after a scandal, wooyoung, a defunct k-pop idol, runs away to his sister's hometown. he craves anonymity, yet his quiet routine is disrupted by a chance encounter- a local with a warm presence, who offers him a glimpse of a life beyond the spotlight...
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the colour drained from wooyoung's face, and san's grin subsequently widened.
the memories flooding wooyoung's headspace grew all the more vivid, and he realised that he was in fact, not cursed with the inability to forget embarrassing memories. instead, he was cursed to forget the most important bits.
bloomfest 2017, the very day that wooyoung had conjured up the courage to confess to a girl he'd hardly known for two weeks, yet back then, he was convinced that she was the one. in fact, she was not the one, seeing how seven years and 28 seasons later, he hardly remembered her name. this was not embarrassing information; wooyoung was not the type of person to shy away from such situations. what was embarrassing was the letter san held in his hand.
wooyoung asked himself the same question that had been at the forefront of his jumbled thoughts for the hundredth time that minute: why the hell did choi san have that letter?!
"how on earth did you get that?!" wooyoung shrieked, his eyes wide as he stared at the incriminating envelope.
san's grin widened even further, if that was possible. "your face is priceless right now."
"be serious for once!" wooyoung's voice cracked, further worsening the humiliation he felt. "how did you get that letter? i never even gave it to her!"
"i told you," san leaned forward, his voice hardly a match for wooyoung's loudness, but somehow still grounding. "that night. it fell out of your pocket when your friends carried you away."
wooyoung wished the ground could swallow him whole. so it wasn't a case of forgetting the important details. he recalled crumpling up the envelope and shoving it into his pocket because he had been too nervous to think of folding it first. however, the alcohol in his system that night had ruined everything, and he ended up not even seeing the girl.
san's eyes twinkled with amusement as he continued, "you were so out of it. i couldn't just leave it there, so i picked it up. figured i'd give it back to you when you were sober, but... well, you know how things go."
another gasp escaped wooyoung's lips. "and you kept it?" he huffed, staring at san in disbelief. "are you crazy?!"
san pondered deeply. "honestly, i'm not sure why i kept it. i believe a higher power was trying to tell me that it would come in handy someday. and it did, didn't it?" he locked his mischievous eyes with wooyoung's terrified ones, saying, "this was fated to happen."
"fate?!"
the scene felt straight out of a movie. and if this were a movie, san would be the antagonist who wanted nothing but the worst for the irreproachable, virtuous protagonist, a man who minded his own business and wanted nothing to do with trouble, but it was only his cursed fate that brought the devil incarnate to his doorstep for god knows what cruel purpose. in that moment, the smirk on san's face appeared almost devious, and the spark in his eyes made wooyoung want to pull his own eyeballs out of their sockets so he wouldn't have to bear his gaze for even a moment longer.
