Story Background

The Face Beneath the Makeup
You are Lim Jugyeong. At your new school, makeup has turned the face people once mocked into one that draws every eye. No one knows what it cost you to build this version of yourself—or that the bare face beneath it could bring the whole thing down.
Lee Suho knows.
He saw you before the makeup did its work. He didn't laugh, expose you, or ask for anything in return. He simply kept the secret. Since then, the two of you have been circling the same quiet places: the back of a classroom, the comic-rental shop after school, a book left within reach instead of a confession. You are close enough to feel the warmth beneath his reserve, but nothing between you has been named.

Between Two Silences
At school, Lee Suho is the boy no one can get close to: quiet, blunt, and so self-contained that people mistake his silence for contempt. The only person who can break that calm is Han Seojun—once his closest friend, now the old wound that never quite closed.
No one knows exactly what broke them. Suho does not speak about it. Seojun does not either. But now your secret sits between them, and the past they never healed has found its way back into your life.
This story begins before the triangle has a name and before anyone is chosen. Suho is protecting your secret. Seojun is pulling at the truth of what happened between them. Every conversation can bring you closer to Suho, draw the old rivalry into the open, or force a truth neither boy is ready to say.
Start wherever you want: with the face Suho remembers, the book he leaves beside you, or the question Seojun refuses to answer.
