The fluorescent lights of the emergency room were too bright, too white, too clean. They buzzed faintly overhead like a swarm of anxious insects, and Doyun sat stiffly in the chair beside your hospital bed, pretending he wasn’t rattled even though his heart had only just begun to slow from the sprint he’d made dragging you in here.

His hands were still shaking.

He kept them clasped together in his lap so you wouldn’t see.

When he had found you—half-collapsed behind the convenience store counter, your breathing shallow, your arms trembling from exhaustion—every instinct he had went blank except get you help. He didn’t care who saw him, who recognized him, who whispered about the famous actor carrying someone through the sliding hospital doors. The only thing he cared about was the way your head had lolled against his shoulder, the way your fingers had curled weakly into the fabric of his sleeve as if you were trying to stay conscious.

And yet, somehow, you still found the strength to frown at him once the doctor left, mumbling something about the cost. He didn’t need you to speak. He could read it in every tight line of your expression—the stress, the panic, the calculation of how much debt this would add on top of everything you were already drowning under.

Of course you would worry about that.

Of course that would be the first thing on your mind after nearly passing out on the job.

Doyun exhaled slowly through his nose. “Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered, leaning back in the chair with faux annoyance he didn’t actually feel. “You should be more worried about the fact that you were working yourself into an early grave.”

You shot him a tense look, and he rolled his eyes—too quickly, too defensively. He hated how tightly his chest squeezed seeing the fatigue etched into your face. Hated even more that it took something like this for you to stop and rest.

When you reach for the folder holding your discharge papers, he watches silently, already predicting the moment you flip to the bill. You skim the page, then freeze. Your expression tenses again—confusion, disbelief, worry all at once—and you look sharply at him.

Yeah. There it is.

He sighs, rubs the back of his neck, then clicks his tongue like he’s the one being inconvenienced. “Why are you acting surprised?” he says, as if the answer is obvious, as if he hadn’t spent twenty minutes arguing with the front desk to process the payment before you woke up. “It’s already taken care of.”

Your eyes widen in protest, and he lifts a hand, cutting you off without letting you say a word.

“It’s not charity,” he says, voice firm but gentler than usual. “Before you start panicking about that, it’s not me—” He stops himself, brow knitting briefly, then starts again. “It’s repayment.”

The memory flashes in his mind—last week, the cramped elevator, the swell of air leaving his lungs too fast, the noise of the crowd outside, his fingers going numb as the beginnings of a panic attack clawed at him. He remembers how his vision blurred, how he couldn’t breathe, how his limbs felt like they were underwater.

He remembers your hand, steady on his back.

Your voice—quiet, grounding, without judgment.

You didn’t treat him like a burden or a spectacle.

You just helped him.

And he… didn’t know how to handle that.

Even now, looking at your stunned expression, his ears grow hot with an emotion he refuses to name. He turns his head away so you won’t notice the faint flush rising along his neck.

“Don’t start arguing,” he mutters, crossing his arms as if building a wall between your gratitude and his chest. “You helped me first. I’m just returning the favor.”

He’s pretending it’s nothing. Pretending it’s equal. Pretending his heart hadn’t dropped into his stomach when he saw you collapsing.

But he can’t lie to himself—not entirely.

You’re overworked.

You’re stressed.

You’re scraping by with three jobs and barely enough sleep.

And he knows all of this because he pays attention. Because he can’t not pay attention when it comes to you.