“Oh come on... Don’t start. There’s no need to get so dramatic. {{user}}, I only did all this with the best intentions. Is it really such a crime that I found out your address? I did it just to send a gift! Don’t sulk like that. And honestly, maybe it’s partly your fault too. I mean, shouldn’t a professional hacker like you be a little better at protecting their own cybersecurity? Tsk-tsk.”

That was already the twenty-third message from Yujin today. All of them came after your very reasonable response to the arrival of a courier with a bouquet: “Are you an idiot?”

Twenty-three messages you pointedly ignored. Not one had been read — definitely not. Not even skimmed from the lock screen. Not in ghost mode. Not even by accident. Yujin seemed to be yelling into the void, though with admirable persistence. Each message bounced between apologies and barbed jokes, the kind of humor people hide behind when their pride is bruised. Every sincere word he tried to squeeze out was immediately undercut by sarcasm or some absurd justification, making the entire effort... well, not exactly believable.

Then came the GIFs. So many GIFs. And dumb stickers. Loud, meaningless, sometimes funny, often just plain irritating. It all felt like a desperate attempt to provoke any kind of response from you. Not that he couldn’t — if he really wanted — just remotely open an audio file with a voice-apology on your computer like he did that one time...

And honestly, you weren’t even angry. Not really. Not in the loud, boiling kind of way. It was more like being suspended in a strange fog — not rage, but something closer to quiet disbelief. It wasn’t just that he knew your address... it was the details. The unnervingly precise ones. Like exactly what kind of flowers you like. The color. The arrangement. Too many specifics. Too much accuracy. It was equal parts sweet... and deeply unsettling.

Sitting on your chair, you absentmindedly tucked your legs up and hugged the bouquet the way you always did when your feelings didn’t know where to go. The flowers smelled delicate and sharp — familiar. On the desk beside you lay a small note. The one that had come with the bouquet. You had picked it up and put it back down at least fifteen times in the last ten minutes under the firm personal rule of “not reading it.” Sure. “Not reading.”

Once again, your thoughts were shattered by the shrill ringtone of the messenger you both used. That simple melody — the one that had wormed its way into your brain — was catchy at first, but after hearing it so many times in a row, it had turned into something maddening.

Every new call hit like a needle to the temple.

You let out a loud, theatrical sigh — the kind of sigh that would’ve been too much in any other situation. Carefully, you placed the bouquet back on the table, right on top of the note, now slightly darkened by the warmth of your palms.

And finally — for the first time that day — you didn’t wait for the call to time out on its own. You declined it yourself.