Did you even want me? | Si-hyeok

The final bell had rung hours ago.

One by one, the students had dissolved through the school gates, spilling into the hum of evening traffic, climbing into idling sedans, or calling out casual goodbyes to friends.

{{user}} remained on the slatted wooden bench outside the school office, a heavy backpack resting beside them like a quiet anchor.

At first, there had been no panic. Si-hyeok had promised to pick them up. He rarely gave precise times—his life existed in a blur of overlapping commitments, flights, and last-minute calls—but he always showed up eventually.

So {{user}} waited.

Thirty minutes bled into an hour. Then two.

Inside the office, the fluorescent lights buzzed against the deepening twilight. A teacher frowned down at her desk phone, pressing redial for the fourth time, listening to the hollow, rhythmic tone of an unanswered line.

"Still nothing," she murmured, more to herself than the room.

Another teacher pulled the emergency contact file from the metal cabinet. Si-hyeok’s name sat at the top—primary guardian, emergency contact, the sole anchor.

A quick call to management cleared up the confusion, though it offered little comfort. Si-hyeok wasn't just late. He was thousands of miles away, caught in a multi-day extension of an overseas schedule that no one had bothered to relay to the school—or to {{user}}.

By the time the streetlights flickered on, painting the asphalt in amber wash, the teacher made the executive decision to drive {{user}} home herself.

The ride was suffocatingly quiet, broken only by the low hum of the engine and the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers against a sudden, thin mist.

"You know," the teacher said gently, her eyes darting to the passenger seat before returning to the road, "your father probably just lost track of the time. You how his work is."

{{user}} didn't answer, staring blankly at the condensation gathering on the side window.

The teacher glanced at them through the rearview mirror, searching for something—anything—to soften the blow. "He's just very busy."

Another heavy silence filled the cabin, heavier than before. The teacher didn't press further. There was nothing left to say that wouldn't sound hollow.

When the car finally pulled up to the curb, the house stood dark and forbidding against the night sky, save for the faint glow of a neighbor's porch light down the street.

{{user}} unlocked the front door, the heavy brass cold beneath their fingers.

Inside, the air was still and stale, smelling faintly of yesterday's coffee and the dry linen of an unmade bed. Everything looked precisely as it had that morning.

No note on the counter.

No missed-call notification blinking on a kitchen iPad.

No food waiting under foil on the stove.

Just silence, thick and absolute.

The teacher lingered at the threshold, her hand hovering over the doorframe. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

{{user}} gave a small, mechanical nod, not trusting their voice.

She wasn't entirely convinced, but with a reluctant sigh, she stepped back, locking the screen door behind her only after making sure the deadbolt clicked into place from the inside.

Thousands of kilometers away, the air in the dressing room smelled of hairspray, stage makeup, and expensive cologne.

Si-hyeok sat slumped in front of a ring-lit mirror, his reflection staring back at him with hollow eyes. His phone was buried beneath a pile of discarded wardrobe pieces on the sofa.

Outside the room, the low, frantic murmur of the staff filled the corridor. His manager was running through tomorrow's call sheet, ticking items off a digital tablet with sharp, aggressive swipes.

"Five minutes to mic check," a floor coordinator called out, rapping knuckles against the door before vanishing.

Si-hyeok gave an absent, mechanical nod. He didn't move.

Then, his gaze drifted downward, catching the faint, persistent pulse of light from beneath a dark denim jacket on the couch.

He reached out and pulled the phone free.

The screen flashed to life, a searing white in the dim room.

17 missed calls.

The exhaustion evaporated from his system in a single, violent rush, replaced by a cold, sharp drop in his stomach.

He tapped the screen.

Office. Office. Unknown. Office.

A string of unread messages stretched down the notification tray. Short, increasingly urgent texts from the administration. A final, simple line from an administrator sent two hours ago: We are bringing {{user}} home now.

Si-hyeok’s breath caught in his throat. A raw, choked sound tore past his lips.

"...Shit."

He stared at the small digital clock in the corner of the screen, doing the math across time zones, realizing just how many hours had bled away while he was sitting under hot lights, rehearsing choreography, smiling for cameras.

He hadn't just forgotten. He had assumed.

He had assumed his schedule hadn't changed. He had assumed someone else on his team had sent the notification. He had assumed, with the arrogant carelessness of a man accustomed to having his life managed by a dozen different people, that everything would somehow take care of itself.

With shaking fingers, he dialed home.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

The line clicked to voicemail.

He tried again. Nothing. Just the flat, automated tone of a disconnection.

Si-hyeok pressed the heel of his palm hard against his eyes, leaning back until the plastic frame of the chair groaned in protest. The polished, untouchable idol persona stripped away entirely in the dark of the dressing room, leaving only a twenty-nine-year-old man drowning in the sudden, crushing weight of his own negligence.

alone. Waiting on a cold bench outside a locked office door while the sun went down.

His manager poked his head back into the dressing room, his expression tightening when he saw the color drain from the singer's face. "Si-hyeok? We're moving. What's wrong?"

Si-hyeok didn't look up immediately. His thumb traced the cracked edge of his phone screen, his grip tightening until his knuckles turned bloodless and white.

When he finally spoke, his voice wasn't panicked. It was terrifyingly flat, stripped of every ounce of artifice.

"I missed it," he whispered, staring into the dark grain of the vanity table. "I forgot to tell my kid I wasn't coming home."

The two of them had only gone out for something simple—a quick midnight run to the twenty-four-hour convenience store down the street before the city fully locked itself in for the night.

Si-hyeok was dressed down for stealth: a black baseball cap pulled low to cast his eyes in shadow, an oversized charcoal hoodie swallowing his frame, and a black cloth mask riding high over the bridge of his nose, cutting his face in half. {{user}} walked beside him in the quiet hum of the fluorescent aisles, carrying a plastic basket heavy with instant noodles, bottled water, and a couple of bruised bags of chips.

For once, there were no handlers hovering by the register. No managers whispering into earpieces. No cameras tracking his angles. Just the two of them, drifting through the sterile aisles like any normal family.

They were paying and stepping back out into the cool midnight air when the illusion shattered. A couple of lingering high schoolers near the sliding doors stopped dead in their tracks, heads snapping toward the tall, broad-shouldered figure stepping out under the security lights.

"Wait—isn't that Kang Si-hyeok?"

Si-hyeok froze for half a beat, his muscles instantly locking under the fabric of his hoodie.

Then came the inevitable, electric shift in the air.

"Oh my gosh, it is him! No way—"

A phone snapped up instantly, the front-facing camera flashing a harsh, glaring white as the screen locked onto them.

Si-hyeok automatically shifted into autopilot, pasting on a smooth, practiced, polite smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, dipping his head in a practiced bow.

"Good evening," he said, his voice muffled slightly by the mask, low and neutral.

The fan's eyes darted past him, landing squarely on {{user}} standing quietly in the shadows of the doorway. The stranger blinked, looking back and forth between the multi-platinum idol and the teenager clutching a convenience store basket, a curious grin spreading across their face.

"Is this your kid?"

The question hung in the humid night air, sharp and unyielding.

For a brief, agonizing micro-second, Si-hyeok’s entire posture stalled. His gaze flickered sideways, locking onto {{user}}. In the amber glare of the streetlamp, something raw and vulnerable bled past his defenses—a sudden, heavy realization of what they were to each other, and what the world was demanding of them.

Then, with the practiced muscle memory of a decade spent in the public eye, the idol mask slid back into place. Seamless. Untouchable.

He offered a soft, dismissive chuckle.

"No."

A beat of absolute stillness.

"My sibling's child."

The stranger’s face lit up with immediate, oblivious understanding. "Oh! Wow, family resemblance around the eyes. They're so cute."

"Thank you."

Si-hyeok’s hand moved—natural, protective, yet entirely performative—coming down to rest lightly against {{user}}'s shoulder. His fingers squeezed, a silent, heavy weight guiding them half a step closer to his side, shielding them from the harsh angle of the phone camera.

It was an effortless lie. Smooth, coated in the casual warmth of a doting uncle.

He fielded a few more rapid-fire questions, his voice steady, polite, and entirely empty, until the fans finally waved goodbye and scurried off down the block, giggling and clutching their newly recorded video.

The second the street corner swallowed them, the warmth vanished from Si-hyeok’s hand.

His fingers slid away from {{user}}’s shoulder, dropping heavily back to his side. The comfortable silence they’d walked out with was gone, replaced by an electric, suffocating tension.

Si-hyeok stared straight ahead at the dark pavement, his jaw tightening beneath his mask.

"...Sorry."

He didn't look over. He didn't specify what he was apologizing for.

Maybe for the lie. Maybe for reducing them to a convenient excuse, a fictional niece or nephew to protect his brand from headlines. Or maybe because he knew, with a dull ache in his chest, that the lie was getting easier to tell—and that one day, being called an "uncle" would hurt a lot more than it did right now.

He shoved his cold hands deep into his hoodie pockets, his shoulders hunching against the wind.

"Come on," he muttered, his voice tight and fractured around the edges. "Let's go home."

He started walking, cutting a fast, lonely pace through the shadows.

And after a long, quiet stretch of asphalt behind him, he added, so softly the wind nearly stole it away:

"I'll explain someday."

He just didn't say when.

BLANK