"Let's get it started, getting anxious, can't think straight
I'll give you an armful of cosmos flowers"
Minho
The door to the rooftop creaked open with a long sigh, the kind that sounded like even the building was tired. The wind was cooler up here, brushing across my neck as I stepped out into the night. I should've turned around. I should've gone back to my dorm, pulled the covers over my head, and ignored the way my chest had been tightening for days. But something told me not to. Something pulled me forward.
And then I saw her.
Y/N was sitting with her back against the railing, knees pulled to her chest, hoodie sleeves bunched up in her fists. Her face was half-hidden, but I could see the tremble in her shoulders. She hadn't heard me come in.
I froze.
For a second, I considered walking away—giving her the space I always told myself she deserved. But that was a lie, wasn't it? The space was never for her. It was for me. Because I didn't know how to stay. Didn't know how to be someone who could hold another person's hurt without cracking under it.
Still, I stepped forward.
"It's late," I said, voice quiet.
She stiffened, wiped her face hastily, and turned away from me. "Didn't realize I booked the rooftop. Should I leave?"
I shook my head, even though she wasn't looking. "No. I... I just needed air."
I sat down beside her, not too close, but close enough that I could feel her heat through the chill in the air. The silence stretched between us like a tightrope.
"Bad day?" I asked after a while.
She gave a short laugh. It wasn't a happy sound. "Which one?"
I looked at her then. Really looked. Her eyes were rimmed red, lashes wet, mouth pressed into a line she probably practiced in the mirror to make people believe she was fine.
"Y/N..."
"Don't," she said, shaking her head. "Please, don't be nice to me right now. I'll break."
I clenched my hands into fists on my knees. "Okay. I won't."
We sat there a while longer. The sounds of the campus below drifted up to us: laughter from somewhere distant, the buzz of a scooter engine, wind skimming over the trees.
She sniffled, wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Sorry. You probably came up here to be alone."
"I came up here because I didn't know where else to go."
Her eyes flicked toward me.
"You ever feel like you're always two steps away from falling apart, and you just keep moving anyway? Because what else are you supposed to do?"
She nodded slowly, eyes glassy. "Every day."
I blew out a breath. "When my mom died, I was nine. It was quick. A stroke. One moment she was tucking me in, and the next day, she was gone."
She went still.
"My dad lasted another month. Packed a bag while I was at school. Left a note that said he couldn't do it."
I didn't realize how hard it would be to say it out loud. My chest felt hollow, like the words were scraping something raw on the way out.
"My grandparents took me in," I continued. "They weren't cruel. Not really. But they blamed me in a hundred ways that didn't need words. They raised me on silence. On closed doors and quiet meals. No birthdays. No hugs. Just... expectations."
I looked at her, expecting her to look away. Most people did.
She didn't.
She was still crying, but quietly now. Like she was afraid the sound would scare me off.
"I didn't tell anyone," I admitted. "Because if I said it, it would be real. And if it was real, then I had no excuse for turning out the way I did."
She reached out, fingertips brushing my sleeve. A small touch, but it grounded me.
"You make me want to try," I said.
She blinked. "Try what?"
"To stay. To talk. To be better."
Her face crumpled, just a little, and then she laughed—a soft, broken thing. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me while I was actively trying to disappear."
"I see you, Y/N."
We sat in silence again. I watched the wind pull strands of hair across her face. I wanted to reach out. Tuck them behind her ear. Touch her cheek. Kiss the corner of her mouth that still trembled.
But I didn't.
Instead, I tilted my head toward the sky. "I started dancing when I was ten. After everything fell apart."
She looked up, surprised by the shift.
"There was a talent show at school," I explained. "No one signed up for dance, so they offered extra credit. I didn't even think about it. I just... needed something. Anything."
A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"The first time I heard the music, it felt like breathing for the first time. I could move, and no one could stop me. No one could tell me to be quiet or small or sit still. I didn't have to talk, or explain, or apologize. I could just exist."
She didn't speak. She just listened, really listened, in that way she always did that made you want to say more.
"I never told anyone why I kept going," I continued, voice softer now. "But I think part of me was trying to find her again. My mom. She used to sing when she cooked. Not well. Not professionally. But it filled the house. When she was gone, everything was still. Dance was the only way I could make the silence move."
Y/N wiped a tear from her cheek. "You make it look so effortless. But it's heavy, isn't it?"
I nodded. "Every step. But it's mine. And when I'm moving, I feel like maybe I still have a voice. Even if I never say a word."
She exhaled shakily and leaned her head against the railing behind us. "You ever think maybe we don't have to carry it alone?"
I closed my eyes. "I want to believe that."
We stayed there, the quiet between us not cold but warm. Not a void, but a pause. A moment held in stillness.
Because maybe she didn't need another boy trying to rescue her.
Maybe she just needed someone who wouldn't look away.
And maybe I needed that too.
Y/N
When the rooftop door creaked shut behind Minho, I almost pretended not to hear it. My hands tightened around the cuffs of my hoodie, hiding the rawness in my palms where my fingernails had bitten in. I didn't have the energy to face anyone. Not tonight. Not after holding everything in for so long I thought it might splinter my ribs.
But it was him.
Of course it was him.
He didn't say much at first. That was something about Minho that always both unsettled and calmed me—his silences. They weren't empty. They were full of things he never said but somehow still made you feel. He sat near me without hesitation, close enough to feel like a presence but not close enough to touch. I was grateful for the distance, even as I hated how badly I wanted to close it.
When he asked if I was okay, I wanted to lie. But there was no strength left for pretending.
I told him not to be kind. He said he wouldn't. And that, somehow, was the kindest thing he could've done.
The wind whipped my hair against my cheek, and I pressed my forehead to my knees. I didn't know why I was falling apart. Or maybe I did, and just didn't want to name it. The pressure. The confusion. The feeling of being so many versions of myself for so many people that I no longer knew which one was mine.
He talked about his mother.
I didn't expect it. Not from Minho.
I held still, barely breathing, as he told me how she died when he was nine, how his father left, and how his grandparents raised him in a house made of silence. No hugs. No birthdays. No softness. Just expectations.
It explained so much.
Why he was so good at pushing people away. Why he guarded everything behind sarcastic jabs and flat stares. Why I always felt like he was watching from the edge of the room, waiting to run.
But he didn't run now. He stayed.
I reached out without thinking and touched his sleeve.
It wasn't a grand gesture. But it was the only thing I could offer. And when he said, "You make me want to try," my heart clenched so hard I forgot how to breathe.
He talked about dancing then. Not the casual comments I'd overheard during rehearsals. This was something different. Something vulnerable. How he started because he needed to move, because he needed to feel something that didn't hurt. Because music had been his mom's language, and dancing let him remember her without breaking.
I wondered how long he'd carried that alone.
And then I wondered why it made me want to cry more than my own pain did.
I told him it looked effortless. That it must be heavy. Because I knew what it was like to carry something quietly for too long. And I knew what it felt like to want someone to notice without asking.
The moment stretched. Not awkward, but charged.
I could feel the weight of his gaze on me. The urge to reach for something we hadn't named yet. But he didn't.
He didn't kiss me.
He stayed.
And somehow, that was everything.
After he left, I sat there for a long time. Watching the stars blur as tears filled my eyes again, but this time they weren't just sadness.
They were something else.
A fragile kind of hope.
Minho had let me in. Maybe not all the way. Maybe not yet. But more than he had let anyone in before.
And in his story, in his pain, I saw pieces of my own. Not the same, but not so different either. And for the first time, I didn't feel alone in it.
I pressed a hand to my chest and whispered into the wind, "I see you too."
And maybe, just maybe, we could figure out what that meant together.