Morning came slowly.
Soft, light filtered through the curtains, warm against your skin. The hotel room was still—quiet in the way only early hours could be, wrapped in that tender kind of silence that didn't need to be filled.
You shifted slightly beneath the blankets, your leg tangled with Chan's, your cheek pressed to his chest.
He was already awake. You could tell by the way his fingers trailed slowly along your spine, patient and featherlight. Like he wasn't in a hurry. Like he could stay like this forever.
You tilted your head up to find him already watching you, lids heavy, hair a soft mess, his expression somewhere between reverence and disbelief.
"Morning," he whispered.
You smiled. "Morning."
He leaned down and kissed your forehead, lingering there. "Still real?"
You nodded against him. "Still real."
For a while, you just lay there. Breathing. Holding. Being.
Then his eyes wandered toward the nightstand, where something caught his attention. He reached over slowly, fingers brushing a familiar piece of folded paper.
His note. The one he gave you back in Orlando.
You watched as he picked it up carefully, almost like it might crumble. He ran his thumb over the crease, the ink. His expression shifted—soft, nostalgic, full of something deeper than words.
"You kept it..." he said quietly.
"Of course I did."
He looked at you again, eyes glassy. "I read this a hundred times after I wrote it. I was scared it wouldn't be enough."
"It was everything," you whispered.
He leaned over and kissed you again—gentler this time, like a thank-you. Then he pulled back just far enough to ask, "Where do you want to be today?"
You smiled. "In the crowd."
His brow arched, surprised. "You sure?"
"I want to see you do what you love. I want to cheer for you, scream with the fans, feel it with them. I got to be backstage already... now I just want to be in your world."
Chan stared at you for a long beat. Then nodded. "Okay," he whispered. "Then that's exactly where you'll be."
As you stretched and rolled out of bed, your phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Felix.
You unlocked it and saw a message with a video and three fire emojis.
Felix :
"You're not ready for this."
You tapped it.
The video opened to a TikTok: last night's performance, right at the moment Chan spotted you offstage. A fan had caught the entire reaction—the pause, the mic drop, the visible shift in his face, and the way he looked like the wind had been knocked out of him.
The caption read:
"When you realize the person you love is standing in the wings #BangChan #StrayKids #MicDropIRL"
You burst out laughing.
"Chan," you grinned, turning the screen to show him, "you're going viral."
He sat up, peering over your shoulder. The second he saw it, his face turned bright red. "Oh my god—no."
You kept playing it. "Look at you! You froze!"
"I did not— "He grabbed a pillow and flopped face-down onto it with a groan. "I knew someone filmed that."
You giggled. "The fans are obsessed. Comments are all like 'This is what love looks like,' and 'Find someone who looks at you the way Chan looked at her.'"
He peeked up from the pillow, ears pink. "Well... they're not wrong."
You leaned over and kissed the tip of his nose. "No, they're not."