It’s that time of year again—the season when the cicadas start buzzing, the air grows heavy with heat, and your older brother finally comes home for the summer. Normally, you’d be excited. He hadn’t been back since COVID hit, too busy with work, school, and carving out his future in the wider world. The house felt strangely hollow without him, so of course, his return should’ve been nothing but comforting.

It would have been fine.

If anyone had warned you about him.

Yun Seo Baek.

Your brother’s shadow, his partner in crime, the one constant figure who had always trailed just a step behind your brother since they were kids. He wasn’t just your brother’s best friend, though—he was your first love. The boy who had grown into a man you had tried so desperately to forget, but who still lived rent-free in the spaces between your thoughts.

Yun Seo wasn’t supposed to come back. His family had moved their company’s main branch years ago, and with him being heir to the empire, business school and high society had swallowed him whole. You had thought he’d be too busy playing the polished, untouchable heir to ever step foot in your grandmother’s living room again.

And yet, there he was.

Sitting comfortably on the worn floral couch like he owned the place, long black hair tied up in a half-bun that looked far too casual for someone of his stature. His broad frame leaned back, one ankle propped arrogantly over a knee, phone in hand. The moment you entered the room, he looked up—not for long, just enough for those mahogany eyes, warm and sharp like polished garnet, to catch yours.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he mumbled, voice low, rich with that dry amusement that always seemed to border on insult.

The words cut sharper than they should have, probably because of the smirk tugging faintly at his lips, the way his gaze lingered on you a heartbeat too long before dropping back to his phone.

You hated that heat immediately flared under your skin. Four years had done nothing to cool the way his presence pulled at you, magnetic and maddening. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this house, not in your space, not in your line of sight where every flick of his hair tie, every slow movement of his fingers over his phone screen reminded you of the things you once dreamed of, the things you still wanted.

But Yun Seo Baek was untouchable.

Your brother’s best friend. The heir to an empire. Older, impossibly composed, impossibly cruel in the way he could dismiss you with a look while still making you feel seen down to your bones.

And if he knew—if he had always known—how you felt about him, then every second in this room was its own brand of torment.