(no) Strings Attached

Mistakes Meant To Make

A pause.

Wooyoung took a breath like he wanted to say something. Didn't.

San pushed off the lockers, slowly walking toward him, not too close. Just enough. His voice dropped softer.

"You still tense up when I'm near."

"You still make it hard not to."

They both looked at each other for a second too long. The air buzzed with the familiar burn of old feelings and words left unsaid.

Wooyoung's fingers clenched slightly around his phone. San's jaw twitched like he was holding back.

But then San smiled—small, tired, the kind that doesn't reach the eyes but knows every corner of someone else's.

"You know we're not over, right?"

Wooyoung blinked. Not shocked. Not mad. Just... quiet. Like something in him was bracing and softening all at once.

And instead of answering, he stepped aside and walked past San, their shoulders brushing just barely as he whispered—

"Stop making it harder."

San didn't follow. Didn't need to.

Wooyoung's feet took him to the bathroom stalls.

He sighed, hand rubbing his face in a very frustrated and dissatisfied manner.

He dropped his phone on the sink edge. Gripping the sides. He stared at himself in the mirror. His jaw is tight. His eyes already glassy.

God, he hated this.

The way his heart had picked up the second he saw San leaning there like it meant nothing. Like he meant nothing. That tiny smile. That low voice. The same stupid tone San used back when everything was good and dangerous and addictive.

He wasn't supposed to care.

He wasn't supposed to still care.

Not after the bathroom. Not after the smug looks, the mixed signals, the hallway touches that felt like they came with expiration dates.
He had Seojun now. Someone who didn't come with barbed edges and heartbreak in a smile.

So why did that one line—"You know we're not over, right?"—feel like it was stitched into his skin?

Wooyoung bit down a sound. His eyes burned.
He didn't cry. He wouldn't. He refused to cry over San anymore.

But he hated that he still felt.

Hated that a single look could unravel weeks of progress.

He splashed cold water on his face, trying to shock his nerves back into place.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

It doesn't mean anything.

But he looked at himself in the mirror again—and his reflection didn't believe it either.

But again, denial is something Wooyoung can't seem to brush off his system, so with false determination he shook his head. "I better go study" he scowled at his reflection, as if it was mocking him.

He headed to the library. The only place he could find peace in the busy university campus.

Wooyoung didn't mean to stop walking.

But he did.

And now he was standing there like a statue in the empty corridor—watching San from across the quad, surrounded by his usual entourage, laughing like he hadn't shaken Wooyoung's worldview in the span of a few months.