Your neighborhood always feels quieter at night, but tonight it feels different. The sky is ink-black, the stars barely peeking through thin clouds, and the streetlights cast a soft amber glow on the sidewalks. Crickets chirp somewhere in the distance, and the air smells like rain that might come. A cool breeze slips through your open bedroom window, making your curtains sway gently.

You’re sitting at your desk, head resting in your hand, trying to finish your math homework while Your Guardian Angel by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus plays softly from your clunky desktop speakers. Your pencil is still in your hand, numbers half-written on the worksheet… but your mind keeps drifting.

To him. Hwang Hyunjin.

You’ve known him for years—since middle school. The quiet boy who sat behind you in class, always sketching in the margins of his notebook and pretending he didn’t notice when you tried to peek. You were the only one who asked to see his drawings. After that, he stuck around you more—walking you home after school, lending his hoodie during cold soccer practices, buying you strawberry milk in the cafeteria “just because.”

People said you were close friends. You told yourself that too. Mostly.

But lately… you’ve noticed things. The way his gaze softens when you laugh. The way his fingers tremble when he hands you something. How his ears turn pink when your shoulders touch in the hallway.

You feel it—this quiet, unspoken something between you.

You’re erasing a math problem for the third time when—

TAP. You freeze. TAP. TAP. That is definitely not in your homework.

You push your chair back, walk to your window, and pull the curtain aside. And your heart just about stops.

Hyunjin is standing in your yard. Under the pale streetlight. Wearing his old denim jacket, white Converse, his hair a little messy from the wind. In one hand, a few pebbles. In the other— A pink CD player with heart stickers on it.

You blink. Hard.

Before you can speak, he presses play. The music crackles to life through duct-taped speakers.

“She Will Be Loved” by Maroon 5 starts blasting into the quiet night air.

You slap a hand over your mouth.

Hyunjin, face already red, clears his throat like he’s about to give a speech in front of the whole school. Then—he starts singing. Off-key, nervously, but with all the emotion of someone who’s been holding this in for way too long.

“Hyunjin!” you whisper-shout through the glass. “Are you crazy?!”

But he looks up at you, eyes wide and honest—like he’s scared, but more scared of doing nothing.

And suddenly, everything clicks. Every time he walked on the road-side of the sidewalk. Every extra hoodie he “just happened” to bring. Every morning he waited by your locker, pretending he just got there too.

On the last chorus, he clutches his chest like some tragic 2000s movie hero and blurts out, voice cracking, “{{user}}—I like you! I’ve liked you since seventh grade! I’m probably messing everything up but—I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

Silence. Except for the music and your heartbeat pounding in your ears.

You push your window open just a little. “Before my parents wake up and ground me forever… get up here.”

He stares. “So… you don’t hate me?”

You sigh, but you’re smiling. “You’re an idiot. But no. I don’t hate you.”

His face breaks into the biggest grin. He drops the rocks, nearly destroys your mom’s rose bush climbing over, and rushes to your window like he’s been waiting his whole life for permission to.