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The dorm was too quiet.
At first, Sangwon thought he was imagining it.
The schedules were the same. The practice room was the same. The coffee machine still made that awful rattling noise every morning. The others were still around, still talking, still laughing at things that were actually funny, which Sangwon tried not to take personally.
But something was missing.
Someone.
It hit him in stupid moments. The kind too small to see coming.
When he made a joke and nobody groaned.
When he walked into the living room and there wasn’t someone sitting cross-legged on the floor doing absolutely nothing, just existing there like the room needed a reason to be occupied.
When he reached for his water bottle during practice and automatically looked to his right.
Geonwoo’s spot.
Empty.
Sangwon hated how often he noticed it. More than that, he hated how specific it was. Not just someone’s missing but always, every time, he is missing. Like his brain had quietly assigned Geonwoo a fixed place in every room and kept checking back out of habit.
“You’re staring at the wall again.”
Sangwon blinked. One of the members was looking at him.
“What?”
“The wall.”
“I wasn’t staring.”
“You’ve been doing it for like two minutes.”
Sangwon looked away and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t make it worse.
He definitely hadn’t been thinking about Geonwoo.
Not at all.
Three days later, he sent his first text.
It was easier to lead with a joke. That was the thing about jokes, they were a door you could walk through without admitting you’d been standing outside it.
Sangwon: you know what kind of fish likes basketball
Geonwoo: I already regret opening this
A smile appeared on Sangwon’s face before he could stop it.
Sangwon: a dribble fish
Geonwoo: that’s not even a real thing
Sangwon: exactly. it’s unique
Geonwoo: you’re impossible
The conversation ended there. Simple, unremarkable, over in under a minute.
Sangwon stared at the screen for much longer than that. Not looking for anything specific, just reading it back. Checking that it had felt the same on both ends, that small thing of a joke finding the exact person it was made for.
He put his phone down.
Picked it up again.
Put it down.
The thing about Geonwoo was that he always listened.
Nobody appreciated Sangwon’s jokes. Nobody. The members either ignored him, threatened to leave the room, or gave him a look that said I have chosen not to engage with this. He hadmade peace with that. The jokes weren’t really for them anyway.
Geonwoo barely ever laughed, exactly. But he reacted.
A slow dramatic sigh. An eye roll that took its time. That specific look of disappointment directed at nothing, like he was quietly grieving something.
Sometimes he’d just stare slightly past Sangwon, as if recalculating a decision he’d made years ago.
But he always reacted. Every time. And he had this other thing where he’d pick the joke up anyway, repeat it quietly to himself like he was trying to locate where it went wrong, then glance back at Sangwon with an expression that was almost impressed despite itself. Like how do you keep doing this.
Somehow that had always been enough.
More than enough, if Sangwon was being honest, which he was trying not to be.
Now he found himself collecting jokes throughout the day with nowhere to put them.
Like letters with no address.
A week later.
Sangwon: why did the calendar get nervous
Geonwoo: I’m scared
Sangwon: its days were numbered
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Geonwoo: I think being away from me has made you worse
Sangwon laughed out loud, actually out loud, alone in the dorm room, which was a little embarrassing and completely worth it.
Then he stopped.
Because for just a second the message felt warm in a way he hadn’t been ready for. Not funny-warm, not the usual thing. Something more specific, with more weight to it. He looked at it for a second too long, then sent back a laughing emoji and put the phone face-down.
That was enough for now.
He missed him.
That wasn’t the surprising part. Everyone missed hi. The members, the staff, the fans who flooded every comment section with the same three words on rotation.
So why did it feel different when Sangwon did it?
Why did the word miss feel like it was wearing the wrong size?
He missed Geonwoo’s habit of borrowing his phone charger without asking and then acting genuinely confused when Sangwon brought it up, not defensive, just puzzled. He missed how Geonwoo always knew, without being told, without any signal Sangwon was aware of giving, when a joke was a joke and when it was something else wearing one.
He missed looking up during practice and finding Geonwoo already looking at him.
That one he’d been avoiding for two weeks.
He missed-
No.
Sangwon put his phone down.
There was no point making lists.
That night he couldn’t sleep.
The dorm was quiet in that late-night way, not peaceful, just empty of everything except the things you’d been putting off. His phone glowed on the mattress.
He opened their chat without fully deciding to. Scrolled up through all of it. Food photos, random thoughts sent at weird hours, bad jokes, voice messages he’d forgotten about. The ordinary stuff that doesn’t feel like anything until it’s what you’re looking for.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard.
The dorm feels weird without you.
Stared at it. Deleted it.
Everyone misses you.
Deleted.
I keep making jokes and they go nowhere and I think they’ve been for you for longer than I knew.
Deleted. Obviously.
Finally:
Sangwon: I heard a really bad joke today and had nobody to tell it to
Send.
He set the phone down.
Coward. But the kind who’d gotten close enough to the truth that the retreat still counted for something.
The reply came fifteen minutes later.
Geonwoo: that’s your way of saying you miss me?
Sangwon’s chest did something inconvenient.
Sangwon: no
Geonwoo: liar
He stared at that. One word, just sitting there, unbothered.
The thing about Geonwoo, the most consistently annoying thing, was that he was right. Not in a winning way, just in a seeing way. Like he’d found some angle on Sangwon that Sangwon couldn’t access himself and just quietly reported back what was there. Sangwon had never decided to let him do that. It had just happened somewhere along the way, without either of them making it a thing.
The next day Sangwon found himself smiling during practice for no reason he could explain.
The day after that he kept checking his phone more than necessary.
The day after that he stopped looking for a normal explanation and just sat with it. In the quiet, in the gaps between things, in the place where honesty tends to show up when you’ve run out of reasons to hold it off.
He didn’t just miss Geonwoo.
He missed him specifically. The way you miss something that had been necessary before you thought to name it. His messages. His attention. The way every joke had started finding its way to him first, not because he was convenient but because at some point he’d become the one that mattered. The way a good day was different when Geonwoo was part of it. The way a bad day was just more manageable when Geonwoo was somewhere nearby, not fixing anything, just there.
It setteled slowly. Quietly. Not a sudden thing, not dramatic.
Just true, once he let himself look at it.
That evening he opened the chat.
No joke, no lead-in.
Sangwon: come back soon
The typing bubble came up almost right away.
Geonwoo: I will
Then a few seconds later:
Geonwoo: miss you too, btw
Sangwon read it a few times. Enough that it stopped feeling like words and started feeling like something he’d been waiting on without knowing it.
He laughed quietly to himself, alone, and the room felt like it had the right temperature for the first time in weeks.
Then he typed:
Sangwon: one more thing
Geonwoo: here we go
Sangwon: what do you call a bear with no teeth
Geonwoo: sangwon if this is another bad joke I’m blocking you
Sangwon: a gummy bear
A long pause. Sangwon could picture it exactly, Geonwoo staring at the screen, already tired, already going to respond anyway.
Geonwoo: I miss you
Geonwoo: but I need you to know I hated that joke
Sangwon smiled at his phone in the dark - wide and content, the kind of smile that doesn’t need an audience.
Sangwon: no you didn’t
A pause.
Geonwoo: no I didn’t
The dorm was still quiet.
Just not in the wrong way anymore.