The party had been loud enough to drown a person.
Han Sena had counted on that.
She had dressed carefully — red lip, perfume at the pulse, hemline three inches above responsible — and told herself she was going to have a good time. That tonight she was not thinking about him. That she was done sitting in the corner of her own heartbreak waiting for Eom Seonghyeon to notice she existed.
She lasted forty minutes before she saw him across the room.
Laughing. Easy. His hand on someone else's waist like it was nothing.
Like she was nothing.
She took the next drink that was handed to her. Then another. Then she stopped counting.
She didn't remember how she ended up outside.
She remembered cold air. Her heels in her hand. The parking lot spinning gently beneath her feet like the universe was being lazy about it. She sat on the curb and pressed her forehead to her knees and thought, with the calm clarity that only alcohol provides—
"I am so tired of loving someone who doesn't even see me."
"You look like you're having the night of your life."
She looked up.
He was leaning against the car behind her — arms crossed, jacket pushed up at the sleeves, watching her with the kind of expression that didn't quite commit to concern. Dark eyes. A mouth that suggested it had said worse things and enjoyed them.
She didn't know his name.
She didn't ask.
"Go away," she said.
He didn't.
He sat down beside her instead, close enough that she could smell him — something clean underneath the cigarette smoke, something warmer than she expected. He looked out at the parking lot like he had nowhere better to be.
"Heartbreak," he said, after a moment. Not a question.
Sena laughed despite herself. It came out wrong. "Is it that obvious?"
"You're wearing the outfit." He glanced at her sideways. "The I came here to make someone regret it outfit."
She should have told him to go to hell.
Instead she heard herself ask, "Did it work?"
"Probably not on the right person."
She looked at him then — really looked. He was beautiful in a way she didn't trust. The kind of face that knew exactly what it was doing. And he was looking back at her like she was interesting, like she was worth the trouble of staying, and Han Sena was drunk and wrecked and so desperately tired of being invisible—
"I don't know your name," she said.
He smiled. Slow. Like a door opening.
"Does it matter?"
Later, she would decide that what happened next was grief made reckless.
That it was the alcohol, and the outfit, and forty minutes of watching the boy she loved touch someone else like she didn't exist.
That it didn't mean anything.
That she would forget it by morning.
The backseat of his car smelled like pine and leather.
Her heels hit the floor somewhere. His jacket followed. His hands were careful in the way that surprised her — not hesitant, but deliberate, like he understood that something in her was already bruised and chose to move around it rather than through it.
She kissed him first.
She told herself that too, later. That she had chosen it. That she had reached for him with both hands while the parking lot lights bled orange through the window and the music from the party was still faintly, absurdly playing.
He made a sound low in his throat when she did.
Like she'd surprised him.
Like he hadn't expected her to be the one to close the distance.
And then he kissed her back—
and Han Sena forgot.
She forgot the red dress and the counting and the careful, patient, useless ache she had been carrying for two years. Forgot the name she had written in the margins of her notebooks. Forgot everything except his hands and the warmth of him and the way he said "hey" against her mouth when she pulled back to breathe, quiet and low, like he was checking she was still there.
She was.
She was.
She woke at 4 a.m. to the sound of rain on the windshield.
He was asleep.
Sena gathered her things without turning on the light. Found her heels. Found her phone. Sat for one moment with her hand on the door handle, looking at the shape of him in the dark — the long lines of him, the unfamiliar face slack and younger-looking in sleep.
She didn't know his name.
She had not asked.
She told herself that was fine.
She told herself this was nothing.
She stepped out into the rain and did not look back.
She would think about him exactly once more before she forgot him entirely.
Standing in the doorway of the university natatorium six days later, a folder of project files pressed to her chest, water everywhere, the smell of chlorine sharp in her lungs—
looking at the boy cutting through the pool like he'd been built for it.
The boy who surfaced.
Shook the water from his hair.
And looked straight at her.
Oh.
The folder hit the floor.
And Han Sena finally learned his name.
some mistakes introduce themselves properly the second time.