Chapter Text
The “divorce” thing should’ve died in a day.
It didn’t.
If anything, it got louder—threads, edits, slow-motion clips of missed glances and almost-interactions, people dissecting seconds like they meant something definitive. Narratives kept forming, reshaping, twisting depending on what people wanted to see.
Chan stopped looking.
Not because he didn’t know.
Because he knew exactly how it would look.
—
It wasn’t a sudden decision.
It was something that had been building for a long time—small things stacking up quietly until they weren’t small anymore. Conversations that only continued if he carried them. Moments that only existed because he started them.
So he stopped.
Just to see.
Just to know.
And now he did.
—
Felix notices it in ways he can’t unsee once it clicks.
At first it’s just… absence.
No random messages from Chan at odd hours. No “come here” gestures from across the room. No easy, automatic closeness that used to happen without either of them thinking about it.
It leaves a gap.
One Felix doesn’t know how to fill.
Because he never had to before.
—
Online, everything keeps moving.
People clip older videos—Chan leaning in first, Chan reaching first, Chan laughing first—and compare them to now, where nothing quite lands the same.
But the conclusions feel off.
Incomplete.
Like they’re missing the actual point entirely.
Felix scrolls through it once, twice, then locks his phone.
It doesn’t matter what they think.
Except… it kind of does, when it lines up too closely with what he’s been feeling.
—
He tries to fix it.
Not all at once—he doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s doing at first.
“Hyung, look at this,” he says one day, nudging Chan’s arm lightly, holding his phone out.
Chan leans in, looks where Felix is pointing. “That’s cool.”
A small smile.
Then he leans back.
Felix waits.
Nothing else comes.
The moment just… ends.
—
Another time, Felix lingers.
They’re standing around after a schedule, everyone half-distracted, and Felix stays close to Chan instead of drifting off like he usually would.
He expects something—conversation, a comment, anything.
Chan just stands there, scrolling through his phone, occasionally responding when someone else speaks.
Felix shifts his weight.
“Hyung.”
Chan hums, glancing up. “Yeah?”
Felix opens his mouth.
Closes it.
“…Nothing.”
Chan nods, like that’s fine, and looks back down.
Felix feels strangely dismissed, even though nothing actually happened.
—
He starts trying more deliberately after that.
Sitting next to Chan on purpose. Starting conversations instead of waiting for them. Reaching out in small ways he hopes feel natural.
Chan always responds.
He listens. He answers. He even smiles.
But he never builds on it.
Never stretches the moment further than what Felix gives him.
It feels like talking to someone through a door that used to be open.
—
The realization comes slow and then all at once.
This is what it’s been like.
For Chan.
For a while.
Felix doesn’t know what to do with that.
—
The jokes online don’t stop.
If anything, they get more exaggerated—people picking sides, turning silence into something dramatic, something bigger than it actually is.
Felix wants to shake them, tell them they’re getting it wrong.
But he doesn’t even know how to explain it himself.
Because it’s not one big thing.
It’s this.
This quiet distance.
This effort that feels uneven now that he’s finally the one making it.
—
He catches Chan alone one night.
It’s late, the dorm quieter than usual, and Chan’s in the living room with his laptop open, music playing softly from his headphones.
Felix stands there for a second.
Then—“Hyung.”
Chan looks up, pulling one side of his headphones off. “Yeah?”
Felix walks closer, heart beating a little faster than it should for something like this.
“Can we talk?”
Chan studies him for a moment, then nods. “Sure.”
Felix sits across from him, suddenly unsure where to start.
“You’ve been different,” he says finally.
Chan doesn’t interrupt.
“Like you’re there, but not really,” Felix continues, frowning slightly. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”
Chan’s gaze softens a little, but he stays quiet.
Felix exhales, frustrated. “I’ve been trying, you know.”
“I know,” Chan says.
The immediate answer throws him off. “Then why does it still feel like this?”
Chan leans back slightly, resting his hands in his lap.
“Because trying now isn’t the same as… before.”
Felix’s chest tightens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Chan says carefully, “I spent a long time not thinking about it. Just doing it. Starting things, keeping things going, making sure there was always… something.”
He pauses, searching for the right words.
“And when I stopped, it got really quiet.”
Felix looks down.
“I didn’t realize,” he admits, voice low.
“I know.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
Chan nods. “I know.”
The conversation feels like it’s slipping through Felix’s fingers, like he’s already too late to say the right thing.
“I’m here now,” he says, a little more urgently. “I’m trying now.”
Chan meets his eyes.
And for a second, Felix hopes—that this is it, that this is where it shifts back, where things fall into place like they used to.
But Chan just looks… tired.
“I see that,” he says softly.
Felix swallows. “Then why does it feel like you’ve already decided something?”
Chan doesn’t answer immediately.
That’s enough of an answer.
—
Later, Felix sees another edit.
Slowed-down clips, soft music, captions about distance and change and things falling apart.
He doesn’t watch it all the way through.
Because for the first time, it doesn’t feel exaggerated.
It just feels… late.
Like something that already happened, and everyone’s only noticing now.