You've always been good at waiting.

It’s a quiet kind of patience, the kind that settles deep in your bones without protest. You don't ask for much. Not really. Just enough. Enough to stay close, enough to hold on, enough to pretend that maybe... one day, he'll look at you the way you look at him.

But "enough" never really feels like enough when it comes to Jeno.

Tonight, you sit across from him in a dimly lit café, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that's already gone cold. He's talking, something about his day, his plans, his life; the one you orbit but never quite belong to. And you listen, because that's what you do.

Then, without warning, he laughs. A soft, effortless sound. You wish it belonged to you, that it was something you had said that pulled that reaction from him. But his gaze is somewhere else, on his phone, on a message you'll never read.

And just like that, you're reminded of your place.

Second.

Always second.