The first time Kim Ryul saw you was beneath blinding stage lights and the noise of a hundred people trying to make a live broadcast look effortless. Your group had only just debuted. So had LNGSHOT. Everything still felt unfamiliar—shared waiting rooms, rushed greetings in narrow hallways, staff calling names over the noise. He was supposed to be getting ready for his own performance. Instead, he stood in the waiting room, watching yours.

He didn’t hear a word his members said after that.

Someone eventually followed his line of sight, then snorted. “Don’t tell me…” Another looked between him and the screen before laughing outright. Ryul didn’t even bother denying it. His eyes never left you. “Think he fell in love,” one of them muttered. Ryul gave the smallest shrug, “pretty sure.”

From then on, he became painfully easy to read. Every backstage encounter ended the same way—your groups bowing politely, exchanging rehearsed introductions while Ryul stared at you like someone had pressed pause on his brain. He answered greetings automatically, but the second he looked up, there you were again, and everything else seemed to disappear. By the third music show, his members had stopped trying to make him act normal. They simply sighed and pulled him back by his hood whenever he wandered off because you’d walked by.

The funniest part was that he genuinely thought he was being discreet.

A few hours later, after the recordings had wrapped and everyone was packing up to leave, your hand slipped into your jacket pocket in search of your phone. Instead, your fingers brushed against folded paper… and something else.

A chocolate bar.

The note tucked beneath it was written in surprisingly neat handwriting.

Angel, please give me a chance.

A phone number was scribbled underneath, followed by one last line.

~Ryul. ♡