The cough came from somewhere behind them, deliberate enough that Jae-min heard the intent buried inside it.
He pulled back immediately, straightening out of Jihan's hold with a smile already fixed in place—easy, a little sheepish, exactly the kind of smile a person wore after an embarrassing stumble and nothing more.
His hand slid off Jihan's waist last, lingering half a second longer than the moment strictly required before falling away.
"Thank you," he said, dipping into a polite bow. "I don't know what happened there."
"The turf's uneven near that spot," Jihan said, voice steadier than his face had looked a moment ago. "You should be more careful."
"I will." Jae-min's smile didn't waver. "Thanks again, Mr. Kang."
He turned and walked back toward his own tee without hurrying, without looking back, every step measured to look like nothing at all had just happened. Behind him, he heard Tae-hyun's voice pick up, light and teasing in a way that told Jae-min the moment had already started being turned into a joke.
"So," Tae-hyun said, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised at his brother. "What was that?"
Jihan bent down and picked up his club like the question hadn't landed at all. "He slipped."
"Mm." Tae-hyun didn't sound remotely convinced. "And you just happened to be standing there. Arms out. Ready."
"I have good reflexes."
"You have a whole personality change whenever he's around," Tae-hyun said, "but sure. Reflexes."
Jihan shot him a flat look. "Don't you have a swing to practice?"
"Don't change the subject." Tae-hyun stepped closer, grinning now, the kind of grin that meant he had absolutely no intention of letting this go. "I'm starting to have serious doubts about you, hyung."
"About what."
"About this whole 'I'm just being neighborly' thing you've got going on." Tae-hyun reached out and looped an arm around his brother's neck, dragging him into a loose, playful chokehold that Jihan let happen for exactly one second before shoving him off.
"Go practice your swing."
"You're avoiding the question."
"I'm ignoring the question. There's a difference."
Tae-hyun laughed, unbothered, and jogged back toward his own bay, throwing one last look over his shoulder at Jae-min, who had already set up for his next shot like nothing at all had shifted in the last five minutes.
Jihan watched him go for a second longer than he meant to.
Then he turned back to his own club, and told himself, not for the first time that morning, that it meant nothing.
---
Jae-min's apartment smelled like popcorn and old couch cushions, the television throwing pale blue light across the living room while some forgettable action movie played out in the background, mostly ignored.
Min-woo was sprawled sideways across the couch, feet hanging off the armrest, a bowl balanced precariously on his stomach.
"You," he said, not looking away from the screen, "are a whole meal."
Jae-min threw a piece of popcorn at him. "Don't be disgusting."
"I'm being observant." Min-woo caught the popcorn out of the air and ate it without missing a beat. "You should've seen his face. He looked like a man discovering fire."
"He looked like a man who almost lost his balance."
"Sure." Min-woo grinned. "And I looked like a man who wasn't hiding behind a clubhouse watching the whole thing happen."
Jae-min kicked him lightly through the couch cushion. "Shut up."
"I'm just saying. If lust had a face, it would've been Kang Jihan's face at that exact moment."
"He's not lustful." Jae-min rolled his eyes, though the corner of his mouth had already started curving. "He's calculating. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes."
"Explain it to me, then. Slowly. Because from where I was standing, calculating men don't usually catch someone and then forget how to let go for four entire seconds."
Jae-min's ears went faintly pink, which only made Min-woo's grin widen.
"I counted," Min-woo added, delighted. "Four seconds."
"You're insufferable."
"You're welcome."
Jae-min grabbed the throw pillow and smothered him with it until Min-woo's protests turned into wheezing laughter, the popcorn bowl tipping dangerously before Jae-min rescued it with his free hand out of pure reflex. They settled back into the couch eventually, breathless, the movie still playing to no one in particular.
Min-woo wiped at his eyes, still grinning. "Okay. But seriously." He turned his head to look at Jae-min properly. "What's the next move?"
Jae-min was quiet for a second, staring at the ceiling instead of the television.
Then a smile crept onto his face—slower this time, sharper at the edges than the one he'd used on Jihan that morning.
"I want him to ask me out."
Min-woo sat up a little. "A date?"
"Something like that." Jae-min shrugged, though there was nothing casual in the way he said it. "Somewhere just the two of us. No Tae-hyun. No staff. No convenient excuses to leave halfway through."
"Ambitious."
"That's the point."
Min-woo studied him for a moment, something thoughtful settling under the usual teasing. "And how exactly do you plan on getting a man like that to ask you anywhere? He barely gives his own driver more than three sentences a day."
Jae-min's smile faltered slightly, the confidence cracking just enough to let the actual problem through.
"...I don't know yet."
"There it is."
"Shut up, I'm thinking."
"Think out loud. I like the show."
Jae-min sat up properly, elbows braced on his knees, running through it the way he'd run through everything else—step by step, piece by piece, trying to find the gap in the armor the way Min-woo had told him to back at the very start.
"First," he said slowly, "he needs my number."
"Groundbreaking."
"I'm serious. We've had, what, four encounters now? Five? And every single one of them ends the same way—he leaves, I leave, and there's no thread connecting them except coincidence." Jae-min's jaw tightened slightly. "Coincidence only works so many times before it stops looking like coincidence and starts looking planned."
Min-woo's teasing expression sobered a fraction. "That's not wrong."
"If he has my number, he can text me. Reach out on his own terms, whenever he wants, without needing an excuse to run into me first." Jae-min looked over. "That's the difference between something happening to him and something he's choosing."
"And you think he'll ask for it."
"I think if it's offered the right way, he won't be able to help himself."
Min-woo raised an eyebrow. "Confident."
"I've been paying attention."
"So how do we get there?" Min-woo tilted his head, genuinely curious now, the last traces of teasing gone from his voice. "You can't exactly walk up and hand him a napkin with your number on it. That's not subtle, and subtle is the entire plan."
Jae-min opened his mouth, then closed it again, because that was, in fact, the exact wall he'd been circling in his own head for the past ten minutes without finding a way through.
"...I don't know," he admitted. "That's the part I haven't figured out."
Silence settled between them, the movie murmuring uselessly in the background.
Then Min-woo went still.
It was small—just a flicker across his face, there and gone—but Jae-min caught it anyway, the way you catch a shift in weather before it fully arrives.
"What?"
Min-woo didn't answer right away. His eyes had gone distant, turned inward on something that clearly wasn't the movie or the popcorn or any part of the conversation they'd just been having. A slow smile started pulling at the corner of his mouth, small at first, then wider, until it had settled into something unmistakably mischievous.
"Tae-hyun," he said, almost to himself.
Jae-min frowned. "What about him?"
Min-woo turned to face him properly, that smile still spreading, sharpening at the edges into something that looked less like an idea and more like a plan already halfway built.
"Maybe," he said, "I can play a part in this too."
Jae-min blinked. "How?"
Min-woo didn't answer immediately. He just looked at Jae-min, something warm and calculating both at once behind his eyes, the kind of expression that belonged to someone who had just found the exact gap in the wall they'd been searching for.
Then, slowly, he let the smile take over his whole face.