How Did This Even Happen?!
Han Jiho had always known that high school was a minefield, but he never expected it to detonate his entire life in a single, catastrophic moment.
One heartbeat, he was invisible—just another face in the crowded hallways of Haewon High. The next? He was apparently dating the school's most unattainable boy.
Against. His. Entire. Will.
Kang Minjae. Star athlete. Top student. The guy Jiho had been silently adoring from a painfully safe distance for three years.
Absolute. Nightmare.
It wasn't like Jiho had chosen to fall for him. In fact, he'd spent countless hours perfecting the art of not staring, of pretending Minjae was just another student. He'd memorized every detail anyway—the way Minjae's basketball jersey clung just right, the rare smile that could light up an entire gymnasium, that one time in middle school when he'd stepped in to stop some bullies picking on Jiho.
Crushes were stupid. Inconvenient. Especially when they involved someone so far out of your league, you needed a telescope just to see them.
So why—why in the name of all that was holy—was he now standing in a hallway filled with excited whispers about his "secret relationship"?!
He was living in a waking nightmare.
And all because of one single, stupid soda.
---
Let's Rewind.
Lunch break. The vending machine. A moment that would absolutely, categorically change everything.
Jiho had been waiting for his drink, lost in thought, when a shadow fell across him. No introduction needed. Some presences were too significant to require announcements.
Kang Minjae.
His traitor of a heart performed an Olympic-level gymnastics routine.
"Hey," Minjae said. Just that. One word, delivered in a voice that was somehow both casual and charged.
"Uh... hi?" Jiho's response came out more question than greeting.
Then it happened.
Minjae's hand reached out. Plucked the just-dispensed soda from Jiho's fingers. And before Jiho could process what was happening, Minjae took a deliberate, impossibly casual swig.
The universe stopped.
"What are you—" Jiho's protest died mid-sentence.
Minjae just looked at him. Lips glistening. Utterly unbothered.
"You were taking too long," he said.
And then the whispers began.
"OH MY GOD."
"Did you see that?!"
"They're sharing a drink?!"
"ARE THEY DATING?!"
The rumor mill erupted with the speed of a viral TikTok. By his next class, the hallways buzzed with a new gospel truth: Han Jiho and Kang Minjae were a thing.
Jiho's protests? Drowned out by excitement.
His desperate attempts to clarify? Interpreted as shy confirmation.
And Minjae?
Minjae just smiled.
When Jiho finally cornered him after school, demanding the rumor be shut down immediately, Minjae's response was not what he expected.
A smirk. A lean-in. A voice dropped to a dangerous whisper.
"Why? Does the idea bother you that much?"
And just like that, their fake relationship was born.
One soda.
Two boys.
A thousand possible complications.
Game on.