Archive of Our Own ^beta

“So I made a list of stuff we gotta pack.” Felix pulled out a folded piece of paper from the back-pocket of his pants and tossed it in the air for anyone to grab.

Hyunjin caught it with one lazy stretch of his arm and, upon unfolding it, squinted, confused, at the crumples and squiggles. “Felix, this literally only consists of a deck of Uno and 3 different kinds of bath bomb.”

“Your point being?”

The floor of Seungmin’s room had been chosen as the most suitable location for a strategic meeting, “chosen” being used very loosely in this particular case, since Seungmin didn’t quite feel the spirit of democracy in the fact that Hyunjin, Jisung, and Felix had arrived at his doorstep in pajama attire with no prior notice. Nonetheless, they had brought food, so ultimately no grudges remained.

Seungmin snatched the crumpled list from Hyunjin’s hands and used it as a cup coaster for his tea mug. “Okay, that's our last concern, how are we even going to travel?”

“I’ve got you, dudes,” Jisung suddenly sprang up from where he was lying on the shaggy carpet to rummage through his pockets, “I told my cousin I need his old car to impress a chick.” He pulled out car keys from his hoodie and jingled them loudly, as if his point hadn’t already been stressed enough.

Seungmin refused to admit aloud that he was actually a bit impressed. He commended the feat with a nod regardless, mug clutched close. “Heterosexuality gets you everywhere in life, huh.”

“What’s our budget, though?” Felix butted in, “I still keep my Christmas cash and some money my family gave me for prom, but how’s the situation with you guys?”

“You say this as if it isn’t clear we’ll be living off of the cheapest cup ramen and pissing at the side of the highway,” Jisung simply left it at that, once again molding into the carpet while sprawled like a beached starfish.

The concept bounced around Felix’s head for a short-lived second. “Fair enough,” he said in resignation while already relocating his attention to a bag of marshmallows abandoned at the foot of Seungmin’s bed.

“But…” Hyunjin picked up from where he was lying on his back on another patch of the carpet. He could vaguely feel his eyes getting fried by the fluorescent light bulb on the ceiling; he still didn’t blink. “Where are we even going to go?”

The room fell into a contemplative silence that could’ve been emotionally impactful had it not been the faint sound of Felix munching on marshmallows.

“How about-” Seungmin quickly slurped up the remainder of his tea and set the mug aside on his desk, clearly meaning business. “-a bucket list.” Three pairs of eyes shifted in his direction. “Instead of compromising for one destination I just think it’d be better if all of us pitched some ideas of what we want to see and do. If we’re just careful with the spending, we’d be able to visit more places.”

Seungmin didn’t realise when he’d begun absent-mindedly fiddling with the hem of his pajama top. “When we split up to go to uni it’ll be difficult to get together like this as often, so we might as well go all out while we still have a chance like this, in a group we trust.” His gaze and the volume of his voice gradually lowered as the sentence went on.

The room lapsed into silence once more, and this time, it was indeed laden with feeling.

Felix silently stood up from where he sat leaning back on the bed frame and plopped on the mattress next to Seungmin, opening two short arms for a hug. “That’s the cutest thing you’ve said all month,” Felix said with a smile, soft and genuine, and Seungmin didn’t have it in him to do anything but hug back shyly.

“I’m totally down for this,” Jisung also voiced support for the idea, but with how deeply he had melted into the carpet, he didn’t have Felix’s energy for the full hug procedure. Instead, Jisung stretched a leg in Seungmin’s direction and tried to pat him with a socked foot in some personalized display of affection.

Conversely, Hyunjin couldn’t find any words at all. He merely stared at Seungmin, eyes a tad wide and lips subtly parted in wonder. Seungmin being a softie wasn’t a recent occurrence, it had long ago become an irrefutable fact; rather, Hyunjin found surprise in all the fondness that bubbled in him each time Seungmin openly showed some of the ways in which he cared for them all.

Seungmin suddenly looked in Hyunjin’s direction, and the eye contact made Hyunjin quietly gulp. “Hyunjin, are you in?” came the question, softened by the notes of consideration.

Pure endearment pulled the corners of Hyunjin’s lips up into a smile as he replied, “You bet,” and the delight he saw his answer etch on Seungmin’s face caused a tiny starburst of warmth in his chest.

“Alright, that’s settled,” Jisung sat up and clapped his hands together, “I want each of you eggheads to think of some places by tomorrow so we can prepare a route and decide on driving shifts. Seungmin excluded.”

The emotional atmosphere was distorted just as easily as it had been spawned. “I almost hit you while trying to parallel park one time, when will you let me live that down-”

Hyunjin had overslept, Jisung bombarding his phone with calls and texts, hence the hair sticking out in several directions after he had made a run for the car and practically lurched himself into the passenger seat. A half-finished piece of toast still hung from his mouth, and the strap of a camera bag dug uncomfortably into his neck. That same piece of toast was almost the cause of his demise once Jisung took a very sharp turn for Seungmin’s side of the neighbourhood. It was kind of Jisung to pat Hyunjin on the back and save him from choking on crumbs, but in hindsight, taking one hand off the steering wheel while dodging all the cars parked on the narrow street in front for the apartment building perhaps wasn’t worth the noble cause.

Seungmin was allowed the dignity of showing up in a decent state after only one text, bags scraping the asphalt in front of the building entrance as he trudged towards the car. When Seungmin opened the boot and saw the way Jisung and Hyunjin had tossed in their parts of the luggage with no grace whatsoever, he could only sigh.

He tried sifting through the mess and slotting his own bags in there so that the whole pile wouldn't topple over at the first speed bump. Once he closed it shut, Jisung suddenly revved the engine and started slowly driving away while Hyunjin waved goodbye from the window on his side, effectively making Seungmin whine out loud like a siren in front of his apartment building. The residents who were out on their balconies for an early morning smoke threw brief puzzled looks before going on with their lives.

“We haven't even left yet and I’m already sick of your shit,” Seungmin declared once he caught up and plopped in the back seat.

“We love you too,” came a sickly sweet harmony of two in reply.

At a stoplight on the way to Felix’s place, Hyunjin made faces at a toddler in the car next to theirs.

Upon arrival, it only took a short wait for a figure holding a few big plushies in either arm to appear and wobble towards the back seat door, and the immediate reaction it drew was a chorus of “Felix, no!” Felix did try appealing with a pout, but when Jisung refused to unlock the car, he admitted defeat and went back up the stairs to return most of his stuffed army.

They did a quick inventory check once Felix chucked his portion of the common mess at the back. It was a pleasant surprise how nothing vital seemed to be missing. Once they all hopped in the car, Jisung stopped just short of turning the key in the ignition to ask, “Gentlemen, are we ready for adventure?” Loud whoops and arms sticking out through the windows in excitement was all the answer he needed before speeding away from their neighbourhood.

Noticeable silence was woven in the ride up until the outskirts. Fingers danced along window sills and jittery feet tapped at erratic paces. Beyond the last streets of the outermost neighbourhood, four pairs of eyes were focused on the side of the road, where the welcome sign with the city's name was expected to appear in their immediate line of sight very soon.

It was a tad rusty from all the lashes of time, some letters showing signs of fading, yet there it stood, in the exact place everyone remembered it being in. Once the car sped past the sign and it became but a dot on the horizon behind their backs, any lingering phantoms of tension got banished, left behind in the city that was seeming smaller and smaller as the distance grew.

Freedom filled their lungs. It sat sweet and delectable on their tongues as they tried to find the proper words to express just how happy they were to finally do something for nobody but themselves. Hyunjin, a man on a mission, grabbed the aux cord with the single purpose in mind of celebrating their escape suitably. 80s disco hits unapologetically blasted as everyone except Jisung stuck their heads out of the car windows to let the wind intoxicate them.

One summer separated them from the big shift from high school to university, each having mapped out a different path to the future. All rationality considered, it shouldn’t have been so difficult to accept; everybody knew it was merely a matter of time before getting pushed off the ledge of adulthood into an unpredictable free fall, but it simply wasn’t something a person could ever be fully prepared for. Uncertainties nibbled at the edges of the mind.

Yet, then and there, on the road that seemed like it stretched on endlessly ahead, it was easy to believe, even if only for a short while, that tomorrow would never come.

It was easy to get lost in the sights out the window blurring together once the car picked up speed. The immersion broke apart one Jisung pulled over into the driveway of a building on the side of the road and the boys started assessing their surroundings.

“I only have one question. Why?” The flat tone Felix gave to the word stripped it of its question status from the get-go, it was rather a pure case of judgement.

They were in front of a motel, that much was clear. The obnoxious neon sign over the entrance that barely managed to emit sporadic flickers looked like it was about to give out any moment now. Not even all the letters lit up. The paint on the outer walls had seen better days. The huge graffiti of a dick on one side of the building really tied it all up nicely.

“Hear me out on this, I looked up the shittiest possible motels in the area and this looked solid enough,” Jisung explained while parking. “I thought it'd be fun to try spending a night in a place like this for the heck of it. We can vlog this!”

Seungmin was warily eyeing the rust on some of the room doors. “If something doesn’t possess us or take our kidneys during the night, sure.”

“Come on, it can’t be that bad,” Jisung hopped out of the driver’s seat enthusiastically. Hyunjin undid his seatbelt and sauntered out of the car shortly after. The need to stretch on the nearest flat surface after being stuffed in a car not meant for tall people for a few hours straight didn’t leave him with much energy to be vexed. Left without a choice, the rest followed them out, each dragging a piece of luggage along.

“I TAKE IT ALL BACK!” Jisung wailed. The paper-thin walls with peeling wallpaper most certainly relayed his sentiment to all nearby rooms.

Jisung had abruptly tugged the duvet off one of the double beds only to be greeted by a handful of bugs scattering and crawling away in various directions. Hyunjin had dropped his luggage on the floor to be able to catch Jisung, who had jumped into his arms almost immediately after.

Felix was perched on the nightstand next to the other bed like a gargoyle for much the same reason. “So who’s sleeping in the car with me?” he said while slowly, carefully, gently stretching out a leg to try and step on the floor again. A bug quickly sped past the nightstand and Felix shrank back in place.

“Oh, cool, there’s jizz on the ceiling,” Seungmin exclaimed, gaze aimed overhead, as if simply stating a fun fact he had read off Facebook. Jisung was just about ready to pass out in Hyunjin’s arms.

One could say the countryside was sentient, alive, with the countless roads leading to secluded, nameless, or simply forgotten-by-God locations on its territory resembling its veins and arteries. The wide variety of trees shaping up small forests around the region had caught Seungmin’s eye, and he had offered for them to try their luck and catch a random path to nowhere to see where it would lead them.

Thus the squad chanced upon a charming little waterfall in a hilly area, crystal clear waters running from the plunge pool in the shape of a narrow river that got lots amidst dense greenery. They decided to spend a bit of time near it, even dared to take a dip, the warm weather and privacy offered by the trees perfect for some whims.

Felix sat in a meditation pose on a flat river rock right beneath the waterfall, letting it gently cascade over him. (“This is the most anime thing I’ve done in my life!” he had shouted over the sound of running water, “I’ve transcended Naruto-running down the school hallway! This is a higher level!”). Jisung and Seungmin were chasing each other in the more shallow part of the river, splashing like toddlers on a beach.

Hyunjin sat cross-legged on the side of the riverbank, following all the unfolding foolishness with his camera. It’s been a while since he had heard them laugh like that.

A few blurry shots of Jisung getting tossed into the water like a potato sack later, Hyunjin decided to check out all the pictures he’d taken up till that point. For a few quiet minutes, he faded into his own little plane of existence.

Mixed between pictures of the sunset, dawn, skies coalescing into multi-coloured horizons, there were loads of candid shots that wouldn’t be of much worth to a person who hadn’t witnessed the context. Hyunjin was quite fond of the way he’d managed to capture Jisung, Felix, and Seungmin in the oddest of poses, as well as in their most serene moments. Not all of them were presentable; Hyunjin was still learning, after all. Some pictures were out of focus, skewed, taken at awkward transitory points in time that couldn't tell much of a story. Yet, he loved them.

It started off with a series of pictures of Seungmin dangling his legs off one of the stools at a gas station while marvelling the baked goods display. There were a few shots of Jisung driving taken from the passenger seat a while after they had left town, his eyes on the road and a sesame bagel in his mouth, as well as more than a few of Felix asleep in the back seat in various positions, some likely defying anatomical laws. Then, again, multiple pictures from different angles of Seungmin perched on the railing of the motel balcony, letting his gaze wander somewhere far beyond while the flickering motel sign cast a neon glow on him. Seungmin posing on the bonnet of the car while Felix was loading gas. Seungmin marvelling at a butterfly that had landed on his finger with all the genuine awe of a child. That, on top of numerous other situations in which Hyunjin had managed to immortalise that effortlessly charming aura of his.

In some shots, Seungmin was looking directly at the camera lens, directly at Hyunjin, donning that distinct blinding smile only he could pull off.

Hyunjin felt his chest constrict, as if countless flower petals were threatening to burst out.

It took him flipping though approximately half of his picture material to catch the blasted hints he had subconsciously left behind for himself, and concluded that he would shrivel up if anyone were to stumble upon his camera roll and get the same ideas.

“What’s making you smile so much?”

The sudden voice made Hyunjin look up from his camera. Seungmin had swum to the rocks nearby. He seemed like a mermaid with the way he was looking up at Hyunjin with a faint smile, his elbows propped on the edge of the riverbank. The sunlight filtering through the trees caught onto the water droplets trickling down his skin and illuminated his face as if an artist’s deft hand had meticulously highlighted the best of his features with a glimmering palette.

The question made Hyunjin realise that his lips had indeed been twisted up in a smile while he had been looking through the camera roll. He set his camera aside on the ground and covered his mouth with a hand on reflex, flustered. “Just got lost in thought, I guess,” he tried his best to lie to both of them.

Seungmin swept his sopping wet bangs back and ran a hand through his hair; Hyunjin was almost aching from the effort to stifle all the smiles that were fighting to bloom on his face. “Come take a dip with us, the water’s nice.”

“I can just watch it be nice from afar,” Hyunjin gently rejected, leaning back on his forearm even farther away from the river.

“Come on, please,” Seungmin whined out the last word for extra persuasive power.

Hyunjin might had come to terms with the fact that he was whipped, but on that particular front he refused to budge. “Nope,” he maintained, and even reached forward to splash a bit of water on Seungmin.

The effort to usher away pesky bootleg mermaid man unfortunately achieved the literal opposite. “This means war,” Seungmin dramatically stated as he crawled out of the water and, before his victim could react and skedaddle, firmly grabbed Hyunjin by the arms.

Either Jisung’s “make Hyunjin’s life more difficult” senses had begun tingling, or this whole scheme had been planned beforehand, because he quickly materialized on the shore as well and grabbed Hyunjin by the legs. Hyunjin’s squeaks of distress truly did nothing to deter the two of them as they swung him around a bit and ultimately tossed him into the river with evil cackles.

Hyunjin sprang above the surface and incredulously sputtered out water just in time to see Seungmin and Jisung share a self-satisfied high five with smiles that shouldn’t have been as endearing as they were. Somewhere in the background, Felix contributed with an obnoxiously loud cackle.

Frankly, Hyunjin couldn’t stay mad; they were idiots, but they were his idiots.

With a glimmer in his eyes, Jisung raised his voice over the swarm of background noise to ask, “How much for the disco ball?”

The old vendor took a languid drag of his cigarette before replying, “25.”

Jisung’s pout was prominent; at least his stubborn episodes looked cute as compensation for the headache they could cause. “I’ll get it off your hands for 10,” he offered.

The salesman apparently didn't get wooed. “You’re crazy. I said what I said, 25 it is.”

The flea market was huge, stalls and stands of various sizes taking up a few streets in colourful controlled chaos. People of all sorts from various nooks and crannies were gathered to ogle discounted collectibles, antiques, second-hand possessions that no longer had an owner, and oddly specific yet undeniably tempting gadgets. Hyunjin, Jisung, Felix, and Seungmin had been waddling through the masses for at least an hour. They had almost lost Hyunjin down a narrower street twenty minutes in, only for him to return shortly with a corndog. Felix had gotten inexplicably enamoured of a display of tiny glass figurines and gushed at any remotely cute object he stumbled upon. Seungmin had buried himself in the piles of second-hand clothes. Jisung simply thrived on arguing with people. Overall, their funds were doomed from the start.

“It’s not even new, come on, 15 then!” Jisung whined, and kicked it up a notch by stomping his foot a little.

“20 is as low as I’ll go,” the man said with finality and a scrunch of his bushy eyebrows.

The strategy changed. Jisung, with his hands resting on his waist like a middle aged mom that was about to ask to see the manager any moment now, dared with a firm voice, “I saw the same one a few tables down for 18, don’t test me.”

Hyunjin stood close by, supposedly keeping an eye on Jisung as self-appointed impulse control, but it’d be a lie to say he wasn’t trying hard not to bust out a cackle at the way the merchant was breaking a sweat over Jisung.

The old man and Jisung maintained intense eye contact for a few seconds, the atmosphere akin to a Mexican standoff in a movie. Eventually, the vendor cracked, and admitted defeat with a vexed sigh and a wave of his hand. “Fine, 15, take it.”

Jisung, clutching a disco ball twice the size of his head, walked away with the biggest shit-eating grin he was perhaps capable of. “I would’ve bought it for 30 too, I just wanted to see how far I could go,” he told Hyunjin with pure slyness dripping from his expression.

At some point the question of why they even needed a disco ball in the first place sat on the tip of Hyunjin’s tongue, but he left it off at just being glad it wasn’t something worse. “I’m never leaving you shopping alone ever again,” he fondly noted and lightly slapped the nape of Jisung’s neck.

They had spread in groups of two to be able to cover more ground faster. Seungmin had casually noted that’s how people in horror movies screwed themselves over, but dragged Felix towards the clothing vendors with blazing enthusiasm nonetheless.

When Hyunjin and Jisung had waddled around that general area to try finding the other two it seemed like a lost cause, but Felix’s bleached tuft of hair peeked out from the crowd suddenly like a lighthouse at sea. That was the only thing that distinguished him currently, his face hidden behind the small mountain of clothes that occupied both his arms, most likely amassed by Seungmin. The shuffling behind the curtain of the makeshift dressing room was confirmation enough.

“Felix, I think I actually kinda like this,” Hyunjin and Jisung could hear Seungmin’s slightly muffled voice come from the inside, and once the curtain got pulled back, all of them gawked.

A dark skirt hugged Seungmin’s waist. Its length complimented his proportions and shape quite well. Pretty was the most fitting word. Time froze for a few prolonged moments until the situation sank in; it was an unexpected combination, but not a bad one in any case. Once the initial surprise wore off, the red tinting Seungmin’s cheeks caught the eye as well.

The way his grip on the curtain noticeably tightened was enough of an indication how flustered the sudden attention had made him. “This was a dumb idea,” he muttered, dejected, gaze evading the guys, and tried to close the entire curtain again, “forget it-”

“No!” Hyunjin, Jisung, and Felix shouted in unison, and sheepishly looked around a bit when they realised their outburst had attracted the brief attention of other people walking around the flea market. Once strangers stopped paying them heed, the trio turned back to Seungmin with no intention of backing off.

“You should buy it if you like it,” Felix softly offered, eyes and voice brimming with support.

“If anyone talks shit about you wearing a skirt, I’ll fold them like a pretzel,” Jisung proclaimed, fully aware he had the approximate fighting skills of a pool noodle. The disco ball in his arms made him seem even more ridiculous. Maybe that’s precisely what made the statement all the more heartwarming.

Inside Hyunjin’s mind, all the words were floating around and bumping into another in an attempt to form a coherent, encouraging sentence, but the view of an uncertain and flustered Seungmin, so unlike the assertive side of him Hyunjin had grown used to, tied his tongue up.

Instead of banking on words that might fall short, he relied on what he did best: impulsive choices. Hyunjin reached forward to give Seungmin’s hand a caring squeeze while donning the warmest smile he could pull off. Internally, he was practically yelling into the void, prepared for any and all comfort he had intended to bring to evaporate, but he kept his grasp firm out of pure determination.

The muscles in Seungmin’s hand almost immediately relaxed and a thankful smile twisted up a corner of his lips; Hyunjin profusely thanked whichever deity of luck was on his side that day.

“Auntie, how much for the skirt?” Hyunjin turned to the saleswoman nearby. He hadn’t even realized he was still holding Seungmin’s hand.

“10,” the lady calmly replied.

Hyunjin pursed his lips in contemplation and eventually decided he might as well go the full mile. “I’ll give you 5 for it.” He was embarrassed to admit the fondness fever had gotten to his head; he’d just blame Jisung for being a bad influence later.

When the auntie agreed without putting up a fight and Hyunjin pulled out his wallet, Jisung proudly hooted “that’s my boy” in the background.

“As kids these days say,” Jisung dramatically spoke up, “let’s get this bread.”

He sat on the curb near one of the entrances of the flea market, the other three settled near him like crows on a telephone line. On their way back to the car, Jisung’s idea light bulb had lit up and he’d finally found a purpose for the guitar he’d been carrying along for the trip. He strummed it one final time before clearing his throat and slipping into concentration mode.

He played the opening chords of a famous pop song, effectively making passers-by spare him a glance. When the verses came along and he started singing as well, the pleased reactions around him were audible and some more generous strangers even tossed coins into the snapback Jisung had placed on the ground in front of him, a piece of his market haul. Hyunjin, Felix, and Seungmin contributed with ad libs and claps. Their budget was well on the way to getting replenished.

The impromptu repertoire was surprisingly varied, old school following mainstream hits and alternating moods. At first the gazes aimed their way made Hyunjin a bit shy, but a few songs in, he grew quite fascinated by the small groups of people stopping to listen. At some point, while Jisung was playing a slower, more emotional song, Hyunjin’s view of the crowd got obstructed by Seungmin getting up and standing right in front of him.

Hyunjin was about to ask what was up, only to be interrupted by a hand extended his way. “Will you dance with me?” Seungmin asked, seemingly amused.

The offer was nothing short of adorable, yet Hyunjin's immediate reaction was to sputter. “We're gonna look silly,” he tried to explain while vaguely gesturing at all the people around them as elaboration.

“Isn't being silly our exact brand?” Seungmin shot back, and Hyunjin really hated how he was doomed from the start to lose any dispute when faced with that familiar smile. He let himself get dragged off the curb by Seungmin until they found a nice little space a few steps away.

Seungmin placed one hand on Hyunjin's shoulder and one on his waist, and began awkwardly swaying them both from side to side. Hyunjin was being hit with waves of embarrassment from several sides simultaneously, a few people around them audibly exclaiming awwwww not helping the flare on his cheeks in the slightest. He wasn't sure what exactly broke the dam -- the audience, the fact that the two of them looked like penguins while trying to figure out how slow dancing even worked, or the sheer concept of his crush spontaneously asking this of him -- but some layer of the whole absurdity prompted Hyunjin to wrap his arms around Seungmin’s neck and bury his face in Seungmin's shoulder to hide the spreading blush.

Hyunjin both heard and felt the laughter Seungmin was trying to hold in. They looked like a scrapped scene from a romcom. When some pure giggles finally managed to spill past Seungmin's lips, Hyunjin concluded that maybe the situation wasn't all that bad. He continued swaying along to the sound of Jisung's guitar, thinking about how comforting the hand on his waist felt.

“Rotate 30 degrees anti-clockwise, I can’t reach it like this. Wait, too far, face 2 o’clock now."

“If you don’t give me normal directions, I will drop you.”

They were in an old-style guest house huddled in the foot of the mountains, wooden surfaces and multi-coloured rugs dominating the scene. Jisung sat balanced on Seungmin’s shoulders, attempting to screw off the light bulb on the ceiling of their room and replace it with the disco ball.

“Alright then, make two cat steps forwar-” The instructions were cut off by Seungmin pretending to drop Jisung with one small sharp motion. Jisung quickly found out he had underestimated his vocal range until that moment when he let out an ungodly high-pitched screech.

Hyunjin, lying on one of the beds a few feet away in nothing but a bathrobe, an exfoliating mask, and two cucumber slices, muttered, sounding unimpressed, “Just don’t get us kicked out before I put on some moisturizer.”

With a few metallic squeaks, the light bulb came off. Jisung tossed it on the bed, narrowly missing Hyunjin. “Felix! Pass me the sparkle dance orb!”

“Only if you stop calling it that.” Felix passed on the disco ball, almost whacking Seungmin in the face in the process, and observed in wonder as it got screwed onto the ceiling. The fascination promptly died once Jisung flicked the button and absolutely nothing happened.

He quickly kept flicking it on and off a tad longer for good measure. “What the fuck, is it broken?” While twisting the thing left and right to find any defects, Jisung noticed there was also a switch for the intensity of the light. He sharply snapped it to the max.

The two lights that were currently on, namely the one on the nightstand between the beds and the one in the bathroom, immediately died at the hands of a short circuit, the startling sound of glass breaking constituting as their famous last words. Hyunjin didn’t even bother removing the cucumber slices from his eyes to see what went on. This time, Seungmin did drop Jisung.

The scenery on both sides had made way for flatlands coloured a lush green. Storks marched about in the distance in search of food. Occasionally, there would be lone trees standing proud amidst the empty fields, the kind that easily got a daydreamer’s fantasy running.

Felix had an elbow propped on the windowsill, chin resting in his hand; he seemed just about ready to melt while looking at the scenery. The idea of just leaning back and falling asleep on Hyunjin’s lap while stretched over the back seat haunted him.

The flatlands slowly made way to subtle dips and curves. The hills in the background twisted the horizon. Then, Felix gradually straightened up his posture a bit to take a better look: the car passed by huge herds of cattle languidly munching on the greenery near the road.

“I want to pet a cow,” Felix suddenly declared to nobody in particular.

From the front seat, Seungmin gave his two cents on the matter, “Felix, no, that’s a seven out of ten on the bad idea scale.”

“I. Want. To. Pet. A. Cow.” Felix tapped the headrest of Seungmin’s seat after every single word for added emphasis.

If their seating arrangement was different, Seungmin would’ve had a plethora of chances to put Felix in a choke hold to assert dominance, but attempting to be too persuasive from the front was a recipe for an inadvertent road accident. He briefly weighed his options. Jisung thankfully got the memo after one pointed look and pulled over.

“Someone better record this,” Jisung said while watching Felix confidently stomp into the field ahead.

“Already ahead of you, chief,” Hyunjin chimed in from the back, firmly by the rolled down window, phone in hand.

Once Felix was in close proximity of the first cow he came across, a smile lit his face up like a Christmas tree. When he reached out to pat it on the head, however, a hoof threateningly stomped on the ground and the cow took on a defensive stance with its tiny horns pointing forward.

When Felix dashed back with a series of high-pitched shouts, the car almost started shaking from how hard the squad was laughing, but still, they did their due as good friends. Jisung started the engine and Hyunjin scooted back from the door so when Felix flung himself inside through the rolled down window with his legs partially sticking outside, they had already driven away.

“Do you think we'll get kicked out cause of this?”

“I stopped giving a shit about my life choices after middle school, Hyunjin. Security can try me.”

Hyunjin, a long noodle boy, sat inside a trolley he barely fit in, pushed down the toiletries aisle by Seungmin. They were tasked with doing the groceries while Jisung and Felix were having a soap bubble war in the car wash on the other side of the street.

By virtue of being huge, the supermarket offered them quite the spacious lane to simply wheel around and chatter about the economy gradually going to shit while skimming through price tags, shelves lined with brands from the bitterly cheap to the most unnecessarily luxurious variety. Seungmin tossed bags of chips and gummy bears onto Hyunjin, the latter simply clinging onto them as if he were a puppy with a toy. Other shoppers threw them perplexed looks occasionally, but that only made them bolder.

Somewhere around the condiment shelves, Seungmin spoke up as he squinted at the various shaped bottles surrounding them, “Remember that summer when Jisung was a part-time bartender and whenever someone annoyed him he just poured balsamic vinegar in their cup instead of dark liqueur? I still wonder how he didn’t get his ass beat.”

“Speaking of getting your ass beat,” Hyunjin contributed, “what about that time Felix sprained his ankle? He told everyone at school it happened while he did parkour, but he just chased a stray cat down the street to pet it and tripped on the pavement.” The sudden recollection made his eyes crinkle in amusement. “We’ve done a lot of shit, huh? Gotta remind them about it when we get back to the car.”

“We have, but you automatically lost the right to clown anyone after that time you accidentally tossed your wallet in the trash at McDonalds and we had to distract the employees while you dug through it.”

“I will fight you,” Hyunjin declared, almost chucking a gummy bear packet at Seungmin’s head.

“Will you, now?” Seungmin leaned on the front of the trolley, looking down at Hyunjin with all the cockiness his vantage point allowed him to exude. “I’m the one in a position of power here, I can just push you into that stack of cans at the end of the aisle and run away.”

Even so, with a mischievous-looking Kim Seungmin looming over him while his ass was stuck in a narrow trolley and covered by packs of junk food, Hyunjin could only giggle brightly. “I know you wouldn’t. You love me too much.”

The tone was comfortable, feather-light, a simple tease as easy on the tongue as a truth.

Seungmin’s joking smile softened with a sliver of bittersweetness weighing on the corners of his lips. The shift in the mood was subtle, yet demanded attention. Hyunjin, self-taught specialist in Seungmin’s smile repertoire, wasn’t yet entirely sure what that particular one meant. He was, however, well-aware he couldn’t look away from it. Giggles gradually quelled to make way for quiet appreciation of the view.

They were merely looking at one another, just like they had done many times before, but perhaps it was exactly the simplicity of the moment left so much room for dormant shreds of fondness to finally be set free. It should have been ridiculous how easily they managed to tune out the people casually walking by their little scene every minute or so, but it was an endearing kind of carelessness that fit them so well. The bland song on the supermarket radio trudging through the aisles fell into the background, dull.

“I’m going to miss all of this,” Seungmin said, tone cloudy with nostalgia for something not gone yet. Hyunjin felt a hand slip onto his own. “You won’t forget me, will you, Jinnie?”

The childhood nickname made a lot of memories resurface, a pleasant warmth accompanying every image, and Hyunjin gently entwined their fingers without breaking eye contact. “I couldn’t and you know it, Minnie,” he replied, words as warm as the hand in his.

The pangs Hyunjin felt around his heart made him realize he didn’t want to go home yet and let this all slip out of his grasp as just another memory.

The sentimental snowglobe they had trapped themselves inside shattered when an old and seemingly rather annoyed shop employee spotted them from one end of the aisle and shouted, “Hey! You kids!” while stomping in their direction.

Before Hyunjin could even manage to weakly lament how they were screwed, Seungmin swiftly went to grab the trolley handle and speed into the opposite direction with a determined, “Not on my watch!” The expressions of utter bewilderment on nearby shoppers intensified, and maybe Hyunjin screamed a little

Aside from Jisung almost getting lost in a shady part of town while chasing around the seagull (or a “bitch ass seaside goose” as he so lovingly referred to it as) that had swooped in and boldly snatched away his panini straight from his grasp, the city wandering was going quite pleasantly.

It was what one could call a tourist city, the waters of the nearby sea lapping at the edges of its most prominent neighbourhood. Tacky souvenir stands stretched on for the length of entire streets. Hyunjin had gotten his hands on one of those classic shirts with a heart and the city name in standard typewriter font as soon as possible; with the camera in his hands and the tinted shades on as well, he couldn’t have looked more like he had jumped out of a travel agency advertisement even if he had tried to.

The entire day was dedicated to exploring every nook and cranny, to taking obnoxious pictures with every statue along the way, to dropping by every odd food stand that caught their eye. As they were ambling through a park, multi-coloured flower beds on either side of the path, music could suddenly be heard from the distance. It got louder as they went on, the bass creeping through the asphalt beneath their feet. When a stadium eventually came into sight, relatively small in size, lines of people slowly making their way inside, it made sense -- a rock festival.

“Ah, fuck, it’s not free entry,” Felix noted once he noticed there was an employee checking tickets at the entrance.

“Fools. Every event is free entry if you’re creative enough.” Seungmin nabbed Felix’s hotdog right from his hands mid-bite and tossed it as subtly as he could near the ticket employee’s feet.

All the seagulls in the vicinity, as if on command, turned their attention to that single hot dog and approached it at once with loud squawks. As any rational person who was perfectly aware of what those damn birds’ wrath comprised would react, the employee let out an indignant scream while moving away as quickly as possible. Felix didn’t even have time to mourn the loss of his food as Seungmin ushered them inside.

Truthfully, none of them knew any of the artists that were playing that night. In no way did that hinder their hype to shout and headbang during every sick guitar riff. The boys even braved the mosh pit that formed in the second half of the festival, leaving with a bruise or two as a memory, which Felix lovingly referred to as battle scars.

At some point Hyunjin even got pulled up on stage by one of the bands. Looking down at the audience with glimmering eyes, he saw his friends waving at him with smiles just as blinding as the spotlights. Up there, amidst the brew of music blaring from the speakers and the exhilarated screams flooding the venue, in a current of midsummer euphoria, the only thing he was sure of was that this trip was the best decision of his life. Life lapsed into slow motion when he fell back off the edge of the stage into a sea of hands to crowd surf.

“Dude, wouldn’t a cryptid, like, see the car tyre tracks and avoid us?”

“Who said cryptids have to be smart? We’re a bunch of dumbasses and we’ve managed to survive so far, so why can’t a cryptid?”

“But why would it even live near the mountains, there’s like, nothing to eat here.”

“Maybe it’s on a diet, Hyunjin, geez.”

The fluorescent lights of the gas station cast an almost shockingly bright glow on the white tile floor. The inside wasn’t remarkably spacious, a few mid-sized shelves placed on one side of the space in an odd pattern, if any pattern at all. On the other side, the cash register stood by the wall and tiny tables were lined alongside the wide windows, the fellowship of four huddled around one and dangling their legs off the tall stools.

Topics of conversation started from the great riches and clout to be had after capturing footage of a local cryptid, then slowly shifted to shady conspiracy theories scrapped from the bottom layers of the internet, and wistful offers to just try their luck living in the nearby woods and dodging society altogether. The clock above the staff room door pointed out the fact it was 2 AM with its usual bored ticking. The rain outside showed signs of waning soon.

The location was neither close enough to the nearest city to be considered convenient, nor far enough to be called distant. A liminal space existing in the middle of nowhere. It had every quality needed to maintain an eerie atmosphere, yet the sound of raindrops pattering on glass and the warm air inside felt like a blanket of comfort.

The boys were the only customers during that slice of time. Perhaps blamed on the risky nature of making decisions past midnight, general consensus concluded that life was too short to be stingy, thus they cluttered their table with every drink in a cute-looking bottle available and more than a few different flavours mini-cake. Somewhere down the line, enough space was freed up to pull out a deck of cards, and sleep was pushed even further back on the agenda list. The single employee behind the cash register had their legs propped up on the counter while reading a magazine, occasionally making a worried grimace every time a fight threatened to break out after a round of Uno.

At some point, when dawn was showing signs of sprouting from the horizon and all vigour to argue had been drained, they slipped out with lazy waves at the cashier and piled into the car parked in the corner of a tiny meadow nearby. Finding a comfortable position to fall asleep in was a matter of lots of shuffling, groaning, and tugging at every piece of fabric that could be used as a bootleg duvet. At last, everyone seemed to have settled when the rustling was replaced by even breaths.

The silence didn’t last too long. “Guys,” Jisung sleepily mumbled from the driver’s seat to catch the others’ attention. Acknowledgement came in the form of incoherent murmurs from three sides.

It was difficult to tell where drowsiness and gloom started melding together between syllables. “We won’t forget each other after we graduate, right?”

The worries of the future were there for all of them, trailing not too far behind every happy and memorable moment. The other side of the coin was always the image of everything becoming locked away into the past before they could get enough of it. Freedom tasted bittersweet, because a person’s fears just grow alongside them.

Yet, the unease was just as easy to dispel as it was to harbour.

“You know we'll just end up living in a cardboard box under some bridge together, right?” Felix said, trying to lightly sock Jisung on the shoulder for being mopey, but missing in the dark and bumping the side of the driver’s seat instead. “Gonna be a bit difficult to forget you then.” Fondness lay somewhere in the tired depth of his tone.

“I will nag you guys to meet up every holiday and we’ll still eat that disgusting corner store instant ramen just like always,” Seungmin added, partially muffled by the neck pillow he was snuggled into. Naivety or honesty, it was too early to dwell on why the words were so effortless to share. “We’ll cross that bridge once we get to it. Now sleep.”

None could realise it under the last veils of the dark before dawn broke, but all of them drifted off with the same smile following them to their dreams afterwards.

Beyond the sandy shorelines, tall, intimidatingly beautiful cliffs dug into the sea. From where the sun hung suspended in the sky, having barely heaved itself off the horizon in the early hours before noon, it cast a blinding shine upon the water surface, vivid summer blue getting lost beneath a sparkling shroud. Jagged rocks withstood the waves crashing into them with garlands of white foam in a lazy rhythm.

Separating the road from the freefall into the sea were merely a flimsy barrier and various flower bushes rooted at the top of the rocky landslide. The view from a car window was the best it could be.

They had been on the road for hours on end without a single word peeled. Niche bands on the radio would stave off the silence and leave only the comfort of the subtly changing scenery. It was one of those days where they simply drove on without a particular goal aside from the pleasant sense of timelessness travelling brought along.

When the sun started to bleed vibrant warm colours into the sea, a withering bouquet of oranges and reds tinged with spots of pink, the boys pulled over to the first beach they saw. They sat on the rocky shore, watching the light gradually dissolve in the water at the edge of the world, everything else too far away to matter at the moment. They didn’t get back on the road until the last rays of light sank to the bottom of the sea.

Felix was awake -- that much at least he could grasp. What took him a moment to figure out was why.

It was dark, some ungodly hour of the night Felix didn’t feel like checking; only the moonlight faintly slipping into the car helped him make out the lines of his immediate surroundings. A few disoriented blinks and a lazy stretch later, he turned around and felt the tension in his muscles ease away when he saw Jisung and Seungmin sound asleep on the backseat, limbs close to being tangled like a pretzel. That was something that tended to happen almost every time either of them fell asleep while on the road, but the frequency didn’t make it any less endearing.

It hit him then. The silence. The lack of an engine’s rumble. The empty driver’s seat.

As quietly as he was capable of while sleep-induced inadequacy still weighed on him, Felix cracked the car door open, slowly slipping out of the passenger side. It was to be expected that the highway close by would be empty at that time, yet the lack of noise and headlights was subtly eerie. Late night chills nipped at Felix’s skin.

Hyunjin sat on the bonnet of the car, focused on some nondescript point in space. A cigarette rested between his lips. Each wisp of smoke languidly flowing from the tip was a second gone by. The concern etched in his slightly furrowed eyebrows and hunched shoulders was easy to read even in the dark.

“How long have you been out here?” Felix asked, sleepiness scratching the words, yet giving them a timid note as well.

Hyunjin snapped out of his reverie and took a moment to form a reply. “A few minutes.” Felix really wanted to smooth out those frown wrinkles on his forehead. “Did I wake you up?”

“No, don't worry.” Felix lightly shoved Hyunjin to the side and sat next to him on the edge of the car. “What's bothering you?” he wasted no time before asking.

Another thick puff of smoke came out from between plump lips. “Why do you think something's bothering me?”

“I don't mean this in a bad way, but you aren’t good at hiding your emotions,” Felix replied as gently as he would to a little kid, with a tiny smile to match.

And Hyunjin accepted it with a pout, looking away, like the kid he was at heart. “You can’t hide much either.”

When Hyunjin brought the cigarette closer to his lips for another drag, Felix snatched it right from his fingers and stole the next bitter lungful. “The difference is, I don’t try to,” Felix rebutted, the short-lived billow of smoke he puffed out afterwards giving his words finality. “Talk to me,” he pleaded when he was certain he’d captured Hyunjin’s attention. “What’s on your mind?”

Hyunjin took a deep breath, deliberately louder than it needed to be. “It seems even more insignificant now that I'm actually trying to say it out loud." Now that he didn’t have anything else to fiddle with, he was erratically tugging at the hems of his sleeves. Felix placed a hand on his shoulder for comfort's sake. “Hypothetically, what if I told you I have a crush on someone?”

“Doesn't sound very hypothetical to me. Why's that a problem, though?”

“Because it's Seungmin.”

In the periphery of Hyunjin’s mind, there was subtle awe at how effortlessly the words had left him.

“Well, that makes sense,” was Felix’s only reply, even more casual.

Hyunjin lightly slapped him on the thigh. “How come you’re accepting everything so easily? I just told you I’m in love with one of our best friends.” The pout made its dramatic return. “Why am I the only one stressed here?”

Felix let him steal the last drag of the cigarette before the flame started nipping on the filter and dutifully died out. “If both of us were a mess, who’d be here to comfort you, dummy?” He gave Hyunjin a soft pat on the head. “Also, I don’t want to spook you, but dude, you kind of seem like you’re a second away from melting almost every time you look at Seungmin. You just give off the in-love vibe.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Hyunjin wailed, burying his face in his hands. “Am I that obvious? Please don’t tell me he’s noticed,” he rambled on, words and mortification muffled into his palms.

“I can’t know that,” Felix tried patching the case up with faux-wisdom in his voice. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to confess if he has, though? Jisung and I planned everything out already, you two are gonna be those sickly sweet high school sweethearts that blow up on Instagram with couple pics, you’re gonna marry after uni, adopt 3 dogs, and send us cheesy family portrait postcards every Christmas. All according to plan.”

If Hyunjin could bury his face any deeper into his hands, he would. “What plan? Who said I’m confessing? And when did you two eggheads even manage?”

Distantly, he realized that the dull tug in his insides was him feeling like a fool at the fact everyone around him had already caught onto his struggle while he was still trying hard to break it down, to make it all coherent, but there was also the vague comfort in knowing he didn’t need to explain from scratch.

“We talked a lot in the bathtub at the guest house.”

“Fuck, I knew you two were in there for suspiciously long.”

“Those bath bombs weren't gonna use themselves, you know,” Felix jokingly chided. “But back to the topic. All I’m gonna tell you is not to be a weenie. You’ll get a huge weight off your chest if you confess. He deserves to know, too. It’s great to be loved.”

“What’s even the point anymore? We’re all enrolling soon.” Hyunjin’s frustration had peaked in that point where vague hand motions followed his every word. “Bad case scenario -- he rejects me, things get awkward between us, and it makes us drift apart entirely on top of everything else. Less bad but just as disappointing scenario -- by some divine miracle he feels the same way; we’ll end up having an unsatisfying relationship because of all the distance between us.” He rummaged his pocket to gracelessly pull out the cigarette carton for another drag as bitter as he felt at the moment, but Felix snatched that from his hands as well. Hyunjin shot him a blank stare, too tired to even glare. “I just can’t win here, huh.”

“You forgot the worst case scenario --” Felix carried on, brushing off the gaze of mild annoyance boring into the side of his face, “-- You don’t say anything at all, keep it all bottled up, and you’ll keep getting haunted by the fact that it’s better to regret doing something than regret not doing it.”

The conversation was left suspended in the silence for a short while until Hyunjin let out a long-suffering sigh. His hands fell onto his lap, tired, limp; the most apt analogy for his state at the moment would’ve been a deflated balloon. “Why do you make sense? Let me be illogical and whiny and useless.” Hyunjin leaned towards Felix, resting his head on his friend’s shoulder. “I hate you,” he muttered without a single spec of sincerity. He closed his eyes to let the whole conversation sink in and simply revelled in the comforting sensation of Felix playing with his hair.

On the road near them, a car sped by. The sound of its engine gradually disappeared as if it were never there, a candid reminder of how they were in their own little world.

“I’m not forcing you to do anything, you know?” Felix wrapped Hyunjin in a hug warm enough to ward off any traces of the night chill. “I’ve just seen you go through all your puppy crushes in middle school and high school. Now that you’re into an amazing person, I just hope it works out for you this time.”

Hyunjin didn’t even have to open his eyes to see the supportive smile on Felix’s face. He felt it. “Have I told you you’re great?” he noted, words lighter now that his chest was no longer tightened by the pangs of inadequacy.

“Not enough,” came the cheeky reply dripping in fondness. Felix ruffled Hyunjin’s hair before standing up and dragging him to the shotgun seat by the arm. “Now get some some sleep. I’ll drive.”

Summer nights practically beckoned one outdoors to revel in the perfect t-shirt weather under the stars. The boys made the most out of that sentiment in the periphery of local woods they had found on a map of the region. They had sat on some fallen logs conveniently lying around the soft grass, comfortable enough if one disregarded the tree sap that was easy to get stuck in. Jisung had once again pulled the guitar out of the boot for atmospheric purposes.

The main worry was the fact that none of them had any experience with building a fire whatsoever, perhaps sans Felix who had allegedly been left to handle barbecues at a few family gatherings. Seemingly out of nowhere Seungmin suddenly pulled out a few tea candles he claimed to have carried along throughout the entire trip and scattered them in their general vicinity, gentle little flickers emitting sufficient lighting, successfully averting a minor crisis. The other three were well-aware those candles resembled the decorative props that were clearly not for sale in the home decor store they had visited on the same day, too much for it to be a coincidence, but they let it slide.

Somewhere down the line the idea that the late night candlelit ambience was perfect to tell scary stories in had been pitched. Seungmin’s hobby of lurking through creepypasta pages paid off generously at that moment. Jisung and Felix found it very necessary to assert how unbothered they were by horror every now and then, but by the third story, Seungmin noticed them holding hands and sporadically glancing over their shoulders. Hyunjin was calmly gobbling gummy bears in the meanwhile.

At some point Jisung stalked off to a bunch of nearby bushes to take a piss, successfully dodging the bullet of having to listen to any more things that would keep him jittery all night. He was a bit reluctant to admit out loud that he was scared of going alone. Fortunately, Felix was in need of a distraction just as much and gladly skedaddled away from the candle zone.

“They really just left us like that,” Seungmin noted in vague disbelief while watching those two get lost behind the trees, “Why does nobody listen to me when I say this is the part in horror plotlines where stuff goes awry?”

Hyunjin kept on tending to that gummy bear pack as he casually teased, “Good thing I'm here to protect you then.”

He won himself an eye roll from Seungmin. “You couldn't even swat a fly if it came down to it.”

“I'm out here willing to die for you and I get paid back with this disrespect.” With how they were sitting next to one another on the same log, Hyunjin lightly shoved Seungmin’s thigh with a knee.

“Oh my, what have I done to deserve such a noble knight?” Seungmin mocked, topped off with jazz hands.

“You should know by now you're worth it all even without doing anything.”

The words had left Hyunjin before he could hold them back. Sincerity was hard to catch. An uncomfortably warm blush began crawling up his features the deeper his own words sank in. Hyunjin had expected for Seungmin to brush it off like any simple tease, to poke him, feign annoyance, slip back into the easy banter they’re always had, but instead there was only that faintly bittersweet smile that Hyunjin couldn't decipher yet, the one that instantly infused fondness into the mood.

“Could you do me a favour, Jinnie?” Seungmin asked, and there was no way Hyunjin could refuse him anything when that nickname sounded so soft in his voice. Hyunjin slowly nodded, promoting Seungmin to go on.

“Close your eyes.”

With no hesitation, Hyunjin complied. He quietly sat and waited, hands folded in his lap, the splitting image of trust. When nothing happened in the next few seconds, Hyunjin absentmindedly dug his fingers into the cuffs of his sleeves to suppress the curiosity. His thoughts weren’t even left with much time to dive into hypotheses, however, because everything fell apart into faded static once he felt gentle pressure on his lips.

It was the softest, lightest of kisses. Looking at it from aside, a long moment passed until Seungmin broke apart and leaned away, but to Hyunjin, it was over much too soon, too quick for him to be able to take it all in. When he opened his eyes, he felt his hands slightly shaking.

“I know you like me, Jinnie,” Seungmin tentatively picked up, and Hyunjin was just about ready to melt from the warmth in his voice and expression. “And I’ve been wondering how to tell you I really like you too.”

“So you…” Hyunjin’s gaze fell to the ground in a vain attempt to will away the blush that had returned full force, “you really knew.”

“We’ve known each other since kindergarten.” Seungmin reached out to envelop Hyunjin’s hands in his own. “I held your hand every time you cried over boys and girls in middle school, and watched you get all giddy every time you were around a crush. If anyone would know how you look like while in love, it’d be me.”

“But if you knew I liked you all along, why didn’t you say anything?” There wasn’t any anger in the words. Hyunjin couldn’t be angry at Seungmin even if he tried to. It was simply a cold ache that wouldn’t stop stinging. “I’ve been losing my mind all by myself.”

“I needed to sort my own feelings out too. You deserve a lot of love, so I had to think really hard about whether I’m capable of giving you the best. With how we want to go to different universities and all…” A puff of worry weighed his lips down into a pout. “You know how it is. The last thing I’d want is to lead you on and break your heart.” Seungmin cupped Hyunjin’s cheeks, looking at him with all slivers of sincerity he could muster. “I’m still fucking scared of ruining everything, but I want to try hard for you.” Candlelight glimmers pooled in the small tears which were starting to well in his eyes. “Sorry for making you wait so long.”

Hyunjin could never handle seeing people cry without being pushed to the verge of tears himself, even more so in regards to his favourite person, but he couldn’t even find it in him to be frustrated about that at the moment when it was nothing but happiness that filled every corner of his mind. With the biggest smile he was capable of, he cupped Seungmin’s cheeks as well. “I would’ve waited even more if it meant we’d end up at this point again.” Hyunjin pressed their foreheads together, softly giggling at how both of them were a fond, teary mess. “We’ll figure it all out, Minnie. I’m worried too, but we’ll figure it out along the way.”

Their lips naturally found each other again, and finally, Hyunjin had all the time in the world to melt into the kiss.

Meanwhile, in some fuzzy bushes a few meters away, two figures followed the whole scene unfold. “Do you think we’ll ruin the moment if we try slipping into the car right now?” Felix asked.

“Let’s leave them at it for a bit longer, come on, they’re cute.” Jisung replied, looking on with an arm propped on Felix’s shoulder like a proud parent.

“Finally, huh.” In hindsight, it was a true relief the tension that has been hanging over half of their friend group for quite a while had been finally resolved. It was a valid reason to feel proud. Still, Felix came to the realisation that watching two of his best friends smooch from a distance wasn’t one of the most morally sound things he’d done. “Wanna go back into the woods?” he offered after averting his gaze.

Jisung shrugged in what was supposed to be either approval or resignation and headed back from where they came from a moment ago. “Let’s go seduce some fucking demons.”

Jisung lay on the floor on his back, the lack of carpeting making his shoulder blades dig kind of uncomfortably into the floorboards, but laziness was firm. He languidly flipped the pages of a photo album, not even realising how easily most of the pictures made him smile. “Man, we really gotta do something like that trip again.”

“After saving up a bit more money next time,” Seungmin added from where he sat on the couch, distractedly playing with Hyunjin’s hair. He had let it grow longer, perfect for fiddling with. Hyunjin lay with his head in Seungmin’s lap while idly scrolling through Instagram.

“The hardship was part of the charm!” Felix interjected from a room away while still intently looking through the fridge.

“I’ll quote you on that the next time you complain about not finding any of the fancy cream cheese in supermarkets,” Jisung shouted back. He wanted to carry on flipping through the album pages, but the patter of paws followed by a tuft of fur sticking itself in his face wouldn’t let him live. “No! You tickle, you huge floof!” Jisung squeaked while trying to roll away from the golden retriever giving him affectionate licks.

“Oliver, let your uncle Sungie breathe,” Hyunjin lazily scolded, weakly hanging an arm off the couch to beckon his dog over.

A few years had passed since their road trip escapade. In spite of struggles and jokes about it, all of them had successfully graduated. It took quite some effort, but their friendship hadn’t lost any of its durability. They had tried their best to visit each other during a lot of holidays and flood the group chat with blurry lecture hall selfies.

Same applied to Seungmin and Hyunjin, who were surprised by how easy it was to just love and be loved. After bearing the distance for a long time, patience allowed them to finally move in together. The flat was small, barely furnished, but it was home, and it was theirs. They only had one dog for now as well, but they planned on getting Oliver some siblings soon after getting more stable jobs. Their current paid internships seemed like a good start, their income ensuring they didn't mind Felix destroying their fridge’s contents all that much.

They had enough to be happy, and that’s all that mattered.