#and fuck minwoo hours

[jungkookschin]

operation true love! chapter thirty : mf got a nosebleed 💀

operation true love!

thirty: mf got a nosebleed 💀

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*not proofread sorry bbs*

"Gosh Y/N, your boyfriend is such a show off."

Despite your very limited knowledge of soccer, you can confirm that your boyfriend is indeed a show off. A sheen of sweat covers his handsome face, making him practically glow as he skillfully passes the ball to Riki.

You can't help but think he's so hot when he plays soccer, always so focused when he's on the field.

"Riki pass the fucking ball!" his voice echos across the field. He sweeps his hair back, exuding arrogance as his handsome eyes pierce daggers into Riki, who clumsily tries to keep the ball away from Sunghoon.

Riki's eyes frantically look towards the direction of Jake's voice, and he finds an opening to pass the ball to Jake. With the force of Riki's kick, the ball soars through the chilly night sky. Jake receives it the ball with his chest, absorbing all its power before the ball gently falls to his feet, and with one kick he pelts the ball past the defenders and into the goal post, all net.

Springing up onto your feet, you jump up and down while clapping your sweater to express your pure elation for Jake's goal. He turns towards you, expressionless until a huge grin spreads on his face. He stares at you before subtly winking at you, and he bites his lip to suppress his laughter before he runs back to his position.

You melt at the gesture, your knees weak as you sink to the ground, ignoring the unimpressed looks from your friends. "Y/N that was like his sixth goal," Yunjin deadpans.

You roll your eyes. "Don't flame me for being a supportive girlfriend."

"Y/N was like this for Minwoo too, though," Hiyyih points out, looking up from her phone, "But this time is different because Jake actually reciprocates her affection," she giggles while giving you a teasing look.

You crack a smile at the thought, reminiscing how you used to cheer for Minwoo on the field and how he never even looked your way.

"Nah, keep doing that Y/N. He plays better when you're watching." Everybody whips their head towards Jungwon, who trudges over to the group with all his soccer bags hung around his body.

"Practice is over already?" Wonyoung asks, handing Jungwon his water bottle. He snatches it from her hand without a proper thanks and chugs the water.

"What do you mean already? We've been out here for like two hours. It's your guys' turn next," Jungwon scoffs, plopping down in your little circle.

You all groan at the thought- the practice for the girls' intramural practice was to happen after the boys, and that meant more running for all of you.

You sense a familiar presence coming your way, and your lips instinctively curl when you see Jake approaching you. He's thrown his hoodie over his frame, swapped out his cleats for socks and sandals, and is walking cooly towards you. You spread out your arms, pouting at him and welcoming him into your embrace.

He plops his bags down next to him before practically falling on you. He's attentive enough to not crush you with his weight, so he lands on his knees and melts into you. You’re able to wrap your arms around the expanse of his shoulders and soothingly rub the back of his head while he rests his forehead on your shoulder

"Tough practice babe?" you coo.

He lifts his head and pouts. "Yea."

The peanut gallery from the side all roll their eyes, knowing that Jake had more than enough stamina and practice most certainly wasn't tough.

"My poor baby,"' you coo, "Why don't you lie down?"

He pouts and nods, lying down and resting his head on your inner thigh. You run your hands through his hair while he closes his eyes and basks in the comforting sensation of your fingers running in his hair.

Sunghoon strolls over and plops down with the rest of the group. "What's wrong with him?" he nonchalantly asks while pointing at Jake.

"Coach was hard on him today," Beomgyu acknowledges, using a towel to wipe the sweat on his nape as he joins the group.

"You mean Coach Shin?" Jungwon asks, eyebrows furrowed.

"Oh yea huh, she mad him run extra laps today," Sunghoon points out, patting Jake on the head.

At their words, your eyebrows furrow. As far as you knew, there was only one female coach on the soccer team- and well.. you knew what that female coach had done to Jake.

You look down at your exhausted boyfriend, and you see that he looks as unbothered as ever- he's completely numb. You wonder if anyone else became aware of the affair between Coach Shin and Jake's father, or if it was only you.

It makes you realize that Jake rarely expressed his negative emotions. In fact, you still haven't resolved the situation from when he called you selfish; you let it pass by as if it was insignificant.

Admittedly, you were selfish. Objectively, you diminished his feelings. Though it wasn't your intention, you were vaguely aware that you lead on two guys at once- but both of them were so emotionally distant that you hadn't noticed.

Sure, you and Jake were perfect together, but you weren’t so sure that your emotional connection was deep enough to guarantee the longevity of your relationship.

You pout, leaning down to kiss Jake softly, eliciting a bunch of throw up sounds from the rest of the group.

"Gross Y/N," a voice says above you. When your eyes meet the owner of that voice, you see a smiling Heeseung who opts to sit down right next to you.

You smile at him. "Heeseung! I missed you!" you words are laced with child-like honesty, and it makes Heeseung smile.

"Missed you too, you ready to go?" he asks.

"Go where?" Jake, who was quiet for the majority of the conversation finally speaks up.

"He's coaching us, remember?" Wonyoung cuts in.

"Not even giving yourself a break, huh Hee?" Sunghoon expreses which makes Heeseung shrug.

"Get your lazy asses up. Kazuha is going to destroy you on the field if you don't practice."

"Kazuha is playing?!" Everybody seems to exclaim simultaneously- even Jake sits up from his comfy position on your lap.

Heeseung laughs. "Yea, so are you guys gonna get up?"

-

“Y/N’s kinda outta shape,” Jungwon comments nonchalantly, nudging Jake with his elbow.

The men’s soccer team took over the girls’ position on the side of the field, now watching the girls run around on the field.

Contrary to popular belief, Jake never actively seeked athleticism when considering his future partner. Sure, Jake’s a professional athlete, but that doesn’t mean his girlfriend had to be one.

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

Jungwon doesn’t say anything, simply watches you as you fall behind the group. You place your hands on your knees, taking a few deep breaths before launching towards the group at full speed, as if your legs suddenly became engines.

Jake softly laughs at that- he can’t help but think the way you sprint towards the front of the group is adorable. “That’s what matters to me,” Jake points out, a smile on his lips while Jungwon scoffs at his friend’s lovestruck expression.

Jungwon and Jake continue to observe your practice, laughing at the way you cheerfully jump up and down once you reach the finish line. Heeseung mirrors your enthusiasm, enveloping you in a bear hug and twirling you around before setting you down gently.

Jungwon raises a brow. “You okay with that?”

Jake casually shrugs his shoulders. “She sees him as a brother.”

“Damn, if I were Heeseung I would never recover from that.”

Too focused on his conversation with Jungwon, Jake doesn’t even notice you sprinting towards his direction, tackling him and landing in his lap as you giggle. “Babe, did you see me? I was first in the race!” you ardently smile, wrapping your arms around his neck while peppering kisses all over his face.

Jake smugly smiles, leaning back on his palms while enjoying your affection. “You were so fast baby. Swear I thought the Flash was on the field.”

You pout and lean into him. “Were you even watching me?”

Jake gently flicks your pout with his pointer finger. “Of course I was. But you need to get back on the field, babe. That was only the warmup.” And he picks you up before throwing you over his shoulder, marching over to the girls’ team on the field.

“Hee! Do you mind if I help you out with the coaching?”

Heeseung looks over towards Jake, a genuine smile spreading on his face. “I would appreciate it a lot.”

Jake reciprocates the smile and sets you down gently before walking towards Heeseung. However, he’s stopped by you, who pulls him back with your grip around his wrist.

“Wait Jake, did you want to sleepover tonight? My parents aren’t home.” You ask the question with sparkling eyes, your cheeks heating up before you bite your lips and avoid eye contact.

taglist: @curly-fr13s , @viagumi , @gyurtl  , @haechansbbg  , @wvnkoi . @flamiricky , @lomzy5 , @loves0ft , @ilymarkchan , @paragonofroyalty , @whippedforbeomgyu ,  @duolingofanaccount , @rikizm , @bluxjun , @articxari , @noascats , @xxjustmaiyaxx , @msviatrix , @cha0thicpisces , @classygirlsthings , @luvalee

[thotsofintrusion]

epex comeback has got me fucked up so have this-

epex legal line mtl likely to engage in casual dominance

#1 keum donghyun

this man has so many rules for you.

he must show his power

keumdong quite literally lives to dominate you

yes hes got soft rules like eating three meals a day and getting seven hours of sleep

but mostly

he’s got rules that should not be spoken of outside of the house

no cumming without permission; no teasing; no touching yourself without permission; you are always to call him daddy or sir, unless around people you don’t know well or he has told you not to; etc

like the man is off the rails i tell you

can usually be found with a hand at the small of your back or on your thigh

if he even slightly senses that you’re uncomfortable or unhappy he’s immediately doing everything he can to fix it

always orders for you

always

often times he’ll put outfits he wants you to wear out when he gets up in the morning

he even picks out your makeup and jewelry

the further you get into the relationship the more it comes out

eventually he stops asking what you want to eat and just gets what he knows will be best for you

it’s a privileged life when keum donghyun is around

#2 kwak dawit

now i do believe that wish is still a dominant man

he’s just not nearly as dominant as keum

the only rules he has for you are that you eat three meals a day, get seven hours of sleep a night, and tell him when anything is wrong

he’s a soft boy at heart

and it shows

dawit loves to hold your hand and link his arm in yours

can often be found whispering words of affection into your ear and pulling you into tight hugs and leaving kisses all over your face

(i don’t even know if that last one counts as dominance i just felt it needed to be said)

orders for you

will plan outfits for you if you ask, but it doesn’t come to him instinctively

prepare to be pampered

#3 kim hyunwoo

baekseung is still pretty new to this whole dominance thing

but some of it comes naturally to him

things like leading you around by your hand and checking in with you every once in a while are just second nature to him

honestly he’s really only a dom because he fell into it naturally with you

he’d at least try switching if you asked (tho i don’t know if he’d like it)

he definitely enjoys getting to push you around tho, especially if you’re older than him

overall

he’s a playful dom and mostly he just wants you to have fun and be happy

#4 cho minwoo

amin doesn’t really seem like he’d partake in any particular power dynamics to me

so by extension i can’t really see him partaking in casual dominance

he might hold your hand when you cross the street or keep an eye on you when you’re away from him

but those aren’t really dominance things

he’s just clingy lol

#5 suh kyungmin

not a chance

mu can barely dominate you seriously much less casually

tiny baby

soft subby boy

not a dominant bone in his body

you might have to order for him

will not be dominating any time soon

this kind of turned into an evaluation of their power roles more than anything but oh well

[intoloopin-archive]

A CHAPTER: THE SHARP AND THE BLUNT (PART 2/2).

tws: dubious consent (Haruki is still very weird and forward about initiating sex! and sometimes that gets Toxic). alcohol abuse and alcoholism. semi-smut (the driest, most unsexy and robotic blowjob in the world is given). insinuation and one very direct discussion of sexual trauma, abuse by a past partner, abuse of workplace power and stalking. a little hint of body dysmorphia (Hanjae's inner voice is often not very kind about how he looks). internalized homophobia, and a hint of biphobia in between the lines. queer pessimism (it gets a bit Hurtful). as always: if I missed anything, please tell me. starring: Lee Hanjae. Fukunaga Haruki. featuring: Dylan Hwang / Hwang Chihoon. their fellow LOOPiN members (old OT10, no Gyujin, still stuck with a bit of Beomseok). Uhm Junghwa (new manager extraordinarie). the ghost of Choi Sangwon. a brief mention of Night Child / NTCD. timeline: early to the end of mid 2022 | quick flash forward to september 2023 (additional context under the cut). word count: 14,138 words. author's note: lil delay because life has to be life, sometimes, and because the hotel scene from May 26th was way more challenging to get right in tone than i originally expected (it's one of the ones to watch out for), but here we are!!!! the Hanruki end. things get much more heavy, morally grey and blantly sad in this final part, so really, mind the tags, skip if you must. and: music rec moment two. stay safe out there, everyone!

March 13th, 2022.

Hanjae doesn’t shower, or change clothes, or gets to sleep on the couch. He lays on it and spends the whole night awake, on his phone, and on his Nintendo Switch after that, back on his phone. He catches the sun rising through the window’s curtain and maybe he sleeps, briefly.

Was it even real?, he wonders when he finds himself with his eyes wide and restless, staring up at the ceiling; Did it even happen?

He pokes and pokes at the one painful spot over his shoulder, the marking of Haruki’s teeth, and gets consumed by shame at the confirmation that yes, it was real; yes, it did happen.

When Junghwa steps into their apartment to wake everyone up in the morning, Hanjae’s sitting on the couch, breathing into his hands. He still looks like a mess. Hair, clothes, face – a mess.

She gives him a crumbling look, half pity, half exhaustion, and laughs humorless. “Out of everyone, I didn’t expect you to misbehave, Lee Hanjae.”

Hanjae peeks up at her through his clammy fingers. He feels a genuine and terrifying urge to throw up on her shoes and buy her new ones immediately after.

“12 AM to 8 PM for you,” Junghwa tells him, with a sigh. She walks more into the house, close enough to lay a merciful hand on the crown of his head – pat, pat, pat. “Just this one time.”

Haruki hours, he thinks, dazed, because that’s what everyone calls it, because he’s the one stuck with the alternative schedule the most: fails to wake up for practice often, gets shoved at the company until late at night. He’ll probably get the same sentence today. He and Hanjae might have to train alone, together, for hours. His stomach takes another queasy turn.

Hanjae watches the world move around him, for once out of the routine; after hearing his fate, Taesong takes a minute out of washing his face to force Hanjae to gulp down ibuprofen while Haegon shoves a pillow at him. Junghwa goes upstairs to knock on Haruki’s door, phone against her ear as she calls him, and then comes down in record speed, by herself.

She asks everyone, “Shall we go?”

“Can I get Haruki hours, please?” Seungsoo begs from where he’s resting his head against the wall, eyes closed, sipping Gatorade.

Junghwa doesn’t look at him as she firmly says, “No.”

“But I’m dying,” Seungsoo whines. “I’m fucking dying. I can’t work. I’m gonna drop dead, dead.”

Minwoo shoves him angrily out of the way to open the front door, tells him, “Then drop dead, Seungsoo. Drop dead.”

It takes a while for the house to fall back into quiet, after everyone’s gone. Hanjae swears he hears the sound of everything amplified now, gonging inside his head. Maybe it’s the hangover – it’s probably the hangover, but he hasn’t had enough of those to figure all of their symptoms out.

He sleeps again, a miracle, wakes up again, and there’s the faint smell of something being stir fried coming from the kitchen, slowly drowning the whole room.

“I’m making tofu,” Haruki says when Hanjae sits up to check. He’s a slouched thing behind the stove, yet he’s flashing him a grin. “You want some?”

He looks, from a distant inspection – normal, regular, like Haruki always does in the morning: a little wan, with his voice a little deep. They’ve kissed, they’ve made out, and he’s absolutely normal, proposing to make Hanjae breakfast-lunch.

Hanjae says a meek ‘yes’ to tofu, and Haruki tells him, “Five minutes.”

It’s enough time for Hanjae to go brush his teeth, and hyperventilate in privacy: every corner of their bathroom makes him think back to Sunyoung’s, and to being on the floor– being kissed on the floor– being kissed by Haruki on the floor until he wasn’t.

He goes back to the couch, a stiff walk. Haruki comes to sit with him, holding a single bowl of food with two runny eggs on top, and Hanjae jumps back up and three feet away. He bumps his heel bone on the coffee table, and the pain is a shock up his entire leg; serves him well, serves him right.

“I want to apologize for yesterday or earlier today at night,” Hanjae says in a single breath, his voice coming out rough around the edges. His arms are set like wood on his sides, tight, fisted.

In front of him, Haruki’s face goes through a journey: startled, then confused, then amused, smiling. He takes a big bite of food. “Oh, you mean the bathroom? That’s what you mean?” He asks, covering his chewing mouth with a hand, and Hanjae nods once. “Pfff, no need. It’s not your fault a girl had to pee.”

“That’s not what I meant, not, not what I’m apologizing for.”

“So what are you apologizing for?” Haruki asks him, tilting his head, dark hair falling like a cloak over his eyes. He wrinkles his nose. “Didn’t I kiss you? I’m sure I kissed you. I’m sure you kissed me back.”

“Hyung,” Hanjae says, helplessly, and has to turn his face to the side, closing his eyes briefly. “Still, everything– We were drunk, and everything, it wasn’t… appropriate. To happen.”

Haruki has stopped chewing when Hanjae looks back at him, has gone full body still for a moment. When he gulps the food down, it looks like it’s a painful thing for him to do.

“Appropriate,” he repeats, looking down at his own feet, like it’s an odd word, an annoying one. “Just sit down, Hanjae. Sit back down. We’re not done yet.”

“We’re not… What?”

Haruki abandons the bowl and chopsticks, puts them roughly on the table, then motions to the vague spot on his side – come here. Hanjae doesn’t move. He still has some word stuck under his tongue he has to work out.

Haruki doesn’t take his paralyzes at all. He clicks his tongue, walks up and close and puts both hands on Hanjae’s shoulders, maneuvers him and sits him back down not that gently on the couch. He tucks himself close to him, sideways, a bent knee almost on his lap, and stays there.

He eyes Hanjae openly then, a brand new thing. Haruki’s seen him, could have gotten sick of seeing him with how much it happens every day, but now Hanjae knows with certainty that he’s never been evaluated by him, or taken into this much consideration up until this very moment.

He hooks Hanjae’s ear lobe between two fingers and pulls, taps at the hoop earring. “I thought you would be a bad kisser,” Haruki says. “But you’re not.”

Granted, Hanjae wouldn’t call their kiss a good kiss. Both their mouths tasted bitter, he remembers now, and their teeth clunked against each other like two cogs being put in an unfit machine. It happened so quick– everything, so quick.

“Thanks,” he says nonetheless, and again, “Thank– Thank you.”

Haruki laughs at him, wispy, a single ‘ha’, and the air around them grows more tense. Haruki pushes himself close until he's full on Hanjae’s lap, a similar position to some hours ago. Hanjae turns his face a little away, to the side; sets his eyes on a wall, right where a painting Haegon made when he was eight years old hangs, framed. 

The cushion of the living room couch smells like an amalgamation of all of them, he notices. There’s a stain on it where Chihoon had once spilled fancy carbonara – a meal everyone saved the whole month to have on their third debut anniversary. Seungsoo had offered him three bucks to lick it clean. The video of Dylan concluding the bet is a blurry 1 minute thing O.z had recorded, still somewhere far down Hanjae’s gallery.

“Hanjae,” Haruki says now, and taps at his nose. “You’re too tense. You’re zooming out. Get out of your head.”

“It’s just–” Hanjae mutters, and can’t stop – just can’t stop: “Here? Wouldn’t it be bad? If someone walks in, if they forgot something and want to come back, and I heard, I think I heard that, isn’t there a camera here, a camera Seo CEO looks through–”

“There’s no camera. Not a single one anywhere. I would know,” Haruki looks right into his eyes to reassure him, or tries to; Hanjae can’t sustain it much. His hands are a constant goosebump on their trail on the back of Hanjae’s neck, up and up and suddenly down, up again. “Do you want to take this to your room?”

But it’s not Hanjae’s room, singular. It’s impossible to look anywhere and not see one of Seungsoo’s too colorful caps, or Minwoo’s notes, scrambled and frantic, the only indication he’s yet to fully move into the studio.

This is LOOPiN’s home, collective. They’re coworkers sharing space at their core, and it’s– It’s all just–

Hanjae makes a whimpering sound, involuntary, not an answer to anything, and with that Haruki’s off him, a sudden rise up and turn around. He walks away with a loud sigh and Hanjae thinks, disappointment and relief an ocean in his stomach, It’s done. It’s over.

It’s not; Haruki just goes to open the fridge’s door, takes something out, pours it somewhere, comes back to the couch with it. He stands it for Hanjae to take – a red plastic cup filled to the brim with some leftover wine.

“One complaint,” Haruki tells him, and goes back to where he was; a stable weight on Hanjae’s lap, both arms hooked around his neck. “One sip.”

“It’s– It’s morning, hyung.”

“No. No ‘hyung’. Stop that,” he says, and Hanjae can’t figure out, either by hearing it or looking him in the face, if Haruki’s being serious or not. He’s still smiling. “I don’t like it.”

“So what,” Hanjae asks, and sinks deeper into the couch when Haruki makes to push himself closer, “Do you like, then? About me if, or this, or–”

It’s all he can get out before Haruki puts a hand over his mouth, firm.

“I’ll blow you,” he says bluntly, and puts his hand away. Another paper thin smile. “Will that shut you up?”

Around a gulp, Hanjae nods, manages to let out a shaky, “Ok–ay.”

Permission granted, it takes a moment for anything to even happen. Haruki grabs the cup out of Hanjae’s hand quickly and downs it, almost fully drains it. He takes a deep and loud breath when he gives it back, eyes closed through it, before he begins to go down on him.

When Haruki kneels in between his legs, Hanjae tries to put a hand on top of his head, a timid and gentle fondling, but Haruki bats it away, says, “Just stay still.”

And Hanjae stays still. He looks up at the ceiling – eggshell white, the same as all the walls, with the faint darkening in a corner where there once was a leak. The kitchen sink hasn’t been closed all the way, and he can hear the drip, drip, drip of the water falling on dirty tableware under the sound of his loose belt being unbuckled, his zipper working open, the downing of his jeans.

What a waste, he thinks, over and over, tells himself that’s all he must think now; what a grandiose waste.

The blowjob’s a not so quick, but fully methodic thing. Hanjae taps Haruki on the shoulder when he’s finally near coming, says so around a pant. And then comes, Haruki swallows, that’s it – that’s the full scope of it, Hanjae has decided. Privately, he calls it efficient instead of emotionless, or confusing, or unsettling.

He zips himself back up as Haruki wipes his mouth and goes to collect the pot, the chopsticks. Hanjae catches him by the wrist before he slips away, asks, “You?”

Haruki laughs – Hanjae’s never seen him laugh so much so quickly, or in such a high pitch. He says, leaning forward, “Me? Me what? What are you even going to do? You look like you’re about to have a panic attack, Hanjae.”

Hanjae’s grip on him goes loose. Haruki breaks free of it and puts his hand on his pocket, rubs it in for a second like he’s trying to get it clean. Or maybe Hanjae’s just seeing things with his blurry hangover vision, his clear hangover discomfort.

“Right,” he mutters, and feels like he’s coming down from somewhere. His hold on the cup had faltered through their whole endeavor, and the spilled wine made a new damp on the couch’s arm. A story. He locks eyes with it.

“Don’t worry about me,” Haruki’s saying, back turned to him, halfway across the room already. The pot of leftover tofu clanks where he drops it, careless. “I’ll just shower.”

“You’re sure…?” Hanjae asks.

“Uh-huh.”

“Really?”

“Really. Now stop talking, alright? It’s not going to make me put my mouth on you a second time.”

Hanjae blinks once, and then too many times to even count. “Okay,” he says, quietly. “I’m– Okay.”

Haruki flees the scene before he notices, goes upstairs; comes back down and looks around for a long beat as if he’s forgotten where he is, where he’s headed.

He goes to the bathroom and closes the door loudly, then soon opens it again, peeks his torso out. He’s got a towel thrown over his shoulder and a smile that’s blinding when he says, looking back at Hanjae: “But next time. Make it up to me next time.”

April 14th, 2022.

‘Next time’, in industry lingo, as Hanjae has learned over the years, is the vaguest time scheduling there is. So Haruki said ‘But next time. Make it up to me next time’, and a day later LOOPiN released the final teasers for the ‘Punch’ EP, and things got hectic – music shows, variety content, a fanmeet, a fansign.

And then Seungsoo made everything come to a halt by jumping Kwon Dongwook and half of NTCD at Rewind K-Pop Fest on the 8th, getting them all thrown out of the event four hours earlier.

They missed the SHINee tribute they were set to be on. Hanjae even got handed Key’s bandana and the same blue shorts he used in the dance scenes in the ‘View’ MV, taken directly out of SM Entertainment’s archive. He had just stepped out of a makeup chair when he got the news, and was made to sit back down immediately to dismantle the whole look.

“Pussy didn’t even fight back,” Seungsoo grumbled, in their kitchen: icing his face where it hit a pole after Code pushed him off Hyunbin’s neck. He wouldn’t stop talking about Dongwook – it had been five hours, and everything that came out of his mouth was soon followed by ‘Kwon Dongwook that bastard’ this, ‘Kwon Dongwook that fucker’ that. “He made me look like an asshole.”

Hanjae ignored him. All he wanted was to drink a glass of water in silence and not look a single person in the eye that wasn’t Mijoo, his guitar instructor, in six hours time.

“You made yourself look like an asshole,” Taesong corrected him, pointing a spatula around from behind the aisle, and he sounded and looked angry in a way Hanjae hadn’t seen him in years. “You made all of us look like assholes, and now Minwoo’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you because I’ll allow him to kill you. I will help him kill you. You deserve to be assassinated.”

“You deserve to be assassinated, you snake! You’re talking with Joseph Song, Taeng! Night Child’s Joseph Song, behind my back, about him, about me! Fuck you!”

Taesong dropped the spatula, put both hands on his hips, and looked up at the ceiling: his ‘Lord, give me strength’ pose. “I don’t talk with Joseph Song about Dongwook, or about you, Seungsoo. All we do is exchange schedule information to know when we all might meet, to try to keep peace between us and them because you’re all insane. All you, insane.”

“I’m not insane!” Seungsoo said, rising up from his chair, and Hanjae escaped the kitchen then, didn’t want to hear his bullshit claim to be functional.

He spent half an hour tuning and running his fingers over his electric guitar’s strings, and did the same with Dylan’s old acoustic one, and pressed random notes on Zhiming’s keyboard in their improvised music space, which was just a vacant corner in Heagon and Beomseok’s room.

On his phone, he got one message, and had to read it once and twice and a third time even, just to figure out what to say:

[haruhyung]: are you free ?

Hanjae sent, fingers flying over the keyboard:

[You]: Guitar pravtice with Mijoo nim sun

[You]: *practice

[You]: **soon

And shortly after, an afterthought:

[You]: Sorry

On his screen Haruki typed, deleted, typed again – the speech bubble looked like a glitch. Somewhere down on the first floor someone snorted, loud and mean, and Hanjae shuddered.

After five minutes, Haruki sent:

[haruhyung]: ok .

More texts came after those, spaced out between days or just hours, sometimes full sentences or just direct question marks, one time with a photo attached in the morning. Hanjae didn’t see it right away, went back to check during lunch break and found nothing but a short trail of deleted messages. 

It’s all the interaction they have behind the scenes lately. No more idle talk in the practice room, no more shared space in the house, just ‘free?’ and ‘no’ and ‘sorry’ and ‘ok.’

Now: a live session for the english version of ‘You Can’t Hold My Heart’ that they managed to film in one single take. Jooheon PD promises to treat them to something for it, and everyone’s saying suggestions on top of suggestions at the speed of light. Hanjae’s trying to gather up courage to ask for hot pot again, preparing for the complaining it’ll cause, when his phone dings.

[haruhyung]: ditch with me .

[haruhyung]: discreetly .

Hanjae takes a wild look across the studio until he finds Haruki: set against a wall in a corner, waiting to be looked at, tapping one foot on the ground. After what feels like a minute of unstable eye contact, but couldn’t be more than a second or so, Haruki ducks his head down and goes back to typing.

[haruhyng]: im really not going to ask again .

It takes little to no excuse to ditch dinner – barbecue, they have decided, and Hanjae’s trying to cut off red meat, doesn’t want to go somewhere so crowded after seeing so many people all day, he says, and Haruki interveins to ask Jooheon if he can pay their cab home. No one asks why he’s not going; no one was expecting Haruki to want to go.

They don’t take the free cab home. They’re instead back at Deh’s apartment complex, taking the stairs quietly.

“I’ll be coming three times a week to feed her cats this month,” Haruki says, unlocking and holding the door open for Hanjae so he can step inside. “She’s traveling out of town.”

“Hm,” is Hanjae’s shaky answer.

The inside of Deh’s apartment looks very much like what he would assume it would: neat, colorful, synthetic fur coats everywhere – really, everywhere.

While Haruki gathers up the cats, two small and loud things, Hanjae sits down on the printed loveseat and makes direct eye contact with a wigged mannequin head next to the TV, plastic lips shiny with lipstick.

When Haruki comes back to the living room, duties all done, he opens the big window on the far left and sits on the cushioned frame, one elegant leg over the other. 

He says, with a cig materialized between his teeth somehow, “Deh’s got a lighter on the second drawer– Second drawer, Hanjae– Yeah, that one, the green one. Come here. Bring it over.”

Hanjae brings it over, and Haruki tilts his head up, points to his cigarette, still hanging from his mouth. Hanjae lights it up for him after a couple of clumsy tries, and flees – bolts away with the lighter at the center of his fisted palm, goes to sit back on the couch, grows uncomfortable, slides down to the floor.

Haruki watches him move with an enerved smile on his face. “How funny,” he says, dryly, and then no one says a thing. He smokes, and Hanjae can’t stand the smell, coffs into his hand once. He sees Haruki move even closer to the window, peeking outside.

“So,” Hanjae tries, when it all turns into too much – the smoke, the quiet. He’s tracing a pattern with his finger on the carpet; a circle on top of a circle on top of a circle. “Do you– You come by often? To see her?”

Haruki makes a choking sound. His eyes are very narrow when he looks at Hanjae. “What are you trying to ask?”

Hanjae forces a shrug that he knows falls very flat.

“Deh’s a woman, Hanjae,” Haruki says after a beat, with a strong emphasis on ‘woman’, and Hanjae turns bright red and hot on his face, immediately responds with ‘Yes, I know’ – would rather shoot his own foot than insinuate she’s not. “And I’m not interested in women, so no, I don’t see her.”

“But you– You never told,” Hanjae stammers, and Haruki tilts his head at him, frown easing. “You never told any of us you’re not straight.”

“None of you ever just asked me,” Haruki counters, and there’s a little humor in him, somewhere – a bit of pride at that, maybe, until he recalls, “Except for Zhiming once, but he doesn’t count. Zhiming somehow always knows. Side effects of having a gay mom, I guess.”

“Did you know before? Before your… Your whole relationship, with– was your relationship what made you…” Hanjae stops talking. Haruki’s eyebrows have darted up and they stay up, waiting, challenging; ‘go on, finish the sentence’.

Hanjae sheepishly goes back to the mannequin head. It has a pink rhinestone hot glued on its nose, mimicking a piercing.

“Alright,” Haruki says, giving in. He rearranges himself on the window, puts his two feet steady on the floor, manspreading. “This again– Alright. You get three questions. Just three. Then we’ll never talk about it again, so be wise. If it’s something stupid I won’t answer.”

Hanjae accepts this, tonguing his cheek while he thinks. He has a billion questions, too many, all build up in these two months, but they’ve all escaped him somehow. He settles for an hesitant, “‘This again?’”

“I know you know Chihoon’s aware. And now Jiahang is, too,” Haruki says, and Hanjae patiently waits for more information. A whole minute goes by and Haruki, smoke coming in and out of his mouth, doesn’t offer him anything else.

“Since when?”

“Dylan? L.A. After the beach with you, he caught the… aftermath,” he grims, humorless. “And J.J knows since last week, after the festival. The day you ditched me for guitar practice with Mijoo nim.”

“That’s not,” Hanjae offers, alternating between looking at him and not looking at him; peeking instead at the shape he made on the green carpet, there still. “Not what I meant.”

“Of course not,” Haruki agrees, and his smile turns tiny, tinier, up until it no longer exists. 

He takes a big drag of the cigarette, the last one; tosses the bug right out of the window without putting the flame out. Behind him, the world looks pink, green, warm yellow. It’s the sort of spring that makes you feel like it’ll never leave you.

“Look, Hanjae, you don’t want to know everything. Not very pretty, with him being married and a dad and my boss and all. Bottom line is he casted me, he made me into a trainee, and that might have saved my life. I understood the way he looked at me and decided to just– let him have it. So I asked him out, kind of. He said yes, kind of. Next thing I knew, it had been going on for years.”

“Years?” Hanjae lets out, a little scandalized, too blunt, and Haruki gives him a look – ‘last question’. He rushes to amend it with, “Why?”

Haruki, with a hint of afternoon sun contouring his falling face, says, “I don’t know. I don’t know why,” and it’s the one thing Hanjae didn’t want to hear.

He wished for: because he loved me, or because it made me happy. But he knew it wouldn’t be that, felt it like a hollow in his stomach. From that day in the rain, he knew.

“I have a question for you, now. Just one,” Haruki says, turning his face back inside. Hanjae hums, letting him go on. “Are you dragging it out on purpose? Fucking me, I mean. Are you trying to make it some grand thing?”

Hanjae takes a beat to respond because he knows he should. He thinks about it deeply, eyes stuck in a corner, and shakes his head ‘no’. It’s the truth; he’s not trying to turn it into a grand thing – he understands now, with a tang of sadness, that he can’t make any of it special.

“Good,” Haruki says, and nods too. “You shouldn’t. I know marketing wants everyone to think I’m some sex god, but I’m not. I’m really not. You should just get me out of your system already. Quick and nice. It’s not like there’s a point in waiting, or… courting. We’re never going to date, Hanjae. You know that.”

“Yes. I know.”

“So…?” Haruki looks around, to all the space, and Hanjae does too. There’s very little of it, it’s a little room, but still, it looks so lived in. It looks like a place that’s loved.

Hanjae lowers his head down, eyes his small circle, fading. “Would Deh mind?” He asks, a whisper.

“Hanjae, she won’t know. No one will know,” Haruki says, and he’s grown annoyed now, shifty in his seat. “No one cares to know. No one gives that much of a fuck, or– It’s fine. It’s really fine.”

“I just– the thing is–,” Hanjae stutters, and tries to push through even when Haruki makes a discontent noise. “I never planned to do anything about it, or act– really act on liking you. This,” he motions to the drift between them, the awkward air: this, “Is not just me thinking you’re attractive, or– I really respect you, hyung, as my bandmate, as my colleague. If anything, what I always wanted was just for you to trust me with who you are, someday, because I think you’re– I just want us to be closer. Any way goes. That’s what I feel.”

He takes a peek up, over his own bangs, and sees Haruki’s eyes flickering. He widens his stance, knees more apart, and his voice sounds very low when he says, “You can grow real close to me now.”

Hanjae sighs at him, because he can’t help it. He tries to think of words, better words. Tries to build some sort of bridge out of them.

“Is it a good time?” It’s what he asks. “It’s been– It’s been a really long week, and you just… Aren’t you tired? I’m tired. You look like you’re tired.”

Haruki’s face clouds, gets taken over by something very cold. “I am tired. I’m tired of you rejecting me.”

“I’m not. I’m not rejecting you. I just don’t want to feel like I’m making a mistake. I don’t want to make a mistake, and I think, neither do you, right? Again?” Hanjae asks, and immediately regrets it when he catches the effect of the word ‘again’. It makes Haruki close his legs shut, makes his jaw tense. Hanjae says, quicker, “I’ve lost a team one time, hyung, by being impulsive – and it looked like this, it felt just like this.”

The silence that gets in between them is loud, almost sticky. Hanjae fights an inner battle to not fill it up with, ‘Please let’s talk, can you talk to me, really talk to me, just talk to me, and tell me what is it that you actually want.’

In a room away, the cats scratch a door, begging to be let out, and Haruki’s new phone goes off – a familiar ringtone, a lack of surprise or urge to pick up Hanjae’s seen before.

Haruki rests his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. His chest visibly rises and falls when he breathes. “Ah, this is funny,” he says. “So not today, then, but soon? When I look better, not tired, is that it?”

“If you still want to.”

“If I still want to…” Haruki repeats, like he’s testing out the words, like he wants to figure out how they sound all together. And then rising up, out of the window, splinting behind the couch, behind Hanjae, “Okay. Alright, okay. If that’s what it takes– It’s on.”

“It’s… on?”

Over his shoulder, Hanjae catches the hint of a big grin being thrown at him. “It’s on.”

April 29th to May 6th, 2022. 

After Deh’s apartment and the sex that didn’t, Haruki turns into someone else for a week.

It’s impossible to not take immediate notice; when Hanjae and Dylan sit down on Friday to play Fifa at night he catches the whole thing, even though he’s not a fan of sports, or video games, or hanging out. Hanjae scores two goals and Haruki cheers him on, in an enthusiasm that makes it seem like he’s winning the real World Cup.

When he excuses himself to use the bathroom, Hanjae and Chihoon share a quick, tense glance.

‘What’s happening?’, Dylan mouths, putting the game on pause, and Hanjae mouths back, ‘I don’t know’, pressing for it to go on.

Later, they order takeout food for everyone, and Haruki doesn’t drink anything with his pizza except for a Sprite Zero. He gathers up everyone’s scattered plates after dinner and takes them to the kitchen, where Hanjae has just begun to do the dishes.

He circles him around the room, then leans on the counter, close, says, “Hanhan, what did you do with my KidSuper jacket? I can’t find it anywhere. Come help me look when you’re done with that. I’m in the laundry room, come help me, don’t forget to help me look, yeah?”

It’s an excuse. There’s no KidSuper jacket that needs to be found in the laundry room. Hanjae goes in, Haruki closes the door shut and immediately kisses him against it, suddenly.

They break apart, and Haruki taps Hanjae’s chin up, making Hanjae’s hang open mouth fall shut. He breathes into his face, mutters, “Cute– You look cute surprised,” and leaves – just leaves, vaporizes in thin air.

Six entire days of this: playing cat and mouse at odd hours, being shoved and kissed by Haruki somewhere, catching no sleep, having anxiety all night, wondering if anyone saw it, if anyone has catched on to this whole… energy. 

“You look like a zombie,” Haruki tells him, once – a direct whisper into his ear, with the slightest press of teeth. “Is it because of me? Are you not sleeping well because of me?”

It all comes to a halt on Friday, just as suddenly as it began, because Haruki snaps over something in the afternoon, and he won’t tell anyone what it is.

He locks Dylan out earlier than he’s ever done it, skips dinner, ignores calls; gets fully trashed somewhere between midnight and 4AM, alone. Beomseok had bought fancy imported dry sake for his older brother, a wedding gift he was keeping in the dorms, and the whole thing’s gone, drained.

Beomseok made a big commotion about it, went on to bang on his room door until the entire house was awake at 6 in the morning on a day off, soured everyone’s moods, split them into two: people pissed off at him and people pissed off at Haruki for pissing him off.

It’s tense through the whole day, with no one seeing eye to eye quite right, and when schedule breaks go this south Hanjae knows to expect an empty house after the sun sets.

Soon enough: at 6PM a voice message from Jiahang on their group chat, saying, ‘I’m going clubbing! I’m going clubbing and everyone can come with me! I refuse to not have a nice night tonight, I refuse it!’

Hanjae’s the first one to answer him, off the shower:

[You]: Pass

[jayjayjiji]: 🍅🍅🍅🖕🙄🖕🍅🍅🍅

Hanjae’s midway through sliding his shirt over his head when Haruki barges in without knocking. He stands there, arms up and tangled with the fabric, in his pajama bottoms, short hair wet. Haruki’s a figure that flops on his bed, face and stomach first.

He’s the only one who didn’t get a haircut for ‘Punch’. The hair stylist had run a hand through his hair, moved Haruki’s bangs one side and the other, said, like a joke, “But he’s perfect! He looks perfect already, Junghwa, what do you want me to do?!” It’s a wild thing now, at the back.

“I will sleep with you,” he announces, voice coming off hoarse and loud; drunk again, but mildly.

Hanjae, fully clothed, says, “Seungsoo–”

“Going out. Not a problem. And Minwoo, he is out.”

Hanjae takes small strides to get the burst open door shut. He takes a long peek at the two sides of the corridor: empty.

Behind him, he hears Haruki grumble, “These days, they’ve been so time waste. A waste. Why are you not caring?”

“What do you mean?” Hanjae asks, and comes back near, not too much. He’s still standing up in the crack diving his bed from Minwoo and Seunsgoo’s bunk one.

“I’m trying,” Haruki stresses. “To appeal to you. With my all, to get you to. Start something. You never do. Do something,” he commands at Hanjae, less angry, just agitated. “I am right here, so just– anything.”

Hanjae sits down on the edge of the bed, then. A calculated descent over the sheets.

“But hyung,” He stutters, and Haruki grunts something incomprehensible under his breath. It doesn’t sound like korean, it doesn’t sound like japanese, it doesn’t sound like anything. “Haruki, there’s people at home. No one’s left yet, we don’t know– Don’t know if everyone will.”

“So what? You were all always– So what?”

Hanjae hesitates, worrying his mouth. He takes one of his hands and slowly places it on Haruki’s hair, trying to somewhat pet it, but Haruki isn’t satisfied with that, and turns his face to the side, looks at him with a strong frown. Hanjae puts his hand back where it first laid on his lap, goes back to picking at the hem of his shirt.

And then Haruki reaches out a hand himself, and places it on Hanjae’s exposed knee, squeezes, sinks nails on it. Hanjae pushes himself further back, startled, and the hand follows, leaving a scratch; he almost falls off the bed trying to sneak away from it, and the hand stills, lifeless, not that far away.

“It is like,” Haruki says, and stops for a moment, gulps spit and something else down. “Like when you touch me is all so nothing. Like you do not… You do not really want me. Like you are not trying to make me remember. How can I remember. That you want me. I can not know if you are, just… Not leaving something behind. Like haunting.”

“Haunting?”

Haruki stops moving completely. “I really miss the way, really…” a breath. “The way you looked at me before.”

“And how,” Hanjae prompts, leaning closer, eager to hear it, “How did I look at you before?”

Haruki ignores him. “It is gone,” he laments, and Haruki actively looks like he’s grieving the death of it, whatever it might be. “You have not even fucked me yet, and– gone.”

It’s a quiet, long minute. Hanjae sees Haruki’s eyes go glossy in real time, catches the whole process up until Haruki turns his face away, presses it on the mattress again, hides it.

Haruki pushes his upper body up with his elbows, covers his face with his hands, inhales. Looks at Hanjae again, his eyes peeking through his fingers, dark.

“Ah, you are so nice, Hanjae. Very, very nice, you,” he says, voice still. He stands an arm out, matches every single word with an absent tap on Hanjae’s shoulder. “And all worried, all in your head. It is so annoying. So weird how you–” And he doesn’t say; doesn’t tell Hanjae what’s weird about him.

The hand on his shoulder goes up, scoops his jaw for a tiny moment, then yanks him forward by the back of his neck – Hanjae has to put a knee on the bed frame to not fully stumble. It’s a grip locking him in place, now, as Haruki drags his face near.

“Pick a fucking date. Pick a date,” Haruki tells him, and his voice almost doesn’t sound like his own; is a pure growl. “I am tired. Tired.”

He leaves the same way he came: a door meeting the lock loudly.

Before going to bed, Hanjae selects another shirt to sleep on, a clean one, red like blood in the water.

May 26th, 2022.

“I think I just– Hyung, I think it all comes down to the fact that I don’t understand what you’re asking, because you’re not– you’re not asking. We’re not communicating.”

Haruki’s long pace back and forth in the hotel room comes to a halt. He’s only in underwear under the bath robe he’s got on, black and with an embroidered logo on the chest and back – they both were, up until Hanjae put his shorts back on.

It didn’t take long for Hanjae to pick a date for them to officially have sex: the pre-Camp Camp filming days are the calmest, with the ease of certain success making everyone better to work with, smoothing all the nerves, and a day before they start shooting LOOPiN always have the liberty to do whatever they want. Most staff are too busy setting up cameras around the park, testing the traps, and putting the winning team barracks up to keep them all in check.

Hanjae brought it up to Haruki a couple of days before they traveled to Jeollabuk over their stale text messages, and promptly got an ‘yes’ and nothing further; Haruki kept his distance like a bride on a wedding day over the weeks, barely a blur on the corner of Hanjae’s vision.

So here they are, a day away from being shoved in a park to pretend it’s a jungle. Hanjae walked around with a condom in his short’s pocket since morning and he’s been trying to look forward to it, trying to rationalize the hollow in his stomach as positive anxiety.

By mid afternoon, everyone was leaving the hotel – absolutely everyone. Hanjae couldn’t put a finger on it, but he felt like Haruki had something to do with it. They were sorted into their dorm roommate arrangements by Junghwa, all in the same corridor, both of their rooms at the extreme ends. Hanjae waited for his text to come over Haruki and Dylan’s suite, then made his way in a quiet and dragged on zig-zag – tapped a little song on a vase with a single flower on the hallway table just to bite time.

Dylan was still there when he got in, angrily tying his hiking shoes, and he refused to look at them as he made his way out. He stopped at the door, turned, looked like he was about to say something.

Haruki went to shove him off the room with a tight, “No, Chihoon, I don’t want to hear you, not today, no one wants to hear you, leave, get out.”

Things happened at a weird pace from there. They made out for a long minute, came close to fully undressing then froze awkwardly in the middle of Haruki’s bed, paused it.

“What do you want to do?” Hanjae asked from where he was set on top of him.

“Whatever you want,” Haruki answered, absently tugging at one of Hanjae’s red ears.

So he tried to work with whatever, since he didn’t know what he wanted – he tried to remember some guilty ridden fantasy of his which Haruki had starred in and use that as a guide, but the search came out blank. Hanjae wasn’t getting them anymore, funnily enough, ever since he had been kissed by him a second time.

But no matter what he tried, be it a kiss on the neck or a firm hold on his tight, Haruki barely made a sound, barely seemed to engage and, the most defeating of all, he wouldn’t get hard. It took Hanjae a long moment to notice, too long, and he did so by accident; went to push him by the waist closer but his hand slipped down, and he noticed how limp he felt under his underwear.

That wouldn't do; he asked Haruki again he wanted him to do, what he shouldn’t do, and under the scrutiny Haruki only blurted out dismissively, “Stop, no one fucks to get comfortable, anyway”, and Hanjae’s hand fell from his shoulders.

He said, “What?” and Haruki, “What what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mean by what?” Haruki asked, an uneasy sound, and Hanjae could almost feel him growing cold under him, losing body heat, so he stepped away.

That was a whole hour ago. They’ve been trying to recover, but the mood has gone sour. Hanjae has put his shorts back on a couple minutes after his boner fully died and Haruki seemed to take that as a personal offense, hence the walking.

Hanjae reiterates: “I just can’t know if you like anything if you don’t tell me or… respond. Physically.”

Haruki rubs a hand over his face. He’s annoyed but he’s trying to mask it, says like a tease, “What’s with the language? Did you do research?”

Hanjae sighs. He’s tired of hearing this tone on him. He’s tired of one too many things at once, a Russian doll of exhaustion. A block; the everyday chaos of work, another; the weight of lying to everyone, the effort of keeping it up, and the core one: Haruki not wanting him, pretending to do so, going about it like a chore, like something he must cross off a list.

“What am I doing wrong?” Hanjae asks. “Can you tell me?”

“No, not– You’re not doing things wrong, it just doesn’t happen, okay?” Haruki lets out. “I don’t really get hard, or anything.”

Hanjae processes the phrase word by word. “You mean, you mean never? Or–”

“Not never, just not always. Not a lot.”

“Hyung. Shouldn’t you get that checked?”

“‘Get that checked’,” Haruki parrots, half heartedly, and then quieter, to himself, “I need a fucking drink. ‘Should have sneaked something, should have– Got something.”

Seeing him stuck in place, an unpleased thing, Hanjae can’t help but think back to his snaggletooth days, the pre-rhinoplasty times, that one White Day in seventh grade where his deskmate pity gave him half a chocolate, and wonders if he’s lying, if he’s making something up to make him feel better, if he noticed that Hanjae’s not feeling great, nowhere close to nice.

He’s been hiding his right hand under the cover, trying to not let Haruki hold it, not that he’s tried to do that yet, nor does it seem like he’ll want to.

“We can just not do anything,” Hanjae reminds him. It’s his fourth time saying it, and it gets the exact same reaction out of Haruki each time: an annoyed huff, a roll of eyes. “Not have sex, if it’s not what you want. If I’m not– Not attractive to you.”

“You are, you are. Very attractive,” Haruki says. “Happy?”

“And if I am,” Hanjae prompts. “It’s okay, right? You think it’s okay?”

Haruki’s mouth hangs semi open, his eyes semi shut, when he shoots him a look. “What? I– What?” It’s almost a hiss.

“Can you just tell me why?” Hanjae presses. It’s the right wrong question; it sends Haruki back to pacing, his back turned to him. “Why do you want us to have sex?”

“You want this to happen,” Haruki tells him. “You always wanted it to happen, everyone knows, you made this happen, with all– everything.”

“And you want it too?”

“That’s such a stupid question! Am I not here? Didn’t I tell you to be here?”

“You’re not just,” Hanjae takes in air, sharp through his teeth. “Looking and understanding and– letting me have it, like–”

He can’t fully say it, Haruki doesn’t allow him, shuts it down with a sharp, “Are you my therapist? You’re my therapist now? Fuck off, shut up, be quiet for just a fucking a minute, will you?”

Hanjae withers. From a place inside him, he recalls, he had hoped. He had cultivated hope the size of a grain of sand that maybe, just maybe, the hesitation ment care – that perhaps Haruki liked him, and didn’t know what to do about it, how to go about it. A nice piece of fiction to cling to. But no. It’s clear now: no.

“I really don’t want to pressure you,” Hanjae says, and tries to make his voice louder as the phrase goes on, less miserable, but fails at it.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Hanjae, I understand korean, I understand what you’re saying, I’m not fucking stupid–”

“I didn’t say– I didn’t say you are,” Hanjae tries to reason, but all the sound gets drowned out; there’s only Haruki talking quickly, loudly.

“–So you can stop repeating all these good phrases now, these made up phrases. No one speaks like that. In the real world, no one says that–”

“I mean it.”

“–You’re not pressuring me, Hanjae, trust me, you can’t do that, no one– There’s no pressure, or urgency, or anything. I don’t feel any of that coming from you, so,” Haruki flashes him a smile, thin, ironic, sharp. It looks like something that would be carved out with a pocket knife somewhere.

“Then why,” Hanjae breaths. “Why don’t we end this here? Can we end this here?”

“Again?” Haruki asks, with a laugh. It’s a mean sounding one. “Are you serious?”

“No,” Hanjae says, and swallows. “All of it.”

He almost regrets saying it, given how hard Haruki’s face crumbles. It takes a full minute for him to recover, and Hanjae watches him try to piece an expression back together until he can no longer look.

“Bullshit,” he hears Haruki say, and then again, “Bullshit. C’mon, just. Give me a minute, alright?”

He moves very close, very soon, back on the bed. Their knees are touching again, and they both feel icy.

Haruki says, “I can do better, I promise,” and there’s a hint of a plea there. Hanjae hates to catch it.

“Haruki, it’s okay. It’s okay–”

“No, just, if you just,” His hands hover over Hanjae’s chest, unfocused, trying to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “I can do this, I can, really, if you just try to be more horrible, if you– if you force me, then–” and Haruki shuts his mouth very tight, looks down at the tangle of sheets between them, about to fall off the mattress.

Hanjae at him once and again, forces his eyes to stay open even though. He takes hold of both of Haruki’s wrists feather light, puts them away from him, pushes them to be on Haruki’s own chest. They fall limply on his sides once he lets go.

“Haruki,” Hanjae begins to say, and then stops, has no idea how to proceed. He puts his hands on his forehead, digging. He presses the heel of them over his eyes, hard. “I’m not… I’m not going to do that to you. I don’t want to do that, so can we not? Please? Can we not?”

He takes his hands off his face to try to look him in the eyes, to tell him with them to: I’m not doing that.

Haruki stags up, seems to tense from the heel off his feet to the top of his head. “This is so– awful, awful. What is it, your face is– It looks so–”

Hanjae takes notice of his frown, his quirked down mouth, his eyes – watery, blinking. It’s a sad face, an about-to-burst-into-tears face.

“I can’t stand this, I’m not– Not going to stand here, and be looked at like–” Haruki swallows dry, goes back into motion; picks his shirt back up from the floor, puts it on in a hurry. “I’m going to the pool. I’ll be in the pool, away from you. The whole trip, away from you.”

He stops abruptly at the door, a shaky hand on the handle. Haruki says without looking back at him, exasperated, “You’re gonna let me walk out? I’m leaving, I’m walking out.”

Hanjae says nothing, and experiences what might be the heaviest silence of his life. He feels it from within, taking the form of a bone crushing pressure.

Haruki is even quiet when he leaves, making the door fall shut with almost no sound; a complete dissonance.

June 2nd and 3rd, 2022.

Hanjae lays down, once he’s alone. He spends the rest of the day checking the door, checking his phone – a wild expectation followed by nothing, nothing, except for a tense engulfment of sleep.

Summer comes and Hanjae sees more rain clouds then he sees of just Haruki. It’s voluntary and it isn’t; they’re both avoiding each other.

But promotions are not done, yet, so it’s not as intense as it could be. Just yesterday they got sorted out to film a Heart To Heart episode, and had to scrap it midway because it was heavy, horrible, quiet. Their prompt was: Beach, and they couldn’t hold even a one minute conversation about it.

He got an email from Seo CEO in the morning: ‘Let’s all keep a serene work environment free of misunderstandings and intrigue’, he wrote, underlined and in bold.

Hanjae presses the cold bottle of energy drink against his face, the back of his neck – pure sweat after filming another music show performance. He’s by the vending machine, catching some air, seeing Idols come and go, staff hushing from one side to the other. Some of them bow their heads at him, and Hanjae greets them back with an enthusiasm he knows falls short.

There’s a small commotion in front of their dressing room when he gets there, and he could spot it from a distance. A girl group or at very least a group of around twelve girls, Beomseok and Seungsoo supporting their exposed arms on the doorframe when they talk to them, smiles warm and easy, so he knows exactly what it's all about.

Haruki’s the odd one out, in the middle of them, the center of all attention. He’s always been popular in the hallways, no stranger to little pieces of paper sneaked into his cafeteria orders, someone coming up to him and asking if they can take a selfie, if he’s got a minute – he’s known for dismissing all requests politely.

Hanjae tries to walk by them meekly, without touching anyone, just muttering polite ‘Excuse me’s until he’s allowed through; he isn’t allowed through. Haruki’s got one warm over his shoulder before he can get even a foot inside, before he can even process how, locking him in a clumsy armlock, turning him around, pushing him close.

“And what about him?” He asks the girls, and he’s close enough to press his cheek against Hanjae’s; they’re the exact same height, and their bones fall perfectly aligned. Someone laughs about it, someone woos. “What do we think of him?”

A girl, the closest to them, wearing the sparkliest makeup Hanjae’s ever seen says, joking, “Oh, him? Hmmmmmm, let’s see…”

At his back, Hanjae feels a lingering over and soon can hear Dylan say, a sharp whisper, “Haruki, stop that. Stop.”

Haruki ignores him. His hold on Hanjae’s neck gets tighter, turns into an one armed hug. “Hanjae’s very very shy, but he’s also very very nice. A proper gentleman.”

“Really?” Another girl asks – long curled hair, jet black, dimples showing. “I thought all gentlemen had gone extinct.”

“Noona, so did I! But not Hanjae. He’s proper old school.”

“If that’s true, then he’s cute,” she says, and comes boldly forward to pinch Hanjae’s cheek. Haruki watches her do so with an enthusiastic nod of approval, and Hanjae can feel his sharp sideways grin form in real time. “It makes him the cutest out of all of you.”

“It’s all true, trust me, trust me. He is the cutest out of all of us, yes. Can you believe he’s single? I think it’s so sad, how single he is, how alone he is all the time, always too lonely. We should solve that, no?”

The girl smiles back at him – amused, having fun, flirting with Hanjae, with Haruki, with the two of them at once in front of everyone when she says, “We really should.”

Around them, everyone’s gone into a frenzy over the situation. Seungsoo is slapping Haruki on his free shoulder, screeching ‘You’re so crazy today, Haruki, what’s gotten into you, you crazy man!’, and Hanjae can’t tell if he’s breathing. Then he can feel his lungs moving and nothing else. There’s a small turmoil under them, right where his heart should be, an agitation – fight or flight, and he fails both. He freezes, throat tight and dry.

And then: the enerved click of Junghwa’s heeled shoes, her voice loud when she says, exasperated, “No, no no no, out, out, out! All of you girls out of here right now, what is this?! Where are your managers?!”

The girls scatter in a hurry, all waving goodbye and giggling. Seungsoo puts his hand on his heart and makes a show out of sighing, looking sad, makes a couple of them laugh louder.

Door shut, Junghwa slaps him and Beomseok naked arms with her papers, half joking, half actually slapping them. “I leave for five minutes! Five minutes! What is wrong with you men!”

“We were filming Tiktoks! Innocent little Tiktoks!” Seungsoo says, but he’s laughing, proudly taking his beating. Beomseok simply steps out of her reach, shrugging.

Junghwa stags when she’s in front of Haruki, papers down. She looks for a long moment at his face, searching for something and Hanjae knows what it is: a sign of winter coming earlier.

She’s gentle with him in a different, more impersonal way. He’s the only one out of all of them Junghwa doesn’t call by the first name; she doesn’t use ‘kid’ or ‘boy’ or ‘son’ either.

‘Fukunaga-ssi’ is what she says now, asking if they can have a word in private, and Haruki complies, follows her out, mute.

Hanjae slides his earphones in and tries to not watch them – doesn’t want to look him in the eyes, and thinks he means it forever, feels like it’s a vow being made.

Everyone’s getting more or less undressed by the time he looks up again, falling back into their usual clothes, and the small glimpses of everyone’s torsos at the corner of his eyes are depressing, being back an old discomfort. He sinks into his seat, blinks something off his eyes, looks at the floor. Counts to ten, scratches at his marked hand.

Jiahang comes to sit by his side, gingerly tapping his face with a makeup wipe, a question on his frowned brow, a deep concern. He’s wearing one of Minwoo’s ancient black hoodies, the one with the falling apart NASA logo that fits him too short at the arms.

Hanjae has no idea why his mouth tastes so sour, seeing it; why the next breath he takes through his nose is so sharp.

Junghwa and Haruki come back soon enough, and he and Hanjae are the only ones left to change. She hurries everyone else out, says, “Boys, grab your things– and make sure you have all your things, please– Yes, Kim Haegon, I am talking directly to you, kiddo.”

In a blink there’s only a fan in a corner, making noise, and Haruki in pristine white performance clothes in front of Hanjae, wearing an overshirt with a cascade of thin chains on the back.

“We’re alone,” he says, suddenly, while staring at the floor. “If you want to you can–”

Hanjae stands quickly up, puts a wall and a door between them, turns the lock shut in the small bathroom attached to the room. He’s only sharing space with a shitter and a sink, a little mirror, and he doesn’t want to see even an inch of himself in it.

When he steps out, jeans and an white shirt, Haruki’s gone. His stage jacket lies abandoned on the floor, a tear on the shoulder, a loose chain on the opposite side of the room.

Hanjae staggers at the door, and sees himself walking back to pick it up without thinking. He’s very cautious when he folds it, very gentle when he tucks it under one arm.

[...]

On the ride home Hanjae lingers on the backseat, blearing some song loud enough to not think – pure instrumental, a booming bass.

When they stop in front of the dorm, he stays planted where he is; unties his seatbelt and then thinks better of it, clicks it back shut.

“I’ll go to the company,” he tells no one, just says it out loud, and no one bothers to object. He rides with Junghwa to the New Wave building, even quieter, almost one with the silence.

He doesn’t give her a chance to speak to him when they park, just hops off and goes straight through the reception to practice room #A2, the one with a bunch of old instruments tucked into the lockers, mostly hand-me-downs, some of them broke beyond repair.

He’s aiming for the one drum kit that’s probably around the same age Hanjae is, nothing fancy: it was some staff's son's, someone else’s teenage dream, and he said Hanjae could have it – it’s what his kid would want. It has million pieces of old stickers glued on it and Hanjae never felt like fully peeling them out.

His mind gets lost in the long choreography of setting it up piece by piece. When he finally sits behind the seat, his hands move on their own, just making noise.

And then he finds his way into a rock song through muscle memory. By the end of it, Haruki is a long silhouette in the corner of his eyes, dressed from head to toe in funeral black, and Hanjae almost loses the hold he has on his sticks.

Hanjae’s sweatier than before, breathing slightly through his mouth, still upset with him.

Haruki has a very firm walk when he comes deeper into the room. He stands a paper out in front of Hanjae, his face turned away.

“Phone number,” he explains, waving it even closer to Hanjae like a treat, a gift. “From the girl, earlier. The one that liked you.”

Hanjae lowers his drumsticks as he stares at it, letting his hands fall to his tights. He has no idea what his face is doing, but he knows that if he says I don’t want it, that won’t be all that he’ll say. He might cry; he might fail himself and cry from exhaustion, maybe. Probably something worse, uglier.

“It’s better if you start seeing someone, now. Really seeing someone. This whole thing, it’s so much bullshit. It’s bullshit, Hanjae, it’s like you said. So let’s end this here, like you asked,” Haruki says, and when Hanjae doesn’t move to take up his offer he shoves it in his pocket, walks away, goes to one of the side bars. He puts an extended leg there, a perfect stretch, as he keeps up, carrying an echo: “We’re not compatible, anyway. There was never anything really happening.”

Hanjae’s acting before he knows it. He puts the sticks on their case, tries to get the zipper shut with a hard push that doesn’t do anything. He tries again, harder, and the dent gets stuck on fabric, almost breaks.

“So don’t get sad, Hanhan,” Haruki concludes, turning around, crossing his arms in front of his chest, and his posture is perfect, fully straightened out – a wall again. “It’ll make me upset.”

Hanjae looks at him, as straight in the eyes as he can from a distance – keeps looking even when Haruki dips his chin down, offering only the top of his head.

“It was fun for a day, right? You had one fun day, got your dick sucked,” he says, and he sounds like he’s smiling, like he’s trying to make it sound light, to paint it as something funny. Trying to be intimate, a bit they did. “I don’t mind that we never really– It’s not important to me. I didn’t even want to have sex with you, so– who cares?”

Hanjae closes his eyes tight shut, tries to take a steading inhale. He hears Haruki say, as if from underwater, “But I did want to like you. That week, with all the kissing, all that– I tried to like you. ‘Just didn’t work. Didn’t work.”

“You tried,” Hanjae says, a breath. “You tried to like me.”

From the opposite corner of the room, Haruki puts his face back into view, and the smile he has grows more forced, more visibly sad. It reminds Hanjae of a chalk line drawn on a black board, crooked.

“I told you.”

“What? What did you tell me?”

“Hanjae,” Haruki warns him. “Let’s not make it awkward. I understand you had your ideas, all these expectations–”

“I didn’t. I didn’t have any expectations I didn’t tell you. Everything– I told you. I tried to be honest. At Deh noona’s. That was really all I had to say.”

“Sure,” Haruki says, with a tiny laugh, the hint of a sneer.

‘Sure’. Hanjae’s up from the seat, can’t no longer sit down, can’t barely stand being here.

Haruki keeps eying him like he’s expecting Hanjae to walk straight out of the door, and grows startled when he doesn’t, when he walks near him instead, at half an arm’s distance.

“Why do you think I didn’t mean it? That I was lying?” Hanjae asks the shrunken figure of him. “What sort of person do you think I am? What sort of person do you think being interested in you makes me?”

He’s close enough to see how tightly Haruki’s jaw sets when he looks away, at a nothing point on the far left. His hair falls on his eyes, a curtain. “What sort of question–”

“Every time,” Hanjae speaks over him, and it hurts to do so, because Haruki reacts badly to it, flinching. But someone has to say it; he has to say it, he can’t keep on not saying it. “Every time I wanted to talk to you, hyung, just talk to you, to make sure you were enjoying anything in any way, you looked at me like I disgusted you, like you hated me. Do you hate me? Why? What’s so wrong about all the things, all the things I've done? What’s not correct? I tried being close, and it didn't work. I tried to give you space, and it didn’t work. I still don’t understand, so can you tell me? Can you make it clear to me now?”

Hanjae’s out of air, when he closes his mouth shut. The whole room – sucked out of air.

Very quietly, Haruki says, “I asked for one thing, one thing, and you didn’t do the one thing–”

“You just said– You said you didn’t want to have sex with me. Then why? Why ask? Just because you could? You just asked because you could?”

“Stop,” Haruki tells him, voice rigid. His arms have unfolded and are now holding on to the side bar with all they have. “Stop with the whole why, why, why, just drop it. I’m not saying. Not saying.”

“You can say. I want to listen. I want the answer,” Hanjae says. “I still– I want to be your friend, now. I want you well. To think you’re not– To think you’re hurting, it’s painful. It’s painful.”

“Oh, you’re in pain– You’re in pain, you,” Haruki spits, and laughs, and sniffs, all at once. “Give me a fucking break! Go care about people that care about you, Hanjae, this is so pathetic, everything you always say is– Quit wasting your time with all of this, when you can get a nice girl, someone nice like you and have a nice, normal thing that’s not– Not this. You can choose to not have this, so I don’t understand, I don’t understand why– And you, you won’t understand why, so fuck off, just fuck off! That’s what I want, what I always wanted! For you to fuck off.”

It’s said like an ultimatum, and it sounds harsh enough for Hanjae to feel it more on his chest than on his ears. He tries to take another look at his face, to match the tone to an expression, but can’t – Haruki won’t let him, and Hanaje won’t insist. It’s not his place to insist, and it’s been made clear now. 

He leaves him alone, carrying himself very tightly out the door, out the corridor, out the entryway.

Out on the outside world, it’s already close to being night, and Hanjae takes in the stale air, looking up. He sits on the New Wave front steps despite himself, and the concrete’s warmth is a faint discomfort about to leave him.

The drum was still set there, in the room. Hanjae had wanted it, and promised to care for it, and still: left it there. He’ll have to go back for it, be back and fix it, put it back in place.

He should clean it first, and the floor, maybe the mirrors – not all, just some of them, the ones that look worse. Everything that looks bad, everything not quite right.

When he walks back into the practice room, there’s no sound, no lights on, and Haruki is no longer anywhere to be found.

The drum set is back on the case, compact inside the locker, exactly where it should be, exactly what it should be – as if it had never been touched at all.

[…]

Food tastes bland during dinner, and Hanjae doesn’t have it in him to pretend to have an appetite for Taesong’s sake.

He's been testing out recipes lately. He wants to impress his mother in law because he knows he wants to marry Yunhee, now. Not even two years together and he knows he wants to be with her forever, is sure that it’s mutual, it’s certain they’re in love.

He wants to show it to everyone; he gets to show it to everyone.

“Are you okay, Hanjae?” Taesong asks, over and over again – at the dinner table, on the couch during a drama commercial break, while they’re sharing space in front of the bathroom sink, brushing their teeth.

And each time Hanjae answers “Yes”, a tight “Yes”, and none of them sounds convincing enough, not even one of them he can get right.

Later, in his room: Seungsoo out, Minwoo out, and Hanjae all alone. Typical. Routine. Things as they’ve always been; as they’ve never stopped being, not even once. Haruki’s voice rings on his head when he lays it on the pillow: so alone, all the time, so sad, all lonely.

He checks the time on his phone: 8:03PM. Too early. Hanjae drops it, closes his eyes for a long time, checks it again: 8:16PM, and the pop up notification of receiving two messages from Dylan six minutes ago.

[dylari]: r things w/ haruki done?

[dylari]: plz answer quick

[You]: What do you mean?

[dylari]: idk how else to read this

Chihoon sends him a cropped screenshot showing a single lengthy Kakao message. ‘i don t know whyy is so hard’, the first line reads, ‘f or anyone ti just on ce do what i avsk and n ot sometind ellse like hsnaje he is sp–’

Hanjae stops reading it. He enters his phone’s gallery and deletes it, goes back to the chat and Dylan’s text now shows up as a blurry gray square, only says ‘media not found’.

[You]: Did he send you this?

[dylari]: yeah

[dylari]: our chat is his diary ig

[dylari]: when talking irl gets hard he blows my phone

[dylari]: i thought you knew

[You]: I didnt know

[You]: Sorry to hear you have to deal with that

There’s a long pause from Dylan’s side. When he resumes typing, Hanjae has long deleted both messages, regretted them – is sitting up on the bed with a hand on his face, a hard press, and regretting that too.

[dylari]: dude i dont mind knowing

[dylari]: look dont worry hanjae this is fine

[dylari]: im his roomie im on it i can take care of this

[dylari]: ill keep an eye on him now

[dylari]: im sure you tried your best your own way so thank you

[dylari]: telling you that now because he wont say it even if he wants to say it he wont so let me do that for you

[dylari]: good job

[dylari]: go breath

Hanjae falls asleep with his phone held tight, tight to his chest: 11:49 PM. He dreams of it ringing, ringing, ringing, and not being surprised, just being afraid.

[...]

It’s way past 1AM when Hanjae’s mattress sinks to the weight of Haruki sitting at the far end corner, some few inches away from his feet.

He had heard him unlock the door and come in, Seungsoo with him, making the most amount of noise – slurring more than singing some old pop ballad.

Minwoo had jumped awake out of bed, angry; threw a pillow at them, and then a shoe, told them both to fuck off, and disappeared.

Seungsoo began snoring as soon as his body hit the bed, loudly, which only happens when he’s exhausted; they must have danced all night, must have club hopped all night, trying to be too shifty to get caught.

Haruki stayed for a long moment in the middle of the room after tucking him in, silent. And then he sat there, in Hanjae’s bed, not moving, not breathing, Hanjae even thought, until he took a long inhale through his nose just now.

Hanjae won’t look; he can’t look at him. He promised he wouldn’t.

“I’m gonna leave you alone, now,” Haruki tells him – tells him directly, because Hanjae can almost make out the shape of his stare on his back, right at the shoulder. He bit very close to there once and meant nothing by it, thought nothing of it. “You’ll never have to talk to me when we are away from a camera, Hanjae. I promise. You’re gonna look around and I’m not gonna be there. Not an inch of me. I’m not gonna be there.”

He sounds so clear when he says it – slow, but still sober in a way Hanjae doesn’t hear from him much. He keeps on looking ahead into the dark, a hand gripping this pillow; his eyes won’t close.

Haruki swallows, resumes: “The thing is, you’re too nice, Hanjae, so, so nice, you’ve been so nice, so it’s not– It’s not you, it’s not. It’s me. I can’t– I can’t have that. Doesn’t work. I know it, for a long time. So with you, I was just… Lying. To you, not to me. I know that’s wrong, and I know what’s wrong and I just, still– I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Hanjae, I’m sorry, I shouldn't have– I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I’ll stop, I promise, I’ll stop. I’ll stop everything, everything, so don’t cry, alright? Why are you crying? Don’t do that– Over me? Don’t do that. I’m sorry. Don’t cry, Hanjae, don’t cry, please, I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, I– I didn’t want to make you cry. I didn’t want–”

September 26th, 2023.

He can see Haruki clearly now, the stark shape of him. He’s still wearing the outfit intended for the airport – a sleeveless designer shirt, blue overcoat, and a wine purple trouser with an abstract David Bowie painted on the right leg.

Hanjae observes him from a small distance, catching his breath. He had run there, trying the piece the way back together from memory, growing a little desperate everytime he turned left and it wasn’t the right left; every time he saw an abandoned lot and it wasn’t the right lot.

But he was the one to find him in the end, sitting right on the floor, tense but not so small. He has a moment now to think of the right thing to say.

Hanjae wants to go with the essential: your sister’s at home, she’s looking for you, she wants to know you’re well. As does everyone; as does everything.

He opens his mouth: can’t make it. Opens his mouth again and takes another breath, a hissy breath, through the teeth.

Hanjae isn’t looking at the ground, this time, as he walks forward; he steps over a twig and it breaks loudly in half, disrupts his equilibrium lightly, and Haruki takes a slow look behind his shoulders. Their eyes meet then – and Haruki’s have grown tiny on his face, swollen. They quickly look down, at himself, to the ground.

“Someone found my spot,” he says hoarsely, with a single laugh. He picks one of the bottle pieces on the floor near him, raw glass, and throws it down the hill. It doesn’t make a sound. Hanjae keeps waiting for the glass to break and make a sound, and doesn’t hear it, never hears it. “They got rid of all my chairs– that sucks. That just sucks.”

It’s been a long, long year – 2023, that is. The oddest one yet, their busiest. Hanjae’s half an actor now, goes to TV and gives magazine interviews alone now, and Haruki models often, editorials and campaigns and a whole outdoor, once.

Hanjae squats near him, some inches behind; he’s still scared of how big the drop is. He waits, and waits, and waits more.

Haruki leans a bit on his back, tells him, “You can see his house from here. That's why I liked it, it’s why I came.”

Hanjae squints, looks ahead, trying to spot it even though he has no idea what to look for. He’s never been to Choi Sangwon’s. He knows some of the others have, back when they were Boy Of The Week trainees. Their reports were mixed: he had a big pitbull, a bathroom wall painted in a horrible shade of red, and all the carpets somehow smelled like they were brand new, like no one ever stepped on them.

Haruki laughs, meek, and points ahead; right at the only house with no light coming from the windows, empty. 

“That one,” he says. “I had a key copy, front and back door. I had a floor mattress, mine. I got clothes there, still– mostly underwear, sleep clothes. And my favorite necklace pin, family heirloom, in a drawer, there.”

Hanjae gulps something acid down his throat. “I see,” he says. “I– I see it.”

Haruki turns his whole face at him, suddenly. Looks sad, and tries to not appear sad, smiles. All white teeth. “Are you happy, Hanhan? Like, ever? Are you well, most of the time? Is your girlfriend nice to you, lately? You’re so busy now. With your dramas and all. I hope she understands. I hope she’s watching them, that she likes to see you on them.”

“I’m well, hyung. I’m– Yoora and I, we–,” Hanjae swallows again, dry. The raw truth is: happiness creeps up on him and it’s a battle to let it linger, when he looks around himself. He tries to start over, tries to sound firmer. “And you?”

“Pfff. What do you think? I know you saw the whole,” Haruki makes a hand motion – mimics an explosion, a disaster. “I heard you. Through everything. And thank you, by the way, for not bringing an army with you. For not acting like I’m a princess– Like I’m a runaway princess.”

Hanjae nods, uses that to say ‘you’re welcome’, and doesn’t mean it much. He should have brought an army with him. Or just his sister maybe, whom Haruki adores; avoids but adores.

Hanjae clears his throat, says, “Furumi’s at home. She wants to see you– talk to you.”

Haruki lets out an airy laugh. “Right. The baby.”

“You asked,” Hanjae reminds him.

“I know,” Haruki says, and turns his face upfront; looks at the drop, looks at the house. “I know I asked.”

“Hyung,” Hanjae says. “Can you tell me what happened?”

He sees Haruki run a hand over his face, up his hair, leave it there. He soothes himself before he speaks, a whole damn breaking sort of thing;

“It was so– I was checking on what Monica sent me to wear at the airport, and when I saw Bowie my first thought somehow was, did my boyfriend get a funeral? He was afraid of that. Of dying without a ceremony. His only real fear, I think, the only fear I figured out,” Haruki trails off, for a moment; seems to dive deep into a memory, takes a moment more. He comes back with a sneer. “Why the fuck Bowie? He didn’t like old music, didn’t like rock. Nothing connects– it’s just two dead people, that’s all, that’s it. And Chihoon was right there, right behind me, but for a moment– For a moment, it didn’t look like it was him. It looked like, from this one angle– Fuck, I can’t even say his full name, now. My first boyfriend, a name I can’t say. How sad. How very sad…”

He sounds like he’s giving Hanjae a cue to laugh. Hanjae doesn’t, wouldn’t be able to remember how to do so even if he tried.

Haruki says, “The thing is– The thing is, he made himself my life and then he died. He chose to die, picked a date and a place to die, and I can’t grieve, I shouldn’t want to grieve because it would be insane to feel– When I know he didn’t love me. He didn’t even fucking like me, treated that fucking dog better– Liked the dog better. It could kill me off, and he would say it was my fault. Everything about me made him so angry, all the time, all the time so angry when we were in private. My age, my face, my name, my accent. Everything. And everyone knows now. They all know, because I had to say– Because I can’t get a hold of it, lately. It’s always very cold in the winter, I always felt it, but now it’s the whole year. I feel very– very sad, cold, all year.”

“But they want this so bad, Hanjae,” Haruki tells him, quieter, holding in tears. “All of them. It’s not like you and me. We just landed here. To dance. To act. They live and breathe this thing, this Idol group thing, and it hit me then– It hit me that I can’t be like them, our members. That’s why I panicked, that’s why I couldn’t go to Fashion Week, why I had to come back here. I can’t do it like everyone else does it because it’s never been the same, my career– I don’t think I deserve these things. I didn’t even want them. I was in college, I came here to be in college. I wanted to dance, just dance, like my grandmother did– I wanted to do something for her memory, I wanted to be something she would be proud of, something anyone– anyone would look at and be proud of, and now no one fucking talks to me, anymore, my family doesn’t talk to me. I don’t know my mom’s new phone number– he didn’t even let me keep my mom’s new phone number. ‘Said I didn’t need it, said it didn’t matter.”

“I wish, back then–” Hanjae says, barely feeling his tongue moving. “That I did more. Anything.”

“You really wish that, don’t you? You mean it,” Haruki sounds like he’s marveling at it, that is a truly remarkable thing that Hanjae has said something and meant it. “You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever been with, Hanjae, really. The coolest, too. While I’m the worst one, right? Worst person you’ve ever been with. By miles. You can’t– Never again. No one like me. Never again.”

“Not like him again,” Hanjae tells him. “For you, not like him again.”

Haruki shows him an even sadder face, more wobbly, and shrugs. Just shrugs, looks away.

“I think no one,” he says, with a firm nod. “No one is better. It feels fitting to let that die, too. If I can’t get it right.”

“That’s not true,” Hanjae says, more with his clenched teeth than with his voice. “Not true. It’s not– Not better.”

“Oh, you don’t think so?” Haruki asks, and it’s just words. Just words being said to fill in silence, to cover up a strong sniff.

Hanjae can feel it again; the sharp line of disconnection rising, cutting the air in half, and he still doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t know how to reach him.

He tries; he has to try. Hanjae licks his lips, forces some sound out of his throat: “You know– Haruki, you know, that all of us, everyone, will listen to anything you have to say. All the time.”

“I know that? Do I? And anything? That’s big. That’s really big. You shouldn’t let anyone say anything– no one should have to listen to just anything. Look at Chihoon now, Jiahang now. What good did knowing everything do?”

Hanjae’s at loss of words again, breathing around a lump on the middle of his throat. He’s too bad at this, too tired to think – just off a long action shoot. He still has his outside mask shoved into his jeans back pocket.

Somewhere in the distance, he can hear a dog haul; a coded hymn to the moon, maybe. Something about wanting life to stay still, wait a little longer. And then silence, a defeating one. A shuffling coming from Haruki in front of him.

“Can you, we– Ah, it’s so,” Haruki begins to say, shaking his head. “Can you hug me? If it’s not too hard or– bad for you. Just one time.”

Hanjae’s up on his feet before he’s even done talking. He stands his hand out, a timid invitation, and Haruki takes it, allowing Hanjae to help him up.

Haruki lays his forehead on his shoulder and stays there, being hugged, fully still until he takes a big shuddering breath. His arms stay glued to his sides, limp.

“I’ve never really– I never did just this,” he tells Hanjae; a shaky whisper, an old time secret. “It’s never been just this, before.”

Hanjae turns his face to the side and away so he can suck in air, so he can close his eyes shut, for a moment. He can’t think too much about it now. He taps at Haruki’s shoulder blades warmly, like a dad or a coach would – pat, pat, pat.

It gets an airy laugh out of him, a long and disbelieved one. “Bro hug!” Haruki exclaims when he steps away, whipping at his running nose, “You just gave me a bro hug. It’s really over now. We’re never going to fuck now. All that, over. What are we, if we’re bro hugging?”

“We’re a team. We’re friends,” Hanjae says, and thinks; you said so right here, once.

Haruki’s face makes too many things at once, hearing it. He looks down at himself again, accessing all the damage done to Monica Imano’s design. Bowie’s face has turned red with dust, and it looks even more smudged.

“VIANFINO is going to fire me,” he concludes with a dry chuckle. “They told me one more slip– the sponsoring, over.”

Hanjae bats an idle leaf off his shoulder and for once Haruki doesn’t flinch out of reach. He tries to give him a truthful close mouthed smile.

“Leave it to me– Leave them all with me,” Hanjae says, and leaves his hand there, a firm hold on him. “I’ll wash them.”

[mothernatureknows]

“Just take my hand, and hold on tight…” - for @intergalacticxmisfits

Fuckin’ hell, here they go again. 

Luna rubs her hands over her face, dispelling any sense of sleep she had left. She stares solemnly at the ceiling of the Po’s guest room, enshrouded by darkness, save for the smallest sliver of light from the window nearby. 

Just when she thought she had gotten rid of them, they just had to come back. Fucking night terrors. Luna was absolutely fine facing them when she was younger, beat the shit out of them and got some sleep. Well...relatively speaking, she would forego sleep and ignore them whenever she did have those nightmares. 

For some time, conveniently after she met Maddy, the night terrors became less and less. Up until they stopped altogether. Luna was finally able to get some rest and enjoy her sleep, rather than dread it. 

However, tonight of all nights, when she wouldn’t have guessed otherwise, she was plagued with whatever-the-fuck that had been. All she can really remember are shadows suffocating her entire being, eclipsing every available orifice and drowning out her screams. 

Her body rolls over, one hand reaching over the side to grab at her phone. The bright screen hurts her eyes as she adjusts, blinking rapidly when she sees the time glaring back:

2:54.

Luna groans loudly, throwing her phone back down and tossing the sheets off her form. Well, she might as well not sleep anymore. Yeah, yeah, she could’ve, but would she? Most definitely NOT. 

Bare feet drag out of the room, careful to not make too much noise. Typically, Luna would be notorious for making her presence known: throwing open doors, stomping on floors, speaking incredibly loudly. But, she wants to be considerate of her two favorite nieces next door. They have school in a few hours and there was nothing worse than a cranky pair of Pos. Luna’s already dealt with cranky Maddy and a semi-cranky Minjae, which was more than enough. 

The path to the kitchen is easy to find, slim fingers gripping for a cup in the dark. Quietly, Luna brews a cup of coffee—courtesy of the Keurig she snuck into the home a few weeks ago—forming a few ice cubes to drop into the dark liquid. 

She’s heading to the living room when a body crashes into her, nearly spilling the iced coffee all over her shirt. “Holy fuck, what the hell??” she curses, squinting in the dim light. For a moment, she’s worried that it was one of the girls, slipping through the shadows after being awakened. If it was one of the parents, Luna would’ve just brushed them off, telling them to watch where they’re going next time. But, as the dim light reveals, it’s neither one of those. 

“Minwoo, why are you up right now?” she asks accusingly, blue eyes meeting brown in the dark. “Don’t you have something important later?” At least, Luna assumes so. The Pos are always so busy doing some shit, she can only guess that that was the case. 

She takes a sip of her coffee as she searches his face for an answer, despite the wavering silence. Something about it seems familiar, an expression she’d seen before...in her own eyes. 

“...Couldn’t sleep?” she mutters finally, swirling her cup. The change in his expression confirms her suspicion, her lips releasing a sigh. “Follow me.”

***

Her breath forms a heavy cloud in the outside air, reaching out to the stars before dissipating altogether. She taps her makeshift skates on the ice, glancing back. “Ice is thick. No breakthroughs.”

After a few, comfortable bouts of silence and an offering of hot chocolate, Luna surreptitiously invited Minwoo to ice skate. Luna was thinking about getting some exercise done for a couple hours, and get some ice practice done, too. The cold was starting to seep through the weather, all the more encouraging for Luna to work her magic and turn everything into her own winter wonderland. 

Providing some lame but irrefutable excuse about this being the coldest part of the state and ice tending to set in quickly at this hour, Luna had led Minwoo out into a secluded portion of the Po’s backyard forest, a small lake conveniently frozen over. 

Enchanting some skates behind a bush, Luna tosses the blades at Minwoo’s feet, already tying up her own. “They attach to your feet, so, just wrap ‘em around the shoes and they should hold up.” In theory. She’s only ever done it on her own shoes and they only held up because she enchanted them to do so. She’d have to discreetly do that to his skates, just so she didn’t end up being liable for any damage. 

As soon as she’s ready to go, Luna jumps out and skates across the lake, sighing as the smooth glide ripples up her figure. Momentarily not caring for an audience, she twirls and twists, allowing the cool breeze to move and turn her body. Ice trailed down from her skates, creating frosted images in the lake. Nearby, a cloud of snowflakes began raining down on them, conveniently hiding the ice shooting down from Luna’s hands. 

After a while, the white haired woman skated to Minwoo’s direction, a spray of ice staining his shoes. “C’mon, it’s safe, look,” she grabs his much larger, warm hands with her small, almost-frozen ones, sliding back. “You move with it, like you don’t give a shit what happens.”

Despite her appearance, Luna carries a strong and wiry frame underneath her layers. She’s battled and bludgeoned assholes twice her height and weight, even freezing a few. So, she wasn’t at all phased by a big-muscled softie, who apparently didn’t know how to skate. 

Just for shits and giggles, Luna lets go of Minwoo and allows him to glide on his own, deciding to circle around him instead. “Don’t fall,” she taunts, lips turned up slightly. 

Under the star and waning moonlight, they shine a perfect spotlight on him, illuminating his brown strands like spun gold, and sending sparkles in his eyes. For a second, a spark of purple shines in his irises, connecting with Luna in a way beyond her own understanding. Like it was calling to something...inside of her. It sounded cheesy as fuck, but Luna doesn’t have a whole-ass dictionary embedded into her brain, so this is all she can muster to describe whatever-the-hell he makes her feel. 

(Unbeknownst to both of them, a circle of nocturnal creatures surround the frozen lake, witnessing the entire interaction.)

“You could at least do something,” she says, letting her skates travel naturally to his direction. “Stick your arms and ass out and move. Amelia and Penelope could do it, so can you.” Without waiting for a response, Luna moves his body to do as she says, careful not to actually touch anything inappropriate, but still jostling him around. She tries very hard to ignore the tingling she feels whenever her skin brushes his. 

“Go! Move with the ice,” which didn’t make much sense to the lay person, but she’s sure he’ll get the idea. In her eyes, he was moving barely an inch a second, but, hey, progress was progress? At least, that’s what Maddy would say. 

She’s ready to take his hand again, not because she wants to, but because he could use some more guidance, that’s ALL. She’s growing increasingly impatient and wants to see how fast he can skate alongside her. As soon as her hand brushes his hand, however, a flash of orange streaks across the ice, forcing her to envelop her entire hand with his. Then, as if both their minds coordinated, both skaters collapse on the ice, their bodies curling into each other. 

The animals quietly crept out of the wood, nearing the fallen two. One curious fox noses against Minwoo’s hand, while an owl lands near Luna’s. They glance at another figure approaching the ice, parting for her. 

A smile graces the lips of the stranger. 

“Well, it is certainly nice to see them getting along,” says she, crouching down for a closer look. “An odd pairing, but quite convenient of keeping them all close in the future.” Red hair swirls as the stranger turns to look at Luna’s handiwork, breathing a sigh. “Shame that she had to create a lake so early this time of year. Really would disrupt my entire schedule. But, no worries, everyone. We must carry them out so I may clean all this up. Lovelies...you know what to do.”

[sourkive]

013 : THE STORM.

Starring: Lee Bohyung.

Featuring: Kim Seungsoo.

Summary: Bohyung tries to run away.

Word Count: 2k.

CW: Bohyung makes a flippant comment about suicide, otherwise I think no warnings apply. Feel free to lmk if you notice something!

“I dunno why they always book me for the shitty jobs.” Bohyung mutters. It's the first word he’s said since getting into the car an hour ago.

He can see Seungsoo drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He bites at the corner of his lower lip, chin jutting out just slightly. Bohyung knows these habits; knows them from the afternoons when Minwoo stumbles home in the clothes he’d gone out the night before in; or when Jade goes to bed without cleaning up his usual bombsite of ingredients in the kitchen. It's the face Seungsoo makes when he’s forcing himself not to be a parent and yell.

“Are you going to be like this when we get there?” Seungsoo asks. Bohyung rolls his eyes, staring out of the car window. His knees are tucked close to his chest. They’re winding down a street; some rundown residential area on the outskirts of the city. It's already nine at night, the sky way darker than it should be on the precipice of summer, and the rain falls in torrents, pelting off of the car. It had been storming for hours now, thunder clapping roughly above them. Seungsoo hadn’t fancied the highway in this weather and opted to take the road less travelled; he’d plotted out a route to Daegu that would minimise the amount of highway roads he’d need to take. 

Bohyung trusted that they weren’t lost, but he’d lived in Seoul since he was eleven, and he still has no idea where they were.

“Like what?” Bohyung asks; though it comes out as more of a grumble. 

“You’ve been scowling for the whole fucking journey.” Seungsoo says. His tone is always dry; his manner of speaking is always rough, and yet, for some reason, today it infuriates Bohyung as if he’s not used to it. As if he hasn’t known Seungsoo since he started training six years ago. As if Seungsoo didn’t sleep in Sour Candy’s dorm five days a week; seven during active promotions. Bohyung liked Seungsoo. But today, he was the last person he wanted to see. And his car was the last place he wanted to be, and some variety show that pulled in some of the worst ratings Bohyung had ever seen was the last thing he wanted to film. 

“When we get to work, I'll do my job. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“Wanna talk about what’s bothering you?” 

“Why am I doing shows that film in Daegu?” Bohyung asks. 

“What?” Seungsoo throws back. Bohyung can already detect irritation in his voice, which is exactly why he never talks to Seungsoo about what’s bothering him. “What does that mean?” 

“It means; why the fuck would you film in Daegu, when every fucking TV personality in the country lives in Seoul?” 

“That’s not-“

“Nobody even watches this show.” Bohyung says, folding his arms over his knees. He looks down at his feet, tucking his chin in. “And the host is weird.”

“What do you mean ‘weird’?”

“I feel like he’s, like, a pervert or something.” Bohyung says. 

“Are there allegations against him?”

“No. It's just his vibes.”

“Well, Valentine usually does background checks-“

Bohyung spits out a meanspirited little laugh. “Is that why we all got hauled into Seobin’s office a week ago and asked if anybody had ever felt us up?” 

Seungsoo doesn’t respond, but he does pull to the side of the road; parking against a pavement rowed by a line of old fashioned looking houses. A large field spans the other side, a little playpark haphazardly assembled close to its edge, looking unimpressive and unfinished compared to the span of surface available. The sky is split into fractions by phone lines, each side of the road barred by big wooden poles. 

There’s little bits of architecture in the houses that remind Bohyung of the street he grew up on; but then again, they could really be at the edge of any city in the world, on a street like this. 

“What’s going on?” Seungsoo asks. “Why are you acting like this?”

“It's nothing.” Bohyung says. Seungsoo looks deeply at him in an awkward and uncomfortable way; and that’s not what this relationship is, and he’s not going to spill his guts to a manager, even if it is his longest lasting one. Seungsoo cares because he’s paid to care. whatever Bohyung says is bound to be reported back. “Keep driving.”

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing's wrong.”

“There’s clearly-“

“I'm going to be late for the gig.”

“You don’t care about the gig.”

“Please just drive the fucking car-“

“No, we’re not moving until-“

“Fine.”

Bohyung undoes his seatbelt with a click. Seungsoo’s halfway through telling him not to be stupid when he opens the door and steps out, plunging himself into the torrential rain in nothing but an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of uncomfortably tight skinny jeans he’d quickly grabbed from the laundry and realised too late were Minwoo’s. Minwoo is short, so they sit too high above his ankles, which immediately find themselves dunked into the flooded road, filling his shoes up with water. 

In seconds, he’s drenched. Whatever possessed him to do this, he regrets it immediately, but he can’t exactly get back in the car now. So he slams the door shut and sets off, storming down the middle of the road and ignoring Seungsoo as he gets out of the car in turn and hollers his name.

“Get back in the fucking car- there’s phone lines everywhere, Bohyung, you’re gonna get fucking struck by lightning-“

“Whatever.” Bohyung calls out without looking back, continuing to wade his way down the street on his pilgrimage to nowhere; the rain battering down hard against him as he marches aimlessly down the road; clinging his clothes to his skin and plastering his hair to his forehead. Behind him, he hears a sigh and quick footsteps. “People don’t just fucking get struck by lightning.“

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Seungsoo catches up to him in no time, grabbing him by his shoulder. Bohyung tries to pull forward, but Seungsoo is much stronger than him, fingers digging into him as he forces him back around. “Do you know how electricity works?” 

“Yes, but nothing like that would ever happen to me,” Bohyung grumbles, stretching his arms out to his sides. He puts a few footsteps between them, a hand raising to tug his bangs out of his eyes in frustration. “I’m not going to get struck by fucking lighting, I'm not going be kidnapped and murdered, I'm never going to be in a plane crash. I probably won’t even kill myself.”

“Bohyung.” Seungsoo looks at him with a furrowed brow, concern heavily on his features. “I don’t know if you’re having a psychotic episode or something, but you can get hurt the same as anybody else.” 

“Well, god has made it pretty clear by now that I’m not interesting enough for a death anybody would pay attention to.” Bohyung says. He says it as if it’s fact; because he truly does believe it, though it aches his chest to say it out loud; each word a knife that slits his throat on its way out. “I’m gonna, fucking… die in my sleep as a lonely old man and never be found.” 

“Alright.” Seungsoo sighs. He rubs his face, fingers pushing underneath his glasses, which are likely impossible to see through at this point. He pulls them off, hands dropping to his sides. “I hate to break it to you, son, but you’re famous. You got a lot of fans. You have your parents, right? Your sister? You have that boy from your old label. Quite frankly, I’d mourn you if you died. I know you and the other boys are going through some growing pains right now, but there’s no need for all this.” 

Bohyung gives a weak smile, and so much is bubbling inside of him that he just can’t phrase and that he knows Seungsoo will have a rebuttal to; that his parents had tossed him into the industry the second they found out he could sing and barely called if they didn’t need money, that his sister would adore the sympathy, that Chiwon had been better off without Bohyung for a long time now, that Seungsoo would be assigned to another artist or find another job and forget all about him. And he thinks about fans and it splinters him a little, that he just doesn’t care about them; and he says;

“I don't want to do this anymore.” It’s quiet, and Seungsoo is quiet too, and for a while it’s nothing but the rain hammering against the pavement, clattering like a sick anticipatory applause for Bohyung’s grand finale. 

“Do what?” Seungsoo asks.

“This.” He gestures around him as if the street he’d stormed down had any meaning. It hadn’t; he’d just gone where his feet had taken him, like always. Something opens the floodgates though; and suddenly he’s just talking, each sentence getting more and more breathless as his volume increases, voice cracking as his throat constricts and his eyes well with tears. “I don't want this. i don’t want to wake up and get in a car and drive the length of Korea just to stand in the basement of a broadcasting station and pretend to laugh at the physical comedy of a middle aged man. I don’t want to get on stage and pretend to fucking cry at every stupid arbitrary music show win you rig for us. I don’t want to thank a company who can’t even protect us from creeps. I don’t want to listen to the other three’s melodramas anymore- And it’s gonna make me sound horrible, but to be honest, I don't want to play backup dancer for Harin either, not when I can sing circles around him.”

“Bohyung…” above them, the thunder claps; the sky flashes with lightning and Seungsoo flinches, but nothing strikes. “Things are tough right now, but-”

“They’re not, though!” Bohyung cries out, with a bitter laugh. The tears fall from his eyes, the thunder rumbling darkly just as they make their maiden plummet from his bottom lashes. The second flash of lightning is brighter still; the rain is pooling by their feet and soaking through the canvas of Bohyung’s vans, though he’s far too into this now to worry about conductivity. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop himself from crying. “They’re no tougher than they’ve ever been. I started training when i was eleven fucking years old and it has never not fucking sucked.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” 

“It was shitty cause V.o.X were failing and then it was shitty because we broke up, and then I came here and trained for five more fucking years and Sour Candy debuted and didn’t fail and yet I still feel like this, every single day. And it has nothing to do with the other boys and it has nothing to do with success or pressure, I just don’t want this! I don't want to be here! I know that it’s gonna fuck everything up if I leave, I know that it’s selfish and it’s going to cause huge problems for the others, and I know that I made a fucking commitment but I just don’t care. I’ve never cared. I need out of this fucking industry because all it’s ever done is ruin me and i don’t- fucking- want to do this anymore!” 

Seungsoo pulls his hoodie tighter around his body, frowning. “Do you mean all that?” he asks. 

Bohyung doesn’t think there’s any turning back when he nods his head, pursing his lips as a sob rattles his chest. And Seungsoo, grumpy, gruff Seungsoo who’d always been so concerned with masculinity he wouldn’t even let himself laugh at Jade’s inappropriate jokes, pulls Bohyung into his chest, arms wrapping tightly around his back. 

Bohyung feels himself break, and then he’s sobbing into Seungsoo’s chest; loud and vocal, snotty and embarrassing. Seungsoo just holds him, rubbing his hand across the span of Bohyung’s back. It's rough and uncertain but it’s something. 

By the time they’re back in the car, their clothes are so thoroughly soaked through that Bohyung shivers so hard his jaw chatters against itself. 

“Hair and makeup are going to have a fit when they see you.” Seungsoo says, cranking up the heat in the car. Bohyung gives a soft snort just to acknowledge that Seungsoo had spoken. He looks down at his fingers as they quake and thinks that, moreso from being cold and wet, he’s shaking from the crash of finally getting the world off of his shoulders. 

“Yeah.” he says. “Sorry.”

“Just be extra nice to everyone today.” Seungsoo says, starting the engine. “I know it’s the last thing you want to do. But get through today. I'll take you to speak to Seobin tomorrow. I’m not gonna lie to you, Bohyung, they’re not gonna let you out of your contract. The best thing I can get you is a break. But you’re gonna need to go on the tour, when it comes. It’s too late to redo everything.” 

Bohyung doesn’t answer straight away. For a few seconds, he’s hit by a wave of disappointment. He’d really thought Seungsoo would help him leave, and he wants to argue some more, or get frustrated at Seungsoo and accuse him of not taking his feelings seriously. He swallows all of that, though, because he knows that he’s right, and just says, “thanks, hyung.”  He did sign a contract, after all. And it wouldn’t be fair on the other boys. Even though, in the long run, he knows well they’d be fine without him. That was the problem all along.

“Y’know, kid,” Seungsoo starts. Bohyung turns his head to look at him, an eyebrow raising when he sees a hint of a smirk on his face. “Maybe next time you want to accuse your friends of being melodramatic, wait until you’re not crying in the rain about how God doesn’t care about you.” 

Bohyung laughs a genuine laugh. It does sting his pride, but he’d woken up this morning feeling like he’d never laugh again. 

So he’ll take it.

[willievermakeithome]

Oh FUCK OFF TAE SU-MI

[joblessquinoa]

It's been an hour and I'm still laughing at, "Are you the Saint of BLACKPINK?" Fuck you Kwon Minwoo

[cosmicloved]

>> A STARTER FROM KIM MINWOO FOR ( @musicalities​​ )

          “ Hey, people listen to you, right? ”    It’s the first thing out Minwoo’s mouth as he struts into the room, with a splayed palm thrust in Evie’s general direction. His footfall is light and agile but the shiny leather of his boots, almost-brand new and needlessly expensive, still creaks with each step. He draws to a stop in the middle of the floor, suddenly cautious of the fact his barging in unannounced has not necessarily earned him the right to sit down anywhere. Still, and somewhat ironically, he does not wait for her to answer before he continues on. 

          “ You make your own music and people pay attention, right? They let you, y’know, release it? You do what you want? ”  says Minwoo, although he is starting to wonder why he keeps asking questions to which he already knows the (really quite obvious) answers. Minwoo isn’t, nor has he ever been, very good at asking for help or even just advice but he’d gotten frustrated enough to swallow his pride and turn to someone who might know a thing or two. He and Evie were roughly the same age, and they had even both spent a decent chunk of their childhood in the same city, but they weren’t in the same realm at all. While Minwoo sweated the hours away in basement dance studios, Evie was making waves in Japan.  “ Because, honestly, I’m starting to feel like a stupid little marionette, flailing my stupid little arms about. ”  But, because he is, after all, terrible at asking for help, he can only look at Evie with an expression of pure exasperation -- a silent how the fuck did you do it?

[jungkookschin]

operation true love! chapter 5: this was all minwoo's fault

after y/n finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her with her adopted sister, she finds herself entangled with two of the most popular boys at their uni: jake and heeseung.

pairing: soccerplayer!jake x reader, tsundere!heeseung x reader

operation true love!

chapter five: this was all minwoo's fault

prev/next

taglist: @curly-fr13s , @viagumi , @gyurtl  , @haechansbbg

Mortification.

Mortification is the horror stricken feeling rushing through your veins as Minwoo approaches the student section. His eyes directly pierce yours as he makes strides right towards you. 

You gulp, instantly regretting even coming to this stupid soccer game. Getting your ass out of bed to be at this game took a lot more effort than anticipated. Sitting on the unwelcoming, cold metal bleachers had you shifting in discomfort- and when everybody shot up to cheer for Minwoo when he scored a decisive goal, you and your friends sat frozen. 

The crowd erupted  in cheers, bellowing his name after he shot the ball into that goalpost. His teammates roared in excitement, dopamine rushing through their veins as they ran towards Minwoo and tackled him in celebration. 

Well- they tried to tackle him in celebration, but they couldn’t because Minwoo ran away from his teammates and to the announcer’s microphone. His long fingers grasped the circumference of the microphone, ignoring the confused protests from the announcers. 

Whispers and doubtful looks of confusion permeated the student section as Minwoo clumsily approached the student section with beads of sweat dripping from the sides of his head.

He continued sauntering your way until he stopped right in front of you. 

“Y/N, that goal was for you.”

The words smoothly flow from his lips as if he had spent hours rehearsing these lines. 

“You’re everything to me- the reason i work hard, the reason I practice hard, and the reason I play hard.”

The profession of his love is accompanied by a lovestruck expression- and had it been the old naive version of you, you would have melted. But you know that his words are nothing but fictitious, and your features curl in disgust.

The boy you fell for never existed. 

The time you wasted on him- your first hand holding, first kiss- it all meant nothing. The realization inflicts a nauseating feeling of revulsion into your system, and that nasty feeling spreads throughout your body and nearly paralyzes you. 

His last profession imposes something vile in you.

“Whatever you think haplened with me and some girl didn’t happen. Please take me back.”

Minwoo’s attempt at manipulating you nauseates you. You witnessed with your own eyes Minwoo leaning down to kiss your sister Ra-Im- right in your fucking room. He has the audacity to cheat on you, lie to you, gaslight you, and publicly manipulate you because he expects that you’ll give him an affirmative answer since the eyes of the entire student body are focused on you. 

“Go fuck yourself,” you say firmly, before you shoot up and run away. 

What’s crazy is that the mic caught heed of your words, amplifying your response to anybody and everybody who was at the game. 

Yunjin and Hiyyih instinctively jolt up, running after you while Wonyoung stays on the bleachers, unable to control her expression. She viciously glares at him, witnessing the way his expression crumbles before he does something very strange. Instead of chasing after you or watching you run off, he looks directly at Ra-Im. 

And of course, Wonyoung doesn’t miss the way Ra-Im subtly smirks to herself before picking up her phone. 

crying your eyes out. Knees curling towards your chest, you’ve been leaning against a cabinet with (probably) many toxic chemicals, and you’re sure you’re getting dizzy from inhaling said chemicals. 

But you can’t bring yourself to leave the room- Minwoo humiliated you in front of everybody. He publicized your issues and successfully tarnished your image by painting you to be the bad guy. Honestly, all you wanted to do is forget about him and move on. You refused to confront Ra-Im on the issue because that would just ruin your family dynamic. And as much as you hate her for being a backstabbing bitch, you know that your parents would no longer welcome her into your home if they know what she did. You hate her, but you don’t want the girl to be homeless. 

You want to move on so badly, but you can’t because you’re constantly being reminded of it. Ra-im lives in the room next to you for goodness sake. And the situation sucks because it’s like you’re mourning the loss of two important people in your life: your ex boyfriend Minwoo, and Ra-Im who used to be your best friend. 

You don’t understand it, and you’d rather suppress your emotions than confront it, which is exactly why you’re in the closet. 

You use your jacket paws to wipe some boogers from your nose before you grab your phone from your pocket and turn it back on. Your friends were blowing up your phone and you were too embarrassed to talk to anybody, so you turned off your phone so the notifications wouldn’t come through. 

When you turn your phone back on, you’re bombarded with hundreds of notifications. You scroll through them briefly, seeing that your friends are freaking out trying to find you. You also see that the men’s soccer team ended up losing. You shiver at the thought, considering that the soccer team may blame you for their loss. 

You shake your head dismissing the thought before you stand up and turn the knob of the janitor’s closet, stepping out quietly. 

As if today wasn’t already a horrible day, you end up running into a certain lead striker right when you step out: Jake Sim. He’s holding his cleats in his hand, hair damp from the shower he took in the men’s soccer room when he stops in his tracks and looks right at you. 

The two of you awkwardly stare at each other, and you gulp, taking in how handsome he is. It’s not like you’re attracted to him, but you can acknowledge that he is attractive. And attractive people intimidate you, so immediately look down and avert eye contact, deciding that this would be the only and last interaction you would ever have with him.

You attempt to step around him and walk away, but he stops you by grasping your wrist. You look at him, confusion etched onto your features, and Jake looks at you in a way that you can only describe as fleeting. Before you can ask him what the hell he’s doing, he pulls you by your arm towards him before he traps you against the wall, forearms pressed on the wall.  

“W-what are you doing?” you whisper, gulping at his close proximity. 

Jake looks down at you, wordless. At this point, you can feel his breath against your cheeks, and you’re peering up at him to properly scrutinize his features. He’s looking down at you with equal fascination eyes glazing over your features. 

“Just-just don’t go,” he finally expresses. 

“I’ve never even spoken to you,” you mutter, finally averting eye contact.

“But I know who you are,” Jake responds swiftly, still gazing down at you. 

“I thought you would be mad at me, um.. That you guys lost because of me,” you hesitantly explain.

Jake responds with an incredulous look. “Y/N that wasn’t your fault. That was all Minwoo.. That fucking idiot,” he suddenly hisses, annoyance etched onto his face. 

“I thought you guys were friends..?-”

“We’re not,” Jake retorts firmly, “We play on the same soccer team. I don’t like him.”

“Oh.”  Jake’s general image was the poster boy of the soccer team: kind to everyone, good at soccer, handsome, gets good grades- you’re a little shocked to hear him speak so abrasively. At the same tie, his face is still close to yours, and the intoxicating scent of his shampoo makes you weak in the knees. 

“Jake, you’re kinda crushing me here,” you squeak. Jake backs up a bit. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Just stay here a little longer, okay?” 

This moment was so painfully awkward but you listen to him because he’s kinda scaring you at this point.

Suddenly, your hear the echoes of two very familiar voices bouncing off the walls of the hallway. Ra-Im and Minwoo. Your heart sinks in the expatiating pit in your stomach, and you immediately follow the sounds of the voices, ignoring Jake’s pleas for you to return. 

You run down the hallway, and see none othr than Ra-Im and Minwoo making out in the classroom. You smile bitterly to yourself: so this is why Jake Sim randomly pushed you against the wall, because he pitited you. 

With tears threatening to spill form your yes, you storm off in the opposite direction. At tis point, you expect nothing from Raim and Minwoo. Both are scum. Minwoo had the audacity to profess his “love” for you in front of the whole school and didn’t even have the decency to wait a day before he ran back into Ra-Im’s arms. 

At this point, Ra-Im is dead to you. All the memories, sleepovers, matching clothes- it means nothing to you. 

As you run off somewhere away from where you are, you ignore Jake’s calls for you to calm down and return. 

“Y/N! Come back! It’s late, let me at least walk you home or something!” he calls, grasping onto your wrist once again. 

You immediately shake his hand off you. “I don’t need your fucking pity” you seethe, “I already know what’s going on between those two- you don’t have to fucking protect me.”

“Y/N, I didn’t mean it like that- I just didn’t want you to be upset. I already know you had a tough day so I thought I should give you a break,” he gently pleas, still chasing you as you storm down the hallway. At the softness of his words, you crumble, slumping down against the wall white you sob into your hands. 

Embarrassing. 

It’s embarrassing that the most popular boy in the school who you’ve never even spoken to is comforting you, letting you cry into his newly cleaned hoodie while his hands gently rub up and down the expanse of your torso. But you suppose that just this time, it’s okay for you to succumb into the welcoming embrace of this cute boy- because you’re hurt and upset. You can always pretend it didn’t happen tomorrow.  

[bangtaninink]

when night falls i am your escape

a sequel / prequel to sanctuary! ( as requested by @athenakyle )

The dull sound of rhythmic knocking against a wall has Jisook stopping in her tracks, a tray of dirty dishes in her grasp.

“I’d keep walking if I were you,” Sanghoon says, fixing his glasses, a leather portfolio tucked in the crook of his arm. “Miss _____ has Master Jeongguk over again.”

Jisook sighs.

“I just did the laundry,” she mutters, walking off.

Sanghoon lets out a terse chuckle in reply, checking his watch.

“Ah, the Chairman and his wife also informed me earlier that they won’t be home for dinner tonight,” he calls out to Jisook. “They’ll be dining with the rest of the board of directors. Miss _____ will be dining out with Master Jeongguk also, so do let the rest of the staff know that only a light supper will be needed when they return, Jisook-sshi.”

“Thank you, Sanghoon.”

Sanghoon bows his head as Jisook disappears into the kitchen, the sound of her shuffling slipper-clad feet growing distant.

The rhythmic knocking eventually stops, and Sanghoon arches a brow at the sudden quiet, looking up from his diary, page half-turned. A few beats later, the door to your room opens, and you emerge in the middle of tying the silk belt of your robe around your waist, hair in a messy bun atop your head.

“Afternoon, Sanghoon,” you greet, lazy smile stretching across your lips. “How you doin’ today?”

“Good afternoon, Miss _____,” he replies, bowing his head. “I’m well. Thank you for asking.”

“Want anything from the kitchen while I’m there?”

“No thank you.”

“Okie dokie. Enjoy the rest of your day, okay?”

“I will do my best, thank you.”

                                                         〰️

Jeongguk yelps when something cold hits the small of his back, clicking his tongue as he pushes himself up off his stomach to sit against the headboard, taking the beer you’re holding out to him.

“It honestly surprises me that I’m allowed inside here every time I come over,” he says, taking a sip.

“Why?” you laugh, reaching into your bowl for a strawberry.

“Uh, ‘cause you’re one of the richest people in the country, and me and the hyungs literally have diets consisting of ramen and discounted kimbap. We are not the same, dude.”

“No one’s complained yet.”

“I don’t think your staff would complain. Maybe talk about you behind your back though.”

“Jeongguk, you’ve seen Jisook. She nags me more than my actual grandma. She would not hesitate to call me out.”

“True. She has such a cold stare sometimes. I can come over here horny out of my mind, but then I see her and I feel like my balls shrivel up and die in an instant.”

“Gross.”

“Well. I could be rich soon though. I hit five hundred thousand followers on Soundcloud within twenty four hours of those photos coming out from that dinner. And then seven hundred and fifty thousand followers on Instagram not long after. Kinda scary how quickly people can find my shit. You didn’t even promote me straight away.”

“Your nudes will be next,” you joke.

“Pfft. Please. You say that like it’s a bad thing. My nudes are spectacular.”

“You know who I bet would love to see your nudes? What’s-her-face. Hara? No, Hana.”

“Oh, Jesus. Don’t,” Jeongguk groans. “I thought her seeing you with me would force her to give up, but now I feel like she’s gotten worse. She keeps blowing up my phone.”

“You gave her your number?”

“Nah, nah. She’s been messaging me on Instagram. I bet it’s because of your ‘statement’.”

“What about my statement?”

“You said I was a ‘close friend’.”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? ‘Jeongguk’s my fuckbuddy. He’s got my favourite flavour of dick!’”

“Aww,” Jeongguk coos, hand pressed to his chest. “I’m touched.”

“Yeah, well, you can touch yourself on your own for the rest of eternity if you keep that up.”

                                                         〰️

“Hi, excuse me, um… c-can I get your autograph?”

You look up from your menu to see someone standing a few feet away from Jeongguk, holding a notebook close to her chest as she waits nervously for an answer.

“Yeah, for sure,” Jeongguk says, grinning and wiggling his eyebrows at you briefly before taking the notebook from the girl, scribbling his signature on a blank page before bowing and watching her walk off. “Look at that. I’m famous.”

“Congratulations,” you say, nonchalant as you turn your eyes back to the menu.

“Damn, you really live like this? I could get used to it.”

“You say that now. Wait ‘til you’re getting followed into the bathroom when you go to take a dump.”

“How much do you think I could sell my shit for now that I’m famous?”

“I dunno. Ask Hana. I bet she’d be the only one crazy enough to buy it,” you say, looking up from your menu again to grin.

“Shut up.”

“Are you ready to order, Miss _____?” a waiter asks, stepping up to the table with a small notepad.

“Mmm, I think I’ll have truffle linguine,” you say, setting the menu down on the table.

“Of course. And for you, sir?”

“Uh… I’ll have the tenderloin steak with the cream potatoes, thank you. Medium rare,” Jeongguk replies, smiling.

“Excellent. We’ll have it over right away.”

“Thank you.”

“Damn. The perks of being rich.” Jeongguk leans back in his seat, hands on the back of his head. “I really could get used to this.”

“Don’t get too cocky, Jeon,” you say, taking a sip of your wine. “It’s not a good look on you.”

“You know what is a good look on me?” You look over your wine glass. “You.”

“God.”

                                                         〰️

“How were your meals tonight?” the waiter asks, collecting you and Jeongguk’s empty plates.

“Amazing. Send my compliments to the chef,” Jeongguk says, smiling. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“Would you like some dessert? Coffee?”

“Oh man, I’m stuffed.”

“Just the bill, thank you, Minwoo,” you say, reaching for your drink.

“Of course,” the waiter says, bowing his head before walking off with the empty dishes.

Jeongguk reaches into his back pocket for his wallet as you finish off your wine, counting out his money before slipping it into the small leather folder the waiter sets down on the table.

“What’re you doing?” you ask, amused; Jeongguk looks at you, confused.

“Paying?”

“Why?”

The crease between his eyebrows grows deeper as he furrows his eyebrows, saying, “because I asked you to come to this restaurant with me? Wait, hold on, I’m confused. Am I missing something? Should I not be paying?”

“No, it’s just… most people would be making me pay, that’s all,” you say, shrugging your shoulders.

“Please,” Jeongguk scoffs, proceeding to put his money in and shut the leather folder. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am not like most people, sweet cheeks. Also, making you pay makes it seem like you’re my sugar mommy or some shit, and that feels weird as fuck.”

“Oh, eww. You’re right.”

“Come on, let’s go. I need a smoke.”

                                                         〰️

You can feel the floor of the club pulsing beneath the soles of your heels, walking over to your usual table with Hyemi and Sora on either side of you, paying no mind to all the heads that turn your way. The rest of your friends cheer and wave when they see you approach, making space for you three in the booths.

The drinks easily come and go, and eventually a bunch of you end up on the dancefloor, nodding your heads and swaying your bodies to the sound of the music, laughing and fooling around as you always do.

One by one, you friends drift off, returning to the tables or leaving with a handsome stranger, until only you and Hyemi remain on the dancefloor – but even she looks like she’s one song away from disappearing from your side.

As you anticipate, just as one Jay Park song ends and another starts, Hyemi has her fingers entwined with an unfamiliar face, and she turns to look at you with an apologetic smile before wandering off. You let her go with a casual shrug and a smile, unbothered because you’re used to this routine now, knowing the fun is only yet to start now that you’re no longer surrounded by your friends.

It’s now that others will gain the courage to approach you, no longer resorting to fleeting glances your way—as if they weren’t being completely obvious in doing so—but using their alcohol-fuelled bravado to make their way closer to you on the dancefloor, until eventually, someone will sidle right up to you, hand on your waist, department store jeans pressed to the back of your tailored Prada dress.

“Hey.”

Like clockwork, you feel a hand come to rest on the small of your back, and the air around you briefly smells like whiskey, cigarettes, and clean laundry.

“Jeongguk,” the stranger says, guiding your hips to sway in time to his.

“_____,” you reply, smiling to yourself.

“Knew that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Surely everyone here does,” Jeongguk says, chuckling.

“You’d be surprised.”

“No way. They’d be insane to think you’re just another pretty face. Are you having a good time so far, _____?”

“Sure am, Jeongguk. How ‘bout you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m fuckin’ petrified.”

“What?” you ask, laughing as you turn around, Jeongguk’s hands wrapping around your waist as you rest your hands on his chest.

(You’re excited to find that his chest is beautifully firm—almost rock solid—beneath your palms.)

“Oh, definitely.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, I’m not sure if you’ve got bodyguards watching you from afar. If I move my hands an inch lower, I could be tackled to the ground and banished from the country for laying a hand on probably the richest twenty-something year old in Korea.”

You throw your head back and laugh, the sound barely drowned out by the loud music.

“I don’t leave the house with bodyguards all the time,” you reply, grinning.

“Ah. A wild child, huh? I’ve heard that too actually.”

“Is that right?”

“Yup,” Jeongguk says, emphasising the last syllable with a pop.

“I’m surprised the tabloids are reporting the truth.”

“Oh, so it’s true? Oh, I like that.” Jeongguk grins when you laugh again. “So. What do you usually do on nights out, Miss _____?”

“Well, that depends on what you usually do on a night out, Mr. Jeongguk,” you reply.

“Hmm. Well, I’ll usually down a few drinks, dance next to a pretty girl, get slapped in the face before she tells me she has a boyfriend, and be on my merry way, crashing on my third secondhand mattress to the sound of my roommates fucking their boyfriends.”

“Sounds like a great time.”

“Eh. Could be better,” Jeongguk replies, shrugging. “Maybe havin’ the balls to dance with one of the richest people in the country will change my fate.”

You hum, barely audible.

“Or maybe this is the part where I slap you and find another hot guy to go home with.”

“Well if that’s the case, at least I can say I tried. I think I’ve done a lot better than that table on my left who’ve been staring at you from the moment you stepped foot on the dancefloor.” You turn to look off to the side, snorting when a cluster of guys startle and turn away from you before any of them can meet your eye.

“Story of my life,” you say, turning back to look at Jeongguk.

“It’s not too late to rewrite it, sweet cheeks,” Jeongguk says, winking. Smooth! “Unless, of course, you were planning on leaving with someone else.”

“Considering you’re the first person to come up to me, I think the gold medal is going to you tonight.”

Dramatically, Jeongguk swipes a finger under his eye.

“I’d like to thank my mother, my lucky lighter, and Jack Daniels.”

He takes your hand and leads you off the dancefloor, no complaints when you detour to your table and grab your things and wave goodbye to your friends who watch on with wide eyes as you leave with your arm hooked around Jeongguk’s.

His friends do the same, it seems, if the way he juts his chin out with a smug look on his face is anything to go by, ignoring the frantic waving to try and get his attention as he walks you to the door. He does, however, humour them with another wink just before he follows you out with a hand on your lower back, paying no mind to the ping of his phone when you’ve both exited the club.

“So. My place or yours?” he asks, waving down a taxi.

“Yours, s'il vous plait,” you reply, running your fingers through your hair. “My place is swarming with people and paperwork right now – probably the whole reason why I came out tonight actually.”

“That sounds so fun.” Jeongguk chuckles, opening the door to the taxi and holding it for you. “After you, sweet cheeks.”

“Wow. A gentleman.”

With a shrug, he waves you in, before climbing into the taxi after you, quoting the address of his apartment to the driver and leaning back, shoulder pressed against yours.

“So. What’s it like being filthy rich?”

“Eh,” you reply, shrugging. “It’s got its pros and cons.”

“Cons?” Jeongguk repeats, eyebrow raised. “That’s hard to believe.”

“That’s what everyone says – until they get a taste of the life, that is.”

“Hmm. Can’t relate. I get excited when I get a new follower on Soundcloud and Instagram, or when I can afford three cups of ramen instead of my usual two. I bet you barely notice followers flooding in – or even eat cup ramen.”

“Well, I can’t say cup ramen is a staple in my diet, but even I can’t resist that stuff. Just means I’ll have to do an extra session of hot yoga to get rid of all that excess sodium.”

“Hot yoga, huh?”

You look at Jeongguk, who stares off into space with wide eyes, totally distracted by what you’d just said. You laugh loudly, shaking your head.

“God, you’re such a… guy.”

“You said ‘hot’ and ‘yoga’ in the same sentence, and I am but a mere mortal,” Jeongguk replies, hand on his chest.

The taxi slows to a stop in front of an apartment complex, and you watch, intrigued, as Jeongguk hands his money to the driver, before stepping out and rounding the car to open the door for you.

He leads you up to his apartment, but without warning, he pauses, hand on the keypad of the front door.

“Shit,” he mutters.

“A problem?” you ask, amused.

“Yeah, I just remembered neither me nor my roommates cleaned up before we left.”

You shrug, saying, “doesn’t sound like a problem to me.”

“Oh, it’s a problem. How dare I invite a goddess into a trash can of an apartment?”

“Are you like this with everyone you sleep with?”

“Well… the guys and gals I sleep with don’t usually have a net worth of a trillion Won…”

You laugh again, shaking your head.

“You can open the door, Jeongguk.”

“Alright, alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Jeongguk punches in the passcode and pushes open the door, turning on the lights and kicking aside stray shoes in the doorway to make a clear path to walk through.

“Honestly,” he says. “I’d say shut your eyes and let me carry you to the bedroom, but I can’t even guarantee my room is any better.”

“This isn’t bad,” you say, scoffing as you look around at the expanse of the apartment, unbothered by the old takeout boxes, empty soda and beer cans, crumpled loose papers, and the remnants of rolled joints and cigarettes in ashtrays around the living room. “You made it seem like a junk yard.”

“I don’t know if you’re just saying that, but I’m not gonna push it,” Jeongguk says, rubbing the back of his neck and chuckling, before motioning to the door of his room. “If you so desire, your Highness, your throne awaits just over there.”

“Weird. Your lap is right here,” you say, nonchalant as you kick your heels off and put your bag down on the sofa, before walking over to Jeongguk’s room.

“Oh,” Jeongguk groans, fist pressed to his lips as he watches the way your hips sway, nodding to himself before eventually chasing after you.

                                                         〰️

Taehyung whimpers softly as Yoongi bites gently at his neck, punching in the passcode without pulling away.

“Hyung,” Taehyung moans, toeing off his shoes, hands fisted around the lapels of Yoongi’s shirt. “Hyung, wait. What’s that noise?”

“Huh?” Dazed, Yoongi lifts his head, eyes squinted in concentration as Taehyung takes the opportunity to nibble at the shell of the elder’s ear, fingers curling around his belt loops. “Is that… I think that’s Jeongguk.”

“Jeonggukie’s home already?”

“Oh fuck, Jeongguk! Yes! Yeah, right there. God!”

Frozen, Yoongi and Taehyung stare off into space as the apartment fills with the sound of moans and groans, jolting in surprise when Jeongguk’s bedroom door swings open.

Panting, Jeongguk frantically crosses the apartment completely naked, stopping dead in his tracks when he notices Yoongi and Taehyung standing in the doorway, staring at him. He jerks his head in a nod, chest still heaving as he grins.

“Hyung, I’m grabbing some condoms from your room,” he calls out.

They watch silently as Jeongguk disappears into Yoongi’s room – and Hoseok’s room, for good measure – before returning to his own room and kicking his door shut, and it isn’t very long before the sounds return.

“You wanna just… watch a movie?” Yoongi mutters, sighing.

“With the volume turned up very loud please, hyung,” Taehyung replies, nodding solemnly.

“I guess I’ll text Hoseok to warn him in case he plans on doing anything with Joon then.”

                                                         〰️

“Christ, you guys wanna turn that down?” Jeongguk says loudly, wincing as he stands shirtless and in a pair of sweatpants against his bedroom doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, lit cigarette held in the corner of his mouth.

Yoongi and Taehyung look at him, eyes narrowed, even as Yoongi’s thumb mashes the volume button on the remote.

“What the fuck were you doing in there?” Yoongi asks, frowning as he holds his lit cigarette to Taehyung’s lips. “I know you’re loud, but Jesus Christ, Guk.”

Jeongguk shrugs, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Did you kill her?” Taehyung asks, exhaling. “Have you just fucked someone to death? I’m telling you right now, we will not be your accessories to murder, Jeon Jeongguk. I’m telling the police everything.”

“I’m sure I can settle any lawsuits that might come from tonight.”

Yoongi inhales sharply, dropping his cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table as he coughs violently when you step out of Jeongguk’s room, tying your hair up. With wide eyes, Taehyung stares at you, mouth opening and shutting repeatedly as he struggles to find words.

“Y-you’re… you… you’re…” he stammers.

“That’s Yoongi hyung, my roommate; and his boyfriend, Taehyung hyung,” Jeongguk says, motioning towards them. “I’m sure I don’t need to introduce you to _____.”

“What the fuck, Jeongguk?” Yoongi says in between coughs. “What the fuck?”

“Your boy’s got game, hyung.”

“Mmm, and a great dick,” you add, picking up your bag.

“Is your driver here? I’ll walk you down.”

“It was nice meeting you two.”

Yoongi and Taehyung stay frozen on the sofa, completely dumbfounded, even when you and Jeongguk leave and meet your driver at the front of the apartment complex.

“Oh,” you say, reaching into your bag and pulling out a pen, grabbing Jeongguk’s hand to scribble your number on his palm.

“Oh, this is officially the best day of my fuckin’ life,” he says, grinning. “Same time next week, sweet cheeks?”

“Wouldn’t say no to that,” you reply, winking and opening the car door. “Let me know if any of your neighbours wanna file any complaints.”

                                                         〰️

[ sms: YOONGI ] _____.

[ sms: _____ ] mr. min. how can I help you?

[ sms: YOONGI ] my phone feels like it’s going to eXPLODE WTF [ sms: YOONGI ] did Jeongguk tell you to do this?

[ sms: _____ ] pfft no [ sms: _____ ] if anything, I did this to piss him off ;

[ sms: YOONGI ] jesus _____ [ sms: YOONGI ] there are so many notifs on here what do I do??? [ sms: YOONGI ] my phone is not strong enough to handle all this [ sms: YOONGI ] I’M not strong enough to handle all this oh god

[ sms: _____ ] you want a new one?

[ sms: YOONGI ] huh?

[ sms: _____ ] a new phone lol

[ sms: YOONGI ] HUH???

[ sms: _____ ] i’ll send you a new one [ sms: _____ ] and hoseokie too :)

[ sms: YOONGI ] hold on [ sms: YOONGI ] HOLD ON [ sms: YOONGI ] YOU’RE SENDING ME AND A SEOK A NEW PHONE??? [ sms: YOONGI ] HELLO?? [ sms: YOONGI ] _____?!

 [ DISPATCH ] Samsung heir, _____, promotes underground Soundcloud rapper, Agust D’s second mixtape, ‘D-2’.

 [ sms: JEONGGUK ] you gave the hyungs new phones??? [ sms: JEONGGUK ] WHAT ABOUT ME

[ sms: _____ ] i’m not your sugar mommy, sweet cheeks ;) [ sms: _____ ] maybe hana will buy you a new one!

[ sms: JEONGGUK ] SHUT UP [ sms: JEONGGUK ] YOU’RE UNBELIEVABLE

[intoloopin-archive]

LOOP GOES DISCO #1 - "THE LAST PIT OF HELL IS AN ASSHOLE'S HOTEL BATHROOM."

A SERIES REWRITE OF DISCARDED SCENES USING DISCO ELYSIUM GAME MECHANICS/LINGO.

TWS: Drug use. Cursing. Self deprecating language. Fighting. Forced vomiting. Blood. Feelings being expressed weirdly at inappropriate times (???).

CONTEXT: This is rewrite of a missing scene from END AT ME: it's a glimpse at the Hell party that caused Minwoo to call Taesong on July 14th going 15th + what proceeded the final motel scene by 4 to 6 hours.

starring: Bang Minwoo. Xu 'J.J' Jiahang.

word account: 3.8K / 3,848 words.

writer's note: OKAY, SO! To anyone who's unfamiliar on how DE functions, fear not: this works as it's own thing. But to hopefully get you into the right mood, I'll link a video to the game's intro as well as the skill sheet out of detail so you can grasp what's being evoked here. Most skills have been adapted to fit this new setting and Minwoo's own psychology anyway, so understanding how they function in game or not (hopefully!) won't take away from any fun of this psyche dive. With that being said! Good read! This is the most fun I had all week!

THE ASSHOLE’S HOTEL BATHROOM - Filled with too many soap cabinets and a candelabra for a lamp – things of value but no *practical use* – the Asshole’s Hotel Bathroom looks exactly like you expect it to. To put it simply it's a fancy, cold and soulless shit deposit.

REACTION SPEED (Easy: Success) - Like your goddamn man.

EMPATHY (Challenging: Success) - Like *them*, your man’s ‘friends’, who share no traits with him. Not an hinch of loyalty to anything or anyone.

YOU - You inspect Jiahang, the said man – just a man, his own man – that you have an arm's hold of, dragging along behind you. He doesn’t want to come into the Asshole’s Hotel Bathroom, of course not. He doesn’t want to leave The Party and its Party People either, but he must be surgically extracted from them. He must be attended to, immediately.

ESPRIT DE CORPS (Medium: Fail) - You still have no idea why he jumped on to take what the asshole man offered you, why he tried to bargain your way out of the room at the expense of his already too dazed system, with a dry gulp of a too big pill ill meant for you, putting on a show so you could leave.

INTERFACING (Easy: Success) - As if you would ever choose to escape out of any Hell without him – as if you could make out of any labyrinth without your North Star.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Easy: Success) - God, he’s beautiful even while bone deep in physical discomfort. That’s art in real fucking staggering movements, all live, full color. He has mastered the sweet, sweet pain it takes to *be* music. He has beat you at your own game, Minwoo love. Beat you right up. *Beat you good*.

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - Whatever is that he swallowed, he needs it out of his system. Now.

YOU - You lock the door behind you, let his pulse go. You both stand in discrepant different examples of equilibrium at the center of the room.

VISUAL CALCULUS (Easy: Success) - The toilet has its lid already set open, like a paid extra.

“What were you thinking?!”

“You need to throw up. *Now*.”

No talking. No time to waste. Reach forward. Be of help.

YOU - You take an unfocused step forward, leaving two feet between Jiahang and you. The proximity accomplishes nothing: your fingers trail millimeters over his chest, failing to check anything, just shaking.

JIAHANG - "Minwoo hyung, c’mon… Calm down, okay, calm down… I can… take it, I’m alright…," Jiahang’s marijuana voice is something deeper in tone and lighter in sound, close to a whisper. He takes pauses to hold in anxious, misplaced laughs. “It’s not my… First rodeo, so… Calm down…”

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - He’s not new to drugs, that’s what he meant. Both in general, and with today’s doctor’s prescription: weed, cocaine, maybe, and the other thing, the white pill.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Easy: Success) - You knew this already. You pretended not to, for someone’s sake – you don’t remember who, now – but it’s become obvious to you early on. How could it not when it’s *you*, a Guryo son who knows what to seek for when telling… *high risk riders* apart from any crowd.

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - And yet you did nothing to put a stop to it. You let it come to this. This is as much as your fault as it is the asshole man’s. You’re a fucking asshole man, Asshole Man.

YOU - Your head bends downwards, away from him, away from direct view.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - Because it pains you; the sight of him pains you. It always has. Every inch of his body is a light that cuts right through your retinas, close to being fatal.

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - By God, he’s made you just as blind as the piano and guitar have. *He really is music*.

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

Give me something else. I won’t say that.

YOU - Give me something else. I won’t say that.

HALF LIGHT (Challenging: Fail) - Oh? And why the fuck not?

It’s not what he needs to fucking hear now, shit Head!

The night’s been already harsh enough. Try to be kind or something, fuck Hell.

Please, *please* don’t make me say it. I don’t wanna say it.

YOU - It’s not what he needs to fucking hear now, shit Head!

HALF LIGHT (Challenging: Fail) - Well, fuck-o, this is all you got. Have you forgotten who you are? You’re a brute and ruthless son of a gun. Shoot-words-to-kill, that’s the Bang Minwoo pattern of speech. You know nothing else.

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

[COMPOSURE CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (3% CHANCE).] Breath.

[LOGIC CHECK: GODLY (27% CHANCE).] Come up with something else. Something soothing. *Anything*.

LOGIC CHECK: FAILURE. - As you search your oceanic brain for a cohesive, less deadly set of words, you find nothing but a dark void and the defeating sound of static. You’re tongue tied. You’re jaw set. You’re furious. You’re terrified. You’re only half inside your own body.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Impossible: Fail) - The smell of urine and powder mixed together, coming straight off the toilet to your nose. The sensation of being too small, too impotent inside a big room that you’ve never seen so big. The body of a loved one shivering close, mad with fever.

INLAND EMPIRE (Challenging: Fail) - It’s all too familiar, isn’t it now, crack baby?

[-1 MORALE.]

THE AWARENESS OF THE LOOP - TIME IS A FLAT FUCKING CIRCLE, AND YOU DREW ITS LINE THEN, AND YOU DREW ITS LINE NOW!

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

[COMPOSURE CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (1% CHANCE).] Breath.

COMPOSURE CHECK: EPIC FAIL. - Thinking of breathing only makes your breathing worse. Stop. Thinking. Of. It. STOP. IMMEDIATELY.

[-1 PHYSICAL.]

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

YOU - “Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

JIAHANG - Slowly, as if he’s hearing you with a 15 second delay, Jiahang looks up at you with his big stars for eyes, embedded in a sea of red. “What..?”

“You–! Jesus Christ, you fucking heard me, Jiahang!”

YOU - “You–! Jesus Christ, you fucking heard me, Jiahang!”

“I can’t deal with you having a crash, I can’t witness that sort of *shit*! You know why I fucking can’t!”

YOU - “I can’t deal with you having a goddamn crash, I can’t witness that sort of *shit*! You know why I fucking can’t!”

JIAHANG - The delay’s gone, it seems: in front of you, Jiahang flinches, withers, pressing his tiny lips close together.

AUTHORITY (Challenging: Success) - BE CALM. He’s scared, but not of you – only of himself, what he’s done, and what you might think of him now.

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - And he’s ashamed of what he took you back to, now that he realizes – the razor sharp flashes of your once uncle seem to flow between you telepathically.

THE BLURRY PHOTO INSIDE YOUR WALLET - *GOODSPEED, BANG WOOHYUN – BELOVED BROTHER, ADORED SON, TRUE FATHER. AND MAY GOD LAY YOU TO REST KINDLY.*

CONCEPTUALIZATION (Medium: Success) - He’s always scared of what people might think of him. It’s his Achilles tendon. When it comes to you, the fear of letting down goes hand in hand with an old, too familiar grief.

UNTRACEABLE RUSH OF DOPAMINE - Tell him. Tell him what we think of him, now and always. It’s time.

“I just don’t get– You or, or! You’re supposed to be music, for shit’s sake! Whatever the fuck that means!”

Don’t make me do this to me now.

I don’t fucking know what I think, alright?! Not about him, not about anything anymore! *I don’t know!* And I don’t want to know! I don’t give a shit! I never fucking have!

YOU - I don’t fucking know what I think, alright?! Not about him, not about anything anymore! *I don’t know!* And I don’t want to know! I don’t give a shit! I never fucking have!

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - Alright, sire, alright. Don’t open the Pandora’s Box that is your stone heart, if you’re too much of a pussy to see what’s been growing inside. Suit your weak self, take the coward’s road. Just be careful not to fall too hard while embarking on this deep, deep sink of yours into that old, old Egyptian river.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Legendary: Success) - That old Egyptian river is called the Nile river. Say it's determiner and name three times quickly out loud. The joke writes itself.

INLAND EMPIRE (Easy: Success) - Not a easier joke to decipher than *you*, of course, Bang Man.

JIAHANG - It takes him a while, but Jiahang eventually recovers; straightens his spine up, grows back to big. “If you can’t see it, then… leave, then. You can… do that. You brought me my bag, I– I took the *thing* for you, you’re free– free to go. So go on. Turn around, just turn– turn around, if that’s what… what you want so bad!”

[VOLITION RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (0% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Leave.

I can’t leave him.

“I can’t leave you!”

YOU - I can’t leave him.

PERCEPTION (Heroic: Fail) - Ah, yes. That you have no strength to do. It's as simple as that.

“I can’t leave you – not like this!”

“I can’t leave you – not with them!”

“I just *can’t leave you*!”

YOU - “I can’t leave you, Jiahang – not like this!”

JIAHANG - You see a frown show up on his forehead as he mouths ‘like this’, like it’s an insult, but doesn’t say it. What he does say is a frustrated, confused plea of, “Then what, Minwoo? Then *what*?!”

HAND/EYE COORDINATION (Easy: Success) - Oh, sire. You know exactly what you must do.

[SUGGESTION CHECK: FORMIDABLE (38% CHANCE).] Convince Jiahang to throw up. Keep talking. He’s giving in.

[REACTION SPEED CHECK: CHALLENGING (65% CHANCE).] Make him throw up. You’ve lost too much damn time already with all this fucking talking.

[PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (1% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Shove him into the bathtub and turn on the ice cold shower. Let the thermal shock overwhelm him, then make him throw up there. It’s risky, but it feels like the way.

REACTION SPEED CHECK: FAIL. You raise your arms and grab him suddenly by the elbows, catching him visibly by surprise – and it all goes quickly downhill from there.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Challenging: Epic Fail) - Your limbs struggle to make him bend any way, let alone to the direction of the toilet or the floor. Under your feet, the humid ground keeps you from grounding yourself enough to make any of this work. Nothing’s in your favor. You realize your mistake too late.

RHETORIC (Easy: Success) - You should have thought this through. Jiahang is, after all, much taller than you – and much too cherished for your hands to dare squeeze or scratch.

YOU - Your fingers let go without you telling them to. Bad equilibrium disrupted, Jiahang slips on the wet tiles and falls sideways, head bumping with the toilet’s unforgiving ceramic, nose first, sound second: a horrible cry out of pain you heard just once.

[CRITICAL MORALE DAMAGE.]

[CRITICAL PHYSICAL DAMAGE.]

YOU - DEAR GOD. MY DEAR GOD.

EMPATHY (Medium: Success): DON’T SHUT DOWN – YOU CAN’T. IT MAKES YOU MORE VICIOUS. YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO: HE MUST KNOW YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO. RUSH TO PROVE IT– HELP!

JUMP TO HELP!

YOU - YOU JUMP TO HELP! You’re on your knees quicker than you’ve ever been, palming his back, his shoulder.

JIAHANG - He glimpses at you sideways, then hides his face away, turning it to the opposite side. A lonely stream of blood drips from his left nostril, and he rushes to cover it with his trembling hand. You notice; you hear a sob.

RETHORIC (Heroic: Fail) - You’re a wordsmitch, fuck face, or are you not?! SAY SOMETHING. FIX THIS.

“Fuck, you– You didn’t give me *any other choice*, like!!!”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry so so sorry I’m sorry sorry!!!!!!”

Fuck it. Focus on the mission. Put your fingers down his throat. Count damages later.

YOU - Make the worst worth it, you think, as you scoopes his face in.

LOGIC (Medium: Fail) - Will it even accomplish anything? The white pill’s been in his system for over 20 minutes, not to mention all the rest, a pool party of shit in his bloodstream. Anyhow: better safe than sorry, you assume – you pray.

YOU - You fight to get your fingers into his mouth, meet a wall of teeth, a resistence of tongue; it opens after you let out a small curse, like a castle’s gate.

SUGGESTION (Easy: Success) - So *this* is how it feels.

PERCEPTION (Medium: Success) - Under you, he’s stopped moving. Jiahang has no real strength or deep desire to push you out or hurt you. He might even understand the invasion, under the haze; be grateful for it, even.

YOU - You feel it when it comes, a stream of bile. You remove your hand and wipes it on your trousers, sees Jiahang bending over to sit and spill sick yellow vomit for seconds, a minute.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Easy: Success) - Even though you’ve hurt him not a second ago – it wasn’t even the first time, either – he hasn’t bitten a single finger of yours off when he had the chance. Not a follower of the Eye For an Eye school of thinking, this pupil of yours, despite your suffocating influence. That’s good. You’re nothing but a bad preacher of a bad religion.

JIAHANG - When he’s done spitting and coughing, Jiahang begins to curl into himself, turning into a quiet small ball on the floor, too close to the release pool.

“I’m sorry. It was the only way– I’m sorry.”

“Jiahang-ah, please, let me take a look at you – Let me look at you, *please*.”

[AUTHORITY CHECK: EASY. 92% CHANCE.] “Show me your nose, now.”

AUTHORITY CHECK: SUCCESS.

YOU - “Show me your nose, now.”

PERCEPTION (Easy: Success) - He does, without a fight, lying on the floor with his head facing the ceiling. It’s bad, the bruise – the damage. You help guide him to sit up straight as he can.

YOU - You extend your hand to the side, up– The toilet paper dances off the holder as you push it, and it rolls away. You get enough of it to wrap it over your open palm three times, to make an amateur glove. You wipe the trace of blood off his mouth as gently as you can.

JIAHANG - “I’m such a… mess, just so–!” He cries, suddenly; a dam of tears, hot and uncontainable. “Awful, *awful* thing, disgusting fucking– fucking *thing*!”

“I know. I know exactly what you are.”

“That’s not all there is to you, baby, it’s not all there is to you at all, listen to me, honey, *listen*, **please listen**.”

“You could be worse.”

YOU - “You could be worse.”

JIAHANG - This gets his attention. “How even– Worse how?” Jiahang asks, mid hiccup, mid wail. “Give me one– One fucking example, if you… can. Can you? You *can’t*, can you?!”

SHIVERS (Medium: Success) - Around you and around him, The Party keeps on going, like a nonstop train. Your ears attune themselves to the purr of it – it's a habit. You’re too often outside rooms buzzing with life, only listening in through paper thin walls, missing the experience of it.

EMPATHY (Heroic: Success) - No one has come to check on him, you both have realized – Jiahang a minute faster than you. None of his Party People friends give a flying fuck. The reality is falling down on him like a skyscraper, crushing, breathtaking, killer.

AUTHORITY (Legendary: Success) - LET THE OUTSIDE WORLD GO QUIET. THERE IS SOMETHING HE WANTS TO HEAR YOU SAY.

[REACTION SPEED RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (11% CHANCE.) YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Start listing the real world things that are worse than him. (There’s a ton, and you know them intimately – and you know him intimately. Give Jiahang something else to weep for.)

[DRAMA RED CHECK, IMPOSSIBLE (9% CHANCE.) YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Start listing the unreal, out of this world things worse than him – the ones you’ve seen in your open eyed dreams. (Not as many options, but a tad lighter. Make the sadness disappear, bring anything close to a laugh back. Be the mad man for a great cause.)

[INLAND EMPIRE RED CHECK: LEGENDARY (26% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] “You could be like me. I’m worse than you’ll ever be.” (The truth. It can only hurt you.)

Say nothing.

INLAND EMPIRE CHECK: SUCCESS.

YOU - “You could be like me. I’m worse than you’ll ever be.”

LOGIC (Challenging: Success) - There is nothing worse than you, False Prophet, Fake Noah. Obsessed with connecting melodies, speaking truthfully only through rhyme schemes on pieces of paper that meet no one, only the bottom of trash cans or the back of your hard pillow. You’re not functional. You’re no leading man. You’re no good.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - But it feels good, doesn’t it? To finally admit how rotten you are after a whole life of pretending you’re a giving three, a good soil.

EMPATHY (Challenging: Success) - To say to someone who knows it, understands it, and stays.

[+1 MORALE]

Wait, I gained a fucking morale point from THAT?!

YOU - What the actual fuck?!

RHETORIC (Medium: Success) - You’re neck deep into shit, pal. Just count your win. It’s only a consolidation medal, nothing more, nothingbless – kiddo needs his fake prizes to fill his kiddo fuel.

JIAHANG - “But… I feel like you already,” he tells you. “All the time, hyung… All the time, I feel like you– Angry, and upset, and– and so lonely.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Easy: Success) - Wait, what’s that taunting your face, blocking your neck…? Oh, fucking Hell…! You’re crying! You’re nodding at him and crying!

AUTHORITY (Impossible: Fail) - HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING?! You don’t do that anymore, you’ve forgotten how. Revoke it. Revoke it along with all this sweat taking over your body.

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“I’m sorry, Jiahang. This is not– Not what I wanted to happen.”

“Just– Give me a minute, God, give me a minute!”

YOU - “I’m sorry, Jiahang. This is not– Not what I wanted to happen.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Easy: Success) - The tears prickle your eyes, actually turn you momentarily blind. You blink, hard, adjusting to their salt. It reminds you of how hard to stomach you are, inside out.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Medium: Success) - And it reminds you of how much saltier you’ve used to be. The tears are already falling off your sad sockets, sire – let them.

[+1 PHYSICAL.]

JIAHANG - “It’s not so bad, right, I think, to have… Turned into *this*, because– You’re no longer… lonely, and… Neither am I, right…? We can both be happy with that, be happy…” He doesn’t finish speaking; just closes his eyes, closes his mouth.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Medium: Fail) - We like the visual he’s evoking, Minwoo love. Picture the two of you, holding hands, walking right into the dooming sun– Oh, oh! Romeo and Romeo, tongue deep into each other’s poison bitter throats!!!

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - Your man’s not right. He’s fading. This isn’t the Jiahang you want; most importantly, this isn’t the Jiahang that *Jiahang wants*. This is no good, Minwoo.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Medium: Fail) - It’s as close as we'll ever get to having any Jiahang *at all*. Enjoy it! We should kiss him now. Seal this deal right up. Two shots of Marriage In Misery and a whole bottle of Honeymoon On The Floor (Animal Style) coming *right the fuck up*, sign it to the wingless lovebirds right there, near the piss jar!!!

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - Let go of his hand. Check his eyes. Help him up.

INLAND EMPIRE (Legendary: Fail) - Or perhaps this is the time for you to leave. You shouldn’t have ever touched him, to begin with. You shouldn’t have spoken a single word beyond ‘Goodbye’ to this man when he was still a graduating boy. You shouldn’t have made him think that he needed to cling to ruination to shine. You shouldn't have come to know any of them.

Kiss Jiahang. (ANIMAL FUCKING STYLE!!!)

Check Jiahang up (medically.), then help him up. You both need to leave the Asshole's Hotel Bathroom and The Asshole’s Hotel all together.

Walk away – Just walk away. His shortness of breath seems contagious. It’s sticking to your lungs.

YOU - It takes no effort to untangle your hands from his, to place them both on his cheeks, tend to the temperature.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Challenging: Success) - His skin is at 110 degrees, to be precise. The lucky-unlucky number, if you’ll believe it.

LOGIC (Medium: Success) - It’s a mind and body turmoil. I’m afraid you can do nothing about it.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, *DO NOTHING*?! FUCK OFF.

I can do something, I– I feel it.

I refuse to let him fall. I reject it.

YOU - I refuse to let him fall. I reject it.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - Cute, my lord, but still not enough. You might as well swear to become a whole different man, in your desperation, if you want to make this medicine of yours come true – transform into a superhuman, super empathic man suit. Like the Taesong Taesong thinks he is.

Good, I’ll swear on it, I’ll be it – I've been waiting for an excuse to tend to the internal damage and start a renovation. This is will be my new wallpaper.

No, don’t swear on it, fool – There’s no need to be extreme. *There’s no guarantee it will work*.

YOU - No, don’t swear on it, fool – There’s no need to be extreme. *There’s no guarantee it will work.*

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Challenging: Success) - Exactly. Hold your horses, Bang Man. Take this promise in. You never tried to be anything besides what you are now. You’re a 26-year-old hound – in dog years that’s 116 to 128 years of living. There’s no space inside your head for new tricks, new instincts.

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - You’re chained to a wall, my liege. You have to tear it the fuck down, and clean the concrete aftermath, and rise from the ashes of it – full Fenix style. Fail at that and you’ll be here again, if not in this asshole’s hotel bathroom, then another asshole’s hotel bathroom; if not with him, then with someone else, just as meaningful. You got the need for change, now? The need to compromise the fuck out of you?!

AUTHORITY (Heroic: Success): Say you got it now.

Fine. I guess I got it now.

I got it! I fucking got it, goddammit!

I understand.

YOU - I understand.

INLAND EMPIRE (Challenging: Success) - My, oh my… It seems you really do.

THE AWARENESS OF THE LOOP - *OH?* OH! THIS IS A REAL STEP, THIS IS SOMETHING – OH, THIS IS *REALLY SOMETHING NOW*, LITTLE MOON, WHAT A MAGNIFICENT EFFORT! THIS IS PROGRESS YOU’RE HOLDING THE HAND OF, AND IT’S PLEASED TO MEET YOU AT LAST, SO PLEASED TO MEET YOU! THE THING ABOUT IT– THE THING WITH PROGRESS, SHARP-TOOTHED ONE, IS THAT THERE IS NEVER ANY INGLORIOUS END – THERE’S NO END TO IT AT ALL!

[HIDDEN TASK, ‘TAKE THE 1ST STEP OF A 100 INTO METAMORPHOSIS’, COMPLETE.]

[+30 EXPERIENCE.]

[YOU CAN LEVEL UP A SKILL NOW.]

[END?]

[END.]

[mothernatureknows]

Minwoo and his nieces are sorting through the forest goodies they’d collected on their afternoon walk when he takes notice of some particular blue bells—how beautiful and vibrant the colour is, and he wonders whether someone else will appreciate it as much. So, he holds it out to Luna with a small smile.

It’s a miracle how two, small, relatively power-free, baby girls could have such a POWERFUL influence on Luna. It’s fucking ridiculous, really. Or rather, freaking ridiculous. She’s been curbing her language more for these girls to be more appropriate and “family-friendly” and—shit! There she goes again. It’s like they have her in a damn chokehold...but in a nice way. 

Ever since the birth of Amelia, and subsequently Penelope, Luna has been absolutely charmed by the two of them. She was one of the first people to see them after their births, and had been in close proximity whenever she crashed at the Po residence (which was practically every other day). Initially, it had been absolute torture to hear their petulant screams and whines and, hell, the fucking STENCH of diaper shit permeating the entire household. But, one day, and Luna can’t pinpoint the exact day but it was a day, Luna had found herself being the reason for the girls’ smiles.

And she hadn’t been able to come back from that since. 

So, when the girls beg her, their sweet auntie Luna, to join them for an afternoon walk, who’s she to tell them no? Well, she actually does say no. Several times. Until they throw themselves at her, and pry her cold, relentless fingers from her phone into their mini, warm hands. Then she says yes...reluctantly.

She’s almost hissing when they reach the barrier of the Po house and the outside, the sun stinging her blue eyes shut. “We gotta do this in the middle of the day?” she huffs, looking down at both girls. “It’s hot as fu...fufu. It’s hot as fufu.” Not really. But Luna thrives in complaining about any weather that wasn’t below 40 degrees Fahrenheit and practically freezing. The girls simply whine and continue to pull at their rigid auntie, “forcing” her out the door and onto the grassy path. 

“Damn it, fine you both win, but it’ll be quick. Mom and dad don’t want us gone forever and—hey, Penelope! Where are you going?” she says to the toddler booking it back into the house. Her confusion only stays for a moment before she witnesses the little girl pulling someone else out with them, quite possibly the instigator of this afternoon walk. 

“Shoulda known...” she mutters under her breath, squinting at a beaming Minwoo. Luna hadn’t been too in-tune with where he had been in the house at the time, but she’s certain that he and the girls had conspired to do this whole outing. The seeming eagerness that he matches with the girls is only more evidence of that. 

There is something...different about him today. He seemed more lively, a demure twinkle in his eye when they connected with hers. Somehow, it increased the steady warmth Luna was already feeling, and she turns her head away before her mind goes wondering to other places. Thankfully, she doesn’t need to say anything more to the girls, they’re already running and yanking her arm out to the forest, squealing in excitement at the prospect of today’s adventure. 

After stumbling across hidden rocks and earning several cuts and bruises, of which Luna released a string of colorful curses (in her head, but fuck does manage to slip through accidentally), they finally make it to a not-so-rough looking patch of forest, overrun with flowers galore. 

At this rate, Luna is tired, grumpy, and disgusted at the bug bites and sweat coating her body. She just wants to go HOME. She needs air-conditioning, filtered air, and an hour long shower. Nature just wasn’t her thing...unless it was covered in a blanket of snow. 

She’s moping by a tree, shielded by the thick foliage above, making small frost figures in the dirt. It’s enough that none of her companions will suspect it’s frost, and the heat of the day melts it pretty quick. Really, she’s just making mud figures, but slightly more stable, and not as messy. 

She hears footsteps coming closer, causing her to scratch out the frost she formed. “We done here?” she asks before looking, letting out a tired sigh. When there’s no audible response, blue eyes tilt up and are met by...

“Blue bells?”

She knows of the flower. They grew in splurges around the outside of her old home and, being young and stupid, she’d accidentally eaten one. For days, baby Luna had been sick with a sore stomach. Sure, she recovered, but she was more careful of what she put in her mouth. Even then, when she revisited the blue bells outside, she had expected to hate them viciously.

But she liked them too much to hate them. 

They had given her hope. A splash of color in her dull and mute world. One of the few things that gave her the energy to not succumb to the darkness and pull free from that shithole and the monsters she called “parents.”

Seeing Minwoo offer this flower to her transports her back to that time and sends that feeling running through her mind. Well, that and another feeling. Something she didn’t think was in the cards for someone like her. 

She blinks twice before accepting it, twirling the flower between her pale fingers. The deep purple petals catch the sun’s rays, fading into a violet hue. Unbeknownst to Luna, her lips curl up, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. 

It was pretty. 

Like him. 

[sourkive]

008 : PIETY.

Starring: Kang Minwoo.

Featuring: A boy, Kim Seungsoo, Minwoo's Mom, Kang Minhyung.

Summary: Minwoo visits home.

Word Count: 4k.

CW: Sexual reference, trauma response, unhealthy coping mechanisms, sponsorship, conflict between parents.

Minwoo wakes up in an unfamiliar bedroom, light filtering in the window and birds chirping cheerily in a way that makes his hangover, somehow, seem a thousand times worse. He groans as he pushes himself up, the sheet falling from his bare chest, faded pink hair sore at the scalp from a night of sleeping with product and hairspray in. It’s all bent out of shape, aching from being pushed in the wrong direction. He grimaces, tucking his elbows over his knees, casting a glance downwards to the man sleeping on the other side of the bed.

He’s pretty, but Minwoo doesn’t know him. He looks like he’s probably an idol or an actor; he has that sort of industry standard look about him. Minwoo’s sure that there’s probably a litany of girls who would murder to be in his spot, right now. 

That was the kind of rush Minwoo had once enjoyed. Fucking these little it boys who had fanbases the size of small nations; asking them ‘what would all your little fan girls think if they could see you now’ as he hits that spot in them that makes them break. It had all been so fun, once. And it was still always fun at the start, but now, he has to get blackout drunk to get through it without seeing him and freaking out. He lifts the sheet and finds, sure enough, that they’re both naked. Minwoo sucks a breath between his teeth. He doesn’t remember last night at all. 

He knows he’s being an asshole as he slowly creeps out of the bed, trying to decipher which clothes are his and which belong to the other. For the most part, it’s easy; Minwoo is way more stylish than the other guy. The only thing he’s not really sure about is the underwear, so he just picks a pair and prays to god that the universe is on his side.

He goes to the guy’s bathroom. Quickly, he uses his shower, rinsing the product out of his hair and washing all the most important bits with the supermarket-bought shower gel that Minwoo suspects is not the peak of skincare. He steps out and steals a towel from his cabinet, drying himself off and dressing and doing everything he can to ignore the fact that the entire room is spinning and his insides are threatening to empty themselves with every too harsh movement he makes. 

He changes back into last night’s clothes and steps out of the bathroom with the towel over his wet hair, drying it off roughly as he steps into the man’s room again, just to make sure he hadn’t woken him.

There’s a sinking disappointment in him, though, when he sees the guy sitting up in bed, a pair of glasses upon his face as he scrolls through his phone. He looks up as Minwoo opens the door. “I thought you’d run away.” he says, offering him a small smile. 

Minwoo forces one back, realising that he could have easily just left. The opportunity to avoid awkwardness is well and truly dead now. He shakes his head, walking to the bed and kneeling upon it, giving the boy a soft kiss, trying his best to keep it from showing as the soft movement of the mattress underneath him makes his stomach lurch. 

“Just showering.” He says. “But I do need to head. I have practice in a couple of hours, and I can’t really go wearing this.” He says, gesturing loosely to his party clothes. 

“I have to practise clothes,” says the boy. He wraps his hand around the back of Minwoo’s neck, pulling him in for another kiss. This time it’s a little deeper, and a little more suggestive. When they pull away, he gives him an arch look. “If you want to have more fun for a while.” 

There's something about the lust in his eyes that takes Minwoo somewhere; and he sees tight skin, and the lingering taste of alcohol on both of their lips suddenly reminds him of the way he tasted like whiskey, and suddenly it’s almost too much for Minwoo to stomach. He feels another lurch, and he backs up, a hand spreading across his mouth as he takes a deep breath, trying his best to keep everything down. 

“Wow.” The boy says with a laugh. “No thanks would have been enough.” 

Minwoo cringes, pulling his hand away from his mouth and shooting an apologetic look. “I'm sorry,” he says. “That was just bad timing. I’m a lot more hungover than I'm letting on.” 

The boy just laughs, shaking his head with a smile as he settles back down on his bed, head hitting the pillow as he wraps his blankets closer around him. “Don’t worry about it.” He says. “You should probably skip practice, though.” 

Seungsoo would probably let him. Whoever this stranger is, he seems like a nice enough guy. Minwoo feels bad, and part of him entertains the idea of staying, but he knows he can’t have sex sober, and he highly doubts he’s going to be content to just sit and talk. 

“Yeah, probably,” he says, pulling the towel from his still damp hair. He holds onto it awkwardly for a second, before saying; “Where should I…” 

“Just dump it with my clothes.” The boy says. “I'll clean up later.” 

Minwoo nods, tossing it in amongst the leftover clothes. He stands, clearing his throat a little, trying not to gag from the lingering taste of alcohol and cigarettes. 

“Well,” he says. “Goodbye.” 

“Can I have your number?” The boy asks. Minwoo visibly hesitates, and the boy’s face hardens a little, another laugh escaping him, this time a little too dry to really believe. “Never mind. I’ll see you around.” 

Minwoo bows his head, and tries not to look too eager to leave on his way out.

Minwoo fishes his phone from his pocket as he walks down the street. He’s pretty sure that he’s in itaewon. He’ll call Seungsoo when he finds a street sign, but for now, he’s just aimlessly wandering. The clock tells him that it’s only 7am. He’d never been able to sleep late if he’d been drinking, no matter when he went to bed. He walks slow, and still each footstep sends a jolt of discomfort to his head. 

Realising that there are people who care and worry about him, he checks his messages, albeit begrudgingly. It’s the same as usual, Harin asks him if he’ll be home that night, there’s a general stream-of-conscious timeline of Jade’s thoughts throughout the night, (‘i’m going to make cookies,’ ‘why isn’t sailor moon on netflix wtf,’ ‘why are men like this!!!!’) Chaerin pesters him for some nail polish he borrowed four months ago that she refuses to forget about; but when he scrolls down far enough, he reaches a message he doesn’t expect. 

‘They’re fighting again.’ Sent at 11pm the prior night. 

There’s a sudden lurch in Minwoo’s heart as it hits him that he’d been too busy blacking out to be there for someone who truly needed him. 

He swallows thickly, despite the fact his mouth is sandpaper dry, and dials Seungsoo’s number. 

“Where?” Is all Seungsoo says when he picks up the phone. Minwoo sighs through his nose. 

“I’m not sure.” He says, leaning against someone’s garden wall, wrapping his arm around his waist. In hindsight, he definitely should have borrowed clothes from whoever it was he had gone home with. His party clothes are not befitting of the daylight; and an old woman glares at him as she passes, so he’s pretty sure he may as well be wearing a big neon sign that reads ‘Walk of shame.’ She mutters something about disgrace; and Minwoo is, like, ninety nine percent sure that she would have no idea who Sour Candy are, so he tucks his phone under his ear and calls after her, “I just got done banging a dude!” 

“Who the fuck are you yelling at?” Seungsoo’s voice comes yelling, muffled from his phone. Minwoo raises the speaker back to his ear. 

“Just some old lady.” he says. “Can I miss practice today?” 

There’s a pause. “No.” 

“Please, hyung.” Minwoo pushes, undeterred. Seungsoo never gave in straight away, but he almost always caved quick. “It's a family thing. And I'm ahead with the dance anyway. You know I am, I always am.” 

Seungsoo sighs. “What kind of family thing?” 

“My parents have been arguing lately.” Minwoo says. There’s no reason to lie to Seungsoo. Of all the staff at Valentine, Seungsoo was the most trustworthy. That, and he had kids of his own; real young kids who he never saw. His wife had divorced him years ago and taken their family to busan, leaving Seungsoo alone in Seoul with nothing else to his name. Minwoo didn’t know the whole story, and likely never would. But he did know that Seungsoo wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of his little brother sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to his parents fight any better than Minwoo could. “Minhyung texted. I want to visit home and make sure he’s okay. He gets really cut up about it.” 

Seungsoo sighs, and after a brief second of consideration, Minwoo hears a shuffle and knows he’s getting out of bed. “Ping me your location,” he says. Minwoo smiles. “And stay away from busy streets.” 

“Thanks, hyung.” 

“Yeah.” Seungsoo says.

Better showered and in more presentable attire; Minwoo stands outside of histoire d’amour and stares up at the cursive sign with a weird sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach. Seungsoo’s car pulls away behind him, and it’s disappeared down the street by the time Minwoo works up the courage to push the swinging door open and step inside. 

The restaurant is always the same as he leaves it, which is as much a blessing as it is a curse. It makes for a comfortable homecoming in some ways, but he can already feel his brain begin to revert, as if he’s back to being some seventeen year old kid who lived from one dance solo to the next. The life of a show dog.

In a way, there’s not much difference between that and his life now, but Minwoo had learned that he much preferred not to compete. Sure, some of Sour Candy’s fans liked to pit them against Tarot and Medusa, but all that really mattered now that he had debuted was that each record sold more than the last. Minwoo stood alongside Chaerin on television every weekend, so Medusa's success just gave him the opportunity to have more eyes on him. And the unimaginable amount of money Tarot seemed to bring the company just by having Junjie step foot in china once every few months was only funnelled back into the funds that paid for all three groups’ extravagant videos and outfits. Maybe it’s just being an adult, but Minwoo had learned that the success of his peers was not a threat but a benefit, and his only competition was his highest previous achievements. 

He's sure there’s something pavlovian there too, at least in the case of Tarot. Every time they hit a milestone in their career, Tetsuo would get all cute and excited and then be overcome with the urge to manually destroy his own vocal cords for a few days, and Minwoo was usually the weapon of choice. But now thinking about Tetsuo kills a little piece of Minwoo’s soul every time, so Minwoo shoves his nail between his teeth and makes his way to the back of the restaurant, through the staff only door. 

“Mommy!” He yells up the stairs, frowning as no reply comes. 

The flat above the restaurant is small, and Minwoo spots his mother sitting outside on the balcony as soon as he enters. He knocks on the glass door, and she jumps a bit, startled, but her face splits into a beautiful, beaming smile as she sees him, a cigarette dangling elegantly from a graceful hand. These days, were you to put Minwoo’s parents together and ask which one was once a star, you’d be justified to think it was his mother. His dad had aged normally and healthily, his face had set with wrinkles and he’d gotten a bit of a gut. He was still a handsome man, but an ordinary one. His mother, on the other hand, was radiant as ever. Even now, sitting at a glass table on the balcony having a cigarette for breakfast, with her hair uncombed and in a pair of faded eeyore pyjamas with a quippy konglish slogan printed on the shirt, she looked like a Hollywood actress. Minwoo would be lying if he said he didn’t wish he was her. The more grown up he had gotten, the more he’d found himself shadowing her; copying her mannerisms, the way she held herself. 

“Minnie!” she calls as he slides open the door. 

He steps out, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple. She reaches out, pinching his cheek between two sharp nails. He smiles as he sits down across from her, sliding her box of cigarettes over. She gives him a disapproving glance, but tosses her lighter in his direction. 

“What a lovely surprise.” 

“I had a day off.” he lies, placing the cigarette between his lips and lighting it without cracking the menthol. “So I thought I'd come visit. It’s been a little while.” 

“Well I'm thrilled to see you.” She says with a grin. “How have things been going?” 

He hesitates for a second. Really, the days had been blurring into one another. Sour Candy had been succeeding, but Minwoo thinks he’s probably been deteriorating. He felt empty, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Myeongjae, who’s aged face had been warped into a halloween mask by his imagination. For a second, he thinks of the relief that might bloom in his chest if he finally let it out, and he considers telling his mom. But he can’t do that. He can’t let her live with that. So he takes a deep draw, and forces on a tired smile and should probably have the whole EGOT by now for how good he’s getting at this. 

“Yeah.” He says, nodding on his exhale. “Yeah, things are going really well. We filmed this show last week where we went out in the woods and did all these games and stuff.” 

“Cabin in the Woods?” His mom asks. Minwoo nods with a noise of confirmation, and his mom beams again. “Oh, your grandma will be thrilled. She loves that show. I had her on the phone the other day, you know. She and your grandpa watch Inkigayo every sunday. They send me pictures of you on the tv every time. They were so proud of the album you sent them, too. They have it on their mantelpiece like it’s a trophy.” 

Minwoo smiles a real smile, a warmth spreading across his chest. “That's sweet.” He says. “I think I'll stop by this afternoon.” 

His mom gives an eager nod. “Oh, they’d love that, Minwoo. They’d love that.” And they just sit, smoking their cigarettes, until his mom stubs hers out and stands, taking a performative look at her watch in the way moms do and sighing. “I'd better go wake your brother up.” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “He has his part time job this afternoon. Did he tell you?” 

Minwoo shakes his head no; and everything kind of stacks up and reminds him that he hadn’t really been keeping up with his family lately. It made him feel bad, but every one of them at Valentine was the same. It was a sacrifice they’d all had to make. 

“He's working down at the bathhouse. At the reception.” She says. Minwoo snorts, and she fixes him a glare as he snickers. 

“Do not tease him about it.” She warns, pointing a finger at him. 

“I won't.” He says, raising his hands. “I just didn’t know high schoolers were allowed to work there.” 

“It's not that type of bathhouse.” She says, giving him an exasperated look that only makes him snicker more. “You watch too much porn.” 

Minwoo makes a disgusted noise of protest and she laughs, triumphant, as she steps back into the apartment.

“So like…” Minwoo says, slouching back in Minhyung's gaming chair. It's old and the leather is fraying at its edges, but still surprisingly comfortable. The room is decorated nicely, in an organised sort of manner that Minwoo didn’t have the energy for even now, but certainly didn’t as a teenager. The walls had been painted a clean white, decorated with print outs of Minhyung's digital art- intricate and detailed anime drawings. The carpet had been dug up and replaced with a sleek, lightwood patterned laminate, with a fluffy white rug in its centre. Upon it sits Minhyung, looking in the mirror propped up between the floor and wall, applying styling gel to his hair, already dressed in his work uniform. He’s seventeen and he looks it; and it’s always kind of jarring for Minwoo to see him, because he’s so used to being apart from him and his memory paints him as the tiny little kid who used to follow him everywhere.

This room is the only one in the house that’s changed. It’s come a far way from pirate themed wallpaper and bunk beds. They both have. 

“What?” Minhyung asks when Minwoo doesn’t finish his sentence. 

“What were they fighting about?” Minhyung deflates. He turns around to look at Minwoo, tucking his knees up into his chest. “Same as always.” 

“Money?” 

“Yeah.” Minwoo had figured as much, but it doesn’t feel good to be right. Money had been an issue for a while. A couple of hit songs really aren’t enough to live off of twenty five years later; and businesses ebbed and flowed. For a long time, the restaurant had brought in enough revenue for their family to live a comfortable life. In the last couple of years, however, the area had been featured on a dazed video for its local clothing district and became a lot more cool- and that saw an initial boom in custom until it saw a lot more restaurants opening up. The first chain place to open was a slash in the heel. By the time the fifth sprung up, the bills were barely being covered by the regulars alone. 

There’s something that felt so fundamentally fucked up about the fact that Minwoo was on television on a weekly basis and that Sour Candy’s song had broken sales records, and yet his family were close to finding themselves in debt. 

‘You'll start earning soon.’ Seobin had told him a couple of weeks ago, when Minwoo had gone to his office and asked when Sour Candy’s training debt would be cleared. But Minwoo had pushed. He doesn’t know where he got the bravery from; but something just wasn’t adding up. He was paid a monthly fee for appearing on Inkigayo. He had writing credits on two of the songs on a mini album which had charted at number one, and more to come on Sour Candy’s upcoming album, which was projected to be an even bigger smash. Even with Valentine’s state of the art equipment and highly respected coaches, Minwoo doesn’t see how much he could possibly have left to repay. Surely by the time Is… Anyone There? Was released, they’d be seeing some kind of royalty.

But Seobin had been cagey. He'd avoided giving answers, and confused Minwoo by talking in circles about percentages and quarters and taxes and redistribution of funds, and eventually Minwoo had just snapped and asked ‘well, how much did you make off of me?’ 

Seobin had played dumb, and started talking about Inkigayo. That was when Minwoo really lost it. He can barely remember what he said, just that he was shouting, and that he’d picked Seobin’s mug of hot coffee and flung it against the wall. It shattered, ceramic flying everywhere. Seobin had barked at him to get the fuck out- the only time he’d ever heard him swear. And when Minwoo tried to argue, he’d been warned that if he didn’t leave then there would be consequences for all four members of Sour Candy. 

Underneath the anger, there was guilt on his face. Seobin seemed to know, at least, that he had made this monster himself.

Is… Anyone There? was dropping in a week, and Minwoo doubted he’d see any of its revenue. He'd avoided Seobin ever since that day, though. And he figured he shouldn’t ask about money again. 

“I'm sorry.” Minwoo says. Minhyung looks at him questioningly. Minwoo regards him in his work uniform and it dawns on him that Minwoo had never had to work when he was in high school. 

“What for?” he asks.

“I feel like I should be able to help. I'm a singer, you know? My family shouldn’t be struggling.” Minhyung shrugs. 

“Things are fucked up for idols, hyung. Everyone knows that. Nobody blames you.” There’s a beat, and then he screws the lid back onto his styling gel and pushes himself up into his feet to put it away. “Besides, it was my fault they started fighting.” 

“How do you figure that?” 

“I asked them for money.” Minhyung sighs. “There's this trip being organised by the art department from my school. To japan, to go to all these galleries and then go visit a bunch of animation studios. I really wanted to go, but it’s five hundred thousand won.” 

Minwoo purses his lips. It’s a lot of money, but Minhyung didn’t often ask for anything. And Minwoo can’t help the song of guilt he feels when he thinks about how much their parents had invested in his hobbies; the dance costumes, the lessons, the competition entry fees. Even their schooling; Minwoo had attended Hanlim, and Minhyung goes to to public school. It's not as if Minwoo would have gotten any of those things if the family were struggling then the way they are now, but he still knows it isn’t fair.

“Anyway.” Minhyung says. “I'm gonna be late for work.” Minwoo offers him a weak smile as he leaves, turning in his chair and making eye contact with the anime girl on Minhyung's mousepad. 

“What do I do?” He asks, but neither she nor her cushioned breasts offer any advice.

“Good day?” Seungsoo asks. Minwoo clamours into the car with his grandma’s lipstick on his cheek and five containers of her cooking balanced delicately on his lap. The top one is packed full of kimchi and looks particularly delicious, though it’s specifically labelled with Jade’s name. Apparently, he’d said he liked kimchi on a tv show, and she thinks he’s too skinny. Jade has a body most people would kill for, but Minwoo will pass on her gift happily. 

“It was great.” Minwoo says with a smile. “I got to see my grandparents for the first time this year. Thank you for letting me take the day off.” 

“I think you needed it. I'm glad you had a good time with your family.” Seungsoo says, and it seems like he genuinely means it. There's a comfortable silence in the car, and Minwoo is full of his grandma’s cookies and sleepy from the soothing and familiar tone of his grandpa’s stories about being a teenager. And he’s mostly happy, for once. But something eats away at him, and he can’t just ignore it. 

“Hyung…” he says. Seungsoo seems to know from the tone of voice that he’s going to ask for another favour, and quirks an eyebrow. Minwoo hesitates, and is about to tell him it doesn’t matter.

But he thinks about his family. He thinks about how they’re struggling, and he thinks about his duty as a son. 

And as far as he knows, Seungsoo had been kept in the dark by Seobin on purpose. He thinks he can use that to his advantage. So he asks another favour. 

“It has to be a secret..” He says. “But there’s a phone number I need you to get for me.”

[babybirdgyeom]

you, me and bertha (2) | park jinyoung

⇴ neighbor!au, farmer!au, jinyoung x reader.

⇴ summary: moving from the big city to your uncle’s farm in the small village you used to visit as a child was a big and scary step. luckily, you found many reasons to stay. reasons like your cousin bambam, your best friend jaebum or park jinyoung, your neighbor who maybe was more than just a guy you like to nag around with.

⇴ this chapter: jinyoung and the reader and their constant habit of teasing and fighting each other. jinyoung actually being nice for a change, a hidden softie. and, of course, bambam being nosey. (kind of a filler chapter)

⇴ word count: this part: 4.5k   full story: ~30k

⇴ all the other parts can be found in my masterlist, linked in my bio! ♥

After a week you slowly got used to the daily work on the farm, your body was already starting to react differently, your arms weren’t getting as sore anymore and waking up early was bothering you less and less. It was Saturday which means you had to gather all of the stuff your uncle wanted to sell on the market the next morning. Picking out the best eggs, milk, wool and cheese was pretty boring, especially since Bambam left early because he was going on a date tonight with a girl you never heard of. But since you wanted him to be happy, and also his teasing about Jinyoung was slowly getting seriously annoying, you told him it’s okay to go. After about an hour you were finally done with stacking all of it into your uncle’s car as you saw Mrs. Park, Jinyoung’s mother, and decided to help her a bit since she looked like she was struggling.

She was a beautiful lady, always has been. Her black hair was long and even though there were a few grey strands in it by now she still looked as young as ever.

“Mrs. Park, let me help you!”, you shouted while jogging over to her, “Where’s Jinyoung? Letting his mum carry all the heavy boxes of fruits and vegetables alone is not a nice thing to do.”, you said as you arrived, one box already in your hands.

She let out a laugh and you were reminded of how warm her laughter was, it sounded like the giggle of a small child. “It’s fine, I told him to rest for today. He always works so much.”, she let out a sigh, “I’m very thankful, I know that’s not what he wanted to do with his life but he does it for me.”

You never really thought about it that way before - this might explain why he’s still here despite wanting a different life, it was probably hard for him to leave his family behind after losing his dad. While carrying a box full of blueberries you ate a handful, not able to hold back. The Park’s blueberries were always your favorites.

“You still love blueberries, huh?”, She asked joyfully as she was carrying the last box to the car.

“Yes, how couldn’t I?”, you answered, “Oh- I still wanted to thank you for the little basket full of fruits you send to me. I was so happy. The peaches were even better than I remembered.”

Mrs. Park looked at you in confusion for a second before realizing what was going on, the confusion vanished while a different kind of expression came to her face, unable for you to read at first. “Oh, so he can actually be charming.”, she mumbled with an almost mischievous smirk and within seconds you knew exactly what she was talking about.

The basket hasn’t been from Mrs. Park, it was actually Jinyoung being nice. You scoffed a bit thinking about it, wondering why he wouldn’t just admit it was from him. You guessed it just wasn’t like Jinyoung to play the nice guy.

“Mum-”, you heard his voice screaming while walking out of the door to their house. When he saw you he froze for a second, “Oh, hey, (y/n).”, he said with a slight and not really convincing smile.

You nodded towards him, ready to go back to work and leave them alone, as his little brother came running outside after him, chasing after Jinyoung.

“Jinyoung!”, he let out a scream as he tried to jump on his back. He was surprisingly tall for an eight year-old, almost managing to get to Jinyoung’s shoulders if he jumped high enough, “Can I come with you? Please?”

Before Jinyoung could answer, Ken’s attention was on something else. Or better said, on someone else. To be precise, on the girl standing in front of his mother and brother, a stranger he’s never seen before. “Who are you?”, he asked curious, studying you exactly, “Are you the niece of Minwoo?”

You kneeled down to be at an eye to eye level with him, shaking his hand, “Yes, that’s me. I’m (y/n).”

He had a big grin on his face, “Hi, I’m Ken.” - After introducing himself to you he turned around to his big brother, “Is this the person you made the basket for yesterday?”

Jinyoung shushed him immediately, giving him a warning glance before trying to cover up his story, “Yes, I did it because mum asked me to. Right, mum?”

She let out a sarcastic laugh, making fun of her son, “Sure, Jinyoung. It was totally me asking you to do that.”

A heavy sigh fell from Jinyoung’s mouth before shaking his head in disbelief, “Where is your cousin? He promised he’d help me picking up our new couch.”

“Oh, I am afraid he forgot.”, you said to him, “He’s on a date right now.”

Jinyoung let out a heavy sigh, not believing that Bambam completely forgot about him. Now even more frustrated, he started mumbling, “It’s always the same with this kid.”

“I’ll help you.”, you said determined, not even bothering to ask him first, knowing he’d say no anyway, “I’m done with work for today and I don’t mind coming along.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll go alone.”, he said, clearly mad at Bambam, before walking over to his car. You didn’t care and followed him, hoping that he’d be nice to Bambam if you helped him instead. You had little hope, considering the fact you were talking about Park Jinyoung but it was worth a try.

“Stop being so stubborn.”, you said to him as you opened the door and sat down inside the car, “Just accept my help.”

As the two of you drove out of town the sky looked like it was painted in golden colors, the sun slowly setting but the air was still warm, brushing your arm that you held out of the open window.

“Where are we even going?”, you asked the obviously bothered boy beside you.

“It’s not far away, the dude I’m buying the couch from lives like twenty minutes away.”, he said, his eyes glued to the street, “You really didn’t have to come. I could’ve easily done it alone.”

Slowly but surely, you were starting to get annoyed by Jinyoung. You couldn’t tell why but his constant attitude was getting to you but it did, “Dude, you’re the worst. Can you shut up for once and accept help? Stop being so rude all the time, being nice every now and then won’t hurt you, you know? You can take your bad mood out on Bambam later.”

Suddenly he looked at you, his eyes grew wide in shock at your rant. Even though your voice was still low he clearly heard the frustration in it, “What do you mean? I am being nice all the time. I told you that you shouldn’t wear your good clothes to work. That was a piece of nice advice I gave you for example.”

You scoffed at him not knowing if he was being serious or if he tried to make him look good, “You also attacked me because you thought I was stealing chicken and made me churn butter all by hand.”

He chuckled as you brought it up, “I still can’t believe you did that.”

“My arms still hurt. You’re an asshole.”, you rolled your eyes, not in the mood to put up with Jinyoung being, well, himself, when you were just being nice, “If that is your interpretation of being nice I’m very very sorry for your future girlfriend.”

“Hey, now you’re just being mean.”, he said, acting offended and honestly a bit confused, not knowing why the two of you were discussing. Actually, you weren’t really mad at him, you just wished that he could be nice for once.

“Well, maybe you just need a taste of your own medicine.”, you said and let out a pout as the discussion was getting a bit more playful than it was serious.

But before you or Jinyoung could fuel the fire and add anything into the discussion you let out a small scream as he was turning right with full speed, making you feel like you were about to crash, holding onto the seatbelt for dear life, “For fucks sake, where did you learn how to drive? Do you not know that you’re supposed to slow down before turning?”

“If this is already scaring you, I’ll give you the nice advice to not drive with Jaebum.”, he said, chuckling, as he parked his car in front of a big house, “Ready to use the strength in your arms built up from churning butter?”

It took you about twenty minutes to carry all the parts of the couch from the third floor to the trailer on Jinyoung’s car. When you were done it was beginning to become dark outside and the weather was cooling down, making you feel a bit cold. All done, you sat back inside Jinyoung’s car as he was securing the trailer so you could drive back home.

“If you’re cold there’s a blanket on the backseat, you can use that.”, he screamed from outside, “See how nice I am? Caring for you, not wanting you to freeze to death.”

You shook your head amused, “What a gentleman you are.”

The drive home was more peaceful, no discussions this time. You looked outside, seeing a big and bright star in the sky, pointing to it. 

“I can’t get over how beautiful the starry night sky is here. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”, you said, almost sounding dreamy, eyes glued to the sky. It wasn’t even completely dark outside yet, but the first stars were already sparkling brightly.

“Isn’t it the same in your hometown?”, Jinyoung asked a bit perplexed as he looked over to you.

“Not at all. The big city lights drown them. You can barely see some, and if you can, they are not as bright as here.”

“I suppose Ilmon isn’t all bad.”, he shrugged. 

You hummed in agreement, “Except for this strange dude, who can never smile, living next to me I quite enjoy my time here.”

He chuckled, rolling his eyes, “Must be really hard to live right next to such an attractive young man, huh? I bet you have a hard time.”

Laughing, you were impressed at his wittiness, “Don’t think too highly of yourself.”

Before you could let him answer your favorite song suddenly started playing in the radio, making you turn up the volume instantly, “You need to shut up now. This is my all time favorite song.”

He started to sing along to the song as loud as possible, laughing, trying to be louder than the radio. 

“I didn’t know you could sing.”, you said, giving him an approving look.

In response, he gave you a small wink, “There are quite a lot things I can do.”

The rest of the drive the two of you were singing along to the radio as loud as you could, having genuine fun together for the first time since you arrived. It was nice to see him let loose a bit. 

Driving up to the farm you already saw Bambam sitting on the porch. He immediately stood up, walking over to the car, already apologizing without you really arriving yet, “I’m so so sorry mate. I completely forgot. I owe you a beer next time we go out.”

Jinyoung chuckled as he parked, “Doesn’t seem like his date had a happy ending, considering he’s home already.”

“Good for me.”, you said, shrugging, “I’m way too tired to carry the whole couch inside anyway.”

You were the first to get out of the car, making Bambam narrow his eyebrows in confusion. “What are you doing in Jinyoung’s car?”, he asked suspiciously.

“I’m doing your fucking job, Bam.”, you laughed.

As you were walking towards your home you were stopped by Jinyoung holding your arm, making you turn around.

“Thank you, I suppose.”, he said, pressing his lips together, “Just trying to be nice.”

You gave him a genuine smile, “No problem. Sleep well.”

“You too, (y/n).”

As you woke up you were almost shocked to see today’s weather. Yesterday the sun was still shining while today it was pouring like never before. The sky was dark and grey and your whole farm looked quite sad, making you wish you could just stay in bed all day, just being lazy, reading, eating and maybe fantasizing about a certain someone. Looking at your phone you saw a text from Bambam.

‘it’s going to storm today, you have to make sure all the animals are in the barn and safe, please. i’m getting food for tonight. see you later, favorite cousin.’

You immediately threw on a cardigan and brushed your teeth, hurrying to get things done before the weather got even worse. Looking in the mirror you scoffed for a second at your sad reflection - your hair was in a very messy bun and your under eye circles were almost black. But there was no time to pity yourself right now.

After you fed and, of course, petted the chickens and made sure that all the windows were closed tightly you ran over to the barn where the cows and goats were in. Your clothes were completely drenched even though the way between the barns was very short, the heavy rain was so strong that there was no way you could’ve stayed dry.

Entering the barn your eyebrows narrowed as you see that the light was on and the food for the cows was already laid out. “Uncle Minwoo?”, you screamed loudly, the rain was so loud that otherwise, no one would hear you.

“Oh thank god, there you are.”, the owner of the voice was coming out of the little hut you kept your tools in, throwing one of the milking machines over to you. You barely had time to catch it because Jinyoung was throwing it without caring if you’d let it fall.

“What are you doing here?”, you asked him skeptical as you sat down to the cow next to the one he was currently milking.

He looked at you with an annoyed expression on his face - but only until he saw how wet you were from the rain. Immediately he burst out into laughter, “Why are you not wearing a raincoat for fucks sake?”, he asked, clearly amused.

“I don’t even own one.”, you admitted a bit hesitant while shrugging, knowing he’d make even more fun of you.

And of course, he did. “How can you not own a raincoat? Seriously, (y/n), you’re something else. Who on earth doesn’t own a raincoat?”, he shook his head in disbelief, still laughing.

You simply pressed your lips together, coming back to your actual question, “But why are you here? Certainly not because you wanted to help me.”

“Hey, maybe I’m not as bad as you think and just wanted to be friendly for once?”, he said, acting offended, “Since you’re always complaining.”

“Yeah, I doubt that.”

Suddenly you heard a loud thunder outside, making you jump - you usually were not afraid of thunder but the sudden loud noise startled you for a second. What really scared you though was the reaction of two of your cows, immediately after they heard the thunder they let out the deepest and loudest sounds you’ve ever heard of them. They sounded terrified.

Jinyoung immediately jumped up from his stool and walked over to Bertha, the small brown cow, petting its face. “Shhhh.”, he tried calming her down before looking over to you, “I’m always here when it storms. Bertha and Marnie are deadly afraid of the thunder, so I accompany them. It calms them down.”

For a second you thought he was fooling you but before you could say something another loud thunder was heard followed by loud sounds of the cows once again.

“Wait.”, you said confused as you saw Jinyoung pet Bertha once again, giving her a small kiss on the side of her face, “You’re serious?”

He looked at you with a grin, “Of course I am. Go, pet Marnie a bit. She loves getting pet right under his chin, she’s such a lovely cow.”

You did as he said, not really trusting him yet. “I didn’t know he had feelings, Marnie, did you know?”, you asked the cow sarcastically.

He let out a laugh, shaking his head, “I only love Marnie and Bertha.”

Bertha was walking away from Jinyoung to the hay he just put down for them to lie down for a bit, something you barely ever saw them doing, “When I first looked into Bertha’s big brown eyes I fell in love.”, he said loving, petting some of the other cows while Bertha was still lying down.

“That’s adorable.”, you admitted, “Didn’t expect that from you.”

He rolled his eyes at your comment, “You know, I’m not an asshole just because I’m telling you you’re stupid because you don’t own a raincoat or work on a farm with a goddamn Gucci shirt. That’s my way of helping.”, he said confident, “You just seem to not know exactly what to do, so I’m trying to help.”

“Oh, did you hear that, Marnie?”, you asked the cow sarcastically once again, “He is just trying to help by being mean.”

“Fuck off, (y/n).”, he said while walking over to Bertha, who was resting on the ground, lying down next to her, “Just go to your hut, I’ll take care of the cows.”

“No way.”, you said sitting down next to him, “I’ll not leave you alone with my cows. I don’t trust you.”, Of course, that was only an excuse to spend some time with the pretty boy from next door. Both of you were now starting to relax, leaning against Bertha, petting her.

“So, farmer girl, how do you like it here?”, he asked you after a few seconds of silence, seeming to be actually interested in you for once.

“It’s nice, Park.”, you shrugged as he was looking at you, “I like the fact that I finally am allowed to go into the pub the most.”

“I remember when we first were allowed to go in, it was like Harry Potter seeing Hogwarts for the first time.”, he said laughing, “and now we’re the ones that get drunk in there while the younger kids are jealous they can’t.”

“Some things never change, huh?”, you said, looking at Jinyoung, who had his eyes closed and seemed to be truly relaxed in your presence for the first time since you arrived. He was using his arm as a pillow, a smile on his lips - for once a genuine smile, not the usual teasing one he gave you. The rain was pouring so hard onto the roof of the barn it sounded like music. You couldn’t help but laugh to yourself, a bit of air coming out of your nose, not believing that Jinyoung actually had a soft side.

“What are you laughing about?”, he asked curiously, still with closed eyes.

“I just love the sound of heavy rain.”, you said, also getting into a comfortable position and closing your eyes.

“Mhhh.”, Jinyoung let out, agreeing with you before yawning, “Me too. It’s cozy.”

You felt your eyelids feeling heavy, you didn’t have much sleep last night and your body was shivering a bit because of your wet clothes, Jinyoung was snoring lightly beside you within a few minutes and before you knew it you were asleep too. You wouldn’t have expected the barn to be such a comfortable place to sleep in.

You woke up by someone calling your name. As you were slowly starting to realize where you were, you were just as perplexed as Jinyoung, who was still beside you.

“Did we fall asleep?”, he asked you, yawning.

Suddenly, Bambam was standing in front of both of you, confusion written all over your face, “What the hell are you two doing in here? How do I keep finding you two together?”

Jinyoung shrugged, sitting up as you were doing the same, “We fell asleep, obviously.”

“Why were you here together in the first place?”, he asked, a smirk on his lips, “Did you make out in front of the cows? That’s unholy.”

You laughed at your cousin, “Shut up, please. I’m having a headache.”

“You two are just too cute.”, he teased you before telling you the reason he was looking for you in the first place, “Dinner’s ready. We’re having some meat with different salads and corn. Join us, Jinyoung, your mum and Ken are there too.”

“I don’t know.”, he said, unsure, “I still wanted to meet with Jaebum and Jackson later.”

Bambam narrowed his eyebrows, “Why didn’t you ask me to join, you fuck?”

Jinyoung laughed at Bambam, standing up, surprisingly offering you a hand to help you get up from the ground, “I’ll eat dinner with you and then you can come with me, alright?”, he asked Bambam.

Bambam agreed and the three of you walked over to the big house Minwoo and Bambam lived in.

“Did you find her?”, your uncle screamed from the kitchen as he heard the door opened.

“Yes, I’m here!”, you screamed as you took off your shoes.

Walking over to them, Mrs. Park was surprised to see her son, “Oh, Jinyoung. How lovely that you’re here.”, she said, as cute as always, “Where have you been?”

Both, Jinyoung and you clearly didn’t want to tell them where Bambam found them, not wanting anyone to get a wrong idea. But, of course, your annoying cousin was faster.

“They were sleeping in the barn together.”, he smirked as he told your family, knowing exactly how much you both wanted to kill them, “You two seem to get along better by now.”

Jinyoung rolled his eyes, “We were just taking care of the cows.”

You nodded, “It’s not like we met to take a nap in the barn.”

Uncle Minwoo and Mrs. Park both giggled a bit at the two of you. “Stop teasing them. They are already flustered.”, she said lightheartedly.

Everyone sat down on the table as your uncle brought the food to the table. It smelled and looked delicious.

“Thank you for letting us eat with you.”, Jinyoung said politely to your uncle.

“Oh, Jinyoung!”, he said laughing, “You’re always welcome. We’re like family.”

He nodded as all of you started eating. The food tasted amazing and the conversation was nice, all of you participating in it, talking about current events and the life on the farm.

“What were you doing before coming here, (y/n)?”, Jinyoung’s mother asked you as you were just speculation about what all of you would be doing if you didn’t have the farm.

“I was working in a hospital as an assistant during surgeries.”, you explained to her, “It was super interesting and I learned a lot about the human body. But the night shifts were the worst.”

Jinyoung looked at you, shaking his head, “I didn’t know that.”, he said surprised.

You gave him a confused glance, “I mean, why would you know that?”

He shrugged, making real conversation with you for the first time, “That sounds so interesting. Did you ever save someone from death?”

You laughed, “Yes, a lot of times. But I think it was more the doctor’s that really saved them, not me.”

Ken suddenly was joining the conversation, being just as curious and impressed as his big brother, “Woah, (y/n). Did you wear all white like the people on TV and ran around the hospital when people were hurt?”

“I did.”, you told him chuckling, “I hated the clothes though. I could never drink cranberry juice because I was afraid of spilling it and people would think it was blood.”

Jinyoung nodded before Ken could answer, “Did you ever see someone die?”, he asked curiously, making his mother gasp.

“Hey, we’re eating! Stop with such inappropriate questions.”, she said almost horrified.

You, Jinyoung and Bambam started to laugh at her reaction, continuing to eat. After all of you were done you offered to do clean the table but Bambam said he’d do it.

“I’ll just go and put on some different clothes and then pick you up, alright, Bam?”, Jinyoung said as he followed you to the door, both of you putting on your shoes.

“Uh-huh, sure.”, he said, grinning at Jinyoung’s obvious attempt to bring you home, even though you didn’t even realize.

Walking from the big house to the small hut took only a minute or two but Jinyoung still brought you home. As the two of you stood in front of your door, you felt a bit awkward. “Don’t let Bambam drink too much tonight. I need him to be fit tomorrow. It’s my day off.”, you joked, Jinyoung nodding.

“I promise to stop him if he drinks too much.”, he said, smiling brightly, “I’ll see you around?”

You scoffed a bit, wondering why he was so nice to you, “Considering the fact that you can see into my living room from your window I think so yes.”

[absinthc-blog]

minwoo  sits  in  the  main  room  of  headquarters,  clad  in  an  overly  expensive  three-piece suit  —  one  leg  crossed  over  the  other  as  slender  fingers  keep  a  hold  of  his  coffee  cup.  he's  been  there  for  almost  twenty-four  hours  straight,  filling  out  paperwork,  going  over  blueprints  &  anything  in  between  he  might  have  missed.  has  he  slept  ?  no,  he  hasn't  and  he's  sure  the  wrinkles  that  crease  this  silk  button-up  paired  with  the  dark  circles  under  his  eyes  tell  that  tale  far  better  than  anything  else.  "they  fucked  up  my  coffee."  it  comes  out  as  a  bitter  scoff,  minwoo  all  but  slamming  the  cup  down  onto  the  table  in  front  of  his  feet.  

"how  in  the  fuck  does  someone  mess  up  a  vanilla  latte  ?!"  he's  mostly  mumbling  to  himself  at  this  point,  peeling  himself  up  of  the  couch  —  adjusting  his  suit  &  tie  before  finally  making  eye-contact  with  the  other  crew  member  that  just  so  happened  to  be  passing  by.  "you  busy  ?"  he  asks,  quick  to  shift  his  attitude  for  one  that  was  a little  more  charming  &  persuasive.  "the  stupid  coffee  shop  messed  up  my  order  &  i'm  in  dire  need  of  caffeine  ...  but  i'm  too tired  to  go  by  myself."  the  male  continues  to  explain,  a  small  (  &  almost  pathetic  )  smile  etching  onto  his  lips.  "come  with  me  and  i'll  buy  you  coffee  and  something  to  eat... sound  like  a  deal  ?"

[staytheb]

Moving On

Pairing: none Genre: college!au, slice of life, slight fluff, slight angst Word Count: 6,298 Summary: The group of four friends just keep moving on despite what blocks their way to have fun and relax after a long year of school.

Warning: none except for the proof-reading that hasn’t been done since two years ago when it was last shared.

i have no idea where this idea came from or why i even wrote it in the first place, but it came out. lol also this features  BOYFRIEND in here and... i totally miss them. i wish i had written stories with them while they were still active, but oh well. it is what it is. anyways, for now, enjoy as this song was inspired by Marshmello’s Moving On. i think that’s what helped get this story out and about. so yeah, happy reading and kthxbai, Admin Lia~

"You guys are aware that you're throwing your own mini pre-graduation slash pre-summer party on the same night as MX and MBB, right?" Jeongmin stated to his friends who were the ones having the mini party at their little private residency to which they dubbed as Silver One that they used for their own leisure due to Hanbyul and Eunbyul's aunt being the dean of the university. "So?" Nayoung answered as she was scrolling through her phone to make sure everything was in order. "We're not associated with them." "Yeah, she's right, Jeongmin. We don't care." Eunbyul commented with a laugh as she and Hyunseong were rearranging the furniture around the living room to make more room. "Oh, let's move it over there, Hyunseong." "Okay."

"It's supposed to be the hottest party of the year." Jeongmin continued as Minwoo nodded his head. "Yeah. I heard that they're going to have this awesome DJ that's hard to book. A grand pool party, a large jumping castle, and even some idols to perform. It's going to be lit as fuck." "That's nice, Minwoo, but that's just a hassle to maintain and clean." Miseung told him as she just finished filling the two large coolers with ice, soda, and water bottles. "We just wanna have fun with our last days here with only those we wanna hang out with." "Because she's anti-social and hasn't made any new friends beside us since attending Starship University." Donghyun laughed wrapping an arm around Miseung's shoulders. "Isn't that right, Miseung?" "Shut up, Donghyun."

"Anyways, the male twins and Hanbyul have been gone for awhile now. They should have been back already." Eunbyul said as she looked at the time. "I hope she didn't go overboard with them alcoholic drinks like last time." "Haha, knowing Hanbyul, I'm pretty sure she may have." Hyunseong laughed as he spotted the trio from the window. "Oh, they're walking up now." A moment later, Hanbyul entered the house with Youngmin and Kwangmin behind her. Each were carrying two bags in each hand. "Yeah, sorry it took forever." Hanbyul apologized as Youngmin rolled his eyes. "It only took so long because Hanbyul wanted to grab every flavor of beer." "And then being indecisive when it came to the snacks." Kwangmin added as Hanbyul grinned at them. "You both loved it."

Nayoung peered inside the bags that Hanbyul had set on the table. "Ohh, raspberry wine. Fancy." "Yeah, we can mix it with the soda." Hanbyul laughed as Miseung scoffed. "Excuse you. Those are supposed to be mixed with my Kinky and Midori Sour liqueur." "Psh, whatever. We can buy more, Miseung." Hanbyul chuckled as she looked at the liqueur bottles lined up on the table and did the same with hers. "Besides, we really need to get juice, too, since that'll also make them taste good and different." "Oh, yeah true. I forgot about that. I'll make a run to the store once we're done." "Anyways, who else is coming besides the ten of us?" Donghyun asked as he looked around the room. "I'm sure there's more people to invite than the six of us, ladies."

"Oh, um Wenhan from the swim team is coming as well as Yixuan and Yibo from the dance team is also coming. Oh, yeah. I can't forget about them. Seungyoun from the soccer team and Sungjoo who helps me with the Chinese Club are coming as well." Miseung informed them as the males looked at her. "What? That club made me interact with them a lot and so of course I invited them to the party as well." "But, where are the girls?" Jeongmin frowned as Miseung shrugged. "Well, since joining MBB, Xiao, Xuanyi, and Meiqi don't really attend the Chinese Club anymore and so I didn't bother inviting them." "That's rude." Kwangmin commented as Miseung eyed him. "Well, who did you invite?"

"No one since it wasn't my party to invite anyone." Kwangmin answered with a smug look. "Well, anyways, Gunhee from my statistics class says he'll come by." "Wait, isn't he like the best friend of Jooheon from MX?" Hyunseong asked as Nayoung shrugged. "Yeah. So?" "Wouldn't he be going to their party instead of yours?" Nayoung shrugged. "I dunno and I don't care. I'm just saying that he said that he'll come by." "Okay, yeah, whatever." Hanbyul dismissed the topic before moving on to hers. "I invited Yoosu from my communications class as well as Kwangji from my nutrition class. Oh and Minkyun from my math class." "And Yoonho from my psychology class says he'll stop by later after his part-time job at VAV Cafe." Eunbyul added a few seconds later.

"Seriously. Where are the ladies at?" Minwoo grumbled as he slumped further into the couch he was sitting on." "If you want, then invite your female friends over." The female quartet told the male with Miseung adding more. "You should know that we're not that social and get along with guys than girls. All of y'all are proof of that." She laughed with the trio joining in soon after. "Yes, we know that." Youngmin commented as he joined Miseung on the other cooler. "But we don't want to since it's not our party to do so and it is your guys' pre-whatever-it-was party." "Besides, we've been stuck with y'all forever and don't know how to actually talk to other girls that are girls, girls, without thinking of you guys." Hyunseong admitted while scrunching up his face.

"Just talk to them." The female quartet said in unison causing the six males to laughed. "It's not that hard or different. Just don't treat them like how you treat us." Nayoung stated as Hanbyul nodded her head. "Yeah. If you treat them like us, then you're not gonna get anywhere." "Yeah, true. What they said." Eunbyul agreed as she stood up to stretched. "Alright. We still have a few more hours before the party actually starts, I wanna get in some sleep before then." "Ugh, me too." Donghyun said also stretching his limbs. "Even though I didn't do anything." "When do you ever?" Jeongmin countered with a smirk as everyone laughed while Donghyun rolled his eyes in a playful manner. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"Anyways, someone set up the playlist for tonight as I get some juice. Any snacks?" Miseung asked while grabbing her car keys. "Yeah, I want peppero. Raspberry, strawberry, yeah like a lot of it." Minwoo answered as Miseung rolled her eyes. "You can come then. Anyone else?" "Nah, just get whatever you want." Nayoung told her as she finished scrolling through her phone. "Just make sure to buy more water, soda, and whatever else we need that we might run out later on." "Gotcha. C'mon, Minwoo." "I'm coming. I just need to find my shoes." "Didn't you leave it upstairs when you snucked through Eunbyul's room this morning?" Jeongmin asked as Minwoo remembered. "Oh yeah." He ran up stairs as everyone else continued to do whatever before the party started.

~~~~~~~

Minwoo and Miseung had just finished purchasing juice, snacks, water, and other things like paper towels, cups, and plates while walking and carrying them out of the store and towards Miseung's car. On the way there, there were a few guys passing out flyers and one of them happened to stopped them. "Hey there." He greeted them as Miseung wondered what kind of guy would wear short ass orange shorts with just a white beater and cap. "MX and MBB are having a party at MX's house. Would love to see you there." The guy flashed them a bright smile while offering a white paper at them. "No thanks." Miseung declined as she moved out of his way and around him with Minwoo slowly following after her. The guy frowned, but he didn't give up and chased after her.

"It's going to be the biggest and loudest party of the year." He tried again as he stepped into her path momentarily stopping her from moving on while Minwoo just kind of lagged behind a bit and off to the side waiting for the whole ordeal to be over with. "Wanna know why?" The male asked as Miseung shook her head indifferently. "No, not really." The male's face fell, but he recovered with an embarrassed laugh. "Well, you must not be aware, but I'm going to be there as I'm the Vice President of MX, Hoseok, but you can call me Wonho." "Not interested." Miseung informed him as she tried to move, but Hoseok blocked her path again. "Um, you must be new to this whole thing and so I'll just leave this-"

Hoseok was about to placed it into one of the bags, but Miseung moved her arms around so that he wouldn't. "I'm sure you'll have plenty of people at your party already." Miseung told him with an uninterested smile. "Besides, there's another party I would rather attend tonight than yours." Miseung side-stepped around Hoseok and continued to move on while signaling for Minwoo to hurry up so that they could head back to Silver One as fast as possible. Hoseok quickly stopped Minwoo and passed him a few of the flyers while telling him about the party to which Minwoo hesitantly took and stuffed them into one of the grocery bags before following after Miseung while Hoseok watched them go with a smirk as he pulled his phone from out of his shorts' pocket. "Hmm, let's see who this person is that's hosting a party tonight."

~~~~~~~

Eunbyul and Hanbyul had went to talk to their aunt, Dean Headmistress Han, about borrowing the school's sound system and what not for their get-together. Their aunt allowed them permission as the twin sisters went to the Music and Sound Department to show the head person that they were going to check a few of the items out as the other pair of twins were already there waiting for them to help. And upon arriving, the female twins were confused on how some of things were already in process to be checked out when the male twins told them about the ordeal. "How are they already checked out, when we have permission to used them tonight?" Hanbyul asked the head person as he tried explained the situation to them.

"Two guys from MX showed me their papers. It had the Dean's seal of approval." The man explained as Eunbyul spoke this time. "Could I see the paper, because we have the seal of approval as well. And the log book." The older man grumbled as he went to fetch the book and the papers. "Do you think it was forge?" Youngmin asked as he and Kwangmin now stood besides the twin sisters. "Probably. We'll see when he brings them to us." The man returned with a piece of paper and the log book. Hanbyul took the log book while Eunbyul took the paper to check. While Hanbyul skimmed names, Eunbyul analyzed her aunt's real signature to the supposed ones by MX. "This is a fake, Mr. Choi." Eunbyul told him as she placed both papers side by side.

"It's not even matching at all. They're both signed by two different people." "What are you talking about? That is the same one as in the past. Maybe yours a fake." He glared at them as Eunbyul matched his stare. "Do you want me to call in Dean Headmistress Han for you to settled this? Because I don't mind having her come all the way over here to tell you how to do your job, sir." The man gulped as he shook his head while pointing behind. "They're still in the room gathering the things. They haven't left yet." "That part is true, Eunbyul." Hanbyul told her sister. "A Lee Jooheon and Lim Changkyun signed in, but they haven't sighed out yet." "Hmm, maybe we can catch them and get this settled." Kwangmin suggested as the four headed inside a moment later.

The quartet spotted several people as they were carrying speakers and other things. "Which one of you are Lim Changkyun and Lee Jooheon?" Two heads turned to look at them as the rest momentarily stopped what they were doing. "I'm Jooheon." "And I'm Changkyun, but better known as I.M." The duo set down what they were carrying while walking over to the two sets of twins. "How can we assist you today?" Changkyun asked. "You can assist us by giving those items you're about to take over to us instead." Hanbyul told them. "Why would we? We need this for our party tonight." Jooheon told them with a look. "And so do we." Eunbyul countered while holding up her permission form. "Dean Headmistress Han confirmed it."

The two glanced at one another a bit worry, but remained cool. "So did we." Jooheon answered. "You can ask Mr. Choi about it since he has our form." "Yeah, that's a fake." Hanbyul stated as the female twins were making sure they were going to get what they came here for while the male twins just stayed behind them and waited until they were needed. "No it's not. We got that approved earlier this month." Changkyun replied as Hanbyul shook her head. "Yeah, I don't think so. We got ours approve about ten minutes ago." "Maybe yours a fake." Jooheon stated as Eunbyul rolled her eyes. "Hmm, should we settled this with a call to the dean then to really know which one's a fake and which one is actually real?"

The duo chuckled while putting up their hands to ease the girls. "How about we don't go there." Changkyun began as he gave them an innocent-like smile. "Um, how about this? You're invited to our MX and MBB bash at the MX house tonight instead of the one you're planning on going to." "Yeah. This MX party is going to be lit as fuck. Y'all gotta go." Jooheon nodded his head. "Y'all will regret it if you don't attend this party." "Nah. Silver One has their own party and we're taking those with us." Hanbyul told the duo as she instructed the male twins to grab the items. "Stop us, and we'll get the dean on your asses and check out what other things MX has been forging and probably among other things."

The MX boys held their tongues while shooting one another worried glances as they let the quartet do their thing as Kwangmin and Youngmin took on the heavier things and the sisters taking on the light items. "Thanks!" Eunbyul mocked saluted them as she was the last to grab something. "Next time, boys, make sure your stamp of approval is actually a stamp of approval." She waved at them before following the others out as Changkyun and Jooheon let out frustrated sighs. "Dude, what are we going to do now?" Changkyun asked Jooheon as Jooheon pulled out his mobile device. "I dunno, man, but I gotta make a call and gotta let the rest of the boys know the sound system was taken and we don't have anything for our sound entertainment tonight."

~~~~~~~

"Alright, you guys finish the decorations and setting up in here before checking the backyard as well while I go and make that call about the food." Nayoung informed Donghyun, Hyunseong, and Jeongmin as they let out collective "all rights" while she headed to the kitchen. "Hmm, already got sandwiches." She spied the three wrapped thirty-six inches sub sandwiches on the table along with several bags of chips before scanning the rest of the area and opening the fridge. "Hmm, dessert. Still need to get that going and probably some pizzas and burgers for sure. Everyone loves that. Too late to barbecue anything since no one thought about cooking meat tonight. Probably another time." Nayoung continued to talk to herself before making a call to a few places.

Nayoung continued to talk to the dessert specialist on the other line as she watched her male friends set up the backyard and rearranging some of the tables and chairs into better positions. "Actually a full sheet is too much, could you make it a half a sheet, please? Yes, that would be perfect. Thank you. Mainly white with a bit of chocolate so kind of like a swirl. Yes, thank you. And please add in white icing and could you drizzle it with chocolate sauce and add in some fruits. Maybe strawberries, mainly. Yes, awesome. Oh and as for the writing, you could just put 'finally' with lots of exclamation marks. Wonderful. Nope that's all. Thank you and have a wonderful day." Nayoung hung up as she opened the back door to speak with the boys.

"Yo, I'm going to pick up the food now. Everyone should be back shortly. I doubt anyone will arrive early, so y'all are good." She told them as they gave her the O.K. signs that they had heard her. Making her way to the front door while grabbing her small purse and car keys she opened the door to come face to face with some stranger. "Hi. How may I help you?" "Is this the Silver One house?" The male asked as Nayoung looked at him indifferently. "That depends on who's asking." "Son Hyunwoo, the President of MX from the MX House. But better known as Shownu. And you are?" "Nayoung. What do you want to know about Silver One?" "I came to ask the head house person to cancel their party so that MX and MBB can have theirs." "And why should they cancel it?"

"Because our party is going to be the biggest and loudest party here at Starship University." Hyunwoo began to explained. "And it would be great it Silver One could back off and not ruin it for us." "How is a small party going to ruin the biggest and greatest MX party of the year?" "By taking our entertainment system." "That makes no sense. Weren't you guys supposed to have some hotshot DJ that was going to be your entertainment system?" "Yes, but he'll be running late and so we need the system until he arrives." "I see. Wow, that's kind of dumb." "Do you know if this is the Silver One house or not?" "I do, but I'm not telling you." "Why not?" "Because your reason to cancel a small party is seriously childish." Nayoung told Hyunwoo off as she continued.

"Plus, if MX is so great and will be having the craziest party ever, I doubt anyone is going to care about the music being played if you can just connect your blue-tooth to it and have everyone already getting wasted and playing drinking games." "It's not the same." Hyunwoo answered as he ran a hand through his hair. "Could you at least tell me where this head person of Silver One is?" "No, I can't. I'm busy and need to get going." She pushed the male away so she could close the door and side-stepped around him to head towards her car. "All I'm asking is for something simple. You don't need to make it any more difficult than you already are." Hyunwoo told to Nayoung's retreating back that made her swiftly swirl around to glare at the male.

"Honestly, if you're so worried about it, why not talk to the dean about it?" Her tone then became sarcastic. "I'm sure she'll love to hear you wanting to squash out a small house party that started just four years ago compare to the biggest and baddest MX that has been around for years now." Hyunwoo remained silent as he just looked at her while Nayoung scoffed with a roll of her eyes. "Whatever man. It's of no concern of mine." She unlocked her car, got inside, and drove off as Hyunwoo watched the vehicle grow smaller and smaller. He then glanced at the house before him. "So this is Silver One. Tch." He clicked his tongue at the sight. "No way am I'm talking to the dean about this. We'll deal with this the MX's way." He left to return to the MX house.

~~~~~~~

Both set of twins were hooking up the system outside in the backyard and testing it to see if it worked or not. Miseung and Minwoo were rearranging all the snacks on the table in the living room and filling in the coolers with the bottles of juices and water. The other four were in the kitchen preparing the food as they cut up the sandwiches into smaller portions, separated the pizza slices, made the burgers into smaller sizes, and cut the cake into individual slices so that they didn't have to bother with it later on. Everything was going perfectly well until the group of six that were inside the house heard screams and the sounds of gunfire coming from the backyard and rushed to go see what it was.

But before the group of six could investigate, the group of four from outside had already rushed back into the house for safety blocking their way to see what was really going on outside. No one had time to ask anything when they suddenly heard glass shattering from the windows of the kitchen and witnessed what appeared to be a few sets of firecrackers that began popping. Before they could run off for safety the group also saw several ping pongs falling onto the floor that released some pink, teal, and blue smoke as it begun to fill up the space and blurred their vision. Someone yelled out 'duck' and everyone began to crowd around one another trying to protect the other from whatever was going on right now.

Somehow a few of them got all of them to head upstairs while navigating through the smoke by crawling carefully on the floor after the firecrackers had finished and where they were sure that there was nothing going on and opened up all the windows on the second floor to air out the smoke so that they could breathe. Donghyun, Jeongmin, Miseung, and Nayoung happened to notice a few people wearing bandanas over their faces while running off with the sound system. "Hey! That's not yours!" They yelled out which made the masked figures run off faster and the quartet running off to find the others to chase after them. "Dude, should we just tell your aunt about it?" Hyunseong asked once they got done talking. "She is the dean of the school."

"Ugh. I don't want her to worry about this stupid incident though." Eunbyul stated as they all headed downstairs to see the aftermath of what had just happened. "Ugh, fuck those guys, man. MX are a bunch of petty fools." Hanbyul cussed upon seeing the big mess. "Well, we're eventually going to have to tell her about Silver One though." Minwoo said as he swatted at the remaining smoke in the air. "I think we should call off the party." Kwangmin suggested while looking at his female friends with Youngmin agreeing a second later. "We have to clean up the mess and check to see if the food is still edible." "This is so stupid." Nayoung glared at the room before her. "They rather act like this instead of being mature about it. Ugh, so frustrating."

"Alright, let's just clean up for now guys." Eunbyul ordered with a sigh as she went to get the broom and dustpan. "Yeah, let's clean first and we can talk afterwards." Donghyun nodded his head in agreement as he followed after Eunbyul. "I'm gonna call and message the people that were invited since it was just going to be a small party in the first place." Miseung said as she pulled out her phone and a list of numbers that the female trio had compiled for her earlier if the attendees needed directions to get to Silver One or something. "Alright, the rest of us can go help clean and test taste the food." Jeongmin softly smiled as the group went about to doing what they needed to do.

~~~~~~~

By the time everything was cleaned up and the food tested, the female quartet crashed onto the couches in their living room once the boys had left a few minutes ago since the party was off and they had classes the next day. "This sucks." Hanbyul complained. "I really wanted to drink the night away." "You know that you still can right?" Eunbyul looked at her twin as Hanbyul groaned. "It's not the same because we're not doing anything." "You know what? Fuck it. Let's just do it with just us anyways." Nayoung said as she stood up. "Party or no party, we're still gonna hang out and do our thing. Fcuk MX and their big ass party or whatever." "What about the boys?" Miseung asked as Nayoung frowned remembering. "Oh, right. I forgot about them."

"Oh, well fuck it." Nayoung dismissed. "It's just gonna be us then." "Alright, let's do this!" Hanbyul exclaimed as she ran over to the coolers, pulled out four random alcoholic drinks, uncapped it with a bottle opener, and brought it over to the others. "Cheers." "Only you would do something like this." Eunbyul chuckled as she took one and the others doing the same. "Of course." "Alright, then." Miseung began. "To our final year at S-U and whatever lies before us." "To our final year!" The other three exclaimed as the quartet clinked their bottles against one another down a bit of their beers. "Ahh, wow. This flavor is strong." Nayoung grimaced as she looked at her friends. "Let's eat. I'm starving." "You were the food tester." Eunbyul countered as Nayoung just grinned.

Meanwhile at the MX house, the party was booming thanks to the sound system they managed to retrieve. Everyone was jamming out, drinking whatever someone was mixing in the kitchen, a few people were already topless, and someone was already passed out by one of the guest toilet. It was definitely the biggest, the loudest, and the craziest party to date for the MX fraternity. Unfortunately, it was unexpectedly cut super early when their power went out. All the party-goers looked around at one another trying to adjust to the darkness that suddenly surrounded them in their tipsy state. "It's alright, everyone. We got it under control." Minhyuk yelled as he went to find his fellow frat brothers to assess the situation and figure out what was going on.

The group of seven finally gathered in their meeting room with all of them holding flashlights and pointing it at one another. "Did you forget to pay for the electricity bill again, Hyungwon?" Kihyun asked as he shook his head. "I paid it last week." "Then did someone trip a wire or something?" Kihyun asked looking at the others. "I already checked the breakers. They're fine." Minhyuk stated. "It's pouring rain outside, guys. It's the weather." Changkyun stated as he heard the downpour first and went to go check to make sure that it was the rain. "Yeah, it's definitely the rain." Everyone went to crowd around the window and indeed saw the heavy rain crashing against their house and the campus in complete darkness.

"This is the worst MX party ever." Jooheon let out in a bummed tone before noticing a flicker of light in the distance. "Did you guys see that?" "See what?" Hoseok asked as he didn't see anything. "Over there." Jooheon pointed off in the distance when he saw the same flickering of lights again before it lit up a two-story house. "There. That building over there." "That's the Silver One house." Hyunwoo confirmed. "The one that was also going to have a party tonight, too, until we took their sound system from them, right?" Hoseok let out with wry laugh. "Yeah." "They must have a backup generator." Hyungwon muttered as Minhyuk grinned. "Should we take that, too?" "Not in this rain." Kihyun said as the rain continued to pour.

"Should we check it out anyways?" Changkyun grinned at his friends. "Seems there's still a party going on." "I'm surprised they haven't call in a complaint about the smoke bombs." Kihyun voiced out as Hoseok voiced his. "I'm more surprised that they didn't file a complaint about the black-cat firecrackers." "Didn't you think it was kind of extreme to do that to them though?" Changkyun looked at his friends. "Over a sound system." "It was fun though." Hyunwoo laughed as Minhyuk agreed. "Haha, yeah it was. Hearing all of their screams." "Anyways," Kihyun interrupted them. "So are we going over there or not?" "Do you think that's wise?" Hyungwon asked as Jooheon nodded his head. "Yeah, after we stole the sound system and threw smoke bombs and firecrackers at them." "Who cares? Everyone loves us. Let's go." Minhyuk said as he left first with the others following after him.

~~~~~~~

"I'm so glad we went with that backup generator." Eunbyul let out a relieved breath as the quartet settled back onto the sofa. "Because of me." Miseung grinned as the others rolled their eyes. "Yeah, yeah, you're so smart." Nayoung teased her cousin as she turned the TV back on. "Oh, hey, let me play this song." Miseung said as Nayoung handed the control over to her. "It better not be a kid song, Miseung." Hanbyul said with a dry look. "We're supposed to party. Not fall asleep." "It's not. I play this for my niece and she likes it even though it just came out ten days ago." Miseung found Marshmello's Moving On and clicked on it. "Oh this one." Nayoung let out upon recognizing the title. "Yeah, your niece really likes it." "She's your niece, too." "You first." "Whatever."

The quartet bopped their heads to it as Miseung continued to play more songs from Marshmello and several minutes later ended at her favorite one, Alone. "Oh my god, this one goes super hard near the end." And soon enough the girls were jamming out to it with their own sound system going just as hard. Because of that, the quartet didn't hear the knocks on their door leaving the group of boys outside to stand in the pouring rain. Changkyun had moved over to where the broken window was and peered inside despite the makeshift covering they had for it. He bopped his head to the song as he watched the four inside dancing like no one was watching with a bottle of beer in their grasps.

Changkyun made eye contact with Hanbyul and he ducked down upon being noticed. "Shit. One of them saw me." "Who?" Minhyuk asked as Changkyun just pointed. "I don't know, but they did." "Dude, we're here for a reason." Kihyun said with a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes. Soon enough the door was opened with the girls looking at the boys. "What do you guys want?" Nayoung asked spotting the president as no one said anything. "Did you come to steal our generator, too?" Miseung sarcastically asked them as Jooheon looked at her with surprised. "How did you know?" The others slapped him as Miseung rolled her eyes. "I didn't." "What do you guys want?" Eunbyul repeated the question they didn't answer.

"Because there has to be a reason y'all are over here instead of at your biggest, loudest, and craziest MX party at the MX house." Hanbyul added with a smug look. "Especially when the main people are standing right before us." "Well, you see, uh..." Hyunwoo trailed off as he had no idea what to say. "Could you let us in first? It's wet and cold out here." Hyungwon asked as the girls looked at one another and moved out of the way to let them inside with an indifferent look. The males happily entered as they were thrilled to be out of the rain and somewhere dry. They scanned the area with curious glances as the females took their seats back on the couch and paid attention to watching a movie now instead of listening to music.

"When it stops raining you guys can go back." Nayoung told them as Miseung added more with an indifferent tone. "Actually, y'all can just leave now since none of you told us why you're here." "We were curious as to why you're the only one with electricity." Hoseok admitted. "And now we know." "Okay, cool. You can leave now." Miseung replied as Hoseok frowned at her attitude. "Why are you being so rude?" "Because I can after that fiasco you guys caused upon us earlier. Damn MX." Miseung tsked as Hyunwoo finally stepped forward to stop the duo's bickering. "Look, we're sorry about the things that we have done to you today." He apologized with the other six nodding their heads in silent agreement. "And we just want to call truce."

The quartet looked at one another in disbelief while casting their eyes upon the group of seven. "MX wants to call truce?" Eunbyul asked with a disbelief tone. "Why?" Hanbyul asked with a suspicious look. "MX never asks for a truce nor do they apologize. I don't believe you. So, what's the catch?" "There's no catch." Hyunwoo stated with a serious tone with the other six nodding their heads eagerly. Miseung shook her head and got up. "Truce or not, I'm not going to bother." She stated as she made her way towards the stairs while giving a dirty look at Hoseok. "Especially not with someone that still passes out flyers to you when you don't want it." Hoseok suddenly grabbed Miseung's arm offended by her words preventing her from leaving the room. "What is wrong with you?"

"I don't like you." Miseung answered him with a glare as she tried to twist her arm out of his hold. "Now would you please let go?" "No." "What the fcuk?" And the two began a tug-of-war of sort with Miseung's arm while the rest watched as they weren't sure how to go about it. It led to the duo stumbling towards the tables and crashing into it. A while ago, before the boys had shown up, the girls had moved all of the actual food with the rest of the snacks in the living room. And Miseung ended up smashing a slice of cake in Hoseok's face out of annoyance and frustration. "I swear, you're so hella annoying." Hoseok wiped the mess off of his face with his free hand and smeared the rest of it onto Miseung's face a second later. "And you, are hella stubborn."

Miseung pushed Hoseok out of annoyance, but the male barely budged who just laughed in response as the two continued to just sit on the floor. "Well," Kihyun cleared his throat as he looked around at everyone, "We all definitely got off on the wrong foot, so why don't we all just start over. Shall we?" The other female trio had looked at one another and nodded their heads as they looked over at Miseung who just shook her head with a smile. Her friends gave her another hard look and she let out a reluctant sigh. "Fine, I guess." Hanbyul clapped her hands together with a large smile. "Now, that we're all cool with each other." She cast a glance in Miseung's direction with a smirk. "Somewhat." Before looking at everyone else. "Let's party."

Everyone practically cheered upon returning to partying as Miseung stood up while dusting herself off with an annoyed look on her face. "Ugh, I would rather shower and then curl up in my bed instead." She muttered to herself as Hoseok smirked also doing the same thing. "Want company for both?" Miseung gazed at him startled as she rolled her eyes. "No thanks." "Hey, it was worth a try." "Well, you can try again when I'm in a much better mood." "Really?" "No." She deadpanned before she felt her lips twitched as she looked away from him. "Maybe." And she ran off and up the stairs feeling slightly embarrassed about what she had just said and possibly implied leaving Hoseok to stare after her with a silly grin.

Meanwhile Eunbyul and Hanbyul began a dance battle against Jooheon and Changkyun with Hyungwon being in changed of the music. Minhyuk and Kihyun had wandered off to the food table and cleaned it up with Hoseok's help and started passing out beverages and snacks to the others. Hyunwoo had pulled Nayoung off to the side to talk with her privately. "Yeah?" Nayoung asked when the two were far enough away from the others to converse quietly. "I just wanted to apologize." Hyunwoo told her as she looked at him weirdly. "I thought you already did?" "I meant personally. I'm the president of MX and if it wasn't for me, then none of this would have happened." "Hmm, true, but then we all wouldn't have met and talked, right?"

Hyunwoo regarded her a bit with a soft smile. "True, but wouldn't we have crossed paths eventually?" "Um, I don't think so." Nayoung grinned at him. "We've been here for four years and neither of us has ever interacted with a MX member until now." "Really? Everyone knows us." "I know, but that doesn't mean everyone wants to be around you." Nayoung then shrugged. "Well, I guess us four never really bothered about fraternities and sororities." Hyunwoo then sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck as he avoided eye contact with her. "Um, well, now that we're here and all, maybe that could change?" Nayoung looked at him with a soft smile. "It could. How would you like to go about that?" "Are you free tomorrow night?" "Yeah." "Then it's a date." "It's a date."