𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗞𝗜𝗦𝗦

and suddendly, nothing was the same

yuwon laid there, tangled in her sheets, staring blankly at the ceiling, but her mind was somewhere else. it kept dragging her back to that moment—that moment when heeseung's eyes bore into hers, searching, accusing, begging. she closed her eyes now, wishing she could wipe the memory clean, but it lingered like a shadow at the edges of her mind, refusing to leave.

his voice, sharp and wounded, rang in her ears like a harsh wind cutting through silence. "is this who the fuck you are, kim yuwon?" the disbelief, the jagged edge of betrayal—it was all there, etched in the roughness of his tone, like he couldn't quite believe the truth unraveling before him. and the way he had looked at her—god, the way he looked at her. it wasn't just the anger, but the hurt beneath it, the kind that came when trust shattered in slow motion, piece by fragile piece.

yuwon's heart had raced then, not with the thrill of the secret she had hidden so well, but with fear. not fear of him, but of losing him. of how different things would be now that he knew. she could still feel the way her chest tightened, constricting with every breath, as if the air between them had become thick and suffocating, a tangible thing pressing down on her.

she hadn't tried to explain, simply because there was nothing to explain, nothing she could do to cover up the truth that had unfolded right in front of him. she had just nodded, admitting it was the only option she had. she remembered how heeseung had laughed—a bitter, empty sound that sent a shiver down her spine.

his eyes had been dark, stormy with a mixture of pain and fury, but beneath all that, there was something else. desperation. the desperation of someone who had held on so tightly, only to realize the thing they were gripping was slipping away through their fingers. and she had seen it, in the brief flicker of vulnerability in his gaze, how much it tore him apart to even think of her like this—as a liar.

the streets that had always been her source of freedom  had felt too small then, too crowded with all the unsaid things between them, the suffocating weight of secrets that had been kept for far too long. yuwon had wanted to reach out, to touch him, to tell him she was still the same, that this secret didn't change who she was, who they were. but the distance between them felt unbridgeable, as if the truth had carved a canyon, deep and wide, between them.

she could still see the way his hands clenched into fists at his sides, his body tense with restrained anger. the way he had paced back and forth, his movements restless, like he was trying to outrun the truth. the truth that she was racer 07, the person he had been hunting for, the person responsible for the chaos and the danger, for lives taken.

she recalled that one time she had raced him—the night that had probably left him with a bunch of questions, how she had won and how had he made it out alive. yuwon had seen the fear in his face, the panic—and god he must hate her for that.

and that final moment, before he had stormed out, the way he had stopped, just for a second, his back to her, shoulders rigid, but his voice. . . his voice had been soft. raw. "i thought you trusted me."

the memory of it, of how he had sounded so broken, so defeated, made her chest ache. yuwon rolled onto her side, curling up, hugging her knees to her chest. it was that voice—that voice—that haunted her the most. because she had trusted him. she still did. but how could she explain to him that some things were bigger than trust? that this, her secret, was something she had to protect, not just for herself but for everyone around her.

but now, laying in the quiet darkness of her room, her thoughts swirling like a storm she couldn't control, yuwon wasn't sure anymore. wasn't sure if protecting her secret had been worth this. wasn't sure if she could live with the way heeseung had looked at her, as if she were someone else entirely, a stranger wearing the face of the girl he knew.

she wondered if he was thinking about her too, wherever he was. wondered if he lay awake like she did, replaying every word, every look, every breath between them, trying to make sense of it all. trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong.

and she hated it. hated that she couldn't stop thinking about him. hated how, no matter how hard she tried, heeseung had this way of slipping into her mind, his presence lingering like smoke in the air, impossible to ignore, impossible to forget.

her fingers tightened in the fabric of her sheets, frustration and guilt twisting inside her. she hadn't meant for this to happen, hadn't meant for him to find out like this. but now, the weight of it all—the lies, the truth, his hurt—it was all crashing down on her, relentless and unforgiving.

outside her window, the world was still, cloaked in the silence of the late hours, but inside her, it was chaos.