Neither of them moved for a long moment, phones held out toward each other like evidence in a trial neither one was ready to stand for.
"You open yours first," Jae-min said.
"You open yours first."
"I asked first."
"I'm older."
"By two months."
"Two months is still older." Min-woo shoved his phone forward another inch, insistent. "Open it."
Jae-min exhaled hard through his nose and unlocked his screen.
*Hey. My birthday's coming up next week. There's a small gathering at the hotel—nothing huge, just family and a few close people. I'd like you there, if you're free.*
He read it twice, waiting for the ground to open up beneath him, some catch, some sign that this was the moment everything unraveled.
It wasn't. It was just an invitation. Simple, a little awkward in the way it had clearly been typed and retyped a few times before sending, but nothing more sinister than that.
"...It's a birthday party," Jae-min said slowly.
Min-woo was already staring at his own screen with an expression somewhere between relief and something else entirely. "Tae-hyun's asking if I want to come too. Same night. Same place."
They looked at each other.
"Okay," Jae-min said carefully. "Okay. That's not—that's not them finding out. That's just a birthday party."
"Right." Min-woo didn't sound entirely convinced. "Unless it's a trap. Unless they found something and this is how they're planning to corner us. All in one room. Very dramatic reveal."
"You've been watching too many dramas."
"You don't know that for sure."
They spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly what Min-woo had half-joked about—going back over every interaction, every slip, every moment either of them could remember from the last several weeks that might have given something away. The wrong surname. The staged fall at the golf range. The number scheme. Every piece of it, laid out and picked over like a crime scene, both of them increasingly certain, and increasingly relieved, that nothing actually connected back to them in any way either brother could have traced.
"Nothing," Min-woo finally said, flopping back onto the couch. "We're clean."
"We're clean," Jae-min agreed, though some small, wary part of him didn't fully believe it yet.
Eventually they both sent back the same careful, noncommittal reply—*I'll think about it*—and set their phones down, the apartment settling into a strange, unresolved quiet.
It was Min-woo who broke it first, sitting bolt upright so fast the couch cushion shifted beneath him.
"Wait."
"What?"
"Your game."
Jae-min blinked. "What game?"
"The basketball game. The one against Seonghwa. You've been talking about it for weeks, Jae, don't tell me you actually forgot—"
Jae-min's stomach dropped as the realization landed. He grabbed his phone back up, pulling up the team calendar, and felt the color drain slightly from his face when he found the date circled in his own handwriting from weeks ago.
The exact same night as the party.
"...No," he said. "No, that can't be right."
"It's right." Min-woo leaned over his shoulder to confirm it, wincing at the collision of dates now laid out plainly on the screen. "Same night. Same time, basically."
Jae-min dropped his head back against the couch cushion with a groan. "I can't miss that game. Coach would kill me. It's the semifinal, Min-woo. I've been training for this since the season started."
"I know."
"So I have to say no to the party."
"...Right." Min-woo didn't sound fully on board with that conclusion, chewing at the inside of his cheek, something conflicted crossing his face.
"What?"
"Nothing, it's just—" He hesitated. "Tae-hyun's expecting me there. I don't know if I can just tell him no without explaining anything, and I don't want to blow you off for the game either, but I also can't exactly split myself in half."
Jae-min looked at him for a long moment. "You want to go."
"I didn't say that."
"Min-woo."
"Fine. Maybe. A little." Min-woo dragged a hand down his face. "It's not just about the plan anymore. I actually don't want to disappoint him."
Jae-min softened slightly at that, some of his own frustration easing into something more sympathetic. "Then go. I'll figure out the game on my own. It's fine."
"It's not fine, it's your career—"
"It's one semifinal, not the Olympics."
"You've literally described it as the most important game of your life at least four times this month."
"I exaggerate sometimes."
"You do not." Min-woo shook his head, firm. "No. We're not doing that. We're figuring this out properly, not just deciding one of us gets left behind because the timing's inconvenient."
They sat with it for a while, turning the problem over from every angle, until Min-woo finally straightened, something resolved settling into his expression.
"You should just tell him," he said. "Jihan. It's his birthday, it's his call to make. Explain the conflict, let him decide what he wants to do with it instead of guessing."
Jae-min hesitated. "That feels like a lot to put on him. It's his birthday."
"It's also his party. If anyone gets to weigh in on how it works around your schedule, it's the birthday boy." Min-woo shrugged. "Worst case, he says it's fine, go to your game, we'll see you another time. Best case—I don't know. But at least it's honest."
*Honest.* The word landed a little strange between them, given everything else neither of them had been honest about for weeks now, but Jae-min let it go and pulled up his phone instead.
---
*Hey. I actually have a semifinal game that same night. Been training for it for weeks, coach would have my head if I skipped it. I really want to be there for your birthday too, but I don't think I can make both work. Sorry.*
He hit send before he could second-guess it further, and then spent the next several minutes staring at the screen, refreshing it every thirty seconds like that might make a reply appear faster.
Nothing came for almost twenty minutes.
"See," Jae-min muttered, tossing the phone onto the couch cushion beside him. "This is why you don't just spring conflicts on people on their birthday."
"Give it a second."
"It's been twenty minutes."
"People have lives, Jae."
The phone buzzed.
Jae-min lunged for it so fast he nearly knocked it off the couch entirely.
*Then I'll move the party to the evening. Come to your game first—I'd like to see it, if that's alright—and we'll celebrate afterward. Doesn't have to be complicated.*
Jae-min read it three times.
"...He moved it," he said, mostly to himself, the words not quite computing yet. "He's shifting the entire party around my game."
Min-woo leaned over to read the screen and let out a low whistle. "Okay. That's not normal birthday behavior."
"It's a compromise. People compromise."
"People don't usually reschedule their own birthday party for someone they've known a few weeks." Min-woo sat back, grinning slow and wide. "Face it. He's completely gone for you."
"It's not that deep." Jae-min's ears had gone warm despite the denial. "Maybe he just wanted to see the game. Maybe he actually likes basketball. It doesn't have to mean—"
"Jae."
"What?"
"You're blushing."
"I'm not blushing, it's warm in here."
"It's genuinely not that warm in here."
They went back and forth like that for a while, the teasing easy and familiar, both of them letting the moment stretch out into something lighter than the tangled mess of scheming and guilt that usually sat underneath everything now. Eventually the joking wound down into a comfortable quiet, both of them staring at their respective phones, at names that had started meaning more than either of them had planned for.
Then Min-woo's expression shifted.
Slow, thoughtful, something working itself out behind his eyes that clearly hadn't occurred to him until just this second.
"Jae."
"What now?"
"What if it's not just a birthday party."
Jae-min looked over. "What do you mean?"
"I mean—" Min-woo sat forward, voice dropping slightly, like the thought needed careful handling before it was said out loud. "What if the brothers planned this together. On purpose. Not to trap us. To—" He hesitated, searching for the right shape of it. "To ask us out. Properly. Like, what if this whole thing—the party, moving it around your schedule, Tae-hyun inviting me the same night—what if it's their way of trying to make us a couple. Both of us. On purpose."
The apartment went completely silent.