15 :  Seoul

**JASMINE POV**

I slept through most of the fourteen-hour flight, which felt like a small miracle given how wired I'd been getting on the plane in the first place. Somewhere over the Pacific, exhaustion had simply won out over nerves, and I didn't stir again until I felt a hand gently shaking my shoulder.

"Peach. We're landing in less than an hour."

"Go away," I mumbled into the pillow, swatting blindly in the general direction of the voice. "Come back five minutes before we land."

"You'll want time to freshen up before we get to the hotel."

I cracked one eye open to find Japheth crouched beside the bed, looking entirely too amused for someone waking me up against my will. "The flight attendant can freshen me up."

"I offered to make you coffee, actually."

"You mean you'll ask the flight attendant to make coffee, and then hand it to me and take credit."

"Details," he said, grinning, and pulled the blanket gently off my head. I sat up, blinking against the cabin lights, hair an absolute disaster, and he just looked at me like it was the best thing he'd seen all day, which fine. That was a good way to wake up, objectively.

"Out," I said. "Give me ten minutes."

He held up both hands in surrender and backed toward the door, still smiling.

---

The drive from Incheon took less than an hour, and I spent most of it with my face nearly pressed to the window, watching the city unfold dense and glittering and entirely unlike anything I'd seen before, neon signs stacked six stories high, mountains visible even from the highway, a skyline that felt both futuristic and impossibly old at the same time.

The King Hotel's manager, a warm, formal man named Jin Seok, greeted us with a deep bow the moment we stepped into the lobby, along with a small team of staff who materialized to handle our bags before I'd even fully registered we'd stopped moving. Edmund trailed behind us, scanning the lobby the way he always did, professionally paranoid on our behalf.

"Annyeonghaseyo," one of the young staff members said, and Japheth answered fluently, easily, in a way that made my eyebrows climb.

"You speak Korean?"

"Enough to get by. I did a semester here during university." He caught me staring and smirked. "Impressed?"

"Mildly."

A couple of the hotel staff exchanged glances and giggled behind their hands, watching him with the kind of open admiration I recognized instantly, having spent most of high school on the receiving end of watching other girls do the exact same thing. It landed differently this time less like a threat, more like an old, familiar ache that didn't quite have teeth anymore.

We rode the elevator up in comfortable quiet, Edmund a respectful step behind us, and Japheth slid a keycard through the reader on a set of tall, dark wood doors that opened into what could only be described as an actual penthouse traditional Korean art on every wall, hand-painted screens, furniture that looked more like museum pieces than hotel amenities.

"This is incredible," I said, turning in a slow circle to take it all in.

"Glad you like it." He set his bag down, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite place. "Hungry? I can call for room service."

"In a minute." I scanned the space, looking for wherever our things had been taken. "Where's my room?"

"Our room," he said, easily, like it was already settled. "There are two bedrooms here. One's for Xandry when he flies in later this week. You're staying with me."

I felt my whole body go still, a very different stillness than the one from the elevator a moment ago.

"I didn't agree to that."

"I didn't mean it as an order, Peach." He held up both hands again, the same surrendering gesture from the plane, and something in his face shifted, careful now, watching me the way you'd watch someone you didn't want to spook. "I meant it as an offer. There's a second bedroom I can take if you'd rather have the space to yourself. I just assumed, since we've slept in the same bed plenty of times before and it's never been an issue, that it might be easier logistically. But it's genuinely your call, not mine."

I studied him for a long moment, and I could see it costing him something to leave it there, to not push further, to actually mean the offer as an offer.

"Can I think about it?" I asked.

"Take all the time you need. I'll be unpacking." He turned to do exactly that, without another word about it, which somehow made the whole thing feel safer than if he'd argued his case any further.

I sat on the edge of the low platform bed in what would apparently be, if I chose it, our room, and thought about it honestly instead of just reacting.

We had slept in the same bed a hundred times as kids, as teenagers, tangled up watching movies until one of us passed out and neither bothered to move. That version of us had never once needed to think twice about it.

This wasn't that anymore. We'd kissed. We were something new, something neither of us had fully named yet, and sharing a bed now would mean something different than it used to not automatically anything more than sleeping, but the option of more would be right there, unavoidable, every single night for a week.

I thought about what I actually wanted, separate from what felt easy, separate from what anyone expected of me.

I found him in the second bedroom, methodically hanging shirts in a closet that didn't need to be that organized.

"I'll stay in our room," I said, leaning against the doorframe. "But I want it clear that sharing a bed doesn't mean anything's decided beyond that. I'm choosing the space. Not anything else. Not yet."

"Understood." No hesitation, no attempt to negotiate further, just simple acceptance. "Thank you for telling me instead of just going along with it."

"You made it easy to tell you," I admitted. "You actually gave me a real choice."

"I'm trying to get better at that," he said quietly, and something about the honesty in it made my chest go warm in a way I hadn't expected.

We ate dinner on the floor of the dining room later that evening, low table, chopsticks, more dishes than I could name, Japheth patiently explaining what everything was while I did my best not to embarrass myself in front of the poor waitstaff.

"This is amazing," I said around a mouthful of something spicy and vegetable-based that I'd already decided I was going to be craving for the rest of my life. "What's it called?"

"Kimchi. Careful, it might upset your stomach if you're not used to it."

"I grew up on Ranjiv's mom's cooking half the time. I can handle spicy." I took another generous bite just to prove the point, which he watched with clear amusement.

"You're going to regret that at three in the morning."

"Worth it."

He laughed, and for the rest of the meal, the conversation stayed easy, comfortable, nothing but two people slowly discovering they liked each other's company even more now than they had as kids no jealousy, no tension, no arguments waiting under the surface. Just Seoul outside the window, glittering and strange and beautiful, and the quiet, growing certainty that whatever this trip turned into, I'd actually chosen every part of it myself.