The stars hung quietly above, scattered across the ink-black sky like memories he tried to forget but couldn’t.Not when every night felt like a rewind.Not when every ride, every turn of the pedal, reminded him of you.

Deokbong stood there, his bike leaning against the lamppost, abandoned just like his attempts to move on. His breaths came slow, uneven not from training, but from the ache sitting deep in his chest.

It had been almost a year.Almost a full year since he’d held you, heard your laughter, felt your fingers tangled with his during cold evening walks.A year since everything broke apart and now.Now you were standing in front of him again.

You looked just the same. Maybe a little different. Maybe a little sadder in the eyes but still you.The only girl he had ever truly loved.

He didn’t speak didn’t need to.

His heart did it for him.

The moment your eyes met, he dropped his bike to the ground with a dull clatter and closed the space between you in two long strides and then his arms were around you. Tightly like the kind of hug that says.

"please, just stay."

His hand cradled the back of your head, fingers sinking gently into your hair.His other hand rubbed slow, careful circles on your back comforting, desperate, familiar.He pressed his face to your shoulder, breathing you in like oxygen.

"I missed you," he whispered with his voice low, rough, almost breaking.

"God, I missed you so much."

You didn’t pull away and you didn’t need to because you could feel it too every ounce of longing that had built in him over time.Every moment he’d held back from texting, calling, running to you.

Deokbong was quiet, but when he loved he loved deep and right now, beneath the night stars, wrapped in his embrace he was loving you all over again.