Chapter Text
The next morning felt wrong.
Sunghoon opened his eyes slowly, the weight of sleep still clinging to his limbs, but something in the stillness unsettled him. The air was different. The house didn’t feel like itself. It didn’t feel like it was shared.
Jay was already up, sitting on the couch in a T-shirt and sweatpants, flipping through news channels with half-lidded disinterest. The smell of coffee lingered faintly in the air, but no one was in the kitchen.
“Where’s Jake?” Sunghoon asked, rubbing his eyes and stepping down the stairs slowly.
Jay glanced up and shrugged. “Didn’t see him. Thought he’d be asleep when I woke up.”
Sunghoon frowned. “It’s Saturday.”
“Yeah.” Jay’s tone shifted slightly. “So, weird he’s gone, huh?”
The silence that followed was unusually sharp. Jake was not the type to disappear early without leaving a word—especially not recently, not when their fragile balance was still teetering between chaos and something almost too raw to name.
But Jake… Jake had left at 4:13 AM. No footsteps, no door creaks. Just a quiet departure, as though escaping something.
Because he had to.
A message had arrived from his mother — just a single line.
> “Jake… your father’s not going to make it. Come now.”
Jake hadn’t even changed out of his sleepwear when he left. The drive to the hospital was blurred by memory — cold sweat on the steering wheel, his heart thudding against his ribs like a warning bell that had already rung too late.
At 8:07 AM, they pronounced his father dead.
Collapsed lungs, internal bleeding — the final cruelty of the rare degenerative vascular disorder that had run through his family like a curse. The very same one that had taken his grandfather, now silently claiming its next heir.
Jake stood motionless at the door to the hospital room, his fingers curled against his own palms until his nails bit into the skin. He was too late. He knew it would happen someday. But not today. Not this way.
And with that — the last thread snapped.
Everything that was holding him together—the silent hopes, the ache for something real, the war in his chest between desire and duty—all of it came undone in a shattering collapse.
His knees buckled under him in the hallway outside the ICU.
No one saw it happen. He didn’t let anyone see things like that.
But when his mother found him minutes later, curled in on himself, gasping soundless sobs like he was drowning from the inside, she didn’t speak. She just fell to her knees and pulled him into her arms like she used to when he was five and waking up from a nightmare.
Except this time, the nightmare was real. And it had no end.
They cried there, mother and son, alone in their grief. Her hand in his hair, his face buried in her coat.
He cried not just for the man who died this morning. He cried for the father he never really had.
For the childhood that was shaped by boardroom lessons and the cold weight of expectation.
He cried because he was 27 and still too young to have his entire future written in someone else’s ink.
Because the moment his father’s heart stopped, the burden was officially transferred. Jake Sim — professor, son, husband by contract — was now heir to a multimillion legacy he didn’t ask for, didn’t want, and could never fully escape.
The press would soon know. Shareholders would demand statements. Park family would tighten the leash.
He wasn’t even sure he wanted to teach anymore. He’d been holding onto that job like it was a piece of his real identity. And now even that felt like a lie. Like a version of himself that didn’t exist anymore.
He had plans, once. Small ones. A little apartment, a dog, someone to love honestly and freely. Maybe he’d publish a paper on dark matter and whisper his theories to someone in bed past midnight.
Instead—
This.
A contract marriage.
A funeral.
The quiet realization that his future had been sold before he could even taste it.
His body shook in his mother’s arms.
“I thought I had time,” he whispered. “I thought I had more time.”
She didn’t say it out loud, but her silence was confirmation: so did he.
And now it was too late.
He stayed at the hospital the rest of the day — silent, mechanical, barely existing. The calls started to come in by afternoon — lawyers, business advisors, family acquaintances who hadn’t spoken in years suddenly concerned about “transitions” and “press releases.”
But Jake didn't respond to any of them.
He sat in the corner of the waiting room, coat still on, eyes fixed on a coffee machine that hadn’t worked in years.
He didn't speak again until he whispered:
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
No one heard him.
Only the silence replied.
It was late morning when Jay first noticed it — the way Sunghoon had been checking his phone more often than usual, the stiffness in his shoulders every time the front door creaked or a car passed by. Jake hadn’t shown up. No calls. No texts.
Sunghoon pretended to scroll through a file on his desk, eyes flickering to the empty chair beside him for the fifth time in an hour. Jay didn’t say anything at first. But then—
“Sunghoon,” he said, tone low. “Come sit. You need to see this.”
The screen of Jay’s tablet was already turned toward him. A news article—freshly published, the title loud in clean sans-serif:
> “Businessman Sim Passes Away at 56 After Health Struggles.”
The headline alone drained the color from Sunghoon’s face. His jaw tensed as he lowered himself into the chair beside Jay and began to read.
> ‘Following a long battle with a hereditary vascular condition, prominent businessman Nathaniel Sim has passed away early Saturday morning. His only son, Jake Sim, is expected to inherit the family’s vast commercial portfolio, a conglomerate long associated with the Park Group through a formal merger signed years ago…’
Sunghoon didn’t finish the article. He didn’t need to.
Jay sat quietly beside him, watching the emotions shift in his friend’s eyes. Not shock — no, Sunghoon was too composed for that. But there was something deeper. Something fractured.
Jake’s father was dead.
And with that death, everything written in ink came to life in iron. The contract. The arrangement. The web of obligation that had always felt like a background hum—now screaming in his ear.
Sunghoon thought of Jake.
He saw the look Jake gave him days ago, when he tried to kiss him in fevered confusion. The way his eyes welled when Sunghoon touched his cheek and asked if he’d been crying.
He remembered the taste of bitterness in Jake’s silence.
And now—he imagined Jake alone in a sterile hospital hallway, or maybe standing by his father’s bedside, trying not to break. Sunghoon shut his eyes, jaw clenched.
He knew Jake must be exhausted.
The sky was overcast on the day of the funeral, the kind of gray that pressed heavy on the skin. Windless. Cold. Quiet.
Black coats and solemn faces surrounded the grave site like ghosts of legacy and expectation. Important people came. Industry men, lawyers, friends of the family who hadn’t seen Jake in years and now suddenly remembered his name.
But Jake barely registered them.
He stood still, eyes sunken, wearing a sharp black suit that somehow made him look smaller, thinner, as if the grief had hollowed something out of him. His hair was neatly combed, but he hadn’t shaved. He didn’t sleep the night before. He couldn’t.
His mother stood beside him, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
And on his other side—Heeseung and Jungwon.
From the moment Heeseung entered the hospital days ago and saw Jake’s state, nothing needed to be said. His confession, the complicated silence that followed — all of it faded in the instant he wrapped Jake in his arms and let him sob without restraint.
Jake had held on to him like a lifeline. And Heeseung didn’t let go.
Not at the hospital.
Not at the funeral.
Jungwon was close too — always a step behind Heeseung, carrying everything Jake might need: tissues, water, calmness. His quiet loyalty was Jake’s silent comfort.
Then there was the Park family.
Polished, poised, unshakable.
They arrived with respectful solemnity, nodding politely to those they passed, but Sunghoon wasn’t with them.
Because Sunghoon had already been there. At the hospital. Before any of them.
He stood in a corner of the hallway the day Jake’s father passed, dark coat draped over his arm, watching from a distance as Jake cried in Heeseung’s arms. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t step forward. But he didn’t leave either.
He stood there for hours.
And now, as the coffin was lowered into the earth, Sunghoon stood apart from his family, silent, unmoving. Watching Jake.
He didn’t know how to offer comfort.
He didn’t have the right.
But every second, every breath, his eyes never left Jake.
He saw the trembling in his hands as he dropped a single white rose into the grave.
He saw the way his shoulders hunched when the first handful of dirt landed on the coffin’s lid.
He saw Heeseung’s hand on Jake’s back.
And he felt—
He didn’t know what he felt.
Aching? Longing?
Possessiveness that had nowhere to go?
Jake didn’t look at him once that day. Not when he passed by. Not during the ceremony. Not when it ended and mourners began to scatter.
But Sunghoon still waited.
He waited even after the last guest had gone.
Even after Jake and his mother remained alone, heads bowed.
Even when Heeseung pulled Jake away gently and led him to the car.
Sunghoon stayed behind, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on the headstone.
Because something inside him—something unnameable—refused to leave.
Not until Jake was gone.
They returned home in silence.
Jake stepped out of the car first, keys in hand, face unreadable. Sunghoon followed behind, locking the door after them, the soft click of the lock the only sound between them. The house was dim, shadows stretching long in the still evening. Not a word had been exchanged since the funeral.
Jake disappeared upstairs.
Sunghoon stood in the hallway for a moment longer, coat still on, as if waiting for something—maybe a word, a glance, a sigh. But there was nothing. So he removed his jacket slowly and hung it, his ears sharp, tuned only to the silence.
Upstairs, Jake turned the knob of the bathroom door, entered, and didn’t look back.
The world fell away.
He filled the tub with warm water, steam curling upward, softening the edges of the mirror and the lights. He undressed mechanically, like an automaton — shirt, pants, the funeral tie that still hung limp around his collarbone.
He slid into the tub.
The water hugged his skin, enveloped his chest, throat, lips.
Jake didn’t stop it.
Didn’t move.
He let the faucet run, let the heat climb, let the water rise until it covered his mouth, then his nose. He closed his eyes. The weight of it... strangely peaceful.
He didn’t panic.
He didn’t even think.
He just... disappeared.
Downstairs, Sunghoon checked the time again. Thirty minutes.
He tapped his finger against the counter. Something was gnawing at him. He didn’t want to admit it, but Jake’s silence had unsettled him more than anything else that day. It wasn’t grief that scared him.
It was the absence.
The utter stillness Jake wore like a second skin since morning.
Thirty-five minutes.
“Jake?” he called up the stairs. No answer.
He tried again.
Nothing.
His heart kicked into his throat. Without a second thought, Sunghoon ran up the stairs, the sound of his footsteps sharp against the wood. He didn’t knock this time — slammed the bathroom door open.
And froze.
Water was spilling onto the tiled floor, a shallow wave brushing against his shoes. Steam clung to the walls. The bathtub was full to the brim.
And Jake—still.
Submerged.
“Jake—!” Sunghoon rushed forward, grabbing under Jake’s arms, lifting his upper body out of the water in one motion. Jake’s head lolled back. His lips were pale.
“Shit—Jake, wake up—” he tapped his cheek, eyes wide, panicking. “Jake!”
No response.
His instincts took over. He tilted Jake’s head and gave two sharp breaths, pressed against his chest, again, again—
Jake coughed.
Water burst from his throat in heavy, sputtering gasps. He didn’t open his eyes, but he was breathing. Sunghoon cradled the back of his head, soaked through but steady.
“Jesus Christ...” he muttered, dragging in a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “What the hell were you doing...”
He wrapped Jake in a towel, then carried him—limp, shivering—to his own bedroom. Laid him down gently. Covered him in a blanket. Wiped the water from his brow with trembling fingers.
And waited.
It was past midnight when Jake finally stirred.
His breath hitched as he woke, bolting upright, eyes wide and panicked.
But before he could move—
A hand. Gentle. Warm. Or was it cold, maybe he was the cold one now, so even Sunghoon's always cold hand felt warm against his skin.
Sunghoon’s hand, pressing him back to the bed. The room was dimly lit now, golden lamplight painting shadows on the walls. Jake’s breathing was ragged.
He noticed the arm that curved softly around him. The fingers in his hair, brushing lightly.
He couldn’t fight it.
Tears came, slow at first, then freely, hot and aching. He turned his head away, but Sunghoon already knew.
He left the room without a word. Jake wiped at his face with the back of his hand.
When he returned, Sunghoon carried a glass of water and sat at the edge of the bed.
“Here,” he said quietly.
Jake took it with both hands and drank, the glass trembling slightly. When he finished, he looked up.
“I wasn’t trying to—” his voice cracked. “I wasn’t... it wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t notice. I didn’t feel anything. I just... disappeared.”
“I know,” Sunghoon answered, softly. “I know.”
“I didn’t mean for you to find me like that.”
“I’m glad I did.”
Jake paused, surprised. “What happened to staying out of each other’s business?”
Sunghoon looked away for a moment. Then: “You stopped being just business a long time ago.”
Jake exhaled.
He turned his body slowly, as if something inside him had been rewound. “I should go back to my room.”
“No,” Sunghoon said immediately.
Jake blinked.
Sunghoon’s tone softened. “Not tonight. You need... someone here. You shouldn’t be alone right now. It’s okay. Just sleep. I won’t touch you.”
A long silence.
Jake nodded slowly. His eyes were tired. “Okay. Just tonight.”
They lay down, an ocean of tension between them, but the quiet was different this time. Not empty — full of things unsaid.
Jake turned his face to the ceiling.
“I wasn’t close to him, you know,” he whispered.
Sunghoon didn’t move.
“But he was still my father. I kept thinking I had time left. A year, maybe. Time to figure things out. Time to plan. To run. To be someone else.”
Sunghoon closed his eyes.
“You ever feel like your life got decided before you could say anything about it?”
“All the time,” Sunghoon murmured.
“I wanted to run,” Jake said, voice cracking again. “With my savings. Just disappear. Find someone I could actually love. Start over.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I promised him,” Jake said. “When I was sixteen. I promised him I’d take care of everything.”
Sunghoon didn’t answer for a moment. “You keep your promises, huh.”
Jake rolled to his side to face him.
“I try.”
Their eyes met. In the dim light, Jake’s face was soft, shadows playing under his cheekbones, his lashes still wet from tears. Sunghoon studied him quietly.
“Why did you come in?” Jake asked after a while. “You could’ve ignored it.”
“I don’t know,” Sunghoon said. “Something told me not to.”
Jake blinked a few times. His throat felt dry again, but this time not from crying.
“You saved me,” he said simply. “I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“You don’t have to,” Sunghoon replied, eyes fixed on the ceiling now. “Just don’t do it again.”
Jake’s brows pulled together. “I wasn’t trying to... end anything, you know? I really wasn’t. But it felt like everything around me was slipping through my fingers. My dad. My plans. My... freedom.”
“I believe you,” Sunghoon said. “Still scared the hell out of me.”
Silence.
Then Jake said it, more clearly this time, voice steady:
“Thank you.”
Sunghoon turned his head slightly, caught in the rawness of the moment.
Jake’s voice grew softer, a hint more vulnerable. “It’s weird, though.”
“What is?”
“Having you here like this. After everything.”
Sunghoon’s gaze didn’t waver. “I can leave, if you want.”
Jake shook his head instantly. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
A pause.
For once, that answer didn’t feel like an escape. It felt like honesty.
“Then... sleep, must be tired. I’m not going anywhere.”
Another silence. But not an uncomfortable one.
Just two souls, breathing in sync under the same roof. The same weight. The same night sky pressing against their windows.