Two months. Jaemin stared at the calendar on his phone, then back at the sheaf of papers in his hands. He had finished the draft two months ahead of the deadline.
His eyes burned, and his fingers felt permanently curled into claws from holding a pen for hours on end, but the fatigue was a distant hum beneath the roaring sense of triumph. It was done. Not just done—it was right. It was his heart and soul, transcribed into ink and notation.
He stuffed the manuscript into his bag, his heart pounding with excitement. He needed to show the professors eventually, to get the technical feedback and the red-pen refinements, but they weren't the priority. There was only one person who deserved to hear this first.
He practically vibrated with energy as he exited the dorms, the cool autumn air doing little to dampen the fire in his veins. He was moving so fast he nearly collided with a tall figure coming around the corner.
"Whoa! Slow down there, speed racer."
Jaemin stumbled back, blinking. "Lukas?"
The beta looked good—healthy, sunny, and almost irritatingly well-rested. He steadied Jaemin by the shoulders, his grin easy.
"Haven't seen you in weeks, Jaemin. I was starting to think the library swallowed you whole."
"I've been... busy," Jaemin said, clutching his bag strap.
"Clearly. You look like you're running on caffeine and hope." Lukas tilted his head, his expression softening as he scanned Jaemin's face. "Off to see Choi Seungcheol?"
Jaemin blinked. "How did you—?"
"You have that look," Lukas teased. "The one you get when you're about to run off to your boyfriend."
Jaemin felt the heat rush to his cheeks, violent and immediate. "We're... It's not like that."
Lukas raised an eyebrow, his smile faltering just a fraction. "It's not?"
"No," Jaemin said, defensiveness spiking in his chest. He hated how small he sounded, how easily Lukas had picked straight at the scabs of his insecurity. "It's... It's more than that. It's about the music. We have a connection that goes beyond just... dating. He understands me. He pushes me to be great."
"He pushes you, alright," Lukas murmured. His sunny demeanor dimmed, replaced by a look that was harder to read… Pity? Frustration?
"Look, Jaemin. I'm not trying to start a fight. But if it were me? If I had someone looking at me the way you look at him..." He shook his head, a small, rueful smile playing on his lips. "I wouldn't leave you guessing."
Jaemin opened his mouth to retort, to explain the complexity of a muse and a mentor, but Lukas was already stepping aside, waving a hand.
"Go on. Don't let me keep you."
…
Seungcheol was home, still managing somehow to look effortlessly elegant in casual slacks and a loose shirt. He welcomed Jaemin in, though he seemed distracted, tired.
"It's finished?" he asked, eyeing the bag.
"The first complete draft," Jaemin breathed, shoving Lukas's words into the deepest corner of his mind. "I want you to hear it. All of it."
Seungcheol gestured to the grand piano in the living room with a small bow. "The stage is yours."
Jaemin sat at the bench. He took a moment to center himself, placing his hands on the keys. Then, he began.
The song started out deceptively simple with a lone, fragile melody, right hand wandering among the fragile notes of the upper octaves—a solitary voice stepping out into the light.
Then the left hand entered, and the sound transformed, not with support, but with conflict.
The complexity ramped up quickly. Jaemin's fingers flew across the keys, executing a series of rapid, chromatic scales that sounded like wind tearing through a canyon.
The piece demanded everything: wide, aching intervals that stretched the hand, thundering bass chords that felt like a heartbeat accelerating, and polyrhythms that forced the mind to focus on two dissonant things at once. It utilized the full range of the piano, the bass notes thundering with a dark, resonant timbre while the treble wept in sharp, crystalline dissonance.
It was a musical surrender, a composition that moved from a storm of aggression, heavy chords slamming down like judgment, into a passage of lyrical sweetness so tender it hurt to listen, before finally resolving, not on a perfect chord, but on a suspended note that reached out, vibrating in the air as if waiting for an answer.
It was a torrential outpouring of emotion, technically demanding and acoustically massive. It was everything Jaemin had lived through in his twenty years
When Jaemin's hands finally lifted from the keys, the silence rushed back into the room. He sat there for a moment, breathless, sweat cooling on his neck, before turning to look at Seungcheol for his approval.
But Seungcheol wasn't smiling. He was staring at Jaemin with an expression of raw, naked shock, and, underneath it, something colder. It was a darkening of the eyes that resembled fear—the look of a man realizing the full extent of his own inadequacies.
Then, the gray eyes blinked, and Jaemin's steadfast partner in music was back.
"Jaemin," he said, his voice smooth, though perhaps a pitch lower than usual. "That was... extraordinary."
"You think so?" Jaemin asked, hope blooming in his chest.
"I know so." Seungcheol stood up and walked over, resting a hand lightly on the piano. "Has anyone else heard this? The professors? Your friends?"
"No," Jaemin said shyly, ducking his head. "Just you. I wanted you to be the first."
Seungcheol smiled. The graceful curve of his lips was perfect, but the look in his eyes remained flat. "I'm honored. Truly."
He turned away abruptly. "We need to celebrate. Stay right there. I'll get the wine."
He made his way to the kitchen, disappearing from view as he called out behind him.
"Does it have a title?"
Jaemin ran a hand over the keys lovingly. "I was thinking... The Promise?"
There was a pause from the kitchen, a beat of silence that stretched just a second too long.
"Too cliché?" Jaemin called out, gnawing on his lip when the silence persisted. "You hate it, don't you?"
"It does sound a little bit... radio pop," Seungcheol replied, his voice echoing slightly from the other room, tone unreadable. "A bit common for a piece of that magnitude."
Jaemin frowned, thinking. He wanted something that conveyed devotion. Something eternal. He stood up, his heart full, and walked toward the kitchen to deliver his real answer.
"Then how about... Dedication?" he suggested, stepping into the hallway so he could see Seungcheol's reaction. "Because that's what it is. A pledge to—"
He rounded the corner just in time to see Seungcheol sweeping something off the marble counter—a flash of silver foil. Seungcheol's hand moved with the speed of a magician, slipping the wrapper into his pocket in a single fluid motion.
"Sorry," he said, turning around with a smile that was a little too bright. He was holding two glasses of deep red wine. "Took me a while to find the bottle opener. Did you say you wanted water?"
"Oh, no, it's fine," Jaemin said, eyeing the pocket where the wrapper had gone. Probably just aspirin, he told himself. He works himself too hard.
He looked back up at Seungcheol, needing the validation more than he needed to question the foil.
"I... I was asking what you thought of Dedication? Or…" he peered up at Seungcheol shyly, "Oath to a Conductor?"
"Fitting." Seungcheol's answering smile came easily; too easily—he hadn't picked up on the hint. "They're both beautiful names, Jaemin. Either one will do."
He smiled warmly down at him. "Thank you for letting me be the first to hear your masterpiece."
Closing the distance between them, he pressed a glass into Jaemin's hand. His fingers brushed Jaemin's, cool and dry.
"To you, Jaemin," Seungcheol said, raising his glass. The overhead lights caught the ruby liquid, making it look almost like blood. His voice dropped to a murmur, intimate and heavy. "And to the things that we deserve. The future that is rightfully ours."
Jaemin flushed, glowing under the attention. "To us," he whispered.
He drank. The wine was rich and velvety, masking any bitterness that might have been hidden beneath the notes of oak and berry.
As he tilted his head back, draining the glass, he missed the way Seungcheol watched him—not with the warmth of a lover or a friend, but with the cold, unblinking fascination of a viper watching its prey swallow the bait.
…
He woke up with a gasp. His head was pounding, a thick, rhythmic throb behind his eyes that felt like a hangover from hell, even though he only remembered having one glass.
The room was cloaked in darkness, the shadows stretching long and distorted across the floor, and it took him a few moments to realize that he was in his dorm room, the familiar ceiling staring back at him in the night.
He didn't remember the car ride back. He didn't remember climbing into bed and falling asleep. But he did have a vague, hazy recollection of stumbling toward the door, insisting he needed to leave the moment the dizziness started spinning the room.
He remembered Seungcheol hesitating, a flash of calculation on his face—perhaps realizing he had no desire to deal with the messy biological reality of Jaemin in distress—before hailing the cab and ushering him into the back seat.
He tried to sit up, but his limbs felt like lead. A groan escaped his lips, sounding wet and unfamiliar.
Then, it hit him.
It wasn't a slow build. It was a sudden, violent wave of fever that started in his belly and radiated outward, setting his skin on fire. It was wrong—synthetic and sharp, a white-hot sensation that made his heartbeat pound in his ears.
His scent glands throbbed painfully, releasing a burst of distressed pheromones that smelled cloyingly sweet and sickeningly potent—a corruption of his usually faint cherry blossoms. The scent hung heavy in the air like rotting fruit.
He clawed at the sheets, confused and terrified.
"Hyung?" he croaked into the empty room.
But there was only silence, and the burning, suffocating heat.