The knock came just past noon, sharp and impatient enough that Jae-min knew who it was before he'd even reached the door.
"He hasn't texted," Jae-min said before Min-woo had fully stepped inside. "Before you ask."
"I wasn't going to ask."
"You were absolutely going to ask."
Min-woo shrugged, unbothered, kicking off his shoes and heading straight for the couch like he owned it. "Fine. He hasn't texted. Two days and nothing?"
"Nothing." Jae-min dropped down beside him, arms crossed. "I checked the message like five times to make sure it actually sent."
"It sent. I watched it send."
"Then why hasn't he—"
"Because," Min-woo said, cutting him off with the particular smugness of someone who'd already solved the problem before walking through the door, "I found something better than waiting."
Jae-min narrowed his eyes. "What did you do."
"I didn't do anything yet. That's the beauty of it." Min-woo turned to face him fully, grin spreading. "The Kang family's going to the beach this Saturday. Whole family outing. Jihan, Tae-hyun, the works."
"...Okay."
"That's your moment."
Jae-min stared at him. "My moment to what? Show up uninvited and hope nobody calls security?"
"To make him get your number himself. To make him worry about you." Min-woo leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice dropping into something more deliberate. "I overheard the housekeeper talking about the cooler they're packing. Drinks, snacks, the usual. There's an orange fruit juice energy drink Tae-hyun's obsessed with—apparently he won't go anywhere without a case of it, and Jihan doesn't mind it either."
"And?"
"And it's got a mango supplement in it."
Jae-min went very still.
Min-woo watched the realization land, watched Jae-min's jaw tighten, and kept going before he could interrupt. "Small amount. Not enough to actually hurt you. Just enough to make you sick—dizzy, maybe pass out for a second. You've told me before, it's not a bad reaction. It just looks bad."
"You want me to poison myself."
"I want you to give him a reason to catch you."
Jae-min shoved off the couch, pacing toward the window, arms crossed tighter now. "No."
"Jae—"
"No, Min-woo. I'm not drinking something I know is going to make me pass out on a beach, in front of his entire family, just to—what, get him to ask for my number? There are easier ways to—"
"Are there?" Min-woo's voice stayed calm, which somehow made it worse. "Because we've tried the easier ways. We handed him your number on a silver platter two days ago and he still hasn't used it. Some men need a reason bigger than curiosity, Jae. They need something that makes them feel like they have to act."
Jae-min didn't answer right away.
"You said it yourself," Min-woo pressed. "It's not severe. You throw up, maybe black out for a minute. You've survived worse falling off your own bike."
"That's different."
"Is it?"
Jae-min stared out the window, jaw working, the argument sitting sour in his chest even as he felt himself losing ground. Min-woo didn't push again. He just waited, patient in the particular way he'd gotten good at over the last few weeks, letting the silence do the convincing instead.
Finally, Jae-min exhaled, long and irritated.
"...Which beach."
Min-woo's grin came back in full.
---
Saturday arrived clear and blistering, the kind of heat that turned sand into something you couldn't stand on barefoot for more than a few seconds. Jae-min got there early, towel slung over one shoulder, sunglasses doing very little to hide the fact that he'd spent the last twenty minutes scanning every family that walked past for a familiar face.
*Nothing yet,* he texted Min-woo.
*Patience,* came the reply. *Rich people always arrive fashionably late.*
He was right, as usual. It was nearly an hour later, sweat already gathering at the back of Jae-min's neck, when he spotted them—Jihan in a plain black t-shirt and swim shorts, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, carrying a folded umbrella under one arm while Tae-hyun trailed behind him lugging a cooler that was clearly too heavy for the casual way he was carrying it.
Jae-min's pulse kicked up immediately.
*They're here,* he texted.
*Don't rush it. Let them settle first.*
He watched from a distance while the umbrella went up, while Tae-hyun dropped the cooler with obvious relief and immediately stripped off his shirt to sprint for the water, shouting something back at his brother that Jae-min couldn't quite catch. Jihan settled into a beach chair beneath the umbrella's shade, sunglasses back down over his eyes, looking every bit like a man who had no intention of getting sand anywhere near his skin if he could help it.
Jae-min waited.
Ten minutes. Then fifteen.
Tae-hyun finally came jogging back up from the shoreline, dripping and breathless, making straight for the cooler. He popped it open, grabbed one of the orange juice boxes, and dropped into the sand beside his brother's chair to drink it.
*Now,* Min-woo texted.
Jae-min took a breath, rolled his shoulders once, and walked over like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Small world," he said, stopping a few feet from the umbrella.
Tae-hyun looked up first, surprise breaking into a grin almost immediately. "Lee Jae-min. Are you following us?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
Jihan lowered his sunglasses just enough to look over the rim of them, something unreadable and pleased flickering behind his eyes before he tucked it away. "Small world," he echoed, dry.
The conversation that followed was easy—too easy, in a way that made something in Jae-min's chest twist uncomfortably, guilt threading in underneath the performance. Tae-hyun ribbed him about the golf club he'd broken. Jae-min ribbed him back about his swimming form. Somewhere in the middle of it, without quite meaning to, he challenged Tae-hyun to a race down to the water and back.
He won. Barely, and only because Tae-hyun tripped over his own feet at the last stretch, laughing too hard to properly compete.
They came back up the sand breathless, Tae-hyun immediately diving for the cooler again, grabbing a second juice box for himself.
Jihan, without looking up from where he sat, reached in and pulled one out, holding it toward Jae-min without a word.
Jae-min looked at it.
For one long second, his whole body went cold despite the heat pressing down on him, every instinct screaming to just say no thanks, I'm fine, and end this before it started.
Then he took it.
"Thanks," he said, and before he could think better of it, he tipped his head back and drank the whole thing in one go.
The conversation kept moving around him—Tae-hyun recounting some story about the race, Jihan making a dry comment that made his brother groan—but Jae-min felt himself slipping out of it, the words arriving half a second too late, the sun suddenly too bright, too heavy against his skin.
Sweat broke out along his hairline that had nothing to do with the heat.
"...min?"
He blinked. The world had gone soft at the edges, sound stretching thin and strange.
"Jae-min."
He turned his head toward the voice too slowly, Jihan's face swimming into focus and then blurring again, sunglasses gone now, brows drawn together in something sharp and immediate.
"I'm fine," Jae-min managed, though the words came out slurred, unconvincing even to himself.
He wasn't sure he meant to say anything else. He wasn't sure of anything, really, past the sudden lurch of the ground tilting beneath him, the umbrella and the sky and Jihan's face all sliding sideways at once.
Then everything went black.
He didn't feel himself fall.
But he felt, distantly, arms catching him before he hit the sand—strong, fast, closing around him without hesitation—and a voice, sharper than he'd ever heard it, cutting through the ringing in his ears.
"Jae-min. Jae-min—hey. Look at me. *Jae-min.*"