[txt short collection💡]

Side Story Collection <1>

《Unrequited Love Only You Don’t Know》
Seowoo♡Taehyun


As if a hole had torn open in the sky right when the general-education class ended
the rain came pouring down.

At the building entrance, the sudden downpour
had turned the place into chaos with the voices of students stranded by the rain.


But amid that commotion, Han Seowoo alone was utterly ordinary.

Clutching her bag to her chest, leaning comfortably against a building pillar,
she was instead watching the raindrops falling outside the window.



A little later,
an all-too-familiar silhouette appeared, cutting through the rain.

Kang Taehyun walked in with a huge umbrella, a varsity jacket thrown on carelessly.


As if the stares of the girls around him meant nothing,
Taehyun's unwavering gaze was
fixed only on Seowoo at the building entrance.



Taehyun strode over and stopped right in front of Seowoo,
without saying a word.

He simply shook the umbrella lightly,
then nodded silently toward Seowoo.


That one short gesture said everything.

Seowoo smiled brightly and, as if it were natural, slipped under Taehyun's umbrella.


The moment Seowoo stepped in, Taehyun's big hand naturally
took Seowoo's bag and slung it over his own shoulder.
At the same time, the large umbrella tilted ruthlessly toward Seowoo's side.


Even knowing his right shoulder was getting drenched without mercy, Taehyun
didn't furrow his brows once.

Back in high school, Taehyun had been prickly, tilting the umbrella so his shoulder got soaked instead, but now
he had become a gentle man
who could tilt the umbrella perfectly toward Seowoo without saying a word.




"Let's go."




Along with Taehyun's low voice, the two of them
walked side by side into the rain.

With their shoulders naturally pressed together on the way to the subway station,
Seowoo suddenly glanced at Taehyun's wet right shoulder and casually brought up the subject.




"You remind me of high school.
That day, too, it suddenly poured down like crazy."

"........"

"Back then, why were you like that under the umbrella?
You said you liked me even then."




At Seowoo's teasing words, Taehyun's pace slowed by a tiny fraction.
Even now, five years later, the memory of that high school confession, made while he was silently suffering,
must have been embarrassing, because the tips of Taehyun's ears began to turn slightly red.


Taehyun pretended not to care, fixed his gaze straight ahead, and muttered out,




"Back then, I thought you were an idiot without an umbrella.
I figured you'd end up walking around getting soaked next to some other guy."

"An idiot, huh..! And now, even without an umbrella, my boyfriend comes to pick me up."
When Seowoo playfully hugged Taehyun around the waist and looked up at him,




Taehyun finally couldn't hold it in and let out a breathy snort of laughter.
Then, tightening the arm around Seowoo's shoulders even more,

he whispered low in her ear.
"Then stop talking. If you understand, just keep walking."




On that campus afternoon, with the sound of rain warmly embracing their footsteps,




that one year of awkward, desperate unrequited love had, before they knew it,
become the cozy comfort of a long relationship that no longer needed words
to be the perfect answer in each other's everyday lives.
《The Rude One I Don't Like》

Yeoju♡Yeonjun

Sophomore year of high school, the new semester,

the classroom atmosphere had flowed quite differently from a year ago.

Not only had the two people they never expected ended up in the same class again,

but they had been fatefully assigned to sit together in the very back row.

The arrogant vampire Choi Yeonjun, who a year ago had said human body heat was annoying and told her not to touch him,

was nowhere in the classroom now.

The current Choi Yeonjun, whether it was class time or break time,

had his heavy chin buried behind Yeoju's back,

using his big body to trap her in a back hug.

No matter where she went, the space behind Yeoju's back was entirely Yeonjun's.

"Hey, bat. It's cold. Get off me;;"

"No. You're mine. It's my heart, isn't it."

Yeonjun wrapped his long arm tightly over Yeoju's shoulder

and grumbled low.

Even now that they were dating, he was still as prickly as a stone just picked up off the street,

but all he did was press Yeoju closer to his chest

with no intention whatsoever of letting go of his arm.

Despite the vampire's famously cold body temperature,

a fast, fierce beating sound began to throb

clearly from Yeonjun's chest.

Thump, thump, thump

Unfairly, this sound must have been audible all the way to Yeoju's back, yet he

stubbornly held his ground behind her.

"You said being warm-blooded annoyed you. Why are you sticking to me?"

Yeoju tossed back the words Yeonjun had said a year ago,

tilting her head and looking up at him sideways.

Yeonjun's brows snapped together for a moment, right on target.

But as if the bold sight of his girlfriend, who was determined to glare back without ever losing, was getting on his nerves,

the tips of his ears flushed red under the harsh classroom lights.

Even as a couple, the two of them traded tension as sharply as ever,

and a merciless tension filled the air.

Yeonjun anxiously pressed his own lower lip with his sharp fangs,

and instead pulled Yeoju even tighter into his arms.

"Don't get it twisted.

Your crappy body heat... is weirdly addictive these days, so I'm only putting up with it."

"Then at least speak nicely, seriously."

"Don't wanna. You should be the one yielding to me first."

Outside, everyone said he was a pure-blood noble who made people tremble in fear,

but in front of Yeoju, the only human he had ever loved and the one who was his lifeline,

he was just a guy suffering alone from some strange possessive obsession.

Yeonjun inhaled the hot scent drifting from Yeoju's nape,

then buried his head deep against Yeoju's shoulder,

trying to hide the corners of his eyes, red as if they might burst.

"If I ever catch you with some other guy,

I won't care if you're my girlfriend or whatever—I really will bite you."

Unlike his fierce nagging, the hand that held Yeoju in place

looked unbelievably frantic and precious.

That rude vampire who said human smell was disgusting,

was instead completely wrapped up in human warmth and unable to run even one step away.

It was the fierce classroom scene of second-year high school.

《My Small Utopia》

Seoin♡Kai

Within the frame of school, Huening Kai still remained in the darkest

corner of the classroom.

His strict daily life: keeping his hair long to hide the fact

that he was a lion beastkin, and never forming deep bonds with anyone.

But the relationship with Seoin, who had broken down that sturdy wall and finally become his lover,

was creating a strange frequency inside the school.

The two of them didn't go around boasting about their relationship.

At the same time, they didn't hide it by avoiding each other in the classroom like strangers, suffocatingly.

They simply blended each other naturally into the little flow of everyday life.

Lunchtime,

in the back row of the classroom where the kids were noisily chattering,

Seoin was dozing off, nodding over an English vocabulary book.

Just then, Kai, who hadn't moved at all from his seat, slowly stood up.

Pretending to head for the lockers, he casually set

a soft banana milk on the corner of Seoin's desk.

It was only a brief moment without even making eye contact,

but Seoin blinked and let out a sleepy snicker.

To everyone else, Kai just looked like he had casually set down a drink while passing by

and gone back to his seat with a calm face.

But even the blue eyes peeking through the long fringe that had fallen low

were drawing an unmistakably clear arc.

After school,

only when the two of them were left alone in the cold classroom after everyone else had left

did their own clock finally begin to turn slowly.

"Seoin, you really kept quiet and behaved at school today, right?"

As Kai spoke while readjusting the strap of his bag,

Seoin slowly walked over and covered Kai's hand with hers.

At Seoin's warmth spreading through his palm,

the white ears hidden above Kai's head trembled faintly and popped out with a thud.

The traces of the beast he had hidden tightly outside for fear of being found out,

were at their most exposed and soft only in front of Seoin.

As Kai softly rubbed his cheek against the back of Seoin's hand,

Seoeun opened her mouth.

"Even without saying anything, it looks like Bomu and Yeonjun, the Yeoju-type people, all noticed."

"Really? I thought I was doing a pretty good job not making it obvious.."

"The way we look at each other,

to other people it apparently already shows without us having to say a word."

"Looks like the temperature of my world is full of you, so it shows."

Even without making a grand announcement of their relationship,

the fact that they were each other's one and only salvation and shelter

had become an unhideable air, warmly filling the classroom.

Even without saying it out loud,

it was the perfectly tender after-school scene of just White Lion and Seoin,

quietly seeping into each other's everyday lives.

《I Know I Love You》

Yeoju♡Beomgyu

Inside the cruel hell that was school, the stares toward Yeoju and

the labels attached to her were still cold and sharp.

But if there was one thing different from the past, when she had sat at the bottom of the abyss and taken in the filth as it was,

it was that now, at Yeoju's fingertips, there was the warmth Beomgyu had given her

and it was there to stay.

The two of them weren't bound by such shallow definitions as ordinary lovers or just people dating, as others might say.

No common word could dare explain this deep, this vicious relationship.

If the other were gone, they felt like they might stop breathing at any moment—

a special bond like a lifeline, beyond just dating.

After school,

inside the empty storage room of the gym on a day when the rain came down hard,

a terrible silence had settled.

On Yeoju's fingers, as she sat on the mat, were still today's

small wounds—scraped, cut, and torn by the children's bullying.

Without saying a word, Beomgyu knelt on one knee in front of Yeoju,

and gently took her small hand in his big one.

Beomgyu took ointment and bandages from his pocket and began

carefully putting them one by one on Yeoju's fingers.

Yeoju stared blankly at the bandaged fingers.

Yeoju said, clutching Beomgyu's shirt hem.

"When you said you loved me last time, that wasn't a dream, right?

You won't... leave me too, right?"

At that desperate question, Beomgyu's hands stopped for a moment.

Beomgyu slowly lifted his head and looked at Yeoju.

Then he gently stroked her cheek with his hand.

"It wasn't a dream. And why would I leave you."

Beomgyu wrapped his arms around Yeoju's waist as she sat on the mat,

and pulled her warmly against his chest.

The label of being a couple wasn't necessary.

They were already beings deeply carved into each other's souls.

With his lips near the side of Yeoju's ear, Beomgyu whispered low,

"If your place isn't in heaven, then I just need to turn this hell into heaven."

Beomgyu's voice filled Yeoju's ear completely.

Beyond the awkward frame of lovers,

their thick shadows—becoming each other's only law and

perfect salvation in a world full of problems—were faintly overlapping

over the gym storage room floor, bleeding into the sunset.

《First Love's First Love》

Yeoju♡Soobin

The park at 3 a.m., with streetlamp light spreading like orange stains,

was quietly sunk in a silence so cold it seemed to pierce the skin.

Soobin, with a face unnervingly gaunt, stood beside the bench

and kept staring at the ground.

Unable to look away from the phone screen that had vibrated at 2 a.m.,

Yeoju, who had rushed out only wearing a thin coat,

quietly watched Soobin's silhouette from far away.

To forcefully erase Soobin from her world,

years of not sending even a single message made it absurd,

and the night air was already changing back at once to the suffocating temperature of the past.

".....You weren't asleep."

Soobin slowly lifted his head and looked at Yeoju.

His voice trembled in the dawn air as it scattered pale and white.

Yeoju, instead of answering, shoved her hand deep into her pocket.

The boy who always smiled brightly like sunshine, with dimples showing,

who used to poke in one earbud for her,

now wore a completely shattered look in his eyes.

Soobin strode over and stopped right in front of Yeoju.

His big hand reached toward Yeoju's cheek,

then dropped weakly into the air as if he realized he had no right.

"Was this how it was every time I sat on the gym stands?

Even when you stayed curled up all night just to watch me play basketball."

Yeoju's breath stopped for a moment.

It was because of the unexpected sentence that came out of Soobin's mouth.

He had clearly been alone all this time,

chewing over the pieces of the past where Yeoju had given up everything she liked to suit him.

Yeoju bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and pushed him away calmly.

"...That's all in the past. Why are you doing this now, Soobin."

"I know I ruined everything.

I know an apology won't wash it all away either..."

Soobin lowered his head deeply, trying to swallow back the tears rising hot and sudden.

His big shoulders shook in silence, in tiny tremors.

Yeoju's heart, which had only barely been buried after years of living as strangers,

began to shake without mercy at the sight of her first love pouring out regret with his whole body in front of her.

"When I was left alone in that cold room, I couldn't think of anything but you.

You... you used to take all my selfish tastes and go along with them....."

Soobin carefully took hold of Yeoju's cold hand with trembling fingers.

Though terrified of being rejected, he gripped on desperately as if he would never let go.

"I know I'm really awful, but can't you look at me one more time?

Now I'll 맞춰 to your world, please..."

Under the blurry dawn light by the streetlamp,

the punctuation mark at the end of that long, long unrequited love was finally turning the whole situation around with Soobin's terrible regret

and pleading.

Listening to the rough thud of Soobin's heart pounding in his chest,

Yeoju finally quietly tightened her hand around Soobin's joined hand.

________

Hahahat,

I'm back after a long time and filled the chapters up full..! All the members are in one by one!

(But the writing quality,,)

But I do want to put out a new work, you know?

But then that would make it three ongoing series

And I'm already stretched thin, so I'm debating whether to keep going or not😖

So please leave lots of opinions..!

I'll be going now for today

bye👋