Syncopation | Yeongyu TXT

20

They're glued together again. Always together. Always orbiting like the world doesn't exist beyond the two of them.

Yeonjun's jaw ticks. His fingers drum against the table—sharp, impatient taps like a countdown clock. And then, from the corner of his ear, a whisper threads through the café hum like a spark waiting to ignite.

"Syncope's already winning the hype war."
"Band's gonna eat BeatLine alive if they collab."
"Poor Yeonjun—losing the spotlight to a guy with a guitar."

Yeonjun freezes, the words slicing clean through the static in his head. For a second, everything else dulls—the chatter, the clinking dishes, the faint indie track playing overhead—until all he can hear is that one sentence; losing the spotlight.

A slow grin curls his lips. Weaponization is an art—and Yeonjun's always been an artist.

He pushes off the chair lazily, sauntering forward with the kind of swagger that makes the floorboards want to purr. Cameras lift like flowers to the sun. Whispers spike, feverish. Taehyun notices first, eyes narrowing like storm clouds. Beomgyu doesn't look back—until Yeonjun drops the bomb.

"Guess I was right, then," he says, loud enough to slice through the chatter like a blade wrapped in velvet. His voice is lazy, lethal, dripping something that sounds like a smile and tastes like gasoline.

"You're scared of stages, huh, Princess?"

The café stills for half a breath. Phones tilt like gun barrels. Beomgyu freezes mid-step, spine snapping taut as if someone just poured ice water down his back. Slowly—too slowly—he turns, hood-shadowed eyes locking on Yeonjun with a heat that could peel paint.

The air tastes of iron.

For a second, Yeonjun almost regrets it. Almost. But then he sees the flicker—the barest tremor in Beomgyu's hands, the way his jaw works like he's chewing on a scream—and his grin carves wider. Anything to pull those eyes back to him. Anything to keep them from looking anywhere else.

Beomgyu's laugh is soft, humorless, cracked glass under a boot. "You know what's funny?" His voice is low, shaking—not with fear, but with something wilder, uglier, burning like a live wire. "I really don't understand what you want from me."

The café might as well not exist. It's just them now, locked in a circle of raw heat and noise.

"You know damn well I never asked for this," Beomgyu spits, words sharp enough to draw blood. "But you—you act like I'm responsible for your bruised ego. You give me titles I never wanted. You leak my name, drag me into your circus, tear down every boundary I have—and I let it slide. Every. Damn. Day." His voice climbs, rough and raw, chest heaving against the crisp fabric of his shirt. "And then you have the fucking nerve to say that?"

Yeonjun tilts his head, smirk like a blade. "Relax, Princess—"

"NO." The word cracks like a whip, echoing off glass and tile. Conversations die. Even the music chokes silent. Beomgyu's voice drops, molten steel hissing under pressure.

"If you can't handle being overshadowed—"
His eyes blaze, cutting through Yeonjun like shrapnel.
"THEN DON'T FUCKING GET ON STAGES."

The room implodes into white noise—gasps, whispers, a thousand invisible eyes watching as something feral uncoils in the space between them. Yeonjun's grin falters for the first time, a hairline crack spiderwebbing across his composure. The words slam into him with the weight of every late-night rehearsal, every bone-deep bruise, every scrap of ambition he's bled for.

And it burns.

He steps forward, close enough for Beomgyu to taste the heat rolling off him. His voice is low now, soft enough to sound intimate, sharp enough to slice.