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“Hey Jonghyun, come out with me to get a snack?”
Minhyun heard a faint groan come from Jonghyun’s room before he heard the latter’s grumbled reply.
“Why do you need me to come too? Why don’t you just go by yourself?”
As he approached his best friend’s room, the frantic clicking and clacking of Jonghyun’s mouse and keyboard grew louder. He stood in Jonghyun’s doorway, peering in, he spied his roommate huddled before his computer in a large fluffy black hoodie, his attention entirely focused on some game that Minhyun didn’t recognise. ‘He’s so adorable’ Minhyun couldn’t help but think.
“Because you’ve been sat in front of your computer since you got home about 4 hours ago, you haven’t eaten and you need fresh air.”
Minhyun seriously questioned how Jonghyun had managed to survive before the two had become roommates 3 years ago.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me, I’m not even hungr—”
He’s interrupted by the loud grumbling of his stomach crying out for food.
“You were saying?” He couldn’t help but reply with a smug grin.
“Fine, I’ll come with you.” Jonghyun muttered as he exited his game and got ready to leave. “There’s no need to look so smug either. It just makes you look more annoying than usual.”
“It’s not good to tell lies Jonghyunnie~~~” Minhyun chimed, amused at the other’s grumpiness, “We all know that my face is a gift from the heavens.”
“More like a curse… What did I do in my past life to deserve this?”
Minhyun’s loud and obnoxious laughter rang through their apartment as he left Jonghyun’s room.
As grumpy as his roommate was, having been best friends for so long meant that he knew when the other was kidding – also there was the fact that he hadn’t failed to notice the small smile of amusement that had graced the other’s lips despite his apparent frustration.
They wandered around for a bit in the streets of Seoul, not quite sure of what they wanted to eat. The cold winter air enveloped them, and perhaps subconsciously they walked a little closer than normal to preserve some body heat. Or at least, that’s the excuse that Minhyun tried to make himself believe.
After a while they decided on settling for some hot street food to help prevent themselves from freezing to death.
Inevitably they found themselves drawn towards the fried chicken stand and it wasn’t long before they found themselves in possession of said precious fried chicken.
Unable to hold back, Jonghyun immediately reached for the chicken, having completely disregarded the fact that it was still extremely hot.
Minhyun turned to Jonghyun, ready to warn him to be careful of the hot food, but his words failed to come as he fully took in the sight before him.
In the yellow-hued lights of the food stall, Jonghyun’s lightly tanned skin glowed golden and his eyes seem to shimmer even brighter, almost blinding. His expression was one of pure bliss as he took a large bite of the chicken. It wasn’t as if Minhyun didn’t already know that his best friend was beautiful beyond belief, but in that moment, he truly looked ethereal.
Minhyun was snapped out of his musings by a light tap on his shoulder. He turned and found himself facing a woman holding a microphone, behind her stood a small camera crew.
“Hi, sorry to disturb you but would it be okay if I interviewed you for a few minutes? I’m filming a short video about Seoul street food for the internet, it’s aimed at foreigners who may be planning to visit in the future.”
Neither Jonghyun nor Minhyun quite knew how to respond. It wasn’t that they were particularly averse to being interviewed, but there was some apprehension at being filmed for the internet, for everyone to see.
Sensing their hesitation, the woman continued, “Don’t worry it’s nothing super difficult, it’s just going to be me asking you about what foods you like, and why you think street food in Seoul is so popular. Is that okay?”
Not seeing any reason to decline, they agreed.
“Great! Thanks so much, I really appreciate your help. If you could just be natural, that’d be great.” The woman smiled at them before directing them and her crew away from the food stand so as not to be in the way of other people.
The interview didn’t take long, only a few minutes, and the woman thanked them again at the end before moving on to find other willing interviewees.
Minhyun had all but forgotten about the interview until a few days later.
He was on his way home after his last lecture of the day, and with nothing else to do whilst on the bus, he opened up twitter to begin scrolling.
Opening the app, he noticed that he had a few notifications, which was odd considering that he was someone who never posted anything. All of the notifications were from his friends mentioning him under something Minki had retweeted.
Curiosity spiked, with a bit of dread at what Minki may have done this time, he clicked through to the post and almost choked at what he saw.
REN @ChoiGoRen 7hr
@optimushwang lol now even the whole world can see how whipped you are for our jonghyunnie
[Retweeted Image]
The image was a screenshot taken from the interview the two of them had done the other day. It was right at the moment Jonghyun was talking about the kinds of food he likes the best.
Suddenly, Minhyun remembered watching Jonghyun as he spoke, enraptured in the way Jonghyun’s eyes lit up with excitement as he rambled endlessly about how delicious fried chicken was. He remembered being so completely enamoured with just how cute Jonghyun was. And he definitely remembered zoning out, not hearing anything that was being said anymore, his attention being entirely captivated by the way Jonghyun’s tongue would peak out every now and then in between sentences to wet his lips which were getting dry in the cold winter air.
And all of that was caught on camera.
Looking at the screenshot, Minhyun could see how his body was angled entirely towards Jonghyun, how his eyes were wide and adoring as he stared at his best friend, how he looked as if Jonghyun had hung the moon and the stars in the sky.
As Minki had put it, he looked entirely whipped.
But Minhyun almost had a second heart attack when he saw how much attention the original post had garnered.
Literally thousands of people had liked, retweeted and replied under the post.
“wow I gotta get me a man that looks at me like that”
“lol that guy is so whipped it’s cute :’)”
“of course, all the handsome ones are always taken”
But it was some of the retweets that concerned him more. Countless amounts of people had taken the image and edited it, adding text over their faces in the image, labelling them as various pairs of things. And there was a very clear common theme: someone and the thing that they loved more than anything else in the world.
Minhyun wasn’t exactly the best at understanding internet culture, but at this point, even he understood that they, but more specifically he, had become a meme.
And naturally, his friends wouldn’t be his friends if they weren’t also laughing at him and his misfortune.
BAEKHO @realbaekho 6hr
@optimushwang lol your big head is all over the internet
That Good Love @kwakaaron 6hr
@optimushwang congrats dude, you’ve reached peak meme status
He just hoped that everything would die down soon. Though he was glad that Jonghyun was even less internet savvy than he was and didn’t even have a twitter, otherwise he’d never be able to face his friend ever again. He’d be far too embarrassed if Jonghyun knew exactly how Minhyun looked at him when he wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t need Jonghyun to find out about his feelings that he’d been harbouring for most of their time as friends. They’d been friends for so long and he didn’t want their relationship to get weird just because Minhyun loved had a (not so small) crush on his best friend and roommate.
Minhyun had never wanted to smash his head against a solid wall more.
He had thought that the whole meme thing would die down after a couple of days, things on the internet were always happening so quickly that surely it would just blow over when people found some more cute pictures of shiba inus to go scream about. But he was very mistaken.
If anything, it’d gotten even more popular. Every time Minhyun opened up twitter, multiple different edits of the same screenshot appeared on his timeline. Everyone he followed and everyone they followed were posting it all over the place.
And early that day, he’d even been recognised on the street.
“woah you’re that guy from the whipped af meme”
‘the what?’ Minhyun thought as he looked around to see a guy slightly younger than him staring at him with wonder.
“um… sorry, do I know you?”
“Oh no, but everyone knows you, you’re like all over the internet” ‘they do??? I am???’
“I swear yours is one of my favourite memes, like it’s just so applicable to literally everything, you’re like my hero”
By this point, Minhyun was far too out of his depth in this entire exchange. He wanted to do nothing but escape this bizarre scenario.
“uh cool? I think? Sorry I gotta go…”
In hindsight, he realised he had been more than a bit rude but honestly, by that point his brain had failed to function properly because of the fact that random strangers were recognising him on the street.
And given that he was being recognised, it was inevitable that it was going to happen to Jonghyun as wel. To his knowledge, the latter had yet to find out about the whole thing but it probably wouldn’t be long until he found out. And then that would be the point at which Minhyun would leave the country and move to Iceland out of embarrassment.
As he had predicted, it only took another day until Jonghyun found out about his status as an internet meme.
Minhyun had decided to take a short break from studying, opting instead to catch up on the latest episode of the drama he’d been following. Just as the male lead was about to go and confess to the apparent girl of his dreams, Minhyun heard the front door open as Jonghyun returned from his own classes.
“Minhyun?”
At the call of his name, said person snapped his focus over to Jonghyun who was staring at something on his phone.
“Hey, how was class?”
“Eh, same as ever.” Jonghyun shrugged, “although, it was kinda weird, I swear people were whispering about me and I’m pretty sure I caught them staring too…”
Minhyun froze in his seat. He prayed to every deity he could think of that no-one had said anything to Jonghyun.
“Huh, how odd…”
“Yeah that’s what I thought, at first I thought that I had something on my face and I’d even checked to see if I’d forgotten to wear my shirt or something this morning--”
Minhyun’s brain took a break from praying for a moment at the visual image of Jonghyun shirtless. But really, now was not the time to fantasise, more important things here were at stake.
Bringing himself out of his daze, Minhyun looked back up to his roommate and found a curious gaze being directed at him.
“— but that wasn’t the case so I had to try and ignore them for the whole hour.” Jonghyun continued.
Relaxing slightly, Minhyun was relieved that his roommate hadn’t paid any attention to the people in his class, he could only imagine what they were whispering about.
But maybe he relaxed too soon…
“Something else did happen today though,” Jonghyun began, “One of my classmates showed me something interesting that they found on twitter…” He trailed off.
This was it. This was the end. He knew and there was nothing left to do but to pack his bags and get on the next available flight to Iceland.
“Oh really?” It was a long shot, but maybe he could try to feign ignorance? Perhaps his friend had merely shown him a post about the game that he was currently obsessed with--
“Yeah, a picture of us that went viral?”
Never mind, he should have realised that the universe was out to get him.
Jonghyun turned his phone screen around and staring straight back at Minhyun was that picture, one he’d be desperately hoping he could forget about.
Turning his attention back to his roommate, he was met with a look that he couldn’t quite decipher. He couldn’t tell if his friend was annoyed, confused, or something else entirely.
“Did you know about this?”
He looks away, unable to hide his own mortification and mutters his confirmation.
“So… you knew that thousands of strangers on the internet seem to think that we’re dating?”
Minhyun could feel his cheeks and ears warm, both of which were probably bright red by this point.
He blinked, and blinked again, and then a few more times in rapid succession, before stuttering out a nervous “yeah”.
“Because of the way you were looking at me? They think you’re in love with me?” His tone was very clearly one of confusion now.
Resigned to his fate, Minhyun hummed in admittance, not trusting his own voice to not stutter and trip over each syllable.
“…Are you?”
That caught him off guard. The gentle and shy curiosity of the question was a stark difference to the harsh rejection or apathetic dismissal that he’d been expecting. Finally gathering his courage, he lifted his gaze towards Jonghyun’s. Was that… hope that he saw in the latter’s eyes?
“W-w-what…?”
Slowly, Jonghyun began to shuffle over to where Minhyun was still sat on the sofa, rather hesitatingly, he sat down beside the taller man.
“A-a-a-are you in love with me…?” And now it seemed like it was Jonghyun’s turn to be embarrassed. Minhyun could tell that he was trying hard to stay still and maintain a calm composure.
Internally, Minhyun was at a loss for what to do. Should he come clean and potentially ruin his friendship with his best friend? Or should he try to laugh this whole thing off, sweep it under the rug, deny everything and just try to forget about this whole conversation? If you’d asked him a day earlier, the answer would have most definitely have been the second option but now, sitting beside his best friend, who he had been pining after for the majority of the time that they’d known each other, who had asked the question so innocently and tinged with hope, he wasn’t so sure it would be the right choice.
For the first time, he decided that maybe coming clean wouldn’t be the end of the world he had always been envisioning it to be.
“Yeah, I am.”
And there it was. The cat was out of the bag now and there was no turning back.
Jonghyun didn’t seem to have expected such an honest answer and he looked visibly shocked by the confession.
What seemed like hours passed as the pair of them just sat facing each other, one shocked, the other anxious as they stared at each other, not quite knowing what to say or do.
The tension was slowly killing Minhyun. Perhaps this had been the wrong choice after all. Perhaps Jonghyun was being so quiet because he was trying to think of a way to reject him nicely. Perhaps –
“Good.”
‘Wait what? Did he just say ‘Good’?’
A small smile was worming its way onto Jonghyun’s previously shocked face.
“Wha…?”
“Because I’m in love with you too.”
“Huh?”
It wasn’t the most coherent response he’d ever given but honestly everything in his head was in meltdown mode because did Jonghyun, his best friend and love of his sad and pathetic life, just say that he was in love with him??? Was he dreaming right now? He really hoped not but really, as recent events had proved, the universe did seem to have something against him.
Jonghyun’s smile grew as he shuffled even closer towards Minhyun and leaned right into his personal space. Minhyun thought his heart was about to explode because seriously there was no way that this was his reality right now.
“I said, I’m in love with you too.” He was so close that Minhyun could feel the other’s breath fan his own lips as he spoke, and that as a concept in itself had Minhyun’s heart racing.
And without another word, Jonghyun leaned in to lightly plant a kiss right on Minhyun’s cheek. As Jonghyun pulled back slightly, Minhyun could feel the warmth radiating through his face from where Jonghyun had kissed him – or perhaps that was just him blushing again.
It was just a kiss to his cheek yet his entire mind sent further into disarray, but there was one thing that he could definitely say for certain: this was definitely a feeling he could live with if it meant he could keep receiving kisses from his best friend – or could they be considered more than that now?
And so, he found himself leaning back towards Jonghyun, who was now staring at him with amusement dancing in his eyes, and finally kissing him how he had always wanted to in the past few years he’d been pining.
And yeah, this was definitely a feeling he could live with for the rest of his life.