Prologue

Some stories begin with love.

This one began with looking away.

Jun learned early how to do it well — how to lower his eyes at the exact moment his heart lifted, how to smile when it hurt, how to pretend that what he wanted didn’t matter as long as the music stayed clean and the stage lights forgave him. Wanting, he’d discovered, was dangerous. Wanting left fingerprints.

The practice room smelled like sweat and citrus cleaner, the windows fogged from bodies moving too hard for too long. MARS had been dancing for hours, the same section again and again, until the mirror stopped reflecting faces and showed only effort. Jun stood near the back when they stopped, hands on his knees, chest burning.

Po laughed first.

It was soft, unguarded — the kind of laugh that arrived before thought. Jun lifted his head without meaning to. He always did. Po was wiping sweat from his neck with the hem of his shirt, exposing that familiar strip of skin Jun knew too well, the one that made his throat tighten every single time. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second.

That was enough.

Jun looked away.

He told himself it was habit. Or professionalism. Or kindness. He told himself a lot of things. What he didn’t tell himself was the truth: that loving Po felt like standing under a tree that would never bend low enough to touch.

Across the room, Dylan saw everything.

Not in pieces — not the obvious things. He didn’t need Jun’s confession or Po’s oblivious smile. Dylan saw the space between them. The way Jun always angled his body toward Po without realizing. The way his voice softened, thinned, broke at the edges when he said Po’s name. Dylan had learned to read Jun the way you read a favorite lyric — memorized, intimate, unavoidable.

Jealousy didn’t arrive loudly.

It settled.

Dylan leaned against the wall, arms crossed, jaw tight, watching Jun pretend to be fine. He hated himself for it — for the heat behind his ribs, for the sharpness in his chest that had nothing to do with exhaustion. He hated Po a little, too, though Po had done nothing wrong. That almost made it worse.

Love, Dylan knew, was cruel like that. It didn’t need permission.

“Break,” Thame called, clapping his hands once. His voice cut through the room, easy, steady. Nano immediately dropped to the floor, groaning dramatically. Pepper stepped aside, phone already in his hand, smiling at something on the screen — a message, probably. From her.

Pepper’s girlfriend existed like a rumor you couldn’t escape. Always present, never visible. 

Three apples on the same branch.

All too heavy.

None of them falling.

Jun sat on the floor near the mirror, back against the glass. His reflection stared back at him — flushed, tired, alive in the worst possible way. He pressed his thumb into the apple sticker peeling off his water bottle, scraping at the edge until it curled.

Behind him, Dylan’s reflection stood still.

Their eyes met in the mirror this time. Jun froze, caught. For a moment, something almost surfaced — a question, a confession, a reaching. Dylan opened his mouth.

Then Pepper laughed again, bright and careless, and the moment shattered.

Jun looked away.

Dylan swallowed the words.

And somewhere between music and silence, love stayed exactly where it wasn’t supposed to.

That was how it began.