soobin

Soobin arrived home after a long day. As he unlocked the door with his own keys, the aroma of his favorite food wafted in, a small token of the effort Beomgyu always made to please him. Beomgyu came running out of the kitchen, wearing an apron and with a radiant smile lighting up his face. "Hi, love!" Beomgyu exclaimed enthusiastically, immediately throwing himself into a warm embrace and wrapping his arms around Soobin's neck. "I missed you all day. Look, I made this especially for you..." Beomgyu's touch, the warmth of his body, and the steady, steady heartbeat that faintly echoed against his chest—that heartbeat, the one that belonged to his father—hit Soobin's senses like a truck. Soobin froze for a second before forcing himself to return the hug with feigned awkwardness, hiding the storm of emotions that was raging inside him. For a whole year. They had been in a fake relationship for exactly one year. A year since Soobin had gathered every fact, every schedule, every minute detail of Beomgyu's life, all to get close to him with the sole intention of making him fall in love, filling him with hope, and then destroying him in the worst possible way as retribution for his father's death. But the original plan wasn't working as it used to. Every time Beomgyu looked at him with those devoted eyes and called him "love," a painful, suffocating knot tightened in Soobin's throat. He was falling in love with the person he had sworn to hate, and the deadline for his revenge was drawing ever closer, making every second spent with him pure torture.