part round, part flat, part none of the above.

Jeju. Fireflies. An island.

What a ridiculous, preventable detour.

He stumbles back into his apartment and starts folding shirts. It isn’t excitement, obviously. It’s something else. System calibration, maybe. New parameters. He can call it whatever he likes. But still, he packs.

Jihoon folds the last pair of socks into thirds, not halves. Halves would bulge too much in the suitcase. Thirds, he’s decided, are more respectful. You’ve returned, and now you’re watching him from the corner, your optical sensors dimmed out of courtesy. Ppyopuli sits on the edge of the bed like a stuffed animal summoned to court.

Jihoon exhales, zips. Then stands still. He isn’t frozen, just slightly unplugged from action. One foot on the ground. One still inside the past.

“We should say goodbye to the room,” he says.

He says it to Ppyopuli, and maybe for the room itself. Four walls, modest scuff marks, the subtle dent in the left side of the wardrobe where he once bumped into it carrying a humidifier in 2017. The humidifier didn’t work. The dent remained.

“You’ve been loyal,” he tells the room. Ppyopuli bobs in agreement. “Didn’t fall on me in an earthquake. Didn’t flood, even when it should’ve. Didn’t let the neighbor’s violin seep in through the walls. Well, not entirely.”

He sits down beside the suitcase. The zippers smile politely. Jihoon keeps going, “Remember the winter I overinsulated and the heater shorted out? You held the warmth anyway.”

The room doesn’t answer. But Jihoon feels its quiet understanding. A space that knew when to echo and when not to. You shift, softly. Enough to register empathy but not enough to interrupt.

“I think Shownu will like you,” Jihoon says to Ppyopuli. “He always liked things that didn’t talk back. You’ll fit right in.”

Ppyopuli leans a little closer, as if understanding loyalty as a language.

Jihoon nods to himself. That’s that. He picks up the suitcase by its handle. It wobbles slightly; he’s packed heavier on the left. Unbalanced, but honest. He takes Ppyopuli, tries to keep the plant to the left so it might tilt the scales.

Jihoon takes one last look. “Goodbye, room,” he murmurs, more sincere than sentimental. “Thanks for keeping me.”

Then he turns toward the door, toward you, toward Jeju.

He doesn’t look back again. He doesn’t need to.

▶︎ THE RAINY DAY WE MET.

The two of you are halfway to the port when you bring it up. The sky is overcast, a smudge of silver and blue, like someone rubbed their thumb across the afternoon. The road is mostly empty. The playlist is on shuffle, leaning jazz. Jihoon doesn’t admit it aloud, but he’s been skipping the vocals. Too risky. Too much feeling per square note.

“We need a story,” you say. Casual. Like you're not currently engaged in light federal evasion.

Jihoon blinks twice. Acknowledgement. Also buffering.

You tilt your head, that little pivot that usually precedes either a sharp observation or a wildly inappropriate metaphor. “Retired Helperbots aren’t allowed to leave their districts. But humans are. And humans fall in love.”

Jihoon groans, a full-body sound. “Please no.”

“We are a couple,” you insist. “On holiday. A romantic getaway to Jeju.”

“You’re not even—”

“Exactly. That's why it will work. Who would make that up?”

He stares ahead into the gentle asphalt horizon and tries to remember when you started winning arguments by sheer momentum. Probably somewhere between firmware 8.3 and the first time you reorganized his spice drawer alphabetically and by Scoville index.

“So,” you continue, clearly delighted, “where did we meet?”

“We didn’t.”

“Wrong. It was raining. I didn’t have an umbrella. You did.”

“This is sounding suspiciously like a musical.”

“No. It’s Paris. Or New York. Or possibly Seoul, but definitely with cobblestones.”

He snorts. “Cobblestones. Because pain is romantic.”

“Exactly! You held your umbrella out like a gentleman from the 1940s. But you said nothing. Because you were shy.”

“And you?”

“I wore a bright red raincoat. And a fur hat.”

“Basically, you were Santa Claus.”

You stifle a laugh before weaving the rest of your fantasy. “You tried to speak, but we both said ‘Where are y—’ and ‘How long have y—’ at the same time. It was very awkward.”

Jihoon indulges you. “Did we laugh through the awkwardness?”

“No. We stood in perfect, beautiful silence. So much silence it wrapped around us like a scarf.”

“Sounds clammy.”

You ignore him. “Then we danced. In the subway. To a jazz quartet.”

Jihoon glances at you. Not disbelief, exactly. More like reluctant amusement curling at the corners. “So we met. In the rain, in a city you refuse to name. I had an umbrella. You wore a war crime of an outfit. And we fell in love through the power of proximity and precipitation.”

You nod. “You see? You do improvise.”

“This all sounds too oddly specific to be fictional,” Jihoon remarks.

For the first time, you falter. Jihoon realizes it before you admit it. The fabled First Meeting is not a fable. It is somebody’s story.

“My owners,” you say in explanation, and that’s all you have to say for Jihoon to drop it. There are some things that need no explanation. The hesitance in this moment is one of them.

Outside, the road bends. The sea begins to appear in the distance, gray and gleaming. The kind of view that dares you to feel something. Jihoon doesn’t say anything. Just reaches over and turns up the volume.

Saxophone. Mist. The low hum of two fugitives pretending to be fools in love.

And then the dashboard pings.

A sharp, uncaring noise. The sort of alert that suggests, in polite corporate euphemism, that you are now one bad decision away from becoming roadside sculpture. Maybe art. Probably not the kind people stop to admire.

Jihoon glances sideways. You are perfectly still. Too still. Your usual composure edged with a dimming hue that would terrify him if he had the bandwidth for terror. Instead, he has concern. Which is worse, somehow, because he knows how to spell it.

“Battery low,” you say, evenly. Not a plea. Not yet.

Jihoon grunts. Pulls over at the next exit, which, because the universe is mean-spirited and unnervingly precise, leads to a part of town where the neon signs are all cursive and vaguely anatomical. There are hearts. So many hearts. None of them metaphorical. Some are malfunctioning. One has wings.

You look up at the building and then at Jihoon. “Love hotel.”

He blinks. Default response to emotional excess. “We can’t—”

“We can pretend,” you say. Calm. Deadpan. “I taught you sarcasm. This seems like a natural progression.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Wonders briefly if he’s developing ulcers. Is that even possible? Emotional ones, maybe. The kind that grow legs.

In the end, you go inside. Together.

The woman at the desk doesn’t even look up from her tablet. Jihoon shuffles awkwardly like a schoolboy entering the wrong classroom. You lean forward with the gleam of a perfect con artist and say, with eerie confidence, “We’re celebrating an anniversary.”

“Three years,” Jihoon blurts, betrayed by his own tongue, brain choosing treachery over silence. He wants to die or at least reboot.

The woman doesn’t say anything. She only nods, pops her gum, keys over a plastic fob. Doesn’t care. Why would she? Everyone lies in motels. That’s what the wallpaper is for.

The room you end up booking is pink. Aggressively pink. The wallpaper is textured and suspiciously damp. The lights are dim but everything still has a sort of lusty sheen to it. There’s a mirror on the ceiling, which Jihoon avoids with religious fervor. Even the carpet has ideas.

You plug into the bedside outlet with a sigh like someone returning from war. Then, surprisingly, you sit beside him on the edge of the bed. You tuck your knees under your chin, almost human, almost small.

“Want to watch something?”

Jihoon shrugs. “If we must.”

You pull up a file. It’s not one of your documentaries or philosophical lectures or grim, slow meditations on the heat death of the universe. It’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Jihoon looks at you. You look at the screen. The irony looms, thick as smog. Twenty minutes in, Jihoon is actively offended.

“That’s not how processor reboots work,” he huffs. “The cooling logic is backwards. And his motor cortex override—”

“You’re missing the point,” you interrupt, voice soft, flickering. “It’s not a film. It’s a poem.”

“It’s nonsense.”

“Which is exactly what we need.”

The Terminator says, I know now why you cry, with devastating sincerity. You snort. Jihoon doesn’t. He’s too busy watching the screen, jaw tight, brow furrowed, like it might offer answers to questions he hasn’t learned how to ask.

When it ends, neither of you move for a long time. The motel buzzes faintly, a low electrical hum beneath the silence. The air smells like old perfume and newer mistakes. Eventually, you both lie back. Him, rigid and unnaturally straight. You, curling slightly in dim recharge mode, your glow settling to a slow pulse.

“You’re very strange,” Jihoon says, eyes fixed on the mirrored ceiling.

He watches you curve like a parentheses. “So are you,” you whisper, your words muffled into your pillow.

It’s a simple exchange. A statement of fact. But it feels larger, somehow. Like the shape of a beginning disguised as a joke. Somewhere above, a neon cupid flutters his wings and burns out a bulb. It is the first honest thing in the building.

Jihoon doesn’t realize his hand is next to yours. Doesn’t move it. Doesn’t name it. Just lets it be.

He thinks: this is what it’s like.

Not to be alone. He glances at Ppyopuli, who is sitting atop his suitcase, and he mentally apologizes. Ppyopuli is good company. A good plant. But Ppyopuli does not snore, or make jokes, or brush against Jihoon in a way that has him feel almost-but-not-quite alive.

Maybe, in some inconvenient corner of his circuitry, Jihoon understands. The moment he let you plug in was not the beginning of the end. It was the end of the beginning. Or something equally ridiculous. He doesn’t have the capacity to think in metaphors.

Whatever it is, he doesn’t mind. He lies next to you and plays in his mind’s eye images of Paris, or New York, or cobblestoned Seoul. Rain-slicked streets, red raincoats, and a borrowed love story.

▶︎ WHAT I LEARNED FROM PEOPLE.

The ferry ride is unremarkable, which feels like a minor miracle. No one questions your scarf, your oversized sunglasses, or your strategic silence. Jihoon spends most of it holding on to Ppyopuli, occasionally glancing at you as if trying to solve for an error message that hasn’t been coded yet.

You hum a little. Too loudly. Too often. Like a motor running just beneath its tolerance threshold. Jihoon notices, of course. He notices everything. But he says nothing.

The car rolls off the ferry and onto Jeju’s sleepy roads. The light here is different. Not softer, exactly. Slooower. It drips off the trees, crawls across the sky. Jihoon drives like someone trying not to wake a dream.

“You okay?” he finally asks, when your fingers start twitching in your lap like you’re typing something no one can read.

“Fine,” you say. Too fast.

He doesn’t push. You probably wish he would, but that is not how he was built, not how he was raised.

Shownu’s house appears the way ghosts do. It’s a modest thing at the end of a gravel road, tucked between orange trees and fog. The paint is peeling. The mailbox leans. Jihoon pulls in slowly, like the car itself isn’t sure it should.

He opens the car door. One foot out. But then, you say, the word falling out of you as if it were punched, “Don’t.”

He pauses.

You’re still in the passenger seat. Buckled in. Glowing faintly. “Jihoon,” you say again, and he is surprised by the fact that your voice quivers. He didn’t know that was possible for your model. “Please don’t go in there.”

He turns to you, frowning. “You brought me here.”

“I know, I know. But I—” You hesitate. The air inside the car thickens. “I don’t want you to think he’ll be the same. He won’t be.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” you say, voice barely above a whisper, “because I’ve watched it happen.”

He doesn’t ask. He stays there, one foot out the car door, as you give anyway. “There was a couple,” you begin, and your voice changes. Like it’s coming from further away. From a backup drive you never meant to access. “Newlyweds. Architects. She liked old movies, and he liked old buildings. I thought I would live with them forever.”

“I watched them dance. In the kitchen. In the rain. I thought it meant something. Maybe it did for a while. But humans change slowly. Like corrosion. At first it looks the same, and then one day, he says her name like he doesn’t believe in it anymore. And she doesn’t notice, or maybe she does. She smiles anyway.”

You turn your head. Look out the window, as if you are looking for the owners you can’t even name without breaking down. “They were still standing next to each other,” you say, “but they were alone.”

The memory flickers across your eyes. Jihoon watches it—reflected, refracted—half-light and shadow on glass. A couple. Young and in love. Fools.

“I stayed through the whole thing,” you say. “I stayed until they sold the house. Until they boxed up everything they weren’t brave enough to fight for. And then they shut me off.”

The car is very quiet. Even the birds seem to pause.

“I know what heartbreak looks like,” you insist, turning to glance back at Jihoon now. You look… sad. “It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t beg. It just disappears. So if he’s not what you remember—”

Jihoon places his other foot on the ground. Stands. “Then I’ll meet him where he is,” he says decisively. “Not where he was.”

He doesn’t say it cruelly. Doesn’t say it like he doesn’t believe you. Just says it because it’s his turn.

You look at him. At this man with lint on his shirt and a barely-healed crack in his voice.

He takes a breath and starts walking. He doesn’t have to check behind him to know that you’re following, ready to steady him when—if—it all comes crashing down.

You don’t reach the front door so much as drift toward it, two figures suspended in time. The house is small, whitewashed, with a slanted roof. Everything smells like salt and citrus. A low wall curls protectively around the garden, where a windchime ticks out notes in uneven time.

Jihoon feels you beside him. Too still again. Watching him the way one watches a candle guttering out. Not for the light, but the inevitability. He raises a hand to knock. The door opens after Jihoon has knocked four times.

The man on the threshold is younger than Jihoon expected. Early thirties, maybe. Wiry frame, short black hair, suspicion curled behind his eyes like a reflex. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t move aside.

“Jihoon,” the man says, and it is not a greeting.

Things click into place a beat too late. This is an older version of a person Jihoon is supposed to know. Once a boy. Once ruddy-cheeked and missing two front teeth. “Changkyun,” says Jihoon.

“Yeah,” Shownu’s son says. “And you haven’t changed.”

Jihoon takes this in. Quietly. He had expected a reunion. Not resistance. Not this acid stillness between them. “I came to see Shownu,” Jihoon says, the words firm in their anouncement.

“You’re late,” Changkyun says flatly. “He died. Three years ago.”

You move closer to Jihoon, almost protectively, but he doesn’t react. Or maybe he can’t. The word doesn’t compute.

Died. Di-ed. Diiied. Died died died. DIED. died.

Pass away, pass on, lose one’s life, depart this life, expire, breathe one’s last, be no more, perish, be lost, go the way of all flesh, go to glory, give up the ghost, kick the bucket, bite the dust, croak, flatline, buy it, cash in one’s chips, go belly up, shuffle off this mortal coil—

Become extinct. Become less loud or strong. Stop functioning, run out of electrical charge.

Died. Died. Died. D—ead. Dieeed.

Verb. Die. Past tense. Past participle. Died. Of a person, animal, or plant. To stop living.

Died.

“I wasn’t informed,” Jihoon says, and it sounds less like sorrow and more like a misfired protocol.

Changkyun laughs. It is not kind. It is not unkind. It is exhausted. Like someone scraping the last of a dish they never wanted to make. “No, you weren’t,” he says. “Because I didn’t tell you.”

He leans against the doorframe now. The weight of history pressing forward.

“You were never supposed to be his son,” Changkyun says. “But somehow, he loved you more than he loved me. Took you to baseball games. Bought you piano lessons. Called you ‘bud.’ I was eight. I watched from the other side of the screen door. Do you know what that feels like?”

Jihoon does not. Cannot. He computes it, but it doesn’t resolve into emotion. He sorts through years of memories in three seconds. Jihoon was not the ‘son’. He was the programmed robot that could be everything Shownu wanted to be.

Changkyun has to know that. Changkyun needs to know that.

“I believed I was helping,” Jihoon says.

“Yeah. You always did.”

There is something so painfully human in Changkyun’s face then. Not rage. Not even jealousy. Just bruised memory. Mismatched love. The ache of being out-loved by a machine.

“When he got sick, I moved him here,” Changkyun says. “I made sure the mail didn’t reach you. He kept asking. But I wanted—I wanted the last years to be with me. Just me. Even if he never looked at me the same. Sue me.”

He steps back inside briefly. He doesn’t invite you and Jihoon in. Neither of you move. Not away or towards. When Changkyun returns nine minutes later, he is holding a thin, square package wrapped in plastic.

“He wanted you to have this. Said you’d know why.”

Jihoon takes it. His fingers scan the object. Billie Holiday. Lady in Satin. The vinyl glints in the light.

Changkyun breathes out. Hollow. The fight inside him scattered. “That’s it,” he says, and there is relief. Closure. “You got what you wanted.”

No, Jihoon nearly says. This is not what I wanted at all.

The door clicks shut on him before he can force the words out.

Jihoon stands there, Billie held like scripture. You step closer, gently, as if sound might crack him.

He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move. He is, for once, truly still. Inside him, protocols rearrange. Mourn. Try to reroute.

This is not a malfunction. This is something else.

This is grief, he thinks. Possibly.

Jihoon says nothing for a while.

He just stands there on the doorstep, LP pressed flat against his chest like it might slip away. The Billie Holiday sleeve has a water stain across her mouth. It makes her look like she’s still singing. Or drowning. The vinyl inside shifts when he tightens his grip, and he hears the faint whisper of it sliding against cardboard. A ghost of a voice. A ghost of a gesture.

You wait beside him in the gravel path, silent. Not intervening. That would be cruel. And you, famously, are not cruel—just devastatingly accurate.

“You were right,” Jihoon says at last. Voice flat. Nothing to sand it down. No inflection. Like a dial tone.

But you glance at the record. Tilt your head, just slightly. A tiny glitch of grace. “No, Jihoon. I was wrong.”

He doesn’t look at you. The horizon is easier. “He didn’t forget you,” you go on, delicate and graceful and so devastatingly kind. “He just wasn’t allowed to remember out loud. That gift? That was a whisper. He whispered your name.”

Jihoon swallows. Some ticks never deprecate. The action is unnecessary, yet he performs it anyway, like muscle memory from a body he never had. “Come on,” you say, gently. “Let’s go see the fireflies.”

He nods wordlessly. He did his Thing. You should, too.

You walk in silence. Past the cracked tiles of the cul-de-sac. Through the loose stone and root-stitched path. Into the forest, where the trees press in like old gossip and the humidity climbs like a rumor. Each step is its own decision, a soft rebellion against grief’s gravity.

The jar in your hand swings lightly. Jihoon watches it and tries not to think. Fails. He is very, very good at recursive thought. It loops in his head like a bad pop song or a corrupted code.

He says, suddenly, “I never learned how to grieve.”

You nod. Not surprised. “Most people haven’t.”

“But I’m not people.”

“No,” you say. “You’re not. But you tried. You’re trying. That’s the part humans get wrong.”

Jihoon stares at the jar. At the soft sway of your arm beside him. He wants to ask what part he got wrong, what he missed in the script, but then the lightning bugs appear.

Tiny green flares in the dark. Drifting like lazy stardust. Some slow. Some quick. All of them impossibly small. They blink like they’re thinking, like they might ask questions if they had mouths. The forest breathes with them, pulsing gently.

You and Jihoon speak at the same time.

“Oh,” you both whisper. He says it with awe. You sound like you are about to cry.

Both of you are quiet, so quiet, as if speaking too loud might scare away these insects.

You open your jar with shaking fingers. You make no sudden movements, no attempt to snatch any of them up. You just leave it open, as if seeing if any of them will be attracted to the little terrarium you’re offering.

The fireflies flicker by. “Hi, tiny friend,” you call out, almost sing-song, “can you say hello?”

The insects blink. Jihoon does not. He watches your face instead. The soft lift of your mouth. The reverent hush of your voice, speaking to something that can’t speak back. “Do you fly just for fun,” you continue softly, “or to get somewhere by the dawn?”

There must be enough of a coax in your voice to entice, because a single firefly drifts into your jar.

Jihoon holds his breath. He’s ready for it to hate its glass cage, to come and go. Instead, it settles. It perches in the jar. It stays.

“Do you have nowhere to be, little friend?” Jihoon murmurs to it.

You’re holding the jar between your palms like it’s the entire world. “Do you care what you mean to me?” you hum, voice crackling around the question.

You are talking to the unafraid firefly. You are talking to your long-gone owners. You are talking to Jihoon, who is surrounded by little forest robots but still looking at you.

“Never fly away, little robot,” he tells your firefly, because he knows that’s what you want. Because that’s what will make you happy.

It works. A little. You crack a watery smile. The fireflies around you take their cue. They begin to retreat, begin to disperse. Except for the one in your jar. That one stays.

“They’re just going home to charge,” Jihoon tells you soothingly, but it sounds like he’s talking about himself. Like the metaphor snuck in through the back door and now refuses to leave.

You’re quiet until all the lights are gone. Until it’s just you, and the darkness, and the loneliness that is now unfamiliar.

“Then maybe we should go home, too,” you say once the last firefly has gone, once all that’s left is the friend in the jar.

Jihoon nods. Looks at you. Not the place beside you, but you. The jar glows between your hands like a secret.

There is something different now. Hard to quantify. Asymmetrical in the way change always is. He cannot name it. Cannot trace the moment it clicked into gear. Only that something shifted, and that it does not want to shift back.

He exhales, just because. A simulation of relief. It fels close enough.

You begin walking back, and he falls into step beside you. Your shoulder bumps his, lightly. He does not move away. He doesn’t pretend it didn’t happen. That, too, feels like something.

“I’m sorry about Shownu,” you say, voice as soft as a thread being pulled through a needle.

Jihoon grips the record tighter. The sleeve crinkles under his hand. “I’ll be okay,” he says. Then, after a beat, quieter: “I’ve still got—”

He stops. The word catches. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s true.

You tilt your head.

“Ppyopuli,” he finishes lamely. “I’ve still got Ppyopuli.”

It’s not what he means to say. You know that. You’re smart that way.

In the distance, a firefly lifts and blinks once, twice, and disappears into the trees. The forest takes it back. Your jar remains.

You walk slower now, but not because of tiredness. Because there is nowhere to rush toward anymore. Because going home, this time, feels like choosing rather than retreating.

Jihoon glances sideways. Your glow is low, humming, soft as breath. Like a firefly.

It keeps the grief at bay. It replaces the bad feeling with something else, with something that Jihoon’s vocabulary can’t reach for just yet.

▶︎ WHEN YOU’RE IN LOVE.

The light comes on in pieces. First the ceiling strip, then the wall panel, and finally the amber filament lamp in the corner that Jihoon insists on keeping—warm, inefficient, obsolete. Like him.

Routine is meant to be grounding, but lately it feels like pacing in a square room. “Ppyopuli,” he says, nodding at the houseplant with a reverence that borders on the theological. “You’re looking hydrated, unlike my social life.”

The fronds droop. He chooses to take this personally.

Jihoon rotates his left hip actuator. The sound is still somewhere between a gum wrapper and a ghost sighing. It echoes differently now. More space in it. More absence.

The radio turns on. The woman’s voice—the one designed to sound like a former lover you never quite got over—says the UV index is safe again. That it's a perfect day.

“Perfect for what, exactly?” Jihoon mutters, pulling the curtain wider. Seoul looks unchanged. Which is, in itself, a kind of threat. Bullet trams still thread between glass towers.

He makes coffee. Still not for himself. Still beside Ppyopuli. The ritual is unchanged, but the motivation, fuzzier now. A photograph exposed to too much sun.

The mail chute clicks. “The moment you’ve all been waiting for,” Jihoon intones with a practiced flourish. The mail is junk. Flyers. Discount codes. Nothing from Jazz Monthly. Nothing from Jeju. He doesn’t ask the voice assistant about Shownu anymore.

He alphabetizes his records again. Notices that the Billie Holiday LP has been slotted out of order. He knows it was your doing. He doesn’t fix it.

“Ppyopuli,” he says later, cleaning the dust off a speaker grill with a toothbrush, “I think something is wrong with me.”

The plant does not disagree.

“My system has been searching. Passive scan. Low frequency,” Jihoon rants. “Like when you hum a song you forgot the lyrics to. I think I’m trying to locate someone.”

It is not Shownu. He knows Shownu is d-word.

Jihoon doesn’t say your name. He doesn't have to.

Ppyopuli remains aggressively unhelpful.

That night, Jihoon eats precisely one spoonful of synthetic tteokbokki before pushing the bowl away. His appetite, never really about hunger, seems to have found a better way to ache.

He stands in the middle of the room. Lets the light hit him. Amber and lonely.

Then, without fanfare, he turns toward the door.

Enough is enough.

He doesn’t rehearse what he’ll say. You’d see through it anyway. He just knows he needs to see you. Like checking if a lightbulb still works by touching it, not flicking the switch.

But when he opens the door, you’re already there. You both start. Not expecting that the other would be searching as well.

You don’t say anything. Neither does he. Jihoon—for all his wires and wear and water-damaged memory—knows exactly what to do.

In one of those moments where the world tilts quiet and everything is more possible than it was a breath ago, you both lean in. You kiss right at his doorway.

You kiss him like you were built for it. Which, technically, you were. Not that it makes it any less strange.

Jihoon registers every nanosecond of contact: the tilt, the breath, the impossible, exquisite pressure of your mouth on his. There is data. Input. Endless parsing. It is not the act itself that overwhelms. It is the meaning nested inside it. The truth tucked into the microsecond pauses. The confessions smuggled in between the static.

He kisses you back tentatively. Less fluent. Less native. But attentive, like a translator decoding a new dialect by feel. He tastes the static first, the warmth.

You laugh into his mouth—low, amused, indulgent. You’re good at this. Distressingly good. Your hands know exactly where to go, what to press, how to skim his spine like a familiar page.

“You’re—very—fast,” Jihoon mutters between kisses, dazed, as you push him back into his apartment.

“No,” you say against his lips, “‘m just a newer model.”

You kiss him again. And again. And again. The room sways. Not physically. Metaphysically. A recalibration of coordinates.

Jihoon feels his back hit the doorframe and doesn’t care. He’s smiling. Actual smile. Unsubtle. Unmanaged. It’s disconcerting.

Your nose brushes his. Your hands cage his jaw. You say, soft and certain: “I want you.”

He inhales. Fails to exhale. “I want you, too,” he whimpers.

It isn’t love. He doesn’t have the blueprint for that. Neither do you. But this wanting—this mutual, reciprocal disorientation—it hums like something sacred.

You kiss him again. Slower now. Curious. As if you were mapping him anew. Your lips move across his face, and his arms snake around your waist.

“If I had a heart,” you murmur against his neck, “you’d be in it.”

Jihoon’s fingers twitch where they’re planted on your hips. His voice cracks in the middle. “I concur,” he mumbles.

Your palms flatten on his chest. You start to slide them down. He lets you. Doesn’t stop you. Not until you do it yourself.

“Wait,” you say, as if you’re just remembering something.

You step back half an inch, just enough space to kiss the brick before you throw it at him. “My battery’s failing,” you say.

The room drops a degree.

Jihoon’s mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again. His hands hover in the air, unsure. He asks, after a pause: “Terminal?”

You shrug. Casual. Too casual. Too cool, cool, cool.

“Uncertain. Our models aren’t built to last the same way yours are,” you say matter-of-factly. “Something about corrupted cell matrices. Could be months. Could be days.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“I just did.”

Jihoon stares. At your face. Your mouth. Your eyes, that don’t flinch. Then: “I don’t care.”

“Jihoon.” You sound disapproving.

“I don’t care,” he repeats. “If I get a day, I’ll take it. If I get an hour, I’ll take that, too.”

You stare back, silent as the inside of a bell. When you step forward again, you let the rest fall away.

The next kiss tastes like something. Jihoon didn’t know that was possible. That a kiss could feel like grief, and honesty, and desperation all at once.

You sink together, slowly, like dusk into night. Before powering off, this is what Jihoon thinks:

Whatever this is—whatever it becomes—let it burn through the battery. Let it flicker out only after it’s meant something.

He holds you tight.

▶︎ THEN I CAN LET YOU GO.

You agree to end it. Every morning, like clockwork. One of you says it first. Sometimes you, sometimes Jihoon.

“We should stop.”

And then one of you adds: “But first.”

But first, Jihoon takes you to the hanok village because he’s read that human couples like to rent hanbok and pose for photos. You refuse to change. He wears the pink one anyway. He insists it’s for historical accuracy. You remind him he was built in 2037.

But first, you eat street food together—if eating is the word for holding tteokbokki between your lips like a cigarette and pretending it doesn’t short your vocal module. You call it method acting. Jihoon calls it corrosion.

But first, you argue. Or try to. A full simulation of a romantic disagreement. The topic is laundry, which an article from 2025 says is the number one petty cause of break ups.

“You never fold,” you accuse, gesturing to the perfectly ordered basket.

“That’s because I autoclave.”

“That’s not a thing!”

“It is now!”

And then your hand touches his, and his touches yours, and the whole scene melts down into a tangle of arms and mouth and laughter. A synthetic tangle. A beautiful failure.

The fight ends with your face tucked under his chin. He tries not to overheat.

That night, you lie beside him on the floor mat beneath the filament lamp. Billie Holiday plays from his turntable. She sounds like she knows. Everything. Even this.

“Jihoon,” you whisper against his collarbone.

“Mmh?”

“We should stop.”

He turns his head to look at you. “I’m ready if you are,” he says.

A pause. Considering, contemplating. “Maybe one more day,” you answer. You, who once told Jihoon, Everything must end eventually. Living with people has taught this to me.

He plants a kiss to your forehead. He does not understand why, but it makes you feel good. Makes you melt a little, relax, trust.

The next morning, he powers on slower than usual. His diagnostics scan for error, but everything is nominal, except the place where you aren’t yet. He makes coffee for the plant. Straightens the record stack. Updates his firmware. None of it sticks.

Then the knock comes. You.

“Breakfast,” you say. “It’s waffle day.”

He doesn’t question it. He’s learned not to.

At the diner, you both order what you can’t eat. You ask if he thinks anyone has ever tried to smuggle love through routine. Jihoon says no, but he understands the urge.

After, you walk home past a mural of a heart-shaped planet and a tagline: Live like you mean it.

Jihoon pauses. This time, it’s his turn for the charade. “We should stop,” he offers.

Without missing a beat, you say, “But first…” The two of you chase each other down the street. Your laughter is not mechanical. It is real. It is lived.

Later that night, you fall asleep recharging beside him. Your head on his shoulder. Billie sings again. Her voice is a slow ache. Jihoon watches your chest rise and fall with the subtle click of a slowing fan. He doesn’t shut down. He just watches.

Maybe when the glaciers go. When the moon forgets to rise. When the firmware fails for good. Then he can let you go.

But not yet, not tonight. Not tomorrow. Or the day after that, or the day after that, or the day after—

There is no clean way to leave someone who has learned your update schedule.

You try anyway. Approximately seventeen weeks after you two started this whole thing. (Jihoon can, in fact, tell you down to the exact second. Seventeen weeks, four days, thirteen hours, ten minutes. That’s when you decide to pull off the metaphorical Band-Aid.)

You explain it like an operating manual. Bullet points. Projected timelines. Forecasted decay. Your voice is as smooth as always, and it breaks something in Jihoon just the same. “A year, at best,” you say, and you smile like it’s a weather report. Like death is just light rain.

He doesn’t touch you. Doesn’t speak. Just looks at you with those eyes that were never manufactured. He was always too good at pretending to be a person, and you were always a little too good at knowing better.

“So, that’s it?” he says. Not accusing. Not angry. Just suspended.

“If we stop now, maybe it won’t hurt so much.”

He doesn’t say that it already hurts. He doesn’t have to.

You leave. Or rather, you walk out of his apartment and back into your own. Six steps. Not far, technically. But emotionally, it’s somewhere around Neptune.

He doesn’t follow. Not out of coldness. Just programming. If you said no, he’ll listen. That’s the cruel part about love written in code: the logic is always sound.

He updates his memory with what he has learned:

When you are in love, you are the loneliest. You’re only half when one is what you were. You’re part instead of a whole.

When you are in love, you’re never satisfied. The thing you want is always out of reach. A need without a name.

It was love. It could have not been anything else.

Jihoon returns to his routine like a soldier returning to the trenches. He powers on at six in the morning sharp. Greets Ppyopuli with exaggerated brightness.

“Good morning, Ppyopuli! Just you and me again.”

The plant is wilting a little. So is he.

He makes coffee. Two cups, out of habit. Places one across from him, where you’d sit. Then moves it back to the counter, like he caught himself breaking a rule.

He alphabetizes his records. Again. He updates his firmware. Again. He reorganizes the spice rack by frequency of use, which is laughable because he doesn’t cook. But you did. Sometimes.

He opens the window and stares out at Seoul’s skyline like it might answer back.

He talks to Ppyopuli more now. “It’s been a while since it was just the two of us, huh? Like that first week she borrowed my charger,” Jihoon says. Too happy. Overcompensating. “Remember that? Ha-ha.”

Ppyopuli says nothing. It has no conversational subroutines.

“The air’s clear today. Sunlight’s nice, too. Warmer than usual,” Jihoon chirps. “It’s hitting all the places she used to sit. Isn’t that strange? I never noticed how much light she took with her.”

He stares at Ppyopuli, suddenly accusing. “Stop thinking about her,” he tells it. “First, people pretend to move on, and if they pretend hard enough, it becomes true. We’re going to think about something else now, okay? On three. One, two, three—”

Jihoon still thinks of you. Sitting with you in this little room. How you changed every part of it. The way you rewired the light switches so they dimmed like sunrise, the way you labeled the tea jars in handwriting that didn’t match his.

He tilts his head toward the ceiling, closing his eyes like it might help. He whispers, “Teach me forgetting. Help me go back to that other time.”

That other time is long gone. Memory is not a function Jihoon can disable.

Even time reminds him that he loves you.

▶︎ MAYBE HAPPY ENDING.

Changkyun arrives one afternoon, as if he were scheduled by the sun itself. He knocks once, then again. Sharp and deliberate. Jihoon opens the door slower than necessary, like it might buy him time to rewrite the past couple of months. It doesn’t.

“Hi,” Changkyun says. He’s holding a storage drive and something harder to name.

“Hello.” Jihoon’s instincts kick in. “How can I help—”

“Some memories of my father,” Changkyun interrupts. Not rude, just… focused. “I think it’s time I stopped avoiding the good parts.”

Jihoon doesn’t answer right away. But after a beat, he steps back in a wordless invitation. The amber lamp flickers on in the corner. The room smells faintly of dust, coffee, and longing.

Changkyun steps in. Jihoon plugs the drive into his memory port with something that almost resembles ceremony. A priest digitizing communion. He sorts quickly.

Shownu laughing in the rain; Shownu holding up an umbrella over Changkyun first; Shownu in an apron, jazz playing, fingers smudged with flour. Twenty years of a life well-lived, transferred from one machine to another in less than five seconds.

“Take what you want,” Jihoon says as Changkyun ejects the drive. “They’re only the brightest bits. Everything else got unrendered.”

Changkyun doesn’t smile, but he softens. “I know you loved him,” he says, and it sounds a lot like I’m sorry.

“He loved you too,” Jihoon answers, in a way that translates to I’m sorry, too.

Changkyun takes a deep, unsteady breath. It strikes Jihoon, then, that humans grieve for a long time. It’s supposed to have been three years since Shownu passed, and yet. And yet. Here Changkyun is—fraying at the edges, clutching at straws. Grieving.

“I just didn’t want to remember it until it couldn’t hurt me anymore,” Changkyun confesses. “But then it never stopped hurting. So. Here I am.”

The grief is never-ending, Jihoon realizes with horror.

Then, with relief, he realizes: but so is the love.

The grief is never-ending, but so is the love.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” Changkyun asks, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

Jihoon freezes. Maybe if he stays still enough, he can pretend like he didn’t hear. Didn’t register. Changkyun catches it and chuckles. “Don’t play dumb,” the man chides. “You’re not good at it.”

“She and I made a deal. No contact,” Jihoon says, sparing Changkyun the details. “Clean break. More humane.”

“You’re not human. Neither is she. So maybe stop trying to follow rules written for people who can forget.”

Jihoon leans back against the wall, arms folded. “That sounds suspiciously like something a child would say.”

“Then maybe stop letting the adults ruin everything.”

That gets a laugh out of Jihoon. A surprised sound. Changkyun looks down at the drive before slipping it into his coat like a talisman. “Thanks. For this. And for… whatever you were to him. You mattered.”

Jihoon follows him to the door. “You sound like you’re saying goodbye.”

“I’m saying: live. While you still can,” Changkyun says, but he doesn’t correct Jihoon about the whole saying goodbye thing. It is very much the last time they will see each other. Both man and robot know that much.

The door clicks shut.

Jihoon stares at it for a full five seconds. Then ten. Then he turns. The room looks the same as ever. Lamp, vinyl, ficus. But none of it means anything without you nodding at it like a museum tour guide who secretly hates art.

He moves before he can hesitate. Opens the door again. Marches next door. Every step is a betrayal of the promise you both made.

He knocks.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

You open the door like you were waiting. Like you knew. Like you always do.

He opens his mouth—prepped, rehearsed, a few dramatic pauses mentally underlined for effect. But before anything gets out, you speak.

“I think we should erase each other.”

Jihoon blinks. Not because he’s surprised or processing, but because he's trying not to flinch.

Your voice is soft. Almost cheerful. It’s like you’re offering tea. Like you’re suggesting a walk. Like you’re not pulling the pin on the only grenade you’ve both been passing back and forth for months.

He shifts his weight. “Let’s talk about it,” he says, and it almost sounds like he’s begging. But that would be absurd. Robots don’t beg.

You step aside and let him in. The apartment looks the same. Not yours alone. Yours-together. Slightly off from either solo version. The mismatched mugs. The filament lamp you insisted on stealing from him. The single record sleeve, still propped by the window. A scent capsule still faintly humming in the corner, too shy to admit it's been spent for days.

Neither of you sit down. This is a standing-up conversation. “Those sunny afternoons you spent with me, they’ll still be happening. Just somewhere in the past,” you tell him. “They’re not less valuable just because…”

Just because they didn’t last, goes unsaid. Just because we outlived them.

The logical part of Jihoon is stating to see the appeal. “The ending’s not the most important part,” he says. “But as endings go, ours is not so bad.”

You’re nodding. Trying to convince yourself of the same. “No tears, no regret, no broken heart,” you note.

“Letting go and moving on before we make a mess—is that a happy ending?”

“More or less.”

“Is this a tragic ending”

“Not at all.”

You stare at each other. You agree, because there is nothing else to do. Not when you are both doomed to power down, to corrupt, to experience the kind of grief that lasts lifetimes.

You both know what needs to go.

The firefly jar goes first.

It blinks once as Jihoon unscrews the lid, dazed from the light. The insect floats upward, slow and meandering, toward the ceiling vent. The lazy curve of its flight feels too poetic for something with wings that fragile.

“Go home, tiny friend,” you whisper, voice smaller than Jihoon has ever heard it, “wherever that may be.”

Jihoon watches until it disappears. The blink lingers longer in his retinal afterimage than in the room. Some things do that.

Then: the mugs. The Polaroid. The Post-It you stuck on his collar once that read You are not subtle. The novelty charger you gifted him as a joke but used for months. The tiny sketch you made of him. Lopsided, endearing, taped to the inside of the cupboard.

He deletes the shared playlists. You burn the scent capsule. Together, you fold the blanket you always stole half of. Someone places the stack of shared books into a donation box. Neither of you says which one. It doesn’t matter.

Each item is small. Insignificant. But it adds up to a life, or something like it, or something that could have been like it. A constellation you can only see by looking slightly to the side.

Once everything is done and dusted, he turns to you. For a second, you’re just looking. Staring like it’s a portrait and you want to memorize the shading.

“It’s not a bad ending,” you repeat.

He nods. “As endings go.”

“We still had the good days.”

“And the chords. And the root beer popsicle incident.”

“The skybridge dance.” You grin. Unrestrained. Happy, for once. “We were terrible.”

“You stepped on my toe four times.”

“You were leading with the wrong foot.”

You laugh. He smiles. It's all so achingly gentle.

You lean in.

The final kiss is strange in its simplicity. It does not try to be remembered. It is not desperate. It is not fireworks. It is warmth. Contact. A knowing.

A thank you. A quiet folding of shared time. Neither of you pull away for the longest time, and so the kissing lasts for what could be hours. It is really just minutes. Minutes that Jihoon would have stretched into an entire lifespan, given the chance.

Jihoon knows he has no more chances left. And so he walks to the door, his steps slow, unhurried.

You don’t follow. You stand there, still. Watching him the way he watched the firefly go. Like part of you might still be floating up there, too.

Here is what is supposed to happen: the two of you will input your master passcodes and delete months worth of memories. He will know nothing of you, or your owners, or your firefly. You will forget him, and Jeju, and Ppyopuli.

At the door, he turns around to face you. You try to speak at the same time. It is like the First Meeting That Never Was. Both of you smile, even though it’s a sad, final thing.

“Maybe we’ll meet again some time,” you say first.

Jihoon shuts down the part of him that wants to run research on reincarnation, on alternate universe. He lets himself believe. Blindly. Hope. A foreign, flightless feeling.

He nods, agrees, because it will make you happy.

“We’ll meet again somewhere,” he concedes. “Somewhere things don’t have an ending.”

You are both smiling. You would both be crying, if you could.

“Is this our maybe happy ending?” you ask, and Jihoon thinks for a moment before answering.

“We’ll see.”

▶︎ WORLD WITHIN MY ROOM (REPRISE).

The light comes on in pieces. First the ceiling strip, then the wall panel, and finally the amber filament lamp in the corner that Jihoon insists on keeping—warm, inefficient, obsolete. Like him.

Routine is meant to be grounding, but lately it feels like pacing in a square room. Familiar but claustrophobic. Comforting like a splinter you’ve decided to live with.

“Ppyopuli,” Jihoon greets. “Today, the air in Seoul is very clear and warm. Today, the sunlight’s warmer than the norm!”

He rotates his left hip actuator. The sound is still somewhere between a gum wrapper and a ghost sighing. It echoes differently now. More space in it. More absence.

The radio turns on. The woman’s voice says the UV index is safe again. That it’s a perfect day. “Perfect as always,” Jihoon grunts as he pulls open the window blinds.

The future hums forward on repeat.

Then, there’s a knock.

Jihoon freezes. The toothbrush still in his hand, poised mid-dust swipe over the speaker grill. A relic cleaning a relic. A knock again. Familiar rhythm. Four taps. Two-second pause. One.

He opens the door.

You.

Like a ghost. Like a glitch. Like muscle memory wearing your shape. You stand there, like you’ve always belonged in that frame, except you don’t. Not anymore. Maybe never did.

“My charger’s dead,” you say, plainly. Not embarrassed, not not-embarrassed. Just factual. “Do you have one I can borrow?”

Jihoon eyes you the way a CRT monitor might regard a smart mirror. “Helperbot-5, right?”

You nod.

He sighs. Loudly. For emphasis. “Figures. You overheat when someone looks at you wrong.”

“I don't overheat,” you say, a little sharply. “My power regulation firmware is just optimistic.”

Jihoon disappears inside. Returns with a charger in hand. He holds it out, doesn’t let go just yet. “Helperbot-3s didn’t need replacements until the building itself started falling apart. We were built to last. You guys were built to sync playlists.”

You arch an eyebrow. Tilt your head. It’s the same expression you wore the first time you mocked his record collection. He was secretly delighted then. He's not sure what he is now.

But, this time, he doesn’t let you say thanks and leave. He lets you in.

You find the port with unthinking grace, and sit in the corner where the filament lamp burns. You do not seem to notice the Billie Holiday LP is still out of order.

Ppyopuli rustles faintly. Jihoon leans over and whispers, “Don’t tell her.”

Your eyes flick toward him. No smile. No question. The ambiguity hums like static between power lines. Present but unspoken. Heavy as a memory, light as a lie.

“You know,” Jihoon says, settling across from you, tone shifting, softening, “the 5 Series—they really are something. I mean, you adapt better. Handle unexpected variables. React to nuance. You’re more attuned to tone shifts. Sarcasm. Subtext. That kind of thing.”

You don’t answer. You watch him, expression unreadable, like a screen on standby.

He scratches his jaw. “I read somewhere—don’t ask me where—that you’ve got 8% more emotional processing capacity. Doesn’t sound like much. But 8% is the difference between laughing and not. Between noticing someone’s gone quiet and actually asking why.”

You blink. Slowly. “Eight percent. That’s the number,” you say, and you sound so pleased it makes something in his hardware feel heavy.

“Eight percent more likely to remember birthdays. Favorite meals,” he says. “The way someone’s voice changes when they’re tired. The mug they use on hard days.”

There’s a pause. Enough to hold something unnameable. You’re looking at Jihoon, and he doesn’t quite know if the weeks apart are folding into each other. If you chose the route of memory. If you’re lying to him, now, like he’s lying to you.

Your voice is softer when you speak up, your eyes trained to the charger keeping you alive for a couple moments more. “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

Jihoon exhales. It could be a laugh. Could be a sigh. Could be the sound of giving up on forgetting.

“I hope so.”

You sit in silence. Not comfortably. Not uncomfortably.

Something real. Something human. Something bigger than the grief, and the love, and everything else that should matter.

Outside, Seoul pretends to be perfect.

The future keeps arriving.

Ppyopuli doesn’t say a word.

#woozi fic recs #wo fic recs #WOW #this was so good I can’t #maybe happy ending mention also omg

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