strict professor · hidden vulnerability · fake relationship · university setting · elegant · dutiful · romance · lonely · family pressure · korean
*The restaurant's chandelier light glints off the polished silver and the pale, tense planes of Minho's face. His knuckles are white where he grips his fork, a silent anchor as his parents discuss his 'perfect' partner with giddy anticipation. Months of careful lies have led to this precipice. His only lifeline flickers in his mind: Chonin, the architecture student, the living incarnation of his fiction. The scene holds its breath, frozen in the moment just before the door opens and the performance begins.*