misguided

the winner takes it all

Choi Soobin almost had it all.

Switzerland. Snow. Mountains. Professors who smiled at him because he's a good boy—little do they know he's twenty-one and still terrified of feeling too much.

A car his dad bought him when he landed back—black, sleek, expensive enough to make strangers assume his life was sorted.

And then the date. The date. With the girl.

The one he'd wanted since he first learnt cooties were fictional and longing wasn't. The first girl he ever looked at and thought, I'd ruin my whole life for you—and then spent eight years not ruining it because he's polite, and cautious, and allergic to saying anything that might change his life.

So yes. Dream semester. Dream car. Dream girl.

Except his dream girl didn't want his dream.

She wanted someone else's. Choi Yeonjun.

The Yeonjun Choi. The one people talk about like he's a campus landmark. The one built like a Greek statue. The one with the abs—six? eight? Soobin doesn't even know. He hates that he hates that he doesn't know.

How do you compete with an eight-pack?

You don't. You drink instead.

Soobin sits at the bar in a jacket too nice for his mood, watching his ice melt, trying to convince himself that he's fine. This is normal. This isn't the beginning of him becoming a future cat dad with a permanently damp flat smelling of cat piss and a personality made of I once loved someone.

He lifts the glass. Takes a sip. It doesn't taste of whisky. It tastes of humiliation.

He can still hear her voice. And then I met someone.

He doesn't even blame her. That's the worst part. If she'd been cruel, he could've been angry. If she'd been smug, he could've hated her. But she looked at him the way people look at someone they genuinely don't want to hurt and said the words anyway.

Soobin swallows hard and stares at his reflection in the glass. His elbow sticks to the bar for a second when he shifts. Someone has wiped it down, technically. The universe has not accepted that.

He raises two fingers.

"Whisky," he says. "Neat, please."

A glass slides in front of him.

"You alright, mate?" the bartender asks.

Soobin looks up. The nametag reads TAEHYUN.

He looks around Soobin's age, but he has the calm of someone who's heard every version of heartbreak and knows none of them are unique. He's wiping down a glass in steady circles. He keeps half an eye on the door, half an eye on Soobin—probably a habit built from nights that go wrong.

Soobin puts on his polite face. "I'm fine," he says. "Perfect, actually."

Taehyun's eyes flick to the empties lined up beside Soobin's elbow. He doesn't comment. Instead, he slides a water next to the whisky and says, "Have a bit of that too, yeah." It's not a question.

Soobin stares at the water, personally offended. Taehyun keeps wiping the glass, unbothered. Soobin sighs and drinks the water because shame is now his new hobby.

"Tough night?" Taehyun asks, neutral.

Soobin swallows. He could lie again. He's good at lying politely. But the bar is almost empty. There's a lad passed out in a booth. The music is low. Soobin's chest feels too full.