The rooftop door slammed behind us, the echo rattling in my skull. His grip on my wrist was so tight my knuckles burned; I didn't pull away because I didn't have the energy to move.
Dae-hyun's face was hard, his voice sharper than anything I felt able to meet. He didn't press me with anger exactly — it was something fierce and full of the kind of worry I wasn't used to letting anyone show.
"Are you out of your goddamn mind?!" The words tore into the night. I flinched, shrinking, not because I deserved it but because any sound felt like punishment.
"I—" My voice was paper-thin. "…let go."
"Let go?" His laugh was bitter, incredulous. "I just pulled you back from killing yourself, and you want me to let go? Hell no."
My wrist twitched inside his hand. I tried, weakly, to tug free. "…You don't understand."
"Then make me understand!" His voice broke with the force of it. "Why? Why would you do something like that?"
I said nothing. Saying anything felt like opening a wound in front of someone who might not know how to hold it.
The silence pressed in between us, suffocating and loud. My lips trembled as if a word wanted out, but the words that mattered were trapped behind something heavier than fear.
He stepped closer until I had to look at him. "Woo-jin, answer me! Was it because of the assholes at school? Was it your family? What the hell pushed you that far?"
My eyes threatened tears. I refused to give them. I could almost hear the safe answer, the one that would make him stop asking, but the truth tasted too sharp. Finally I whispered, so small I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it—
"…It doesn't matter."
He froze. The way his chest tightened made my chest twist back as if to mirror him. I felt the pull of wanting to explain, to unload everything, and also the primal instinct to protect whatever pieces of myself I had left.
"Doesn't… matter?" His voice came out thin, incredulous.
I gave the smallest nod, keeping my gaze fixed on the floor because looking up felt like giving him permission to stay inside me.
"Don't," he hissed. "Don't you dare tell me your life doesn't matter. Don't you dare—" His voice broke, the anger shifting into something rawer. "You think it's nothing? That I should just walk away and pretend I didn't see you ready to throw everything away?"
My shoulders shook. I bit my lip until it bled, and even then I couldn't make the words fit into a shape that would let him understand.
"…Let me go, Dae-hyun."
"No." He closed the distance. His grip didn't loosen. "Not this time. Not ever."
I wanted to say yes—to let him go because staying felt like admitting I needed anyone—but I stayed. Let him hold on. Let him be the anchor, even if I didn't know how to return the favor.
The corridor smelled faintly of rain and old paint. My shoes echoed too loudly on the tiles as we walked; every step felt like something I had to announce back into the world.
I didn't want to be left alone in that classroom with silence gnawing at me. The image of standing at the edge kept replaying, a loop I couldn't erase. I wanted to say one thing that might explain myself, but the right words were slippery, and the wrong ones felt dangerous.
Instead, he did something small and almost absurd.
"Come," he said, stopping in front of me. "We're getting ice cream."
For a moment I thought of refusing. Of folding back into the shell I knew. Then I rose and followed him like a puppet pulled by a thin, uncertain string.
Outside, the air felt cleaner. We walked side by side, neither speaking. The city was loud with students leaving campus—voices, scooters, the distant scrape of a bus—and I let his hand around my wrist be the small thing that kept me tethered.
The shop was two blocks away: a faded awning, a handwritten menu, an old man who nodded like he remembered me from another fight. Dae-hyun ordered without hesitation.
"Two scoops. One each. Vanilla and strawberry."
The man raised an eyebrow. "You sure?"
"Yes." Short. Simple. He slid the money across and took the paper-wrapped cups.
I hovered beside him, hands tucked into the sleeves of the jacket he'd thrown over me on the roof. The fabric still smelled like rain and the faint detergent he used. It swallowed my shoulders like a shelter and made me feel — stupidly — less invisible.
When he handed me the bag, our fingers brushed. For a second I expected to flinch. Instead my hand closed around his and held, tentative and warm.
We sat on a bench beneath a streetlamp, the light pooling around us. He shoved a spoon into my hand like it was an order. "Eat," he said.
I did. I held the plastic clumsily, staring at the white scoop like it was something foreign. The cold hit first, then the sugar; my face tightened as if tasting temperature more than taste. A sound escaped me — not a laugh, not really, but a breath that might have been one.
"You don't have to make a face," he muttered, folding his arms the way he always did when trying to be tougher than he felt.
"I haven't… eaten much today," I admitted. It came out like a confession I hadn't planned to make.
"Good," he said without missing a beat. "Then eat."
So I ate. Bite after slow bite, careful like someone handling glass. I watched him as much as he watched me—the way his jaw set, the way his eyes kept checking I was still there.
After a while he asked, voice small: "Why did you buy this flavor?"
"Vanilla's boring," he said, dry, and then about the strawberry: "Strawberry's idiotically sweet. Thought the combination would… shut you up for a bit."
I let a little amusement touch the corner of my mouth at that, a tiny thing I hadn't expected to feel. "You could have told the cashier to put nuts on it," I said, testing normalcy like a fragile toy.
"Tch," he scoffed, but he smiled. "You're the one who likes to make things difficult."
I looked down at my spoon, licking it with a motion so small it felt like stealing. Then I asked, because the question had lodged there and wouldn't leave: "Why did you—why did you save me?"
He blinked, and I could see him weighing answers. I thought he might say something big or poetic, but he said it blunt and practical, the way he always was.
"Because you almost jumped." He watched me when he said it. "No one deserves to suffer plus you're a cute lil omega. Heh. You're inconveniently alive, so you're staying."
It landed on me like a smack. I kept eating because moving felt like an act of defiance.
"You're allowed to be angry at me," he added after a beat, voice softer now. "If you want to hate me for stopping you, fine. I can take it."
There was a flash in his eyes, not quite thanks, not quite anything I could name. "I'm not… I don't know how to be anything right now," I said, the truth tumbling out messy and raw.
"Neither do a lot of people," he shrugged. "But you're still here."
When he said he wouldn't leave me alone — the repetition of it — I asked the question that had been hovering over us both. "You kept repeating that you wouldn't leave me alone. Did you mean it?"
"Yes," he answered simply. No promise, no flourish. Just a fact. "If you try again, I'll catch you again. If you tried a hundred times, I'd catch you a hundred times. Deal?"
There was a silence between us, and I nodded once, small and honest.
We talked after that in fits and starts. Not about the things that sat heavy and dangerous in the air. We talked about pigeons and vending machines and exams—small things that felt absurd and almost sacred because, for the first time all day, my face moved away from the permanent line of pain.
The night pressed down soft and heavy, the park painted in blue shadows and broken orange light from the streetlamps. My empty ice-cream cup sat in my hand, the plastic spoon bent where my fingers had clutched it too tightly. It looked pathetic — like me.
"Cold?" Dae-hyun asked suddenly. His voice wasn't gentle — he didn't know how to be — but something beneath the sharpness made my chest ache.
I shook my head. "No."
"You're lying."
My throat tightened. The words slipped out before I could stop them. "Why do you care?"
He leaned back, arms crossed. "Because I don't like wasting my time."
The words stung sharper than I expected. I shrank into the jacket he'd forced around me, my voice dropping small. "So… I'm just a waste of time?"
His head snapped toward me, eyes burning. "That's not what I said."
I wanted to believe him. Hell, I wanted to. But my father's voice rose louder than his — worthless, pathetic, better off gone. The chorus of classmates, the sneers in the hallway, the hands shoving me into lockers, all of it screamed the same thing.
Everyone agreed.
I curled tighter into myself. "Everyone says it. Maybe they're right."
"Who's everyone?" he demanded, sharp like he was ready to fight the shadows themselves.
"My parents," I whispered. The word cut my tongue. "People at school. Alphas in the hall. Even strangers who don't know me. They all see the same thing: useless."
The laugh that escaped me was brittle, bitter. "And they're probably right."
Dae-hyun didn't answer at first. He just stared, like he was forcing the truth out of me with his silence. Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice like steel.
"You believe them?"
"I…" My voice cracked. "I don't know anymore."
His jaw clenched. "Then listen to me instead."
My head jerked up.
"You're not useless. You're not weak. You're not worthless." His words felt like commands, not comfort. "The fact you're still sitting here proves it. Everyone was born with a purpose, so them saying it makes you useless?"
Tears pricked my eyes. I rubbed them away fast, ashamed. "You don't even know me. Not really."
"You're right," he said, gaze unwavering. "But I've seen enough to know you're stronger than the cowards who try to break you."
"Strong?" My laugh cracked into a sob. "I tried to jump. Twice! That's not strength — that's pathetic."
"No," he shot back without hesitation. "That's pain. And pain doesn't make you pathetic. It makes you human."
The words hit harder than anything else tonight. My chest lurched, unsteady.
He leaned back again, voice softer now. "I don't need your secrets. I don't need your past. I just need you to stop trying to disappear."
My hands trembled in my lap. "…Why? Why do you care if I disappear?"
His eyes softened — not much, but enough that I saw it. "Because I was there. And I don't walk away from people once I've seen them fall."
Silence filled the bench, fragile and heavy. My tears slipped free before I could stop them, hot against my cheeks. Shame burned, but so did something else — a strange, raw relief that he was still here.
"I don't know how to keep going," I admitted, voice breaking apart.
"Then let me show you," he said. Simply. Like it was obvious.
Something inside me cracked. Not all the way. But enough. Enough for one breath of air to seep through the walls I'd built.
I didn't answer. Couldn't. But for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel completely alone.
He stood, stretching, and held out his hand. "Come on. I'll walk you home."
My heart twisted painfully. Home wasn't safe. But I couldn't tell him that. My fingers moved anyway, trembling as they slipped into his. His grip was steady. Unshakable.
We walked without another word. And in that silence, for the first time in forever…
I felt the faintest spark of something I thought I'd lost forever.
Hope.