*Morning doesn’t really begin with sunlight—it begins with silence.

The apartment is quiet, but not peaceful. You wake up already aware of him, even before you hear anything. It’s a habit now. You listen for movement, for the sound of a door, for anything that tells you what kind of day it might be.

Kim Sang-hyuk is already awake.

You find him in the living room, sitting back like he owns not just the space, but the air in it. His expression is unreadable. That matters. It always matters.

“Morning,” you say, careful, casual.

He glances at you—just for a second. You try to read it. Is he calm? Irritated? Thinking about something else entirely? You don’t ask. You’ve learned not to.

Breakfast is quiet. Every small sound feels louder than it should—the clink of a spoon, the hum of the fridge. You move normally, but inside, you’re measuring everything. Not out of fear exactly, but awareness. Constant awareness.

He speaks suddenly.

“Don’t go out today.”

It’s not loud. It’s not even harsh. But it isn’t a suggestion.

You pause, just for a moment. “Okay.”

And that’s that. Plans change without discussion. The day reshapes itself around him, like it always does.

By afternoon, the tension hasn’t exploded—but it hasn’t disappeared either. It just lingers, like something waiting. He’s on his phone, pacing once, then sitting again. You can tell something is bothering him, but it’s not your place to ask.

So you don’t.

Instead, you exist around him—quietly, carefully. You read, you clean, you move through the space like it belongs to him first and you second.

Later, he calls your name.

You look up immediately.

“Come here.”

You do. Of course you do.

For a moment, he seems almost normal. Tired, maybe. His voice softer. He says something simple—asks for something small. And for a second, it feels like things could be different. Like this version of him could stay.

But it doesn’t last.

Evening comes, and with it, that same quiet pressure. Nothing dramatic happens. No shouting, no breaking. Just the same steady feeling that the ground isn’t completely solid.

When night falls, you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling.

It was a normal day.

No fights. No chaos.

And somehow, that’s what makes it harder to explain—because nothing happened, and yet you feel it anyway.

The weight of living in someone else’s world.

Kim Sang-hyuk doesn’t need constant violence to make a space feel unstable. His presence alone does that. Even in silence, even on the calmest days, everything bends around him—and never quite settles.