Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

we're just friends (that's what we tell people)

The court looked like it was about to melt.

White lines wavered in heat, the paint almost bending until it looked like it was melting. The metal rim shimmered under the descending sun, too bright to stare at for more than a second. The sky was still bright, but unfurling at the edges— blue melting into gold, gold slipping towards pink, pink into something softer, heavier.

Shadows lengthened, stretched, blurred into one another. Somewhere beyond the fence, a scooter passed, its sound stretching thin into the warm air before dissolving completely. Things felt muted, cicadas pulsing in to fill the silence that wasn't really silence.

A basketball bounced once, twice, then hit the fence across the court with a quiet thud, like it too had given up in the unbearable heat.

No one went to get it.

They were all too tired for that.

Practice had ended minutes ago. Or maybe longer. Time felt strange in the heat— slower, thicker, like it stuck to skin the same way sweat did.

Wonwoo sat where the wall met the ground, in the small pocket of shade it casted. His back was pressed against the concrete that still held a trace of coolness.

Sweat gathered at his temple, traced the lines of his jaw, disappeared into the stretched collar of his t-shirt. He didn't wipe it away. Couldn't. The weight draped across him made it difficult to even move.

Junhui was collapsed across Wonwoo's side. Half of his weight leaned into Wonwoo, shoulder pressed against shoulder. His head tipped slightly, resting somewhere between the wall and Wonwoo's arm like he'd stopped holding himself up a long time ago and never bothered to start again. One arm hung loose, fingers brushing the ground, drawing lazy, meaningless shapes in the dust. His hair was damp, curling slightly at the edges, and every time the faintest breeze passed, it shifted just enough to tickle Wonwoo’s jaw.

Wonwoo didn't complain— not that he could. His head was tipped back against the concrete, eyes half-lidded, watching a flock of birds cross overhead in loose formations, wings cutting through the fading light. Their chirps and calls echoed as they folded themselves back into rooftops, into wires, into nests hidden between branches.

Jun shifted barely, hooking his arm through Wonwoo's, sprawling even lower like he had no bones left.

"You're heavy," Wonwoo muttered, though he didn't move.

Jun hummed like he hadn't heard him. Or like he had and didn't care.

Somewhere nearby, someone groaned dramatically. Another voice laughed. The faint squeak of sneakers echoed. Someone lay flat on their back a few feet away, arm thrown over their eyes. Another sat cross-legged, lazily spinning a ball on one finger and failing every few seconds.

Laughter came and went, rising in brief bursts before fading back into the heavy quiet.

The world felt far away. Muted, distant, slipping further with every passing second. Sounds blurred into something soft and indistinct.

A soft sigh escaped Wonwoo. His breathing had started to settle, he felt a strange sense of peace, almost content with Jun pressing into his side.

It didn't last long. Not when a sudden weight crashed into his other side.

“Ugh,” Soonyoung groaned dramatically, collapsing without warning, his shoulder knocking into Wonwoo’s arm. “I can’t feel my legs. This is the end for me.”

Wonwoo’s eyes opened immediately, the calm snapping just slightly. He pushed at Soonyoung without hesitation, firm and instinctive. "Go away."

“Hey!” Soonyoung protested, nearly tipping over before catching himself. He stared at Wonwoo like he’d just been betrayed on a personal level. “What was that for?”

Wonwoo didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at him.

Jun, however, did. Slowly, like it required effort, he lifted his head just enough to glance over. His expression was lazy, eyes half-lidded, hair sticking to his forehead— and then he stuck his tongue out.

Soonyoung gasped.

“You see that?!” he demanded, pointing at Jun like this was evidence of a crime. “You’re letting him do this!”

Jun didn’t bother pulling back, just let his head drop again, cheek pressing more fully into Wonwoo’s shoulder this time. “I was here first.”

“You’re not even sitting properly!”

“That’s your problem.”

Soonyoung's eyebrows shot up. “It is my problem. I also want to lie down!”

Wonwoo exhaled quietly through his nose, eyes drifting shut again, like this had nothing to do with him. Like the extra weight against his side— the way Jun had settled more firmly, more comfortably— wasn’t something he was actively allowing.

“Find somewhere else,” he said, flat and final.

Soonyoung stared at him, offended beyond words. Then, with a huff, he flopped back onto the ground instead, arms spread wide like he’d been cast aside by society.

“This team is built on favoritism,” he muttered.

Someone nearby snorted.

Another voice, what sounded like Seungcheol to him, chimed in lazily, "You just figured that out?"

"This is so unfair," Soonyoung complained, arms and feet flapping in distress. "I work just as hard. Maybe harder."

"Debatable," Seungcheol said.

"Hey!" Soonyoung called out.

Laughter ripped through the group, carrying over the hum of a bee passing by. A soft breeze finally slipped past. It brushed past them, cooling the sweat at the back of Wonwoo's neck, lifting the damp edges of Jun's hair. The sun dipped lower, the shadows stretched longer across the court.

The cicadas seemed to grow louder. Or maybe everything else just faded.

Jun shifted closer, just a little. His fingers brushed the side of Wonwoo's wrists.

Someone started talking again. Someone else laughed. A dragonfly buzzed its way over Soonyoung's limp body, his eyes following it for a second before fluttering close. A can cracked open with a sharp pssst, followed by the soft fizz of it settling.

Jun mumbled something under his breath. Wonwoo didn't catch it, didn't bother asking again.

A few minutes passed like that— stretching, thinning, dissolving into the heat and humming air.

The sun dipped lower, finally brushing the edge of the horizon, orange deepening into the dark blue of the clear night. The air felt cooler now, but still clung to skin.

Someone pushed themselves up, called out to no one in particular. "Alright, I'm leaving. See you at school."

That was all it took to break the haze the court had slipped into. The moment broke. Shoes scraped, bags zipped. The basektball was retrieved with a dull bounce and tucked away. Voices started fading in small, tired bursts— laughter echoing easily, then faded just as quickly.

Jun didn't move. He still lay sprawled across Wonwoo like gravity had personally chosen him.

Wonwoo blinked up at the sky surrendering to dusk, the exhaled quietly and shifted beneath him.

"Get up," he said, nudging Jun with his elbow.

Jun made a soft, wordless complaint.

Wonwoo didn’t repeat himself. He straightened just enough to dislodge him, then lifted his hand without looking.

It hovered there between them.

Jun squinted at it like it had personally offended him. “You’re so demanding,” he muttered.

But he took it. Their fingers closed— warm, damp with sweat— and Wonwoo pulled. Jun rose slowly, like it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, stumbling half a step forward when he reached his feet. He lingered there, too close, for just a second longer than necessary before letting go.

Behind them, Soonyoung’s voice cut through, loud and shameless. “Me too!”

They turned.

He was still on the ground, arm stretched out dramatically, fingers wiggling. “Pick me up too, Wonu!! I can’t move. I’ll die here.”

Wonwoo looked at him flat, and unimpressed. He held his gaze for a beat too long, then he turned away back to Jun.

“So,” he said quietly, like the interruption hadn’t existed. “Can you walk?”

Jun paused.

Something flickered in his expression— quick, mischievous, gone almost immediately.

He wilted completely. A full-body collapse, shoulders dropping, head tipping foward like the weight of the world had suddenly become too much.

"No," he whined, dragging the words out brazenly, "my feet hurt."

Soonyoung went still.

Jun leaned in a little, just enough to be heard, but loud enough anyway. "Carry me home, Wonu."

There's a beat. A very long stretching second of silence.

Soonyoung's mouth fell open.

"Excuse me?" he sputtered, pushing himself up onto his elbows. "Excuse me?! I literally asked first—"

Wonwoo didn't even look at him. He sighed, so soft that it was almost inaudible. Then he turned his back, knees bending slightly.

Jun brightened immediately. He didn't hesitate, just stepped forward and climbed on, arms looping around Wonwoo's shoulders, legs hooking at his sides with ease. His chin dropped to Wonwoo's shoulder, hair slightly damp, brushing against his neck.

Wonwoo adjusted his grip automatically, hands settling under Jun's thighs, steady and sure, like it was nothing.

Soonyoung stared at them like the world had personally betrayed him.

"I hate it here," he declared, voice high enough to carry around the court. "This is a toxic environment. I deserve better teammates."

Jun, already settled comfortably, turned his head just enough, and stuck his tongue out again. "Womp, womp, Soonie,"

Soonyoung clutched his chest. "Unbelievable."

Footsteps approached them from behind.

Mingyu's laugh came first— low, warm, completely unbothered. "You're actually serious?"

Seungcheol followed, already shaking his head. “Get up,” he said, nudging Soonyoung lightly with his foot. “Stop embarrassing yourself.”

“No,” Soonyoung said immediately, without shame.

“Get up," Seungcheol said again.

“No.”

"Soonyoung, you're not dying. Stand up," Seungcheol shot back.

"No."

"What do you mean no?"

"My legs don't work anymore," Soonyoung complained. Then made a show of moving his legs, but only moved his toes.

"Your legs were working fine five minutes ago," Seungcheol said with a deepening frown.

"That was before I was emotionally offended," Soonyoung huffed.

"Kwon Soonyoung," Seungcheol warned.

Soonyoung didn't move. At least not in a way Seungcheol intended he did. Instead, he rolled onto his side, propped his head up in his palm, blinking up at Seungcheol like he had all the time in the world.

"Cheol," he said, voice suddenly softer, almost syrupy. "My feet really hurt."

Seungcheol stared at him, long, hard, like he was trying to out-stubborn him. "What do you want me to do about it?"

Soonyoung pouted. Actually pouted. Then because he had no shame whatsoever, he batted his eyes with a slow, deliberate blink.

Jun and Mingyu made a noise that was half a laugh, half a choke.

“Carry me too,” Soonyoung said, softer now but somehow worse. “I deserve care too.”

“No, you don’t,” Seungcheol shot back instantly.

Soonyoung opened his mouth, but Wonwoo cut in with a sharp click of his tongue. "Hyung, just carry him. We don't have the whole day."

“Why are you on his side?” Seungcheol demanded.

“Because I want to go home.”

Seungcheol groaned, loud and long, like the weight of the decision was personally ruining his life. "I don't want to carry him."

Soonyoung pointed again at Wonwoo and Jun, who had already started moving ahead slowly. “Look at them! Wonwoo’s carrying Jun too!! Why does he get princess treatment and I don’t?!”

Seungcheol glanced over. Watched, for half a second, the way Jun had settled against Wonwoo’s back like it was the most natural place in the world.

Then he looked back.

“That’s different,” he said.

“How is that different?!” Soonyoung demanded.

“It just is.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

Soonyoung stared at him, betrayed. “So you’re saying if I collapse right now, you’ll just leave me here?”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t even look back?”

“No.”

“…wow.”

A pause.

Then Soonyoung reached out and grabbed the front of Seungcheol’s shirt, tugging once.

“Carry me,” he said again, quieter this time.

“No.”

“But Wonwoo—”

“I’m not Wonwoo.”

“So be better.”

Seungcheol groaned, loud and long, dragging a hand down his face. “You are unbelievable,” he said, glancing between Soonyoung and the retreating figures of Wonwoo and Jun.

“They started it!” Soonyoung insisted immediately.

“They didn’t—”

“They did! Wonwoo’s carrying Jun! I’m just asking for equal rights!”

“That’s not—” Seungcheol cut himself off, exhaling sharply. “Fine. Fine.”

Before Soonyoung could react, he grabbed his arm and hauled him up.

“There. You’re standing. Now walk.”

Soonyoung stood for one second. Then he leaned in again, arms looping around Seungcheol’s shoulders, already climbing.

“Carry me too!!!” he said with a gleeful giggle.

“Hey—no—get off—” Seungcheol started, but his hands came up automatically anyway, catching him before he slipped.

Soonyoung beamed, chin resting comfortably on Seungcheol’s shoulder. “This is what I deserve.”

“You deserve to walk,” Seungcheol muttered.

He still shifted him higher.

Wonwoo, beside them, had already started moving.

Jun settled against his back, quieter now, cheek pressed to his shoulder, the earlier dramatics melting into something softer.

They fell into step together— Wonwoo and Jun, Seungcheol and Soonyoung, Mingyu trailing along, shaking his head.

“I still asked first,” Soonyoung complained after a moment, glaring faintly at Wonwoo.

Wonwoo didn’t respond.

Jun hummed, satisfied.

Mingyu laughed again.

Seungcheol groaned under his breath.

The court faded behind them.

The sky deepened.

Streetlights flickered on, one by one.

Their footsteps fell into an easy rhythm—five of them moving through the warm, lingering dusk.

And if Seungcheol adjusted his grip again, just slightly, when Soonyoung shifted—no one said anything about it.

The sun had no business being this aggressive before eight in the morning.

Junhui felt it the second he stepped off the bus— not the gentle warmth of the early summer mornings people wrote songs about. Not the kind that made everything look golden and forgiving, but the other kind. The mean kind. The kind that landed on the back of your neck like a relentless hand, and stayed there all the way from the bus stop to the school gate.

By the time he pushed through the front entrance, his collar was already damp and he had fully revised his expectations from the day downward.

Comfort was off the table. He was surviving now. That was the plan.

The hallways had that specific early-morning Friday emptiness to them— the kind that made every footstep echo slightly more than usual. A janitor was pushing a mop bucket somewhere around the corner. A couple of girls stood outside the second-year classroom with their legs stretched out and eyes half-lidded.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead the way they always did, a sound you stopped hearing after the first week of school and started hearing again on mornings like this, when everything felt slightly more exposed than usual.

Junhui pushed open the classroom door and stepped inside.

The suffocating heat him straight in the face.

The ceiling fans were spinning. They were doing genuinely nothing. Just moving the heat from one corner of the room in slow, useless circles, redistributing the misery rather than alleviating it. The windows on the far wall were propped open with the same battered erasers that had been wedged under them since probably the fifth year of this building's existence.

Outside the sky was already hard, the flat blue of day that intended to be brutal about it.

There were only two kids in the room. One had their head completely buried in the folds of their arms, face down, fully commited to not being here. The other was staring at their phone with a hollowed look of someone who had technically arrived, but had not yet consented to be conscious.

Jun respected both approaches. he understood both.

He dropped into his seat, let his bag slide off his shoulder to the floor, and sat there for a moment doing absolutely nothing except existing inside the heat. The fan turned overhead. A bird outside made a noise that felt uncalled for.

The light coming through the windows was already the kind of bright that made everything look slightly washed out, slightly too real, the way summer mornings always did— like someone had turned the exposure up and forgotten to bring it back down.

He put his phone on the desk face-up and looked at the door.

The room filled the way it always did on mornings like this, not all at once but in slow accumulation, the way water rises— first one, then two, then a cluster, then somehow everyone was there and you couldn't remember the exact moment it had tipped from empty to full.

The girls by the window arrived together, mid-conversation, and took their seats without breaking it. A boy in the third row dropped his water bottle, picked it up, then dropped it again. Someone's phone played three seconds of a song before being silenced.

The summer classroom had its own particular atmosphere that Junhui had spent three years becoming fluent in.

The chalk residue from yesterday still hanging faintly in the air. The desks warm to the touch already, the wood holding heat from the afternoon before. Notebooks that hadn't been opened since Wednesday sitting there with a quiet, judgmental energy.

The smell of the room itself— something like sun-warmed paper, hair product, floral perfumes, the ghost of someone's breakfast. And underneath all of it that specific collective restlessness of a group of people who would significantly rather be somewhere else, and were performing fine with being here.

Mingyu arrived in the doorway at eight fourteen.

Specifically, Mingyu appeared in the doorway by walking directly into the doorframe with his shoulder. He made a sound, looked at the door like it had done this to him personally. Then stepped in through with the residual dignity of a very tall person who had been underestimating door frames his entire life, and had yet not adjusted his approach.

"I'm okay," he announced, to no one who had asked.

Mingyu was, well, simply a large friendly hazard that people had collectively agreed to be charmed by. There was no other explanation.

Jun had watched him trip over a flat surface, apologize to a vending machine, and once spend four minutes trying to push a door that said pull in large red letters.

Somehow, at the end of it all, people still wanted to sit next to him.

It defied physics. It defied reason.

It was perhaps the greatest mystery of their friend group, and Jun had stopped trying to solve it sometime in the middle of his first year.

Mingyu walked in, found Junhui with approximately zero effort, and dropped into the seat beside him with the full-body resignation of someone who had accepted defeat somewhere between waking up and getting dressed.

"Tell me why," he said. Not to anyone in particular. More of a statement directed at the universe.

"The heat," Junhui said.

Mingyu turned to look at him. "The heat," he agreed. His voice had the weight of a eulogy.

Seokmin appeared in the doorway half a minute later, and the universe, as it did when Lee Seokmin arrived somewhere, rearranged itself to accomodate him.

He had his uniform shirt rolled to the elbows because of the heat, collar open one button past dress code, his hair doing something effortless.

Two girls near the window looked up exactly at the same time.

It annoyed Jun, but also made him find it amusing.

Soonyoung was right behind him, already talking, finishing a sentence that had clearly started somewhere in the stairwell, hands moving, eyebrows doing considerable work.

They folded into the cluster of desks around Junhui with the easy familiarity of people who had been sitting in the same configuration for long enough that it no longer required discussion. Seokmin pulled his chair around and Soonyoung dropped his bag, and not breaking the thread of what he was saying for even a breath.

Jun caught the end of it— something about a convenience store, a broken refrigerator, a series of decisions that had compounded poorly. He laughed, and Mingyu laughed, and Seokmin made the face he made right before he lost it completely.

For a few minutes, the morning felt like something you could actually live inside rather than just get through.

"Where's Wonwoo?" Seokmin asked, glancing at the empty seat next to Jun's, the question easy and offhand, asked without really needing an answer.

Mingyu shrugged, already distracted. "Probably late."

"His bus is always late," Soonyoung said, then without a pause continued. "Anyway, so after he bought me ice cream, I asked Seungcheol to go to that arcade, but he—"

And just like that, the moment passed, folded itself back into the conversation about Soonyoung's not-date-date with Seungcheol.

Jun laughed at the right places. Smiled at something Seokmin said. His eyes moved to the door once, stayed there briefly, then he brought them back.

Their homeroom teacher walked in at 8:32 with her attendance folder, and the particular expression of a woman who had decided a long time ago that equanimity was the only reasonable response to this job.

She set the folder on her desk, uncapped her pen, didn't say anything about the heat— which Jun respected profoundly, because there was nothing useful to be said about it and she clearly knew that.

He'd gotten his notebook out. He had his pen uncapped and his hand resting on a fresh page. He was, by all visible measures, prepared for the school day. Except he was not.

The date was written in the top corner of the page. He had underlined it, which was something he did when his attention was elsewhere and his hand was just filling time.

Roll call moved through the room in alphabetical order, a rhythm of here and yes and the occasional present from the one kid who always said present like he was in a period drama and had committed to the bit. Junhui answered when his name came and looked back down at his notebook.

Wonwoo.

The name sat in the air for a second, uncollected.

The teacher looked up from her folder. Looked at the empty seat. Looked back at the folder.

Nobody said anything for a moment— not the covering-for-him kind of silence, just the ordinary kind, the room taking a breath— and then the teacher made a small mark with her pen and moved on, and that was it.

Junhui looked at the empty seat.

He hadn't meant to. It wasn't a decision he'd made. His eyes just went there, the way they'd been doing all morning, the way apparently they'd decided to keep doing regardless of what the rest of him thought about it.

The seat was just a seat. Blue plastic back, scuffed legs, the corner of the desk where Wonwoo always put his phone face-down because he was the only person in their friend group who actually tried not to be on his phone during class.

It was a detail Junhui had absorbed so thoroughly that he couldn't say when he'd noticed it, only that he had.

He looked back at the front of the room.

The teacher was writing something on the board. Junhui copied it down without fully processing it, his handwriting neat and automatic, his hand moving while something else in him sat very still and quiet and tried to figure out what it was doing.

He picked up his phone from the desk, turned it over, and opened his and Wonwoo's conversation.

The last message was from last night— Junhui had sent a video at 11:43 PM, something stupid and funny, the kind of thing that lost all its comedy if you tried to explain it.

Wonwoo had replied nineteen minutes later with a single period. Just a period. It was his particular way of saying I saw this and it got me and I'm not giving you the satisfaction of a real reaction.

Junhui had known that, had smiled at it in the dark of his room with his phone screen the only light, and had fallen asleep eventually feeling like the day had ended correctly.

There was nothing after that.

No message this morning. No explanation. Nothing that said not coming in or something happened or even just the silence of having sent something to the group instead, of having told everyone at once the way you do when the information isn't personal.

There was just nothing. The conversation ending on a period, and then a whole morning on the other side of it.

Junhui put his phone down.

He stared at the board. He copied another line.

The fan turned overhead in its slow, insufficient circle and the heat leaned in through the open windows. The room around him was alive with the ordinary noise of a Friday class— a pencil tapping, a whispered exchange, the teacher's voice moving through something he should probably be following— and all of it was fine, all of it was completely normal, and he was fine, and this was not a thing.

It was just that they told each other things.

Not as a rule, not anything they'd ever named or agreed to, just something that had become true without being decided, the way most things between them had— quietly, incrementally, over the course of three years of sitting next to each other and sharing lunch tables and long bus rides after away games.

Junhui told Wonwoo about bad days while they were still happening. Wonwoo texted him when he was going to be late — not the group, him specifically, the kind of message that was never necessary and always there.

They narrated things to each other. Small things, mostly. The things that didn't feel worth saying out loud to anyone else but somehow were always worth saying to Wonwoo.

This morning, on the bus, Junhui had watched a pigeon destroy someone's iced coffee on the sidewalk outside the pharmacy on Main Street— had watched the whole thing unfold in real time through the window, the coffee going one way and the cup going another and the pigeon entirely unbothered.

He'd laughed out loud with his headphones in, and his first thought had been Wonwoo.

Specifically the face Wonwoo would have made. Not a big reaction, never a big reaction. Just that small shift at the corner of his mouth, that almost-smile he kept mostly contained, like amusement was a thing he felt privately and let out in carefully rationed amounts.

Junhui had been collecting these for years. He knew all of them.

He'd been going to tell him when he sat down.

He pressed the end of his pen against the page, not writing, just pressing, and looked at the board, and tried to pay attention to something useful.

Outside, the sky had gone from hard blue to something even brighter, the kind of summer morning that looked beautiful from inside a room and felt like standing too close to something on fire when you were actually in it.

Wonwoo's seat sat empty beside him, and the space of it had a particular quality that Junhui couldn't name and wouldn't try to.

He underlined the date a second time, slow and deliberate, for no reason at all.

By fourth period, Junhui had stopped pretending.

Mathematics was the class that was one period before lunch, which meant it existed in that particular purgatorial stretch of the school day where the morning had already taken everything you had and lunch wasn't close enough yet to feel like a promise.

The clock on the wall moved with the specific cruelty of a clock that knew exactly what it was doing. The teacher wrote equations on the board in confident, unhurried strokes, each one more elaborate than the last, and the chalk squeaked once and half the class flinched. Someone in the back muttered something that got quietly laughed at, and Junhui watched all of this from a very great distance.

He'd never been good at mathematics.

This wasn't a secret or a source of shame— it was just a fact about him, the way it was a fact that he was good at reading a room and bad at waking up and completely incapable of watching anything even mildly sad without his face doing something embarrassing.

Mathematics required a specific kind of sustained, linear focus that his brain simply declined to provide.

It would wander.

It always wandered. Off toward the window. Toward the sound of someone's pencil tapping three rows over. Toward nothing in particular. Toward the specific quality of light coming through the glass and the way it made the dust in the air visible, all those tiny suspended particles just drifting, going nowhere, taking their time.

The problem was that usually, in the seat to his left, there was Wonwoo.

Wonwoo, who was quietly and somewhat irritatingly good at mathematics— not in a showy way, never in a showy way. Just present and capable and occasionally tilting his notebook two centimeters in Jun's direction without comment, which was its own language.

When Jun's pen went still for too long, when his head started its slow and treacherous descent toward the desk, there would be a hand.

Sometimes it was a pinch— precise, targeted, to the soft inside of his elbow— sharp enough to bring him back to the room so fast he nearly upset his notebook.

Sometimes it was just Wonwoo's fingers sliding between his under the desk. Unhurried. Like it required no thought. Like it was simply the most efficient solution to the problem of Junhui drifting away, and Wonwoo was nothing if not efficient.

Their hands would sit together in the narrow space between their chairs, hidden under the overhang of the desk, and Jun would stare at the board and try to follow whatever the teacher was doing and the warmth of it kept him awake better than sleep ever had.

Best friends, Junhui thought. That's the best thing about being seat partners with your best friend.

Yeah. Well.

He put his chin in his hand and looked at the board.

The teacher was doing something with variables that Junhui felt no particular connection to. The equations accumulated. The fan turned overhead in its slow, pointless rotation.

Somewhere to his right, a girl was taking notes with an admirable and slightly intimidating dedication, her pen moving fast and continuous, and Junhui observed this with the distant respect of someone watching a marathon from a park bench.

Good for her. He meant that. He wished her well in all her future endeavors.

His eyelids were doing the thing.

He knew the thing. It wasn't a fall— it was a slide. Slow and inevitable, the weight of his own skull becoming a negotiation his neck was quietly losing.

The board blurred at the edges. The teacher's voice dropped in register, became less a sequence of words and more a texture, a low warm frequency that washed over him and caught on nothing.

He blinked. Heavy. Slow. The classroom snapped back into focus for a moment— too bright, too warm, the chalk dust still hanging in the air. He blinked again.

The seat to his left was empty.

He closed his eyes.

He didn't mean to. He never meant to. It just happened the way the heat happened, the way the morning kept happening— without his permission, without much interest in what he thought about it.

His head dropped toward his folded arm. The pen was still loosely between his fingers, a formality.

The teacher didn't stop him. Noticed or didn't, either way, made no move.

Junhui's seat was the last one in the farthest row, tucked against the wall where the windows threw long rectangles of light across the floor and the teacher's sightline didn't naturally fall. He wasn't invisible.

He was just inconveniently placed for anyone who wanted to do something about it, and it was a Friday in May, and no one did.

So he slept. The fitful, shallow kind that isn't really sleep but is better than nothing— head on his folded arm, face turned toward the wall, the pen still held loosely in fingers that had given up on writing somewhere around the twenty-minute mark.

The lesson moved on around him. The variables resolved into answers he'd have to get from someone else's notes. He was aware of this distantly and filed it away for a future version of himself to deal with.

By the time the lunch bell rang he felt like something that had been left out in the sun too long.

He gathered his things slowly. Let the room empty around him. Then stood and followed the current of people out into the corridor.

Soonyoung appeared at his elbow in approximately eight seconds, which was about as long as Soonyoung was ever capable of waiting for anything.

"Okay so I'm telling you," he said, already mid-momentum, already at a volume that suggested this had been building since at least third period. "I need you to be a judge right now. I need you to listen to what Mingyu did last night and I need you to tell him, to his face, that he is the reason we lost."

"I'm not the reason you lost," Mingyu said, already on Jun's other side, hands in his pockets, the picture of innocence. "I played fine."

"You played Teemo," Soonyoung said.

"Teemo is a valid pick."

"You picked," Soonyoung said, with great precision, "a little rat man. In ranked. You picked the little rat man, Mingyu."

"He's not a rat, he's—" Mingyu paused. "He's a yordle."

"I don't know what that is and I don't want to. The point is nobody picks him, nobody thinks he's a valid pick, the game doesn't think he's a valid pick."

"He has a high solo kill potential."

"You went one and eleven!" Soonyoung barked.

"The jungler didn't gank me once."

"Nobody ganks Teemo! Nobody wants to go near Teemo! Our own jungler was avoiding your lane!" Soonyoung turned to Junhui with the expression of a man at the absolute end of something. "Jun-ah. Tell him. Tell him Teemo is not a ranked pick."

"I don't play ranked," Junhui said.

"Exactly! Even you know! Even Jun who doesn't play ranked knows that you don't pick Teemo in ranked!"

"That's not what he said," Mingyu rolled his eyes.

"It's what he meant!"

Mingyu groaned. "It was one bad game. I think I just needed to warm up."

"For eleven deaths!?" Soonyoung shrieked, scandalized.

"I think," he said, "you just don't understand my playstyle."

"Your playstyle," Soonyoung said slowly, "was running in a straight line and dying."

"I was being aggressive."

"To your own team's base! You ran the wrong way twice!"

"The map is confusing—"

"It's the same map! One map! We've been playing on it for two years!"

Junhui walked between them and let it happen around him, this beautiful, self-sustaining disaster of a conversation that needed absolutely nothing from him to continue. On any other Friday he'd have been in it— he would have looked at Mingyu with complete sincerity and said I also think you ran the wrong way. Then watched Soonyoung reach a new emotional altitude entirely.

He'd done it a dozen times. It was one of his better contributions to the group.

Today he just walked.

He thought, without choosing to, about what Wonwoo would have said. Wonwoo who had been in the call last night, who had watched Mingyu select the little rat man in real time, who had said absolutely nothing.

Not when Mingyu hovered over him, not when he locked in, just sat there in silence for a long moment and then exhaled very slowly through his nose, which was somehow more devastating than anything words could have done.

And then he would have looked at Jun, just briefly, through the small rectangle of his camera, and Jun would have already been looking, and they wouldn't have needed to say anything because the look was the whole conversation, it always was, it had been for a long time now—

"I need to go to the bathroom," Junhui said.

"And another thing," Soonyoung was saying, pivoting with the energy of someone with a prepared list, "youkept buying the wrong items—"

"The items felt right!"

"They felt right? Mingyu, you bought boots four times."

"I wanted to be fast!"

"You can't buy four boots! You only have two feet! The game won't even let you equip them all, it just—" Soonyoung stopped. Pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why am I explaining this. Why is this my life."

"You chose this," Mingyu said warmly.

"I chose to be your friend, not your therapist—"

The cafeteria doors swung shut behind them.

The corridor went quiet. That clean, immediate quiet of a door closed on noise, like someone had put their hand over the source of it. Junhui stood outside and didn't move toward the bathroom.

The boys' bathroom down the hall was empty, which was exactly what he needed. He took the last cubicle out of habit, locked it, and sat down on the closed lid and looked at his phone.

Wonwoo's contact was already open.

He didn't remember opening it. His thumb had apparently made the executive decision somewhere between the cafeteria door and here and hadn't bothered consulting the rest of him. He stared at the name on the screen.

The little contact photo he'd taken without asking, Wonwoo mid-sentence at lunch three weeks ago, slightly annoyed, which meant he looked the way he always looked.

Junhui had set it as the contact photo specifically because of this and Wonwoo had seen it and said change it in a tone that meant he wasn't actually going to do anything about it.

He hadn't changed it.

He stared at the call button.

Should he call? He could call. They were best friends, that was that was a thing best friends did, called each other. It was completely normal and not at all strange.

And Wonwoo never minded when Jun called, had never once picked up with anything other than immediate, full attention, like Jun calling was something he'd been waiting for.

So it was fine. It was a normal thing to do.

Jun pressed call.

It rang once. Twice. Halfway through the third ring the line clicked.

There was a silence for exactly one second. Then, warm and unhurried, and so infuriatingly him, came Wonwoo's voice.

"Miss me, baby?"

Jun’s head hit the cubicle door behind him with a soft thunk.

“You’re insane,” he said immediately, but there was no bite to it— just disbelief, threaded with something dangerously close to relief. “Who even says that?”

"You called me in the middle of a school day," Wonwoo said, and Jun could practically hear that pleased smile in it. "You must've missed me."

Junhui's mouth fell open.

He closed it. Opened it again. Turned to stare at the cubicle door in front of him like it had done something to him personally.

“That…” he started, then stopped, because there was no good recovery from that. "I was checking if you're dead."

"Are you in the school bathroom?" Wonwoo said, voice dripping with that smug, quiet thing that always meant trouble.

"You—what—how," Jun stuttered.

"Oh you're running from your responsibilities, sweetheart."

Jun groaned, leaning into the wall. "I hate you."

"Mm," Wonwoo hummed, soft and satisfied. "No, you don't."

"Wonwoo."

"Junhui."

"Wonwoo," Jun repeated, but it came out like a petulant whine.

"What's wrong, Jun-ah?" Wonwoo's voice was hushed now, as if he could soothe Jun with that alone.

"You… didn't come to school today," Jun said, voice hesitant, barely above a whisper.

There was a pause. It was not a guilty pause— Wonwoo didn't really do guilty— more the pause of someone setting something down carefully before they responded.

And then, quietly, almost soft enough to be something else entirely, a small sound escaped him. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh. Something in between, something that sounded uncomfortably close to fond, like Jun calling him from a school bathroom in the middle of school to demand answers was something he found genuinely, privately endearing.

"Yeah?" Wonwoo said.

Jun frowned immediately, pushing at the opposite wall to stand properly.

"Yeah?" Jun echoed. "You're just… That's it? Yeah?"

"You want me to cry?" Wonwoo's tone was teasing. "I can try. Give me a second, I'll really get into character—"

"Jeon Wonwoo." This time it came sharper, quieter.

Jun swallowed, staring at the floor.

"You didn't tell me," he said, softer now. "You always tell me."

There it was again, that small, stubborn thing sitting in his chest, refusing to be ignored. He hated it.

There was a pause again. Then a soft sound, not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh.

"You're so cute," Wonwoo murmured.

Jun blinked, caught off gaurd. "That's not the point."

"I know," Wonwoo said, voice gentler now, like he was smiling into a pillow. "Hold on, am answering your complaint, give me a second, sweetheart."

Jun huffed, but didn't interrupt.

"I didn't plan it," Wonwoo continued. "The kitchen sink just decided it hates me."

"What?"

"Something happened to the pipe," Wonwoo said. There was a rustle of fabric as if he was shifting in his bed. "There was water everywhere."

Jun let out a quiet laugh before he could stop himself.

“You?” he said. “In a plumbing crisis?”

“Wow,” Wonwoo said flatly. “Supportive. I love that.”

“No, I just,” Jun pressed his lips together, smiling a little despite himself. “You’re the most put-together person I know. I can’t picture you… drenched and panicking over a sink.”

“I wasn’t panicking,” Wonwoo said.

“You were panicking.”

“I was handling it,” Wonwoo corrected. “Very bravely.”

Jun laughed properly this time, shoulders relaxing.

“And then?” he asked.

“And then,” Wonwoo said, “we stayed up fixing it because my dad’s out of town and apparently I’m the responsible adult now.”

“Of course you are,” Jun said, amused.

“Obviously,” Wonwoo replied. “And then I slept through my alarm.”

Jun went still for half a second—and then burst out laughing again.

“You?” he said. “Slept through your alarm?”

“Stop,” Wonwoo muttered, but there was a smile in it. “I’ve had a hard life.”

Jun laughed. He tried not to. He genuinely tried. It came out anyway, short and bright, bouncing off the cubicle walls. "You," he said, "didn't wake up on time."

"The alarms didn't go off."

"You set four alarms, Wonwoo."

"The phone was across the room."

"Wonwoo you put your phone across the room specifically so you'd have to stand up."

"I stood up," Wonwoo said, with tremendous dignity. "And then I sat down on the floor for a second."

"And then?"

A pause.

"And then it was eleven."

Jun pressed his hand over his mouth. His shoulders were shaking. "You sat on the floor of your room for three hours!"

"I wasn't on the floor for three hours, I went back to—" A pause. "The point is I missed the bus."

Jun laughed again, properly this time, and it felt like the first real thing that had happened all day— the first moment where the strange low-grade weight of the morning lifted enough to let something else through.

He could picture it so clearly. Wonwoo on his bedroom floor, back against the bed, completely asleep and completely unbothered, three alarms going off and off and off and Wonwoo, the most punctual person Jun had ever met in his entire life, entirely unconscious through all of them.

The image sat in his chest like something warm.

He let it sit there for exactly three seconds and then he straightened up, because he had a point to make and he wasn't going to let fond feelings get in the way of it.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," Wonwoo echoed, cautious.

"So you had a whole thing. A whole dramatic plumbing thing. And you sat on your floor. And you missed school."

"Yes."

"And you didn't think to maybe," Jun said, "at any point in all of that, send me a message."

Jun pressed on, because now he had momentum.

“One message,” he insisted. “That’s all. ‘Jun, I’m alive, the sink tried to kill me, don’t mourn me yet.’ Done.”

“You’re very demanding,” Wonwoo said.

“I am not!”

“You are,” Wonwoo said, amused. “This is high-maintenance behavior, angel.”

Jun choked slightly at that. “Don’t call me that.”

“You like it.”

“I don’t.”

“Mm,” Wonwoo hummed. “Sure you don’t.”

Jun pressed his lips together, fighting the heat creeping up his neck. "I hate you, I am hanging up."

"Jun—"

"A text. One text. Good morning Jun, I'm not coming in today, here's a brief summary of what happened, something, anything."

"I was asleep on my floor—"

"Before the floor, Wonwoo, when you were still a functional person dealing with a sink," Jun shifted, getting comfortable against the door. "I'm just saying. I didn't know. I had to find out from roll call like everyone else and that's—" he huffed, going for unbothered and landing somewhere in the vicinity of deeply bothered, "that's just not how we do things."

“You disappeared,” he said, doubling down. “From me.”

There was a beat.

"You're right," Wonwoo said, and he said it simply, no deflection, just that. "I should've texted. I'm sorry."

Jun blinked. He hadn't been expecting that. He'd been expecting Wonwoo to argue back, or to be dry about it, or to say something that would give Jun an excuse to keep going. He hadn't been expecting sorry, said quietly and directly, like it actually meant something.

He chewed the inside of his cheek.

"Okay," he said, aiming for dignified.

"Okay?" He could hear Wonwoo's mouth curving. "Just okay?"

"I'm still upset."

"I said sorry."

"I heard you say sorry and I'm still upset, those things can both be true—"

"Jun—"

"You're neglecting me, Wonwoo." Jun inspected his own hand, very casual, very composed. "I'm being neglected. On a Friday. In a school bathroom."

"I'll make it up to you," Wonwoo said.

"How?"

"How do you want me to?"

Jun picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. Very casual. Very unbothered. "Come over after school."

"I thought you were upset with me."

"I am upset with you. You can come over and I'll be upset at you in person. It'll be very efficient."

"That's not how making things up to someone works."

"It's how it works when you neglect someone, Wonwoo, you lose the right to negotiate the terms—"

"I didn't neglect you, I had a plumbing emergency—"

"And I had mathematics," Jun said, with great feeling. "Do you know what that's like without you?"

"You never pay attention in math even when I'm there."

"I pay more attention."

"You pay slightly less no attention."

"It still counts! And today I had nothing and the equations were just," Jun waved his hand expressively at the cubicle wall, "doing things, on the board, and I couldn't follow any of it and my head kept drooping and there was no one to—" he stopped himself just in time. Rerouted. "The point is I suffered."

"I'll teach you," Wonwoo said, easy as anything. "This weekend. We'll go through the whole chapter."

"I don't want to do math on a weekend."

"You just said you couldn't follow it."

"That's a separate issue from whether I want to do it on a Saturday."

"Pick a day."

"I pick the void."

"Jun."

"Fine. Yes. Teach me. But that's not the point." Jun straightened up, recollecting his grievance. "But I am upset with you right now."

"What should I do for your forgiveness, Your Majesty?" Wonwoo litled.

"You're so corny," Jun groaned. "And I asked you to come over and I can be upet at you there. I'll order food too."

"So I come over, I watch you be upset at me, and you order food."

"I'll let you have some."

"You'll let me have some of the food that I'm presumably paying for."

"I never said anything about you paying."

"Jun."

"Come over," Jun said, final, firm, leaving no room for arguement. "Five o'clock. Bring something cold to drink because it is genuinely so hot today and if you show up empty handed I will be even more upset with you."

A soft exhale, the warm almost-laugh kind, and then Wonwoo said, quieter, the smile tucked away for just a moment: "I really am sorry. Okay? I am gonna first text you the morning next time, I promise."

Jun leaned his head back against the cubicle door and looked at the ceiling and felt something in his chest settle in a way it hadn't all day. "Okay," he said, quietly.

"Okay," Wonwoo said. A pause. Easy and warm, the way he said everything. "Love you."

Jun's brain stopped. Just completely stopped. The words landed in the middle of the call and sat there and Jun stared at the ceiling of a school bathroom cubicle.

"Yeah, me too," he said, with tremendous eloquence.

Silence.

"Me too," Wonwoo repeated. Slowly. Like he was turning it over. "Me too what, angel."

"You know what."

"I really don't think I do."

"You know what I mean."

"I genuinely don't. Me too what? Be specific."

"You are the most annoying person I have ever met in my life."

"You say that and then you call me from a school bathroom. Me too what, baby."

Jun closed his eyes. He was going to dissolve. He was going to dissolve into the floor of this cubicle and they were going to find nothing.

"Me too the thing you said," he said, very quietly.

"The thing I said," Wonwoo said, and Jun could hear him smiling, could hear how much he was enjoying this, the absolute menace. "What thing."

"The same thing you said."

"I need you to be more specific, Jun, I said several things."

"The last thing."

"I say lots of last things. Which one."

Jun made a noise that was not a word.

"Okay I'll help you," Wonwoo said, graciously, like he was doing Jun a tremendous favour. "I'll say it again and you just say it back properly. Okay? Nice and simple." A pause, perfectly timed. "I love you, Jun."

Jun pressed his palm flat against the cubicle door. Took a breath. The bathroom light buzzed overhead. Somewhere outside someone was walking down the hallway, footsteps fading. He was alone. It was fine. It was completely fine.

"I love you," he muttered, very fast, very quietly, his free hand coming up to cover his face even though there was genuinely no one here to witness this. "There. Done. Happy?"

"Almost," Wonwoo said.

Jun removed his hand from his face. "Almost?"

"Say it like you mean it."

"I do mean it!"

"Then say it like that."

"I am standing in the school bathroom."

"I know, and you're doing great. One more time."

"You are genuinely the worst person—"

"One more time, sweetheart."

Jun looked at the ceiling. Asked it for strength. Received nothing. "I love you, baby," he said, clearer this time, still quiet, his face so warm it was embarrassing. "I love you, okay, I love you, are we done."

A beat of silence. One single beat.

And then, breezy and cheerful, like flipping a page, Wonwoo said, "Did you eat yet?"

Jun lowered his hand. "What?"

"Lunch. Did you eat? Break's gonna be over soon, you know."

"You just made me say that and now you're asking me about lunch."

"Both things matter, Jun."

"They do not both equally matter right now—"

"Go eat something." Wonwoo's voice was warm. Fond. Completely unrepentant about any of it. "Go on. Get something cold to drink too, it's hot today. I'll see you at five, okay?"

"I can't believe you," Jun said, which was not a denial of any of the above.

"Yes you can. Go eat, cutie. Drink some water."

The call ended.

Junhui stood in the cubicle. The light buzzed. The hallway outside had gone quiet again. Through the walls, the muffled noise of the cafeteria kept going, three hundred people eating lunch, completely unaware that Jun had just been entirely taken apart and put back together slightly differently in a school bathroom over a ten minute phone call.

He looked at the contact photo. Wonwoo mid-sentence, slightly annoyed, completely, entirely himself.

He stood there for one long moment, face warm, the ghost of a smile doing something embarrassing to his mouth.

Junhui unlocked the cubicle, stepped out, turned toward the sinks, and made direct eye contact with Kwon Soonyoung.

He was standing approximately one meter away with both hands clasped over his mouth and an expression on his face like he had just witnessed something that was going to change his life.

Jun's heart stopped.

Soonyoung's eyes were enormous.

They stared at each other.

The bathroom light buzzed overhead. A tap dripped somewhere. Distantly, through the walls, the cafeteria kept going, entirely unaware that something catastrophic was unfolding in the second floor boys' bathroom.

"No," Jun said.

Soonyoung said nothing. His hands were still over his mouth and his eyes were doing something genuinely alarming.

“Don’t,” he said immediately, grabbing Soonyoung by the shoulders. “Don’t say anything.”

Soonyoung made a muffled, high-pitched noise behind his hands.

Jun shook him once.

“Stop that,” he hissed. “Stop—whatever that is. Whatever you think you heard, no.”

Soonyoung took a very slow breath in through his nose, hands still clasped, a man trying to contain something that was significantly too large to be contained. "Jun-ah," he said, muffled behind his palms.

"It was a phone call."

"Jun-ah."

"A normal phone call. Between two normal friends."

Soonyoung's hands came down from his mouth and the expression underneath them was absolutely radiant, was genuinely one of the most delighted things Jun had ever seen on a human face, and that was when Jun knew he was in serious trouble.

"Who were you talking to?" Soonyoung said, with the controlled energy of someone who had so many questions they couldn't decide which one to deploy first.

"A friend," Jun said, but it came out too quick, too sharp.

"Which friend."

"A friend you don't know."

"I know all your friends, I am your friend—"

"A school friend. From my old school. You wouldn't know him." Jun sounded desperate even to himself.

"Him," Soonyoung said, pointing.

Jun opened his mouth. Closed it. "People can be hims, Soonyoung, that's not—"

"You said I love you."

"I said," Jun started, and then stopped, and then started again with the careful energy of someone constructing something load-bearing, "I say that to lots of people. I'm an affectionate person. You know this about me."

"You said it like four times."

"I was being emphatic."

“You said baby.”

Jun clamped a hand over Soonyoung's mouth. “I did not.”

“You said—” Soonyoung tried again, voice cracking, “‘I love you, baby’!”

“I did not!” Jun whisper-shouted, eyes darting wildly toward the door like a teacher might walk in and end his entire life. “You misheard!”

“I did not mishear,” Soonyoung insisted, clutching Jun’s wrist like he was clinging to evidence in a courtroom. “I have ears. Functioning ones. Unfortunately.”

Jun groaned, dragging his free hand down his face. “This is not happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening,” Soonyoung said, eyes narrowing now, suspicion blooming fast. “Who were you talking to?”

“No one.”

“So you just confess your love to no one in the bathroom?” Soonyoung tilted his head. “Should I be worried?”

Jun shoved him lightly. “Shut up.”

“I’m serious!” Soonyoung pressed, leaning in. “Was that your boyfriend?”

Jun recoiled like he’d been personally attacked. “I don’t have a boyfriend!”

“You literally said—”

“I say that to everyone,” Jun cut in, desperate now. “It’s normal. It’s like friendly.”

Soonyoung blinked. “…No, it’s not.”

“It is,” Jun insisted, doubling down with the confidence of someone who absolutely knew he was lying. “You just don’t get it.”

“I get plenty,” Soonyoung said, folding his arms. “I just got a full live performance of your secret love life.”

“There is no secret love life!”

“Then explain the ‘baby’,” Soonyoung shot back immediately.

Jun opened his mouth. Paused. Closed it again. “…It slipped out.”

“So you just accidentally call people baby?” Soonyoung asked flatly.

“Yes.”

“Regularly?”

“Yes.”

“Name one other person you’ve said that to.”

Jun stared at him. "…You.”

Soonyoung’s face went blank. "You have never called me baby.”

Jun pointed at him. “Exactly. That’s why it sounded weird to you.”

Soonyoung squinted. “That makes no sense.”

“It does,” Jun said quickly. “You’re just overthinking it.”

“I’m not overthinking it,” Soonyoung snapped. “You’re under-explaining it!”

Jun grabbed his shoulders again, shaking him lightly.

“There is no boyfriend,” he said, slow and firm, like he was trying to rewire Soonyoung’s brain in real time. “There has never been a boyfriend. You imagined everything.”

"Was it Wonwoo?" Soonyoung gasped.

Jun felt his heart drop. "No! It was a friend from my old school."

"Jun-ah, was it Jeon Wonwoo, your seatmate, who is also absent today, who you have been looking at the empty seat of since this morning."

"I have not been!"

"Mingyu noticed."

Jun felt the floor shift slightly under him. "Mingyu is not observant."

"Mingyu said and I quote, Jun keeps looking at Wonwoo's seat, during second period, to me, unprompted."

"Mingyu was projecting."

"Was it Wonwoo," Soonyoung said, simply, finally, planting his feet like a man who had all the time in the world and was not going anywhere.

Jun stared at him. Soonyoung stared back.

The tap dripped. The light buzzed. Somewhere down the hall a locker slammed.

"No," Jun said, cleanly and clearly, with every ounce of conviction he had ever possessed in his entire life.

Soonyoung's eye twitched. Just slightly. "You're lying."

"I'm not lying."

"Your ear is red."

Jun did not touch his ear. He wanted to touch his ear. He kept both hands exactly where they were, loose at his sides, portrait of a man with nothing to hide. "It's May," he said. "It's forty degrees outside. Everything is red."

"My ears aren't red."

"You have better circulation than me."

"Jun-ah—"

"Soonyoung-ah," Jun said, and he stepped forward and put both hands on Soonyoung's shoulders and looked at him with the steady, sincere eyes of someone telling the complete truth, "I do not have a boyfriend. I was on a phone call with a friend. It was a normal conversation between two normal people who are normal friends. Okay? That's all."

Soonyoung searched his face. Jun did not blink. A lesser man would have blinked.

"Okay," Soonyoung said slowly.

"Okay," Jun confirmed, and released his shoulders.

"I just," Soonyoung said, "it really did sound like Wonwoo's."

"It wasn't."

"The voice on the other end—"

"Different person."

"Jun-ah, when he said something like did you eat at the end—"

"I will do your maths homework," Jun said.

Soonyoung stopped talking immediately.

Jun watched it happen in real time— the full stop, the recalibration, the shift in Soonyoung's eyes from investigative to something considerably more commercial. His mouth closed. Stayed closed. Opened again.

"For how long," he said.

"Two weeks."

"Maths and science."

"Fine."

"And you pay for my snacks," Soonyoung said, with the calm of a man who had done this before and knew exactly where the ceiling was, "for the next week."

"Done," Jun said.

Soonyoung stuck his hand out.

Jun shook it without blinking.

They stood there for a moment in the humming fluorescent light, the deal settled, the terms agreed upon and binding. Soonyoung's face had gone smooth and satisfied, a businessman leaving a meeting with everything he came for. Jun breathed slowly through his nose.

"You know," Soonyoung said pleasantly, moving toward the door, "I wasn't even that sure. I probably would've dropped it on my own."

"Wonderful."

"You folded pretty fast for someone with nothing to hide."

"Goodbye, Soonyoung."

"I'm just saying. The maths homework was very quick."

Jun held the bathroom door open and gestured through it. Soonyoung walked out still talking, and Jun followed him into the hallway and fell into step beside him and fixed his gaze on the cafeteria doors at the end of the corridor and said absolutely nothing.

Three seconds of silence.

"So," Soonyoung said. "This friend from your old school."

"Soonyoung."

"I'm just saying they sound nice."

"We had a deal."

"The deal was I wouldn't ask questions. I'm not asking questions. I'm making a friendly observation." A pause, light and casual, a man throwing something into water to see what happened. "He sounds nice. Whoever he is."

Jun stared straight ahead.

"Yeah," he said, before he could do anything about it. "He is."

Soonyoung nodded slowly, sagely, like a man receiving information he had already known for a very long time. He clasped his hands behind his back. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at Jun.

"Cool," he said.

"Cool," Jun said.

They pushed through the cafeteria doors. Soonyoung grabbed a tray. Jun grabbed a tray. They stood in line.

"I'm gonna need those snacks starting tomorrow by the way," Soonyoung said pleasantly. "The ones from the convenience store, not the school vending machine. The vending machine ones are depressing."

"Sure," Jun said.

"Great." Soonyoung picked up a bowl of rice, then said, very casually, to no one in particular, "Wonwoo's nice too."

Jun dropped his spoon.

Soonyoung kept walking, a small smirk on his face.