4. Five Years
FIVE YEARS
SANG-HOON — CANNES
I couldn’t breathe.
The door clicked shut behind Aidan, and the silence that followed felt like a physical thing pressing against my chest. Jin was still leaning against me, his head on my shoulder, his breathing starting to even out toward sleep.
He heard me.
The thought circled like a vulture. Aidan had just left, and before he’d gone, I’d said it. Out loud. To a stranger who was now our bodyguard.
I’ve spent five years loving him in silence and he would die without ever knowing.
The bathroom door had been open. The suite wasn’t that big. Jin’s English was better than he let most people know.
Oh god. He heard me.
Jin stirred against my shoulder, and I froze. His hand, which had been resting loosely on my knee, tightened slightly. He wasn’t asleep. Had never been asleep.
He sat up slowly, pulling away from me, and I immediately felt the loss of his warmth like a physical ache. When he turned to face me, his eyes were dark and steady and full of something I was afraid to name.
“Sang-hoon-ah.” His voice was soft. Too soft. The kind of soft that came before I’m sorry or I care about you, but or you’re important to me as a friend.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them against my thighs, trying to still them, trying to find words that would take it back or explain it away or turn it into something that wouldn’t ruin everything we’d built.
The professional distance. The careful friendship.
The thousands of small moments I’d hoarded like a miser, pretending they were enough.
I couldn’t look at him. “You should eat something. Sun-hee-noona is sending food up, and you need to—”
“Sang-hoon.”
He was so close to me I felt his pulse, the way I used to count his heartbeats when I checked him after hard choreography, my fingers at his wrist, pretending I was only doing my job.
He turned to face me. I smelled the hotel soap on his skin, saw the faint redness around his eyes from smoke and exhaustion.
“Look at me.”
I couldn’t. If I looked at him, he’d see everything. All that longing and careful distance and the moments I’d let myself imagine a different world where I was able to touch him without permission.
“Please.”
That word broke me. I looked at him.
He lifted one hand. Slowly, giving me time to pull away. He touched my face. Palm against my cheek, thumb at the corner of my mouth, the same way I’d touched him on the stage when I was checking for injuries.
“I heard you,” he said quietly.
My heart stopped. Literally stopped. For a second I thought I might pass out, might crumble right there on the expensive hotel carpet.
“Jin, I—”
“I’ve been waiting a long time for you to say something.”
The world tilted.
“What?”
He smiled, and it wasn’t his stage smile or his press-conference smile or even his genuine-but-tired smile he gave the other members when they needed reassurance. This was something else. Something I’d never seen before because he’d never let me see it.
“You thought you were the only one?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Sang-hoon-ah. I’ve had strong feelings for you since you stayed up all night fixing my jacket before our debut showcase because I tore it during rehearsal and I cried about it like a child.”
“You were eighteen—”
“And you stayed.” His thumb moved against my cheek, a touch so gentle it hurt. “You always stay.”
I couldn’t process this. Couldn’t make it fit into the reality I’d constructed over years of careful distance, professional boundaries, and convincing myself that what I felt was one-sided, impossible, and something I’d eventually learn to live with.
“But you never—you didn’t—”
“How could I?” Something flickered across Jin’s face.
Frustration, maybe, or old pain. “You’re staff.
I’m talent. I’m still under a dating ban, and even if I weren’t, staff relationships are career suicide.
They wouldn’t need a rule to fire you. And the fans...
” He stopped. “They’d destroy both of us, but you’d disappear first. No statement, no goodbye. Just gone.”
I knew he was right. The industry had no room for this kind of complication. Idols didn’t date staff. Staff didn’t fall in love with idols. And if they did, they certainly didn’t act on it.
But his hand was still on my face, and he was looking at me like I was something precious instead of something forbidden, and I was so tired of being careful.
“Jin—”
“I almost died tonight,” he said quietly. “I was standing on that stage and the world exploded and all I thought was that I’d never told you. That you’d never know.”
My breath caught. “I thought the same thing.”
“I know.” His smile turned sad. “I heard you tell Aidan.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” He stepped closer, and now there was no space between us at all. “Don’t apologize for this. Not after tonight. Not after so long pretending we’re just colleagues when you look at me like…” He stopped, swallowed. “Like I’m the only person in the room.”
“You are,” I said helplessly. “You always have been.”
He kissed me.
Soft at first, tentative, like he was afraid I’d pull away or disappear or turn out to be a dream conjured by smoke and exhaustion.
His lips were warm and dry and tasted faintly of toothpaste, and I made a sound I didn’t recognize, something between a gasp and a sob, because this was Jin, this was Joon-hi, this was the boy who’d spilled water on me once and apologized like it was the end of the world.
I kissed him back.
My hands came up to his face, my fingers sliding into his damp hair, and I kissed him the way I’d wanted to for so long.
The way I’d imagined in the dark when I couldn’t sleep, when I was touching up his makeup before a show and his eyes would close under my hands and I’d pretend, just for a second, that it meant something more.
He made a soft sound against my mouth and pulled me closer, one hand fisting in my shirt, the other sliding around to the back of my neck. The kiss deepened, turned desperate, months and years of want and denial and careful distance burning away in the space of a heartbeat.
When we finally broke apart, both breathing hard, his forehead came to rest against mine.
“We can’t do this,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“The company—”
“I know.”
“The fans—”
“I know, Sang-hoon. I know.” He pulled back just enough to look at me, his eyes fierce. “But I don’t care anymore. I almost died tonight, and you ran onto a burning stage to save me, and I’m done pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
“That you’re not the most important person in my life.” His voice cracked. “That has been true ever since the moment you handed me that water bottle and told me not to spill again.”
My throat closed. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything.” His hand moved to my chest, palm flat over my racing heart.
“The first time you did my makeup and your hands shook because you were nervous. All the nights when you stayed with me until four in the morning because I couldn’t stop panicking.
Every time you’ve fixed my hair between takes, every time you’ve checked on me after a hard performance, every single moment you thought I wasn’t paying attention. ”
“Jin—”
“I was always paying attention.” He kissed me again, softer this time, almost reverent. “How could I not? You’re all I see.”
I kissed him back, helpless against the weight of time crashing down around us. We sank onto the sofa, and his hands were in my hair and mine found warm skin under his towel.
“We have to be careful,” I managed between kisses. “If anyone finds out—”
“Then we’ll be careful.” He pulled back, cupping my face in both hands. “But I’m not giving this up. I’m not giving you up. Not after tonight. Not ever.”