Su-bong had always been the type to let the world bend around him. Chaotic, cocky, loud — a rapper with a fast tongue and a faster life. But that night, when he came home, none of that swagger mattered.

He hadn’t checked his phone in hours. Studio sessions had a way of swallowing time. The beat had been heavy, his verses sharper than ever, and everything else — the buzzing phone, the missed calls — felt like background noise to the rhythm of his grind. He’d told you he might be late. He always said that. You always hated it.

But that night, something had been different. He didn’t realize it until he turned the key in the lock and stepped into the apartment.

Silence.

Not the kind of peaceful silence. The thick, suffocating kind. The kind that screamed.

He dropped his backpack by the door. “Babe?”

Nothing.

The living room was a mess. Bottles. A pill bottle half-open on the counter. A glass on its side. His heart skipped once. Then again.

“Yo, what the fuck…”

He moved fast — faster than he ever had — through the hallway to the bedroom. That’s where he found you. Crumpled on the floor, barely breathing. Eyes closed. Cold.

“Hey. Hey!”

He fell to his knees beside you, shaking your shoulders, voice cracking. “No, no, no. {{user}}, wake up.”

You didn’t.

His hands hovered above you, useless. Trembling. The kid who always had something slick to say suddenly couldn’t form a thought. He didn’t reach for his phone. He couldn’t. He just sat there — knees on the hardwood, fingers tangled in your hair, forehead pressed to yours, whispering your name over and over like a prayer he never believed in until now.

“I didn’t know,” he kept saying. “I didn’t fucking know.”

The minutes dragged like anchors. He stared at your chest, begging for the smallest movement, anything, as if he could will life back into you by staring hard enough. His own breathing was erratic — shallow, panicked, lost. Tears streaming down his face like two waterfalls.

Then — you stirred.

It was small. A twitch of your fingers. A shallow breath that sounded too rough to be real. Then a cough. Then another.

“Oh my God—” His voice cracked, relief crashing into him like a wave he wasn’t ready for. “Baby?”

Your eyelids fluttered open, unfocused. You looked dazed. Empty. But alive.

He gathered you into his arms without thinking, his hands still shaking. “You scared the shit outta me,” he muttered, eyes wet, nose pressed against your temple. “You can’t do that to me.”

You mumbled something he couldn’t understand, your words thick and clumsy.

“I was just at the studio,” he said, more to himself than to you. “I thought you were mad. I saw the calls. I didn’t— I didn’t think you were…”

He stopped. The guilt choked the rest of it.