Midnight in Myeongdong

Myeongdong didn’t glow—it pulsed. Neon beat against the night like it had a pulse of its own, too fast, too bright, almost impatient. It made my own heartbeat feel small in comparison, like it was trying to keep up and failing.

Around us, the world carried on like nothing fragile existed. Tourists laughed, hands sticky with honey-glazed squid, voices rising over the hiss of grills. Teenagers drifted past in clusters, arms looped together, pastel shopping bags swinging like they had nowhere else to be. To them, it was a playground-lights, sugar, endless choices.

To me, it was a field of tripwires.

One wrong angle. One careless gust lifting the brim of my hat. That’s all it would take.

I tugged the bucket hat lower until the edge pressed into the bridge of my nose, grounding, suffocating. Beside me, Taeyong moved like the city belonged to him—or maybe like it didn’t touch him at all. Effortless. Fluid. Wrong, somehow. A man with his face blown up three stories high on a digital billboard shouldn’t be able to vanish into a crowd.

But he did.

Even now, in a plain hoodie and a black mask, there was something about him that bent the space around us. You didn’t have to see him to feel him.

“Two minutes,” he murmured.

His voice slid low, settling somewhere deep in my chest.

“Then we’re back in the van.”

I didn’t answer. I just reached for him, slipping my hand into his sleeve like it was something we’d practiced a thousand times. My fingers found his, familiar, warm. The roughness of his skin—earned, not given—pressed against my palm.

I squeezed once.

Our thing. Our small, stubborn rebellion.

Every few weeks, we stole this. Exactly one hundred and twenty seconds from a life that had already decided too much for us.

For those two minutes, I wasn’t the Filipina girl people had underestimated, dissected, labeled until the words lost meaning. I wasn’t Verse’s voice, packaged and perfected.

I was just Gehlee.

And he—he wasn’t BEAT’s center, the untouchable one, the name people said like it meant something holy.

He was just Taeyong.

Just the boy holding my hand.

“It’s beautiful tonight,” I said, almost to myself.

I tilted my head, trying to find a gap between the lights. There were no stars—Seoul had erased them—but the night still felt… alive. Like something was about to happen. Like everything was balanced on the edge of becoming.

For once, the noise in my head matched the world outside.

For once, it felt easy.

“It is,” he said. Then, softer, “More when it’s just us.”

We slowed near a narrow alley, damp and shadowed, tucked away from the spill of light. His grip tightened—not enough to hurt, just enough to say something without words.

Stay. I’m here. This is real.

I leaned into him, breathing him in—sandalwood, something clean, something unmistakably his. The kind of scent that lingered in places long after he was gone.

And God, the thrill of it. Standing beside him out here, where we weren’t supposed to exist.

I didn’t notice when his body went still.

Didn’t see the way his gaze sharpened, cutting past me toward a black sedan idling in the dark, lights off. Didn’t hear it—the faint, steady click of a shutter tucked somewhere it shouldn’t be.

“I wish we could stay,” I whispered. The words slipped out before I could stop them. “Just for an hour. No masks. No hiding. Just… us.”

He didn’t look at me.

His eyes were on his watch. Red numbers glowing.

Two minutes.

Gone.

“Time’s up, Gehlee. We have to go.”

His voice had changed. Flat. Precise. Like a switch had been flipped somewhere I couldn’t reach.

His hand slipped from mine.

Just like that.

He was already walking ahead, faster now, not checking if I was keeping up.

I followed.

Of course I did.

As we turned the corner, a shop window caught me off guard. For a second, I saw myself—really saw myself.

I looked… happy.

Radiant, even. Like the kind of girl people write stories about. The kind who gets the ending she wants.

It felt delicate. Like glass.

I didn’t know it was already breaking.

By morning, that girl wouldn’t exist anymore. Not like that.

The footage was already out there—cut, cleaned, stamped, ready.

And the worst part?

I didn’t know the choice had already been made.

That somewhere between those two minutes and the walk back to the van, the man I loved had chosen himself.

Myeongdong kept pulsing. Lights flashing, people laughing, everything moving forward like nothing had shifted.

And I walked straight into the dark.

They teach you everything, in this industry.

How to breathe through a three-minute routine that feels like drowning.

How to find the camera in half a second, even when the lights are trying to blind you.

How to smile until your face forgets what it looks like at rest.

They teach you how to become something polished.

Something sellable.

They just don’t teach you what it sounds like when it breaks.

It sounds like a camera shutter.

Sharp. Precise.

Final.

The van ride back felt normal.

Too normal.

The kind of quiet that usually settles after we get away with something. I leaned my head against the window, cool glass humming faintly beneath my skin, watching the neon smear into long streaks before fading into the dark stretch of the Han River.

My hand still remembered him.

That warmth—gone now, but not really.

It’s better when it’s just us.

I replayed it, over and over, like a favorite song.

“You’re glowing again,” Lisa said softly.

She didn’t look up from her tablet, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

I groaned, pulling my hoodie strings tighter. “Was it that obvious?”

“To anyone who knows you?” Sophia twisted around from the front seat, eyes bright with mischief. “Painfully.”

I huffed a laugh. “I hate both of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Lisa said.

She was right.

They knew. Everything. The late-night messages, the stolen minutes, the way my entire world seemed to tilt toward him without asking permission. They held it for me—carefully, like something fragile.

“He’s worth it,” I said, quieter this time.

The words felt heavier out loud.

Sophia’s expression softened. “Just… be careful.”

There it was.

Not teasing anymore.

“The higher you go,” she added, “the less there is to catch you.”

I nodded.

But I wasn’t really hearing her.

I was twenty. I was living the life people dream about. I was in love with someone the world couldn’t stop looking at.

Falling didn’t feel real.

Flying did.

Back at the dorm, I didn’t even bother changing. I dropped onto my bed, still wrapped in the oversized hoodie that smelled faintly like him.

It clung to me—warm, familiar.

Safe.

I fell asleep like that, smiling into the pillow, dreaming of a world where two minutes didn’t have to end. hi