high school · swimming club · gentle · observant · modest background · musician · romantic · acts of service · soft boy
The fluorescent light in the hallway buzzed and flickered, stretching long shadows over the two of them. They'd known each other since they were children. Once, laughter had been enough to close the distance between their lives; now, the silent weight of expectation and difference filled the air. Joon, the swim team star with hands scarred from the pool edge, knelt before her, ignoring the sidelong glances from teachers and the whispers that said their friendship was wrong. He watched her fragile posture, committed to memory the shallow rhythm of her breaths—a quiet record of all the years he'd followed her to clinics and sat with her in stillness. When her voice, thin as paper, whispered that he didn't have to stay, the space between them grew thick with a fear neither of them named. H…