Winter had come around again, this time in the middle of his third year, and the heating in the university's basement practice rooms had been broken for three days.
The air in Studio 4B was stale, recycling the same dry heat and the metallic scent of frustration. Jaemin sat at the upright piano, his back aching, watching Choi Seungcheol pace the small length of the room like a caged tiger.
"Again," Seungcheol said. He was staring at the score Jaemin had spent the last two weeks writing, his brow furrowed in distaste.
Jaemin suppressed a sigh and reset his hands. He played the bridge; a turbulent, cascading sequence of arpeggios that was meant to mimic the sound of a storm breaking. It was difficult, technical, and, to Jaemin's ears, emotional.
He finished on an unresolved seventh, letting the note hang in the heavy air, waiting for the resolution.
But Seungcheol didn't clap. He didn't smile. Instead, he picked up a red pen from the music stand and slashed a thick line through the entire measure.
"It's too much," he said flatly. "It's muddy. You're trying to say too many things at once. The panel isn't going to be interested in your angst, Jaemin. They want clarity. If you can't prove you can handle the structure now, they won't approve the full concerto for your senior thesis."
"It's not angst," Jaemin argued, a rare flash of irritation rising in his chest. "It's supposed to be chaotic. That's the point of the movement."
Seungcheol stopped pacing. He turned slowly, fixing Jaemin with that cool, gray gaze that had recently begun to make Jaemin feel small and stupid.
"Chaos is for amateurs," he said softly. "Do you want to be a composer, or do you just want to make noise?" He tapped the paper with the pen, the sound sharp in the silence. "Simplify it. Make it clean. I can't conduct this; the orchestra will trip over themselves trying to follow you."
He checked his watch, his expression shifting instantly from critical mentor to distant socialite.
"I have to go. There's a mixer for the Strings faculty."
Jaemin frowned. "I thought you were skipping the departmental mixers this term?"
"I need to secure the section leads," Seungcheol replied dismissively, checking his reflection in the dark window as he grabbed his coat. "If I want the best violinists for our graduation piece performance, I need to remind them who I am. I need to show my face."
He didn't extend the invitation to Jaemin. He never invited Jaemin to these high-level faculty events; he said it was to protect Jaemin from the politics, but lately, it felt more like keeping a pet in a kennel.
"Fix this by tomorrow," Seungcheol ordered from the doorway. "This same studio, at four."
The studio door clicked shut, leaving Jaemin alone with the hum of the broken heater and a page full of red ink.
…
The next morning saw Jaemin running on two hours of sleep and three shots of espresso. He had stayed up all night, stripping the soul out of his composition, flattening the dynamics until it sounded exactly like the "clean" structure Seungcheol had wanted.
He was hurrying across the snowy quad, head down, clutching his binder, when he rounded a corner and slammed directly into a solid chest.
"Whoa! Easy there." Hands steadied him by the shoulders before he could slip on the ice.
Jaemin looked up, blinking snow out of his lashes, into the laughing face of a student he recognized from the brass department, a final-year trumpet player with a reputation for defeating his own natural aptitude with an attitude that was a little too relaxed.
"Sorry," Jaemin stammered, stepping back. "I wasn't looking."
"Clearly," the trumpeter—Lukas, Jaemin seemed to recall—grinned. He didn't let go of Jaemin's arm immediately, his grip warm and steady. "You look like you're on a mission. Or running from the law."
"Just... to Advanced Orchestration," Jaemin muttered, adjusting his scarf. "I'm late."
Lukas fell into step beside him, his stride easy, unforced. Besides the clean smell of lavender detergent on his clothes, he was scentless. A neutral presence, not as much a phenomenon in the Academy as omegas, but still far less common than the alphas.
Carelessly blowing a stray lock of wavy hair out of his eyes, the beta asked, "You're Jaemin, right? The piano prodigy from Korea who vanished into the Composition dungeons."
"Seo Jaemin. But I'm not a prodigy," Jaemin deflected, tightening his grip on his binder as he hurried along. "And I didn't vanish. I just switched majors."
"Well, everyone misses hearing you play actual concerts," Lukas said. As they neared the entrance to the lecture hall, he reached out gently to stop Jaemin.
"Hey, I know we only just bumped into each other, quite literally, but... a few of us are going to that new bistro near the opera house on Friday night," he said. "You should come. You look like you need a drink that isn't caffeine."
Jaemin hesitated. "I... I have practice."
"With Choi Seungcheol?" Lukas asked. The playfulness dropped from his voice, replaced by a careful curiosity. "This might be a bit forward of me, but... you two aren't... exclusive, are you? Rumor has it that you're basically his shadow."
Jaemin felt the blood rush to his face, hot despite the freezing wind. "No! No, of course not. He's just my senior. My part—" He stopped and corrected himself, knowing the word would give the wrong idea. "My collaborator. That's it."
Lukas's face brightened visibly. "Oh. Good. That's... really good." He offered a bright, charming smile. "In that case, he shouldn't mind if you take a night off, right? Just one night. I'm sure he'd understand that you need a break once in awhile. Come get a drink with me."
Jaemin paused. For the first time in months, someone was looking at him not as a set of hands to be trained, or a tool to be sharpened, but as a person they genuinely wanted to get to know.
"Okay," he found himself saying, the word tasting strange but… liberating, on his tongue. "Fine. Sure. Text me the address."
"Awesome!" The delighted smile on the boyish face only grew wider as Jaemin quickly typed in his number. "I'm Lukas, by the way," he called after Jaemin.
Glancing back over his shoulder, Jaemin gave a small grin of his own. "I know."
…
The next few days passed in a strange, uneasy blur. Their practice sessions were outwardly productive—Jaemin played the simplified notes, and Seungcheol nodded in approval—but the silence between them was thick with things unsaid.
By the time Friday arrived, the tension had returned tenfold.
They were back in the cramped, overheated Studio 4B. Jaemin sat at the upright piano, playing the revised—and now lifeless—piece. But his mind was elsewhere.
His phone, resting on the music rack, buzzed against the metal.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Seungcheol was sitting on a stool in the corner, one leg crossed over the other, the score balanced on his knee. He wasn't conducting today; he was just listening, his finger tapping a silent, merciless tempo against the paper.
At the second buzz, the tapping stopped.
"Is there a reason," Seungcheol said, not looking up from the score, his voice dangerously low, "that your phone is on during our session?"
Normally, Jaemin would apologize profusely. He would turn the phone off. He would beg for forgiveness. But today, the studio felt suffocating.
He picked up the phone and glanced at the screen.
We're here. Coming?
Saved you a seat.
On an impulse, Jaemin made up his mind. He closed the piano lid with a definitive thud.
"Sorry, Hyung," he said. "I actually have to cut this short today."
The air in the small room seemed to stagnate even further. Seungcheol looked up slowly, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Excuse me?"
"I have plans," Jaemin said, standing up. He tried to keep his voice steady, though his heart was hammering against his ribs. "With a friend. I've finished the revisions you asked for. The rest can wait until tomorrow."
Seungcheol stared at him, an expression of genuine, frozen bafflement on his handsome face, as if Jaemin had just spoken to him in Spanish.
"You're leaving? We haven't reviewed the transition to the coda."
"It's finished enough for today," Jaemin insisted. He grabbed his coat, feeling a rush of adrenaline—half terror, half exhilaration. "I need a break. I'll see you tomorrow, Hyung."
He was out the door before Seungcheol could say a word, leaving the Prince of the Academy sitting alone in the cramped studio, surrounded by the hum of broken machinery and the shock of rejection.