Chapter Text
Most of the time, Suho spends these meetings staring out the arched, mullioned windows, figuring out the shade of their blue tie-back curtains. It’s old-money grief—traditional, polished paneling, cool mahogany woodwork. Every time he comes, he learns something new. The armchairs are made of oxblood leather. The bookshelves that span the walls are built-ins, loaded with a conveniently aesthetic palette of hardcovers. There’s a Persian rug beneath his feet. It’s impossible to clean.
He sits at the executive desk that stretches nearly the entire room, along with five other people. His legs are crossed, and his hands rest in his lap, and the angle of his gaze has not shifted for the past hour. The conversation topic remains just as singular.
“Ahn Suho?” she asks. “What would you like to do?”
His thumb is pressed to the crown of his watch, rolling back, rolling forward. He’s probably setting himself back hours, minutes, days.
“Ahn Suho,” she says again.
Suho blinks. Aegean blue. That’s it—that’s what it’s called. Aegean. Sieun had once asked him about it when they were choosing the colour of their kitchen.
Suho’s eyes flick back to her. By default, he catches everyone else’s gaze too—the other four people he’s been seeing weekly.
“Yeah?” he asks.
His divorce attorney sighs. Suho never got her name. It’s printed at the top corner of every page he has at home, but he doesn’t bother to look over those very often. Everything is sealed and done and will continue to be, whether or not he memorizes how black ink looks on white paper.
“You’re entitled to your silence, Mr. Ahn, but I do need your signature.”
Suho glances at the papers in front of him, the straight line of yellow highlighter where his signature should apparently be. “What’s this for?”
His divorce attorney has probably explained it already. Maybe even twice. But she is patient, so her voice comes out calm. “It’s the stipulated judgment. We can’t file with the court until both parties have signed. Mr. Yeon hasn’t submitted his yet.”
Mr. Yeon doesn’t even know about this. Suho fights the urge to sigh.
“Your signature just initiates processing on your end,” she adds. “We’ll hold it until we hear from him.”
Suho stares, probably. He’s like a million miles away from here. The other member of his legal counsel realizes this, too. It doesn’t take much. Mr. Kim Jaejun, or something, has eyes. “If Yeon disputes the valuation—or worse, asks for retroactive claims—what's the plan then?”
Divorce attorney’s responding look is icy, at best. “We’ve advised him of the risks. It’s his decision.”
Suho’s thumb rolls back, right to the beginning. The watch clicks into place. The seconds resume ticking naturally. Something in Suho slots together, and he feels almost whole again.
His smile is cheerful when he holds out his right hand. The tremor shakes it imperceptibly, but to Suho, it looks like an avalanche. His fingers curl inward, an attempt to steady. It just shakes more. He deals with it. “The pen?”
Kim Jaejun, or Jaejin, or Jaehyun, lays a hand on his shoulder, far too casually. “You realize he’s entitled to marital assets, right? That includes licensing rights, sponsorships, even your gym shares if they were acquired post-marriage.”
Suho’s eyes pass over, slowly. “Please,” he says, smile glued to his face, “Don’t touch me.”
Jaehun’s hand slides off. Suho redirects his gaze to the divorce attorney, with her slick back ponytail and her perfectly ironed out suit. At least someone is competent around here. “The pen.”
She passes him the pen. The Pen™. It’s a nice, smoky amber fountain pen, looks like it costs a pretty buck. It should—it feels only fitting. The nib and trim gleam 14k gold. Suho must be in an immense stage of privilege in his life to be able to recognise it so quickly. He’s sure there must be one of its caliber lying at home somewhere, sitting in a forgotten case, tucked into a forgotten cabinet. He had the tendency to splurge on useless things for useful people.
“Okay,” he mutters under his breath. He brings the nib down on the paper, thick, ivory stock. His hand jerks once, pulling a thin line of trembling ink from the source droplet. His jaw clenches once, releases. He tries again. Involuntarily, his fingers shake. Again.
“If you need to take a moment, do. We’re on no one’s clock but your own today.”
Suho laughs, and this time, it is real. “I’m actually trying to finish this as quickly as I can, but my body betrays me,” he says, amused.
Once more, he brings the ink-stained nib back down, forcing through it, dragging himself along the lines of his name. He used to do this and a hundred other things without thinking. Now, Suho barely remembers that version of himself. He sighs, flattening the heel of his palm against the paper. He’s only halfway through an ugly u in Suho, and he’s already tired.
“We can take a break,” his divorce attorney says, mercifully.
Suho’s never really been merciful. He shakes his head, and finishes off the rest of his name with no compulsion to be neat at all. It’s just ink, now, anyways. And it’ll do the job.
“Okay!” he says, pushing away the papers. He grabs his blazer off the armrest and stands, sliding the chair back with his heels. “Is that it for today?”
She stares at him. Her eyes are bottomless. Then she exhales and begins stacking the papers, with a kind of precision that Suho no longer has. She slips them into a folder, pops open her briefcase. Around him, the other members of his little legal squad begin packing their things, too. It’s confirmation enough. Suho will be the first to leave, like always.
He bows at them, bows at her, pushes the chair a little further to make more room for his exit. On his way out, some of the dirt on the heel of his dress shoes gets on the Persian rug. It will be impossible to clean out, but he feels only a flicker of regret—certainly nothing enough to begin treading carefully. He’ll only have to see the stain a few more times before he never walks through these mahogany doors again.
The thought is very comforting. Suho presses his stupid trembling hand against the wood and pushes his way out. The walk to the exit is as openly sunlit as ever. Suho comes here at the exact same time on the exact same day every week, so the windows are freshly cleaned, and the floors are always freshly waxed from the weekend. He takes his usual 57 seconds down the hall, rides the elevator, waves at the receptionist, and gets the hell out.
On some occasions, the weather will match his mood. Cloudy. Charged with static. Threatening rain. Today, it is really fucking sunny.
Behind him, the glass door shuts soundlessly. Daylight explodes across the paved plaza, nearly blinding, and he’s surprised half of the bushes don’t wilt on the spot. He catches his reflection in the glossy black of a planter, some towering, green sprout crawling out, and he looks like shit. Maybe he took all the wilting with him. Suho’s never gotten a sunburn in his life, but he’s realized that there are firsts for everything.
First marriage. First divorce. First time living.
He does not end up putting the blazer on. He hates his outfit, hates his dress pants, hates the shirt enough to yank some of the buttons free with his other hand. He doesn’t trust his dominant one right now—can’t handle fumbling around for 10 minutes straight, getting baked alive. Suho’s never liked wearing these kinds of things, but sometimes it is necessary. Dress well, and maybe it means you’re doing something right. Contributing to society, somehow.
He’s delusional. This realization is comforting to none. He curses, kicks a rock across the sun-baked pavement and trudges his way out of the decorated plaza like every other loser leaving a divorce firm. He should send a text. Should call a cab. He stands there by a rack of paint-chipped bikes for a solid 5 minutes contemplating. Cars and scooters whizz by, heedless of his internal tumult. He has a million and one ways to escape the sidewalk. Even so, he can’t help thinking a walk might do him good.
What do people say? Take a walk, clear your thoughts?
Suho used to jog. Punch things. The nearest candidate is a person, and he already has enough on his plate. No need to tack on aggravated assault.
So he walks. He hates it 30 seconds in. He doesn’t know how he used to do it for hours on end, but then he catches sight of a girl and a guy sharing an ice cream, passing it one-handed, their other hands tangled together. And maybe he remembers a little.
Still. He hates it. That makes him hate it a little more, actually.
Suho passes by a lot of things, on his way back to nowhere. A 24-hour convenience store, a bookshop, a phone-repair stall ironically nestled beside a brand-new phone retailer. A huge mall. A hotel. Eventually, he reaches a more populated stretch of the city, far from the law firms of separation and sadness. When he stands among the crowd, waiting for the light to change, he feels like a person again. He even follows through—crosses with them when the signal turns green.
Honest to god, he did not know that the corner bakery was there. It’s a different path than he usually takes from his apartment, and it looks even more different when it's hidden behind 25 other people. But there it is, still tucked into the rounded corner of the building complex—glass panes, yellow-white trim, unchanged from a year ago, and the year before that. The windows wrap around its face, and warm light spills onto the sidewalk like sugar dust. When someone opens the door and walks out with an opaque bag of goods, the smell of bread follows them like a second shadow.
Suho sighs. The blazer is hot and sweaty in his hand. He grips it tight, just to feel its weight, and loosens. He thinks, briefly, of cake. Some red or blue icing.
Someone nudges him, trying to get past. His tongue finds its way into the hollow of his cheek. Give me a sign, he thinks, resigned. Anything.
Nothing comes. Just him and the sweltering heat.
Well. Fate’s never liked him much, anyway. He turns on his heel and walks away.
✦ ✦ ✦
Sieun blearily wakes to the scent of metal and a man’s voice.
“We broke up on April Fool’s day, so I took it as a joke,” he’s saying. There’s static—it’s the TV, probably. Sieun presses his face deep into the sofa and inhales a hint of wine, a hint of iron. “I'm willing to humor her for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1st, because May loves pineapple, and May 1st is my birthday.”
Sieun’s eyes flutter shut. His fingers stretch out, searching for the remote. It’s time to get up. If the TV continues to drone on like this, he’ll just fall asleep again. “I tell myself that if May hasn't come back by the time I've bought 30 cans..”
His hand finally closes around it, fumbles as the guy talks. The plastic feels heavy in his addled grip, thumb dragging blindly over the rubber buttons, and for a split second, the volume spikes high—
“...then our love will expire too."
The TV shuts off with a click. Sieun’s managed to find the power button, at last.
He sinks back into the sofa cushion for a second or two. Just when the silence threatens to lull him back asleep, he hears the steady drip of the leaking pipes overhead. It’s been like that for a week now, an oversight on his part. Some flaw in structuring he hadn’t accounted for when he designed the apartment. Suddenly, the idea of moving doesn’t seem all that appealing anymore.
After a while, the scent of metal becomes too strong to ignore, faint and wet, like rust in the air. Sieun pries himself from the sofa, thinks of useless things, useless metaphors. The apartment’s bleeding. He sits there like that and stares at the puddle forming a meter away, where it drips off the sharp corner of an old, wooden cabinet. Suho would hate to see his favorite cabinet soaked through when he gets home. Who knows what prized possessions he keeps in there.
Sieun gets up, dizzy with it. He grabs things along the way to steady himself, the armrest of the sofa, the wall. When he gets to the cabinet, he crouches down, fingers trailing along the worn, vintage wood. Suho had picked it up from the street, a very long time ago, from who knows where. He’s kept it ever since. An ancient relic, he used to call it. It’s certainly on its very last legs like one. And Suho certaintly treats it like one.
Sieun presses his lips together, picking up a towel hanging off the TV stand. The striped blue design is faded, and some of the threads are worn where Sieun bunches it up in his hand. The AC whirs to life somewhere to his left, kicking off another blast of frigid air that’ll inevitably seep through Sieun’s hoodie, through his sweats and socks. It’s poor armor.
Sieun sighs. He’ll deal with that, later. This first. Mistakes first.
He draws open the upper cabinet drawer, finding it relatively unscathed. It’s dry, at the very least. There are some miscellaneous items in it, like old figurines from college, long vanished from store shelves; some rubber bands, a keychain or two. Credit cards that no longer work. Phone screen protectors. Sieun examines the case of his old cracked mouthguard in the dim lighting. A flattened event wristband.
He catches a glint of some metal, too. Sieun pulls out a watch, waits to confirm that it no longer works. There’s some currency scattered inside from his trips abroad, for training, for tournaments. There’s a reason why all of this is old. Why there’s nothing new.
Sieun exhales, slow. He resists the urge to press his forehead against the cool wood, and simply pushes the drawer shut. The second, bottom cabinet, looks a little more vulnerable to the leak. Water is already seeping in. It’s locked, but Suho keeps the key tucked inside the flower pot sitting on top of the cabinet, so Sieun retrieves it easily.
It takes him two tries to open it. A part of him doesn’t remember which way to twist it—Sieun doesn’t really have a habit of looking through Suho’s things. His fingers are bunched in the towel by the time he finally manages to tug it open, with a little more force than necessary. Something rattles, glass-like. The slosh of liquid. Sieun frowns, reaches into the dark.
He’s met with the smooth surface of a bottle, the narrow ridge of its neck. It takes some effort to wedge it out, and just as he pulls it free, the sharp scent of wine hits him, stirs him properly awake. Some of it sloshes, wetting his fingers. He curses immediately, setting it on the ground. Now that the cabinet is open, he can see that the stain he had mistaken for water was wine, and that it’s soaking the wood through in maroon.
Suho will be devastated. The thought doesn’t make Sieun happy, but a wry smile settles on his lips anyway. He already expects some of what he sees inside the drawer—the box of Suho’s ring, a notebook of his grandma’s cooking recipes, a framed photo of his first big win. One by one, he takes them out, wiping them clean with the towel. It’s sticky. He’ll have to do it once, or twice, or with some soap. Sieun’s sure he can at least finish the task before Suho gets home.
At the bottom of the cabinet, there is a folder—and it’s soggy. Sieun sighs, digs his fingers underneath it and lifts it out, staring impassively as a pool of wine rolls off the surface in a slow, red river. The papers inside are thoroughly soaked through. He knows of this fact even before he even cracks it open, but still, he grimaces when he finds that the damp sheets are clinging together. He peels them apart as best he can. The ink has bled, leaving some of the words unreadable.
At the bottom, there’s Suho’s signature. A hint of yellow highlighter turned pink-orange.
Sieun's eyes flit to the top. Amid a sea of blurred words, one line remains perfectly intact, dissolution of marriage.
Suddenly, it is very quiet.
Nothing much really happens. There’s no clap of thunder, no crescendo of sound that plateaus into silence. But Sieun’s eyes begin to burn, and his thumb presses in. The papers don’t crinkle, they’re too wet. They just tear.
He finds other things, like the date it was filed on. Months ago. Like irreconcilable differences. Like Petitioner: Ahn Suho.
At some point, Sieun can’t read anymore. He closes the folder, and it falls together gently, all sticky and red. He swallows, thickly.
The anger comes first, obviously. It’s brutal, and it chokes him. But numbness, for Sieun, has always presided above all, above everything. It dulls the edge just enough so he can survive, or breathe, or do anything but sit here and clean. His mind goes to the logical things first. Who gets the house. What assets do they split. When. What happens afterwards. How they’re going to do this.
The whys come afterward. Sieun only gets one in—Why did Suho not tell him?— before he presses a pillow over it and gets up from the ground. The towel remains clenched in his sticky, red hand, and he drifts over to the sofa, bends down and begins searching. He finds his phone between the cushions, underneath the blanket, and his grip is iron when he swipes it open.
In his call history, he has to scroll for four total, agonizing seconds before he finds Suho’s name. It’s an outgoing call dated a week ago. His mouth is impossibly bitter. He doesn’t remember what it was for, why he called, if Suho even picked up. Maybe he should try and start to. Maybe it’ll help him in court.
Immediately, something ugly curls in him at the thought. He recoils from it, from himself, feels the nausea rise sharp and fast. He’s terrible. He’s terrible when he inhales, trying to reground himself, the weight of his phone massive in his hand, he’s terrible when he stares fixated at the TV—what had it said—our love will expire too?
Sieun clenches his jaw, tight. He refuses to be terrible any more than that. A redo would be nice. They could go back to the beginning, back to when it started, and he could explain himself to a boy that will grow to hate him. His trembling thumb hovers over Suho’s name in his phone, and it must be a sight that Suho sees everyday, but it’s not just nerves for Suho, it’s not just fear. It’s just a way of living, now.
Sieun makes up his mind. He forces his hand steady, goes to call—
Suho’s name lights up his screen. Some—no, most of the courage Sieun’s built up crumbles.
Sieun swallows, again. His voice is remarkably steady when he answers. He’s always been good at that.
“Hello?”
There’s static, a rustle. A beep of machinery in the background. Something flickers in Sieun at the familiarity, a passing deja vu, but he doesn’t recognise it. He feels like he should.
And then he does, when the voice speaks. It’s the same question of his nightmares.
“Hi, is this Yeon Sieun? You’re listed as Ahn Suho’s emergency contact.”
Sieun’s eyes squeeze shut. Fuck.
Fuck.
“My name is Dr. Han—we’re calling from the emergency department at Sungang University Hospital.”
Sieun’s knees don’t buckle. He stays perfectly upright, perfectly cemented. It is a miracle that is expected of him.
“There’s been an accident. He was admitted about twenty minutes ago following a motor vehicle collision. His condition is serious—we’ve stabilized him for now, but he’s currently undergoing imaging and further evaluation. We’d like you to come in as soon as possible.”
A pause.
“Can you confirm your relationship to the patient?”