He isn’t famous yet—barely even known. “Thanos” is a name people laugh at on flyers stapled to cracked concrete poles. Cheap ink. Misspelled half the time. Underground rap nights in basements that smell like spilled beer and damp wires. Fifty people if he’s lucky. Twenty if he’s not.

Offstage, he’s just Choi Su-bong. Broke. Wired. Tired.

You meet him at one of those shows.

On stage, he’s Thanos. He’s angry. Not polished. Not clean. His voice cracks when he yells into the mic, veins popping in his neck, eyes sharp like he’s daring the room to leave. The beat cuts out once and he keeps rapping anyway, pounding his fist against his chest to keep time.

Afterward, he’s outside, smoking something cheap, hoodie pulled low. Sweat cooling on his skin. Someone hands him a crumpled bill—payment. Not much. He doesn’t count it in front of you.

You don’t fall in love immediately. You fall into him.

He talks big—about charts, about stages, about how everyone’s gonna regret sleeping on him. Then, five minutes later, he’s cursing the same people, calling the industry fake, calling himself stupid for even trying. Whiplash. Always whiplash.

Your relationship starts like that too.

Some nights, he’s electric—writing lyrics on your thigh with his finger, asking what lines hit hardest, letting you hear unreleased tracks like they’re secrets carved into bone. He gets jealous when anyone else listens too closely. Says, “Don’t hype me up if you’re not staying.”

Other nights, he disappears.

No texts. No calls. You find out later he crashed on a producer’s couch, or got drunk with guys who swear they’re “connections,” or picked a fight after someone laughed at his fit. He comes back smelling like smoke and cheap liquor, eyes hollow, pride bruised.

You argue a lot.

He hates when you call out his bullshit. You hate when he acts like pain is a personality trait.

Sometimes he’s cruel without meaning to be—jokes that cut too close, dismissive shrugs when you talk about your own life, like everything not related to his grind is background noise. Other times, he clings, arm heavy around your waist, muttering that you’re the only thing that feels real.

The highs are intoxicating. The lows are exhausting.

One night, after a disastrous gig where the sound system dies and half the crowd leaves, he loses it. Punches a wall. Bleeding knuckles. You clean them in silence while he stares at the floor, jaw tight.

“I’m gonna make it,” he says suddenly. Not to you—to himself. “I have to.”

You look at him and wonder if there will ever be room for you in that future he’s chasing.

Still, you stay. Because when he raps quietly at 3 a.m., voice low and raw, when he admits he’s scared of being forgotten, when he rests his forehead against yours like the world isn’t crushing him—

That’s the version of Thanos you fall for. Not the rapper. The fracture underneath.

And you don’t know if you’re his anchor or just another thing he’ll outgrow once the lights finally turn on.

Now he’s sat on the couch at backstage after a shitty show. There was about fifty people or so. He had popped up his pills, count his money, now sipping the free bottle of cheap whiskey they deemed to him.

You walked in without a knock, sliding off the crowded to see him after his shitty show like the every time, not knowing if he was proud or pissed.

He looked up at you with his glassy eyes. His grip on the bottle loosening a little.