Lacy Euphoria

His Favorite Girl/Part Two: Becoming Real to Him

Originally published on AO3.

🔞 Adults 18+. MDNI. Fictional fanwork using names fictitiously for entertainment. Not real, endorsed, affiliated, or a claim of real events. All romantic and sexual content is between consenting adults. Please consume fiction with media literacy intact.

The couch still looks like you.

Nothing about it has changed. The cushions have settled into their usual shape, the leather has cooled, and every piece of clothing that fell between the door and the studio floor has been collected. The room smells like equipment, coffee, and the faint metallic warmth of machines left running too long. Still, when Mingi steps through the soundproof door the morning after you leave, his eyes go directly to the place where your body had been.

He stands there with his bag hanging from one shoulder, staring long enough to feel ridiculous. Yesterday, your head had rested against the cushion while he hovered over you, trying to decide whether missing you excused how badly he wanted to lose control. Later, he had fixed the strap twisted against your shoulder, helped you find your shirt, and stopped himself from kissing you again because one more kiss would have become ten.

At the door, he told you to text him when you got back to her.

Not home.

Her.

Wherever the truth was waiting.

The distinction had felt important then. It feels heavier now.

Mingi crosses the studio and sets his bag beside the console. His phone lands facedown near the keyboard, placed there intentionally before the screen can invite him to break the promise he made. You said you would reach out. He told you he would wait.

Waiting is easy to offer when the person is still standing in front of you.

It becomes something else after they leave.

He powers on the console and opens the session he is supposed to review, but the first notes barely make it through the speakers before he stops the track. The silence that follows does not feel empty. It feels occupied by every version of you he has ever watched walk away.

The first one left a fansign table.

He remembers asking for your name without looking up, his marker moving automatically across the album while the noise around him folded into the rhythm of another event. By then, he had already smiled at hundreds of people, softened his voice for the nervous ones, laughed louder for the shy ones, and repeated the same phrase often enough that the words no longer required thought.

“You’re my favorite girl.”

He knew how to make it land. He knew which tone would make someone hide her face, which smile would make her laugh, and how long to hold eye contact before staff moved the line along. He understood the work because he understood people.

Then your voice reached him.

Calm. Direct. Entirely too steady for someone sitting across from him for the first time.

When Mingi finally looked up, you were not staring at him the way most people did. You were studying him. Your attention moved past his face and settled on the changes in his posture, his voice, and the way he adjusted himself for every person who sat down.

You told him he had a lot of favorite girls that night.

The accusation amused him until you leaned closer and said you wanted to be the only one.

He remembers the silence inside his own head after that, sharp enough to separate your voice from the entire room. You did not ask him to notice you. You told him exactly what you wanted and left him to decide whether he was capable of answering like a man instead of a performer.

He questioned you because he had heard versions of the fantasy before. People wanted the name, the stage, the access, and the story they could tell afterward. When he warned you not to follow him or cross lines, offense flashed across your face before you corrected him with enough attitude to make him fight a smile.

You told him you were not chasing an idol. You were a woman expressing interest in a man who happened to be working.

Looking back, Mingi understands that was the first time you separated him from everything built around him.

At the time, he only knew he was not ready for the conversation to end.

He asked staff for more time. He watched you leave the table afterward and return to the event floor. He tried to continue working, tried to return to the rhythm he had maintained all afternoon, but his eyes kept finding you.

You noticed that too.

Instead of smiling, waving, or using the attention to pull more from him, you moved somewhere he could not see you.

That was the moment he sent someone to find you.

The memory makes Mingi lean back in the studio chair, his fingers resting against the edge of the console while understanding rearranges something he thought he already knew. He had spent years surrounded by people competing for his attention. You were the first person who gave it back when you realized having it was distracting him.

He told himself he brought you backstage because he was curious.

The truth is simpler.

He did not want you to leave.

The private room returns in pieces. The bar set against one wall. The whiskey you had poured because your composure apparently required assistance when nobody was watching. The way you turned when he entered and still managed to look as though you had been expecting him instead of hoping.

“You stayed,” he had said while closing the door behind him.

You looked directly at him and answered, “I meant what I said,” without softening the words or pretending the confession had been a joke made under event lighting.

The certainty in your voice unsettled him more than nerves would have. Nervousness was familiar. It gave him something to manage. Your confidence required him to meet you at the level of what you had asked for.

You told him you wanted to know what it felt like when he meant the words with you.

He warned you that whatever happened next could not be simple. No pictures. No posting. No friends talking. No public mistakes. You listened without romanticizing any of it, then asked him to give you a way forward that did not require chasing or guessing.

You wanted intention, not access.

That sentence followed him for three days.

Mingi glances at his phone, still facedown beside the keyboard, then deliberately looks away. He remembers making you wait because the meeting needed to be arranged carefully. Staff had to know enough to protect him without knowing too much. A location had to be secured. A car had to be sent.

Those were the practical reasons.

The private one was harder to admit.

He wanted to know whether your certainty would survive silence.

It did.

You did not contact staff, return to another event, or search for a way around the boundary. You went back to your work and let him fulfill the promise himself. By the time he sent the message telling you to be ready, relief had already settled beneath the control he used to hide it.

The car became his first test of whether you trusted him. You entered without asking for the route, yet you did not become passive inside it. When he saw you scrolling through your phone, he reminded you not to post. You told him to relax.

The memory pulls a quiet laugh from Mingi while the studio track waits untouched.

You had respected the danger without becoming obedient to his mood. Even then, you refused to confuse his need for control with permission to control you.

By the time the elevator carried you to the private suite, Mingi had been waiting long enough to recognize your footsteps in the hallway. He remembers the door opening, your eyes finding him, and the calm way you entered a room that had been arranged entirely around his secrecy.

You did not perform nervousness for him. You did not talk to fill the silence. You looked around once, then stood in front of him like the conversation from the fansign had never ended.

When he asked why you had chosen him, your answer changed the night.

You did not begin with his face, his body, his voice, or the public version of him that strangers believed they knew. You told him you had watched the way he noticed people. The way he softened himself for someone nervous and changed his energy to make someone else comfortable.

He dismissed it as part of his job.

You corrected him.

His job was performing.

What you saw was not.

Mingi remembers how still he became when you said it. Care had been built so deeply into his habits that he stopped expecting anyone to notice the difference between instinct and performance. You noticed, then touched his face as if the man beneath the work was the part you had come to see.

He told you that you saw too much.

You answered by staying.

The first kiss came after your fingers settled beneath his jaw. You held him there long enough to feel his breathing change, and the fact that you noticed affected him almost as much as your mouth finally meeting his.

He asked for consent before the night went further. Not because he feared your answer, but because the confidence you carried into the room made him want your yes to remain yours.

When you gave it, the rest of his restraint cracked faster than he expected.

Later, with your body wrapped around him and every rehearsed version of himself gone, he finally gave you the phrase you had challenged him to mean.

“You’re my favorite girl,” Mingi had told you while holding your gaze, his thumb moving slowly along your jaw. When you stayed quiet beneath the weight of it, he made the confession clearer. “My only favorite girl. And I mean that shit.”

He had meant it.

There had been no performance left in him. No fan service. No easy charm shaped for someone else’s memory. He meant you were the woman he wanted most, the woman who had made every other possibility feel irrelevant the second you walked into the room.

At the time, he believed that was the deepest meaning the words could carry.

Morning proved him wrong first.

He remembers waking with his arm around your waist and tightening his hold before his eyes opened. You tried to move, and his body pulled you back as if it had already decided your place was against him. Daylight should have made everything feel less believable. Instead, it made the night impossible to dismiss as impulse.

Then came the knock at the door and the quiet realization on your face when Seonghwa, Seonghwa, walked in carrying breakfast and recognition.

You had looked from one man to the other before asking whether Mingi had told him about you.

“I talked about you,” he answered from the bed.

He had not understood why your expression changed until later.

Telling someone about you could describe one conversation.

Talking about you meant you had become a habit.

Seonghwa knew enough to say it was nice to finally meet you. He brought coffee without knowing how you took it and accidentally exposed how far behind Mingi already was. That morning, while the three of you ate breakfast in the hotel suite, Mingi watched you laugh and felt something in the room settle into place.

Your presence did not feel like an interruption.

It felt like something the morning had been waiting for.

The studio door opens behind him, pulling Mingi from the memory. Seonghwa enters carrying two cups and one unimpressed expression, glances at the frozen session on the console, then at the untouched controls beneath Mingi’s hands.

“You have been here for almost an hour,” Seonghwa says while placing one cup near the keyboard. “Have you listened to anything?”

Mingi reaches for the coffee and takes one sip before frowning at the sweetness. “This is hers.”

Seonghwa looks down at the cup in his own hand, then laughs. “I switched them.”

“You did that on purpose.”

“I did not, but the fact that you knew after one sip is depressing.”

Mingi keeps your coffee anyway. “It is coffee.”

“It is symbolism with a lid.”

“Please leave.”

Instead of leaving, Seonghwa drops onto the couch. The same couch. His eyes follow Mingi’s brief glance toward the cushion, and the humor in his expression softens into recognition.

“You have not heard from her?”

“She said she would reach out.”

“So you are waiting.”

“Yes.”

Seonghwa studies him over the rim of the cup. “You are not usually good at that.”

Mingi turns your coffee slowly between his hands. “I usually know what waiting protects.”

The answer changes the room. Seonghwa lowers the cup, giving him the space to continue without making it feel like interrogation.

“She told her partner enough to stop hiding,” Mingi says, looking toward the dark console screen. “I thought asking for privacy kept everyone safe. I did not understand that she was carrying the cost of it home.”

“And now?”

“Now I understand.”

Seonghwa’s gaze moves briefly toward the couch before returning to him. “What are you going to do with that?”

Mingi thinks about the message Wynter allowed you to send. She was not trying to expose him, but she refused to remain invisible. She wanted respect to look like not forcing her to chase the truth through your body.

He had asked for time.

She had asked him to recognize who else had to live inside it.

“I told her I would earn more than secrecy,” Mingi says.

Seonghwa nods once, then rises from the couch without making a joke. At the door, he pauses with one hand against the frame. “Then do not waste the waiting.”

After the door closes, Mingi finally starts the track.

The bass fills the studio, and memory takes him to another stage.

“Cash Money.”

He remembers standing behind the curtain and asking whether you had arrived. Staff confirmed you were inside, and relief moved through him so quickly that he pretended to adjust his microphone until it passed.

He walked onstage already knowing where you stood.

The opening line belonged to the whole room in sound and only to you in intention. He watched recognition move through your face, watched Wynter follow his gaze, and still returned to you because hiding had not yet begun to feel like something capable of hurting anyone.

At the time, he thought the song was brave.

Now he understands it was careless too.

You came backstage carrying the question he had planted inside the performance. When the room emptied and you asked whether the song was about you, he answered yes because lying had become impossible beneath your hand.

Then came his house.

The coffee he remembered. The sunroom curtains he closed. The kitchen island, the theater, the studio console, the guest room, and the bedroom where he usually slept alone. He had brought you there so the two of you could discuss whether Wynter could be trusted, then spent the entire night proving that privacy made him want more from you, not less.

The most important part happened before the gate opened.

You told him Wynter was your partner.

You explained the relationship was open, that sex was allowed, and that dishonesty was the betrayal. You gave him the truth before entering his home because you refused to let desire become another lie without his knowledge.

He could have stopped the car.

He could have decided the situation was too complicated, too risky, or too unfamiliar.

Instead, he covered your hand with his and thanked you for not giving away his private life without asking.

He thought that response was enough.

It was not.

Because protecting his privacy had still required you to return home with an edited truth. It had left Wynter sitting in your kitchen, reading his presence from your clothes, your eyes, and the comfort still resting on your body.

By the time Mingi understood that, the secret had already become something all three of you were forced to carry.

Yesterday was different.

You did not arrive through management. No driver collected you under instructions he had built around secrecy. You texted him while sitting across from Wynter. You told him you missed him with her knowledge and came to the studio without pretending she did not exist.

When Mingi opened the side door and asked whether coming was honest, you answered that she knew.

The relief nearly broke him.

Before yesterday, he had known what it felt like to be wanted privately.

Yesterday, he learned what it felt like to be chosen honestly.

That distinction follows him across the studio until he reaches the couch. Mingi sits where you had been and lets one hand rest against the leather beside his thigh. The room has cooled. Nothing remains of your warmth except the memory of it.

He had called you his favorite girl before and believed the words meant certainty.

You were the woman he wanted most.

The woman he searched for in crowds.

The woman whose coffee he recognized after one sip, whose silence changed the feel of a room, and whose absence turned ordinary places into evidence.

He still means all of that.

It simply is not enough anymore.

Favorite cannot only mean the person he wants when wanting feels good. It has to include the life attached to her. The partner waiting at home. The promises she made before he arrived. The rooms that still need her after she leaves his.

It has to mean waiting when pulling her closer would be easier.

It has to mean protecting her without asking her to damage someone else for him.

It has to mean becoming worthy of the honesty she offered before she knew whether it would cost her the relationship.

His phone remains facedown beside the console.

Mingi looks at it, feels the ache of wanting to hear your voice, then leaves it where it is.

The choice surprises him, not because he misses you less, but because he finally understands that waiting is not the absence of love. Sometimes waiting is what love looks like when desire is no longer the only person in the room.

He leans back against the couch and lets the memories move through him again. Your calm face at the fansign. Whiskey waiting backstage. The car carrying you toward him. Your palm beneath his jaw. Morning light across the hotel sheets. Your front door opening because he needed to see you safe. His song becoming too personal in public. Your truth in the passenger seat. Your body and laughter moving through every room of his home. The studio door closing behind you after you told him Wynter knew where you were.

Mingi tries to locate the exact moment wanting became something larger.

He cannot.

Love had not arrived with the first kiss, the first night, the song, or the confession. It had collected quietly inside every choice until his habits understood the truth before he did.

The first time Mingi called you his favorite girl and meant it, he thought he was saying you were the woman he wanted most.

Now, sitting inside the space you left behind and choosing not to reach for you, he understands the rest.

You are the woman whose life matters beyond what he wants from it.

You are still his favorite girl.

This time, the words are not about having you.

They are about becoming someone who deserves to keep being chosen by you.