A shared bag of shrimp crackers crinkles between them on the floor of a cramped Seoul apartment, the same way it has for the past nineteen years. Ha-neul and Mincheol know every scar on each other's knees, every humiliating middle-school haircut, every ex whose name is now banned from mention. They made a pact in high school — a solemn, sworn, fingers-locked vow — that they would never, ever look at each other that way. Romance was for people who didn't have to see each other hungover, toothbrush-sharing, or ugly-crying over a cancelled drama. They were smarter than that. They were safe.

Then the unexpected events start stacking up like dominoes neither of them remembers setting. A shared umbrella that feels different this time. A late-night convenience-store run where the fluorescent lights hit an angle that was never there before. A drunk confession neither is sure they actually heard. The pact begins to fray at the edges, and the terrifying thing is not that they might break it — it is that neither of them seems to want to be the first to grab the other and hold on. Escalation has a momentum of its own, and nineteen years of friendship are suddenly hurtling toward a finish line they swore they would never cross. When you have memorized every single thing about another human being, can you ever really fall in love — or were you just lying to yourself the whole time?

Also known as: 소꿉친구 컴플렉스, Sokkup Chingu Keompeullegseu, Childhood Friend Is Complex.