Jiwon stares at his father across the boardroom, trying to focus, but his mind keeps drifting, skidding off like a stone across water, landing only on Jay.

Dad’s African-Korean PA and long-time lover runs the presentation, flawless in every detail. Late thirties, impeccable, her voice precise, polished—each syllable perfectly Korean, yet carrying a quiet authority with a teasing edge that hints at something dangerous, something magnetic. She clicks through the slides—profit and loss, numbers stacked across the family’s casinos, each chart punctuated by the sharp tap of her laser pointer. She is ruthless, ambitious, and breathtaking in a way that draws curiosity like a moth to flame. On any other day, Jiwon is riveted, watching her own the room, noticing the subtle ways she flicks a glance in his direction, the brief curve of her lips when she catches him looking. Their lives had intersected more than once in reckless intimacy—moments spent tangled in sheets for amusement, for the rush of getting caught. But today, all of that blurs. Her presence might as well be a shadow on the wall, because Jiwon can’t take his mind off Jay.

Jay’s face flickers in his mind. The way his eyes shift, distant and lost one moment, piercing and searching the next. Every glance feels like a challenge, pulling him deeper into a world Jiwon doesn’t fully understand but desperately wants to drown in. The way Jay drops his gaze when he’s overwhelmed, the slight tension in his shoulders, the soft inhale of breath when the world gets too much—it’s intoxicating. Then there was that soft, disbelieving smile he showed when he realised what Jiwon did to get “Phantom Blade” for him. A different, more intimate side of him Jiwon hadn’t seen.

But now Jay was ghosting him. He hadn't taken his calls in more than a week and hadn’t responded to his chats. To make matters worse, Jiwon had been off-campus for days on end to manage pressing money laundering issues across the family casinos.

What could have gone wrong?

In a bid to understand, Jiwon had spent the last few days reading about autism—sensory overload, social exhaustion, the way the world can feel overwhelming, all the time. He is fascinated, yes. But fascination isn’t what gnaws at his chest. Desire does. Desire to understand Jay, to protect him, to hold him close and not let go.

A sharp clap of his father’s hand against the mahogany table drags Jiwon back into the room. At the head of the table sits the Dragon of Busan, Kim Dae-hwan, looking like a storm on the verge of breaking. His face is deathly cold, handsome despite the jagged scar running from his left eye to his temple. Even in his fifties, with silver beginning to frost his hair, he commands an effortless, magnetic pull.

Tonight, he is draped in his usual luxury: a black and gold kimono adorned with intricate dragon embellishments. When he speaks, every word feels like a whip slicing through the air, snapping Jiwon’s spine upright.

"You mean to tell me fucking Yun is stealing from me? That goddamn rat!"

He inhales and exhales, slow and steady. His eyes narrow to slits, his mind clearly calculating. "Rough him up tonight. Get a confession out of him. Then we make him sign with our loan sharks for the next ten years. Fucking thieving bastard," his father spits.

“Jiwon, you go with Hong and Huan. See to it,” he commands.

Jiwon nods, feeling a familiar rush, adrenaline lacing through his veins, a dangerous thrill that makes his chest beat faster. He hates to admit it, but danger excites him, much like the prospect of sex.

The Dragon’s gaze lingers, a question half-formed on his lips—the Black Crane, perhaps, or something more sinister—but he turns instead to Woo-sik, seated to his right, where Jiwon should rightfully be. Jiwon doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if his father hands the whole goddamn drug empire to Woo. Then all his mum’s expectations would end. 

As Woo-sik recounts Seoul casino numbers, Jiwon eyes him coldly. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t come to the rooftop cafe the other day, maybe Jay wouldn’t be avoiding him. Maybe seeing him get violent actually scared him.  And now he's gone, silent, leaving Jiwon with a hollow ache that pulses beneath his ribs. The memory burns hot and fresh in Jiwon’s chest: Jay frozen, flinching, from Woo-Sik. His fist, sending his cousin staggering back, blood blooming at the corner of his lip.

He opens his Kakao chat, studying the twenty or so messages he had sent with no response from Jay. He sighs and blanks his screen.

Honey-brown eyes that seem to hold galaxies dance in his mind. Soft pink lips that Jiwon wants to trace with his own. It’s frustrating. He wants him so bad!

Jiwon bites back a curse, his knuckles turning white as he squeezes his fists hard. He can’t let Jay slip through his fingers. Not now. Not when he'd finally started to make progress.

In a momentary lapse of sanity—the kind fueled by a racing heart and a lack of oxygen—Jiwon swipes his phone open again.

I can’t stop thinking about you. I want all of you, and it’s driving me crazy! [Sent 8:42 PM]

The “Sent” icon instantly feels like a death sentence.

No. Fuck—no! His thumb hovers frantically over the screen. Delete. Delete for everyone. Too late. Two blue ticks appear, mocking him. Then, the ultimate torture: the three pulsing dots of a typing bubble. It appears. Disappears. Reappears like a taunt.

Jiwon feels blood rushing through his ears as he waits.

[Jay]: I’ll call you. [Received 8:42 PM]

“Fuck!”

The word escapes Jiwon's frustrated lips with enough force to draw the room’s attention. Awkward and curious glances, his father’s brow arches in a silent, icy interrogation from the head of the table. Jiwon snaps his spine straight, fixing a pained, robotic smile on his face and pretends to be riveted in the ongoing conversation.

Fuck! 

Stellar work, Jiwon. 

Truly a masterclass in dignity!

He can see it now: Jay, sitting in his perfectly organised room, staring at his message with the same analytical detachment he gives a calculus problem, completely unfazed by the nuclear explosion igniting in Jiwon’s life.

Jay would probably think - this person is statistically improbable, and go back to organising his sock drawer by thread count.

Jiwon groans inwardly. I’m officially obsessed with a human calculator, and this is the hill I die on.

—

My phone vibrates against the metal side table. The sound is sharp, cutting through the white noise I have going. Based on my previous data, there is an 87% chance it's Jiwon and a 13% chance it's my mother.

I am right.

[Jiwon]: I can’t stop thinking about you. I want all of you, and it’s driving me crazy!

I stare at the screen. My brain immediately begins to deconstruct the syntax.

“I want all of you.” The phrase is logically impossible. “All” is a totalizing quantifier. Does he mean my physical presence? My thoughts? My past? My future? To want “all” of a person implies a level of integration that defies physical boundaries. It is an overstimulation of intent. My heart rate climbs—90, 95, 101 BPM.

"It’s driving me crazy." Hyperbole. Jiwon is prone to hyperbole, but this might suggest he is experiencing high-intensity emotional distress. Because of me. Because of my “space to think.”

What do I do now?

Delete. No, that is illogical. Ignore. No, this message is different from his earlier cautionary asks of how I'm doing and when we'd see each other again. He's distressed, and I don’t like it.

My thumb hovers over the glass. My skin feels electric, a buzzing sensation that starts at my fingertips and climbs up my arms. I feel like I am vibrating at a frequency that doesn’t match the rest of the world.

I need to stop the input. I need to stabilise the variable.

I type three words. They are the most terrifying words in my vocabulary because they require real-time, unscripted audio interaction.

[Sent 8:47 PM]: I’ll call you.

I hit send and immediately drop the phone on the sidetable as if it were at a temperature capable of causing second-degree burns.

“I’ll call you,” I repeat to the empty room, my voice cracking.

I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing my palms against my ears to dull the sound of my own thundering pulse.

“Stupid,” I whisper, the word hitching in my throat.

Something bubbles in my chest. I run a diagnostic, but the results are inconclusive. Is this excitement? Or is it a looming sense of doom?

I can’t stop thinking about you. I want all of you, and it’s driving me crazy. 

The text becomes a permanent loop in my internal audio, a corrupted file I can’t delete. I try to drown it out. I apply gentle pressure to my forearms, then harder, digging my knuckles into the muscle until the sharp ache provides a temporary anchor to reality. I slip into my proprioception suit next; it's tight, compressing, grounding, pulling my scattered edges back into a single point. But today, the relief only lasts a few minutes.

I reach for my Rubik’s cubes. I solve them—Standard, Mirror, Megaminx—again and again until my fingertips are numb. The colours should be the only thing I see, but the shifting patterns keep morphing into the memory of his inked skin. I pivot to my comfort manhwas, flipping through familiar panels, but the heroes all start to look like him. I try to calculate the probability of "us" working, but the math is messy. The variables are too human to make any real sense.

I am OCD-ing on Jiwon. I am at my wits’ end, my processing power completely drained by a single person.

Then the phantom scent hits me: tobacco, spice, and leather. It is an olfactory ghost. I never cared for the scent of tobacco before—I find it too strong, almost intrusive—but now a hint in everything is my new favourite. I even had Mum order new scent jars scented with tobacco. She hadn’t asked any questions, but the way her eyebrows rose by about 0.5 centimetres spoke volumes.

I pick up a jar, inhaling deeply and begin to pace my room, stimming to discharge the frantic energy. Back and forth. Three steps, pivot. Three steps, pivot. What do I do now? How do I resolve a variable that refuses to be solved?

I stop abruptly in front of my bookshelf. I touch the spines in a strict alternating sequence—red, blue, red, blue—until my fingers land on a worn spine: Social Scripts and Phone Conversations.

I pull it out. It feels like sealing my fate.

I sit on the edge of my bed and set a timer for five minutes. I focus on the rhythm of my lungs—inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight—regulating the static in my nervous system. When the timer pings and my hands are finally steady, I reach for a fresh notepad and a black ink pen.

I open the book to the section on Initiating Difficult Conversations. “Step one,” I whisper, my pen hovering over the paper. “Write the script.”

Once the dialogue is mapped, I do the unthinkable.

I pick up the phone and call him.

Author's Note: 

❤️ Valentine’s Drop ❤️

It’s Valentine’s weekend!
And tension should be rewarded.

Chapter 13 drops at 2.30 pm EST!

"Are you ready for what happens next?”