Chapter 6: The Empty Seat
The cafeteria noise was a physical thing, a wall of clattering trays and overlapping voices that Hyukjae normally tuned out like static. Today, it grated against his skin. He sat at their usual table—his usual table, the one by the window that had been the captains’ table for years—and pushed his budae-jjigae around the bowl. The steam had stopped rising minutes ago.
He wasn’t looking for Donghae. He was just aware of the entire room’s layout, a hockey player’s spatial mapping. So he knew the exact moment Donghae walked in.
He didn’t look over. He focused on a soggy piece of instant ramen in his broth, applying surgical concentration. He heard Donghae’s laugh, easy and bright, from the far side of the cafeteria. It wasn’t directed at him. It was for the group of wide-eyed first-year players Donghae had settled with, holding court like the charming heir he was.
Hyukjae’s jaw ached. He’d been clenching it since dawn.
He risked a glance. Just one. Donghae was leaned back in his chair, one arm slung over the back of the kid next to him, nodding along to some story. He was wearing a soft-looking grey hoodie, the fabric bunched at his wrists. He looked relaxed. Rested. Untouched.
He hadn’t looked at Hyukjae once.
The cold, congealed food in Hyukjae’s gut turned to stone. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? Distance. Silence. A clear line. So why did the sight of Donghae’s easy smile feel like a violation?
“Wow. You look like someone backed over your puppy with a bus.”
Hyohyeon slid into the seat across from him, setting down a tray with a fruit cup and iced coffee. Her long hair was tied in a messy bun, textbooks tucked under her arm. She studied his face, her head tilted.
“I don’t have a puppy,” Hyukjae muttered, stabbing a slice of sausage with too much force.
“No,” she agreed, her voice deceptively light. She peeled the lid off her coffee. “You had something worse. And you killed it.”
The plastic fork bent in his grip. He put it down carefully, his fingers trembling. He couldn’t look at her. He stared at his own reflection, blurred and pale, in the metal napkin dispenser. You kissed my chest last night. The memory was a hot wire in his brain, short-circuiting every rational thought.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, the lie brittle.
“Hyukjae.” She said his name softly, the way she used to when she’d find him icing his knees alone in their old kitchen at midnight. “You’ve been vibrating since you got back from Daegu. And he,” she subtly flicked her eyes toward Donghae’s table, “is sitting over there pretending the sun shines out of Maknae Lee’s ass, which is frankly insulting to the sun. What happened?”
“Nothing.” The word was automatic. Defensive. He rubbed his thumb over the academy ring on his finger, the metal warmed by his skin. He’d put it on this morning with a sense of grim reclamation. Now it felt like a shackle.
Hyohyeon followed the movement. Her eyes narrowed, then widened slightly with dawning, horrific comprehension. “Oh,” she breathed.
“Oh what.”
“The ring. You never take it off. But you came back from a trip without it once. Last semester. You said you lost it at the rink.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Donghae found it then, too, didn’t he? Brought it to you at practice. You scowled and snatched it. I thought you were mad because he touched your stuff.”
Hyukjae said nothing. The sausage sat like a lead weight in his stomach.
“It’s a pattern,” she continued, her words accelerating with her realization. “He finds the things you lose. He returns them. And you hate him for it.” She took a sharp sip of her coffee. “That’s not hate, you psycho. That’s a horrifically convoluted mating ritual.”
“Stop.” The word came out strangled. He finally looked at her, a flash of panic in his eyes. “Just stop. It’s not like that. He’s—he’s playing a game. He’s rich and bored and he’s messing with me because he can. Because he took my captaincy and he wants to see how far he can push.”
“Right.” Hyohyeon nodded slowly, her gaze drifting back across the cafeteria. “He’s playing such an intense game that he’s currently pretending you don’t exist. Which is, notably, making you look like you might actually combust. Masterful strategy.”
Following her gaze, Hyukjae saw Donghae get up, collecting his tray. He was leaving. He hadn’t touched his food either, Hyukjae noted with a vicious, irrelevant satisfaction. As Donghae turned to dump his trash, his profile was clean and sharp against the window light. For one fractured second, his eyes flicked—not to Hyukjae, but to the empty space beside him at the table. To Hyukjae’s solitary tray.
The look was too fast to decipher. Something hollow. Something resigned.
Then it was gone. Donghae shoved the tray onto the rack and walked out without a backward glance, the cafeteria doors swinging shut behind him.
The space he left behind felt louder than his presence had.
Hyukjae exhaled, a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“He looks at you,” Hyohyeon said quietly, pulling his attention back. All the teasing was gone from her voice. “I thought… for a while, I thought maybe he was looking at me. Hanging around because of me. It was flattering. But he never actually sees me. Not really.” She poked at her fruit cup. “He sees you. Even when you’re not in the room, I think he’s still seeing you. I thought it was rivalry. But rivals don’t get that… hollow look when they walk away.”
“You don’t understand,” Hyukjae insisted, but the fight was leaching out of him, replaced by a cold, sinking dread. You came to me.
“Maybe I don’t,” she conceded. She stood up, gathering her books. She paused, looking down at him with an expression that was equal parts pity and sisterly exasperation. “But you need to figure out what this is, Hyukjae. Before whatever’s left of it finally gives up and dies. And you’re left sitting here alone, staring at cold soup.”
She walked away, leaving him with his ruined meal and the echoing silence of his own thoughts. He looked at the empty chair where Donghae always used to sit, uninvited and inevitable, stealing fries and prodding him with questions until Hyukjae snapped. The space looked vast. It looked permanent.
He spun the ring on his finger once, a full, slow circle. The metal caught the light. A trophy. A tomb. He stood abruptly, the legs of his chair screeching against the floor. A few people glanced over.
He didn’t care. He left his full tray on the table and headed not for the exit, but deeper into the academy, toward the only place that ever made sense when his mind was this loud. The sharp, clean scent of ice, and the brutal, physical language of the game where everything could be solved with a check into the boards.