I don't know what to say, I feel the ending close!
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Seohyun lay sprawled on her bed, surrounded by the soft glow of fairy lights strung along the walls of her pastel-colored room. The once comforting space now felt like a suffocating bubble. Her phone lay discarded beside her pillow, buzzing intermittently with notifications she ignored.
Messages piled up—Jaemin's concerned check-ins, Renjun's lighthearted jokes, and occasional emojis from Chenle. They were all trying to pull her out of the shell she'd withdrawn into, but she couldn't bring herself to respond.
The weight of Chenle's confession still pressed heavily on her. The sincerity in his eyes that night haunted her, leaving her conflicted. She hadn't known how to answer him—not because she didn't care about him, but because she wasn't ready to navigate the complexity of what he felt. And the fact that Donghyuck had overheard everything added another layer to the emotional chaos she was stuck in.
Since that night, she'd made it her mission to avoid both of them. Chenle's texts were the hardest to ignore. Each message felt like a gentle nudge toward a conversation she wasn't ready to have, and guilt gnawed at her every time she left him on read.
As for Donghyuck... he was more elusive, but she knew him well enough to sense that his absence wasn't permanent. He had a way of lurking in the background, watching quietly until the right moment to reappear.
Seohyun spent her days cooped up inside, only stepping out of her room when absolutely necessary. She missed meals often, relying on the occasional snack Renjun or Jaemin left at her door. It became a routine—one she hated but couldn't seem to break out of.
Every time she tried to muster the energy to leave her room, her thoughts dragged her back down: the look in Chenle's eyes, Donghyuck's unreadable expression, the weight of the mission she'd failed to handle alone. It all swirled in her mind, leaving her exhausted before she could even take a step toward the door.
The physical pain from her shoulder wound didn't help. Though it was healing, every ache reminded her of the night Donghyuck had carried her back to the base. She still couldn't wrap her head around the fact that it was him—of all people—who'd been there in her most vulnerable moment. The memory unsettled her, stirring emotions she couldn't quite name.
Why did he care?
The question gnawed at her endlessly, and the more she tried to push it aside, the louder it echoed in her mind. It wasn't just the fact that he'd carried her; it was the look in his eyes that night—a fleeting glimpse of something soft beneath his usual sharp exterior. And yet, Donghyuck hadn't followed up, hadn't tried to talk to her since that night.
That in itself frustrated her. He was always so infuriatingly unpredictable—one moment distant, the next too close, like a storm that hovered at the edge of her world, waiting to crash in.
