Chapter Text
The way Hyungwon grips the whiteboard marker in his hand is tight, but despite that, he can feel the marker slip slowly from his grasp and onto the small handheld whiteboard in front of him.
The timer ticks slowly and Hyungwon has yet to actually solve the problem given to him, it’s a jumble of letters that frustrate him. He can see that all the other competitors already had answers since they were holding their own boards close to their chests protectively from prying eyes.
His heart is hammering in his chest, wanting to break free. For a few seconds, all he could hear is the loud thundering of his chest, going boom boom boom , it’s nowhere near adrenaline that just causes excitement to run through his veins. It’s dread, the inevitable negativity that washes over him as the sound of his heart beat blares through his ears.
Maybe he regrets joining this stupid contest.
There’s a crowd in front of him, a bunch of people he sees from different classes and some he doesn’t recognize the slightest bit, along with teachers that were looking at him and the other contestants, proud. For what, Hyungwon doesn’t know. Rather than thinking about what he could answer, he takes the time scanning through the students, looking for a certain blonde. His eyes run past sleeping students, bored students, and students that look as if they prefer to be anywhere but here. Hyungwon pulls his lips into a thin line.
The timer ticks down even louder, even faster, showing that there wasn’t a lot of time left. To all, it meant lack of time to raise an answer, but to Hyungwon, it meant lack of time to find the only person that could make him feel better, calmer.
Suddenly, he sees him. Lee Minhyuk, mouthing words, that he can’t decipher well from where he’s sitting on a plastic chair on the stage. Until Hyungwon blinks again and he--
‘I love you!’
He gasps and immediately scribbles his answer, just in time to raise his board with both hands in a protruding haste that stands out from all the other contestants that hold their boards with a single hand in a relaxed manner.
Just then, Hyungwon realizes that maybe this is the worst day in his life.
He blushed immediately and hangs his head when the MC announces that he is wrong since this is only the easy round and he had already made a pretty embarrassing mistake. When Hyungwon turns to peek at what the other students had written he sees the word ‘colorful’, a huge difference in comparison to the massive ‘I Love You ’ he had written as a mistake.
Of course Minhyuk wouldn’t declare his love for him, or anyone in that matter, in a stupid competition that didn’t mean jack shit to Hyungwon.
He rubs off his answer with an eraser and looks at Minhyuk again. This time, Hyungwon sees him strike up a conversation with one of his and Hyungwon’s close friends, Lee Jooheon, a really smart student that has very adorable features, from his small eyes to his deep dimples, Hyungwon is the total opposite. He is thin, has big brown eyes (that comes with eyebags like a package deal), and isn’t smart. Most likely at all.
Did Minhyuk really mouth ‘I love you’ to him as a confession? Or were they both just really dumb?
Thinking about it aggravates him and pressures him, so he moves on.
When the competition was over and Hyungwon was ranked second to the last, he, along with the other kids, were rushed off the stage, he isn’t surprised to be greeted by a laughing Wonho and Changkyun, a smiling Hyunwoo, and a stern looking Kihyun. He looks down immediately, knowing what the duo was laughing at. He couldn’t even glare at them because the embarrassment engulfs him like a beach wave.
“Guys, stop that, you’re making Hyungwon feel worse.” Kihyun speaks up and berates them immediately with a threatening hand when he sees Hyungwon’s down expression. “He probably just got nervous or something.”
The laughter dies down at once, and Hyungwon is grateful for Kihyun to be there.
“It’s odd, though,” says Hyunwoo firmly, a bulky guy that Hyungwon has been friends with for quite some time now. He’s a really good guy although he could be too much of a doormat to numerous crazy antics.
“What is?” Wonho asks him with a blank expression. Hyungwon couldn’t tell if he was seriously concerned, or if he was looking for another reason to laugh again.
The eldest let’s a frown show up in his face, “The word was clearly ‘colorful’, how did you end up with ‘I love you’? Some letters are present in ‘I love you’ that aren’t in ‘colorful’.”
The way Hyunwoo looks at him felt as if Hyungwon was in an interrogation room, it prevents him from feeling calm, and it just lets the familiar heat pool on his cheeks.
Before Hyungwon can stammer a lie (he was never good at lying in the first place, so he was doomed immediately), Changkyun steps in the conversation.
“Maybe it’s because they have the same amount of letters,” The shortest speaks up, placing a hand on Hyungwon’s shoulder. Wonho nods understandingly, though, it doesn’t comfort him at all because Changkyun’s small hand is extremely cold. He could just feel it seep through his uniform. “Don’t worry about it too much, hyung. Happens to the best of us.”
“Thank you,” Hyungwon says, finally.
A small and boring conversation picks up and Hyungwon begins to stare off into the distance to wallow in his shame alone and to think unhappily about the fact that he let his hopes too high up.
Just then, Wonho suddenly snorts, “I love you” and despite his tired front, Hyungwon tries to muster the nastiest glare he could, but since Wonho grew up getting used to it, the elder eventually became immune to it and its effects.
A loud screech is heard and Kihyun jolts, placing his hand on his chest. “Where the fuck were you guys? Heony and I were looking for you!” It’s Minhyuk, who walks with a slight bounce in his steps, clutching a smiling Jooheon in his arms.
Kihyun glares at them, clearly unpleased with the way some students turned to look at them due to Minhyuk’s unexpected intervention. “Could you be a little quieter? We were here all along, where do you think the contestants would go?”
“The front?” Jooheon suggests and pries away from Minhyuk’s hold to walk towards Hyungwon. “I thought you guys had to hop off the stage or something.”
“We’re Word Jumble contestants, not people that do parkour.” Hyungwon replies bitterly. He wishes he could do parkour, that would be cooler than mistaking ‘colorful’ for ‘I love you’ in a competition’s third round.
Minhyuk sticks a finger in his direction, leading the others to look at where he’s pointing, which is Hyungwon. “Oh yeah, Wonnie, what happened to the ‘colorful’ I tried to mouth at you?”
“Oh, I uh… kind of misinterpreted it?” Hyungwon squeaks, and the others look at him, complexed, aside from Minhyuk who smiles and nods at him, clearly embarrassed for him. “I mean, the timer was ticking fast, and I needed an answer quick!”
“Uh, sure.”
There’s probably nothing worse than the fact that Minhyuk, the only guy he ever liked seriously, feels embarrassed for him.
Mortification is all Hyungwon feels for a while as he holds his face in his hands. Either he’s dreaming or he senses his pride slip away, too. He feels someone rub up and down on his back he doesn’t know who it is, but he only hopes it’s not his skinny blonde friend.
“I swear,” Hyungwon mutters, “I genuinely thought you meant ‘I love you’. It looks the same, try it out for yourselves. I’m not lying!”
It’s silent for a few seconds, and even though Hyungwon still refuses to make eye contact with anyone, he can tell that they were all playing around over it. It remains quiet until a loud and elongated “Oh!” comes out of their youngest. “It does!”
When they move on from the ‘colorful’ and ‘I love you’ debacle, a new topic and slither of conversational interest fill the group meanwhile Hyungwon is left to his own thoughts.
He didn’t mind the fact that he lost the competition, definitely not. He joined simply for the cred and maybe because he could have won something (which he didn’t and mainly drained his decreasing self esteem, which is great).
Hyungwon hates how hopeful he got when he saw Minhyuk mouth what he thought was ‘I love you’. It fucked up his entire train of thought the entire competition, because hope had filled him up, it made him happy, gleeful, and just so so careless.
And it embarrasses him so much that the whole situation had just been a big misunderstanding. It’s an unfortunate turn of events that does nothing to reassure Hyungwon.
“This is stupid,” Hyungwon spits out before walking out of the campus to head to a familiar diner he and his friends always hang in after special events. It wasn’t anything too special in an outsider’s perspective, but even Hyungwon knows that that diner had been with them since day one of their friendship as a group.
It’s a small diner that has been very comforting and special to him since long.
As he stomps towards the direction he heads to, he hears numerous footsteps that chase after him. Normally, his impulse would be to run farther away, but based on the movement alone, he knows it’s his friends, attempting to run after him, so he slows his steps and turns to them.
He’s correct as he sees his friends scramble after him, he sees Hyunwoo carry a laughing Kihyun on his back leading the group as Wonho, who’s carrying a Changkyun that’s clearly dozing off, laughs loudly. He doesn’t know where Minhyuk and Jooheon are, and Hyungwon tries not to think too much about them.
Suddenly, someone jumps on his back and he ends up falling down the rock hard cement immediately.
“What the fuck?! Get off of me, Jooheon!” Hyungwon yelps and tries to writhe away. The friction from the floor and his uniform is extremely uncomfortable and he hears laughter above him then easily, he realizes that the familiar tone of voice could only be Minhyuk. “Wait, no, Minhyuk, fuck off!”
“Never!” He yells from above him yet Hyungwon manages to squeeze out of his grasp and run away towards the diner.
He hears Wonho’s laughter far behind him, almost mocking, but Hyungwon believes it’s just due to the fact that the adrenaline probably made him giggle like a brat. (Or maybe the youngest’s presence affected him somehow, but Hyungwon just shrugs mindlessly at that.)
When he arrives outside the diner’s entrance, he leans on the wall outside and waits for his friends that are still quite far. He takes the time to even his breathing and stare blankly on the small thinning patch of grass.
Suddenly, an arm wraps around his shoulders and he turns to look only to find Minhyuk, who had a big and bright grin on his face.
“How did you get here?” Hyungwon queries and Minhyuk winks at him. The taller blushes and looks down before biting his tongue, realizing that the action only made him more obvious.
“A master never tells his secrets,” comes the cryptic reply that makes Hyungwon chuckle.
They wait for quite a while, then. It surprises Hyungwon how fast he ran, but it surprises him even more that Minhyuk catched up to him. He spares the latter a glance and finds him humming a tune Hyungwon is unfamiliar with.
He’s beautiful, Hyungwon thinks. And he’s sure Minhyuk knows this too, due to the way he moves so confidently without any reassurance, it’s admirable and a little part of Hyungwon has to admit that he’s jealous of the way he brings himself up.
Minhyuk had been a bully before. He wasn’t the victim, he was the opressor, and he used to harass Hyungwon and a few other kids almost daily, from dumping the contents of Hyungwon’s bag, to stealing his favorite sharpeners that had little Digimon stickers at the side. Hyungwon used to despise him with all the malice he could muster.
But looking at him now, a nice guy that looks at the future far too brightly for what it is, it’s almost unbelievable.
The change had been slow, almost undeveloping if Hyungwon had to comment. But maybe he finally learned his lesson, maybe he had finally accepted his mistake and decided to change for the better.
Even though Minhyuk opened up to his group and told him that he had changed, Kihyun and Wonho had found him very suspicious at the time and thought that he was just playing with their emotions to get some laughing material for later, but Minhyuk did change even if it didn’t come as quick as most want the process to be.
Hyungwon could never be like him, deep in his heart, he knows he could never develop character and change that much in little time and he likes him a lot for that.
Currently, in the light breeze of the afternoon, he notices that the elder’s natural roots are showing, standing out from the bright blonde he dyed his hair with. He opens his mouth to make a comment to strike up some light conversation, but Minhyuk beats him to it.
As soon as he does, he senses tension in the air when it was light and liberating just a few pauses before.
“What would you have done...” He starts, so suddenly, his tone is calculated and serious, as if he had been planning this, and Hyungwon finds it odd as the man is normally charming and bolts into a random conversation without thinking ahead. “If… I meant to say I love you?”
Hyungwon decides to make eye contact as it’s appropriately timed, and notices how there’s doubt in Minhyuk’s expression despite the bold question. Hope, just like the one from the competition, fills him up, but it immediately deflates. He doesn’t think or feel the same way he does about him… right?
Hyungwon resorts to letting out a fake and deep chuckle. “But you didn’t. You were coaching me.”
He hears Minhyuk gulp next to him. “I know, but what if I meant to say I love you?”
It’s then in which Hyungwon notices that it wasn’t doubt, no. Minhyuk was scared , nervous.
The dull afternoon sweeps away Hyungwon’s words. He knows it wasn’t due to the time of day, but he doesn’t want to admit it, because then, it’ll feel real, and maybe he doesn’t want it to be real. He’s just as scared as Minhyuk, if not, more.
It takes him a while to let out an answer, so when he does, his breathing is ragged, as if he had ran all the way back to campus and back here, to the diner.
“I--”
“Hey, they’re here!” Minhyuk is quick to point out, extending his long arm to show Hyungwon that the rest of their gang has arrived. Minhyuk probably thought he was being sneaky, but the younger knows that he had been in a haste to end the conversation. He frowns. Why start it if you were in a rush to end it?
The boys were panting when they arrived, and it’s Kihyun who pushes the door open for all of them to enter in, and it makes Hyungwon smile. He is the one with the most manners despite the fact that he can be unintentionally rude at times.
He sneaks a glance at Minhyuk who already seemed to be looking at him. But he looks away almost immediately and ducks his head.
Hyungwon looks forward and tries not to let distracting possibilities flood his head.