YOUNG_ADULTS
NCT JISUNG AU | IDOL AU
Some wounds don't bleed.
They echo.
After a public fallout and a silence louder than any crowd, Jisung disappears from the place that once defined him. He runs-not to escape the past but to breathe somewhere it can't reach him so easily. A quiet village by the sea becomes his hiding place. Familiar streets. Old memories. The kind of calm that hurts before it heals.
Jeju doesn't ask him to perform.
It only asks him to exist.
Between nights that stretch too long and days filled with things he forgot he missed, Jisung learns what it feels like to be seen without being watched. To be surrounded by people who don't want anything from him-except honesty.
And then there's her.
Too sweet in a way that makes him suspicious.
Too sour in a way that feels uncomfortably familiar.
She doesn't know his stage name. She doesn't care about headlines. She laughs too easily, speaks too directly and pokes at truths he's spent years avoiding. Being around her feels like biting into something you're not sure you'll like-sharp at first, then unexpectedly addictive.
This is a story about burnout and belonging.
About anger that doesn't know where to go.
About missing home, missing someone, missing yourself.
Inspired by "I Hate Fruits" by NCT DREAM, this story lingers in the space between sweet and bitter-where healing is messy, feelings contradict themselves and not everything that hurts is bad for you.
Sometimes, the things you claim to hate
are the things that make you feel alive again.