Chapter Text
“Your stories are getting cliché.”
It’s six in the morning.
On a good day, Jihoon gets out of bed before one in the afternoon. It’s neither a good day nor one in the afternoon, so this must be it. The end of the road. Park Jihoon has finally clawed his way to the depths of hell and Lucifer is none other than—
“Rise and shine before I roll your paychecks into balls and feed them to the intern.”
—Ong Seongwoo, which, strangely enough, is fitting and not even the slightest bit jarring.
“No offense, hyung, but—” Jihoon groans out, tugging his covers up higher, burying himself beneath them.
“I’m already offended.”
“—our company’s at the height of environmentalism and you talking like you’re going to write my checks on paper is an egregious waste of natural resources. Think about the trees, you jerk.”
Seongwoo tears Jihoon’s blanket away from him and has the audacity to spritz Jihoon in the face with cold water from a pink plastic spray bottle labeled ‘GET JIHOON’S LIFE TOGETHER.’
Right. He forgot Seongwoo’s interest as of late was the outdated label machine they unearthed from the company attic during spring (it’s October, but Jaehyun, the head of the Editing Department, is arguably handsome enough to re-order the seasons and if Jung Jaehyun says October is spring, then October is spring) cleaning last week.
(Jihoon’s personal favorite is the company CEO’s treasured BL manga being labeled as ‘DOYOUNG’S SOFTCORE JERKOFFF MATERIAL’ in a bold Sans Serif.)
It’s cold outside and being exposed to the unforgiving winter air (heating is expensive and Jihoon is broke) and water that might as well be ice splashing him on the face makes for a less than pleasant experience.
Jihoon hisses.
“Good, you’re awake,” Seongwoo says. “Anyway, like I was saying, your stories? They’re getting predictably trite. In the words of the teeny-boppers on the Twittersphere that live-tweet every new update you post, ‘Wink-nim really is getting more and more boring by the week.’”
With much futility, Jihoon forces himself upright, expression unpleasantly disgruntled as he squints at Seongwoo. He reaches out and yanks the iPad from Seongwoo’s hands, glowering at the screen as he confirms every single word Seongwoo’s quoted from Public Enemy #1: Twitter.
“So what?” Jihoon grumbles. “I’m going through a slump. Sue me.”
“I wish I could,” Seongwoo sighs out. “I’d sue you for everything you own, starting with your One Piece collection.”
“In your dreams. I’d die before letting you smudge a single page Zoro hyung’s been drawn into life on.” Wait, he’s missing the point. Jihoon shakes his head. “You seriously broke into my apartment at six in the morning to tell me my most popular demographic thinks I’m as big of a flop as that Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen-Idon’tevenknow bullshit?”
Seongwoo, to his credit, doesn’t even look the least bit mocking when he frowns. “I walked into your apartment to tell you that you’re going to get shelved at this rate unless you come up with something new—something interesting.” He gets up from where he’s seated at the end of Jihoon’s bed, making like he’s about to leave before he pauses. Seongwoo turns, reclaiming his spray bottle and spritzing Jihoon in the face one last time. “And it isn’t six in the morning, you absolute idiot. It’s six in the afternoon. Get your life together.”
Jihoon shoves his face into his pillow and bites back a scream.
✐✐✐
He drops out of university after one semester into his first year. Understandably, Jihoon’s parents are equal parts distressed and equal parts enraged, and the first semester he stays at home as a NEET is spent being constantly reminded that once upon a time, he had such a bright future.
The truth is, Jihoon isn’t so reckless as to drop out without a foreseeable goal for the future. He drops out because he hates medicine, yes, but also because he figures out—after months of falling asleep in every single one of his lectures—that his real dream for the future involves the amateur manhwa stories he’s got filling his notebook for Biology to the brim.
He doesn’t tell his parents until after he lands his first big story, until after he’s moved out, until after he’s quit his job at the corner convenience store scanning barcodes day in and day out.
It’s a simple message: a screenshot of the headline of an e-mail that reads CONGRATULATIONS, [BLURRED OUT]-NIM! YOUR STORY, [BLURRED OUT], IS THE #1 READERS’ CHOICE OF THE YEAR… and an emoticon of Ryan the Lion offering a thumbs-up. His parents don’t even call (they know him better than that). His mom replies with an I’m proud of you and his father even sends a heart.
There are people he has to thank for getting him through the past few years, be it by reminding him to please eat or by dragging him out of bed at reasonable hours to ensure he meets his deadlines. Seongwoo, for being his most reliable editor (because Jihoon refuses to call him a manager—he doesn’t need to be managed)—
“For starters,” Seongwoo says, “you could stop writing the same-old one-sided love stories drawing from personal experience.”
Jihoon grips his pen too tightly and glowers. Seongwoo holds up his tablet as a feeble shield.
“I’m just saying.” There’s an uneasy smile on Seongwoo’s lips. “At some point, the public is going to get tired of you writing your self-insert love stories about Mark.”
—and of course, he has to thank Mark Lee for being his muse, his inspiration, and the only light in this unforgivingly dark universe.
In the quiet of their shared apartment, Jihoon hears Mark sneeze.
“Say that louder, hyung,” Jihoon hisses. “I don’t think the lady downstairs heard you.”
“I could,” reasons Seongwoo. “I could say it so loud that the blockhead across the apartment hears me, too.”
Jihoon glowers. “Anyway, I’m not in love with Mark and my stories have nothing to do with love. They’re post-apocalyptic zombie stories, not fucking—ugh—shoujo teenybopper high school romance fluffy…”
“Wow. Keep going, Jihoon. You have such a thrilling way with words. No wonder the denizens of Twitter love to waste their livelihoods gossiping about you on the internet.”
“Ugh,” Jihoon groans out, chucking his pen across his desk and uselessly hurling himself out of his chair and onto the rug he received as a Christmas gift last year from Sungwoon. Five-billion thread count Korean linen with tiger fur detail, which is to say I got this from the street market for less than manwon, Sungwoon had told him. He’d balked then but Jihoon’s made considerable use out of it over the past few months. He calls it his ‘Despair Rug.’
“Get off of your Despair Rug,” Seongwoo chides with a roll of his eyes, nudging Jihoon’s shoulder with a socked foot. “You just need a change of pace. Something new. Something that’ll push you to really think.”
“Murder?” Jihoon suggests. “Homicide would make me think. Specifically, of every single person who’s had the nerve to call me boring—”
“I was thinking more along the lines of actual love story, but you were really close.”
Jihoon’s brows furrow instantly. He squints his eyes at Seongwoo, uncurling from fetal position until he’s lying flat on the ground. “A what.” A love story? Him?
“You know,” Seongwoo continues with a flippant wave of his hand. “You could try writing a love story with a happy ending where your self-insert character doesn’t fall to their demise at the hands of zombies. It could be a good learning experience.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” murmurs Jihoon. “What do you mean by… a love story with a happy ending? That’s so unrealistic.”
“You write about zombies for a living,” deadpans Seongwoo. “You really want to talk about unrealistic with me?”
“Were you even paying attention when we watched Train to Busan? World War Z? You know the reason why they cast big-name stars in zombie movies? Because the government’s trying to distract the foolish masses from the feasibility of a real-life zombie apocalypse.” Jihoon folds his arms over his chest and closes his eyes. “Of course you think zombies are unrealistic, hyung. You were probably too busy fantasizing a honeymoon with Brad Pitt to realize that—”
A knocking on the door cuts straight through Jihoon’s impassioned tirade and both he and Seongwoo freeze.
“Yo, Jihoon?” Mark calls out.
“Fuck my life,” Jihoon mutters. “Just step on me. Kill me right now. I can’t look at the purest thing on this planet when I’m contemplating homicide of faceless strangers on the Internet.”
Seongwoo rolls his eyes. “You are so dramatic. Come in, Mark. Door’s unlocked.”
Jihoon barely manages to mouth a passionate fuck you before the door swings open slowly.
Hi, Mark, echoes in Jihoon’s head. His mouth opts for a delicate, “What do you want, loser,” instead.
Ever the saint, Mark doesn’t even seem the slightest bit miffed by Jihoon’s persistent attitude. It’s probably attributed to their years of friendship or something, and Jihoon still hasn’t figured out if he loves it or hates it just yet.
“Hey,” Mark greets, flopping over onto Jihoon’s unmade bed. “I’m going to hit up a party later tonight with Jeno. Wanna come with? You can come too, hyung. I heard someone you’re interested in might be there.”
“Don’t half-ass it, Mark. If you really want to see hyung squirm, you have to say the name—Hwang Minhyummmfffhggf!” It is disgusting having to taste Seongwoo’s sock in his mouth and while mildly repentant (Jihoon did sort of have it coming), he’s more bitter than anything. “You’re a monster.”
“Trust me, that’s you,” Seongwoo says with a deceivingly sweet smile. “Unfortunately, I can’t. And neither can Jihoon. He has a story to come up with.”
“A story?” Mark asks with a tilt of his head. “Another one about zombies? The last one was cool. ‘Zombies in New York.’ Way better than that verse you had in Hawaii.”
Jihoon lets out a muffled groan. “Haven’t you heard? Zombies just aren’t cutting it anymore! You know what’s messed up? The fact that these teenyboppers on Twitter think they have the right to shit on me and my stories when they’re the ones reading them.”
As though guilty himself, Mark winces. “Bad day?”
What was supposed to be a creative meeting has definitively plummeted into the most unproductive three (THREE!) whole hours of Jihoon’s life. He sort of feels sorry for sucking away Seongwoo’s time—he’s more or less responsible for making sure Jihoon’s getting shit done, and as it stands, he’s not getting shit done—but more than anything, he feels sorry for himself for getting comfortable and complacent in the most inflexible niche of a genre of all time.
It shouldn’t be so difficult branching out. Jihoon remembers high school days wasted away writing and drawing the most extravagant of stories. He can’t even remember what he used to write back then—only that it certainly wasn’t the same-old shit.
Maybe the Internet is right. He really is getting predictable.
“Haha,” Jihoon laughs dryly. “What makes you think that? I’m having the time of my life.”
“You’re lying on your Sad Rug,” Mark says with a frown. “Isn’t that a bad sign?”
“It’s a Despair Rug, actually. Sad makes me sound sad.”
“Jihoon’s just going through a creative block.” Seongwoo pats Mark on the head in a manner much too paternal. “I’m trying to get him to write a love story that doesn’t end in cannibalism. Don’t you think that’d be good, Mark?”
Jihoon narrows his eyes.
“I guess,” Mark says. He grins a beat later. “Want me to set you up with one of my friends? Get some real dating experience? It’ll be like research!”
“What.”
“That’s not a terrible idea,” says Seongwoo, because he’s an asshole. “How sweet of you to offer, Mark!”
“This is a terrible idea and I’d never agree to it,” Jihoon practically bites out. He sits up too abruptly, feeling the blood rush almost immediately when he stands up to sit back down at his desk. “Suddenly been hit with a wave of inspiration. Need everyone to leave my room immediately.”
“As your manager—”
“You’re not my manager.”
“You’re right.” Seongwoo smiles. “As your babysitter—”
“Hey,” Mark interjects with a deep-set frown. “Come on. Don’t make fun of Jihoon. He’s working really hard.”
HI I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU? flashes in Jihoon’s mind like a New York City neon sign. “Fuck off, Mark,” Jihoon’s Mouth says instead, because there is something preciously comedic about this life-long running gag where he self-sabotages any chance he, an author of romance (sort of, not really, but apparently), has at actual romance. “Seriously, can both of you just like—I don’t know, disappear? I can’t go on a date with one of Mark’s five-thousand Soundcloud rapper friends. I’m busy.”
“You’re busy?” echoes Mark at the same time that Seongwoo, fuck Seongwoo honestly, asks, “In what world?”
“Yes,” Jihoon says through gritted teeth. “I have plans tonight.” He doesn’t have plans tonight. He barely has friends to hit up that he doesn’t already see every day against his own will. With much futility, Jihoon grips his favorite white Muji mechanical pencil and tries to think of the first name that’ll come to mind. “I’m busy,” he repeats after a long pause. “I’m hanging out tonight with Woojin.”
✐✐✐
“And then I told them I was hanging out with—” Jihoon hiccups. “—you.”
Woojin, donning his crumpled navy GS 25 vest, says nothing. Instead, he sprays some cleaner on the plastic table Jihoon’s sitting at without so much as a visceral reaction.
“So, you came to bother me at work again?”
“Yeah.” With some added dramatics, Jihoon crumples onto the newly cleaned table, pressing his face against folded arms. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
If Mark is Jihoon’s light in the darkness, Woojin is probably the anchor in a stormy gale or something (see? Jihoon’s great at writing cheesy shit). Maybe it’s a rite of passage, but as childhood friends, there’s very little Woojin doesn’t already know about Jihoon—including Jihoon’s outrageous crush on Mark ever since the first day of university.
They’ve done practically everything together. Grew up together, moved to Seoul together—there’s nothing Jihoon feels uncomfortable sharing with Woojin.
Including his many, many, many, many, many, many, many troubles.
“Uuuuuuuuuuuugh,” Jihoon groans. “I feel sick.”
“Don’t,” Woojin warns. “If you throw up again, I’m banning you from coming here. We have a Wall of Shame in the backroom and I’m not afraid to put you on it.”
Jihoon looks at Woojin, especially meaningfully, as though willing him to Feel Sympathetic. “I’m coming to you with my heart on my sleeve and you’re being a dick.”
For a second, Woojin looks entirely unimpressed. And then—as always—he lets out a withering sigh, gaze fixed on something in the distance as he settles his spray bottle of cleaning agent on the table and tosses his rag next to it. He plops down in the dingy plastic seat across from Jihoon and slumps into it.
“I’m the dick?” Woojin repeats with a shake of his head. “I let you rob me of my paycheck by turning a blind eye when you steal ice cream from the shop, and I’m the dick? Pfft.”
“Can you just be nice to me?” He’s purposeful as he reaches across the distance to kick Woojin’s shin. “The asshole I’ve written fifty stories about is going on a date tonight with that guy that did a milk commercial. You know him, right? The one that smiles like he’s literally been manufactured to be next to the dictionary definition of ‘smile.’ I’m hurting.”
“You’re hurting my wallet,” Woojin corrects, flicking an empty ice cream wrapper in Jihoon’s direction. “When are you going to get over him, huh? It’s been years and you haven’t even told him you like him. Stop pigeonholing yourself, dumbass. There are hotter dudes than Mark Lee out there.”
Woojin’s probably right, yeah, and Jihoon never knows how to answer that question. He supposes some matters of the heart are unforgivingly mysterious in that sense, and as dissatisfied as he feels, maybe he’s not meant to know why he still likes Mark, why he can’t break past the same old boring stories where every hypothetical happy ending Jihoon could build for himself inadvertently gets shattered to smithereens.
“Seongwoo hyung wants me to write a love story,” Jihoon says instead of responding to Woojin. “Me, a love story. Every single story I’ve written has ended in apocalypse or the person that I’m using as a parallel for my life getting eaten alive by zombies. Me. A fucking love story.”
“My little sister’s been into rom-coms these days,” offers Woojin with a half-hearted shrug. “I can ask her to forward you some recommendations.”
“Me,” repeats Jihoon. “A god damn love story. Holy shit. In what world?”
He’s lucky it’s the middle of the week at an awkward hour when even the drunk businessmen haven’t quite found their way onto the streets. The convenience store is empty and Jihoon can afford to monopolize some of Woojin’s time (and the employee discount he gets on alcohol). Idly, Jihoon sips at the remainder of a paper cup of soju he’s poured for himself. (When’d he manage to get through two bottles?)
Him? Write a love story? When he’s forcefully shoved every single person he’s loved into the safe zone of ‘just a friend’ or ‘like family’?
Jihoon sinks into his chair, pulling the hood of his jacket over his head.
The remnants of his conversation from earlier with Mark and Seongwoo echo in his mind. Maybe it’s the alcohol—he’s always considered himself to have a pretty strong tolerance, but there’s a fuzziness to his thoughts he can’t quite wade through.
“Hey, Woojin,” Jihoon starts to say.
Woojin doesn’t even say anything, only lifts his head, gaze locking with Jihoon’s expectantly.
“Hey, Woojin?” Jihoon says again.
“What?”
Get some real dating experience? It’ll be like research!
He sort of feels sick, and Jihoon slumps a little more before murmuring, right before he manages to throw up on the table Woojin’s literally just cleaned: “Want to date?”
✐✐✐
When he comes to, it’s morning (or afternoon) and Jihoon already knows he’s in Woojin’s room from the family photos propped on an otherwise messy desk and posters of offensively attractive dance crews plastered against his walls. Woojin’s room is a mess of sentimentality and Jihoon always feels at home in it.
Or, well, Jihoon usually feels at home in it.
He squints, biting back a pounding headache and the powerful urge to throw up one more time. Ah, right. He threw up last night. A pity session really isn’t complete without forcing his best friend to see him at his lowest for the nth time.
At some point, he should probably start paying Woojin a gratuity for not dropping him.
“Fuck,” Jihoon groans out, eloquent as always as he flops over onto his stomach, burying his face into the pillow. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.”
“Shuuuuuuut uuuuppppp,” Woojin chimes back, mocking, with the door swinging open noisily in tow. “Sleep well? I see you’ve drooled all over my pillow, to no one’s surprise.” He’s holding a cup of water, a white container of pills, and what Jihoon thinks might be a Vita 500. Sometimes, Woojin really is an angel in devil’s disguise.
“Aren’t you supposed to, like, I don’t know, stop me from making stupid decisions?” His head is pounding but he still remembers to mutter a feeble thanks while accepting the water and two painkillers.
“Seongwoo hyung called.” Woojin tosses Jihoon his phone. “Something about how he needs an idea by next week?”
Oh.
Right.
Jihoon’s stomach sinks then, entirely unattributed to the lingering effects of Bad Decisions with Alcohol. Right. Right. His career. How could he possibly forget that he was being instructed to change the trajectory of his entire creative process?
He closes his eyes purposefully.
“He told me to help you find a boyfriend,” continues Woojin. The mattress sinks as Woojin takes a seat beside Jihoon. “So, I told him I was your boyfriend.”
The water in Jihoon’s mouth dribbles out unattractively.
It’s becoming alarmingly more apparent by the second that there’s a significant portion of last night that Sober Jihoon is desperately repressing.
“I, sorry—just, uh,” Jihoon stammers out. He squints, using the back of his hand to wipe his mouth. “Uh, what am I trying to say… what the fuck?”
“Wow. Don’t tell me you forgot about vomiting all over the table I spent fifteen minutes cleaning and proceeding to beg me to be your boyfriend so you could do ‘real research’ while I tried to get you to stand up. I’d be crushed if you didn’t remember.”
The insistent burning of Jihoon’s cheeks is, frankly, rude and uncalled for, and he’s not looking forward to having this held against him for the next half-year. Woojin is that kind of person and Jihoon has absolutely no defense given his actions from last night—which are coming back to him in waves—definitely were that embarrassing and that (as Seongwoo would say, expression fixed into one of fond disgust) messy.
Jihoon smiles placidly and lets out a dry laugh.
“Nah, I’m kidding,” Woojin says. “I know you forgot. You remember now though, don’t you? I had to pay Youngmin hyung ₩50,000 to wash my shoes for me because I had the smallest feeling that I’d resent you if I tried to get the throw-up out myself.”
“You love me too much, don’t put up a front,” Jihoon musters up the nerve to scoff out. “Anyway, I, uh, that—you—fucking—um… I was drunk. And the context of Drunk Jihoon’s poor decisions were probably derivative of Drunk Jihoon being sad about the fact that Mark Lee is in a happy and cute relationship and maybe Seongwoo hyung’s right when he—doesn’t explicitly say because even he’s too nice to—implies overtly that I’m miserable and can’t write love stories because love has failed me in every human respect.” He inhales sharply. “Yeah, I was drunk.”
“Uh.” The vague look of concern on Woojin’s face is one Jihoon is well-acquainted with. “Sure. Well, Seongwoo hyung also hung up on me before I got the chance to say just kidding. He might have told Minhyun hyung or Daehwi, or both, so it’s probable that too many people already know already.” Woojin’s shoulders ease into relaxation as he leans back on his arms, heels of his hands sinking into the mattress. His gaze is fixed on a poster of Marvel superheroes hanging on the back of his door. “I’ll do it if you really want me to.”
Jihoon knows better than anyone else that Park Woojin would do close to anything on this planet to support him; it’s why he’s particularly protective of this friendship—because as much as they tease each other, there’s really no one else that Jihoon could ever trust more than Woojin. Like any other human relationship, sure there are times they get frustrated with each other, there are secrets Jihoon’s positive (and okay with the fact that) Woojin probably keeps from him.
But unlike any other human relationship, there’s a factor of steadfast unconditionality that practically pops out of Woojin in moments like these.
“What the fuck, dude. I’m not going to make you do that,” Jihoon says with a brisk shake of his head.
“I’m not offering because I want you to date me,” Woojin clarifies, his voice dipping ever-so-slightly toward the end of his statement. “I’m just saying that if you really need to do something this ridiculous to get the tiniest idea of what a relationship without zombies and heartbreak is supposed to be like, I’ll do it.”
“What the fuck, dude,” murmurs Jihoon, for a second time. “Are you serious?”
Woojin shrugs. “Granted, I expect payment in the form of a new pair of shoes, but yeah, I mean, other than that, I’m really doing this out of charity.”
The more rational part of Jihoon’s brain is telling him that this probably isn’t a good idea. It’s going to get awkward at some point, and maybe that’ll hurt them in the long-run (unlikely, but there’s always a time and place for fatalism and that time and place is now and here). Maybe pretending to be in love will make Woojin realize that Jihoon really isn’t the type of person who does enough to warrant the energy, the effort, the friendship that Woojin affords him (also unlikely, but doomsday scenarios are kind of Jihoon’s forte).
There are more Reasons Why He Shouldn’t than Reasons Why He Should, but then Jihoon thinks about his impending deadlines, the admittedly slow demise of his current creative universe, and the fact that the only other option is relying on Mark to find him someone to essentially replace Mark with—
“Charity.”
“Charity,” Woojin confirms.
“Wow, fuck you,” Jihoon says with a heave of his chest, one long sigh slipping past his lips. He pauses and hesitates for a fleeting moment before biting out a cautious, “Okay.”
“Okay,” echoes Woojin. “Cool. We can figure out logistics later, but I forgot to tell you that Seongwoo hyung also mentioned you have a meeting at your company in twenty minutes.”
The relationship is already off to a bad start because Doyoung—er, President Kim—will undeniably ream Jihoon’s ass if he’s late to another meeting.
“Are you f—”
“Nope, but I did call a Kakao Taxi for you, so I guess I’m the World’s Best Boyfriend now instead of just the World’s Best Friend.”
Jihoon’s already hurtled himself out of bed, rummaging through Woojin’s closet for something vaguely more presentable to wear, and wasting no time—two minutes, actually—to put himself together the best he can without having to commit to more human things, like washing his face.
Like an uninvolved ghost, Woojin trails behind him noncommittally, tapping away at his phone (Candy Crush) and periodically looking up to make sure Jihoon hasn’t somehow injured himself in his desperate last-ditch attempt at staying on Doyoung’s good side.
“Shoot, you know what I just realized?” Jihoon asks from the bathroom.
“No, what?”
“Seongwoo hyung’s going to be there. What am I supposed to do if he asks about you?” Toothpaste spurts out of the tube in splatters. Great.
“Tell him I’m your boyfriend,” Woojin calls out dryly. “Didn’t we just have an entire conversation confirming this?”
“Yeah, but you’re not actually my boyfriend,” Jihoon says. “Would it be challenging the integrity of this relationship if I told him we were faking?”
“Probably?”
“I’m not going to tell him,” Jihoon decides for himself (for them). “He’s an asshole. This is payback. I’m going to make up an elaborate get-together story.”
“Sure,” replies Woojin, his voice growing smaller as he shuffles away from the bathroom. “Do whatever you want, and I’ll meet you there.”
It takes a total of ten minutes but Jihoon is as ready as he’ll ever be. The taxi’s going to pull up to Woojin’s apartment building in less than two minutes, and if traffic is kind, it shouldn’t take more than five to get to work. Maybe he’d be better off sprinting but Jihoon’s not sure if he trusts his stomach to do its job just yet.
As he stumbles out to the living room and sees the crumpled blankets on the couch—Woojin probably crashed there and let Jihoon have the bed—something very small, something akin to dread, to worry blooms belatedly at the very base of Jihoon’s heart. He swallows it down and tries to will it to the back of his mind, forcing himself to instead focus on anything else.
“Yo, breakfast,” Woojin says, interjecting Jihoon’s thoughts cleanly. Reliable as always. He extends a foil-wrapped square and another bottle of Vita 500. “Break a leg, or whatever it is you do at meetings. Break a pencil.”
“Break a pencil,” deadpans Jihoon. “It’s the twenty-first century. We don’t have pencils to break anymore.”
“Break a tablet,” Woojin amends. “Break two.”
Jihoon’s two steps closer to the door when the concern he’d neglected moments prior bubbles up to the surface once more. “Hey,” he starts to say, trailing off as he loses hold of the words he once had floating insistently in his mind.
“What is it? Spit it out. Your face looks like you have something important to say.”
There are questions he probably should have asked and reasons he isn’t seeking solely because Woojin is Woojin, and for some reason Jihoon’s convinced that it’s easy to categorize the things Woojin’s willing to do for him as a positive of the strength of their friendship. Still, it isn’t every day that your best friend asks you to pretend to be their boyfriend—and Jihoon sincerely hopes this isn’t something Woojin is forcing himself to do out of pity.
Woojin isn’t that type of person. Jihoon knows this. But he’s prone to self-doubt, to imagining the worst possible scenarios before even entertaining the best possible ones or even the most realistic.
“You’re going to be late,” says Woojin. “Come on.”
“You’re really okay with this?” Jihoon finally asks, quieter, sincerely. “Being my… uh, boyfriend for a little while, I mean.” The word rolls off of his tongue awkwardly, emphasis on all of the wrong syllables. He wonders if his face is red from embarrassment or just overheating because his body’s still livid at him for the treatment he exposed it to last night.
Looking entirely unaffected, Woojin bobs his head. “Yeah.” He offers Jihoon the faintest smile, something that’s more comforting than Woojin probably intended for it to be. “It’s no big deal.”
“Okay,” Jihoon says. “Fine. Then we’re dating.”
“Sure. You know what this means though, right?”
Jihoon’s halfway out the door when he turns around one last time to ask, “What?”
The small smile on Woojin’s lips grows into a borderline wicked grin. “It means you’re in a relationship while Seongwoo hyung is still pining hopelessly after Minhyun hyung. Good luck at your meeting. Don’t forget to remind him that life is short.”
Life is short, and though the context of the phrase in light of what Woojin’s said is funny, Jihoon doesn’t really dig much deeper into it as he exits the apartment building with a smile on his face.
Life is short.
Life is short.