The drive home from the equipment shop was quiet until Min-woo couldn't hold it in anymore.
"He paid for all of it." Min-woo glanced sideways at Jae-min, grinning. "Didn't even blink. You could've asked for a whole new set and he'd have handed over his card."
"I know." Jae-min stared out the window, jaw tight. There should have been satisfaction in it — watching Jihan reach for his wallet without a second thought, watching him carry half the bags out to the bike like it was nothing. Instead there was just the same cold weight sitting under his ribs that had been there since the day he found his sister on the bathroom floor, since the day he swore this man was going to feel something close to what she'd felt.
"So, why did you not go with him? Wouldn'tthat be easier" Min-woo asked.
"He knows where my sister lives, it would expose us. I had to tell him i came on a bike" Jae-min finally looked at him.
"Are you sure you are ready for the next part?" Min-woo replied "You know the plan. Practice. Golf spot. Tae-hyun's there too, so it make sure it looks natural."
"Yeah, I'm going to make sure he can't look away from me." Jae-min said it flatly, like reciting a shot sequence. "That's step one. Step two is making him chase. Step three is—"
"I know step three," Min-woo said, quieter now. "You've told me a hundred times."
Jae-min didn't answer. He turned back to the window and didn't say anything else the rest of the ride.
---
At home he changed fast — a fitted sport vest that clung close to his frame, shorts that showed more leg than anything he usually wore to practice. He caught his reflection in the mirror on the way out and paused for half a second too long, something flickering behind his eyes that wasn't quite confidence. He shook it off before Min-woo could notice and grabbed his bag.
"Ready?" Min-woo asked from the doorway.
"Always."
---
The golf spot was already warm with early afternoon sun when they arrived, Tae-hyun's easy laugh carrying from the practice tees before they'd even reached the fence. Jihan was beside him, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a bucket of range balls at his feet.
Jae-min made himself walk over slow, unhurried — the opposite of how his chest felt.
"Didn't think you'd actually show up this early," Jihan said, and there it was, that faint warmth in his voice that Jae-min had been cataloguing for weeks now. Proof. Evidence. Something to use.
"I think I'm finally getting use to it," Jae-min lied easily. "Figured I'd get some practice in before you start correcting my grip again."
"Your grip needs correcting."
"Everyone's a critic." Jae-min let the corner of his mouth lift, held Jihan's gaze a beat longer than a normal conversation required, then turned and walked back toward his own tee before it could go further.
He set up for his first shot and let his shoulders do the work, drew the club back, struck clean. The ball sailed out in a long white arc and he heard, faintly, Tae-hyun whistle in approval behind him.
Jihan and Tae-hyun had taken a break, both started talking while occasionally stole a stare at Jae-min.
Jae-min didn't turn around. He didn't need to. He could feel Jihan watching — had felt it the second he walked onto the field, a weight settling somewhere between his shoulder blades that never quite lifted.
After the next shot he let himself exhale hard, tugged the collar of his vest up and blew air down his own chest like the heat had gotten to him. He caught the motion out of the corner of his eye — Jihan's gaze snapping toward him, then away, then back, like he couldn't help it even when he tried.
Jae-min filed that away too.
A few shots later he peeled the hem of his shirt up to wipe sweat from his jaw, slow, unbothered, letting it ride high enough to show the flat line of his stomach before he let it drop. He didn't look over that time. He didn't need to. He could hear it in the way the conversation behind him stumbled — Tae-hyun's voice trailing off mid-sentence, then picking back up a beat too late.
"You good?" Tae-hyun asked someone, and it wasn't Jae-min he was asking.
"Fine. Just the sun." Jihan's voice, clipped, unconvincing.
Jae-min bit down a smile and set up for his next shot.
---
He kept it going for twenty minutes — small, deliberate things, each one calculated to look accidental. An unnecessary stretch here, bending low with one leg extended and holding it a beat too long, shorts riding up just enough. A pause to roll his shoulders that had no business taking as long as it did. He watched Jihan's reflection in the low glass of the clubhouse window every time he could get away with it, watched him look, catch himself, look at the grass instead, and fail to keep his eyes there for more than a few seconds.
It should have felt like winning.
It felt like something else too, something Jae-min didn't have a name for yet and didn't want to look at too closely.
When he took his break, he walked past where Jihan sat with Tae-hyun — not toward his own bag, but toward the towel and second water bottle he'd left there that morning, on purpose, so he'd have a reason to be close. He crouched right at Jihan's shoulder, close enough to catch the sharp inhale Jihan tried to hide.
"Mind if I grab this?" he asked, easy, like there was nothing deliberate about any of it.
"Sure," Jihan said, to the ground.
Jae-min picked up the towel and walked away before the satisfaction on his face could give anything away.
---
The last piece came twenty minutes later. He crossed back toward his bag, picked up the water bottle, and tipped his head back, pouring it slow over his face and letting it run — down his jaw, his throat, into the collar of his vest, tracing a line he'd practiced in the mirror more than once and hated himself a little for practicing. He shook his hair out, water scattering, and started the walk back to his tee — a walk that put him directly in Jihan's path.
He felt the exact moment Jihan stopped pretending to watch Tae-hyun's swing.
Three steps from him, Jae-min let his foot catch the loose divot he'd clocked earlier that morning and hadn't mentioned to anyone. His balance broke — or looked like it broke — and he pitched sideways with a startled sound, arms out.
Jihan moved before he seemed to decide to.
A hand caught his waist, another braced his back, and for one long second neither of them moved at all. The noise of the range fell away. Jae-min could feel his own heartbeat too loud in his ears and told himself it was adrenaline, told himself it meant nothing, and didn't quite believe it when he looked up and found Jihan already looking down at him, eyes wide, unguarded in a way Jae-min hadn't seen before.
In that moment, the world seemed to freeze.