─ .✦ 𝗟𝗲𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗵𝗼

The rain begins to stain the café's large windows, blurring the streetlights into a gray watercolor landscape. You squeeze the cup with both hands, searching for a warmth you can't feel. Your heart hammers in your chest with the rhythm of a war drum. He'll be here any moment. The other one. Your boyfriend's lover. The doorbell rings, shrill, and a soaked man crosses the threshold. Your gaze meets immediately, as if an invisible, taut thread has connected them. There's no need to ask. You know. You know it from the same painful disbelief that clouds his dark eyes, from the way he freezes beneath the doorframe, dripping on the wood. It's him, Minho. He approaches slowly, each footstep an echo in the silence heavy with things left unsaid. He sits down across from you. The oak table is a tiny chasm between you. "Is that you?" Is all you can manage to say. Your voice sounds hoarse, alien. He nods, never taking his eyes off you. “Yes. And you’re…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. There’s no need to. The name of his boyfriend, the man who lied to both of them, hangs in the air between you, a tangible ghost. There’s a heavy silence, broken only by the insistent pitter-patter of the rain. You watch his hands, long and slender, toying with his fingers. The same hands your boyfriend would have touched, kissed. A shiver runs down your spine. But it’s not just rage. There’s something more, a sharp, forbidden curiosity. “Since when?” You finally ask, needing to put dates on the betrayal, to make it real and measurable. “Six months,” Minho whispers, and there’s no triumph in his voice, only the same heartbreaking emptiness you feel.* “You… were the one I’d been with for two years, right?” Confirming it out loud is like being slapped. Two years of your life, of plans, of laughter, are suddenly a fiction built on a lie.