It was barely noon when I heard the front door open and shut with the subtle aggression only Seungyong Kang could pull off. Not a slam. Just... judgmental.
Sejun would've shouted something lighthearted. Haneul would've quietly walked past but given me a nod. Daeho would've opened the fridge like a tornado and snacking. But this silence? That was a Seungyong silence.
I poked my head out from behind my laptop screen. He was already halfway across the living room, shoes off, coat over his arm, and a scowl on his face like the air personally offended him.
"Home early," I remarked, my gaze returning to my laptop screen as I typed away. "Got bored of tormenting teenagers?"
He sighed mid-step, glanced at me, and said, "I'm taking a leave." He exhaled sharply through his nose and rubbed his temple. "I need help filing it online. The school's online portal is a nightmare, and I'm not in the mood to wrestle with it."
Something about the way he said it—tight, clipped, reluctant—piqued my curiosity. Seungyong didn't strike me as the type to ask for help. He passive-aggressively endured things to death.
I stayed on the couch for a beat longer, watching the back of his head. His hair was less perfectly styled than usual, the strands slightly disheveled like he'd run his fingers through them too many times. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned. And now that I was really looking, he was flushed, too. Pale in a way that washed out his features, with that high-color bloom across his cheeks that didn't look healthy. Fever.
"Go to your room, get changed or shower while I file your leave. You look like shit." I sighed, getting up from the cough and taking his laptop bag as he begrudgingly mumbled about not needing to listen to me.
I rolled my eyes, following him into his room as I sat down on his desk and logged into the school portal. As the loading screen spun, I glanced at him again.
"You know," I said casually, "You actually do look terrible. As in, you need to get some rest."
He made a sound in his throat. Something between a scoff and a snort.
"You're hovering," he said. "Too close."
"I'm two feet away from you." I retorted, getting up and walking toward him. "This is close."
I watched him retreat another half-step, now pressed almost to the wall. But that look in his eyes, it wasn't disgust, now that I looked at him properly. Then it clicked. Not just stubborn. Not just irritable. He was scared. Not of me, necessarily, but of proximity. Of being too close to anyone who could reach in and unspool something inside him. It wasn't just physical space he was guarding. It was emotional. Deep. Probably old.
Avoidant, I thought. Classic symptoms. High-functioning, emotionally distant, avoids vulnerability like it's the plague. Prone to self-isolation. Probably a result of someone violating his trust or weaponizing his vulnerability. Once. Twice. Maybe repeatedly.
I sighed, retreating to fill out the form. Name. Employee ID. Duration of leave. Date.
"Reason?" I asked.
"Illness."
"You want me to add anything else?"
"No."
"Done," I leaned back, stretched a little, and looked at him. "You're now officially allowed to be a sick, miserable recluse."
Seungyong had placed his laptop on the far end of the desk and stood beside it, arms folded, radiating silent irritationIt wasn't personal. Or maybe it was. Maybe he found me repulsive. But more likely, this was how he operated. Withholding. Guarded. Hypervigilant. Then he turned away from me. Again. Without so much as a thanks. Just walked onto his bed and flopped like the act of standing had become too much effort. I followed. Not out of kindness. Out of something meaner. Pettier.
"You could've just asked for help without acting like I spit in your food," I scoffed, crossing my arms.
"I didn't want help. I needed it."
He pissed me off, so I left. I marched back into the kitchen, filling the kettle and pulling down a jar of the herbal blend I'd bought weeks ago. Not the delicate ceremonial tea Seungyong fussed over, but something potent, with a kick of ginger and honey. He'd hate the flavor, which was part of the fun.
When I returned, I set the steaming mug in front of him like it was an order. "Drink."
He regarded it like I'd handed him poison, but eventually, he lifted it to his lips. His hand was steady, but only because he was putting every ounce of stubborn pride into making it so.
"Good boy," I said sweetly. His eyes flicked up in warning. I grinned wider.
It was glorious, seeing him like this. The mighty Seungyong, reduced to sipping tea while swaddled in a blanket I'd tucked around him.
He didn't say anything when I set the bowl down. Didn't thank me. Didn't even pretend. And I didn't expect him to. He looked at the soup like it was a personal insult. I almost smiled. I sat across from him, legs crossed, arms folded, watching him refuse to meet my eyes.
He wasn't noble. He wasn't stoic. He was tired. Sick. Alone.
Just like I was.
I didn't pity him. I loathed him. Or maybe I loathed what I am. That cold, tight refusal to accept care. The firm belief that needing someone was weakness. Let him stew in the discomfort of being noticed. Let him suffer the indignity of being tended to by someone who knew exactly what his pride was made of. Let him hate me.
He didn't speak. And I didn't care. I stood abruptly and walked away. Not to give him space, but to take control. If he wasn't going to ask, I was going to force him to receive.
I grabbed the spare humidifier from the hallway closet, filled it, and plugged it in near the bed. Dropped a eucalyptus oil capsule in. Then came the extra blanket. Then a glass of electrolyte water. Then the thermometer. Then I dug out the heating pad from under the bathroom sink. With every item I laid down, I could feel him shrinking into his bed more and more. Not out of comfort, but out of humiliation.
Good. Feel the shame. Feel what it's like to be managed.
Because no one had ever done it for me. Not once. Not when I was overworked, not when I collapsed from exhaustion, not when my fingers were bleeding and I told myself I was fine. No one forced me to rest. So now I'd force him.
He tried to sit up straighter. I pushed him back with one hand. "You're sick. So sit there and be sick."
He stared at me, something sharp behind his eyes. "This isn't kindness."
"No," I agreed. "It's vengeance."
For every time someone ignored me. For every ache I buried. For every sleepless night I powered through while the world pretended I was fine because I didn't bleed loud enough to be noticed.
Seungyong went quiet again, but I didn't miss the way his hands clenched the blanket tighter. And maybe, for a second, he was going to say something. Maybe he was going to crack. There was a breath—a hitch—a look that passed over his face like the shadow of a memory. But just as quickly, it was gone.
The thing was, I wanted him to remember this. To remember being trapped in bed, breath shallow, depending on me to bring him water and keep the blankets from tangling. I wanted him to remember that no matter how high and mighty he tried to be, there had been a night when I had the power, and he didn't.
It wasn't kindness. It was spite, dressed up in bedside manners.
And I was enjoying every second of it.
I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead before he could lean away, ignoring his withering glare. His skin radiated heat, sharp enough to make me pause. Concern tugged at my gut, but I shoved it down.
Spite, I reminded myself. This is about spite.
Still… every so often, his eyes closed just a fraction too long, and I found myself leaning forward before I could stop myself. Checking if his breathing was even. Making sure he didn't drop the cup.
Not that I cared. This was about winning. About having the upper hand for once.
He rolled over, turning his back to me. That was the end of the conversation. I didn't push. I didn't ask. I did what I came to do.
I left the room and sat down at my laptop, the screen long asleep, the cursor blinking like a pulse I didn't know how to silence.
Later, I would serve him the soup and watch him eat every spoonful, still telling myself it was for the satisfaction of knowing the high and mighty Seungyong had been reduced to needing me.
And maybe—just maybe—I'd ignore how my chest eased when I saw a little of the color return to his face.
I should've felt satisfied. Instead, I felt hollow. Like all the years I spent wishing someone would force me to stop had finally found their outlet, and it still wasn't enough. Because even in forcing him to be vulnerable, I still wasn't allowed to be.
And that's what burned. That's what would keep burning, until someone came along and did it for me. But no one would. So I'd keep caring out of spite until someone choked on it.
And then I heard choking coming from Seungyong's room. Goddamn it, did nobody ever teach that old man not to eat laying down during the centuries he's been alive for?
"Haaah, what I'd kill right now for a bottle of mango juice." I muttered, getting up to head to his room, before I heard the sound of the front door closing shut. Daeho, the last of the four to arrive home today.
"Old man Seungyong's under the weather. Your shifts are on, I'll get dinner ready so make sure the patient doesn't die. Again." I called out, shutting my laptop down before heading to the kitchen. I didn't bother waiting for a reply before popping my earbuds in while I cooked. Out of the sheer, unrelenting need to impose order somewhere. If not on them, then on the garlic I could crush under my knife.
I'd just started browning the beef strips when I heard footsteps approaching from afar. It wasn't anywhere near me, but having grown up in a strict household, I learned to analyze the weight, sound, and personality of footsteps to tell at least how far they were, how fast or slow they were going, and in what direction.
There was no loud entrance. No fanfare. Just the faint, soft scuff of socks against tile. I didn't look up until I felt someone hovering just outside the kitchen. Haneul. He stood there like a shadow, thin framed glasses resting on his face, sweater sleeves pushed halfway up, gaze flicking from the cutting board to the stove, then back to me.
"You're making dinner," he said softly. Not a question. Just a statement that held the same quiet surprise I felt about myself. "Can I help?"
Daeho would've joked. Sejun would've offered with the implication of duty. Seungyong, if he'd been conscious, would've insisted and then collapsed halfway through stirring. But Haneul? He didn't offer like someone looking for praise or permission. Just someone used to sliding into silence and filling the spaces no one else noticed.
"…You still know how to prep vegetables?"
He gave a small shrug. "Enough."
I pointed with the knife. "Carrots. Matchsticks. Cleanly. No chunks."
He pulled the cutting board closer, hands already steadying the knife as if acclimating to its weight. The motion was almost casual, but there was an ease to it that felt older than him — not a new confidence but an old, practiced muscle memory. His fingers closed around the handle the way someone who has always stood at a counter beside another would: familiar, precise, unselfconscious.
We worked in a companionable silence. Oil sizzled in the pan, breath warmed the window fog, the knife on wood made a steady, metronomic tick. It was surprising, in a small way, how perfectly we fit into a rhythm that required no spoken directions. He hadn't needed to be told where the peeler was; he reached automatically. When I reached for the soy sauce, it was already in his hand, the bottle cool and reassuring.
There was a shape of memory that slid into the present: a smaller kitchen, narrower counters, a chipped blue bowl that used to live in my mother's sink. We had been children who found each other in the sticky after-school hours — Haneul with his bag slung over his shoulder, me with my hair in a messy knot, both of us hungry and reckless with time. He used to climb onto the counter when my mother wasn't looking, ankles swinging; I used to hide the sugar jar and dare him to find it. He'd taught me to slice strawberries the way his grandmother did, fanning them into neat overlapping petals for whatever cake we were pretending to make. I'd shown him how to pinch dough so it wouldn't tear. The chores we learned were small, domestic rituals that stuck to us like flour on skin.
Now he sliced carrots as if that kitchen in my memory had never truly left us. His hands moved with the confidence of someone who had done this while waiting for me to come home after school, the same way he had once steadied my elbow when I insisted on cutting my own sandwich. There was no grand declaration of skill, no performance. Just the quiet proof of a shared history: the way he stacked the matchsticks by size, the way he flicked a stray sliver into the compost with the same gentle contempt he used to show toward burnt rice.
I caught myself watching his profile in the steam, the way his brow furrowed minutely when he concentrated. Little grooves there I remembered from when we were kids arguing over board game rules. Even his absentminded humming — a half-remembered children's song he'd once whistled while drying dishes — nudged open places inside me that had been closed for years. The sound made the room feel smaller, kinder.
When the pork hit the pan and let out that low, impatient hiss, he leaned over and inhaled like someone taking stock of something familiar and necessary. "Smells the same," he said, as if confirming that time had kept one thing in place while it rearranged everything else.
"It always does," I told him, and meant it. There was comfort in the repetition — in flavors and movements that refused to be complicated by all the things we were now, by the distance and the changes and the people we'd become since the playground and the chipped blue bowl.
At one point a carrot strip escaped and landed on the floor. Without looking, he tapped it with his foot and nudged it toward the compost, and I flashed back to the hundredth time we'd done this as kids — him making sound effects for a fallen vegetable while I laughed and pretended to scold him. The laugh came out soft and private, a thing for the two of us.
We moved through the rest of the prep with those small, efficient exchanges that only people who have known one another for a long time acquire: a tilt of the head to request salt, an index finger held up for a moment to say "wait," the precise angle at which to hold a pan so nothing spills. When I needed the garlic minced finer, he didn't ask how; he just leaned in and matched my pace, cutting until the pieces were the size I wanted.
By the time the vegetables were sizzling and the pork browned to the color I liked, the kitchen felt less like an assembly of appliances and more like a living room where memories lay folded on the couch. The light over the sink slanted in a way that made the steam halo him, and for a moment I saw us both — not just as we were now, but as the children who had once set up an imaginary restaurant on the living room floor and charged each other pennies for invisible soup.
As Haneul laid out the perilla leaves, banchan, and sauce dishes, I continued flipping the meat in neat rows. Each turn was deliberate, as if precision could distract from the churn in my chest. As if this ritual of heat and seasoning could settle whatever else was crawling under my skin. The sizzle started as soon as the first slices of beef hit the pan. Fat rendered quickly, bubbling into shallow pools that spat at me like I deserved it. The kitchen filled with smoke and heat and the familiar scent of sesame and scorched garlic. It reminded me of summer nights when work ended late and my hands wouldn't stop shaking from too much caffeine and too little sleep.
More footsteps approached. I didn't need to look up. Sejun always entered like he belonged in every room. Calm, even when he was exhausted. I could hear the drag of his tie being loosened as he approached. He didn't speak right away. Just took in the smell, the setup, the simmering beef, and finally said something neutral. Probably "smells good," or something equally inoffensive. I didn't respond. I was too focused on getting the char just right, on plating the first round of cooked slices before they dried out.
I reached for a spare bowl and portioned one for Seungyong. His wouldn't stay warm, but maybe the smell would wake him. Or Sejun would drag him out of the grave like he always did.
Sejun didn't say anything more. Just walked toward the hall with that purposeful, quiet urgency that meant he wasn't going to knock—just barge in and fix things, the way he always did. When he returned, he mentioned Seungyong still sleeping. Still curled up in his room like a burnt-out shell. I didn't respond to that either, though something in me flickered at the mention. I told myself it was irritation. That watching someone with the same workaholic compulsion I used to preach was grating.
Haneul started laying out spoons and napkins at the table, still quiet, but moving with a calm precision that made the room feel strangely grounded. No theatrics. No commentary.
I handed him two of the bowls. "You're good at this," I mumbled before I could stop myself.
He blinked at me. "At setting a table?"
Stupid Daphne. Stupid, stupid, why did you even say that? What was that meant to mean in this context? "At helping." I replied, shrugging.
He didn't smile. Just gave a soft, neutral nod. "You make it easy." That silenced me more effectively than any insult.
Daeho was louder, as expected. He arrived a couple minutes later like a typhoon wearing a graphic tee and cargo shorts. . I braced for the inevitable explosion of praise, whining, and theatrical commentary, which arrived with the precision of clockwork. He swooned over the smell, demanded to know if this was heaven, and declared the meal life-changing before even tasting it.
"Wash your hands and sit down."
"Ma'am, yes, ma'am." He saluted and vanished toward the bathroom.
When he returned, the table was set. I had already pulled the finished meat off the grill and set up the portable pan on the table so we could finish grilling as we ate. Daeho was noisy and dramatic, narrating his ssam-wrapping like a food critic on reality TV. Sejun was gentler, quieter, but kept thanking me with his eyes, like I was feeding something more than hunger. Haneul didn't speak unless spoken to, but kept the grill running and the wraps moving. He always made sure I had food on my plate.
The meat was perfectly crisp. Juices locked in. Garlic roasted until soft and golden. The spice of ssamjang burned just enough to numb the corners of my mouth. It was good. Objectively good. I ate it with slow, steady bites, letting the heat fill my chest and the salt settle low in my stomach. I let the hum of the house—Daeho's chewing, Sejun's glass clicking against the table, Haneul's faint movements beside me—wrap around the space like a blanket I didn't ask for. By the time the grill ran out of meat, we were full, slower, quieter. The table had the afterglow of a meal shared by people pretending they weren't family. Dishes pushed aside. Banchan half-eaten. Empty bowls stacked in neat disorder.
Daeho leaned back, hands behind his head. "You're not as scary as you pretend to be," he said. "You fed me ssam with garlic."
"So?"
"So now we're emotionally bonded."
"Daeho."
"Yes?"
"Choke."
"This is nice." He grinned.
I didn't respond.
But later, when the table was clean, and the meat was gone, and Haneul was silently washing dishes beside me again, I thought maybe he was right. It was nice.
And in the hallway, behind a closed door, Seungyong still hadn't stirred.
I told myself I didn't care, but I wrapped a small tray of leftovers anyway and labeled it with his name.
The plates were still warm when I carried them to the sink, steam curling up in little ghostly ribbons as the water began to run. The rest of the boys had already drifted off; Daeho to the living room with the hum of the TV, Sejun upstairs to make a few late calls. Seungyong was still asleep, cocooned in his room, breaths slow and even.
I reached for the soap, but Haneul was already beside me, his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, exposing the fine, pale lines of his forearms. He didn't say anything, just took the sponge from my hand as if this was already decided. The rhythm between us was unspoken—him washing, me rinsing—our hands moving close enough that the space between them felt more like a pause than a distance. The first brush of fingers came when I reached for a plate too soon, my skin glancing against his knuckle.
"Sorry," I muttered.
He didn't flinch, didn't pull back, just passed me the plate, as if the contact was nothing. But it sat in my mind like a pebble dropped in still water, ripples expanding quietly.
"You still draw?" I asked, desperate for any conversation to break the silence.
He handed me a plate, our fingers grazing. I thought he'd ignore the comment, but instead he said, "Maybe."
"You're not gonna tell me what you draw?" I pressed, drying the plate slowly.
"I'll show you," he said finally, his voice lighter, softer. "If you want."
It startled me enough that the next plate I reached for slipped in my grip, the soapy ceramic sliding out of my hand. I caught it clumsily, heart skipping, but his hand had already darted out to steady mine.
The touch was warm. Firm. Close enough that for a second, it felt like there was no air between us.
"Thanks," I mumbled, looking away.
He released my hand slowly, as though making sure I wasn't going to drop the plate again. I had the absurd thought that I could still feel the shape of his fingers against mine, even after he let go.
The next dish was a mug. Smaller, lighter. When I took it from him, our thumbs knocked into each other, skin against skin. I thought maybe it was nothing, but then I saw the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth—not quite a smile, but enough to suggest he'd noticed.
"You're bad at small talk," I told him, trying to deflect.
"Maybe you're bad at silences," he replied, still not looking at me.
It was such an unexpectedly sharp answer that I blinked, caught between wanting to laugh and wanting to disappear. The warmth that had been steadily building in my cheeks finally reached my ears, and I prayed the lighting was dim enough to hide it.
By the time we finished the last dish, the kitchen felt warmer than it had when we started. And not from the steam, but from something quieter, heavier. Something that lingered even after the faucet was turned off.
And when I brushed past him to put away the clean plates, I could swear I still felt the heat of his hand.