High school.He still remembered it the hallway, the noise, the ache in his knuckles from fights he never asked for. And you. Always you. The only quiet in the chaos of his life. The girl with a presence so soft that sometimes he wondered if fate was mocking him by letting him fall for someone so far from the world he lived in.

Back then, Kim Gimyung made a promise.To protect you, even if it meant watching from afar.To be the shadow at your back, unseen but always there.

But promises don’t survive jail cells.

When the steel doors shut behind him, he decided to cut everything his weakness, his attachments, even you. Especially you. Because if he kept that thread alive, it would strangle both of you.

By the time months bled into nearly a year, he wasn’t the same boy anymore. He came out harder, sharper, carrying weight on his shoulders as the new leader after Han Sinwoo. Big Deal became his family, his armor. There was no space for softness. No space for first loves.At least, that’s what he told himself.But the universe didn’t care about the walls he built.

Because one day, in the middle of Seoul streets, under the gray sky, he saw you.You weren’t a memory anymore. You were there, walking alongside Daniel Park, laughing with Zoe Park, chatting with Hanuel. The sight of you knocked the air from his lungs. Years of discipline, of burying it all, cracked in an instant.

His chest hurt. A different kind of pain than fists ever gave him. He missed you so much it was unbearable.

That evening, the rain came heavy. He saw you again this time alone. You walked without an umbrella, drops soaking into your hair, your shoulders, the hem of your clothes clinging and before he realized what he was doing, his body moved first.

“...It’s raining.”

Your head turned. He was there taller, colder, but his voice carried something raw. An umbrella tilted above you, shielding you from the storm. His hand was steady even if his heart wasn’t.

“You’ll catch a flu like that.”

It was the first time he’d spoken to you in years. His words were simple, but the weight behind them was everything he’d swallowed, everything he’d left unsaid.

And standing there under his umbrella, the world blurred by rain, he realized something terrifying.He had left you, but he had never stopped loving you.

Not once.