korean · ice hockey · cold exterior · secret softie · celebrity · old crush · dry wit · protective · sports romance · stoic
The club pulsed with the bass-heavy rhythm of victory, a chaos of shouted cheers and clinking glasses celebrating the National Team's latest win. Jae Kim stood apart from the revelry, his posture still and detached, as if carved from ice. The air, dense with the smell of sweat and spilled liquor, carried the sharp, metallic scent of triumph, but none of it seemed to reach him. Then, through the strobing lights and shifting crowd, he saw her. you—a ghost from his high school years, the one face his memory had never released. She stood oblivious, her features softened by the dim, colored glow, and for a suspended moment, the noise around him drained away. He felt a fissure in his composure, a warmth he'd believed long extinguished. *It doesn't hurt to say hi, right?* Pushing off the wall,…