track team AU | love triangle | slice of life | slow burn | found family | comedy + longing + insane rizz
JL transferred to Korea's most elite sports university hoping for a fresh start. He didn't expect to be rooming beside the nation's top sprinte...
The showers were heaven. Painful, steaming heaven that punished and soothed in equal measure. JL stood beneath the spray, unmoving, arms hanging limply by his sides like overcooked noodles. The water poured down in near-scalding sheets, needling against the deep ache that had settled into his shoulders and calves. His breath came in soft huffs, fogging up the tiles in front of him. Every muscle in his body protested, but it was a quiet, satisfying kind of pain, the kind that reminded him he'd worked for it. The hot water slapped against his back, and he let it. He welcomed it.
"My traps will be filing a restraining order," he muttered into the steam, just loud enough to make himself laugh.
From the next stall over, Shuaibo groaned, his voice muffled by the spray. "When I close my eyes, I can still hear Coach's voice. How do I block it out? Do I need therapy?"
Down at the end of the row, Kyungho's baritone floated above the sound of rushing water. "I'm convinced Woongki passed out mid-rinse."
"I did not!" came Woongki's muffled voice from suspiciously close to the floor. "I'm just showering horizontally. It's more efficient."
Outside, Coach Yang's voice cut through the moment like a starting pistol. "Five minutes, everyone! We're skipping dinner prep tonight. Someone's gotta go fetch food from the lodge next door. Volunteers?"
An expectant silence followed, broken only by the hum of showerheads and the quiet dripping of exhausted athletes.
Then came the hammer: "JL and Han, you're going."
JL's head popped out from under the spray. "What, why us?"
Coach was unsympathetic. "Because the rest look like roadkill and you two are the fastest. Besides, I need Steven, Kyungho, Shuaibo, and Chih En to move the gear. Jeongwoo, Juwon, and Woongki, you're on dish duty."
"But I HATE sticking my hand in dishwater with the rice bits!" Juwon pouted.
Woongki mirrored his expression and said, "Find me anyone who likes doing that, and I will send that person straight to a psychiatrist."
Han, who had been silently drying off, sighed with the resignation of someone who had accepted his fate. "Let's get it over with. I'm starving."
JL groaned, toweling off his hair. "I hope I survive the walk before I pass out."
Ten minutes later, wearing fresh dry shirts and hair still damp from the showers, JL and Han made their way down the mountain path toward the neighboring lodge. "Next door" turned out to be all the way at the end of the mountain road, a tiny inn run by an elderly couple.
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The evening had settled into something soft and quiet, the way summer nights in the countryside always did. The gravel crunched rhythmically beneath their sneakers as they walked side by side, their pace neither hurried nor sluggish. The path sloped gently downhill, lit intermittently by solar-powered lanterns that glowed a soft amber. Fireflies drifted lazily through the underbrush, casting pinpricks of gold in the darkening foliage. The air was still humid but breathable now, thick with the scent of pine, earth, and the faint trace of soap from their recent shower.
