You don’t do love songs, grand gestures, or Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, Yunjin does all three loudly, proudly, and directly into a live microphone. One overnight radio marathon should be easy credits, but when your co-host turns the broadcast into a game of emotional chicken, you start to suspect the real danger isn’t dead air. It’s her.
You’ve been staring at the soundboard for so long, the blinking green lights are starting to look an awful lot like red.
The campus radio booth smells of dust and burnt coffee and unwashed clothes that accumulate anywhere students live for too long. There’s a tangle of cables in the corner that might actually be sentient. The ceiling tiles are stained in patches, as if the building tried to cry once and then gave up halfway through.
On the wall, someone taped a crooked paper heart over the station logo. The marker bled through, leaving a fuzzy red halo around the letters.
It is unfortunately, Valentine’s Day.
You’re supposed to be testing the mics. Instead, you’re spinning a slider up and down with one finger, watching the levels bounce on the monitor like tiny, annoying heartbeats.
“You’re glaring at the sliders again,” Yunjin says from behind you. “Don’t tell me they rejected you on this very special day.”
You don’t jump. You just adjust your shoulders like you weren’t startled out of your skin.
“I’m practicing my stage presence,” you say, then spread your arms like wings. “This is my stage presence.”
“Right…” she says.
She squeezes into the space next to your chair without bothering with things like personal space or physics. Her citrus shampoo and cheap fabric softener brush against your nostrils; the cold from outside still clings to her coat.
Her hair’s braided back today, little flyaways escaping around her face, headphones pushed up like a lopsided crown. Her lipstick is slightly smeared at one corner where she probably wiped it with the back of her hand. There’s glitter on her cheekbone. You don’t want to know where that came from.
She leans over the console, close enough that her braid brushes your arm. “Levels look fine,” she says. “Unless you’re trying to blow out the speakers and take the entire building with us. Which, honestly, respect.”
“I would never do that,” you say. “The building’s innocent. It’s all the Valentine’s Day propaganda inside it that needs to go.”
“You’re so dramatic,” she says.
“You invited me to host a twenty-four-hour Valentine’s Day marathon. What did you expect?”
Her mouth twists like she wants to smile but is trying not to. “I expected a bit more enthusiasm,” she says. “You get to spend time with the prettiest girl on campus.”
“I’m quitting,” you say.
“You can’t,” she says. “You signed the volunteer form.”
You glare at the clipboard. The clipboard glares back. Twenty-four hours of themed programming. Love songs, dedication readings, call-in lines open all night.
You’d agreed because you needed credits, because you like the station, because Yunjin had looked at you with big eyes and said please.
Then you’d walked in and seen the paper hearts and remembered what day it is, and your stomach had folded in on itself.
“You still haven’t answered my question, by the way,” she says, twirling a pen between her fingers.
“What question?” you ask.
“Who hurt you,” she says, “and why do you hate Cupid?”
You spin in the chair just enough to face her. The headphones squeak against your shoulders.
“Okay. First of all, his whole vibe is suspicious. Creepy winged toddler with weapons? Red flag. Second of all, love is a capitalist scam. Third—”
She groans. “God, we’re really doing this. Right before we go live.”
“You asked.”
“I forgot you treat everything like philosophical debates,” she says. “Normal people just eat chocolate and watch a movie.”
“I can do that without the holiday,” you say.
She sighs, dramatic, and taps the clipboard against your arm. “Fine,” she says. “Lay it on me. Explain why love is fake, and I’ll explain why you’re wrong.”
You glance at the big window that looks into the hallway. The On Air sign above it is dark for now. In an hour, it’ll be red.
“In brief,” you say, “love is a series of chemical reactions designed to trick you into pairing up long enough to theoretically raise offspring. It’s inherently unstable and eventually breaks down into either resentment, indifference, or mutual tolerance. At best, you get long-term companionship with occasional affection, which you could also get from a very loyal dog.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. “You sound like a professor who got divorced twice,” she says.
You shrug. “I read.”
“You got dumped once and turned it into a thesis,” she says.
“You’re telling me you buy this?” you ask her. “The hearts, the roses, the couple’s posts, the speeches. You think that’s… real?”
She looks at you as if you’ve suggested the sky is green. “Of course I do,” she says. “Love is amazing and beautiful and, most of all, real.”
“You’re so gullible,” you say.
“And you’re a baby,” she says, so casually you almost miss it.
You blink. “Excuse me?”
She turns a page on the clipboard like she didn’t just lob that at your head. “You’re scared,” she says. “Therefore, you’ve decided love isn’t real so you don’t have to want it.”
You laugh, sharp. “Wow. You diagnose me, you insult me, and you do it for free. I think you picked the wrong major, Yunjin.”
She spins the pen once, twice, and then points it at you, eyes suddenly very, very focused.
“Let’s make a bet,” she says.
“Absolutely not.”
“You don’t know the terms yet.”
“You said the word ‘bet,’” you say. “And you have that look in your eyes. That’s enough.”
She ignores you. “You don’t believe in love,” she says. “I do. We’re about to be trapped in a small, sticky, questionably ventilated booth together for twenty-four hours of Valentine’s programming.”
“Your sales pitch needs work.”
She leans in. Her eyes are brown and firm and irritatingly sincere.
“I bet you,” she says, “that by the time this marathon is over, you’ll be in love with me.”
You stare at her.
The clock ticks. The soundboard hums. Somewhere down the hall, a door slams.
You wait for her to back off, point a finger, reveal she’s joking. Her mouth quirks up at one corner, but her eyes stay steady on yours.
“Stop with the jokes,” you say, but hate how small your voice sounds.
Her fingers drum against the clipboard once, twice. “It’s not a joke.”
“You’re out of your mind,” you say.
“Possibly,” she says. “But come on. You said love is chemicals, right? Chemical reactions are predictable. So if you already know the answer, there’s nothing to fear.”
“You think you can hijack my entire emotional system in a day,” you say.
She smiles, teeth flashing. “I think I already have a pretty good hold on it. I just want to see you admit it.”
You’re very aware of your own heartbeat. It feels like the levels on the monitor, bumping too high whenever you look at her and too low when you look away.
“And if you lose?” you ask.
She shrugs. “If you don’t love me by the end of the marathon, I’ll…” She thinks for a second. “I’ll stop forcing you to do my show segments with me. No more on-air bits. You can go back to your quiet Wednesday night slot where you play moody indie music and pretend no one’s listening. I’ll even lie so you can still get the credits.”
You perk up. “Seriously?”
“Dead serious,” she says. “You can be the mysterious voice in the dark again, free of my corrupting influence.”
That’s actually tempting. Your solo slot was nice. It was just you and the board and a playlist no one could judge in real time.
“And if I lose?” you ask.
“Then you admit love is real. And you take me on a date. A real one. No ‘it’s ironic,’ no ‘it’s for science.’ Just you and me and you trying very hard not to combust.”
You look at her and think about every stupid, small thing you’ve already memorized without meaning to. The way she always eats the green M&Ms first. The way she hums under her breath when she’s concentrating. The way she always saves the last slice of pizza and then pretends she doesn’t want it so someone will offer it to her.
You shove those thoughts into a mental closet and lean back in your chair.
“You’re awfully confident,” you say.
“Obviously.”
“Why you? If you actually believed in love, wouldn’t you say, like, ‘You’ll fall in love with someone, someday’? Why specifically you?”
She blinks. Her cheeks pinken, just slightly. “Just because,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate.
You know suddenly that if you say no, something fragile might crack between you. Still—if you say yes, something else might.
The clock ticks on the wall.
“You’re scared,” she says again, softly this time.
It bothers you she is right.
“Fine,” you say. “You want your stupid experiment? You got it.”
Her whole face lights up. “Really?”
You roll your eyes. “Let’s see you prove your little theory. Twenty-four hours. Knock yourself out.”
Her grin turns almost feral. “Oh, you’re going to regret that so much. Or maybe you’re not.”
You already do.
She hops off the stool and slaps the On Air button with more flourish than necessary. The red sign over the window springs to life.
“But if you do, it’s too late,” she says. “Welcome to the show, lover boy.”
You groan.
She laughs.
The mics go live.
─
Ten minutes into the first hour, you remember the other reason you agreed to this gig.
On air, Yunjin is a hurricane in human form. She leans into the mic, voice warm and bright as she welcomes listeners to the overnight Valentine’s special. She makes dumb jokes about Cupid’s underwear and about love as a duck.
You mostly push buttons and monitor levels, chiming in occasionally with deadpan commentary. It’s your role. You’ve leaned into it before: the grumpy foil to her chaos.
But tonight, every time she calls you “my very single co-host” or “dear love skeptic,” the words land a little differently.
She’s good at this. Too good. The call line blinks before the hour’s half over.
The first caller is a girl from third-year engineering who wants to dedicate a song to her boyfriend. She stumbles through the message, giggling, and Yunjin guides her gently, like she’s coaxing a nervous animal out of hiding.
When they hang up, Yunjin mutes the channel and swivels toward you.
“See?” she says. “Evidence.”
“Just hormones,” you say.
“Everything is hormones,” she says. “That’s not the slam dunk you think it is.”
The second caller is a guy who rambles about his girlfriend for a full two minutes without letting either of you get a word in. He’s so earnest you can practically hear the hearts floating around his head. You find yourself smiling in spite of yourself.
Yunjin catches it and raises her eyebrows.
“It’s cute,” you say defensively.
“I didn’t say anything,” she says, but a smirk pulls at the corner of her lips.
By hour three, she takes control of the playlist. Every song is obnoxiously on theme. Every time you reach for the mouse to queue something with fewer hearts in the lyrics, she smacks your hand away.
“Part of the bet,” she says. “Full immersion. You can’t fall in love if you’re listening to breakup songs.”
“I thought you liked breakup songs,” you say. “You call them cathartic.”
“That’s for me. You need to marinate.”
“In your playlist?”
“In your feelings.”
You groan into your hands.
Off air, in the three-minute pockets between songs and ads, the booth shrinks down to the two of you and the hum of machines.
At some point around eleven, she kicks off her shoes and tucks her feet up on the stool, socks mismatched. One has tiny acorns. The other says SLOW DOWN in all caps.
“You wore a message on your sock just for me,” you say.
She glances at her ankle. “You wish,” she says.
“Very subtle,” you say. “Real subliminal messaging.”
“You need all the help you can get,” she says.
It’s easy, this back-and-forth. It always has been. The difference now is the way your body keeps overreacting to tiny things. The way her laugh lands low in your stomach. The way you keep noticing the smudge of glitter on her cheek and wanting to wipe it away.
You tell yourself it’s just the sleep deprivation.
The hours blur.
You read dedications and answer dumb quiz questions and accidentally get into a ten-minute argument about whether pineapple belongs on pizza with a caller from the dorms. You scroll through memes on the station computer during ad breaks, showing her the worst ones just to hear her wheeze-laugh. She stretches whenever there’s a long song, arms over her head, T-shirt riding up, a slip of bare skin flashing above her waistband.
You pretend very hard not to look.
Sometime around midnight, the building empties. The glass in the window goes dark. The station becomes its own little floating world.
Yunjin flips her headphones up so they rest on her head like a halo. She leans back, chair tipping dangerously, and sighs.
“What?” you ask.
She stares at the ceiling. “I just thought… if I was going to make you fall in love with me, being trapped in here is the best possible environment.”
You give her a look. “You know how that sounds, right?”
She grins sideways. “Yeah,” she says. “Hot.”
You drag a hand down your face. “I liked you better when you were just manipulative on air.”
“You like me,” she repeats.
“That’s not what I said,” you say.
“It’s what I heard,” she says.
You mute her mic before she can say anything else dangerous and throw to a song.
─
At two in the morning, the calls slow down.
The people still awake are either high, heartbroken, or both. The confessions get sadder, messier. Someone cries on air. Someone else laughs too loudly for too long.
When there’s nothing in the queue, you and Yunjin are left with the dead air countdown ticking in the corner of the screen and the kind of silence that makes you aware of your own breathing.
“Tell me about her,” she says suddenly.
You look up. “Who?”
“Your ex,” she says, like it’s obvious.
You stare at the monitor. The ON AIR timer crawls down from thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.
“We’re not doing this,” you say.
“You keep talking about love like it’s a disease,” she says. “I’d like to hear about the cause.”
Three. Two. One.
You take a breath and flick the mic sliders up. The red light on the console snaps on.
“Welcome back to the overnight Valentine’s special,” Yunjin says, as if she wasn’t just elbow-deep in your personal life. “We’ve heard from a lot of people already tonight about the love they’re in. Or out of.”
“And some who probably shouldn’t have given us their real names,” you add.
Yunjin leans toward her mic, eyes on you, and says, “But I think it’s time we hear from our very own love-hater.”
You shoot her a warning look. She barrels on.
“So,” she says, “tell me, dear co-host, where did love go wrong?”
You should cut her off. You should cut your mic, throw another song on, pretend the question never reached you. But two words hang at the back of your throat, clawing and raking and begging to come out.
Your hand does not move toward the mouse.
“High school,” you say. “Obviously.”
She smiles, slow. “Obviously,” she repeats. “Walk us through it.”
You stare at the screen above her head. The station logo glows back, smug.
“She was… fine,” you say. “We met in debate club. Which should have been a warning sign.”
“There’s your first mistake.”
You tell the story in broad strokes. The matching schedules, the way it had felt easy at first, the late nights studying, the first time you kissed in the back stairwell. How every time your lips touched, a swarm of butterflies fluttered in your stomach.
You keep your voice light. You know how to perform into a mic. You sand the edges off.
You don’t say the part where she told you she loved you in your mom’s car with her hand on your knee and then cheated on you three weeks later because “it didn’t feel real enough.”
You don’t say the part where your parents used the breakup as proof that teenage love is meaningless, a rehearsal for the pain you’re supposed to get used to.
You say, “It ended.”
Yunjin doesn’t push. She doesn’t fill the air. She lets the silence sit for a beat, just long enough for you to feel it, before she says, “I’m sorry, but she sounds like a bitch.”
You huff a laugh. “That’s the word,” you say.
“If the shoe fits,” she says.
“You have a whole closet of shoes that don’t fit. You wear them anyway.”
“You’re romanticizing my poor choices again.”
You glance at the time counter. The segment’s almost over. You clear your throat.
“What about you?” you ask. “Since we’re sharing.”
She lifts her shoulders. “I’ve been in love a lot.”
“Shocking.”
“But not like that,” she says. “I’ve had crushes. Infatuations. Situationships. People I liked because they liked me. People I liked because they were broken and I wanted to fix them.”
The corners of your mouth twitch.
“And…?” you prompt.
She looks at you, then down at the console. Her fingers trace the edge of a fader.
“There’s only one person I’ve stayed in love with,” she says. “So far.”
You know you shouldn’t ask. You know you definitely shouldn’t do it on air.
“Do I know them?” you ask.
She smiles without teeth. “You’re an idiot,” she says, and cuts to a song.
The track starts. The mics go dead. The silence on your headphones is sudden, like popping out of a pool.
─
Time does something weird around four in the morning.
You slide past tired into something loopy and raw. Your body feels hollowed out and vibrating. The booth becomes your whole universe. The only light is from the monitors and the tiny lamp someone stuck in the corner with a red scarf thrown over it, turning everything a dim maroon.
You’re on a break between segments, a slow jazz cover swaying through your headphones, when Yunjin kicks your ankle.
“Hey,” she says. “Wake up.”
“I am up,” you say. You are very much not. You are slumped in the chair like someone took out your bones and declined to put them back.
“Up,” she repeats, standing. “Dance break.”
You look at her. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I refuse.”
She reaches for your wrists. You yank them back, but she’s faster when you’re tired. Her fingers wrap around yours, warm and sure.
“Come on,” she says. “We have three minutes before the song ends. Science says movement keeps us awake.”
“No science says I have to dance with you,” you say, but your body is already tipping forward.
She pulls you to your feet and into the sliver of space between the chairs and the wall. The cable to your headphones tugs as you stand. You push them down around your neck.
The music is slow and lazy, horns curling through the air like cigarette smoke. The bass thumps faintly under your feet.
She sways. You don’t. Not at first.
“Just follow my lead,” she says.
“I don’t dance,” you say.
“You do now.”
She puts your hands on her waist. Her palms land on your shoulders. Her fingers curl into the worn cotton of your hoodie.
Your heart rockets into your throat.
She moves side to side, a gentle shift of weight. You’re too close to see all of her at once. Just a mouth. A cheek. Eyes that keep flicking to your lips and away again.
You move with her because you don’t know what else to do.
“This is dumb,” you say. “We’re not even on video.”
“So?” she says. “You can do things without an audience, you know.”
“You constantly ask the audience to rate us.”
“Yeah. But this one’s just for you.”
You swallow. Your hands are still on her waist. You can feel heat through the fabric. The curve of her hip under your thumbs is a map you’ve never let yourself read.
“Why me?” you ask.
She frowns. “What?”
“You said… there’s only one person you stayed in love with,” you say. “If it’s me… why?”
She exhales. You feel it against your neck.
“You’re really fishing for compliments at four in the morning,” she says.
“I’m serious.”
She pulls back just enough to look at you. Her eyes are dark and clear.
“Well… if, and I only mean if, that person were you, it’s because…” she paused for a moment. “You try really hard not to care. But you do anyway.”
You open your mouth. Nothing comes out.
“You pretend the world is something you can outsmart,” she continues. “Like if you just know enough, if you rationalize enough, nothing can surprise you. Nothing can hurt you. But then you… stay late to fix the board for the morning shift. And you remember everyone’s favorite segments. And you get stupidly angry when people treat their partners badly on air, even though you say love is stupid.”
“I listen to the show,” you say. Your throat feels tight. “It’s my job.”
“You listen period,” she says. “Not just on the show.”
Her fingers slide up from your shoulders, skim the back of your neck, tangle in your hair.
“You’re gentle when it matters,” she says. “And mean in the ways that count less. And sometimes, when you think no one’s listening, you talk about things like they can still be beautiful. Even after everything.”
You close your eyes. You can’t hold that look and keep your balance at the same time.
“That,” she says quietly, “is why.”
The song ends.
Dead air looms. You jolt back to the console like a puppet whose strings got yanked, hands flying to the mouse, to the sliders. You slam the next track on, throw your mic live, and say something about keeping the love songs coming in a voice that doesn’t sound like yours.
Yunjin sits, breathless and flushed, and laughs silently into her fist.
─
By dawn, the windows are pale rectangles. Snow flurries against the glass, soft and relentless. The campus outside looks like a stage set someone forgot to strike.
You’ve been awake for… a long time. Your sense of linear time is gone. All you have is the green LED clock on the wall and the schedule on the clipboard, marching toward the end of the marathon.
You have also been in love with Yunjin for approximately… longer than you’re willing to admit.
The realization comes not as a single lightning strike but as a series of insults you can’t ignore anymore.
The way your chest hurt when she talked about being in love with someone and didn’t name them.
The way you watched every hand that touched her at parties and wanted to break their fingers.
But she asked for honesty on a time limit, and there’s still one segment left.
The last hour is “Love Letters.” Prewritten, anonymous, some sent in weeks ago, some from tonight. A neat bow to tie the marathon.
You queue up a song. Three minutes. It feels like both a lot and not enough.
Yunjin is watching you. She’s been doing that more as the night has gone on, like she’s waiting for something.
You spin in your chair to face her fully.
“Hey,” you say.
“Hey,” she echoes. Her voice is hoarse from talking all night. She sounds like her shell started to crack.
“Off the record,” you say.
She raises an eyebrow. “Uh-oh.”
“Why did you start the bet? Really.”
“I told you. I wanted to prove to you love exists. Then you might finally find a girlfriend”
“Bullshit,” you say, too tired to soften it.
She blinks.
“The bet is just too weird,” you say. “You could've picked a random girl at a bar. A stranger. Not you. Not a date with me as the reward. Not twenty-four hours of live radio where people can hear you bomb.”
“You think I’m afraid of bombing?” she asks.
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“The point,” you say, “is that this is—” You gesture at the cramped booth, the mics, her. “—a really big risk for you if I don’t… if I can’t…”
You trail off. The song counter is at forty-five seconds.
“If you lose the bet and I quit the radio… you—” Your palm claps your chest, clamps down on it, and seizes your thumping heart between shaky fingers. “—we would not…”
She looks down at her hands.
“I needed a deadline,” she says. “I kept… waiting. For you to get there on your own. To notice. To do something. To stop making those jokes about love being fake.”
Your stomach lurches.
“I thought if I gave us a clock,” she continues, “maybe you’d decide faster. Maybe I’d know if I should hold on or let go. I can’t keep doing the… loves me, loves me not.”
The last word barely comes out.
You want to reach for her but you don’t. Your hand hovers in the space between.
“What if I end up hating you for it?” you ask. “For pushing.”
She smiles. “I figured if you hated me, that was an answer too,” she says.
The song ends. The final chord hangs in your headphones.
You hit the stinger, toss to the last segment, and talk on autopilot, the words of the script spilling out of your mouth without going through your brain.
Welcome back. Last hour. Love letters. All that.
You queue the first email and read it, your eyes tracking the words while your mind is three feet to the left, hovering over the spot where her knee bumps yours under the console.
The letters are earnest and messy and stupid. Someone writes to a barista they’ve never spoken to. Someone confesses to a crush on their TA. Someone thanks their best friend for staying when everyone else left.
Then you reach the last letter in the folder. It has no subject line.
You click it open.
Your own name stares back from the greeting.
You go very, very still.
“Everything okay?” Yunjin asks softly, off mic.
You don’t answer. You read.
“Hey you,” the email says.
You swallow.
You don’t mean to read it out loud. You don’t even realize your mic is still live until you hear your own voice in your headphones, smaller and rougher than it sounds in your head.
“…you’re probably frowning at this,” you read. “You frown at everything. The soundboard, your laptop, the concept of joy—”
You stop. Your eyes widen. You glance at Yunjin.
Her mouth is parted. Her fingers are tight around her pen.
You flip the mic off with a shaking hand. The ON AIR light dies.
“Did you write this?” you ask.
She doesn’t answer. Her cheeks are bright pink. Her eyes are wide open.
“Yunjin,” you say.
“It’s called commitment to the bit,” she says weakly.
You look back at the screen.
“…but sometimes you laugh so hard you fall off the chair,” the email says. “And sometimes you look at me like you’re seeing something you don’t think you deserve, and I wish I could make you feel what I feel for just one second so you’d understand how wrong you are.”
You exhale, shaky.
“I wanted to,” she says, then shuts her mouth like she’s said too much.
You scroll.
“I don’t know when it started,” the letter says. “Maybe it was when I called you to pick me up from the bar and you actually came. Maybe it was the time you stayed with me at the station until four a.m. because I messed up the prerecording and didn’t want to go home. Maybe it was always, a little bit.”
Your chest is not a chest. It’s a fist closing around itself.
“I do know this,” the letter says. “I believe in love because of you, not in spite of you. I’ve seen every worst part of you and my heart still does the stupid thing when you walk in the door.”
You laugh, helpless and breathless.
“You told me once love is a scam,” the email goes on. “If that’s true, I’ve already been duped. I can just hope for compensation.”
The cursor blinks at the end of the paragraph.
It’s not signed. It doesn’t have to be.
“You’re such a dumbass,” you say, voice breaking on the last word.
Yunjin flinches. “You can delete it,” she says quietly. “We don’t have to read it. It’s… fine. I’ll pretend I never sent it.”
You look at her. Really look.
She looks small, suddenly. Not physically—she still takes up more space than anyone in a room—but her shoulders are hunched, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her hoodie, her eyes shiny.
You realize you’re not scared anymore. Your heart is beating a hundred million times a second, but not because you’re scared.
“That’s not what I meant,” you say. You take a breath that hurts going in. “Put your headphones on.”
Her brows knit. “Why?”
“Please,” you say.
She slides them on, hesitant.
You flick your mic back on, your voice going out into the quiet morning city, to whoever’s still awake and listening.
“Okay,” you say. “We’ve heard a lot of letters tonight from people trying to be brave.”
Your heart drums against your ribs. Yunjin’s gaze is locked on you.
“I thought I should… return the favor,” you say.
She presses a hand over her mouth.
“This one’s not anonymous,” you say. “But I guess that’s the point.”
You talk.
You don’t read anything. You don’t have a script. You just… talk.
You say you thought love was dangerous because you watched it used as a weapon. You say you built a whole personality out of not needing it. You say you thought you were safe that way.
You say you were wrong.
How the first time she dragged you on air, you wanted to murder her and thank her in the same breath. How she makes the station feel like more than a hobby. How she makes every room louder and softer at the same time.
You finally say IT.
“I’m in love with you,” you say, into the mic, into the booth, into her headphones. “Yunjin.”
The confession sits in the air, warm and irreversible.
You mute your mic.
The world shrinks to the space between your chairs.
Her eyes are wet. There’s a tear track on one cheek, shiny in the dim light.
“You…” she starts, then stops. She pulls her headphones off like they’re heavy.
“You said it on air,” she says, half laugh, half sob.
“You wrote me a love letter on air.”
“I thought you’d pretend you never read it. Or roast me for it. Or… something.”
“I thought about it. For, like, two seconds.”
She exhales, a shaky thing that almost turns into a laugh.
“Do you mean it?” she asks. “Or is this you being… swept up in the bit?”
You hate that she even has to ask.
You push your chair back. The wheels squeak. You stand, knees popping, and step into her space.
She tips her head back to look at you. You can see every mole, every fleck of glitter, every trace of the night on her.
“You win,” you say. “Okay? You were right. Love is real. I’m in love. With you.”
Her lips part. “Say it again,” she whispers.
“I love you,” you say.
Her hands reach for you at the same time yours reach for her. There’s an awkward bump of elbows and a tangle of headphone cables, but then your fingers find her jaw and her palms land on your shoulders and you’re both laughing, breathless, right before your mouth hits hers.
The kiss lands slightly off-center. It doesn’t matter.
Her lips are dry and then not. She makes a small, startled noise that you feel more than hear. Her fingers curl into the fabric at the back of your neck.
Your brain, which has been screaming for hours, goes very, very quiet.
You pull back just enough to breathe.
“Off air,” she gasps. “Off—”
You throw a hand blindly toward the console and slam every fader down. The lights on the board dip. The mic signs go dark.
The station goes silent.
You kiss her again.
This time, you aim better.
She tastes like the energy drinks you both chugged at three and the mint gum she chewed to cover it. Her nose bumps yours. Her hands are everywhere, in your hair, on your back, tugging you closer.
You brace one hand on the console to keep from knocking both of you over. The plastic digs into your palm. You’d bruise your entire body and the soundboard if it meant she kept kissing you like that.
She laughs against your mouth. “Hi,” she whispers.
“Hi,” you whisper back.
“We’re still technically on shift,” she says.
“I’m on a break.”
Her smile curves against your lower lip. “You’re such a bad employee.”
You kiss until your knees feel like they’re going to give out, until your fingers go numb from gripping the edge of the console, until the clock over the window ticks all the way to the end of the marathon.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to fall into.
She gasps into your mouth.
God, that sound.
Her fingers tug at the hem of your hoodie, grabbing your shirt along with it. You help her peel them off, and her hands are everywhere—chest, shoulders, back; tracing every line as if making sure you are real.
“Yunjin,” you grit out, hands on her face like you need to hold yourself steady. “I want—no, I need you. Now.”
She blinks, surprised.
You wait.
Then she smirks. “So fucking take me.”
You stop thinking after that.
You push her back against the wall. Her head almost bumping into it were it not for your hand in the back of her hair.
Your mouth is on her throat, slow and greedy. Her hands thread into your hair, fingers curling tight when you find the soft spot under her jaw.
“Jesus,” she breathes.
As you pull her shirt up and toss it somewhere behind, you move lower. Kiss the top of her chest. Trace the edge of her bra with your teeth.
She arches. “You gonna tease me all night?”
“Thinking about it,” you say, dragging a hand down her side.
She huffs a laugh. “Then I’ll start without you,” she says. Her fingers move to her waistband.
You stop her. “Let me.”
Yunjin goes still. Watching. Waiting. Then her hands drop to her sides.
You hook your fingers under the band of her jeans and pull. Slow. So fucking slow.
She lifts her hips to help you, and when the jeans clear her thighs, you just stare. No rush. No comment. Just her bare legs, panties black and damp and perfectly in place.
You dip, then kiss the inside of her thigh.
She twitches.
You kiss higher.
She makes a sound, high and rough, like her body won’t hold on much longer if you continue.
Your hands slide up her legs. Her stomach. Her ribs. You get back up and catch her mouth while your fingers finally slide between her legs, slow and gentle, through the heat and the wetness that has been building ever since the bet started.
Her breath hitches. Her hips roll.
“You like that?”
“I will if you keep going.”
You do. One finger, then two. Deep, slow. Your thumb brushes her just right. She falls apart in front of you, little gasps punched out of her with every stroke. Her hands fist at her sides, thighs clenched and eyes rolled back just a little.
“What the—fuck—” she wails between gasps, her tongue dangling beyond her full red lips.
When she comes, it’s a quiet explosion. She comes against your hand, hips jerking into you.
You pull your hand away and kiss her again.
She kisses back like she’s been waiting all night. Her tongue slides against yours, confident without being cocky, and when she makes that low, surprised sound into your mouth, it hits straight through your spine.
She breaks away only because she has to breathe. You feel her chest press into you as she exhales against your jaw, then she presses her lips there, then lower, like she can’t stand not having you in her mouth.
Her knees hit the floor, eyes tilted up, hair messier than it’s ever been, breathing you in like you’re something addictive she’s finally allowed to use.
Her fingers tug your waistband open, careful and steady. She frees you, and her breath stutters—just slightly—but she doesn’t make a joke, doesn’t throw out a line.
She just whispers, “Yeah.”
And then her mouth is on you.
Not tentative this time. Decisive. She takes you in slow, lips sealing tight, heat wrapping around you so suddenly that your hand shoots into her hair on instinct.
She moans.
God, she moans around you like you just answered something inside her. The vibration punches sounds out of your throat. Your hips jerk, barely, and she keeps you still with her hand on your hip like she knew it would happen.
She sets a perfect rhythm, unhurried but merciless. Her tongue drags along the underside, slow and claiming. She sinks deeper, takes more of you, then sucks on the way back like she means to ruin you.
You are gone.
“Yunjin—fuck—” Your words break apart, and she actually smiles with you in her mouth, like that’s exactly what she wanted to hear.
Her hand strokes the rest of you she can’t take, matching the pace of her mouth. Every breath you drag in feels too thin. Every sound she makes wrecks you worse. She looks up at you through her lashes—eyes heavy and bright and unbelievably present—and it feels obscene how good she looks like this.
You feel it building, sudden and sharp and impossible to stop—
And then she pulls back. Just enough to bring you close without letting you finish.
Her mouth eases off with a slick, obscene drag, leaving the head flushed and throbbing, her hand still wrapped firm around the base. You groan, broken, chasing her mouth on instinct, but she tightens her grip. Halts you. Holds you in place like she knows exactly what you’re about to do.
“Not so fast,” she murmurs. Her lips are swollen, slick with spit, a smear of her lipstick half-faded but still sinful on the edge of her mouth. “I’m not done yet.”
You try to speak, to respond, but all that escapes you is a ragged noise.
She kisses your hipbone like an apology. Or maybe a promise. Her mouth drags lower, tongue teasing along the base, slow and intentional, lips skimming your skin like she’s studying it. She knows exactly what she’s doing. How close you are and how easy it would be to tip you over.
But she doesn’t. Not yet.
Instead, she wraps her lips back around you—just the tip this time—and hums. The sound shoots straight through your stomach. Her tongue swirls once, then again, every motion slow and deliberate.
She sinks down, slowly. Her hand strokes what her mouth can’t take, syncing together in a rhythm that's made to torture. Heat coils low in your spine.
You glance down, and the sight nearly finishes you anyway.
Her.
On her knees.
Mouth full of you. Cheeks hollowing. Hair wild around her face, braid half undone. That look in her eyes: focused, intense, locked on yours.
Every time you twitch, her mouth flexes, adjusting. Every sound you make, she follows, like it’s feedback she craves.
“Yunjin—if you keep—”
She moans. Vibrating around you like an answer.
Your fingers fist tight in her hair. Your thighs shake. You're right there.
She feels it. You know she does.
And again—again—she pulls back. Just enough to leave you aching. Her tongue slides off the head in a slow, wet drag, and she kisses the tip so softly you nearly curse.
You can’t breathe.
“Not yet,” she whispers, thumb stroking the base, gaze never leaving yours. “You don’t get to finish before I get to wreck you.”
You don’t know how long you can take this.
She’s still kneeling, still got your cock wrapped in her hand like it’s hers to keep, and at this point, maybe it is. Your head thumps back against the wall, jaw clenched tight, trying not to embarrass yourself, but she sees it—sees all of it.
And she smiles, pleased, like she knew this is how it would end.
She strokes you slow, firm, her grip slick from her mouth. Just enough to keep you from slipping back too far. Her other hand skims up your thigh, fingers brushing so lightly they’re barely touching.
"You're shaking," she says, not quite teasing, but close.
You are.
“Do you want to come?” she asks softly, lips parted just enough that you can still see the sheen of spit on them. “Like this? In my mouth?”
You choke on a breath. Nod.
“Too bad.”
Then she leans in again.
This time she kisses everywhere but where you need her. Along your hip. Your stomach. She licks a slow stripe just below the base, then mouths at the skin beside you, leaving a faint mark—territorial.
You mutter a curse. She grins into your skin.
“Relax,” she murmurs. “I’ll let you come eventually.”
Her mouth returns to the head, tongue flicking, lips parting. She sucks, gentle and shallow, working only the tip until your hands shake. Each pass is maddening. She’s not trying to take you deep right now. She’s teasing every nerve you have raw.
You try to thrust, just once—instinctive, helpless—but she flattens her hand against your stomach.
“No,” she says, firm.
Her mouth slips lower again, this time a little deeper, and your whole body tenses. She moans, and it makes you twitch so hard she actually laughs around you.
You’re panting now. Gone. Mindless. All you can do is feel; her mouth, her tongue, her pace.
You feel it surge again, hotter, faster, sharper.
You manage to gasp out, “I’m—Yunjin, I’m—”
And she pulls off just in time.
You nearly collapse.
She leans back on her heels, hands on your thighs, and watches you burn. Your cock throbs in the cool air, spit-slick and flushed, twitching uselessly against your stomach. Her mouth is red, wet, wrecked. Her eyes are so fucking dark.
“You look so good like this,” she says softly.
You swallow hard. Your knees are barely holding.
“Then finish it,” you say.
She rises slowly, body brushing yours as she stands. Her hands slide up your chest, slow and greedy.
“Oh, I will,” she whispers against your lips. “But not with just my mouth.”
She kisses you again: wet, deep, messy. And then she’s walking you backward. To the couch. To the end of your control.
The backs of your knees hit the couch, and she pushes, lightly, but you go down hard like your legs never belonged to you in the first place. You land half-sitting, breath ragged, hands braced behind you.
Yunjin stands over you for a second, watching. Savoring.
Then she straddles your lap.
Her thighs slide against yours, skin hot and bare. Her panties are still on, black and soaked through, clinging to her like a secret she’s not ready to give up just yet. But she grinds down anyway, slow and deliberate, right against you. The slick heat of her makes your head fall back instantly.
She leans in, mouth brushing your ear.
“Feel what you did to me?” she whispers. “You think I got like this by accident?”
Your hands go to her hips without thinking, thumbs dragging along the curve of her waist like you need something to hold on to.
Her lips find your neck, open and wet, tongue tracing every inch of skin she couldn’t reach when you were standing. She bites, soft and then not. You flinch, gasp, grip her tighter.
“You’re so close,” she says, teeth grazing your throat. “I can feel it. I can feel you holding on.”
Her hips roll once. Then again.
You nearly buck beneath her. She’s not moving fast. The thin fabric between you is soaked, sliding against your cock every time she grinds down, and it’s torture. Heat builds again, sharper, tighter. You're already soaked from her mouth, already shaking from the way she won’t let you go over.
“You want to fuck me,” she says, straight into your ear. Not a question.
You nod. Desperate. “Yes. Fuck—”
She kisses you again. Hot and open and unforgiving. Her hand finds you between your bodies, wraps around you again, drags the tip through her slick heat, through the soaked fabric of her underwear.
You make a sound you’ve never made before.
She presses her forehead to yours, breathing hard.
“You’re not going to come,” she whispers. “Not until I’m on top of you. Not until I feel you lose it.”
You shudder, nearly break.
And still, she doesn’t move.
She stays there. Grinding slow. Touching you just enough to light the fuse again, just enough to bring you back to the edge. Her breath on your mouth. Her nails in your shoulders. She pressed her body against yours, warm and maddeningly out of reach.
Then—finally—she sits back, grabs the waistband of her soaked panties, and peels them down.
They stick to her for a second before sliding free. She tosses them somewhere behind her without looking. Then she grips your cock again, guides it to where she’s dripping.
You lock eyes.
You can barely breathe.
“Now,” she says. “You can come inside me.”
Then she sinks down, and whatever control you had left disappears.
It’s not loud, it’s deep, from somewhere in her chest. A gasp, broken in half by a moan, her body folding forward as you stretch her open inch by inch. You grip her hips, trying not to thrust up into her, trying to hold still while she takes you.
She feels so warm you lose the thread of every thought.
Your head drops back with a curse. "Holy—"
"I know," she whispers, almost stunned.
She settles fully with a tremble, thighs shaking around yours. For a moment, she just stays there, seated flush against your hips, her breath ghosting over your cheek, her hands on your shoulders like she’s grounding herself.
Then her fingers find yours.
She laces them together.
Your eyes snap open.
She’s watching you—face flushed, lips parted, hair wild, but her gaze is steady. Intimate. Like this is the part that matters.
You squeeze her hand without thinking. She squeezes back.
Then she moves.
It starts slow, grinding down, rocking her hips in careful, devastating rhythm. She’s so fucking wet, every movement a slick slide of heat around you. Every roll of her hips draws another breathless groan from your throat, another wrecked sound from hers.
She leans in closer. Chest to chest. Your hands still locked together. You swear you can feel her heartbeat through her palm.
“God,” she pants, forehead pressing to yours, “you feel—so fucking—good—”
You groan, fingers tightening around hers. “Yunjin—please—”
“Please what?” she whispers, dragging her hips back, then snapping them forward again just right. You cry out. She smiles. “You want to come?”
You nod.
She lifts up slightly, angle shifting—and drops back down, hard.
Your vision blacks out for a second.
Then she starts to ride you in earnest.
No games now. No teasing. Just rhythm and heat and need. She uses your hands as leverage, fingers still interlocked, slamming her hips down harder, deeper, again and again.
She’s close. You can feel it in the way her thighs start to tremble again, the way her rhythm gets messy, desperate.
“Come with me,” she gasps, mouth brushing yours. “Please—please—I want you to—”
You barely hold on one more second.
Then you’re gone; hips thrusting up into her one last time as you bury yourself deep and give in. She follows a heartbeat later, pulsing around you with a gasp so raw it almost sounds like a scream.
She collapses against your chest, still shaking, still holding your hand.
Your other arm wraps around her. You bury your face in her hair, breath catching, body wrecked in the best possible way.
Her fingers tighten in yours again.
“Fuck,” you whisper into her skin.
She laughs. Weak, hoarse, beautiful.
“You owe me a date,” she murmurs.
You groan. “Still on about that stupid bet?”
“That ‘stupid’ bet is the reason we’re here.”
You don’t even try to argue.
You just kiss her forehead, still holding her hand like you’ll never let go.
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