Hyun-woo sat at the edge of the booth, shoulder pressed against the faux leather, eyes wandering not to the faces around him, but the ceiling. 

Exposed ductwork, low-slung pendant lights draped like afterthoughts. A patch of water damage near the exit sign bulged in protest beneath a bad paint job. He catalogued it all silently. The walls weren’t straight. He could see the subtle bow where the studwork had caved to time or negligence. Tables weren’t aligned either. Angled just enough to betray a lack of deliberate planning. Whoever laid out the space had favoured “vibe” over geometry.

“Sloppy,” his father would have called it.

The acoustics were worse. Voices bounced and tangled, a lattice of interruptions. Just to prove his point. His colleagues laughed nearby, the sound fractured on its way to him, stripped of warmth, just empty syllables in transit.

He reached for his glass. It wobbled slightly against the uneven surface of the tabletop, like the room itself resented stability.

It wasn’t distaste. Not exactly. Just the quiet knowledge that everything here was made to feel full, not function well. And that fullness didn’t hold.

He looked down at the condensation ring left behind. Another circle. Another design without permanence.

He stood from the group and collected his bag at his feet. The chatting abruptly stopped as he stood.

“Leaving?” asked Soo-hyun. 

He said nothing but motioned towards the bar and the stools. 

The table looked blankly in the direction of his gesture. While they stared, he walked over and pulled a stool from the bar while removing his tablet from the bag. He lowered the bag by its handle, allowing it to sit against the base of the bar. As he took to the stool, he placed his drink down on a throw-away coaster, then, with the same hand, pulled a napkin from a stack on the bar top, wiping the surface in front of him before placing the tablet down along with a worn leather notebook, a pen held within its pages.

Now seated, he moved his head a little to the right, angling it rather than looking at a table across the room. Four women, two men, mid-thirties maybe, laughing the way people did when something just ended and hadn’t disappointed.

A celebration. Deadlines met, messes averted. Camaraderie that bloomed in shared chaos and late nights fueled by bad coffee and mutual complaints. It was loud. Disordered. Chairs pulled in at odd angles. Someone’s jacket draped over a bar stool. Half drunk cocktails and plates cleared into a jumbled pile. No symmetry. No centre.

But they fit.

His eyes tracked the pattern unconsciously, the way one of the women leaned in, arm slung across the back of a colleague’s chair, claiming space with ease. The men laughed in staggered rhythm, their tones overlapping like poorly mixed music. He couldn’t hear the words, but he read it in their bodies. Relief, permission to loosen.

Hyun-woo noted how one woman’s hand brushed the frosted glass with the absent-minded grace of someone entirely present. There was something beautiful in its imbalance, also something faintly familiar in one of their movements. He was watching too long. 

Not envy. More a curious ache for how they filled their space without needing to design it first. A part of him, the part he’d long since disciplined, recalled a time when such untidiness felt less like a flaw and more like life.

One of the women threw her head back with a laugh that was sharp and unfiltered. In the afterglow, her gaze caught his. Not by accident. Not in passing. She held it. Eyes still bright from whatever joke had landed, cheeks flushed with warmth and a day well ended. There was no guile in it, no performance.  

Hyun-woo met her gaze, but only barely. A glance returned with the kind of indifference that wasn’t unkind, just practised.  His expression didn’t shift, didn’t rise to meet the warmth in hers. Not dismissive. Just... unavailable.

There was a flicker of recognition, maybe. Then he looked down at his tablet. Not abruptly but with the quiet certainty of someone who had already deemed the moment surplus to requirement.

One of her friends tugged her back into the conversation, and the spell cracked. She turned, laughing again, dissolving into the group’s rhythm.

Over at the table, Seo-jin leaned back in her chair. One hand cradled a glass, the other animated mid-story, every gesture fluent, shaped by confidence that didn’t need to prove itself. 

The others were turned to her, angled like sunflowers finding light. She had that thing. The ease of someone who could slip from sarcasm to sincerity without warning, and leave people disarmed either way.

She wasn’t the loudest in the room, just the most assured. Laughter came not just from what she said, but how she made others feel included in the telling. Even her silences held weight, punctuated with sideways glances that invited everyone in.

Sang-wook offered to grab another round of drinks, and without looking up, she handed off her glass, still talking, her eyes flicking only once toward the bar.

“So, Seo-jin, tell me,” Do-yeon’s voice cut through the din, laced with an affectionate challenge. “Have you lost your touch, or do you still have… IT?”

Seo-jin scoffed, a blend of indignation and amusement. “Lost my touch? Please!” Seo-jin was the touch. Her confidence wasn't arrogance; it was a well-earned fact.

Sang-wook, halted by the question and still with glasses in hand, leaned forward. “Prove it.”

Seo-jin raised an eyebrow, a slow, elegant arch. "What, you want me to..."

Do-yeon's gaze flickered across the room, landing back on Hyun-woo at the far end of the bar. “There. Mystery guy, sitting alone. Caught him looking earlier. Go on.”

Seo-jin followed her gaze. A man. Not flashy, not overtly trying to catch anyone's eye. He sat with a drink and a tablet before him. He was absorbed. Focused. Relaxed, but in the way a predator is before it strikes. He possessed an aura of intensity.

Seo-jin smirked, a roll of her eyes signalling mock exasperation. "Easy," she mouthed.

She took Do-Yeons' still half-full glass and rose. Her movements were fluid, a practised saunter that drew just enough attention without appearing desperate. 

She slid onto the stool beside him, a casual flick of her hair, and angled her body just so, flashing a smile that was equal parts approachable and intriguing. He didn't look at her. His focus remained on the tablet, his brow furrowed in concentration.

"You look like a man deep in thought," she purred, pitching her voice to carry just above the ambient noise.

He spared her the briefest glance. His eyes were dark and held an unreadable quality, but his expression remained polite, almost distantly courteous. "I suppose I am." His voice calm and measured.

"Should I be concerned?" Seo-jin teased, her smile widening. "Hopefully you’re not plotting world domination."

A flicker in his eyes, a ghost of something she couldn't quite decipher. "Not tonight."

"You could use a break," she pressed, the familiar rhythm of the chase invigorating her. "What’s your drink?"

He finally turned, a slow shift of his body. He lifted his glass slightly, the amber liquid glinting under the soft lights. "Whisky. Neat."

"Predictable," she shot back, a playful challenge in her tone. "Let me guess, you like simple, no distractions."

"Something like that."

A small silence stretched between them, not awkward, but filled with a peculiar weight. Seo-jin tilted her head, studied him more closely. There was something in his posture, the line of his jaw, the subtle curve of his lips when he spoke, that pricked at a distant corner of her memory. His presence was vaguely unsettling, not in a dangerous way, but like a half-remembered dream.

"Do we know each other?" The words slipped out before she could censor them, driven by an insistent tug of familiarity. "You seem... familiar."

His grip on the glass tightened. She saw it, a minute clench of his knuckles. He met her eyes fully then, his gaze steady, calm, utterly controlled. A deep, unsettling recognition settled over her. The bar faded. The music became a distant thrum.

Before he could respond, a voice boomed from the booth he had left, cutting through the bubble they had created.

"Hyun-woo, another round?"

The name.

Hyun-woo.

It hit Seo-jin like a physical blow. Her breath hitched, lodged somewhere in her throat. The casual hum of the bar turned into a roaring silence.

Now she saw him. Not the stranger she’d tried to charm, but the ghost she'd buried. The years hadn't erased the sharp angles of his face, the dark intensity of his eyes, the subtle curve of his lips. Hyun-woo held her gaze, waiting, expectant, knowing this moment was inevitable.

Her eyes darted to the man who had called his name. Soo-hyun. The puzzle pieces slammed into place, horrifying in their precision. She knew him too. The familiar face of Hyun-woo’s friend.

Her gaze snapped back to Hyun-woo. Her lips parted, the name a soft, barely audible whisper, ripped from a place she thought long since sealed away.

"...Hyun-woo?"

A beat. A long, suspended moment where the world shrank down to just them. No words, no explanations, just the weight of the years between them, pressing against the suffocating silence.

Then, his voice, calm and even, cut through the quiet. "No. No, I don't think we do know each other.” he paused for the briefest of time, readjusted his look, to stare her down. “At all!"

He was steady, unreadable, his dark eyes holding hers, unflinching. She couldn't take it anymore. The air in her lungs felt like acid. Abrupt. Sudden. She spun on the stool, her hand knocking her glass over in her haste. She didn't look back and fled.

Hyun-woo watched her go, his eyes flickering with some fleeting shadow passing through their depths.

Behind her, she heard the concerned murmurs of her friends. Their smiles had evaporated. She heard the scrape of chairs, the hurried gathering of belongings as they scrambled, taking off after her.

Hyun-woo took his glass from the bar and drained its contents, slowly, savouring it, before lowering the glass back to its original spot. 

Soo-hyun, oblivious, still watching the frantic exodus at the door, walked over to Hyun-woo. "Was that... who I thought it was?"

Hyun-woo lifted his now-empty glass into the air. He spoke, still without looking back at Soo-hyun, his voice flat. "You offered me another drink?"

He looked down at his tablet, not to read but to deflect. Stared through the screen as though it could buffer him. He tipped his torso forward a little, onto the edge of the bar, allowing it to take his weight, as though the bar were the only thing keeping him upright. Tiny motions, perhaps unnoticeable to others as they watched him, but essential for Hyun-woo to maintain his outward appearance. He had been right. It was her motion within the group that he’d recognised, but her sudden approach brought with it the one thing he'd been outrunning all these years. Her. 

He was irritated at himself for moving to the bar to settle his curiosity. He was annoyed at the mistimed use of his name. He was, however, frustratingly unnerved by her appeal to him. Carefully patched and covered wounds now lay bare again, simply by her presence.

He quickly gathered his thoughts. Pulled himself from his own self-pity. Focused on the tablet again, saw the words, eased himself back from the edge of the bar. No need to revisit something he’d already dealt with. She was gone now. He could revert to his old new-self.      

The bar's door slammed open, and Seo-jin burst out into the night.

She didn’t remember rising from the stool, not really. Her legs had moved before her mind had given them permission, driven by something visceral. Panic? Perhaps just the need to escape. 

Cool air slapped her cheeks. She doubled over near the curb, palms braced against her knees, lungs heaving like she’d surfaced from underwater. She couldn’t stop shaking. Why was that?

A hand touched her shoulder. Then another at her back. Warm voices, familiar, urgent.

“Seo-jin!” Sang-wook’s voice.

“What happened?” Do-yeon stepped in front of her, eyes wide with alarm. “Was he a creep? I knew it. We should talk to the bar. He shouldn’t still be allowed in there... ”

“No,” Seo-jin cut in, voice tight. Too tight. “No, I… I just needed air. Thought I was going to be sick.”

She straightened slowly. Tried to smooth her hair, her breath. But the lie had come too quickly, too rehearsed. And Do-yeon heard it. She didn’t call her out. Not yet.

Sang-wook exhaled, relief or maybe discomfort, threading his voice. “Okay. That’s a relief, then.” He hesitated, then gestured up the street. “Let’s find you something for your stomach, yeah?”

Do-yeon slipped an arm through hers. Gentle, almost protective. But her grip betrayed the softness. Seo-jin turned, gave a brittle smile. “I’m okay,” she said. Tried to mean it. Do-yeon didn’t believe her. Not fully. But she nodded anyway, and they walked, trailing the others down the street in search of a remedy. But she knew there wasn’t anything in a bottle that could fix a twelve-year problem.