No Strings Attached

CHAPTER 5: error

"The part where you said I don't know everything."
A beat.
"And the part where you said something might happen to you."

Her face stays unreadable.

"That."

His voice drops darker.

"That's the shit I want you to explain."

"...You look scared," she says quietly.

He shakes his head once.

Not denying.

Not agreeing.

Just stating:

"I'm not fucking scared."
"But I am done being blindsided. So you're going to tell me what card you think you've got."

She doesn't answer.

She just stares him down — silently, steadily, coldly.

And that's the part that gets him.

Because for the first time in seven years...

He genuinely doesn't know.

Then—

"Come here."

Not loud.
Not angry.
But absolute.

Yerin doesn't move.

Hyunjun lifts his gaze fully now, and she finally sees the crack underneath his calm — the way fear has hollowed out something behind his eyes, the way his right hand trembles just barely against his knee.

He notices her staring and curls his fingers into a fist to stop it.

"Yerin," he says, voice lower, rougher, "don't make me say it again."

She walks over, stopping a few feet away from him.

His eyes drag over her — her uniform, her shoes still dusty from school, the faint smear of mascara under her eye from a long day.
He memorizes her.
He always memorizes her, but this is different.

This is him checking if she's damaged.

Or if she's leaving.

"Did you have a good day at school?" he asks.

The question sounds normal.
But the tone is not.

Yerin shakes her head once. "Why do you care?"

He rises up, slow and deliberate.

The air tightens.

He approaches her with that same unnerving stillness he only has when he's seconds from snapping something — or someone — in half.

When he's finally close enough to touch her, he doesn't.
He just looks down at her like he can hear every thought in her skull.

Then he says it:

"What did you mean last night?"

Her breath catches — just a little — and he sees it.

"What part?" she asks flatly.

Hyunjun's jaw flexes.

"You know which part."
He leans in, his voice barely above a whisper.
"'What if something happened to me?'"

Yerin doesn't blink.

He studies her face, every twitch, every micro-expression.

And something inside him fractures.

"...You're not fucking dying," he says quietly, almost to himself, like he's correcting reality by pure will. "You're not disappearing. You're not going anywhere."