Chapter Text
“When did you find him again?”
“When I was fourteen. I was walking home from school.” Minho smiles, “I had to beg my mum to keep him.”
He cuddles the surprisingly docile cat close to his chest and they both seem to emanate a content glow. It might be the soft morning light coming in from the curtained window of Minho’s living room.
Chan laughs from his spot on the couch, looking gently at them and comments:
“He looks happy. I’m surprised you don’t have like twenty cats now that you’ve moved out.”
“Well, they have to be special,” Minho says, “They have to click with me if I want to pick them up and give them a home.”
“I think you have a talent for that,” Chan says thoughtfully, picking up his phone and opening the camera. He frames Minho and his cat into a picture that could just as well be a painting.
“For what?”
Chan shrugs.
“I don’t know, just… picking up tiny, scared and hungry little things and caring for them, making them happy.”
“I guess so.”
A month and a half later, Minho meets Jisung.
it’s not exactly a pretty, movie-like scenario. And to be honest, Minho wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary to happen that day. It was cloudy and dull. Tall buildings loomed over him and cars rushed by. It was a grey day all around.
Minho was making his way down a pretty crowded street in the shopping district closest to his house. He wanted to get a snack or maybe ice cream. Just sit in a nice little place and stare out the window for a while, catch up on his reading. And as he was walking to a rather popular pastry shop he realised that, on a Saturday afternoon, he’d probably have to wait at least an hour to order. He changed his mind suddenly. Maybe going to a lesser known place closer to his house would be better.
And so he turned around. But his plans for a pleasant afternoon quite literally came crashing down, because he slammed into somebody that came running behind him with full force. It was a hard crash and both Minho and the boy he had bumped into fell back onto the concrete.
Minho blurted out a breathless apology and quickly stood up. As he did, he felt a cracking noise and a particular shape under his shoe.
The boy, still on the ground and probably still trying to regain composure, watched as Minho lifted up his foot to reveal a completely shattered mobile phone under it. In a split second of pure panic, he glanced straight into Minho’s eyes, looking for some sort of reassurance that that was, in fact, not his phone and that everything would be okay.
And in those eyes, Minho saw what was probably the most accurate human representation of a helpless, abandoned little kitten in the rain he had ever seen in his entire life. He was wearing a college hoodie which happened to be the same college Minho attended.
The kid scurried on the ground to grasp his damaged device and wipe the screen a few times as if that was going to be of any help.
“Oh, no. Oh no, no, no!” He cried, pressing all buttons simultaneously, but the phone remained silent and void. “Please don’t be dead!”
Seeing as the boy grew in desperation and didn’t seem to be willing to get off the floor any time soon, Minho snatched the phone away and stretched his hand out to him.
“Hey, I apologise for bumping into you and breaking your phone, let me see if there’s anything we can do about it, okay?”
The boy looked up at him empty of feeling, limp. A little paler than normal too, so Minho resorted to straight up grabbing the sleeve of his shirt and pulling him up until he stood.
“I…” He tried to speak, but his eyes watered and he shut his mouth immediately.
On the verge of tears, the boy let Minho drag him to a less crowded spot on the sidewalk, where they wouldn’t be annoying the passersby. Minho maneuvered the phone the best way he could, trying to get it to turn on, but to no avail.
“It’s dead, isn’t it?” The boy sighed, taking his phone back and staring at it. The cracked screen seemed to resemble his feelings. “I don’t even have money to buy a new one.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Minho said, “You were running, are you in a hurry to get somewhere?”
The boy hesitated, “no, not really.”
“Okay, look. There’s an Apple Store nearby, let’s go there and see if it can be fixed. Sounds good?”
“I guess.” He shrugged.
“My name’s Minho by the way, Lee Minho.”
“I’m Han Jisung”
They shook hands and walked in awkward silence to the store that was a couple of blocks away. Minho felt like asking him questions but kept quiet. He felt like trying to comfort him, but he couldn’t find the words. The arrived at the Apple store and asked to see a technician.
“I’m sorry, we can’t fix it,” the tech sighed after having taken a look at it. “And this is an old model too, we don’t make it anymore, so we can’t replace it either.”
Jisung’s shoulders dropped, defeated. His already gloomy aura turned sadder. He took his destroyed phone back and murmured a low thank you before turning around and heading back to the entrance.
“Where are you going?”
Jisung stopped. He turned around and looked everywhere but Minho’s eyes.
“He said it can’t be fixed, and I already told you that I can’t buy another one. So I’d like to go home now.”
Minho chuckled but stifled up when Jisung glared at him.
“But I broke it,” he explained, “so I’ll buy you a new one.”
“What? No.”
“Yes.”
“No, thank you though.”
“Come on.” Minho picked up a phone on display that he could afford. Not the latest one but definitely an upgrade from Jisung’s old one. “Black or white? Which one do you like better?”
“Neither. I’m going home.”
“Alright. Black it is then.”
Minho looked around for an employee and asked for the phone before Jisung could react and stop him.
“What are you doing? I told you I didn’t want it!” He said but Minho ignored him, brought out his wallet and looked for a card. “Lee Minho!”
He tugged at Minho’s sleeve like a kid that’s about to ask for sweets, puffy eyes already getting redder. But Minho didn’t budge. Swiped his card and got the new phone in a pristine little baggy. He handed it to Jisung with a big smile, and he reluctantly accepted it.
“Well thank you,” he sighed, “I’m indebted to you now.”
Minho shook his head.
“Nonsense, I broke it. I paid for it.”
“Still, this is really expensive. I feel like I owe you.”
Just because he seemed miserable, and maybe because he’s frankly quite cute and Minho wanted to see what he looked like smiling, he came up with another plan.
“Okay. I’ll tell you what.” He said, and Jisung looked up at him. “How about you buy me dinner and we settle the debt at that?”
“Okay,” Jisung accepted almost immediately but there was a tint of worry in the creases on the corners of his eyes.
“Nice. There’s this really nice restaurant nearby that…” Minho started to say but the look of worry grew in Jisung’s eyes. “I’m fine with convenience store ramen.”
A light drizzle has started to fall and the sun has gone down when they sit down next to the window of a tiny 7/11. Wooden chopsticks sit on top of their cup noodles and as they wait for them to be ready, Jisung carefully unboxes his phone, peels off the plastic protector and puts in his SIM card.
“Did you have a lot of important stuff in the old one?” Minho asks.
“Nothing that I’ll miss, to be honest.”
“Well, that’s good to hear.” Minho extends his hand out for the phone. “Give me.”
“Why?” Jisung asks, but he’s already handing it in, unlocked.
Minho fiddles with it for a while.
“So that I can add me as a contact. We go to the same school, you know?” He says distractedly while typing away some numbers. “So if you ever need something you can just text me.”
“We go to the same school? Are you a senior?”
“Junior, I’m on Performing Arts. You?”
Jisung stirs his noodles and blows on them before answering.
“Sound Production. I’m just a freshman though.”
They go into a silence that’s a bit more comfortable than the previous one. Maybe they grew closer after a few words and warm food. That’s until Minho gasps and sets his noodles down.
“Wait! You’re the Han Jisung!” He says with a pretty smile. Jisung lets out a confused sound. “You take Music Theory with Chan, right? Bang Chan?”
“Uh… yeah.”
“Oh, I’ve heard plenty about you. He says you’re really passionate and that working on a song with you would be cool.”
Minho goes back to his food with the most satisfied look on his face for some reason. Chan is a close senior of Jisung that he really admires, but he didn’t know that he thought of him that way. He feels like blushing.
“You’re friends with Bang Chan?”
And they continue a light conversation about school until it’s finally time to part ways. Minho offers to walk Jisung home but he profusely refuses. And they go their separate ways.
Jisung thinks that’s the end of it. That it was just a weird encounter with a random dude from school or a crazy dream, and that everything will go away and be forgotten in a couple of days. But of course, he’s wrong. When he gets to school by Monday he has already managed to spend his whole weekend thinking about this guy Lee Minho.
He comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t like him. He’s sketchy. Who can just simply pull out a credit card and buy random people on the street super expensive phones? Like, how rich do you have to be? The worst thing is that every time he looks down at his phone, he’s reminded of him.
Lunchtime comes quickly and Jisung and his friends head to the cafeteria to sit down. He’s excited to eat and have time to think about something else that’s not this guy he met on Saturday. That’s ruined when ten minutes into lunch a hand sneaks behind him to ruffle his hair up.
“What’s up, Han Jisung?”
That voice is familiar. The unique timbre and pitch. Jisung turns around hoping that it will be anybody but who he knows it will be. He’s looking different than Saturday. More… polished, his hair is combed and parted in the middle and he’s wearing a striped shirt that looks pretty good on him. Jisung waves nervously.
“Hey.”
Chan appears from behind Minho and says hi too. He pats Jisung’s shoulder and tells everyone to enjoy their lunch, and then they go to sit at another table with two other guys. Almost immediately, Felix leans over the table wide-eyed.
“You’re friends with Lee Minho and Bang Chan?”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Seungmin adds.
“Well, not exactly, I just share a class with Chan and happen to know Lee Minho,” Jisung explains but Felix cuts him off again.
“Are you kidding me? They like you, did you see how they said hi to you?”
“Specially Minho, how do you guys even know each other?”
“I don’t really feel like talking about it.”
“Jisung, this is serious. They’re the most popular guys in school.”
“What? No way.”
Jisung rolls his eyes but looks at the table Minho shares with his friends. They have a certain aura around them. And some girls nearby are definitely staring hard at them. Since when have they been popular? Jisung wasn’t aware at all. He shared a class with Bang Chan and he was the biggest goofball. No way they were so cool. But now that he actually paid attention to them, they all had dazzling looks. The kind that you would only find in movies.
“Bang Chan and Kim Woojin are the most popular seniors of the school. They throw the best parties,” Seungmin says. “Plus, Seo Changbin right there is the most popular among girls. They say he’s cold and doesn’t give his heart to anyone. Hyunjin’s had a crush on him since the start of the year.”
“What? How did I not know about this?” Jisung gives a reprimanding stare to Hyunjin that looks away and stuffs food in his face.
“Jisung. You need to get them to be friends with us,” Felix suggests.
“No.”
“Why not?” Hyunjin barges in for the first time. “You’re already friends with Minho, so why not?”
“Because I’m not friends with him!” Jisung complains. “Plus, we’re already quite popular, we don’t need them.”
“We could never get to their level,” Seungmin rolls his eyes. “And if you got them to be friends with us, we could get Changbin to date Hyunjin.”
“You don’t even know if he swings that way.”
“Of course he does,” Felix scowls. “You can tell from a mile away. Why do you think he doesn’t give in to the advances of every girl on campus?”
“Well, that’s not my problem,” Jisung gets up. “Get a man by yourself, Hyunjin. I’m not getting involved with them, I don’t like them. And that’s final.”
It’s not final. The boys take about three days to convince Jisung that befriending the popular guys is a great idea. At first, Jisung doesn’t give in. He’s content with the popularity that he has now, and he’s only a freshman, he’s sure he’ll become more popular as the years pass. But all of his friends seem to want it desperately. Especially Hyunjin.
After all, Jisung really does like Bang Chan, and he’d love to be friends with him. It’s just Lee Minho that gives him a strange vibe. He’s too tall and too attractive. Too rich and he dresses too well. And Jisung feels like he owes him something. He’s just uncomfortable around him.
A week later, Jisung’s group chat name has been changed to “Operation Changjin” and the boys are way too excited about orchestrating a plan to get Seo Changbin and Hyunjin together. So he just goes along with it. After all, he can just introduce them through Bang Chan and then let his friends take over. He doesn’t even have to interact with Lee Minho if he doesn’t want to, right?
Yeah, that’s simple enough. Operation Changjin. Introduce his friends to Chan and let the magic work itself. No need to be near Lee Minho, it makes him too nervous. He’s sure everything will work out alright.