Yeonjun hits play on his choreography track again, the bass swallowing the quiet—but his moves land heavier now, as if he's dancing against something nameless clawing under his skin.
And in the dim band room below, laughter rings bright against the walls, sharp enough to cut through even the loudest beat.
The dorm is finally quiet.
Not the tense kind of quiet—the kind that hums with worry—but the soft, heavy silence that settles after chaos finally loosens its grip. Taehyun is slumped across his bed, sprawled on his stomach like a corpse, still in the jeans he swore were "comfy enough to nap in." His phone dangles from one hand, screen dark, breaths slow and steady.
Beomgyu watches him for a moment, propped on his own bed with knees hugged to his chest. There's something grounding about seeing Taehyun like this—messy, vulnerable, quiet. After hours of sharp words and steady hands holding his world together, here he is, the same boy who once shared packets of ramen on a freezing rooftop because neither of them had cash for dinner.
Beomgyu smiles faintly, then drags his gaze away, back to the notebook sprawled open on his desk. Lines of lyrics stare back at him like open wounds, ink dark against the pale page.
He exhales slowly, chest tight, then reaches for his phone.
It lights up instantly—an avalanche of notifications flooding the screen like a dam breaking. Mentions. Tags. Direct messages stacked in dizzying rows. Headlines from campus forums screaming his name alongside BeatLine edits, GIF loops, and speculative threads.
"Guitar Prince IS Syncope's secret weapon??"
"Yeonjun x Beomgyu rivals-to-lovers CONFIRMED??"
"Petition for Guitar Prince to drop a full cover because we're starving."
He scrolls without meaning to, each headline hammering deeper into his skull until the blur of words starts to spin. His throat tightens.
Control? Gone. Privacy? Gone. The illusion of hiding? A joke.
His grip on the phone slackens until it slides onto the blanket. He stares at the ceiling, feeling the panic press against his ribs like it's trying to carve its way out.
But then—like a thread in the dark—Taehyun's voice from earlier unfurls in his mind, soft and certain:
"I still want you to shine. Not for me. For you. Because you deserve it."
He squeezes his eyes shut, clinging to those words like a lifeline.
Shine.
The word feels heavy and impossible—like sunlight trying to burn through a storm. But as he lies there, chest rising and falling against the weight of everything unraveling, something small flickers in the wreckage.
Because the truth is, he's survived this long, hasn't he? Every fall, every fracture, every whispered rumor from years ago—the ones that nearly broke him when he was too young and too raw.
He's still here.
And maybe...maybe Taehyun's right. Maybe shining doesn't mean being unscarred. Maybe it just means choosing to step into the light, even when the dark still clings like a second skin.
His gaze drifts back to the notebook. To the song that feels less like a track and more like a confession carved in melody.
If this song doesn't save me, nothing will.
His fingers trace the chorus he wrote earlier—the part that feels like a prayer.
This is my answer
This cold winter too
Shall pass.
YOU ARE READING
Syncopation | Yeongyu TXT
FanfictionHe wasn't even playing. Just a notebook, a guitar on his side, and sunlight in his hair, and suddenly, Beomgyu's face is all over campus feeds. The internet crowns him the Guitar Prince. Too bad Yeonjun, the star of that dance video, hasn't forgiven...
