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The month of April is near and that is the month that Jisung dreads. Absolutely and emphatically dreads. For many reasons, with the select few being:

1.   It’s hot all the time
2.   Where are all the bugs coming from? Is this a beehive? Is he an insect magnet? A mosquito bagel?
3.   Going to an all boys’ school is a mistake, because boys sweat and they smell and some of them don’t know what is a deodorant or deodorants exist in the literal form
4.   Felix likes to shove him down the stairs the week April’s Fool falls in and puts cryptic notes in German in his textbooks when he’s not looking – they’re mostly existentialist questions and at any point in the day they are too deep for him to even process
5.   Arts gala
6.   Prom 

“So,” Seungmin lounges on his desk and manages to balance and look luxurious on it, “prom.”

“Get off my desk,” he grouses. The weather is too hot. He can’t do this. Someone turn on the fan for him. He is suffering.

His bastard friend doesn’t budge, only smiles wider.

“Prom.”

“I heard you the first time, Kim. Now off. You’re wrinkling my school materials,” he smacks the boy’s leg. “Off with you.”

“Are you coming?” Seungmin refuses to move, remaining stubbornly on the surface of the tiny table. Jisung throws himself back onto his seat, arms crossed, heat sticking onto the inside of his elbow, gritty and humid.

“The answer is obvious, Kim. Don’t bother asking.”

“But we were gonna go together, be the hot power couple unit that we are,” Seungmin skids to a stop as Jisung narrows his eyes at him, “I swear I mentioned this to you before.”

“You might have, but I essentially forgot, so right now I’m hearing it for the first time. No, stupid, I’m not going. I’m sorry. Go with your class. Ask Felix's sister. Hell, take Felix himself if he's free,” he sighs and allows one careful application of a sympathetic pat on his own shoulders. “Why am I chosen?”

“Because you provide much needed sarcastic commentaries, complementary to my own scathing insults,” Seungmin lifts his eyebrows, “and I don’t like seeing you holed up inside your house all the time outside of school. This is your youth. Go have fun. Do normal teenagery stupid things.”

“You’re not authorised to comment on doing ‘teenagery stupid things’ or me leading a youthful life because neither one of us are qualified enough to comment on that subject matter,” he points out blandly, as Seungmin squawks and smacks his arm with a paper fan, drawn out from his sleeve like a card in a magic trick.  

“That’s mean, Jisungie!” His friend gasps, full of theatrics. 

“Also socially expected and coerced and largely heteronormative functions such as prom? You want me to go to that?” He raises an eyebrow. “No thanks.”

Seungmin purses his lips. Neither of them are backing down.

“Is this an ‘I don’t want to buy clothes' or ‘crowds make me want to hurl teapots at Kim Jong Un’ thing?” He can very well hear the embedded I worry for you and this is the only way I know how to express care - which is nice, but extreme weathers make him irritable and more of an asshole than normally, so he sulks and gives Seungmin no satisfactory answer.

His friend levels him a withering look and stalks away, offended that his offer to help had been rebuffed and tossed to the wind.

He would offer an apology, but teenage spite kept his words sealed inside his mouth.

“I hate April,” he mutters and looks out the window. “How do people just prance about and,” he casts a judgemental look towards the track and field team, “run until they sweat under this heat?”

Yang Jeongin, sweet, heart like brittle glass, one who visits Jisung too much on a regular basis, even though they are not friends - swings by Jisung’s classroom door, big eyes blinking.

“Can you help with this English thing,” he flicks his eyes outside the corridor, onto the book that he holds in an arm. “It will literally take two seconds,” he reassures Jisung's pretend closed lids. 

“Why would I?” He doesn’t open his eyes, hoping that if he remains as annoying as he is, this headache too will pass by. He’s great at waiting people out. 

“I’ll make sure nobody annoy you for the week,” the Yang kid wheedles, volume bordering on voice-break high.

It looks desperate. He takes his feet off the table, opens his eyes wearily, as if this is a taxing hike on a hill upward to school, and he is given nothing back but trauma and terrible chronic back pains.

“How will you do that, Yang?” He clicks his teeth at the boy’s dilating eye shape, the common tactic to guilt trip soft-hearted Jisung into doing literally anything academic. He searches his soul, trying to locate the shreds of humanity lingering in there. No. No. It’s a Tuesday. Luckily for the idiot, there’s a spot available.

“How long is this thing? Bring it over to me.”

.

Jeongin kept his promise. Whether that is because Jisungis notorious for nagging and pursuing the promises made to him or because Yang Jeongin is just criminally naïve and virtuous - he doesn’t care to distinguish. He had the honour of witnessing first hand at a Jeongin hissing for three others to leave his side and hurling soccer balls at potential abusers, his vigilante in broad sunlight. Eventually he dismisses the offer, feeling somewhat compromised at how extreme the kid is willing to body slam a lot of people into Sunday and while it is of great entertainment value, he will have to answer to authorities questioning his involvement with any incurring injuries. 

A bit miffed, but dignified, Jeongin departs from his presence, though he checks in with Jisung every now and then, like the shining knight in braces that he is. What a nice kid. Almost too nice, creepily enthusiastic. The rare nice people do occasionally pass by his weeks, true, but the enthusiastic ones do pass by just as often. Yang Jeongin isn’t the first or the last. 

While being repaid is satisfying to a spiritual extent, he prefers the universe where people avoid him, with reasons of him being a bloodthirsty underground drug mafia who decapitates those who had wronged him in the mildest inconveniences possible and lose a head in return of his bad mood. Or they could avoid him because of the eye bags badly concealed through really pale foundation, lipstick and hair covered one eye and him having to glare up with knives in his eyes, at much taller colleagues whenever he’s forced to interact. 

People have good reasons to avoid him too. He’s not particularly pleasant to be around. He glares a lot. Foul-mannered. Impatient. Literally sleeps throughout conversations. A belligerent spirit. 

Today is a glaring example of why people normally don’t approach Han Jisung.

“This is a problem,” he pinches the ridge of his nose, shaking his head behind the door of his classroom, “and it’s not even one o’ clock.”

“You haven’t heard what I want to ask,” the guy outside argues, trying to step through the door and into the classroom. Jisung makes a primal pterodactyl sound and the guy steps back, face horrified. He hasn’t even gotten up from the floor. He’s too lazy.

Guy at the door is Seo Changbin, preferred title being Spear something - he doesn't know nor does he care - rock music enthusiast, writes songs and poems and very compelling feminist essays, a year older than him. Also Seo Changbin, number one personal enemy of Kim Seungmin and Jisung, by extension of being his friend. Jisung doesn’t hate him with a passion like Seungmin does, because the literature and music kids get a lot of funding in comparison to drama and Seungmin as a drama person hates Changbin who is the music and literature person. But he has to be loyal. Thus the salt.  

“I don’t care what you are asking, I’m warning you that I charge for a high rate for every question you ask me, so I suggest you choose carefully. And,” he snaps his fingers, “don’t step over that doorway. You’re not welcomed.”

“Why am I no-”

“My floor, my rules. Now fess up.”

“Heard you got a duplicate copy of the keys to the theatre. Can I borrow them? My friend arranged a piece and he wants the big space to perform his heart out.”

“Are you able to exchange something as deposit?” Jisung lifts his brows. “I don’t lend out things for free. Especially not for never-met-or-talked-to-before upperclassmen.”

Changbin rears back with a scrunch of his eyebrows. Jisung waits for the guy to turn tail and leave. They all leave. Only the most desperate stay. Those he lends help with a low price. What do these people think he is? A fountain of free goods?

He hears a muffled ‘God damn it they weren’t lying when they say he charges’. Jisung is bored and tired. He’s trying to reap profits here. There are people piling up behind Changbin and the older boy doesn’t even budge, still staring down at Jisung.

Eric from the next class gives up on trying to get in and slides the donuts across the floor to Jisung, with a note attached to it. Thanks for letting me copy your maths homework. Have some bribery donuts.

Jisung picks up the bag and jiggles it in sight of Eric who nods like he just handed a stash of drugs to his buyer and he’s getting out of there pronto, stats, before the cops are up his ass about illegal drug trafficking.

“Alright, time’s up,” Jisung yawns and flicks his wrist dismissively at Seo’s direction, “begone. You’re blocking the doorway.”

Seo still stands. Jisung lifts a brow, contemplating eviction, on his doorstep.

“You can have the bigger music room today for afterschool practice,” Seo proposes, like it pains him.

“Oh? So readily?” He crosses his legs. “How so?”

“He’s so loud,” Seo pinches the ridge of his nose, “you don’t understand how loud the guy gets. I just want to shut him inside the theatre and let him run loose so I can do my literature homework.”

Seems desperate enough , Jisung blinks slowly. It’s only a lunch time.

He fishes out the bunch of keys and tosses them to Seo who handles the toss a bit clumsily but miraculously doesn’t drop anything on the floor.

“Give everything back 5 minutes before class starts. Find Eric if you don’t see me,” he drawls and lies down on the floor. “Now scram.”

“Is there an ulterior motive to this?” Seo jingles the keys.

“Seo, I wish I care that much about you or your little friend, but I don’t. I want the music room to write my music and you had offered me an easy leeway into that with minimum effort on my end, therefore, that is my ulterior motive. No off with you, be gone, don’t bother me, I’m going to nap.”

Changbin leaves, with considerable side eye glances at Jisung. He tries to pretend that he cares, but that failed before it could begin. He doesn’t care enough of the boy to.

At the end of lunch, people start crowding back into the classroom, bypassing a napping Jisung with steps which remember that there is a fallen body on the floor, to no one’s horror or surprise. Felix likewise steps over him with an easy long stride, mildly commenting on the weather and how dirty the floor is. Jisung doesn’t listen to him.

“Lix. Oi.”

“His Highness is speaking to me, a mortal?” Jisung opens one eye. There is a gasp and Felix winds back, clasping his chest in mock surprise, voice failing to go up any higher.

“I got us the big music room. Bring your guitar.” He closes the eye, settling on the hard floor.

“Got it. But why? How? How many favours did you rack up to worm yourself this deal?”

Jisung tries to kick him, with minimal effort. Felix is still chanting about the state of things being left on the floor and he has to raise his voice to speak over it.

“Stop doubting my integrity,” he grouses.

“I will, at some point, after you abolished your underground bribery system.”

Felix says that, but he gets back the key and a classmate who passed along the words of ‘it’s all yours, Han.’

.

In the rare occurrence of Han Jisung coming to things early, a miracle, he likes to nap. He naps an obscene amount during the day to overcompensate for the amount of restless nights he leads. 

Crashing by the doors of the theatre, to the left, Jesus, he’s not that crazy, he’s knocked out. It’s a measly sleep, half an hour, but by the time Felix comes to kick him away or attempt to sweep him with a guitar as a failing broom, he’s more or less alive. Barely. The back of his head hits the wall and he’s out like a light.

Hyunjin closes the doors to the theatre and backs against it like he just shut in Godzilla successfully and if he leaves it’s all over, the monster can get out. He comes to a wall squat, school shoes skidding on the squeaky-clean floors, glancing this way and that. The heat is trapped outside the hallway, amazingly, and cold air circulating around. Hyunjin always dresses in his specifically tailored sports jacket – in fact, he’s identifiable by his jacket and eye mole, just those things, nothing else. He’s shivering, in his jacket and the poor thing, full-cheeked, thin face, purple eyebags staining his closed eyes, must be shivering with his short sleeve shirt.

It is a flaw of his personality, righteousness, that he shrugs off his jacket and places on the poor boy, even though the cold air makes the hair on his arm all racked up, shivering. The boy snuggles into his jacket, warmth lingering in the sleeves of the material, and Hyunjin smiles a little, cold forgotten, as he gazes on this stranger with maternal fondness uncalled and unneeded for, yet he insists on.

“Hwang!” Minho finally destroys the latches and kicks his way out. “We need you to pretend you know how to do ballet!”

“Shhh,” he shoots back, “stop screaming.”

“Come back! You stop screaming.”

Hyunjin pats the boy on his fringe, barely leaving a heavy impression on the hair, and runs back in.

Felix asks him where’s his jacket is because Hwang Hyunjin, without his jacket? Shocking . It’ll start snowing in April next.

“I gave it to someone. Don’t worry, they told me they’ll wait outside,” he dismisses it, too optimistic, another flaw.

Hyunjin doesn’t get it back because when Felix bids goodbye, to ‘practice this piece my friend wrote, see you guys soon’. He doesn’t correlate Felix with the guy outside, and when he leaves to check, he’s gone.

God damn it Hyunjin loves that jacket. He hopes it’s identifiable enough so that people can steal it off and give it back to him, knowing the kleptomaniac tendencies of this school.

He hopes. He’s too optimistic. It’s another fatal flaw of his person.

“You do sports?” Felix looks at him. He’s just been rudely poked with the butt of a guitar, once again, at roughly 4.30, because Felix decided to steal time to dance. Jisung must’ve been shivering and some kind Samaritan who didn’t know of his reputation or him had too kindly and selflessly put a sports jacket on him and he is now stuck wearing it around his shoulder in too slobby a manner because it’s too big on him.

Jisung furrows his brows at Felix. Dares him to repeat the question. Him, doing sports? Which universe is that?

“So whose jacket is that?” His friend gestures with a capo.

“I don’t know. I’ll find out whose it is once I bother to. Sit down, Min isn’t coming because he has some talents in debating and there’s a training session tonight, so we’ll just have to sub in for him. Sing a verse, Lee, do a thing,” he gestures with the display folder of the notes even though he doesn’t need them. It’s an arrangement of Dangerously , with Felix and Seungmin ooh-ing and ah-ing over the piano freestyle at the start and the input of rap. It sounded decent in the disjointed practice that Jisung forced the other two to attend. If he comes to debating for Seungmin and dance competitions for Felix, those assholes better sing his damn arrangements. Seungmin gloated over him about the fact that he pushed Jisung to pursue music in high school and it’s true, it’s a good outlet for all his sleepless nights and constant banging on the piano in his living room, but Kim doesn’t need to know that, he’ll get more bloated with that ego of his.

Felix complains, but Felix has a soft and high tone that needs bullying to be projected, which Jisung is willing to do, slamming all his fingers onto random keys loudly and dissonantly until his friend reluctantly begins the mellow notes of Charlie Puth’s song.

“Oi Lee.”

“No,” Felix walks faster and ahead of him, “I’m not taking responsibility for your messes.”

"How is it my fault?” He’s whining, which he rarely does, but his attempt of pawning this burden onto Felix is being botched. Seungmin is extremely argumentative (read: violent) after debating meetings. He can’t engage on that road and the most logical choice being Felix who is doing his best to wriggle out of things too easily. “Can’t you-”

“No is no, Jisung,” they’re at Felix’s house who keeps walking inside, “goodbye.”

He’s stuck with the jacket for the time being then. God it’s such a nuisance, returning a kind gesture because now he’s burdened with finding the guy, thanking him and owing him a debt.

Jisung doesn’t have the energy for this.

.

Someone very kindly pointed out the embroidered name on the back of the jacket when he kept on staring at it in the morning before class. Jisung is at school at abnormally early hours where some equally suicidal souls who camped in the school grounds are also at similar stages of bloodshot irises and murderous inclinations, whose eyes glaze over with the cumulative sleepless nights as he is and seek revenge on capitalism and the hierarchy of class.

“That’s Hwang’s jacket,” he vaguely remembered, “he wears it everywhere.”

Jisung obviously isn’t the most eloquent person on the planet at 6 am on a Tuesday. He nodded in thanks, hoping they’d do him the favour of fucking off.

“You guys know each other?” They persisted. This conversation shouldn’t even be happening, God forsake him. He shook the hair strands out of his eyes. Hoping the can you leave is conveyed. 

“Because he lost it recently and he was looking for it. It’d be nice if you can return it to him. He’s in the year level above. Same class with Changbin.”

He nodded again. Offered no thanks, but with Jisung that’s as good as a thank you. The kid left, or something, because he took a nap and when he was woken up with someone shaking his desk, he wasn’t too sure if he held an actual conversation with a human person or his brain just amped up the hallucinations to conversations.

“What,” he slurs, everything blurry. His glasses are inside his blazer pocket. Too lazy to take them out.

"The announcement board,” Heo Hyunjoon kicks him again, for good measure, “get up, come on, it looks serious.”

Jisung scrapes himself off the table, debating on whether he can take the words of someone who just kicked him. The commotion outside does eventually reach an unacceptable level of noise pollution and he reluctantly peels himself off the desk to blindly navigate his way outside.

On the announcement board there is a very centralised A4 sheet of paper. He blinks a couple of times and pats for his glasses. It doesn’t sound like good news. The quick whisperings that are more like whistling arrowheads speeding by him make him a little apprehensive.

Attention , the very big words read, the school will be ceasing funding to the theatre club starting from next week. All activities will be at the expense of the club.

“Mother-” Someone swears. About three people snuff the sound out.

Seungmin is going to make people bleed by 3.

He wonders why he’s being flanked by two enthusiastic mortals, marching in unison through the heavy wooden doors of the theatre. Their background music is a cheerful funeral procession. 

There are already people in the theatre – how or why, he’s not too sure. Theatre children exist on another plane. It’s best no enquiries are made regarding that. The marshalling text only occurred the minute shit hit the fan. The pandemonium and outcry in the corridors at the sheer bullshit and discrimination that the school is inflicting on the dwindling club is appalling, as he gathered. Words like ‘disenfranchisement’, ‘the ref is on their side’, ‘this is a trespass on my rights to pursue my interests within the confines of this school’ in between classes and teachers turning their backs to write on the board. There is a rally, for the club participants and friends of the club to attend. Maybe they’re coming together to enact a plan of action. Maybe they’re just going to storm into one of the board’s meeting and rip up all the rules and regulations about club disbandment powers that the board has. Maybe they’re just going to sit there and complain.

Jisung informed Seungmin of the high certainty of the third option because there is one thing the students of this school have in common and that is wasting time on complaints instead of delegating that time for actions.

Seungmin being himself tuned Jisung out, despite being privy to the truth. He’s practicing for the ‘I told ya’ moment that is inevitable. Kim Woojin, music captain number 1, is up on the stage, behind the lectern, hovering above the audience who arranged themselves in whatever seats available. They, the September Trio, pause a bit at the door where Jisung aggressively points to the back of the theatre where there is more darkness than light and all that would be seen of him will be the reflection of the stage light onto his glasses. Seungmin disagrees and Felix sends the baby off to sit with his theatre brothers and sisters while he accompanies Jisung to the top, holding tightly onto his wrist.

Someone sneezes into a microphone and the feedback shocks and deafens at least several rows of unsuspecting fools who claim residence at the front. He chants ‘I told you so’ under his breath and veers away from Felix’s defensive swipes in admonition of his bullying of his ‘pack brother’.

“Ahem, hello,” Bang Chan shoots up. Bang Chan, the orchestra stand-in conductor, full-time composer and producer, writes original soundtracks for all the musicals ever since he graced the school’s hallowed grounds. Bang Chan, a man of authority and connection with previous alumni and sister and brother schools. Bang Chan the ruthless executioner if the children don’t shut up.

The children shut up. They can sense fear very easily.

“Thank you for coming, all of you. We know the problem. We’re here to suggest solutions.” He smiles serenely into his microphone. Woojin hums from the stage.

There are a few ‘kill the financial managers’.

“No,” Chan sings the syllable, with eyes that scream ‘I will murder you’, “anything else?”

“Plan a walk out?” Someone else suggests.

“Lawsuit! Lawsuit! Lawsuit!” The trombone players chant on his right. God, Jisung is here on a scholarship, they’re joking if they think he’ll be able to scrape non-existent money for a cause he’s not very interested in salvaging. ‘Lawsuit!”

“I can’t punch him right,” he leans over to Felix who punches him for daring to speak violence in the face of nonviolence and enlightenment himself. “Okay, fine, gee.”

There is a person who just stood up. That back looks awfully familiar to Seungmin’s. Wait. Hold on. That is Kim Seungmin, the baby of their trio, the tallest and the meanest. What is he-

“We create a fundraiser event to raise awareness within the local community and any profits we keep and try to sustain yearly activities within the club,” Seungmin rushes out with one breath.

Woojin makes a gesture for him to repeat again. Seungmin reiterates, slower, clearer. Jisung pinches the ridge of his nose, sensing the headache forthcoming. He walked Seungmin there – that is already a sign for his implication in the scheming and failing of this fundraiser. He could tune out and walk off, denying responsibility or duty towards an organisation outside of his loyalty. He already did enough by escorting. It exceeds his capability to care if he were to do anything further than that.

Unfortunate as it is, he is a friend. Thus, he is morally and loyally obligated to lend a capable hand. Half-assing things around Kim Seungmin and Lee Felix is like asking for his head to be guillotined across innocent little freshmen’s eyes.

“Just write a damn play or something,” he mutters, slumping in his seat and letting his feet slide to kick the seat in front of his shoes. “Make a self-produced musical, get private funding from alumni, recruit students’ participation, promote and advertise the event, charge for a reasonable amount of fees, make it good, rinse, repeat.”

Felix leans over and murmurs for him to drop that suggestion somewhere where it could be useful for the pandemonium breaking out below. He shakes his head. Felix can do it. Jisung jerks his chin to the stage, where they’re wrapping up a very unsuccessful session.

“Thank you for coming today. We made a Google Doc for those who are interested and will announce meetings soon. We can do this,” Bang Chan closes his fist in a ‘fighting’ motion, trying to channel all the luck in the gesture.

“I’m telling him we’re writing a play,” Felix drops a few steps at a time and bounces onto the lectern, whispering to Chan. Meanwhile Seungmin locates him blending into the mass of children leaving the stage and collars him, drawing him back.

There is the option of struggle, but his friend seems rattled, but hopeful rattled, not devastated rattled. He doesn’t like this, wherever this is going.

“Kim,” he whispers lowly, sensing danger, “what is going on in that head of yours?”

Felix turns and points dead straight at Jisung who’s pinching Seungmin’s side. Chan stares, assesses them both, eyes sharp and calculated.

“Han Jisung,” Woojin whispers into the microphone, “how would you like to direct this whole thing with us?”

“That wasn’t a question. Sorry, mate,” Chan booms. Jisung congratulates himself on not flinching. 

“You’re obviously very bright and capable. Hence, you’re doing it. There is no yes or no.”

“I blame the both of you,” Jisung slumps against Seungmin outside the theatre. He has the very elegant task of outlining the basis of the fundraiser and getting back to the Overwhelming Leaders at some point before 11. Failure to comply can lead to death. In Felix’s tone, legit death.

Jisung makes sure the books he’s hitting the fake brunette with hurts, because he led him to ruin and a few bashes over the head should compensate for the crushing responsibility he now bears. Organisation is never his strength, nor had it ever been an area of concern. Now he must fulfil his prescribed role.

He wants to skewer Felix alive, but that’s too much work. He can have one more bash and Jisung can go back to mourning his loss of freedom.

“Gosh,” he swears at Seungmin unintelligibly when he tapes all of the atrocity committed upon Felix, “go away, do some acting and singing, Hamlet, leave me to my mourning.”

“Think of it closely,” Felix laughs and blocks the slamming book brought onto his neck, “there’s such a glorious benefit for you.”

Jisung doesn’t see any benefits besides an early and swift death if he chooses rebellion. Felix rolls his eyes, pushes his short sleeves beyond his shoulder.

“You don’t have muscles,” Seungmin points out very honestly.

“It’s April, it’s hot, I’m not even trying to flex, shut up,” he fans himself, “and it’s also prom season. You will be missing out on it, given your chronic fatigue.”

He is right. Jisung completely forgot about prom and all its nasty social conformities and the yapping of Seungmin of ‘come with me, I need a pretty boy hanging from my arm at the school dance’.

“Huh,” he puffs out his cheeks, “that is a pro. I’m still going to whinge until prom passes though.”

“Babe, you don’t stop whinging, that’s not a Han thing to do,” Seungmin tuts and barely dodges the kick and the shoe lob. “But hey, you get to feign tiredness after this that you skip prom, you help me, I sing your songs, we play your music, we act your stories, it’s all skippy.”

“The term skippy is such an inappropriate thing to flaunt around,” Jisung sighs, “I don’t care about me because I always whine, but you and you,” he pulls on Seungmin’s untucked shirt and Felix’s belt loops. “What about you two fools though? Won’t you be too tired to go to prom?”

Felix’s shrug conveys all the nonchalance he has regarding school events. Seungmin rolls his eyes, covering Jisung’s hand that’s fiddling with his shirt.

“Don’t be stupid, Han, if I can’t go then I can’t go. Theatre comes before all things.”

“Under the brothers in the scale of priority, I hope?” Felix teases.

“Except the brothers. The brothers are above and beyond my allegiance,” Seungmin vows solemnly.

“Okay, that’s enough, we need to get busy, stop with the sentimental speeches,” he lets go of them, aggressively dusting his hands free off human interaction dirt.

Felix leans back, reclining on an imaginary couch, supported by his spindly wrists. Seungmin pushes his bangs back, sweat clinging onto skin.

He’s strangely fond of these fools, but he won’t say anything. They’ll know in his next words.

“Let this be clear, I’m doing this for you and your arse, Kim Seungmin, do not put up a shit performance. You too, prance around prettily and do the things well.”

If flowers can bloom in smiles and tightly shut eyes, then coreopsis and spring crocuses have already covered the entirety of Felix’s smiles and Seungmin’s eyes, spilling petals of luminous purple and playful orange pollen from wall to floor. Always cheerful and youthful gladness.

Woojin had told Hyunjin, the words distinctly vivid in his memories, of ‘You’re too kind and one day it’s going to blow up in your face’ fresh in elementary school where he lent his comic to a friend and it came back in cat shredded pieces.

Hyunjin made too much of a habit in not listening to useful and straightforward advice Woojin put forth from a young age. 6-year-old logic or an old grudge, he’s not quite sure, but Do Not Heed the Kim Woojin is an integral coding of his genetics in which he can’t shake off and he’s reminded every week why that was silly and he should start reprogramming his systems to heed the advice.

“You don’t have your jacket,” the athletic coach observes as he jogs in his equally distinguishable Hwang-style Adidas parka, hoping in vain that nobody would notice. “Did you lose it?”

“Well I took it off afterschool last week-” he explains. Tries to. An attempt that is not heard by Park Woojin speeding by him with a loud You actually take your jacket off? - seasoned with all the incredulity and shock of the blasphemous notion of Hwang Hyunjin, taking his jacket off. What’s next? He…functions as a human too? He…doesn’t dance and play sports…all the time?

It seems ridiculous, but quite a few boys were shocked at the concept of their schoolmates having human body needs and meeting those on a regular basis for the high performances they carry out at school. One even whispered, shell-shocked. ‘I thought you only dance and swim and run.’

It is an insult to him and everything that he stands for that he cannot fathom even a response to Woojin passing by, referred fondly within Hyunjin’s circle of friends as Smol Woojin, or on lazier days, Toothless.

“No I don’t have my jacket,” he concedes, “but I’ll get it back soon.”

The coach doesn’t look even convinced and he nods, appeasing nobody and nothing. Hyunjin’s regional is coming up and while they will have generic uniform for him to don in the time pending for the rescue of the Jacket, he won’t be as noticeable and scouted as fervently as The Times With The Jacket.

People continuously dismiss that notion, proclaiming he’s too pretty to not be noticed, marginally less now without his jacket, but still significantly pretty. Changbin had muttered something about Hyunjin losing his face and how ‘that might be a problem with identifying you’ to Woojin and Hyunjin karate kicking him simultaneously, with Hyunjin threatening to start bawling in front of the Seo apartment, Broadway-style with a tinge of ‘I am about to be murdered’.

“Pretty people are batshit insane,” Changbin muttered once more and quickly fled when Hyunjin scrunched up his face in preparation of a fake crying session, with Woojin pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You know his face, right? Track ‘im down on social media or some other creepy method you young ‘uns bandwagon on. Someone out there ought to know him,” Woojin reasoned and Hyunjin attempted to kick him too, to a lesser success because his childhood friend and a brother in everything but blood, is a competent martial artist who wields swords and is great at it. Kicking him is a futile effort.

Hyunjin would like to argue that he is a better person than most and that he would rely on the traditional method of asking around in his extensive social circle to track this person down. He’ll resort to Facebook stalking if a day of asking fails.

He doesn’t even need to actively seek out anyone because Heo Hyunjoon accosts him by the toilet, throwing an arm around the back of his neck.

“Han Jisung is going around wearing your jacket,” he desultorily remarks.

“Oh, yeah, I was looking for that, thanks. What does he look like,” his voice drops to a lower octave, “this Han Jisung?”

Hyunjoon’s face tells him everything he needs to consider moving far away from this school, give up his voice to become a mermaid in the ocean in exchange for a tail and gills. He doesn’t even know the guy and he’s giving away clothing items unknowingly.

That just sound bad. The implications are bad. Bad . True crimes bad.

“I don’t want to know the specifics, but he’s friends with Felix. They’re always together - find one and you’ll get another. Y’know, buy one get one free sort of deals.”

Hyunjin knows Felix, they dance and muck around together. They also band as a unit to get swimming discounts. This is searchable.

Except Minho speeds by him, screaming about ‘theatre’ and ‘no funds’ and all he sees is a crowd of angry theatre children who demand justice for their meagre organisation. Minho has a Broadway history, his love for theatre performances as extensive as his love for bundles. Minho would want to secure the dignity and monetary funds for the beloved theatre club. He will not ask Hyunjin for he knows Hyunjin’s weakness. It is a flaw of his personality, righteousness, that he would extend help without active askance from his friends. It is for a cause of righteousness and he will be lending aid, asked to or not.

Plus Woojin would be in on it too. Woojin as the other lead from last year’s musical and permanent choral conductor for the chorus. Hyunjin shudders. That one would coerce Hyunjin and throw him in the middle of jazz practice for the fifth musical number and bombard his household until he gives in. That one will be relentless and ruthless. He’s seen him coerce enough signatories for multiple petitions from the age of ten to seventeen. He’s not about to doubt Woojin’s bullying tactics at sixteen years old now.

But that is not of the utmost priority. He must retrieve his jacket first – the coldness of society is seeping into his bones without the protection of his fame and glory.

Gosh that sounds awfully Minho-esque. He ought to separate from his mentors, form his own identity besides the Kind and Good-looking One.

“Han Jisung has a class next door yeah?” He leans over to Kim Sunwoo, trying for a surreptitious look.

Sunwoo nods, side eyes him. Doesn’t comment on anything, head coming back to his maths textbook. Brings up his head as if he remembers something.

“There’s a meeting for theatre club members and friends,” Sunwoo drawls, almost lethargic. He’s barely sitting up, posture slipping. “I haven’t been tasked with informing you, but I feel like you should know, since your friends are all,” he rotates his wrist, leaving the crazy theatre people unsaid.

“Thanks Sunwoo,” Hyunjin nods glumly, “’preciate it.” sunwoo emphasises his sympathetic eye glance, puckered lips and scrunched up eyebrows and Hyunjin’s worry-ridden heart frees itself from its irrational restraints, leading to him beaming inappropriately in a situation that does not call for any sort of smiling or mirth. He’s worried, over Hyunjin. That’s so nice.

“No really, thank you,” he smiles, all teeth.

“The pretty ones are all insane,” Sunwoo turns away, shaking his head. “Just be careful nobody kidnaps you and chuck you in the boot of a car, Hwang.”

He doesn’t believe that, not with how this is real life and Kim Sunwoois a human person, not Supreme Soothsayer of Central Seoul High School.

Except Minho does kidnap him, abetted by Changbin who lifts him by the middle and both of them corner him in the corridor near the theatre like two thugs about to strip a poor unsuspected citizen of his very expensive Rolex. Valued at 70k and up.

“Gosh you scared me,” he wheezes as Changbin slams a hand on one side of his head and Minho slams another hand on the other side. “What’s up?”

“Your jacket got nabbed by Han Jisung,” Minho dives straight into the matter.

“Yes,” Hyunjin retreats back into his shoulder, “how or why do you know?”

“I saw him today,” Minho briefly informs him but shakes himself out of it, hair flopping onto his eyes. “It doesn’t matter how I know, it matters that Han Jisung has a weird ass underground bribing system and he will split your skull in half if you do some dumb shit.”

“Okay? Good for you?”

Changbin helpfully tacks on. “He meant to say that you do dumb shit regularly and we have to fulfill our good friends' duties, thus we are warning you.”

“Of getting my head split in half? I’ll take that chance honestly, my head hurts all the time, gotta expunge the demons inside of my-” Minho steps on his foot.

“Just be careful, don’t try and fight him. He normally doesn’t have enough motivation to fight or put up a lot of resistance when you ask your stuff back. Tread carefully, be diplomatic. In the case of extreme aggression where he doesn’t give your jacket back, then you may use force, though we don’t recommend it. Get backup, then use force.”

Changbin nods, agreeing with everything that is being said. Hyunjin is insulted these people he calls his friends, shared his lunch with multiple times and tutored into a passing grade, these people underestimate his athleticism. These people undermine his ability to wreak havoc on his oppressors when the situation calls for it.

“I think I can handle myself fine if he starts turning violent on me,” he ducks from Changbin’s kabedon stance and faces them, mouth twisted in a mildly upset pout. “I’m strong too.”

“We know, we fully know, don’t worry,” Changbin explicates, “but you get weird when you have to fight someone, like refusing to fight them, so we just want to make sure there’s someone else to beat the guy and get your jacket back in the case of you being a virtuous boy.”

“That’s so mean,” he whines, “that is genuinely so mean.”

Minho makes a face. It speaks volumes of I saw this coming ever since 6 am of this day. He theatrically heaves a sigh, clasping Hyunjin in the shoulder.

“That’s all I had planned. Go forth, be merry.”

"Goodness me, you’re so uncoordinated,” Changbin tuts his tongue in disapproval. “How do you manage to even walk without falling over?”

“It’s called I have an audience to impress,” Minho snarks back, fixing his collar, “when I say that you should understand that the audience is me, myself and I.”

Hyunjin seizes Changbin’s fist, sure to make contact against Minho’s head or ribs. “Okay, great, now go off and away and scheme for the salvation of the theatre club. I’m sure you have plans and such to overthrow the decision carelessly made by the school board.”

“Damn right we do,” Changbin shakes him off. Minho fixes his own collar and beams, ready to burden him with a corkboard full of the finer dot points on attack plan and back up plans lest the True Plans™ fail. “No, we’re going, stop bothering the kid. Come in later, yeah, we’ll see you after school,” his friend, the upperclassman, the reliable older figure type, grabs Minho by the elbow and bodily drag him away, both swearing back and forth in differing intensity of aggression.

It really makes Hyunjin wonder the true question. “Why is everyone worried about Han Jisung? Is he that scary?”

The story is very brief. The story is that he happens to see Felix and two others, one he thinks is a Kim Seungmin and the other, by process of elimination, must be Han Jisung, the same face where he put his jacket on. He seems haggard, hair messy and greasy, but his clothes are in pristine condition, Hyunjin’s jacket draped over his slim shoulder. The story is that he is about to ask politely for the jacket and walk away, all the while fully aware of Han Jisung’s destructive prowess per the rumours, but Felix is there to talk sense, hence Hyunjin feeling hopeful.

If he is truly the Underground Crime Lord as rumours had it, on top of being very unmotivated and of varying degrees of violent outbursts, he must love and treasure his friends very much. Enough to say what Hyunjin hears in the hallway.

“Let this be clear, I’m doing this for you and your arse, Kim Seungmin, do not put up a shit performance. You too, prance around prettily and do the things well.”

Really. Han Jisung is not what the rumours say he is. He stalks off, the quest of retrieving the jacket completely forgotten.

.

One would assume Jisung to neglect the plans and would cleverly dodge the people in charge as they hunt him down for neglect of his duties. He thought about the pros and cons of both options, juggled a lot on the scale of Which One Requires Less Efforts and Thus Benefits Me More. It was strenuous mental maths - but he concluded, quite resignedly, to draft up a plan for this battle between the school board and the theatre club and friends. On the grudging path onward to school, Seungmin holding his right arm prisoner, both with half of the plan and perusing for any additional edits to be made. Jisung had already pointed out a few and their little linking arrangement proved complicated to simultaneously walk, edit and link arms, but Seungmin insisted. They don’t have many opportunities to walk to school together and with any available time slot, Seungmin insists on them embarking on the short 15-minute walk as a unit. It’s to reaffirm their friendship status and to further perpetuate Seungmin’s need to have people hanging off his arms, for whatever purposes.

“I think that’s called a heartbreaking move, Kim,” Felix pointed out once.

“He knows, he fully knows of it,” Jisung clapped back, “that’s exactly why he does it.”

Seungmin only flourished his palms like ‘have you not noticed?’ and received a flurry of balls of scrunched up paper projected upon him.

Back in the present, Seungmin finds one mistake with the funding strategies, which, in Jisung’s defence, was entirely a cuckoo project manned by him who has no experiences with funding or money. He doesn’t even take any business subjects, a blunder on his end, for he does not perceive, back in the days of subject selection, that this would be bestowed upon him, accounting responsibilities.

Seungmin’s hand darts out, grabbing his wrist all of the sudden, leaving a trail of ugly purple glitter ink all over the outline of the setup. Jisung looks up, mouth pressed tight, unimpressed, only to have the butt of Seungmin’s pen pushes his head up and forward, to Chan leaning against the school wall, all refreshed and dimples, waiting for someone.

“Is he waiting for us?” His friend whispers, not moving his lips.

Jisung meanwhile interprets this as predatory stalking. He, the knowing but clueless prey, had walked onto enemy ground without knowledge of where the predators are. Here is one, broad and friendly-looking, but he knows of Chan’s biceps size from the grapevine. It’s as big as Bae Jinyoung’s head. Jisung’s head is barely bigger. He can’t avoid a fatal head injury if Chan decides to pounce and crush his skull between his arms.

He can always play it safe by being diplomatic. Appease the hungry beast by offering the conditions he set for Jisung the day previous. Only then will Jisung escape.

“Protect me if I die,” he hisses and advances forward, letting go of Seungmin. His friend stupidly follows, grabbing the back of his cardigan and inching along, both eyeing Chan consistently, never looking away.

“Hi,” Seungmin approaches, “here are the plans.”

“Ah, of course, thank you,” Chan accepts, all friendliness and trust in his tone and an eye smile directed at Jisung, the clear weak link in this power dynamic. He doesn’t take the plan, glancing briefly at the scattered pages, humming and smiling. “I wanted to ask something of you. It’s quite optional, entirely, but I was wondering if you would like to help Changbin and I write the script for the production?”

“I don’t write,” Jisung denies immediately. “I have no literacy skills.”

“Don’t you write songs? I found a few of yours, read the lyrics. There is definitely room for great dialogues and monologues if you do help us,” Chan reasons, stooping a bit. It seems like he rehearsed and had gotten this insight from someone else. Someone…being his friends. His Judas-y snake-ry bastard of companions

“Did you find this out via Kim Seungmin here, by any chance,” the arm that’s been resting on his shoulder retreats promptly, but Jisung is fast when he needs to. Seungmin is trapped to his fate, struggling futilely, while Chan smiles serenely at their escalating violence. He gives the vibes of a man who would watch carnage with a smile on his face, he who is fed and sustained by blood and wars.  

“No actually,” Chan deliberates, after Jisung nearly punches Seungmin in the jaw, “I tracked you down and found your SoundCloud.”

“That’s in the public domain?” He squints.

Chan beams, the ‘of course not silly’ suburban soccer mum at the Parents and Friends Association voice flaring in the background. “You and I both know that I stalked you. Obviously.”

“Because that’s so normal,” he deadpans, face flat. “Social media is so progressive nowadays. Ha ha ha.”

“Absolutely,” Chan maintains his smile, “it tells you useful things like your love for Han Solo.”

Seungmin pinches him. He doesn’t stop. He’s ready to throw hands, what is this creep talking about Han Solo is good and true -

“Are you terrorising kids first thing in the morning again, Christopher?” A drawl, drawn out from how lazy and lethargic it was, has Seungmin slapping a hand over Jisung’s stomach, pulling his tie. That voice sounds familiar. It sounds like someone who Jisung had a fight with.

Seo Changbin pops out from nowhere, sauntering with a beanie stitched in golden threads interweaving with platinum silver, spelling out Bean with a solid block font in English. He has a similar beanie, with Ribbit on top. Seungmin has one too. It just spells out H-U-M-B-U-G.

Seungmin and Jisung volunteered a censored ‘Bitch’ but it was a Christmas present and they didn’t get any say in it. The friendship beanies are non-refundable, and alterations are not up for negotiation. Felix is a pure soul who knitted a few of these one Christmas, for friends and family, and bestowed upon their frozen heads proofs of their mutual friendship and his claim over them as his minions.

That’s weird. Does that mean Changbin is a friend of Felix that Jisung doesn’t know about? Felix has friends he doesn’t know about?

But like. It’s Seo Changbin.

Seo Changbin, music enthusiast, writes songs and poems and very compelling feminist essays, a year older than him, number one personal enemy of Kim Seungmin. Jisung is influenced into disliking the guy, out of sheer loyalty to Seungmin, but Felix cannot be coerced into that allegiance. He’s out here making friends left, right and centre – everyone is a friend, no one’s an enemy. He literally cannot be touched because he befriended the entire school and everybody and their mother will trample the guy that stupidly raises his voice at Felix.

“Oh my god Seo Changbin,” Jisung lets out an ‘eep’ sound. “You’re here.”

“Seo,” Seungmin freezes, “you’re here.”

“Binnie!” Chan turns to him. “You’re here!”

Okay that one was on purpose. Chan winks at Jisung, throwing an arm over Changbin’s shoulder, dimples sitting on the corners of his mouth. Seungmin meanwhile towers above Jisung, head looking everywhere but at the shorter Changbin who similar diverts his gaze elsewhere. The air is awkward, much more than Jisung and Chan before. He’s not too sure if he should run now, but he shifts forward, a minute step, putting his small self between Seungmin and Changbin, all the while keeping an eye on Chan.

I see what you did there, the older boy mouths, mischief lining the corners of his eyes. Jisung doesn’t like the look. It screams T-r-o-u-b-l-e.

“Bin’s gonna work with us in writing,” Chan continues, nonchalant, impervious to the sheer frigidity of the situation above their heads.

Yep.

There it is.

Just like his instincts had predicted.

Right on the money.

Gosh, it’s not like he waved banners and led tearful demonstrations to be a part of the Theatre Clan. It’s not like he deterministically demanded active participation. He was forced into every part of this unwilling arrangement. Too late to back out now, he with no agency to his own. Stray, and he will not survive between Bang Chan’s teeth tearing him apart with uncalled for guilt-tripping. Stray, and he will not hear the end of it from Seungmin when they break off to go their merry ways.

“Let’s all get along, yeah?” Chan finishes it off, clapping Changbin on the shoulder merrily who doesn’t even react or jump or flinch, set on not making eye contact to anyone. It’s a noble effort and he feels marginally bad, but hey, not his problem.

 “Sure…” he oscillates between despair and doubt, peppered with denial. The three D’s. “I’m not too sure I want to do-”

Seungmin pushes him forward with the flat of his palm, tutting.

Jisung snaps his head to him, one eye squinting. Seungmin shakes his head, jerking his chin away from the two older boys. Don’t mind me. Go. The angry head tossing and eye telepathy with the success rate of roughly 20% carries on for 2 seconds, in which Chan decides that he’s done, he’s bored, he ought to be in school and learning.

“Ahem,” Chan coughs. “Find us later if you do change your mind,” he smiles, all teeth, “you’re a great writer, Jisung, you’re just not letting yourself write.”

How dare he, this scoundrel -

Before Jisung can properly vomit out a scathing insult, Chan drags Changbin away, tripping over his own feet, not even bothering with goodbyes.

“Gosh, am I just an open book for people to read,” he fumes, throwing his hands up and down. Wait. Hold on. He’s holding paper. The plans. The plans that he was supposed to give to the Two Leaders of the Theatre Clan.

Dexter’s broken lamp post. Things are not great. They are not good. Now he is tasked with tracking down the guys, shove them their plans up their mighty powerful heads and hide until he is otherwise summoned.

Seungmin, however, seems shaken, like he saw a ghost of the past that he’d rather not. Jisung doesn’t want to ask, his wording abilities atrocious in the morning and all the time, only checking overall and deeming the tall child fit physically and only in need of ten minutes sitting down, away from others. Felix should be consulted and assisting this one. It’s outside of Jisung’s jurisdiction to cater to emotional needs. He needs some time off on his own too – socialising taxes him of any energy he had from nicking that stash of muffins from Seungmin’s kitchen this morning.

“Shall we go in?” He touches his friend’s elbow, whose head is down, staring at his feet and the ground.

“Don’t hate Changbin,” is Seungmin’s answer, “because of me.”

“I…would never? I don’t know him?” He splutters, discombobulated. That had nothing to do with anything they were talking about and there is no logical thought progression that jumped that far. He’s gaping, blinking quickly, hands raised in a mixture of confusion from his brain trying to get him to slap Seungmin out of it or slap himself out of it. “I don’t know him enough to hate him?” He struggles, everything sounding like a question.

To Seungmin that was as good as a resounding yes . He snatches the sheets of tattered pages from Jisung, dusts some unseen dirt from the front page and mumbles something about how he’s friends with Woojin and he can get that delivered across.

Jisung is left alone at the front of the school while one of his close mates essentially flees from him, clutching several pieces of paper and hoping that it would solve everything and all his problems.

If they had just gone at normal time, reasonably before class time (5 minutes), none of this would’ve been a thing and Seungmin wouldn’t sulk for a good week to come. He fishes out his phone anyway, texting Felix and trying to navigate the schoolgrounds for unsuspecting holes, climbing up the stairs to his class.

Me : minnie is sulky and i need you to provide moral and emotional support because i’m emotionally unavailable and am too tired

s(u)n #1 : yep yep, all g, be @ school in 5

Changbin manifests at the threshold of Jisung’s classroom once again, this time more skittish, not toeing the actual threshold, staying as out of the room as possible. Jisung once again is on the floor. He props himself up on one elbow and yawns, rubbing his eyes.

“Come in, commoner,” he beckons through a yawn, “yes, you, Seo, inside, I give you permission to enter, you vampire, you may cross the threshold of my humble institution and drink everyone’s blood.”

A couple of hesitant steps later, Changbin is crouched before him, long chin, long nose, long face, bit like a horse, and long fingers, darning invisible beanies with invisible needles.

“You must be here for a reason,” Jisung adopts an orator tone, sombre and reverent, “cough it up.”

“Chan wants to brainstorm ideas for the theme and plot. We’re down in the hallway near the freshman’s row of classes. It’d be helpful if you could turn up.” All Changbin is to him are all these overlapping shades of dark brown and skin colours. Jisung’s not getting up. This one is getting down to his level.

“Lean in a bit,” he invites, “I need to see you better, because my eyes are weak.”

“Sounds terribly like Red Riding Hood,” Changbin jokes, half-nervous, half-teasing, as they are now close enough to exchange normal eye contact.

“Rar, I’m the big bad wolf,” he arcs his wrist pathetically, “scared, Seo?”

“Not at the slightest, Han,” Changbin chuckles. “Will you help?”

“I’m not coming there in person, if that’s what you’re looking for. I will, however, look at any script you have and fix things for you. I’m too tired to walk and you can’t make me, I will stay on this floor until lunch ends, unmovable.”

A yawn rises out of him. He doesn’t even bother to tamper it down, dropping his jaw open in an ugly yawn, his eyes shutting open and close. People who saw Zootopia had drawn a too-similar parallel between Jisung and Sloth and he cannot agree more. His animal form. The higher state of being, beyond the human shell.

“I expected nothing less,” the older boy had stopped fiddling, clasping his fingers together, voice teasingly unimpressed. “I’ll get your number now, actually, and we can send you stuff to edit until you want to come and join us.”

“On that table yonder, my good blood-sucking sir, take liberty to punch in your number. Password’s 1522.” Jisung drops the elbow and lies facing the ceiling, on his back, the ground no longer hard and unaccommodating.

Changbin puts down his phone, tone pleasantly surprised, like he wasn’t aware Jisung can emote more than the bare boredom and sarcasm. “Have you thought about perform-”

“Put the phone down and begone, you’ve overstayed your welcome,” he kicks feebly, “off with you, or I send a minion after your arse.”

“I’m charmed,” the blur that is Changbin steps away. “I’ll see you soon, hopefully.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Seo-ssi,” Jisung slips into polite speech, all mockery of title, “I could easily disappoint you, as I have numerous other times. I’m a quitter.”

“Defeatists are just ones who tried harder and fell harder,” Changbin lingers at the threshold, half in, half out, the bloody shape of him liminal, “you can always get up, if only you choose to, Han Jisung.”

He doesn’t get to retort smartly about how being nihilistic is great and not defeatist, those two are different things, no he’s not spending more nights staying up thinking about how much he failed and how he shouldn’t try again, shouldn’t try more. Shouldn’t be a failure. Don’t do things, because he will fail inevitably.

There he is again, lying to himself. He is an open book after all. Two complete strangers read him front to back covers, found all the footnotes and ink stains on the pages. Highlights sections, takes out crude masking tape and tapes an extra page in.

“Allow yourself to fail.”

Jisung kicks his leg out and sits up, not without groaning like he’s pushing a four wheels drive up a mountain road. Feet apart, he blinks. Reaches for his phone. Texts Changbin. Asks him to send the documents over now, I can look at it .

Allow yourself to fail. Allow yourself to be empty, so that it can learn more. Once you hit the ground, there is little that can go wrong beyond that fall. Fail, so you can get up. Fail, so you won’t dip lower than you already are.

How ludicrous. Somehow he believes it.

“We got so many cheques,” Felix runs to him, throwing himself at Jisung’s back, chattering in English, “the dough was rollin’ fine and dandy.”

“Say that again but in a Southern accent,” he throws books together inside his bag, lugs the extra weight that is the responsibility of being a friend and shuffles out into the gym, where dance auditions and rehearsals are happening. He jostles the human koala on top of him, taking precaution to his steps. Every footfall is one step closer to their transformation to a Transformer bot. Bam, here’s a truck leg, bam, have an airplane as a backpack.

“No, ew, trip,” Felix sneers, mouth twisted, all ugly, no charm in him. “I ain’t fulfillin’ your-”

“You sound kinda Southern now,” Jisung points out. Felix tightens his arms around Jisung’s neck and squeezes, intending to cut off air supply, but really, jokes on him, Jisung would like to drop dead right there and then. Perhaps Felix can crush him and his ribs to irreparable damage. No suing - just let him die slowly because of a crushed lung or two.

“I really hope you trip and fall,” his friend whispers, locking his elbows over his neck. He stops, adjusts Felix’s falling self, continues his stagnant pilgrimage.

“With you on it? Sure. No probs, bro.”

“I’m making a gang sign and I’m stabbing it up your eyes.”

“Why do that when you can just weigh me down a bit more and we’ll both trip and die?”

“After I say goodbye to Minnie I’m so going to dent your head with a spade. I will do it. Are you laughing at me, Han, stop doing that, you’re gonna drop me!”

He lets Felix go near the corridor outside of the gym, breathless with hysterics. It’s a new and foreign feeling, to genuinely laugh without thinking, mindless little sounds from his chest to the corners of his mouth. Felix can’t maintain the pissed off puppy look for long, his nose scrunching in an effort to hold it together, but he lets loose, giggling and covering his face, face reddening, the blush spreading to his ears and neck.

It’s a stupidly nice feeling. And he rather likes it.

“I’m going, stop laughing, god damn it, I’m going to see your face in my head now, that’s such an ugly sight to see,” Felix makes a show of entering loudly, footsteps exaggerated, thudding at irregular rhythm on the floor.

“I know my face is pretty, Lix, that’s why you see it! You want to see it all the time!”

“Stop screaming, you lunatic!” Felix scolds him, but he’s blooming with joy and pure happiness on his cheeks. “You’re too loud!”

“Boo-fucking-hoo!” He grins back, banter in his words. “Go away!”

“I am!”

“You’re really not, mate.”

“Aren’t we lively today, boys?” Seungmin saunters up to them, all traces of discomfort dissipated with the passing of time since this morning. Felix waves a hasty goodbye as he’s being dragged inside, with the rising of voices and a Minho-esque blur passing by, screaming for Felix to close the damn door, Lee .

Lee Minho. Jisung still hasn’t got a chance to talk to that man-child. He really has no time outside of Seungmin and Felix. He’s sure he can squeeze Minho in a slot of time in six months’ time.

“As always,” Jisung bows, grandiosely, “how are you, my good sir?”

“Passable. I come bearing messages from Overlord Number One,” Seungmin replies breezily, plopping onto the ground. This habit is a Jisung pass-on, he as their leader and their eldest. The floor is inexplicably comforting, they as humans returning to their primitive ways of sitting on the ground around the hearth and trading oral performances of the ways of the gods and nature. 

“He’s coming, but I got here first. Wanted to say bye to Lix because I have baseball in like, five minutes.”

“Are you sure it’s in minutes and not, you know,” Jisung gestures outside vaguely, where people have begun to assemble the gear for baseball, “seconds?”

“I’m exploiting my teacher’s pet privileges, so I get to be late,” Seungmin shrugs, comfortable where he is, “I saw Felix, it is all good, now I need to pass on Woojin’s thanks. The plans are splendid and he was moved to tears at your surprisingly docile compliance. We were expecting more raised hackles and teeth-baring.”

He’s not too sure if that was a jab at his being or not, but he’s not about to question Seungmin’s backhanded comments. Gosh. It’s like Jisung is a rabid mutt. He doesn’t bite. He gets others who are indebted to him to perform the biting. He has hygiene standards and he’s not nearly as suicidal as confronting Kim Woojin. That way lies suffering and pain.

 “You didn’t exactly give me many options. It was either yield or perish,” Jisung swings a leg on Suengmin’s knee, comfortable. “Should you leave now?”

“Getting tired of me already, Han?” A wolfish smile slices its way up Seungmin’s face, contrasting with his baby face. It’s unconventionally attractive. If he was a weaker man, he would’ve been all over that. Fortunately, he is strong, and he shan’t let baby faced friends win this game of testosterone dominance.

“Scared, Kim?” In his head, he sounds like a Malfoy. Outwardly, it might not have been so. Seungmin scrunches his face in genuine horror and disgust, casting Jisung aside and rising to his feet, gasping dramatically.

Not that shocked then. Actors and their deceiving performances.

“How could you insinuate such a crude thing, Mr Han?” There is Scarlet O’Hara, Southern belle and dramatic before his eyes. “But yeah, good point, I gotta run. Text me later. Hug Woojin-hyung if he finds you!”

Jisung endures head pats, Seungmin slapping his on the top of his head, before the child rushes off, spewing apologies which, to him, seem genuine enough. Apologetic, even.

He stretches his legs, yawns. It seems that nobody will talk about the Changbin/Seungmin fiasco from thence on. Good.

The only question is why, but he won’t get any from neither one of them.

“Hey Jisung,” someone imposes their palms on his shoulder, destabilising him. “Thank you for what you did.”

“Oh,” he looks up, “I’m not getting up. Sure.”

Woojin’s face holds no judgement, only mutual fondness. He bends down, crouched in a squat, smiling quite motherly at him.

“You’re a good kid,” he declares. Jisung doesn’t reply, raising his brows. “From this day onwards you are one of my children.”

“I don’t get to refuse,” he draws out the sentence, hearing the answer in the statement.

"Not at all!” The older boy beams brilliantly. “Normally I would hug you, in gratitude, but it’s an awkward angle and you have a reputable aversion of physical contact except for a select few, so I will not venture.”

“I guess I am your child now? I agree?” Please leave me to nap.

“Great! Hope you have fun with Binnie and Channie!” Woojin rises, elegance in every movement, probably plays a sport, smiling with his eyes the whole while. It’s a diplomatic ploy, to gather Jisung’s trust. He knows this trick, sees it everywhere. It’s not that he has a choice in not trusting Woojin though. He is mandated to.

“If you sleep here, remember to put on a jacket,” the boy turns to walk away, “the air con is rigged.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he yawns, “I got Felix’s swim jacket.”

“Just making sure,” Woojin singsongs, still annoyingly present, “Chan sent his thanks. The edits were much appreciated.”

Jisung can’t hear him. Jisung’s asleep. Hasta la vista, Kim Woojin, you’ve been an unwelcome nuisance.

He doesn’t know what prompt him to go home, sift through all the half-written songs, all the discarded lyrics, all the baked, half-baked, raw scribbles on pages and sort out a few ideas to send over to the script writing group chat. Chan wanted to change it to 3 Chili Bois, to the loud objection of both Jisung and Changbin, and now it sits normally at Script Writing Room. Over text he’s all business conduct and he doesn’t actively participate, only chiming in every hour or so about this thing that they should fix and that sentence can be rewritten this way.

chris : so do we want to meet two lunches from now? i’m busy soccering tomorrow

bin : got tuition

me : sure

chris is typing…

me : but only for a while

He doesn’t stay online long enough to witness what Changbin later texts him as ‘Chris blew his lid off, it was very entertaining.’

He tucks away the lyrics, in his English literature book. Something can be made with them. He doesn’t know what yet.

“This is good. This is great. Oh my gosh, I have a great idea!” Chan swings his hand around and Jisung had long hidden behind Changbin. “Han Jisung, you can write the lyrics. I got music. I got some right ‘ere with me. Sit, sit, we gotta listen!”

Without waiting for the younger children to sit, he blasts two lots of instrumental track, both got a different vibe going. Jisung hasn’t had a ‘true calling’ moment where he knows exactly what his sole passion in life will be heading towards. It’s less intense, no wind billowing from the north or fanfare setting off with a backdrop of fireworks round. He hears the music, can see which lyrics fit which segment, tossing on his feet with the rhythm.

This is the something that his words can evolve into. This is the missing link.

He retreats further behind Changbin, tugging his jumper. Changbin translates that into human speech.

"He said yes, but he’ll do it in secret and send it to me so I can forward that to you and we have to pretend to not know who did it come from.”

He deserves that kick. It is karma, inhabiting the mortal shell of Jisung, to inflict the cosmic punishment on those who wronged others. Chan flips them many thumbs ups, frantically transferring files onto a USB and entrusting Changbin with it, closing his laptop and bidding goodbye. They only have 2 minutes left.

“I guess this is where we part,” the older boy dangles the USB with a cat head and pretty bells before his eyes, “yes or no?”

He takes out one hand from his pocket, cupping his palm. Changbin lets the USB drop, tucking his shirt all the while, scrunching his nose.

“Thanks, for playing messenger,” Jisung mumbles.

“Thanks for coming. Chan gets overbearing, but he means well. He’s hardly harmful.” Changbin mimics Jisung’s pose, hands in pocket, shoes bending in and out, toes touching then sole. “How is…Seungmin nowadays? I didn’t know you two are friends.”

Whoop.

There it is.

There is a mutual agreement among the September Brothers to not talk about Changbin. Changbin who? He exists? Script writing is largely a known fact, but Seungmin doesn’t ask about the happenings of that part of Jisung’s life and he likewise doesn’t share.

Changbin on the other hand, Changbin and Jisung developed this oddly mutual respect for each other because they are alike yet they are not. Changbin accommodated to both Jisung and Chan’s every whim with no complaints, checking in to see if they are alright. It raises interesting questions such as What exactly did you do to make things awkward between Seungmin and you? and How are you so nice underneath that resting bitch face?

Chan knows something but accosting that puts his fear of loud people at risk and he can’t do that to himself. The older boy flits about, casting them both meaningful looks, like an omnipresent and omni-useless Judeo-Christian deity, daring him to approach. Jisung has no energy for investigating this. He ought to drop it, drop his gnawing concern for Seungmin, his best mate.

“He is how he is. Snide. Assholish with a baby face. Great liar. You know how he is,” he scuffs his shoes on the floor. Class is starting very soon. They ought to leave.

Changbin doesn’t answer. Stops shuffling.

“I do know how he is, yes,” he mumbles. Somehow, Jisung has a sense that he wasn’t meant to her that. “How’s Felix?” He looks up. Meets Jisung’s eyes.

“Making more friends, dancing his way into Minho’s heart, being charitable, being everyone’s favourite child.”

At this Changbin grins, a blunt canine popping on his close-lipped smile. Ah. That is a different reaction. That is a wildly different reaction.

The bell screeches at them to move. Jisung blinks, coughing on an inhale of surprised air.

“Class, I have to go. Text me later if you have issues. See ya,” Changbin jumps a little, backing out to the door.

“Hyung,” Jisung raises his voice, “this conversation never happened.”

Changbin stalls, nods, and runs off, steps a bit lighter as he leaves.

.

“My dear!” He heard Minho before he sees the man-child, bracing himself for the impact of the tackle. A teenage boy bodily slams into him, squealing simultaneously to arms coming around to cradle his head, patting him like a pet Chihuahua. The best tactic is just to breathe through it all. Breathe. Try not to take too long to answer.

“Darling, oh how I missed you!” Minho declares emphatically to their audience of none, crushing his cheeks between his hands. “My idiot sandwich.”

“I missed you too, hyung,” he nods his head. Tunes out as another squeal emits. Tunes in when Minho presses him onto his chest, hand supporting his neck and spine, cradling him into non-existent bosom. It’s a motherly pose that the other boy insists on exercising whenever they do get a chance to see one another. It adds onto his seductress’ prowess or other nonsense. People melt into him when he executes this head cradling hug. It cuts off Jisung’s air supply when it’s imposed onto him.

How did this become a thing again?

Oh right. Last year. After exams and the Rip Incident. He hid inside the instrument cupboard after stumbling to school after a sleepless night, shivering all over. He failed. He failed. He’s a failure. He can’t escape, he can’t go back or go forward. There was no way but down, burrow deeper and deeper. The rip reverberated in his ears, thrumming dully, intensely, clicking and knocking in his ear canal. He wanted to be out of this skin, out of the whispering that amassed in disembodied voices. He can’t hear them. He can’t hear them.

He skipped a couple of classes that day, drifting in and out of hysterical fits, whimpering in the airtight cupboard, hands in his hair, pulling and letting go.

It must’ve been afterschool. Clamour and hubbub of teenage boys filtered through the barely-seen gaps of the door. He was in slumber, but he could hear the faint conversations outside. He was too weak to defend himself. He would just drop onto the floor, weak and miserable, rolling about in a ball of pathetic adolescent.

The doors were yanked open, with Jisung falling out of a closet space. If Seungmin was there, he would’ve made some coming out jokes, with the closet and all, but fortunately Jisung was devoid of both of his closest friends and he tired himself beyond his capacity. Therefore he napped. He kept his eyes closed throughout the drop as he fell and rolled on the carpet.

“Oh gosh,” the hushed voice gasped, “are you alright?”

He kept still on the floor, unmoving. Immobile. He had begun his metamorphosis into a rock. Catch him later being one with the earth and of the ground, being tossed into the sea and kicked about by unknowing humans.

“Finals,” a tongue click, “they make the children want to kill themselves. What a tragedy. You look lovely. A prettier Sleeping Beauty.”

Jisung couldn’t keep ‘extra’ out of his blood even if he drained himself clean of the thing. He sprawled his limbs about, posing as dramatically and reminiscent as Aurora as possible, arms flounced about on the floor.

“I guess,” the guy intoned, “I must kiss the beauty awake! Mayhap,” a rustle, “I am his fated!”

A breath fanned across his cheeks. Jisung tried to peer from closed eyes, entrusting his other senses to inform him of the whereabouts of this meddling Prince-type. His senses told him the guy was quite close and he ought to wake up, move away. Alas, back in that specific time stamp he was very out of it and opened his eyes when he felt very warm breathing on him and there would be a lot of explanations to be made to Seungmin if his first kiss had happened without any sort of informing to the Kim child.

“Oof,” he flicked his eyes open, “how courageous of you to arrive at my rescue, my Lord!” Threw his arms out and nearly smacking a shoulder. “I am awakened, thanks to you!”

There was someone, of average height, objectively pretty, crouching over Jisung’s fallen body with why are you falling asleep inside instrument cupboard after finals scribbled in Felix’s chicken scrawl all over his face.

Jisung didn’t elaborate. The general consensus of Everyone Does Weird Shit All The Time During Finals ought to protect him from needing to explain. The reasons were infinite. I failed a test. My lunch came back out all over my papers. I tripped and ripped the sole off my shoe now the half-ripped sole is flapping every time I lift my foot to walk. I haven’t been home in 3 weeks. My dad saw my lyrics and ripped them up in front of my face during dinner and swore to force me back on track with my studies that aren’t entirely mediocre marks, even if he has to rip everything I spent time writing on because ‘a doctor doesn’t need pretty lyrics to get into med school.’ I feel sick all the time and I don’t see the point in living. My friends haven’t seen me in two days. I want to die.

Countless reasons. So many he forgot which one was the reason that made him upset enough to not keep any food down for the past two days and crawl into a cupboard to catch up on sleep.

No. He ought to forget. He’s awake. He ought to forget. He’s not Jisung. He’s someone else.

Plastering on a smile, he pulled himself up, all teeth showing.

“But my prince,” he orated, very boomingly in that small corridor, designed to fit 2 people at maximum capacity, “we have not been acquainted. We have not been on many outings. You did not take me to lunch where you shower me with expensive caviar from the Northern Isles. How will I accept this proposal? How will our family, the royals, think of this unsolicited union?”

“Tell you what,” Prince Philip smoothed his face into Gently Concerned, “it’s 4. You look like you need food. I know a couple of places that have discounts on today. Do you wanna go with me then to get something to eat and just get out of school?”

“What do I owe you?” Jisung quizzed, because he ran these things, he knows the drill. A meal for a piece of gossip. A piano for a copy of the maths homework. Equivalent exchange. One thing for another.

“A name,” the Prince stated, emphatically, “and what you’re allergic to in terms of food.”

“Not my reason for hibernating inside a cupboard?”

“We need to be reasonable here. There’s no way you’ll answer that. Names? Names we can do. Let’s start off with me. Hi,” the Prince stuck out his hand, “my name’s Lee Minho. I am still going to force-feed you food.”

“No wonder we fell in love at first sight,” Jisung clasped a hand over his chest and wiped away a fake tear, “this mortal is named Han Jisung. You can also refer to me as Your Grace or O’ Great One, I’m not fussy about either. I’m also not allergic to anything but if you plan on fattening me, let it be known that chocolate is a no because my throat hurts when I eat it.”

"That’s oddly specific,” Minho noted.

“I know. Can you pull me up? I can’t feel my knees,” Jisung extended his hands.

“This marriage is falling to shambles,” the other boy lamented, hoisting Jisung up, “it barely even started.”

“I’m not paying for a dowry.” They were in a coffee shop, Jisung had just finished his third plate of frozen yoghurt, he had cream puffs and eclairs before along with a proliferation of fried snacks, out of his own pocket, clearly, to the face of a disgruntled Minho. The older boy – they established age hierarchy on the bus to Incheon, Minho noting absently that he had never seen Jisung before and he himself explaining that he was very new to the school and Minho exclaiming that he was two years older, a look of gloating consuming his whole face – insisted on treating him for desserts, there were discounts on the things he ate, he’s getting a lot of them.

To be completely fair, he did warn Minho. Emphatically warned him just outside the door, but what did he, a baby, a freshman know?

Not a lot. Not a lot of anything. Because he’s young and inexperienced. The same things he got told over and over like a broken record from those older than him. Minho’s tone was light, teasing – but the fact remained stern. He would be treated to free food and he ought to shut up and eat.

“I warned you. I warned you like ten minutes ago,” he chewed the strawberry slice and bit his spoon because the brain freeze was getting to his nerves.

“Ten? You ate how many plates in ten?” Minho counted not-so-quietly in front of him, his iced coffee melting into cacao beans water, because he was carrying it the minute they got off the bus till then, for a good 2 hours. “…four, six. Han, Han, look at me. Look me in the eye you demon. Stop pigging yourself out, gosh. Oi.”

Minho pulled the straw from his drink and flicked water at Jisung’s attempt to stuff his mouth with more strawberry slices. He cringed in revulsion because that straw had been in Minho’s mouth and those nasty mouth germs did not have any business flourishing onto him. It was a futile baptism attempt, from an iced coffee, performed by someone of questionable priesthood qualifications. The demon being Jisung was completely acceptable but Minho baptising him? What’s that going to do to him? Scare him back into the bowels of his home? Exorcise him to possess another human host? God forbid, convert him to God’s light?

Joke’s on him because Jisung’s English name is Peter. He’s basically one step closer to God, bar the whole denying Jesus three times. Semantics. He’s a disciple. He’s basically a saint.

“Why are you baptising me, arse?” He got a round of water in his eyes. Oh that was horrible. Just horrible. Horrible horrible .

“You’re clearly stuffing yourself because you’re trying to escape something. I, as your friendly and well-intentioned stranger, advise you to talk it out or like, go do something that’s not overeating or undereating. It’s not good for your health.” Minho flicked the very last drops from his straw onto Jisung’s shirt, staining an off-yellow shade on the breast pocket. His lips curled. That was unacceptable, calling him out and throwing coffee onto his white shirt. He got enough shit from his mother whenever she washes his shirts, yellowing from all the rolling on the ground and inconvenient naps he engaged in. There was one more stain to the growing list of complaints. Gosh. The woman would talk his ears off for the week.

“Would you advise alcoholism as an alternative to dodgy diets?” He considered scrubbing the stain but only resorted to staring at it in disdain. It’s a way to not meet Minho’s overly concerned eyes. His tone was light, but the warning sat clear in the easy way his words slipped out. Do not tell me what to do.

“No,” the older boy groaned, “go, like, bike or something. Punch a tree. Get out of the house.”

“Soak myself in the bathtub fully clothed?”

“That’s-” Minho cut him off, “that’s an early death, by pneumonia.”

“Don’t you think there’s something poetic about it?” He wondered airily. “Enveloped by water.”

“Wrinkly fingers, blood cells drowning ya, saggy skin? No. No,” he slammed the table and Jisung looked at him. Stop that. Don’t scare me like that.

To think this all started by that one innocent comment about wanting to disappear and how he can’t carry on anymore. It was too hard, now or then. It sounded easier to simply…not exist.

"You don’t have to abide by my advice, you big oaf, but you can at the very least listen to me. No, come on, kid,” he sat on the table, “I care about you.”

“You don’t even know me,” he shot back, hands curled in his pockets. “What do you know?”

“Enough to stop you. Enough to know that your head is fucking you over where the facts of the matter is that there are so many people out there caring about you that keeping this self-destruction up will hurt you and those who love you.”

“What do you know about me to say-” he repeated, the repetition routine on his tongue, a routine he could revert to.

“Felix. Felix was talking to me about you. He’s worried. He’s worried to the point where he’s not focused and he’s falling everywhere. To the point that he’s hurting himself. Think of him please. Think of the shit running through his mind for him to ruin himself regularly. You love him. Think. Consider the poor thing.”

That played straight into Jisung’s supposedly cold and blackened shrivelled heart. That hurt him a little, shook some sense into his hazy brain. Felix. Blonde, bit of an idiot, occasionally astute, pigs himself on an unhealthy number of Australian snacks and cheeseburgers. His twin brother from another womb. The kid he vowed to protect and shield away from the cruelties of the world. Ironically in turn, he ended up worrying the ward he was meant to protect. It’s deeply shameful. He had not done a good job of caring for Felix, with his friend worrying and bruising for his sake. Felix. Gosh. What about Seungmin? Seungmin would be devastated. Jisung is 80% of that kid’s impulse control. If Felix is his brother then Seungmin is his child. He raised that baby from his back, brought him up to be less of an asshole than he was in middle school, a feat unachievable by many until Jisung waltzed into that school. Seungmin would spiral, even more out of control than previously, into some caricature of the Joker and ruin himself in the footsteps of Jisung. He would perish, much more painfully.

He had this conversation before, with Seungmin. It was the same. It was the exact same one he had.

Hyung , Seungmin confessed once, I don’t feel pain. I don’t think death is that scary to me. But I’m weak, so I’ll probably go quietly, in the night. No one will know.

No. No please, he begged, I won’t be able to survive without you. You’re holding me together.

Seungmin’s eyes were hollowed out shells, ghosts of what once lived in them lingering in shades, blinking in and out of existence. Nothing makes sense, hyung. None of it does. I’m just a hollow shell, inside and out. I don’t see the point in anything. I just wish it all end, so I can breathe. Hyung I’m scared. I struggle to breathe. Breathing scares me, but I want to breathe my own way. Let me go, hyung, so I can breathe again.

What had Jisung done for Seungmin in that situation? What did he do for his friend who wanted to pass into the beyond?

Jisung drew out his hands from his pockets, burying his face into the palms of his hands. They were warm and sticky. Gross and kept inside for too long.

“I don’t need you to be strong for me,” Minho whispered, “but be strong for them.”

“Did you plan this out, with them?” His voice was muffled with unshed tears. He was so tired and so drained. The food clogged his airways, stopping the breath from leaving out of his lungs. He could understand why and how Seungmin couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t too and it’s been one afternoon of a total stranger calling him out on his shit.

“Nah, but I texted Felix that I got a hold of you. He went half delirious trying to track you down today,” the voice was gentle, yet firm, “Seungmin refused to talk to anyone and only just then let Felix feed him some snacks. They’re waiting for you, near your house. You don’t even have to explain. They just…want to see if you’re okay.”

Jisung stood, skidding from the chair under him, sending it back. A few middle school girls glanced at them and returned to their conversations, nonplussed. He couldn’t tell that he was breathing hard, but Minho told him later that he was, indeed, wheezing. ‘Like you were asthmatic, almost,’ he recounted, almost fondly, as if asthma is something to joke about.

“I want to go home,” Jisung declared and marched away to the bus stop.

Minho followed. After paying, of course.

“Are you reminiscing our past, my dear?” Minho squeezes him even tighter. He’s choking for real now, hitting Minho with his feeble fists.

“No, just remembering the game,” he gasps, “let go, I’m actually dying.”

Minho relents his grip, twinkle in the corners of his eyes. He shimmies side to side, goofy grin on his face. He looks ridiculous.

“Han Jisung,” he singsongs, “let’s play a game.”

“I am not doing this with you, right now.”

“Look, I kept up pretense of you being a fearsome underground drug lord with an iron fist who rules his domain with brutal beheading and alleyway beatings of innocents. You should entertain me on my end too. We agreed on the same terms, baby.”

There is a nose flick that he is absolutely not happy with.

“What game, Lee-ssi?” He resigns himself to his fate. Minho squeals and coos over him, patting his left cheek and pulling his earlobe, giggling fanatically.

“First one to give up loses.” Minho skips to the door, having nicked one of his earrings.

“Lose what? What am I being taunted with?” He recites the words from back then, his initial reaction still mirroring his reaction now, six whooping months later.

“Me!” Minho strikes a pose at the door. Jisung lobs a watch at him. “I want to come over and give you a hug.”

“No,” he bars his arms, crossing them in a Wakandan salute across his chest, “piss off. You’re late.”

“And you’re no fun!”

“Go. Off! Off with you!” Minho pokes out his tongue as he slides in, winking.

“Hey,” he whispers, “I’m proud of you.”

“Do you want me to come over and kick you or something, moron, gosh-”

“You’re smiling again! It means we’re doing a great job!”

The door slams. Jisung lets his arms drop by his sides, pondering.

Huh.

It seems that they are doing a good job.

(Seungmin and Felix were waiting for him in front of his house, Felix bawling and clinging to his arm, just keeping him close. Seungmin, Seungmin knew, could tell there was something off, could tell that this was a mirror image of the death wish he ardently regretted not carrying through. Death no longer pervaded his mind. Jisung’s alive. Jisung’s alive and that’s all that mattered. They came so close to losing him. They were terribly close.

“Hey,” Jisung extended a hand to him and Seungmin crumbled into his reach, bawling, face scrunched in an ugly contortion of his otherwise pretty face. “Sorry. I’m back now.”)

.

“I’m heading outside the corridor,” Hyunjin announces to the dance team who waves him off half-heartedly, some plastered on the floor, some pressing their cheeks onto the mirrors, fogging the glass up. Felix hops up from his corner, engaging in what Chan titles as the Dap and Clap – one-armed hug around the back with the other hands clasping and drawing in. It’s weird. People insist on doing it and he’s not sure why.

“Can I come,” Felix breaks apart from Minho, blinking big eyes at him.

He shrugs. It’s not like it’ll hurt.

Felix flanks one side of him, holding his arm captive. Hyunjin lets himself be dragged along, trying to strategically insert the straightforward ‘Your friend Jisung has my jacket can we work out a way that I can get it back with minimal confrontation?’ question into the conversation about district swimming, but thus far there had been no such opportunities. But he is optimistic. According to many trusted sources (Chan and many others), Jisung will be nearby where Felix does things. Stemming from that information, one must assume Jisung is outside the corridor of the gym, waiting for his friend.

Jisung is outside the corridor of the gym, waiting for his friend.

Funny how Chan is just right sometimes. Sometimes he can be trusted, although he acts like an omnipotent and omni-useless Christian God most of the time. Gives cryptic advice. Creates things then leaves it. Knows everything and hears everything but does nothing about it. Sometimes if people pray a lot and loud enough he sends Braille and breadcrumbs, literally breadcrumbs, for them to decipher his free time in which he can offer limited assistance to their issues.

“Ha-” he coughs and Jisung looks up.

They make sudden eye contact, him wide-eyed and afraid and Jisung? He has those sharp eyes and he stares directly at Hyunjin, intense and probing, digging about in his gaze to dismantle Hyunjin next to Felix. It’s such a powerful stare, almost a glare, which pops up the welcoming thought of how do I get out of this staring contest I’m sorry I didn’t plan things to turn out this way forgive me let me go.

Jisung snaps his head down first, pen pulled out from thin air and scribbles at a terrifying speed on the pages of an open notebook, riddled with blotches of crossed out words and words botched with a tornado of ink.

“And that is our cue to leave,” Felix singsongs, steering him away from the scribbling boy.

“I’m sorry but what?” He’s puzzled, bamboozled, confused. The man in question was right there, within walking distance and he could have very well arranged a meeting in the near future, like tomorrow, to get back his jacket. But no. The stare-off happened and he’s the slightest bit afraid of Han Jisung, not because he has an aura that upholds his title of Mafia Gang Leader, but also he has a stare that can probably kill Hyunjin if he tries hard enough and Hyunjin? He’s a smart lad. He’s not approaching him again unless he’s armed or he has Felix between them.

“He gets into creative inspirations really randomly,” Felix explains, which in itself wasn’t a good explanation, “when they happen, we just leave him be until he’s done with jotting down all the notes.”

“Does he get violent during these sessions?” Hyunjin tentatively approaches. Felix laughs, covering his mouth with the back of his hand.

“No, no, he just has a harsh stare, but he has no motivation to do anything to anyone, don’t worry.”

They’ve come to a stop at the gates. Felix fishes out his phone, tapping it onto his lips, staring at Hyunjin.

“Are you busy on the weekends?”

“Saturday, I got training until 10 and after 2. Sunday’s completely full. Why? Are you buying me food?” He’s hopping on one foot in excitement, eyes large. Outside of the school grounds, Felix and Woojin exist as a dynamic unit. This unit is very hospitable. They invite people to lunches and dinners with them, at no cost to the invited guests. One only need to turn up. Be a nice human being. Establish connections. Get invited for free food again.

It’s a simple and commensal system. Hyunjin is a growing boy. He always craves more food. He’s willing to sit through what possibly would be a ‘meet your in-laws’ lunch because Woojin raised him and Felix is his spouse and it will be sort of awkward at the start, but he will brave through it. He will do his best, for the food.

“Just a small picnic thing. Chris, Changbin, Jeongin, Minho and us. It’ll be nice to get out and do things together,” Felix smiles, cherry lips pressing together. Hyunjin is reminded once again that this is the academy’s Golden Boy, pretty and kind and talented and hardworking. Perfect. Everything sweet, sugar and nice.

He said that wrong. Whoops.

Point is – Felix is near-perfect, and he scares Hyunjin a little. However, food. Food is priority. Many free things.

“I’ll come,” Hyunjin agrees, quite easily. “Jisung is coming too, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, to give back your jacket. Don’t worry. If I’m going then he’ll come. I’m dragging Seungmin too.”

Ooh. That’s a hard one. That’s a hard one to pull, with Changbin being invited and Seungmin being forced to come.

“You do know about the…Changbin-Seungmin fall-out right and how,” he makes vague hand gestures to properly convey the whole ‘one day they were friends and the other day they weren’t and Seungmin had been angry since February’. Felix shakes his head, the pacifist that he is, and smiles bright and proper. It blinds Hyunjin a little.

“Fully. But it’s food. It ought to bring people together. Run along now, you’re late for something,” Felix smiles beatifically one last time, waving with his phone and Hyunjin walks backwards, still sceptical about forcing that interaction on Seungmin, who’s known for being prone to angry fits. He’s tall and he plays baseball. He can do some serious damage on tiny Seo Changbin who swims butterfly and can juggle tennis balls.

That’s outside of his realm of worry, but he’s ready to step in to break off any fights if Changbin’s safety is threatened, Seungmin’s fists are deadly be damned.

.

Something happened and another thing happened – now he’s in backstage with Felix who he vaguely remembered as the one pushing and coercing him to accompany his visit to backstage.

“Hey,” Felix clasped many people who he did not know in half-hugs. “Great job! You’re doing really well! Keep it up!”

"I don’t like being here. It’s all dark and cramped. People are everywhere,” he whinged the whole way, dragging his feet like a petulant child after being withheld his request for a sleepover. “Why am I here?”

“To help Jeongin, duh,” Felix kept the pace in front of him, pulling the weight of Jisung and his refusal to be talked into his friend’s extracurriculars.

“Why? I don’t help, Lee, I need the help,” he stressed, with more desperation than he would prefer. “Let me go. Jeongin owed me something, once upon a time. It’s already a broken bridge. Don’t do this to me Lee.”

He is here, now, before Jeongin and Woojin, Woojin chatting with a couple of alumni he recognised vaguely from years past. Jeongin is remarkably taller and less skittish than he expected, discussing in a low tone on lovely topics of finance and managing the moneys. Felix is gone, long gone with the dancers, all of them matching their clothes to the choreography they’re dancing to.

“Jisung-hyung!” Jeongin sees him. “Hi!”

“Oh no,” he mutters, wishing their school uniform was less bright and sunshine-y. It’s not ideal to hide with a bright ass white shirt. And one sole earring on the right ear because Minho made off with his other one and he doesn’t have any other earrings at home that remain pairs.

“Jeongin. Hello,” he steps back tersely, “how lively and involved you are.”

“Bit of a business nerd myself,” the boy shrugs, no longer fearful around Jisung. It’s unfortunate that way. Second encounters remove all fear and crippling terror at Jisung’s supposed Drug Lord Enigma persona. It’s a shame, but a lot of the school’s population doesn’t make it past the first encounter that often to be less fearful of him. But here he is, pretending to be chums with Yang Jeongin, a victim of his web of deception and manipulation. It is mortifying, to be seen as less than intimidating. He isn’t up his arse normally, outside of arranging music and scribbling half-baked lyrics, but having inexplicable astuteness in proxying others around is a fact he prides himself on.

Never mind that then. Jeongin doesn’t see him as a lot beyond the little overlord who helped him once for a favour. Jeongin flips through a couple more pages, pen dangling on a thread on his wrist, ink marks on his wrist and palm and on his cheeks. There is a calculator sticking out from his school slacks.

“Are you now?” Jisung comments mildly. “What exactly do you do here?”

“Managing incoming donations and allocating appropriate funds to groups who require them. I’m negotiating some numbers for prop production and dance costumes. Felix is gathering designs and logistics for me. It’s all going really well. Do you know we have a lot of alumni donating to our cause? It’s plenty to have more than one show. Chan-hyung was thinking we should have another show so he and I were going through everything and see if we can pull through with a second show.”

“Lovely,” he wheezes out, “cool.”

“Woojin-hyung wants to have someone video everything about this process. Can you, perhaps,” Jeongin whisks out a camera from thin air and offers it up to Jisung, “try?”

“I have shaky and unreliable videography,” he declines.

“I can get someone else to do it, sure, but hyung did mention your name,” Jeongin shrugs, “so if you want to square up against that, sure.”

I wouldn’t advise it – his face grimaces. You’re up against the wrath of the Overlord. Capital O.

“Oh for the love of-” he takes the camera. “If you’re learning manipulation techniques from me, then expect retaliation. I will crush you.”

“Thanks hyung!” Jeongin completely ignores him, slapping him in a bro-esque manner across the upper arm. “This way we can have proper music because you won’t be killed by Woojin-hyung!”

“I knew there was an ulterior motive,” he mutters and is pushed away. In petty and utterly useless retaliation, he points the camera at Jeongin, head close to Woojin, both discussing fervently, eyes narrowed and serious. Woojin has on glasses, lips pursed, tongue in his cheek, highlighter strewn out from his back pocket, rulers between his fingers. He looks up, smiles at Jisung, waves and looks back at the treasury, both grasping at the falling pages and leaning on nothing to write.

The epitome of students writing on air.

He turns, wandering and stumbling onto a group of artists. Changbin crouches nearby, paintbrush held in one hand, the other pointing and semi-yelling at Eric to ‘stop that you moron you’ll spill all the paint!’

It’s a shame that Jisung happens to capture Eric dips a finger into the tub and smears it on Changbin’s cheek, cackling as the older boy very gently sets down the paintbrush, taps at his cheek and knee and boomerang-style flings two rulers at Eric’s calves, felling a spectacular tree-child. Nobody bats an eye and he’s too busy scooting away lest Changbin flings things at him too.

Something also bugs him. What was it?

He points his camera this time at the troupe of actors who’s shuffling and annotating their scripts, yelling at Chan who has a whistle around his neck and a megaphone he’s carrying around.

“No, shut up, sit down! Yes, sit!” He screams at a row of freshmen who drop down obediently while Seungmin leads the backing of a dissonant complaining chorus.

Seungmin. Oh gosh. Seungmin.

Changbin throws like Seungmin. Changbin throws in the exact same bloody pose Seungmin does. Jisung saw it in effect, all the weird crouching and leg pulling typical and expected of a baseball toss. What’s so Seungmin-esque about it is the fact that the little ritual Seungmin does before every throw – two fingers, middle and pointer, tapping on his right cheek then his left knee. That’s a carbon copy of a Seungmin throw. Chances of success are 90 out of 100.

Seungmin was hell-bent on Felix and him learning the Toss, but neither one of them participate or have a maniacal love for baseball. They had indulged him up to the point of throwing meagrely to him before practice, but they both sucked. Pathetic and useless, to quote verbatim, which is accurate, but also not because they don’t play the damn sports, can you swim freestyle at my time, Kim Seungmin?

“I taught this to someone and he got it perfectly! A good arc! Gosh you guys are disappointing! I wish I took him to practice instead.” Seungmin had thrown a fit worthy of an Oscar trophy, shaking his fists at disappointment in Jisung’s direction, who was at best pretending to care.

“Good for him,” Felix had yawned.

Changbin is the guy. Changbin is the friend who was taught baseball and as far as he knows, doesn’t play any baseball but practiced it to a proficient extent of getting praised by a semi-pro player.

And how did these two fall apart, again?

Changbin is still chasing Eric around, now with Kevin blasting various Wii music and meme soundtracks at the back, overpowering the scarce instrumentalists trying their hardest to tune their instruments.

Jisung points the camera at Seungmin who is still screaming at Chan but turns his head when Eric’s shout of ‘Spare me Binnie-hyung!’ startles everyone else. Through the lens the Keats longing of an unattainable muse is crystal clear, actor Seungmin forlornly reaching with silence for his muse Changbin to no avail.

That’s almost sad. What’s sadder is when someone pokes Seungmin and gets a round of retaliation from a rolled-up script. Jisung’s camera lens captures the split moment where Seungmin’s eyes stray from the back of Changbin’s head to his assaulter and Changbin’s eyes replacing that emptiness, beckoning for Seungmin to meet eyes with him just as Seungmin had, mere moments ago.

Huh. If Jisung was more capable, he would attempt a love song. But he’s not, so he’ll store that video for a different time, perhaps to build a bridge.

“Hello,” Woojin clasps his hands onto Jisung’s shoulder, jostling the thin and bony boy and the camera, him diving to steady it and protect the implement. “We’re having a picnic soon. Join us.”

“Who is this nebulous ‘us’ that you speak of?” He queries, all wariness. Woojin beams even brighter, an impossible task in this half-lit space. “Stop being happy around me, it’s giving me rashes.”

“Gosh dear, you do speak a bit like Seungmin,” the other boy winks. “By us I meant Chan, Felix, Jeonging, Changbin, Minho, Seungmin and Hyunjin.”

“I had been informed of my uncanny resemblance to Kim Seungmin but I can assure you quite emphatically that we are two distinct beings,” he cradles the camera, tapping on the top of it with the tips of his fingernails. “How many people are coming? Did you say Seungmin and Changbin?”

Woojin shrugs. Jisung repeats, as if it’s not clear what a horrendously terrible idea that was being proposed first time around and it requires a second reiteration.

“Did you tell them each other was coming? You know Seungmin is pure trash underneath that pretty face. You know Changbin is going to freak. They’re both going to freak. I’m going to freak.” He’s freaking out and he doesn’t care that he’s freaking out, only that Woojin doesn’t seem to think this is significant. Gosh. It’s like he wants to make things worse.

“It was Felix’s idea,” the older boy defends, “absolutely his.”

“I’m not surprised. But you could’ve stopped him. Talk him out of dangerous thinking. Exist in your natural pacifist state. Gosh,” he splutters, winded. “It’s like I speak Malay to you people.”

Woojin seems amused, a corner of his mouth pulled up. On the right side. It probably is charming and alluring to Felix who seems to be falling and tripping at his feet whenever there is a Woojin Smile™ present and flashing at him. God forbid anyone say no to that smile. Or start a war against it. It simply is not so.

“Yes, but understand this,” Woojin carefully clips on his missing earring, sweeping his hair aside. Jisung momentarily has a heart-stopping moment where he is very aware of how close Woojin is, how his cologne is nice and how he’s fully pretty.

“Felix insisted. I only went along with it,” he steps away, smiling benignly, as if he’s not aware he could have very well given Jisung a heart attack and killed him off with a smile.

Jisung honest to God wheezes. He’s hitting himself in the ribs and coughing.

“ Yeah ,” he chokes and coughs, dying. “No. You’re too pretty and it’s messing with me. Step away. Lemme breathe, gosh who made you so pretty?”

Woojin offhandedly offers the comment of ‘If you see Hwang Hyunjin then you would think otherwise’ which is absolute rubbish because Jisung has a weak spot for pretty people who have pretty smiles.

“I was attacked,” he wheezes again, “and soon I’ll be attacked by Seungmin throwing arms around because he’s awkward with Changbin for no known reasons and he’ll cancel himself out faster than me cancelling my subscription to life.”

“You would find that you’re being a tad dramatic,” Woojin ruffles the back of his own hair, crinkling his eyes, “they would cope fine. I don’t think Felix would be that foolish to risk his friendship with Seungmin without considering the risks first.”

“You say that, but it’s Felix, idiot extraordinaire,” he mutters.

“Things will be okay, Jisung-ah. Worry about your jacket situation first. Hwang Hyunjin, jacket guy, is coming.”

“Is he now. Is the whole school coming to this picnic of ours now.” He blandly states.

“Things will be okay,” Woojin reaffirms.

“That’s what they said about Kim Jong Il but look where we ended up!”

.

Looking at the discarded lyrics littering his room in a tower of fallen and crumbled up words and tree corpses, he harbours the desire to tear all of it up and throw everything away. Get out of here. This is District 9. Talk, talk, but no one hear you. Will you sew your mouth shut with that thread you spun from your hair or will you stab that needle onto skin, to water the ground with tainted blood?

These are dark. This ought to be burnt. Some had already been burnt by his father. He had broken down that day too, eyes burning with the quickly extinguished flame lit by the fire.

“I’m willing to bet your hatred of me in return for your success later on in life,” the man told him those words, even, calm, convicted in this twisted way of thinking. There was no reason, there was no madness. There was something just so deeply deranged about that thinking that it made Jisung seethed deep inside his gut. It hardened his liver and lungs, cementing what’s left of his blood.

“Alright father,” he conceded, “but I will not forget and I will never forgive you.”

He had evidently not. Freud would have a field day analysing Jisung’s clear Oedipus complex, but that is not the root of the matter – he despises his father, but his mother he holds nothing against. He does not wrong those who had not wronged him, but Agamemnon had informed him of the cyclical nature of vengeance. Blood upon blood will bleed. He is too pragmatic and too lazy to plan and commit patricide, but he is vengeful. His blood and tears had been torn open and set in flames. That he would never forgive. Vindictiveness breeds further vindictiveness. 

He would write and would make music, until his fingers can’t hold a pen any longer and his throat spits out blood from straining his voice too hard, but he will persevere.

He will climb back, up and out of the tunnel he and others had thrown him in. Seeing that boy had shown him something. Like beauty that can exist on this barren land. Like a compass and a guiding light out of the pit of stormy seas.

I’m escaping from my dark past, shining on my path ahead, tiresome times that drove me crazy, I’m running so I can forget. As long as I stay with my heart, I can rely on a broken compass.

Perhaps he should extend thanks to that boy who gave him the light, but as things are, they never got to exchange names. And as things are, he shall live in Jisung’s words. The best muses achieve immortality that way.

Felix did come back to get him so they could walk home together. Jisung queried into the identity of the person, but only mildly. He conveniently forgot the name to the face.

.

“You’re late,” is what Changbin comments on when he picks up.

Why Changbin? Why is he late? Why is he calling Changbin freshly at 11 on a Saturday morning, clear of tuition and not his trusted snake friends?

“Sorry. My brother needed help fixing up his life and I had to lend a hand, because I’m younger and this society rules that age is power,” he grits, forcing an arm into the backpack strap. “Tell the friends I am alive, never well, I hate the two snakes you got with you and I’m en route to the bus station. Will be there in 20 minutes. Give or take.”

“Okay cool, Chan just wanted to know when you’re coming because we bought chickens and we need more than 5 people to hold him back from salivating or running off with them,” there is ease but an urgency is not even implied, it is explicit with the teeth grinding. “Walk faster.”

“Let him go off. I got coupons for a group catering type thing,” he narrowly misses the stop.

“All clear. Unleash the beast,” Changbin calls. “I’m off. He’s actually salivating.”

Jisung steps on the bus and mentally prepares for literal hell, because teenage boys together in one place whose personalities clash will only be disastrous to themselves and others.

Upon his arrival, these things occur, because nine people who have three friends in common with this other person who is friends with this other person’s dog on three picnic towels and a lot of unhealthy snacks are bound to combust in senseless shenanigans.

The Seungmin/Changbin Pringle Exchange or Do I give you my Pringle can out of politeness or do I hog it in pettiness? Alternatively, the Seungmin option: buffer in real life and have Changbin apologise profusely, then tiptoe around the guy for the rest of the day in his periphery, very stalkerish and very awkward turtle-esque, with nobody commenting on it, but judging on it. Changbin is either aware of it and is too creeped out to comment on the creepiness of it or he’s utterly blind to it, either case holding up very well. But the thing that bugs Jisung is that they’re doing the thing again. Theatre? Can’t hold ‘em back they’re back at it again with the thing. The thing with the looking at each other when the other person isn’t looking. Why. Why must they do that. People can see. People can see them and people are uncomfortable because they’re uncomfortable. Why can they not take this somewhere else?

Changbin squints at Seungmin scurrying in obvious fear of persecution to hide behind Minho, face a pale sheet of paper, his own face like someone had thrown freezing water on him first thing in the morning to wake him up. Ooh. Ooh that’s not pretty. He looks more like Hannibal Lecter that way.

“Quit that look,” Jisung snaps his fingers in front of the scowling boy, who struggles with smoothing his face into neutrality, stuffing his cheeks with chicken strips. Chan watches over them, impish Jesus smile ready on his face. He can hear the chant, the words spelling out obviously over Chan’s head.

Ask me about them. Ask me about them. Ask me about them. Ask me. Me. Me.

He pokes out a tongue. No way is he getting in the middle of that. These two can solve their own little diff themselves. He has no business in intervening, unless he has a death wish. A slow painful death wish.

He scoots away, checking in on Jeongin and Minho who squeezes him in an octopus grip for a solid minute before moving onto Jeongin, whose face turns from red to purple to artificial grape-coloured, not an ideal shade, as Jisung crawls away, to escape.

Escape is not on the agenda today. It is for him. It’s not for life, destiny, karma, Lady Luck.

“Oi Han,” Seungmin hisses, nudging him with the Pringle can, “can you give this-”

Jisung can’t hear. He can’t understand Korean. Korean whomst’ve? He can’t invest in language ability on a nice sunny day. He lies down on the ground and not-so-subtly rolls away in a side tumble, winding with grass bits and dirt on his neck, back and under his shirt. Felix casts him a look of utter disdain, but not of surprise, because the earth has a stronger gravitational attraction to Jisung than every other thing on this rock, because he is always rolling and ending up sprawled on the ground. He’s not going to ask.

“Jisung’s on the ground again,” Woojin observes. Felix thinly slices the bananas and forces a slice onto him, shaking his head. “Are we not going to ask him why?” The older boy muses, biting a chunk of the fruit.

“We don’t. We let my friends suffer,” Felix denies, feeding him another slice of banana with Woojin laughing, eyes pulled up into half-crescents.

Then there is the Minho greeting.

“You’re late, asshole,” Minho whales and lobs a filthy shoe at him. He doesn’t exercise nor does he engage in this particular interaction because it taxes him of the will to live when he’s near Minho. He watches, dissociated, as the shoe knocks into his thigh and bounces off, plopping onto the grass.

“Same,” he comments.

“This is not Tumblr,” the older boy grouses, “give me a hug.”

“If I die between here and there, can I be excused from it?”

“Jisung ~”

Jeongin looks at him, suffering, eyes urging him to just hug it out and leave the rest of us here to peace why won’t you .

Minho knocks the Whinging Factor up a notch and he’s slowly losing the shreds of his sanity and impulse control, so he bends down for a subpar hug to get it over and done with, only to be yanked down in a two-bodied slump and an octopus Minho hanging onto him, rolling the both of them on the ground, his glasses falling off and hitting the ground just a bit less than how hard he hit the ground.

He can’t even untangle himself because he is a weak and unathletic individual while Minho press-benches and regularly does push ups with three humans on his back. He submits to his fate and hopes he loses the guy’s attention fast enough that he can roll away to oblivion, safety, whatever and to never return.

“My dear,” Minho gasps, “how I’ve missed you!”

“I could tell,” he wheezes, “can I go?”

“In a bit,” his own face is pulled to Minho’s cheek, a disgusting cheek-to-cheek contact that is forcibly prolonged on Minho’s end, “okay now you may leave.”  

How could he forget Murder Discovery, the place where you find out who the local murderers are at?

Jeongin points the butt of the butter knife at him, voice bland, the emotions taxed out of him.

“Are you…. perhaps…”

“You peel your grapes?” Chan shrieks in horrified fascination, like one would with a car crash – with the defensive mechanism of a nervous smile at his arsenal.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he deposits the peels of the grapes into the wide plastic bag of the corn chips, cringing at the clinging fruit skins. “I don’t like the taste of ‘em.”

“Oh my god you’re basically a murderer,” Jeongin aptly inserts the Darth Vader Whisper. “I’m sitting next to a murderer.”

“In what world does peeling your grapes equate to killing people?” His face scrunches in abject confusion and discombobulation. He would’ve wheezed if the fruits aren’t inside his mouth, one eye of his twitching and half-closing behind his glasses. “What. How?”

“No, no, peeling your grapes is a sign of peeling flesh,” Changbin interrupts. “Like you peel your humans like how you peel grapes. One at a time.”

“Skin’s very hard to peel though,” he muses.

“Not if you have a good knife. A sharp one. You dig under the epidermis, right, and then you make an incision and you tear the flap off.”

Well.

That’s…very detailed. It sounds as if he has experience in it. Changbin already has a case of severe Resting Bitch Face. Combined with the skin peeling knowledge, it won’t be long until people start spreading rumours about him being a murderer.

“You know way too much about this. I am concerned,” Felix points at him, overhearing their words.

“He peels grapes!” Chan shrieks at Jisung.

“He knows how to peel human skin!” Jisung shrieks back, equally dissonant.

“You both need help,” Changbin mutters.  

Of course, one must not forget the ice cream incident.

“You know what this taste like?” Seungmin points to him with the cone, the top of the ice cream bitten off unceremoniously in true Seungmin fashion. “Two dollars.” The child concludes, without heeding a word of Jisung’s input.

“The ice cream…tastes like two dollars.” He’s not quite sure what expression or tone of voice is appropriate for this sort of statement, all firmly confused.

“May I ask how you know what two dollars taste like?” Jeongin tilts his head to one side, blinking rapidly, to shut out the bullshit from entering his brain.

“It tastes exactly like how I imagine two dollars would taste like. Water with flavour. Nice flavouring. Like I would pay two bucks for flavoured water, for sure, and if that flavoured water comes in the form of ice cream? Ding ding ding bitches I’m eating this thing.”

“Have they made murder legal yet?” Jisung sits on Seungmin’s leg.

“Not since last I checked,” Felix mournfully informs him.

“Are you conspiring to kill me, you two, my mates, my brothers from the same month, my brothers from different-”

“Catch me in jail, I’m about to stab a moron,” he bides adieu to Felix and lies on top of Seungmin, crushing the child. There are about seven different notes in panicked frequencies that escape the Great, the Noble, the Stupid Kim, as he bumpy-irons over Seungmin, cackling along with Felix who’s howling in hysterics, pointing and flopping his feet and his wrists as Seungmin shrieks, hyperventilating as if he is being crushed to death. Hold on. He lifts himself up, checking on the breathing.

Seungmin feigns a faked gasp, choking on his lies. Jisung drops back down, digging an elbow onto the side of his friend’s stomach and presses down, triumphant as Seungmin gasps ‘I yield! I yield!’

Jisung sticks a hand over the idiot friend’s skull when there is a person in sight, very near to Seungmin, and jerks him away in pure wrestling style. His friend chokes on pure air, at being released, and Jisung grouses to annoyance, wondering who has the audacity to just stand there and interrupt an elaborate humiliation ritual designated for Seungmin.

Looking up from the ground is an extremely strenuous effort, especially after that wrestling debacle, but he’s willing to pour all of his anger and frustration into this perfectly harmless and unaware individual, as he does with the projection of his failures – unto others.

“Oh,” he hears the lyrics and the music he ascribed to them. I can rely on a broken compass.

“Sorry for that,” Muse with capital M peers down at him, concerned, “do you want a hand?”  

Felix approaches him with a smile, Muse in tow. Jisung is not ready. He doesn’t ask to be subjected to all of these confrontations all in one morning. Muse boy is very pretty. Fully pretty. Extremely attractive. Tragically his type. The usual drill.

“What,” he deadpans, more at Felix than the newcomer, undoubtedly Felix’s friend. He’s tall too. Taller than all of them there, although that’s not hard to achieve. They are not a very tall bunch.

“This is Hwang Hyunjin, a swimming brother and a dance brother. Jinnie, this is my friend, the menace, the ji in jilix, Han Jisung,” he gives up his wrist, unwillingly, face in full I Will Run You Over With A Lawnmower If You Go Into Asshole Mood mode. “Be nice.”

Jisung proposes a hand with a civil and safe ‘Nice to know you.’

Hwang Hyunjin decides to dive straight to ‘You have my sports jacket for two weeks and I need it back because I’m running in two hours.’

“Al ~ right then,” Jisung singsongs, not in his usual mocking mannerisms, but in dire fear of Hwang’s sanity. “I’ll see where it is.”

Maybe he didn’t make it clear that his statement also translates to Now leave me to my own devices, because you are pretty and it scares and fascinates me because Hwang Hyunjin is tailing him around and it is deeply uncomfortable for him and his gay ass.

Regardless, he still manoeuvres around Woojin wrestling Chan to the picnic blanket because ‘I’m trying to see if grass is edible – it’s for science’ to which Woojin screeches in mild distress ‘No it bloody isn’t you stupid omnivore! You’ll die!’. Changbin turns to them, eyes half open from napping in Felix’s arms, probably talking and rapping in his sleep, squinting at Jisung then Hyunjin, grumbles and turns back into Felix, exhaling harshly.

“Hyung is so clingy,” Hyunjin observes.

“I didn’t think he would be, but apparently he is,” he mutters, sidestepping many legs and reaching for his bag. “You guys friends?”

“Yeah, since elementary. He was like, my GBF.” Hyunjin grins, friendly and detached. Jisung rummages through his unusually heavy and multi-comparted bag, squinting as he looks up.

“That’s a movie. I’m sure that’s a movie and it was such a big hype.”

“Oh it fully is. Good pick up. To be fair, he was my gay awakening too,” Hyunjin hums, all proud of that fact.

Jisung is sort of glad the pretty one is odd and oversharing personal information upon the first meeting. It takes away all the intimidating ‘I have good genes and I am socially superior to your average conventional face’ pose he has going.

“I’m sure he’s happy to know that,” he hums, seeing the jacket poke up from behind his Kundera book. “Here we are.”

“We were each other’s mutual gay awakening. It was great. It brought us closer that way. You know, best friends who are gay for each other stay together kinda thing. It’s such a shame we didn’t fall for each other. It must’ve been glorious,” Hyunjin shifts and leans down, nice fabric softener smell clinging onto his clothes. Smells like lemon and apple.

“Please don’t start singing-” Damn his face and his stupid lemony apple scent – if this punk starts bellowing that stupid ass song that he can’t get out of his head -  

“I FEEL GLORIOUS GLORIOUS GOT A CHANCE TO START-”

“Okay, goodbye!” He pulls the jacket by the sleeve and tosses it at Hyunjin’s face, steaming. “Now I can’t get that song out of my head oh my god I’ll be humming and singing it for the week thanks a lot asswipe.”

“You’re not scary at all,” Hyunjin steps back and catches the crumbled-up jacket fluidly, like he is of water and is a Water Bending practitioner. “I thought differently.”

“Don’t listen to the rumours. Some even have me as a fire-breathing eldritch from the pit of Gollum’s cave. But I do execute gruesome beheadings of my enemies if you happen to cross me. So don’t.”

The boy starts to walk backwards, draping his jacket over his slim shoulders, smile radiant like the bloody sun had decided to drop down to Jisung’s eye level to amplify the blast from Colgate Wake Up and Shine campaign in a literal person so he’s more inclined to love their products and feel the brightness of the sun, as if being infinite number of kilometres away isn’t enough for him to ascertain that yes, the sun is bright and an asshole.

“I stand firmly by my words. I have to go now, I’ll be actually late if I don’t turn up on time. I’ll see you soon,” the guy beams, all crescent eyes.

“Goodbye. I hope not,” Jisung with his disgusted eyes and shrinking into himself. “Leave, weird movie fanatic.”

“I can’t! I have to see what you wrote about me then we can pretend we don’t know each other!” Hyunjin jogs back and waves, still blinding even from 5 metres away.

Jisung has a feeling that that statement is not going where he wants it to go and it’ll jinx his life for the rest of the year because once he stated something, it’ll turn against him. Karma is nice like that. He wronged it in a way and now it’s taking vengeance on his ass.

“Tangerines?” Minho offers a plate full of the stuff, unaware of the high-tension face-off he was just in.

“They’re mandarins,” he argues and plops down.

.

He called it. He bloody called it.

“Hey! Jisung!” Hwang Hyunjin, all in his jacketed glory, tall-ish and Colgate smiley self, long arms and longer legs bouncing yonder, excited and happy, God forbid, to see him. He regrets accompanying Seungmin, Felix off somewhere running errands with Woojin, those two disgustingly in love as usual, and Seungmin gets lonely. Seungmin is lonely enough to bully a passive Jisung to drag his feet over to see him practice his lines for the play, courtesy of a Bang Chan writing those words.

“Hide me,” he hisses and tries to dive behind his friend who steps aside, into someone else, rather than make contact with Jisung, he who is a close mate of the brat Kim Seungmin. Glaring, he is ready to defy statutory murder legislations to break Seungmin into the Circle of Hell for betrayal, seething.

Until he sees who Seungmin bumped into. Hyunjin is near him, arms raised for hug where Jisung’s protective instincts just kick in. He doesn’t even think. He sees Changbin, sees Seungmin, all the cogs running overtime and throws himself onto Changbin, throwing Seungmin at Hyunjin.

“Hello!” He dashes in front of Changbin. “I would like to offer myself as tribute. Take me away oh cringey one. Take me.”

He ushers Changbin quickly away from the mess he wrecked, passing off a hasty ‘sorry!’ to Hyunjin and Seungmin, making vague eye contact to one tall child to another. Please help each other out. I am going to damage control all of this.

Seungmin’s eyes had flared, in the most unsettling and deeply disturbed way, as if he can’t bear to make contact with Changbin without breaking out in rashes and contracting the Plague in the same breath. This is not hatred. This is avoidance. This is avoidance because of trauma and heartbreak. This is ‘Please don’t touch me you threw me in front of the enemy line before’ culture. This is ‘You rejected my proposal then kicked me in the face so hard my nose needed emergency surgery’ avoidance reason.

To be fair those two situations are equally likely with Seungmin because he is a pretty boy. Plenty of proposals are floating about elsewhere.

What really cemented the emergency intervention was Changbin’s brief flick of panic that barrelled into Frozen Prey In Front of Headlights Unable To Move Out Of The Way. He saved them both from the trouble of interacting with each other. God only knows how badly that would’ve went off, with Seungmin still simpering about the picnic. Simpering and staring off into space, blinking at the same spot on the ceiling. He zoned out for quite a bit – after Felix’s two calls and his own, they gave up, leaving him. Before any of this play thing, Seo Changbin wasn’t a part of their life – but karma has a way of stringing things along. Seungmin’s fate just happens to be on a string titled Please Talk To Seo We’re Tired Of Your Skirting It’s Making Us Stress but he doesn’t see it and Changbin is too afraid of approaching Seungmin about it (honestly who wouldn’t). They are to be kept apart until further discussions about this thing are to be held. Mainly between Felix and him.

“I’m not feeling well,” Changbin turns around and smothers his perfectly smooth collar into a crumbled one, “I’ll just head off. Find Chris.”

“If you’re sure,” Jisung mayhap lets it be obvious that he is concerned. Changbin’s troubled expression flashes with the barest of a smile.

“How odd. Han Jisung caring.”

He shuts off his expression but grants Changbin one sharp concerned glare. “I’m finding Bang. You do what you need to do and like, call me if you’re dying.”

“I will, I will.”

Chan beams, bright and maniacal, when he subjects himself for an enveloping bear hug, being swung side to side.

“Hi, hi, hi,” the boy chants, excitable, “you’re here, you’re here.”

“Not by my own accord, no,” he mumbles, “nice to see you too Chris.”

“Bean sent you over right? Of course he did, he knows I need your expertise now rather than him. What is Bean good for except drama in plot?” Chan pontificates and Jisung narrowly misses his waving fists, eyes impassive with disapproval.

“Spell Bean for me,” he requests.

“B-E-A-N. Today is a good bean day and not rubbish dumping ground day, little young grasshopper,” Chan informs him serenely, like an Asian buff Yoda, “why did he send you over, by the way?”

“Seungmin. Bumped into each other. Also I’m trying to hide from over enthusiastic Hwang Hyunjin too please shelter me. What happened there with,” he gestures vaguely to Hyunjin and Seungmin, huddled awkwardly around each other, one taller child suffering through Seungmin’s emotionally shaken monologues.

“That? Seungmin and Changbin had a thing. Then they had a big falling out. Since then they can’t stand to be in the same room,” Chan shrugs and gives him an earphone, “I’m surprised you finally came to me about it.”

“Yeah me too,” he mutters, “what is this?”

“Remember those edits you did for School life? This is it. I wrote music for it,” Chan gracefully shoves the earpiece into his ear canal, with a lot of protesting from him.

“You wrote music for my shitty edit-” he gripes and shuts up when the good music hits him.

Chan doesn’t provide snide commentary, just mills around and beams, genuinely proud. Praise my music – his posture screams. Jisung deems one head pat is enough – partly because this is a sort of praise that ought to be cultivated and selected carefully like aged wine and shouldn’t be told in a darkened theatre room with forty odd children screaming about and partly because he can’t grant nice words of praise put on the spot so a pat will suffice.

“Han,” Felix emerges out of nowhere, “let’s stop chatting and do more next time. Come, I gotta go, Rachel’s screaming for me.”

“Go away you fake brunette,” he bats his friend off, disentangling himself from the mess of earphones, “thank you for sharing your music with me,” he turns and bows to Chan, meaning every word of the thanks.

“Next time you can show me lyrics of your own,” Chan lingers, smile holding the expectation of some good lyrics.

The words of the songs jostle in his head, but he cannot unveil them. Not until he puts together everything and deletes some out of frustration. He gives a half nod, grabbing hold of Felix’s wrist and getting pulled out of there.

“Hyunjin asked for you when you left,” Seungmin’s bored tone, a pretence he wears, booms from the speaker. “Guy was excited to rave about his recent win in sports.”

“Cute but I’m not interested,” he shuffles and shifts through a mountain of paper, more crosses across the words than legible words themselves, the manufacture of his inspiration and self-hatred colliding, creation colliding with destruction, the product being nothingness. Emptiness. No things of value.

Ah ha! He dives at the crumpled page, half maths notes, half stage setup, the very end of the page being lyrics that he scribbled down when he saw Hwang Hyunjin for the first time. How odd it is that the subject of his inspiration now has a name. How odd that he’s writing even more now knowing the person from the fragments of words they exchanged and imagining the person, from the words he wrote on the page.

.

“Are you writing again, Jisung?” Seungmin quizzes curiously, all pretences dropped. There is a fondness, unbeknownst to many except for his closest friends, the fondness that exists, just not in excess and all too bewildering to the recipients of it.

“Yeah,” he deliberates on a longer answer, but he wants this conversation to continue. They don’t talk like this much. They should.

“What about?”

“Myself. Depression. Lots of depression. I feel like I’m advertising my mental illness here like,” he flourishes his arms, sarcasm abounded, “I am depressed. Now leave me alone!”

“You wicked, wicked one. How dare you advertise your mental illnesses in such a way? What will the world make of this information?” Seungmin responds with just as much extra stored in him.

“Probably run it by the useless counsellors and bother me excessively by it. The usual,” he shrugs, pulling out a pen to scribble on the back of his English notes. “How are you feeling?”

“Functioning. Doing better than I hope. You strangely are not questioning me about things, why?”

“Because I know you and I’d rather you tell me everything rather than seeking you out actively. Why? I can just wait and extract information as the lazy bastard I am,” the room has less air to breathe in now, he who cannot seek air in this space, but he pushes forward, determined to break through the wall for the outside air to fester inside the airtight room.

“Maybe later,” Seungmin hums, “I’ll tell you things later.”

“Alright.” He ought to go up, up the elevator, not down. Down means regression. Down means no change. “You know you can just…tell me stuff right? Things get blown out of proportion real quick when miscommunication is involved.”

“I’ll be good. I’ll be fine. I will survive,” Seungmin asserts, firm. Changes his tone to conversational, detached, fun and sarcastic asshole-ish in the next vein. The actor blood in him is strong. “Also your glasses need to be picked up on Saturday and I can’t go with you to fetch ‘em. 

Take Felix. Tomorrow I’m also busy with choir prep. Go on without me.”

“However will we survive? Without you, I am nothing. Without you I cannot go on in this trash life. I need your strong, manly,” he chokes a bit in the exaggeration. Seungmin does not have manly arms. “Arms to hold and support me through this miserable existence.”

“You choked through your web of lies didn’t ya?” He hears the mockery, smug and comfortable with the knowledge of being the one to cause all this pain.

“I’m hanging up. You’re a bad friend.”

“You’re a worse friend, Jisungie, but here we are, friending each other.”

“Do not verb the noun, you troglodyte. God, it’s like I raised two cavemen under my wings. Do not verb the noun,” he calls to his phone as Seungmin cackles and hangs up.

“Children,” he bristles, “how ungrateful.”

There is a knock. He quickly throws the pieces of paper into the drawer under his desk and pulls open his history books, half-pretending to study. He doesn’t grant permission to enter, but his father does not possess human decency or privacy awareness. He simply enters, regardless of a yes or no answer. In fact, the knocking was redundant. He has no need to knock if he is to enter either way. He stands at the doorway. Tall. Imposing. Taking up a lot of space physically.

“How was school?” The man asks, the question a complete obligation of fatherly performance to no audience but seeking no response. “We’re visiting your aunt this Sunday for a family dinner. Come home after church straight away.”

He nods, deeming the man not worthy of a response. His father turns, already fulfilled his duty of conversing with his youngest son, out the door, both cannot physically exist in the same space without resorting to scream at each other. The falling out is still fresh and they communicate through Mama Han exclusively. This is the only way to exist. This is the only way to pass the days without violence. He had not healed from the fall out they had and perhaps he will never. Reconciliation is never an option, not with their clashing personalities. Jisung does not care anymore, wanting nothing to dash his head out on any available surface. There are however many people who he suspects had mastered the art of necromancy for the sole purpose of reviving his dead self to scream at him, hindering the otherwise quiet ending he was hoping for.

He glances at his drawer, lyrics swarming his head again. Gosh. That too, he supposes. He can’t die before the production finishes – Seungmin and Woojin would have his own head. In fact, they own like 2/3 of his head, if he commits any sort of self-harm it’ll bounce back badly on his end and his father doesn’t have the money lying around to pay for property damage. It’ll be a legal mess. He can’t let his mother and brother bear the brunt of his friends’ shenanigans.

One more school day. He’ll have Saturday to distance himself away from his father and everything else Chan, so he can properly work on the half-baked lyrics from many years ago.

One more day. He can make it through one more day.

.

April is ending and the weather is only getting hotter and stickier and if the three idiots by his right, left and frontward do not obtain deodorant by the end of this day, he’s going to stick some up in unsavoury places. Incredibly unsavoury places.

The windows had been in a fierce debate. Close them or open them? Half the class voted for closing them – they may suffer in the airless heat but at least it won’t get any hotter. The other half of the class is understandably in favour of air circulation and wind because it’s going very south right now Kim do not close the windows we are going to roast in here like barbecued pork,  you absolute asshats.

Jisung, through many unreasonable impulses and the pretence of ‘working on my lyrics’, lugs around his new notebook, unused except for the jumble of lyrics thrown together on the page the day before, the notebook nestling between his legs as he jitters restlessly in the heat, wanting to throw himself into the nearest puddle and just melt there. Melt into oblivion. Away from the horrid stench of teenage boys after an intensive game of whatever they play down in the courtyard.

Mrs Kim walks off from maths and the bell rings, with the collapse of many enduring souls. He’s surprised they last this long, with fervent and feverish mutterings of many who wish death be upon them. The Open Them Windows faction wins by a smidge and he, who is in favour of the Leave Me Alone To Suffer, containing solely of him - that’s okay, he’s used to being by his lonesome, doesn’t mind either way. Just cease the stupid fussing and decide. Open or close. It’s not rocket science. The windows overlook the track field, those idiot runners sprinting even in this heat, suicidal souls who value death before life. He hangs by the ledge, sneering at the field in disdain when he sees the jacket that he unceremoniously borrowed, almost indefinitely, from Hwang Hyunjin. It’s hot, and the idiot is running with that thing on. He’s half leaning out and half ready for him to just drop dead. No struggling, just straight up death. Expires of expected terms. Exhaustion. Dehydration.

“On your mark,” the coach hollers, “get set -”

Hyunjin crouches, calf muscles tense.

“Go!”

Jisung breathes and Hyunjin had very much shot passed that finish line. A couple of boys from neighbouring classes throw their torsos out from their windows, whooping. Hyunjin swings back, long legs, longer strides, throwing about triumphant and goofy smiles to his adoring fans. They don’t make eye contact, thank the gods and his ancestors, but that was incredible. The weather is blisteringly hot, people cry for death and suffering all about and there are these morons out there running, bathing in their own sweat. It really takes a whole new level of idiocy and suicidal intentions to do all of this and look good doing it. The audacity of Hwang Hyunjin to look like he stepped out of a men’s magazine for summer sportswear. Damn him. The heat, how had the heat not gotten to his head yet?

That dedication is downright metal and it reinforces that little image of Hyunjin being this elevator dragging the deadweight that is Jisung up. One level at a time. One inch at a time. Slowly but surely, they can emerge from the ground and break free from the interring earth he covered them under.

Lyrics. Those are lyrics. He drops unceremoniously and ungracefully from the ledge and scrambles to his desk, pulling a pen out and chucking the pen cap somewhere off to the side, possibly hitting a classmate in the arm and industrially vomits out these inspirational words on the page. Page one and page two filled. He sits, staring at two songs. Two. Gosh Hwang Hyunjin, you Muse-like boy, you inspiration to my random-ass lyrics in the middle of the day, thank you.

He packs the book and dashes to Chan’s class, knowing full well Changbin will be there to mutually mock or be awed by his initiative to seek them out and write anything, after his perpetual tune of ‘I shan’t write’ with background accompaniment of ‘You will never take me alive!’.

Changbin is there, yet he isn’t. He is observing a Seungmin, equally suicidal, out in the baseball pit, swinging his bat about and screaming at his teammates in typical Seungmin Dictator Style. Lots of arm bashing and mouth stretched wide. Jisung nagged him about it countless times. Don’t be disagreeable. Be nice, then crush the brats . He’s doing the crushing, but he wasn’t being nice before that. It really takes away all the fun associated with the crushing.

“I have things,” he shoves the notebook at Chan, who fumbles as gracefully as one who does sports would. Nothing falls, he’ll give him that.

“I’m so proud of you,” Chan squeals, clutching the book awkward and proceeds to be occupied with flipping through the pages and not squishing his cheeks, mercy be before him. He pauses, scrutinises the words, eyebrows scrunched together. Looks up to meet Jisung’s eyes, ignoring Changbin who gazes upon Seungmin with a forlorn longing of a separated lover or a newly divorced spouse. Tragic. Hilariously so. But not of importance right this moment.

“Comments?” He prompts. What he really intends is Can I leave now?

“It’s a bit dark,” Chan hums, considerate. Jisung reaches for the notebook, twirling his fingers in Panicked Jazz Hands.

“I’m taking this back and we’re never bringing it up agai-”

“Bin! My boy!” Chan exclaims, barrelling into Changbin. “Look at Jisung’s lyrics tomorrow morning if you can.”

“Wait why?” He startles, hands reaching for the notebook that transferred from Chan to Changbin, the other party less willing to cart around his emotional baggage than he does.

Changbin’s eyes meet his, all the pain and suffering from living with a Chan clear in his eyes. “Felix wants to see me tomorrow morning about music arrangement. You are coming along, I hear, so I’ll have a look at your lyrics as we fine tune the wants and needs of the dancers.”

“Great!” He snatches his book back. “See you tomorrow. I’m leaving.” He pauses, wanting to desperately comment on the situation at hand but finds that he’s too drenched in heat to bother. 

“Felix will call you. With all the info and stuff.” He digests his words and startles. “Wait, Felix knows you?”

“We’re mates. Now move on,” Changbin shoos him, eyes all Please don’t ask me about the thing I don’t want to talk about the thing yet.

How rude. Ruder of Felix to never mention they’re picking up his glasses and visiting Changbin en route. Sheesh. Seungmin must not have known about this – or if he did, selectively ignored the mention of the name. His brain censors out the name Changbin. No Changbin here. This is a safe space. No trauma. Bad thoughts be gone.

Is it simply a misunderstanding? Or is it more? Why is he getting involved?

Drama. Right. Drama. He lives for the thing. It’s an unhealthy addiction to him. He’s obviously going to intervene, because Seungmin and Changbin are starting to mutually irk him out from inertia and he’s raising hell on those who nudge him out of lazy orbit. Also because he’s a smidge concerned for Seungmin and this seems like peak interrogation period plus Felix Lee. It’ll all work out fine.

.

His glasses have granted him a whole new world, to the tune of Aladdin, and he’s willing to walk even the lame and mundane parts of town just to squint at anything with them on. The trees. How vivid. Tedious bus stops and ugly buses, how dazzling thou art.

“We’re here,” Felix pushes the door and waltzes into what everyone and their mother nickname as Seo Family Cave with a brevity of familiarity that Jisung needs to double check that he is walking with Felix Lee, long term mate, blonde hair enthusiast and philanthropist, not a very convincing doppelganger.

He goes in for a side-armed hug with Seo, which is amicably reciprocated. That’s … unprecedented. Unexpected. How ? How is that possible? He had seen Changbin and Seungmin’s Awkward and Borderline Viscerally Uncomfortable Confrontations. It is unfathomable, the cringe on Changbin’s face can be easily replaced with this fond smile. Brotherly and warm and everything Chan has on his face when he looks upon his herd of children.

Jisung has on glasses. These are new. He just got them replaced. There is no way they failed him, within the hour of his acquirement.

So how come Changbin does such a 180 with Felix? Is that a blonde thing? Are people just nice to blondes?

There is such a dichotomy between Felix with Changbin and Seungmin with Changbin that he’s simply convinced that Changbin is just awkward. A very socially dysfunctional bean. The many half-attempts and badly attempted initiatives to talk or confront Seungmin had been grinded into grains of sadness and blows to the guy’s fragile dignity. The rumours that Changbin is a tough and ruthless cookie are all lies – he apologised to a flag pole three times when he walked into it without looking properly and he hugs a Snorlax to sleep (there are photos on Chan’s phone). People would be correct to assume that about Seungmin than they are about Changbin. The baby can and will rip a human’s throat out if they wronged him. He holds grudges easily, the ability to forgive people not that inherent in him as many others. He’s being a bit of a dick to Changbin, ignoring and avoiding and plain right not tolerating the guy breathing without breaking into a rash. It’s not fair, asserting that Seungmin doesn’t like him, but understandable, knowing Seungmin. He probably was wronged in the past and vowed to harbour the grudge until the day he dies. There’s not much he knows about Seungmin, now that he thinks about it. It’s weird. They’re just very close friends one day - yet he doesn’t know which friends Seungmin had pre-Jisung. Felix is not included there because Felix comes as a package deal with Jisung. They were friends way back in Malaysia and came back to Korea together. Seungmin completed them the minute he heard them speak in hushed English and Malay, grabbing the back of their necks and steering them to a classroom, inducting them to places. Then took their phones, punched in his number and told them to call him.

It sort of fell together after that. They’re friends, tada , done.

He has a hunch Changbin might’ve been a close friend back in the days because he looks at Seungmin with this Shakespearean tragic longing, all inconveniently while Seungmin has his back to him. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be seen staring. That’s all great for him, but Jisung can see him. He does not want to. It is too much tragedy for a Saturday morning, he’s only here with Felix to see Changbin because he wants approval for his piece. Seeing Changbin beaten down with forlornness and Hamlet-worthy longing for his beloved puts a bitter taste on his throat. It’s not a particularly lovely flavour.

Felix grins at Changbin again, all toothy and brightly-freckled. It makes Jisung want to throw up a little. Maybe a lot, but that requires strenuous effort. The thing is that the happy fake brunette has a vivacity in him that on occasions, if he tunes in to conversations at the wrong time, he would’ve heard the gross ‘He rivals even the sun’ and other equally sickeningly honeyed praises from Woojin, completed with a hefty sigh and a high-pitched swoon. Felix is charmingly attractive like that, stealing hearts 25 at the one time with two smiles, brown eyes and freckles on top. He heard that his friend mesmerised the fellow student body to the extent of besotted and utter infatuation, that thawed even the hearts of unconquerable souls like Seo Changbin and Tuan Yi En, who goes by Mark Tuan. He also observes that Felix displaced a lot of friendships, not intentionally, but he rattled some bonds and depending on the friendship dynamic of those people, things either strengthen or they collapse in a row of very brightly neon domino dots with many tears shed and screaming in the hallways of ‘WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME FOR LEE FELIX?’

He heard a few. Quite entertaining. Not beneficial for Felix, but since when do any of them care about what others say of their standing in the school hierarchy?

Whispers and such get around and in them he heard something interesting. Apparently, they went to the same middle school and were friends back in the day. It dwindled and flickered to a point of separation, quite angrily on Seungmin’s side too, a good few months into Jisung and Felix’s arrival at the school. Something must’ve happened in between.

He is drawing conjectures, but he is fairly sure that before Felix came, there was a thing between Seungmin and Changbin. A thing being more than being friends thing. Then, because of how Felix’s overzealous personality and the odd months that they weren’t really friends yet, Changbin befriended Felix out of sheer niceness and decent humanity. As all friendships, they grew closer together. Felix didn’t share all his classes and time with Jisung. He might as well be off in the time without Jisung with Changbin, hand holding and writing poetry, sipping hand-brewed green tea. Jisung doesn’t care much about company – he’s first and foremost a one-man operative. It is entirely Felix and Seungmin’s initiatives to flank him and shadow him. Seungmin however, has significant abandonment issues to which he doesn’t show but Jisung sees it in his repetitions of ‘will you be here for me’ before every event, every practice session, drop off at home. He grew out of his way of speaking in circles just for Seungmin, a curt but overwhelmingly reassuring ‘yes, always’ on the tip of his tongue, secondary to his farewell to his friend.

Seungmin’s pieces start to not shake and stumble into the sucking void of his head every time Jisung says that.

But because he knows Seungmin and he knows Felix and sort of the situation at hand, he can reasonably take responsibilities for Seungmin’s inaction, because it’ll be twenty thousand years before he confronts Changbin about anything. He’s inconveniently altruistic that way. Thinks that he’s being a bother, that Changbin prefers Felix’s company more next to his. Thinks that Changbin is better off friends and something more with Felix. Thinks that being angry and internalising is better than a 2-minute conversation that would more or less solve this miscommunication problem out. The repression laced within the performed hating act is starting to irk him. Changbin does not wish to be stagnant, he’s sure. He just needs a push. As does Seungmin. If things fall, they can be rebuilt. Better than teetering and not falling as quick as possible.

Besides, it’s not like Seungmin doesn’t stare back. It just happens that Changbin turns his head too. Or he does it to the night sky whenever they have study sessions, face all Orpheus longing for Eurydice and regret of actions taken and did not take.

That’s irking him. He, a proclaimed stagnant bastard, will give a tiny nudge. Not too much, just enough.

Felix is finally done with the music accompaniment, skipping to Jisung and nuzzling into his neck with the infinity scarf Jisung bought him back when they were 12 and runty. It’s starting to wear out now, threads loose. He’ll buy a new one soon.

“Are you done?” He stares at the two donuts. Felix swiftly filches one, shoving it all into his mouth, never once detaching from Jisung.

“You’re disgusting,” he scrunches his face in disgust.

The uncivilised wretch has the nerve to wink at him, all pink powdered sugar up in his face. He scoots away, cringing all the while.

Changbin is zoning out on his bed, staring at a spot on his wall.

“Are you going to do something?” Felix mouths, the words English.

“ Probably ,” he shrugs, Malay rolling off his tongue familiarly.

“Jisung? You want me to look at those lyrics now?” Changbin stands, still a bit dazed.

Felix winks at him, squeezing his arm. A good luck sits inside the gaze they share.

“Oi Lix, go find Woojin for me. I need a thing from him to give to Chris. Run along now.” He nicks the last doughnut right under Felix’s grip. He barely avoids the retaliating pinch and waves a cheery goodbye with the half-bitten confectionery as Felix stomps out. All faked. All cued.

“You look like you’re ready to fight,” Changbin observes. His fingers are tapping, subtly, on his thighs.

He’s deliberating words but circles will not break through walls now. A bulldozer is what they need. He’ll hand them rocks to build the bridge back again.

“Seungmin doesn’t hate you,” he decides, stressing the words, “he’s just an idiot. Talk to him first, otherwise it’ll keep getting worse and worse for the both of you.”

He ought to amend his words. It won’t be that bad, but still.

“It won’t be that bad, I’m exaggerating, but yes, do something, corner him, punch him, talk to him,” he picks up his bag and rubbish, “the imperative word here is do . Possibly the word ‘soon’ as well.”

“How do you-” Changbin gets up, bereft. Jisung shrugs, backing to the exit.

“I have ears and eyes everywhere, Seo-ssi,” he lifts his empty cup of coffee, “and he watches you too. It’s really a coincidence you two never see eye to eye, literally.”

He leaves his lyric book on the table, really hoping for the best.

“Ey mate, what a grand exit,” Felix leans over to him, eyes crinkling, pleased.

“Thanks. It wasn’t meant to be a public spectacle,” he drily responds, heaving popcorn chicken into his mouth, to eliminate the obligation to carry out conversation.

“You, of all people, call half of that dynamic out on their bullshit. What’s next? Will you accept hugs? Punch your father in the face? Confess your undying love to the arts?” Felix marvels, stepping aside to let a young girl dash by. They flash each other mutually bright smiles.

“Punching the father- that I can do, but the rest have to be rescheduled. I have a mandatory meeting with the family tomorrow. I’m getting prepared now,” he sighs, munching on the chicken dejectedly. “I feel nauseous already.”

“You can’t get away? Can’t run off?”

“Nah. He’ll saw off my legs. Don’t laugh, no, seriously, I saw those serrated edges on the hand saw, they’re legit. He’ll cut me in fours and chuck me in the Han. Me, Han, will die in the Han,” he bemoans, the situation not funny, never funny, but he’s laughing, because if he starts crying then it’ll never cease. Felix’s eyes flicker between dark wood and gold, sunlight hitting him strangely, from all angles. He’s all washed up in gold and that little phrase he always tells himself, Gold will always shine, comes into full literal effect here. He’s glowing gold and he’s devastatingly beautiful, radiating a natural glow.

Jisung had written so much prose about Felix and gold that he's slightly fearful of his intense love for his friend. But there is nothing shameful about love, least of all with a family who loves you just as fiercely back. There are proses too about Seungmin and the weight he carries around on his shoulderblades. These vignettes make their way to the intended eventually, winding and curling to Seungmin’s locker or Felix's swimming bag. Pieces of soul that they share with each other and hold dear in their hearts. Pulsating with gold, Felix grins, magnificent, more than ever, and Jisung aches for a writing implement so he can capture the way the sun bathes his friend in solid gold. A mirror is a way to truth, but prose and art are also gateways to truth. Sometimes people don't see how they look in other's eyes and they are utterly and devastatingly illuminating that it's insulting when people like Felix insults his own face like no, you're pretty, here's why.

Felix lets him loose on a path unwinding in his head for two minutes before tugging on his arm, lacing their hands together.

“Will a distraction help? I have Hyunjin’s number. He’s been begging to talk to you. He begged, like, legit begged. Like his life depends on you two talking. He was desperate enough even to crawl to Minho and he outdid himself on the splits and tumbles. May I then grant him the honour of knowing your number?”

“Hyunjin? What’s he got to do with anything?” Even as he speaks the words, he can taste the failing nonchalance and lies between the syllables. Hyunjin in fact has significance over many things in Jisung’s life. Can potentially save it as well.

Felix doesn’t comment, doesn’t look at him. Only hums. Simply hums.

They both know that he would rather eat his own arm before he admits to anything that he has human feeling and they are directed at another human. He’s just as interested in Hyunjin as the other is in him. It’s an exhilarated feeling, reciprocated interest. But Felix doesn’t need the confirmation from his own tongue. Words are simply semantics.

“Everything, my dear padawan,” Felix waves his fingers in an astonishingly jazzy gestures. Lively jazz hands.

“Shut up youngster, what do you know?” He challenges.

“I know what’s best for you and I know that right now this is a good sign. Give him a chance. He might spam a bit though or talk a lot, but he’s a good and pure bean. I know that Seungmin and I aren’t the happiest people on the planet-”

“Bullshit.”

Felix smiles, pats the back of his hand. “But you won’t do wrong if you give Hyunjin a chance to be your friend. When you two are friends, imagine the benefits. Unsolicited staring without having to explain yourself. Unlimited loan of tailored sports jacket. Right to call us, your squad, the millennium squad. You may also prance about and name us ‘Han Jisung and the three musketeers.”

“Your reasons are never valid, idiot, but fine. I’ll prepare for the onslaught of texts.” He sighs, all pretences

“Liar,” his friend reaches for his hand. His left hand, the one he tries to pin down with a raised pen tip. “Be careful. Run out if you need to. Never mind the saw.”

“Cheerful. I shall do just that.”

“You won’t regret this one. He’s lovely. You’re lovely. You’ll get along well,” a wink and a secret he cannot read on Felix’s lips. He wonders what the words are he cannot hear, the meaning of those words.

.

In another part of town, Hyunjin waits for the all clear signal from Felix, worried over a text message. It is not often that he waits for others to tell him he can text someone else – he was already in possession of the phone number of one Han Jisung straight after the Jacket Extraction. This newborn obsession is odd. He is always one to chase, to be proactive, but Han Jisung has the brooding face of a suffering llama and his heroic nature, the little ‘I want to save everyone’ in him, flares in intensity. Jisung is a suffering soul and Hyunjin takes it upon himself to aid Jisung. There is snark and life there, but everything is buried under a layer of apathy. He seems frozen, a statue, disconnected from the happenings of his world.

Hyunjin is too obsessed with saving others. It is all-too common, ingrained in his bones and marrow, that he has a duty and that he is to save others. Woojin mocked him of it since young, Hyunjin squandering an opportunity to advance to regionals to walk an injured runner next to his lane to the finish line. He was virtuous, at the cost of his own gain.

“But I do gain something,” he stomped his feet, “I did win!”

“In what, baby?” Woojin’s smile was lopsided, not unkind, but not nice either.

“Kindness! I win in kindness! I felt better helping Joochan than when I win races.”

Woojin had been taken apart, mouth parted as if that was a foreign concept. That being kind is possible in sports, in competition, in life.

“You’ll be crushed, or you’ll be raised up far in life later, Jinnie,” his friend clasped his cheeks between his hands, “all because of kindness.”

He had not been crushed, though he had to forgo some of that kindness in his blood to be the best. Earnestness and honesty and virtue – all forgone for a momentary taste of fame. He is corroded down into a spectre of his virtuous self, all lies and liars to his dwindling honesty. Abject pointlessness in his purpose of advancing further in life.

Is he not motivated by kindness? Is he not one who cares for others and is rewarded in the knowledge of being someone’s saviour? Is it problematic that it had regressed into this perverted understanding of his kindness?

“Is it problematic to feel good when I am kind to others?” He wondered to Changbin. They’re lying on the cold ground, gravel bumping into the back of their skulls and elbows and backs.

“There is a difference though, between what you do and what others do. With other people I know they lord it over those they help – they want recognition, they want acknowledgement,” Changbin turned to him, eyes that hold the weight of the universe and too long chin, unconventional looks all the beauty to him. “With you, the gratitude makes you happy. It doesn’t make you an ass. It's honestly the opposite.”

“I’m so attracted to you right now,” he blurted out, half-serious, half-mocking.

Changbin’s eyes did a wheelbarrow roll around his socket, not unkindly. Hyunjin always has a habit of never filtering his words and oftentimes confess long-held secrets to his intended without meaning to.

“Yeah well me too kid,” his friend returned the gesture. “But not like enough to do anything about it.”

“When we’re old and crusty do you think we should marry-”

“No. Never. I like you but not enough to tolerate you under the same roof.”

His instincts reassured him that Changbin was right. Changbin rarely is wrong – he’s unnaturally accurate like that. Hyunjin’s instincts too were correct. Going through crises before high school had rendered him immune against the doubts somersaulting in his mind, often about being a doormat or being trampled over by others. He has Changbin to say no to others for him now and Woojin to consult before he exerts kindness – reliable older brothers who look out for him. It’s alright. He’ll be alright. Being kind will not crush him. It will raise him.

His initial reaction to Han Jisung was outright terror. His second reaction was that of a tired boy behind many walls built and knocked down. There was a boy who could not live, in fear of living and in fear of not living – fearful of existing. Of existence itself. There were lenses that Hyunjin borrowed to view Jisung through – he who flinched in social interaction, he who cried and locked himself in instrument cupboards, he who stood under the rain and heat, shirt unbuttoned, heat and rain drenching through skin, into veins. There is now a boy who does not fear anything, least of all death, reckless in his actions, pen marks littering arms and the back of his hands, eyebags proliferating purple and red, earphones perpetually hanging from under his shirt. The boy who claimed to hate everything and everyone with his might, yet all he did was pour himself onto rebuilding what is broken.

Han Jisung and Hwang Hyunjin are alike, yet so different. Both fixing the world around them – Hyunjin being built up while Jisung is crushed down. He wants to save the broken, not to mend the broken bits in him, but for the hope of wholeness in others.

 Hyunjin wants to sit by him and crafts him new pieces so that he can complete his own puzzle pieces, for what he needs is not for someone to fix him, but just be there for him. Kindness breeds more kindness. Interest collides into affection. How can one be so fond of someone they have never held a conversation with? How can there be such an overwhelming urge to fix a person who does not require fixing but compassion?

One cannot know. Maybe Hyunjin had stumbled upon a version he prefers of Jisung, out of his own musings. Maybe the Jisung he thinks he understands is just a shadow of the real guy – all he has of Han Jisung is one conversation and fragments of his identity through the mouths of others and borrowed eyes. Huh. The guy is as much as enigma as well as someone dear to Hyunjin, someone he knows well despite never getting to know.

He must get in contact. Weasel his way into Jisung’s life. Felix. He ought to track down Felix, appeal to the friend of why he should join the Impenetrable Three. The Golden Trio, the gold being Felix – the Harry-Hermione-Ron, Sakura-Naruto-Sasuke of the school. He must don the disgustingly fake smile he embraces for everyone else – he hates it, the plasticity of it all, but he must endure.

The new school day seems tiring already. He walked into three chairs and four tables on his quest to track down Felix. The fake blonde child is perched on his table, stabbing fingers at an open book on the table, arguing with Eric.

“Boo,” he claps both hands on Felix’s shoulder who slants a glance at him, one eye squinting. His friend skids back in surprise, eyes startled. “Hey Eric.”

“Hyunjinnie,” he beams, “great timing! We have this dance segment that we know will look great if you dance it. Have a look!”

“I’m here to ask about-”

“Jisung. Yeah, I know,” Felix waves him away, a secret on his lips, “come to rehearsal and backstage. Seungmin is dragging him there.”

“Oh.” That was easier than he expected. Suspiciously so. “Does this come with a price? Is Jisung an actual drug lord and Minho was right the whole time? Am I a sacrifice to the beast?”

Felix laughs, a bit condescending, like he’s a dumb species of sentient mushroom who uprooted straight up and into a snare unknowingly and he’s quizzing if it’s safe to do so, to the guy who laid down the traps.

“Not at all. I know what’s good for people. Just show up. I’ll show you the dance later,” he winks and turns back to Eric, switching to rapid English. That’s the conversation done. He cannot approach it any further. Interruption comes at a cost of having to learn English and hardworking as he is, he cannot educate his brain on the entirety of the English language in twenty minutes. Nodding goodbye to Eric who waves at him sympathetically, eyes all understanding, before crossing out a few of Felix’s annotations and adding his own, both screaming in loud Korean and English.

He enters the theatre with the determination of a man who left his loved sport, running, to properly reintroduce himself for a guy who he has a passing fancy for.

Passing fancy. What is he, 300 years old and Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Wilde is gay, fool, his brain hisses back.

“You know what, brain, I’ll take that,” he speaks aloud, slamming into a wall. “Oof.”

If his brain can facepalm, it would. Alas, it can simply screech inhuman decibels at him for being a moron, a gay moron, and to be careful next time. He slips inside the theatre, tracking the bright head of platinum blonde hair, Felix’s trademark look. Before they can even locate each other though, he catches sight of Jisung, hiding behind Seungmin, the Seungmin, and he blooms like a flower starved of the sun and nutrients, smile spreading his lips in indescribably simple joy. Simultaneously, Changbin appears. Hyunjin’s smile dims.

Oh no. Seungmin is there. Seungmin is near Changbin, Jisung can wait, come on, come on.

Jisung wrenches them apart faster than he can cross the finish line in 100m – Seungmin to Hyunjin, him dragging Changbin away. They make brief eye contact – everything too chaotic for emotions to be in checked. In Jisung’s eyes there is an apology as he disappears into the dark of the theatre.

He is with Kim Seungmin, after all the fiasco of year 10.

“Hey Seungmin,” he tries for a smile.

It transpires as a poor attempt – more reminiscent of a grimace than a smile. The other boy, their heights similar, match his eyes without craning his head up or down, eyes frozen over.

“Hello Hyunjin.”

“How are you doing?” He questions, curious. The post seungbin fall out falls silent. It’s best to not voice those words out loud. It’s been almost a year since the ending of the seungbin dynamic blown up. The iconic dynamic. The dynamic. The friendship between Seungmin and Changbin was legendarily solid. Patroclus/Achilles solid. So solid that people did question the bond, but nobody really confront them about it because Changbin has two black belts in taekwondo and karate and Seungmin is tall and has a foul and degrading mouth. Theirs was a power dynamic that resulted in terror and awe in others and it was the accepted and known consensus to not piss either one off.

Hyunjin and Woojin heard about Seungmin at a total number of two times for them to make eye contact across the room like ‘yeah he’s whipped’. The facts had never been more aligned or more obvious. Seungmin got introduced to them, they acknowledged his existence and approved of him – everybody else approved of Seungmin. seungbin the ship name floated about in middle school and they were those people who you weren’t entirely sure if they were dating or not but you’re too afraid to ask.

Plus homophobia. That might’ve been a hindrance. Girls and boys shipping other boys were alright – until there is a gay couple, then it’s not alright. Fetishization is a disgusting but unfortunately prevalent and perpetuated act. A closeted gay who barely knew much of anything, Hyunjin could only trade the uncomfortable truth for fancy lies. Lying was second nature for those closeted and knowing full well the consequences of being gay in South Korea. Not one for lies, he outweighed the safety of his closest friend for his values. Perhaps this fierce and reckless abandoning of his values arose from the biting remarks Changbin yielded on the courtyard and in between hallways at school, threatening bullies who dared to spread litanies of lies about Hyunjin or Woojin. But Woojin could defend with his sword – Hyunjin could run and swim, defensive sports, and he was too much. Too athletic, too kind, too good-looking, too polite, too perfect. He was the clear weak link in the WooChanJin trio and in unstable and cruel school hierarchies, ones who were insecure always target the weak links.

But Hyunjin had Changbin merging shadows with his own since a young age. He was untouchable and Changbin too. But gay is a disease contingent with decay and virality and all the sins nasty and corrupted by humanity and no one, impenetrable or not, would be able to escape the stigma with the word. To be labelled gay is to have a death sentence hung over one’s neck, the noose just waiting for the accused to slip their neck into.

Hyunjin valued his morals and would continue to uphold them – but it was Changbin, his neighbour who used to be taller than Hyunjin and could beat him and his bullies up and Changbin, who Hyunjin fell in love with and would be for a long time. He could not let Changbin, full of fire and grit, to simmer and extinguish by the dirt of society. Morals can be set aside, if death, the legitimate fear of death, was to be considered.

Thus he protected Changbin. Because he’s important to Hyunjin. Because he’s a friend. Because he’s someone Hyunjin loved. Because he’s family.

seungbin fell apart in high school, two months in and everyone from their middle school was confused. Discombobulated. Disoriented. Lost. He was gutted. He hoped it would go somewhere. Be something more defined. But really, how are relationships defined? How can he affix heteronormative standards onto a marginalised relationship? How can he define their dynamics for them? Their boundaries are for them to decide and during November, at the library door where he waved to Seungmin who was passing by, eyes frigid, he knew where the lines are drawn.

Seungmin bowed, stiff and drew himself up and into his frame, tall, still growing, but still and coordinated. His face wished for the rest of him to have no part in participating in a friendly catch-up session with Hyunjin, bristling in the winter cold.

Some lines had been drawn and some rules had been set down. One of those rules had been very clear: Changbin is to have no more part in Seungmin’s life.

And that was it. No explanations. No questions asked. It simply was.

Except that he is now before Seungmin. The guy doesn’t expressly hate him, but he doesn’t tolerate him either – a point of measure between Absolute Distaste for Changbin and Utter Adoration for Woojin who had reconciled and mended bridges with Seungmin. How, Woojin never mentioned, and when, also no information. They quickly outlawed the S word after Hyunjin whispered to Woojin about the frigidity of one Kim Seungmin and Woojin reciprocated in multiple sightings of Changbin, banging piano tiles in a music room, red-eyed.

“Should we censor the name of He-who-shall-not-be-named?” Hyunjin wondered, half serious.

“That would be best,” Woojin agreed, all serious.

They had never approached the name directly since. Things had mellowed out, to the point of the two being awkward exes that occasionally run into each other because they go to the same school, Changbin panicking and walking into things, Seungmin blanking him out of his peripheral and his front on vision. Whatever happened, Changbin is trying to reconcile, to the rebuff of Seungmin, his former lover. Hyunjin could only protect him from bullies. In the matters of love, he could only cheer on Changbin with a sympathetic pat on the back and send him off with a basket of bread buns and lemons to woo Seungmin’s love back. He can even provide backing track, sung by Woojin and drummed by him. Otherwise, he is useless. He runs competitively, he runs from his problems. On which planet is it viable for him to run towards a problem? Not this one.

Present Seungmin still reserves mild distaste for Hyunjin, crinkling his nose slightly. It might have been a year since they’ve talked, but Seungmin’s temperament had remained refreshingly constant. It seems almost like he stagnated while Hyunjin advanced – into the present and future while Seungmin lingered in the past. In the what-could-have-beens, what-ifs. The seed of malcontent and dissatisfaction blooms grotesque and fearful in the hoarseness of his voice and the bags under his eyes. It hasn’t been a good year of separation down this end either. Changbin, an expert in masking his emotions, still let slip the forlornness in his eyes. Hyunjin lost count the number of times Changbin bumped into him, called him the wrong name and slipped his hand into his and recoiled, apologised for overstepping boundaries. He reassured his friend, pulled him in for a hug.

“There’s no such thing as boundaries between us, okay? Trample ‘em all over. It’s fine. Breathe. I gotcha.”

Hyunjin might be an awkward elephant but he would cut himself open to stop Changbin’s wounds. It is a friendship of equals and he hurt too when Changbin hurt. The older guy hugged back, clutching Hyunjin, a life vest, amidst stormy seas.

Seungmin though, who is holding him together? His friends, Jisung and Felix? Or perhaps he only has himself and he cannot hold vestiges of a thing once intact together? He doesn’t look fine. Any words following the lines of ‘I’m okay’ are lies. All lies. He is not okay. His eyes sing a different  song.

“I’ve seen better days, Hyunjin,” Seungmin sighs, ruffling his hair, “I apologise for Jisung. He’s always like this, running when he’s confronted with a potential friend.”

“How do you know I want to talk to Jisung?”

“Felix,” the other shrugs, tone relaxed, “you have also been hunting him down for a while. Rumours happen. You seem to be one of the first who actively seek him out, not for his service, but for him.”

Seungmin peruses through his script. “How weird. He stole your jacket, yet you are quizzing about who he is and what he does. It comes across as a bit stalkerish. Do keep in mind that I am legally obliged to deposit of you if you have weird intentions with him. Only after multiple others had done maiming your corpse and what-not with it. I’m not at a position to care or put a stop to said maiming.”

He shudders. This threat is all too common but coming from the mouth of a guy whose face radiates gentleness and puppyish softness it just seems sinister. He isn’t entirely sure if this is a friendly warning to a new person joining Jisung’s friendship crop circle or a father calmly advising him of the murderous relatives of the potential romantic interest, too calmly that it unnerves him.

“This conversation is unsettling me,” he informs Seungmin who appears nonchalant through it all, ambling about in his movements. “Will I be able to talk to Jisung face-to-face ever?”

“Monday,” Seungmin hums.

“Monday?” He echoes, feeling stupid.

“Felix is very efficient. I trust that he’ll put in a good word or essay about your glorious graces.” They meet eyes once more, Seungmin’s eyes no longer hard. They sing a song of exhaustion, of suspension in turbulent air, unable to touch a safety point.

“What about you?” Hyunjin whispers.

“What of me?” They don’t meet eyes, but it’s because one is scared and the other wants to reach out.

“I can put in an essay to hyung about you. Sing Hello and Someone like you in your honour, even though I can’t sing. All of this, for you,” he confesses, sincerely. Please make up with Changbin. I am sick of your collective bullshit.

“No need. In time I will do it myself,” Seungmin walks away.

“The singing or the making up?” He calls after.

“None of your business, Hwang! Tell Woojin I said hi!”

He wishes, ardently, that the expression ??? can be converted into human facial expression format, because what he is feeling is exactly five question marks. What…why…where…how…whomst’ve? What even just – what was that? How did that happen? How was it construed into being?

Felix isn’t particularly interested in explaining his friend’s actions. He’s been a bit of a mystery, bright and bubbly and friendly, yet Hyunjin went on for a solid two months before he realised that Felix and Woojin are dating, a thing , a unit, existing in a relationship, or that Felix had freckles or a Catholic. He manifested into Hyunjin’s life at some point, bubbly and deceptive, and had planted roots in his social circle. It is inescapable once one enters the orbit of Felix Lee. They simply become accustomed to his ways of operating and his belief systems. Others accommodate Lee – he does not do any of such.

“Have his number first,” Felix texts him out of the blue, “and wait until I give you the all clear.”

He’s sitting here, listening to Lemon Tree, wondering about Seungmin. Worried about Changbin. Wondering if Woojin had eaten yet.

His phone buzzes. All clear, Felix’s text reads. Let all go well.

“Let all go well,” he hopes, fingers hovering to text Jisung.

Instead he doesn’t. Instead he presses call.

“Hwang Hyunjin,” Jisung greets, wariness in his voice. Caution. On guard.

Hyunjin plasters on a smile and lets it seep into his voice, colouring the tones of his sounds smiley, kind and perfect. Because that’s what he is. Perfect.

“Jisungie! Finally! Hi, are you home?”

“Gosh you’re loud,” the voice mutters. There is less wariness. He lets out a relieved sigh. “And fake. Stop that shrill little voice. Talk normally. Are you,” he stops breathing for a second, seeing blue and yellow behind the darkness of his closed lids, “not doing so well?”

“I don’t know, Jisungie,” he admits, “I don’t know.”

“That makes two of us then.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m off to see my father’s side of the family. Great bunch. We get along well.”

“I can spam you memes to accompany you until that,” he offers, sincere, as sincere as he can.

“Shall I accompany you until you find a solution to your issues too?” Exhaustion tinges the edges of that voice, drained of everything and himself by the world. Hyunjin wants to hold him, hand him back his pieces.

“No need. Let’s just pretend all is well.”

“Let all go well,” Jisung muses.

“Cry, cry for death, but good win out in the end,” he supplies. They share a laugh, the click heard in both their heads. Certainly, good shall not win in the end, but they can futilely hope for a false sense of good.

.

Church is a chore. Life is a chore. Sitting in such intimate proximity with his father is a chore, strenuous, ardently exhausting. Jisung wants the sermon to be over, wants the dinner to be over, wants nothing more than just to write more songs, finish off homework, drop off to sleep. Mundane routine, but comforting routine. There is no desire or want in him to interact or socialise. His mother begs in his shoes, Jisung too tired to care, too exhausted in his bones, too washed up by the demands of his father to compromise and mould himself excessively to the family’s values, not to his own terms. All the bending and contorting leave him drained. He cannot go on, not before countless tripping and collapse. He is attending the dinner, out of sheer coercion – filial obligation no longer a motivation for him, his father and his own family severing any blood bonds they have in the shift from middle school to high school, from Malaysia back to South Korea. They had declared him not of their relations, with him returning the sentiment. There is nothing to grieve or pay due respects for. His name seems a joke for him – he who is shunned by the Hans. His attendance is solely out of fear of his father. He flinches still, unable to suppress the shudders and spikes of pain up his neck when the footsteps, fearsome steps, ascend to his room. The piercing accusations of his relatives when he soils their threshold with the dirt of a weakling, the veins in which giving up is not acceptable in the bloodline flows, the face of someone less than perfect. His father brought him, monthly, to endure the torture of skewed conversations and threats in the hallways, outside the toilet door, at the threshold and in the kitchen. He can hide inside his own house, but before his father’s family he is defenceless.

“May God be with you,” Reverend Euijin raises his hands, robe sleeves rising.

“And with you, father. Amen,” the congregation choruses, mostly in unison. Jisung rises, the processes of church muscle memory for him. His phone buzzes in the murmurings of those who are attending mass.

It can’t be Felix or Seungmin. The brats know he has church now. They’re on standby in the situation of ‘I am too overwhelmed by the collective abuse of my dad’s side of the family please give me the newest memes so that I can cry looking at them’. Distractive and unsolicited, those two will dilute the horrid booming of his aunts screeching at him and the silent stares of his uncles. It would be so much better if he had been left alone, ignored, as he was in the past. Nowadays it becomes every Han’s monthly goal to personally victimise Jisung. It’ll make them feel better about their shattering lives or some such logic. The school doesn’t offer psychology as a viable subject on the curriculum. He can’t tell for sure if there is some deep Freudian symptoms that his extended family are afflicted with or they are just plain cruel for the sake of their own amusement. Dehumanisation and abuse keep one full for the month to come , he always mutters when the cousins shove and bump into him, forcing him into the wall and hiding snickers behind orchestrated coughs. Good fun these evenings are to him. Nobody wants to invite him and he wants to stay back home. His father insists. Coerces.

“Go outside. Your mother and I will be with you shortly. We are talking to the reverend,” his father jerks his head to the wide-open doorway, all tinted glass and dimmed night sky.

They do not make eye contact in that entire exchange. Jisung turns his back to his father and his father to the reverend. Their footsteps are the same rhythm and knock, but his steps crave escape and free air while his father’s purposefully steps demand an interaction, a connection to be made.

His phone is already in his hand before he’s under the doorway. The screen flashes with several new messages by the one and only irritating factor, Hwang Hyunjin. Scrolling down the page, there’s only really one line of message that is important. He’s infected with Jisung’s cyclical speech too, it seems.

You will fall, but you will stand once more. Nothing can knock you down except for yourself. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you got me who is here for you and I think that counts for a lot. It’ll go away soon.

“How naïve,” he lets out a laugh, the breathless one, head tipped to the sky.

Hyunjin receives a call when he’s surreptitiously trying to do his homework on his desk with his blanket held up by one hand over his head. The buzzing of his phone startles his blanket arm and it falls onto his lamp, clattering onto the table. He kicks the switch off for everything, ditching his almost-finished physics homework, clutches his phone to his chest, wraps the blanket around him and burrito-style rolls himself to the foot of his bed, wheezing.

There are footsteps outside of his door and the door creaks, hot air sneaking in. He shivers, crouching even further into his burrito shield as one of his parents squint into the dark, trying to determine the source of the sound.

“He fell off the bed,” his mum hisses from his door.

“Again?” His dad hisses back, equally sleep-deprived and agitated.

“Do we try and lift-” she gets cut off by his dad.

“He’s twice your size. Leave him. He’ll crawl back up in the morning.”

That’s so mean, he moans inside his head, I’m your only son. His mother closes his door and they walk back to their room, arguing. Gosh. He kicks the blanket over his head, wheezing. One corner choked him in that time and he’s looking like a convincing double for an off-colour Oompa Loompa for Willy Wonka’s Chocolatery. Someone hire him. Someone scout him please, he’s perfect for the role.

In this time the call stops. Risking everything, he unlocks his phone and dials the number again, crossing his fingers for a reply. Praying to the ancestors and God and Buddha and –

“Did I wake you?” Jisung answers, not a yawn to his voice.

“Why are you still awake?” He hisses back, silence be damned.

“You know I don’t do sleepin-”

“Shut up,” he harangues, “whatever, why’d you call, did you die, are you dead, is this a ghost, what happe-”

“Thanks. For your convoluted essay texts. Made tonight easier. Bearable even. I smiled at a cousin, although I think it must’ve been a grimace, who knows,” Jisung rambles, uncharacteristically talkative. Another minute slips by and Hyunjin is another minute deeper into the inexplicable pull towards the centre of gravity that is Han Jisung. If he isn’t careful, he’ll be ripped apart at the black hole in the middle, Jisung’s self which is all-consuming and all-powerful will rend him apart.

“Jisungie,” he whispers, “are you only talkative now because you’re lonely? Or do you actually like me?”

It is ridiculous. They only started conversing a bit more than 24 hours ago. He has no right to be framing that question like a snare, a trap for Jisung to fall into. But into what? What trap is there for one to blunder into except honesty and genuine feelings towards another? Hyunjin craves honesty – the world around him had sucked him dry of any and those approaching him had lost all the honesty they have. Relying on two and perhaps one more cannot be a source of honesty. That is finite. Perhaps he is searching for one who can inspire honesty in himself. Hwang Hyunjin had not been very honest to himself. Even right now, in the dark, all the rules of proper etiquettes and morality shifted sideways and casted out the window. He can ask any question here and now and they can pretend the words had never been proposed in the night, where all can be forgiven.

“I cannot ascertain or deny,” comes the reply, “as I do not know of this myself.”

“Ah,” it is not disappointment, but unfulfillment that fills his stomach. “I suppose that is as good as an answer as anything.”

“I can answer parts of your queries, Hwang Hyunjin,” he suppresses the sigh at the aspirated H of his name, Jisung’s pronunciation deliberate and drawn out, as if he fears disrespect to his name.

“And what are they?” He rolls to his back, staring at the ceiling.

“That I am lonely and I talk a lot during the night,” there is now a sigh and a hum in Jisung’s voice. “It’s late. Go sleep. I don’t want you to be like me.”

There is this silence that needs spoken in the pause of Jisung’s words. Hyunjin heard it. He heard the pause, the words yet to be uttered. He protests, jumbles of incoherent gibberish. Tell me. What did you meant to say after that?

“Will you sleep if I tell you what I was about to say?” Jisung sighs. Things rustle on the other side.

“Yes. Absolutely. Obviously. I promise,” he rushes. Waits. The silence hangs on telephone wires with one clawed leg and threatens to fall to oblivion.

“I don’t hate you. I don’t like you. I suppose that and this factor into this splurge of words.”

“And?”

“And nothing more, Hwang Hyunjin. You’ll do best to not dwell in conjectures, what-ifs. They will keep you unhappy for a long time.”

He cannot win, not when the night time is Jisung’s domain. Sighing, his finger hovers at the red phone symbol.

“I’ll get it out of you one day, Han Jisung. I’m sleeping now. It’s almost midnight.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Jisung bides, promises in all the aspirated Hs of his name. “Hwang. Hyun. Jin.”

Jisung doesn’t know him very well. It is in the unspoken words that he dwells and thrives. He will drill it out of Jisung one day. He is hopeful for that day. Hope is the thing unspoken yet all too-powerful. He will dig it out of Jisung.

 .

Monday sees Jisung walking by Seungmin’s side, gauging his expression for any sign of a run-in with Changbin. Monday sees Seungmin ditching Jisung at the school gates to run onto the soccer field, shoes kicked off, one off to a patch, one flying in the air. Monday sees Jisung gathering the shoes and walking to Seungmin, handing them back, sole to sole.

“I want to see me be brave,” Seungmin sings under his breath. “I’ll be brave.”

“As you do. As you are,” Jisung pushes the pair of shoes onto Seungmin’s pristine white shirt. “Be a little braver. Get a little closer.”

Monday sees Seungmin’s eyes get a little clearer – brighter, livelier, and his laughs richer, a surplus of honey after the bees had gone away, but they’re back now and they’re here to stay.

Monday sees Jisung resting a little bit less during the day, because he had been taken to talking to Hyunjin and when the words had left him, he was all exhaustion and no more stubbornness in fighting the world and his rest. He lay down, wishing for a sweet unrest.

Hyunjin finds out where his class is and Jisung finds out where Hyunjin’s class is – they meet somewhere in the middle, somehow searching for the same thing.

“Hwang Hyunjin,” he utters, the words weighing familiarly on his tongue, “you stalker.”

“That’s mean,” Hyunjin whines, tone high, “I missed you. Come give me a hug!”

“Let’s not. I don’t do hugs.”

“I’m heartbroken. Look at all those pieces! I’m heartbroken!”

“Gosh will you just hush?”

Hyunjin got that hug in the end. It was awkward, but long withheld. Jisung didn’t fit with Hyunjin nor Hyunjin with him, but that’s all part of the strange pull. It’s because they didn’t fit that they are to fit. They don’t need to fit for a hug to work out. For anything to work out.