No Strings Attached

CHAPTER 2: D-0

She typed back one word:

Yerin: "Why?"

No punctuation.
Punctuation would imply emotion.

The phone stayed silent.

Seconds passed.
Then minutes.
She stared at the dark screen, listening to the faint city sounds outside her window, waiting without admitting to herself that she was waiting.

Finally — finally — the screen lit up.

Jaehyun: "You'll see."

Her jaw tightened just a fraction.
Ambiguity.
He liked using it.
He liked pushing.

Yerin tightened her hood and sat perfectly still, posture rigid, mind racing far faster than her expression showed.

She didn't know what he meant.
She didn't know what he was planning.
She didn't know why he wanted her to wait.

But she wasn't nervous.
Not even close.

She was calculating.

And she was ready.

Yerin stared at the message on her screen:

"Wait for me."

She let the words sit there, unacknowledged. Commands didn't work on her. Not from teachers, not from classmates, and definitely not from Kang Jaehyun.

She slid her phone onto the bedside table and pulled her hoodie tighter around her. The room was dim, her lamp casting a warm pool of light over her notebooks and the half-unfinished essay she'd abandoned earlier. Her brain flicked through logical explanations for why he had her number. There were only three viable possibilities—none of which she liked.

She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, listening to the faint ticking of the clock.

He probably wants a reaction.
Everyone always did.

Her phone buzzed again.

She didn't rush. She didn't even look at it first. She reached for it with the same calm she used in everything she did, opened the notification, and read the new message:

Jaehyun: "You really not gonna ask anything else?"

She blinked once. That was all.

Then she typed—each word carefully chosen, clean, sharp-edged:

"Superfluous questioning wastes time."

Sent.

She put the phone down.

It vibrated almost immediately.

Jaehyun: "There you go again with your dictionary talk."

Her brows lowered just a fraction. Not annoyed—more like... mildly entertained by how predictable he'd become.

She responded:

"Precision is not pretension."

This time, he didn't text back right away.
Good. Let him sit with that.

She walked to her window, lifting the corner of the curtain to glance outside. Streetlights glowed against the pavement, and the faint noise of neighbors echoed from the building across the way. Everything was returning to normal... or at least what counted as normal in her universe.

She stepped back from the window—

Her phone buzzed again.

She didn't even need to check who it was.