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There was some kind of elaborate prank being played on him by the universe, Seungkwan thought as he eyed the phone number the barista had written on the side of his iced americano warily.
“Wow,” Seokmin whistled, “that’s the second one this month. You’re a verifiable Casanova.”
Seungkwan huffed out a nervous laugh, “Haha, very funny.” He continued to squint at the phone number, which was followed by the name Eunji written in neat handwriting and a smiley face. Maybe, if he looked at it close enough, he could figure out what the fuck was happening.
“Are you gonna text this one?” Soonyoung asked, peering over the table to catch a glimpse of the number. Seungkwan brought the americano closer to chest, frowning.
“No,” Seungkwan said, “it’s probably fake anyway.”
“You think she gave you a fake number, completely unprompted? Who would do something like that?” Seokmin laughed.
Seungkwan very carefully did not say, the girls who went to my high school, and said instead, “Let’s get out of here.”
-
Seungkwan got back to his apartment and promptly collapsed onto the couch, face down. He was trying very hard not to over analyze every millisecond of the approximately 30 seconds he spent talking to Eunji the barista, but that was exactly what he was doing.
(Those 30 seconds went something like this:
“Hi, what can I get for you today?”
“Can I get a medium iced americano?”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, your total is on the screen, please insert your card.”
Not exactly a lot to go off on.)
Seungkwan ran through the interaction in his head again for what was approximately the 118th time, this time with a specific focus on facial expressions. She was smiling yes, but she was also working in a customer-facing job, so it’s hard to read into that too much. Was he smiling? Probably, yes. Was his smile somehow more alluring than usual? He prided himself on having an inviting smile, but it hadn’t garnered him any errant phone numbers from any girls before. Okay, wait, never mind, that wasn’t true anymore because he technically had gotten a number from the girl who sat next to him in his 20th century history lecture a couple weeks ago, but they had conversed at least a few times, unlike him and Eunji, who had not even exchanged names. Okay, this was getting him nowhere, so he rewound the interaction in head and was in the middle of, “Can I get a medium iced americano?” when Hansol opened his bedroom door and promptly tripped over nothing.
“Oh, Seungkwan, I didn’t hear you come in,” Hansol said once he righted himself. Hansol was Seungkwan’s roommate. They had also gone to high school together. There was pretty much no one on Earth who knew Seungkwan better than Hansol, except, maybe, his mother.
“Sorry,” Seungkwan mumbled into the couch, giving off a general air of misery.
“Uh, you alright?” Hansol asked, making his way to the couch.
Seungkwan made a vague effort to shrug while lying down and gestured randomly toward the coffee table, where his americano made by Eunji was sitting. Hansol picked it up and made a small noise of surprise before breaking into a wide smile. “Oh? Who’s Eunji?” he asked.
“Cashier at The Coffee Bean.”
“You put the moves on her?” Hansol asked, failing to hide his delight.
“If ordering coffee counts as ‘the moves.’” That was the problem, wasn’t it? What had Eunji seen in him in those 30 seconds? Seungkwan moved to sit up to make room for Hansol on the couch and hugged his knees into his chest. “I know that I should be, like, happy, that this random girl thinks I’m cute, or whatever, but I’m not.” In a quiet voice, he added, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Hansol sat down and wrapped an arm around him so Seungkwan could lean his head against his shoulder. He was silent for a few moments as he pieced together what he was going to say. It was one of the things Seungkwan liked best about Hansol; he took the time to think about what he was going to say before he said it. This was, of course, in stark contrast to Seungkwan himself, who would often talk incessantly without purpose to fill silence that he felt was too awkward. He was trying to be better about that.
“Everyone who went to our high school was an asshole,” Hansol said finally.
Seungkwan couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped from him. “You can say that again,” he laughed as he relaxed into Hansol’s shoulder.
“Everyone who went to our high school was an asshole,” Hansol repeated faithfully, before giggling.
Seungkwan rolled his eyes fondly. “You’re not supposed to laugh at your own jokes.”
Hansol paused again. He had that look on his face that he usually had when he was thinking deeply about something, but when he finally spoke, he just grinned and said, “You’re cute, but, personally, you’d have to chat me up first. I don’t give my number to just anybody.”
Seungkwan tackled him off the couch.
-
When Seungkwan and Hansol were in high school, they mostly kept to themselves. Seungkwan had the unfortunate habit of word vomiting every thought that crossed his mind, and Hansol had the unfortunate habit of not saying anything at all. Neither of them were exactly magnets for high school popularity.
The first thing Seungkwan had said to Hansol on the first day of high school in their first shared class was, “Hi, I’m Boo Seungkwan, I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Where did you go to middle school? Most of my friends when to private high schools, so I’m a little out of my element, you know? I’ve heard Mr. Park is a pretty chill teacher, but I guess we’ll see. I hope he doesn’t assign too many essays. It takes me forever to write essays. I have math after this, which is annoying, but at least I can get it over with. I really hate having math in the morning, and I always have math in the morning. It makes my brain hurt.” After pausing for a few seconds, he said, “You don’t talk much, do you?”
The first thing Hansol said to Seungkwan was, “I’m Hansol. What period do you have lunch?” and he smiled so widely that his face hurt a little.
If Seungkwan had been asked to describe how Hansol was in high school, he would’ve said, “Hansol was kind of awkward. He didn’t really know how to talk to people, and people were always weird about him because of the half-white thing. Basically, he was a recipe for disaster, and I pretty much saved his life.”
If Hansol had been asked to describe how Seungkwan was in high school, he would’ve said, “obnoxious,” but he wouldn’t have been able to say it without smiling.
-
“Mingyu, you’re conventionally attractive,” Seungkwan tried to casually float across the dining hall table at lunch the next day. Clearly, he failed, since Hansol immediately did a rather impressive spit take, spraying blue Powerade everywhere, but mostly in the direction of Minghao, sitting across from him. Minghao’s expression changed from shocked to murderous in a flash as he wiped blue splatter off his face. This was probably going to get ugly, so Seungkwan surreptitiously pushed his lunch over to the left, away from Minghao.
“I, uh, I guess, yeah,” Mingyu responded, eyeing the chaos unfolding in front of them as Minghao lunged across the table at Hansol, in the process of which he upturned the remainder of Hansol’s Powerade, soaking both himself and Hansol, which only served to make him angrier. Seokmin, sitting on the other side of Hansol, attempted to pull them apart and got a lap full of Powerade for his trouble.
“Do people just, give you their number? Like, girls. Do girls just give you their number without you asking? Or guys, too, I guess,” Seungkwan asked loudly, talking over Hansol’s screams for mercy. He lifted his lunch in the air to prevent it from getting wet as the blue puddle on the table slowly expanded.
“I mean, it’s happened before, but not often?” Mingyu said as he started aggressively ripping napkins out of the dispenser and throwing them in the general direction of Hansol and Minghao on the ground. “Oh, would you two let up?” he directed at the pair of them before turning back to Seungkwan. “Why do you ask?”
“Kwannie keeps getting phone numbers from cute girls,” Soonyoung supplied as he plopped down into the remaining dry chair at the table on the other side of Seungkwan. “I see I haven’t missed much,” he said, gesturing to Minghao and Hansol, the latter of which was attempting to use napkins to dry his newly blue shirt as he continued his stream of apologies to Minghao and the universe in general.
“Wait, wait…I just got an idea!” Seokmin exclaimed suddenly, standing up. He then immediately sat down when Soonyoung laughed loudly at the unfortunately located Powerade stain on his shorts.
“Congrats, Seokmin,” Seungkwan rolled his eyes and refocused his attention on distributing napkins around the table with Mingyu.
“A BooSeokSoon idea!” Well, that got Seungkwan’s attention. “Remember that video we did a couple years ago? Where Chan called all of us ugly and Seungkwan the ugliest of all?”
“How could I forget,” Seungkwan said darkly. Hansol looked up from the floor and frowned.
“We should do a sequel, like a revisiting. ‘In the past two years, Seungkwan has undergone—' what do they call it? A glow up? ‘—Seungkwan has undergone a glow up, so we need to do a re-ranking,’ or something. We can workshop it.”
Hansol opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Soonyoung spoke up, “Hmm, that is our best video. It could be a good idea.”
“Ooh, can I be in it?” Mingyu asked, absolutely vibrating with excitement, completely forgetting about the pile of blue napkins he was collecting. “You never let me be in your videos, please, please, please.”
Seungkwan, Seokmin, and Soonyoung all exchanged looks with each other. Mingyu was always begging them to appear on their YouTube channel, but he had the unfortunate habit of completely freezing up on camera. It was funny sometimes, yes, but most of time it was hard to work around and save the scene. They usually carefully planned videos in secret to avoid exactly this issue, since Mingyu’s puppy-dog eyes were a force to be reckoned with. Seungkwan sighed and gave in. “Okay, fine, but this is your last chance. You have to promise be funny!”
“I promise! I’ll be hilarious!”
Famous last words, Seungkwan thought, but wisely decided to not say out loud.
-
During his first year in University, Seungkwan made fast friends with Seokmin, who he had a group project with in Econ 101. The project had been a nightmare, their other two group members incomprehensibly terrible, but he and Seokmin had spent too many hours complaining about them late into the night to not become friends. Along with Seokmin came Soonyoung, and the three of them quickly learned that they could not study in the library, since when they were together, they became the loudest group of people perhaps anywhere on the planet. The list of places they had been kicked out of was not long, per se, but not exactly short, either.
Hansol, on the other hand, had decided to volunteer with the international student program since he spoke English fluently. There he met Joshua, who clung to him with all the desperation of a man who lived in a country whose language he was not quite fluent in. Through that he also met Minghao and Junhui, and then a whole slew of other people, including Mingyu, who was Minghao’s roommate. All of them called him Vernon, which always made Seungkwan feel odd in a way he couldn’t quite place. He’d asked him about it once, if he’d rather Seungkwan start calling him Vernon instead, but Hansol had just shrugged and said, “I like that you call me Hansol.”
On one particular Tuesday, Seungkwan, Seokmin, and Soonyoung were doing homework in Seungkwan and Hansol’s dorm room on campus since they'd already been kicked out of the library. Well, Seokmin and Soonyoung were doing homework, and Seungkwan was catching up on clips from various variety shows from earlier in the week, which he would have likely insisted was homework, if asked. Seungkwan had spent at least 30 minutes complaining loudly that the hosts weren’t funny, that the guests weren’t funny, that variety shows weren’t funny anymore, when Soonyoung threw a pen at him and yelled, “Then why don’t you just make your own variety show?”
“Maybe I should!” Seungkwan shot back, shielding himself from the various projectiles that Soonyoung was pelting him with.
“Honestly, we should,” Seokmin said offhandedly. “We’re hilarious.”
Soonyoung and Seungkwan both froze. “You’re right,” Soonyoung said after a beat, “we should.”
When Hansol walked into the dorm an hour later, the three of them were huddled around Seungkwan’s laptop, putting the finishing touches on a YouTube channel entitled BooSeokSoon.
“Excellent timing, Hansol,” Seungkwan said brightly. “We’re making our own variety show. Do you want to be our cameraman?” And so, BooSeokSoon was born.
What they unanimously agreed was their funniest video was one they'd filmed a few months after starting the channel. In it, they invited Chan, Seungkwan and Hansol’s then neighbor in their freshman dorm, to rank them based on how attractive he thought they were. Chan had been absolutely brutal, dragging out the reveal, and commenting on various qualities they all had that he found distasteful along the way. In the end, he declared Seungkwan the ugliest, and Seungkwan shrieked and leapt at him, tackling him to the ground and taking down Hansol, and therefore the camera, with them. It was hilarious. It had 547 views.
Their most successful video was one from three months ago where they filmed Soonyoung getting his hair dyed neon orange and then going home to show his parents. His mom had cried and wouldn’t stop until Soonyoung dyed it back later that evening. It had 2,389 views.
-
The subway was unusually crowded for the early afternoon, so Hansol and Seungkwan were standing, hanging onto to adjacent handles. Seungkwan stood close to Hansol, shielding his blue-stained shirt, from the general view of the other train patrons. He did that more for himself than for Hansol, who, in high school, would sometimes wear outfits that consisted entirely of tie-dye. Seungkwan shuddered at the memory and pressed closer to Hansol.
“I still can’t believe you and Minghao tried to drown the dining hall in Powerade,” Seungkwan commented, eyeing the damage the sports drink has done to Hansol’s shirt, pants, and general appearance. Hansol grimaced and tried to pat his hair down from the unfortunate shape it had dried into.
“I’m gonna have to take, like, three showers,” Hansol complained. “Who knows if this shirt will ever be white again.”
Seungkwan wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you’ll probably have to toss it.”
Hansol hummed in response. A serious look slowly crept onto his face. “About the video—” Hansol began, but Seungkwan cut him off.
“Don’t worry about it, Hansol. It’s fine, really.” Seungkwan knew where this conversation was going, and he didn’t particularly want to have it at all, much less on a crowded subway train.
Hansol frowned, but a sudden jerking of the train brought him out of his thoughts. He wrapped an arm around Seungkwan’s waist to keep him from falling, and he let it stay there after the train righted itself.
“If it’s not a joke you would make about someone else, you shouldn’t make it about yourself,” Hansol said after a few minutes of silence.
Seungkwan didn’t have anything to say to that, so he just rested his forehead on Hansol’s shoulder, hoping he could feel what he meant though the contact.
“You smell like Powerade,” He complained, and Hansol huffed a quiet laugh into Seungkwan’s ear.
-
“Hello viewers of BooSeokSoon, we have a very important video for you today!” Seokmin greeted the camera brightly. “It is, in fact, a follow-up to one of our best videos, that I’m sure all of you have seen—”
“Yes,” Seungkwan interrupted, “all 300 of you.”
“In that video, we had our mutual friend Chan—"
“Friend,” Seungkwan repeated with air quotes, looking into the camera with a glare.
“Yes, our dearest, and most treasured dongsaeng, Lee Chan, determined that I, Lee Seokmin was the most handsome member of BooSeokSoon, and that our poor, little Boo Seungkwan was the ugliest.”
“I swear to god, Seokmin—”
“But!” Soonyoung interrupted, “Recently, there have been some incidents that suggest that Chan’s rankings are not longer accurate.”
“Yes,” Seokmin continued, “recently our one and only Boo Seungkwan has been getting—” here he paused for dramatic effect “—phone numbers.” At this, Seungkwan rolled his eyes.
“That’s right, a barista at our local coffee shop wrote her number on Seungkwan’s americano,” Soonyoung added with delight.
“It was an interaction so minimal, that she could not have been swayed by his winning personality, and seemingly based her decision to give him her number solely on his appearance. Seungkwan,” Seokmin added, turning towards him, “what do you have to say about the pile of phone numbers from pretty women sitting lonely, un-texted, in your bedroom?”
“Ah, thank you so much for your interest,” Seungkwan said, looking directly into the camera. “I am sorry I have not texted you. Truthfully, I have received so many numbers, that I could not possibly text them all, so, in order to be fair, I have not texted any of them. Please understand, thank you,” Seungkwan bowed, and Seokmin let out a snort of laughter.
“He makes it seem like he got dozens of numbers, but in reality, he just got two,” Soonyoung said offhandedly.
“That’s two more than you!”
“Anyway,” Seokmin continued, “the fact of the matter is that Chan’s rankings cannot be correct anymore, since neither myself nor Soonyoung has ever received a phone number from a potential romantic interest without asking, so to rectify this, we decided that we needed an updated ranking. We chose Chan last time because he was our ugliest friend. This is why, this time, we have invited our friend Kim Mingyu onto our channel.” Seokmin turned towards Mingyu, who had walked into the frame of the shot, and bowed. “Welcome Mingyu, you are our most conventionally attractive friend.”
“Yes, thank you.” Mingyu bowed towards the camera.
“You’re not supposed to agree!” Seungkwan shouted.
“Speak to us a little bit about being so handsome,” Seokmin continued.
“I don’t have much to say, these are just the looks I was born with,” Mingyu said simply, but he was fighting a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“An explanation that truly only could’ve come from someone who’s been told that they’re attractive all their life,” Soonyoung commented.
“Alright, Mingyu, the floor is yours,” Seokmin said. “Please feel free to rank Soonyoung, Seungkwan, and I in order of most to least attractive.”
“Soonyoung, Seokmin, Seungkwan,” Mingyu said directly to the camera without pausing. Seungkwan groaned loudly and the three of them descended onto Mingyu.
“What, you said it so fast! You’re supposed to make it funny!” Seokmin exclaimed, affronted.
“You said you’d be funny!” Soonyoung accused.
“I’m still last?!” Seungkwan complained.
Mingyu put his arms up, trying to defend himself from being accosted from all sides. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“I can’t help but notice that you’ve also just listed us in order of oldest to youngest,” Soonyoung observed. “Did you do that on purpose so you wouldn’t actually have to rank us?”
“Yes, I did,” Mingyu admitted with another bow towards the camera. From behind it, Hansol brought a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh
“Mingyu this is why we don’t invite you to be in our videos,” Seungkwan said with a dramatic sigh. Mingyu pouted, giving the camera his saddest and most pathetic puppy-dog eyes.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Seokim said, regaining his bearings and addressing the camera. “Luckily, we prepared for Mingyu to fail,” Seokmin ignored Mingyu’s soft noise of offense, “and, we also invited our second most attractive friend, Yoon Jeonghan, to appear in this video.”
“Oh, is that why I’m here?” Jeonghan asked from where he’d been sitting on the couch just out view of the camera.
“Jun isn’t going to talk to any of you for like, a month, when he watches this,” Hansol commented as he adjusted the camera so Jeonghan was in the picture.
“Cameramen don’t talk!” Soonyoung snapped, and Seokmin burst into laughter again.
“Good this video is a disaster,” Seungkwan sighed.
“It’s fine, that’s what editing is for,” Seokmin said with a wave of his hand. “Jeonghan-hyung, please, rank us in order of most to least handsome.”
Jeonghan had a pained look on his face. “Ah, guys, I really don’t want to do this,” he admitted, looking anywhere but the camera.
Thank god, Seungkwan did not say out loud. Instead he said, “It’s fine, this video is already a mess, just tell a joke or something.”
“Okay, that I can do.” Jeonghan eyed the camera dramatically. “Truthfully, you’re all so ugly. I don’t think I can do it.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” Seungkwan said, bowing toward Jeonghan. Seokmin and Soonyoung joined in a chorus of thank you’s and bowed as well.
Just as Seungkwan thought they were going to wrap up, Seokmin yelled, “Wait! I have one more idea!” Seokmin turned to face the camera. “Vernon, our cameraman, also happens to be inordinately handsome,” he said, eyes gleaming.
“Uh,” Hansol faltered, eyes wide. He tried to silently beg Seungkwan for help, but it was too late. Soonyoung grabbed at his wrist, pulling him into the center of the room
“Here, Mingyu, grab the camera,” Soonyoung said without missing a beat. He pulled the camera from Hansol’s grasp and gave it to Mingyu, who looked elated to be a part of the video again. “Remember to be funny,” Soonyoung warned.
“Vernon,” Seokmin said, eyeing Hansol carefully, “this video is quickly veering into unsavable territory, so please rank us in order of most attractive to least attractive, or we may have to scrap it entirely.”
Hansol’s eyes flicked back and forth between Seungkwan and the camera, unsure. Seungkwan could only imagine what his face was doing in response. Having Hansol in front of the camera with him was unfamiliar, and he realized abruptly that he really didn’t want to know how handsome Hansol thought he was, and he didn’t know what to do with the thought.
“Well, obviously,” Hansol said, finally, “Seungkwan is the most handsome.”
“Oh, he said obviously!” Seokmin said, delighted.
“Why is it obvious, Vernon?” Soonyoung said with interest, pushing Seungkwan next to Hansol so they were in the center of the frame. Seungkwan wished briefly that the ground would open up and swallow him whole.
“Uh, well, his cheeks, you know, um. They’re so cute,” he finished lamely, avoiding Seungkwan’s eyes.
Seungkwan had, at this point, lost all control of his own face, which he was sure was making some sort of pained expression. He felt hot all over and meditated briefly on why this experience was so much more horrible to sit through than Chan telling him he was ugly, but came up with nothing.
“Have you often though about pinching Kwannie’s cute cheeks?” Soonyoung said reaching toward Seungkwan’s face. Seungkwan swatted his hand away.
“Okay, now that this has been thoroughly embarrassing for everyone involved, namely me, can we be done?” Seungkwan was not above begging.
“Wait!” Seokmin yelled. “Vernon, you have to finish ranking us!”
“Seokmin is the ugliest,” Hansol said with sudden conviction directly into the camera.
“What?!” Seokmin screamed. “Cut the filming! Absolutely not! I was the most handsome last time!”
The video cut off with Seokmin lunging towards the camera, accompanied by Soonyoung in the background, laughing so hard he had to bend over and rest his hands on his knees, and also by a loud shriek from Mingyu as he toppled over.
-
They posted the video on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, it had 98 views. On Thursday, it had 263 views. On Sunday at noon, it had 78,629 views.
-
“We’ve gone viral!” Seokmin cried in victory as he threw open the door to Seungkwan and Hansol’s apartment on Sunday afternoon, towing Soonyoung behind him.
“What, really?” Seungkwan asked, looking up from where he’d been lying on the couch. “We had like maybe 2,000 views yesterday.” He pulled out his phone to check YouTube. It had 79,543 views. Holy shit. There was no way this was real. “Oh my god.”
“It’s got almost 80,000 views now!” Soonyoung laughed, a little bit maniacally. He made his way into the kitchen and started rifling through their fridge. “Do you guys have any alcohol? We need to celebrate!”
Hansol peaked his head out of his room. “What are we shouting about this time?”
“Vernon, we’ve done it!” Seokmin skipped over to Hansol and hugged him, actually managing to lift him in the air and spin him around. “We made a video that people actually watched!”
“This is crazy,” Seungkwan said in disbelief as he scrolled through the comments on the video. There were so many comments. “Oh my god.”
“I posted it in the university meme page and it got, like, 5,000 likes,” Soonyoung said from the kitchen where he had his head in the fridge. “Ooh, score!” He pulled out a six pack that had been shoved in the back of the fridge for who knows how long and cracked one open.
“All the comments are ranking us. How did we not see this coming,” Seungkwan said, still in complete disbelief. There were a lot ranking them on looks, of course, but there were others, too. One comment ranked them on fashion sense (Mingyu won); another ranked them on haircuts (Jeonghan won).
“Ooh, who’s winning?” Seokmin said with interest, towing Hansol with him to sit on the couch with Seungkwan. Soonyoung brought over the beer from the kitchen and then sat himself on Seungkwan’s lap so he could read the comments on his phone.
“Well, they’re ranking us on a bunch of different things. Here’s us ranked on our desire to appear in the video: Mingyu, Seokmin, Soonyoung, Seungkwan, Jeonghan, and Vernon.”
Seokmin let out a loud laugh. “Oh my god, that’s so good.”
“‘Seokmin was the most attractive in the last ranking, and yet he demanded a re-ranking?’” Seungkwan read aloud. “‘He played himself.’”
“Hey!” Seokmin complained.
“There are also a lot of comments demanding to see Jun in the next video,” Seungkwan added, ignoring Seokmin.
Hansol laughed, “He’ll be happy to hear that. He’s been giving me the cold shoulder all week.”
Seungkwan, just then, reading a comment about how cute Mingyu was, came to a sudden, horrible realization. “Oh god, I can’t believe our only successful video in two years was the one we did with Mingyu.”
Soonyoung groaned loudly. “Oh no, he’s going to be insufferable. We’re going to have to put him in every video, now.”
“Is there a way to makes sure he never knows?” Seokmin wondered aloud.
“Hmm, probably not, because I already invited him over to celebrate,” Hansol said from the other side of the couch, and then just laughed at the chorus of voices screaming at his betrayal.
-
On Monday morning, the video had 397,236 views.
-
Classes on Monday were bizarre, to say the least. Though most of Seungkwan’s day was relatively normal, it was punctuated by what could only be described as the extremely abnormal. As he walked to class, someone would see him and shout out that they’d seen the video, or that they though his cheeks were cute, or once, quite memorably, “Justice for Seokmin!”
And, in the most confusing turn of events, he got more phone numbers. He got a lot of them, actually. Girls came up to him after lecture, passing him notes with phone numbers on them before bowing. Girls stopped him in the hallways to give him their number. A girl ran up to him in the middle of the quad and dug into her backpack for a pen and paper, scribbled down a name and a phone number, and pressed it into his chest with a sheepish expression on her face before turning around and fleeing in the oppostie direction. One girl and her whole entourage cornered him in the Arts building, grabbed his arm, pulled up his sleeve, and wrote their numbers on his arm with a sharpie.
A guy even gave him his number in the library. What on earth?
As the day went on, and the more numbers he got, the more obvious it became that that it was a joke. A continuation of the universe’s grand plan to mock Boo Seungkwan. Haha, Seungkwan is ugly. We get it, universe, you can stop now! With each person that caught his eye, his heart sank lower and lower in his chest. By the time he got home, he barely had the energy to take off his shoes. He lowered himself to the ground, right in front of the doorway and slowly began taking out all of the scraps of paper he’d wadded up and shoved in his bag throughout the day, smoothing them out and laying them flat. He counted 27 before he remembered his arm. 31, then.
Hansol found Seungkwan there an hour later, sitting on the floor in the doorway, staring at the small pile of phone numbers he’d amassed, knees folded into his chest.
Hansol sat down next to him and eyed the pile, considering. “What’s up?” He asked after a beat.
Seungkwan, embarrassingly, couldn’t stop his eyes from watering. “I—” he started, but he found that he didn’t know what to say, how to explain all the things he was feeling. He didn’t know what to call the thing in his chest weighing him down.
“No one really wants to date me,” he settled on, after he was sure he could speak without his voice breaking.
“What? That’s not true. You’ve quite literally been propositioned by, what, 20 people in one day?” He gestured to the phone numbers. “How can you interpret that as nobody wanting to date you?” Hansol said in disbelief.
“31,” Seungkwan mumbled into his knees.
“What?”
“I got 31 phone numbers.”
“Okay, so 31 people, just today, told you that they were interested in dating you, and you think no one wants to date you?” Hansol clarified with incredulity. Seungkwan only nodded, unable to make eye contact. “Seungkwan,” Hansol continued, “you are cute. You’re funny. You’re smart. Anyone would be lucky to date you, like unbelievably, incredibly, indescribably lucky. And, I think those 31 people saw that, and that’s why they gave you their number. Maybe they thought it was funny, but if you called any one of them, they would answer. They would be happy for you to call them. They wouldn’t have given you their number if they didn’t want you to call them.”
Seungkwan did not know what to say to that. The feelings in his gut swirled, an uncomfortable mixture of joy at Hansol’s words and an ache at not quite believing them.
“I don’t want to call them” he said finally, quietly, small.
“Okay,” Hansol said, and he slung an arm around him, pulling Seungkwan’s head into his shoulder, like he always did. “Okay.”
-
By Thursday, the video was up to 700,000 views, and Soonyoung demanded that they go out and party “to celebrate our success and also to get fucking wasted.” That sounded excellent to Seungkwan, who had spent the entire week so far fending off propositions from what seemed to be everyone in the entire school. He’d stopped counting after 50, but if he had to guess, he had probably received around 70 phone numbers by Thursday evening, all sitting lonely, un-texted in a pile in his bedroom. Yeah, getting fucking wasted sounded great to him.
They always went to parties with all of the international students, a holdover from when Hansol took on the responsibility of being Joshua’s personal translator. Joshua was now mostly fluent in Korean, but he still clung to Hansol a bit, if only due to force of habit. Joshua said something loudly to Hansol in English when they walked into whoever’s house at 10pm that night and pulled him into the crowd, probably to take shots, leaving Seungkwan with Junhui and Minghao.
Junhui had, as Hansol had predicted, pretended to be mad at them after the video went up (“Am I not conventionally attractive enough for you?” he’d demanded, affronted), but after hearing that the populace demanded his presence, and after they pretended to beg him to be in their next video, he’d magnanimously forgiven them. Minghao, curiously, was wearing the same shirt from the infamous Powerade lunch, which Seungkwan only recognized because the neon blue stain had not most definitely not come out in the wash. (Minghao just shrugged when he asked about it and said, “I kinda like it.”)
And, as they usually did, Jun and Minghao immediately ditched him to go dance, but that was fine, since Seungkwan could spot Mingyu and his stupidly tall head in the next room. He grabbed a beer from counter as he made his way over to Mingyu, who was talking to Soonyoung and Seokmin
“Seungkwaaaaaan!” Mingyu cheered when he spotted him and slung an arm around him. “The man of the hour! The David to my Bowie! The piña to my colada! The knife to my butter?” In the background, Soonyoung cackled.
“The what now?” Seungkwan laughed. “Are you drunk already?”
“I’m a viral internet star now, Seungkwan. I’m celebrating my catapult into fame. Yes, I’m drunk,” Mingyu giggled.
“Oh, we’re famous now?”
“I’ve gotten, like, 10 phone numbers since we posted that video,” Seokmin commented with a sly shrug.
“10?” Seungkwan couldn’t help but ask. That could not be right. He’d gotten well over 50, and Seokmin had gotten 10?
“Yeah, why? Have you gotten any more?”
Seungkwan suddenly felt awkward. “A few?” He tried to sound casual, but when he brought a hand up to scratch at his head, it had the unfortunate effect of exposing the phone numbers written in sharpie on his forearm that hadn’t come off in days of scrubbing. Seokmin’s eyes immediately zeroed in on them. Before Seungkwan knew what was happening, Seokmin had grabbed his arm and shoved his sleeve up past his elbow.
“Oh my god, Seungkwan,” He turned his forearm around, eyeing it. “How many phone numbers did you get?”
At that moment, Hansol and Joshua appeared out of the crowd, wearing matching dopey grins and miraculously saving Seungkwan from having to respond. Hansol said something loudly, seemingly to the whole lot of them, but he said it English, so the only words he caught were “friend” and what was maybe “dance.” Joshua responded, also in English, and whatever he said had a dramatic effect on Hansol, who’s eye’s widened, his expression turning quickly to betrayal. “Shua!” he exclaimed, upset, and grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of the room, leaving the four of them blinking in their wake.
“Alright, then,” Mingyu shrugged, but before anyone could say anything else, a girl walked over to the four of them, occupying the space that Hansol had just been in. She wordlessly pressed a small scrap of paper into Seungkwan’s hands with a wink and then disappeared into the crowd as abruptly as she’d appeared.
“Is that another phone number?” Seokmin cried. It was, in fact, another phone number. “This is unbelievable!”
“Seungkwan, you cad!” Soonyoung said with delight.
“Why don’t you text one of them?” Mingyu asked, curious. Seungkwan could only frown in response. He could barely trek his way through his own muddy feelings, much less express them out loud.
“Well you’re still holding out for Vernon, right?” Soonyoung commented casually.
Seunkwan’s blood turned to ice. “What?” he breathed.
“I mean, you’re in love with Vernon, right?” Soonyoung said with a shrug, making eye contact with Seokmin.
Seungkwan’s heart stopped, leaving a wounded feeling his chest. No, this wasn’t happening. Absolutely not. Seungkwan had, at one point, maybe had a crush on Hansol, but that was ages ago, in high school. They lived together for god’s sake. He was over it, way over it. Seungkwan deftly ignored the sinking feeling in his chest that said, “no you’re not.”
“I’m really not,” Seungkwan said weakly. “How pathetic would that be, spending all these years pining after him?”
At that, Seokmin and Soonyoung gave him matching sad looks that Seungkwan decided he couldn’t look at for a second longer. He turned and fled, ignoring Mingyu shouting after him. He made his way to the kitchen and figured he might as well make himself another drink since he was nowhere near drunk enough to deal with this night, this week, his whole life.
What was alcohol for, if not drowning your feelings?
Seungkwan tried, at all times, very hard not to think about his feelings, for Hansol or anyone else. Truthfully, he never spent a lot of time contemplating romance, mostly because of Hansol and whatever his emotions were doing about that at the time, but also largely because the few times he’d tried, it had ended spectacularly poorly. There was that time he’d gotten a drink thrown at him freshman year, that time the boy he had a crush on turned out to be the one who had been slipping, well, unpleasant notes in his locker, and then of course, there had been that time in high school where, one of the most popular girls, in a fit of giggles, handed Seungkwan a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it. “Call me,” she said, to a stunned Seungkwan and Hansol, who’d been standing next to him. When Seungkwan called later, it turned out to be the number of a reject line. Seungkwan couldn’t even remember if he’d ever spoken to her before that.
Well, that was enough time spent brooding about that, Seungkwan thought, pouring himself a drink that should have him covered for the next hour, if it lasted that long. Four shots was probably good, right? Through the doorway, Seungkwan spied Hansol, talking with Joshua. He was wearing that same odd expression on his face, the one he’d been wearing a lot lately. It was as if he was constantly thinking very hard about something uncomfortable. Seungkwan knew from experience that, if something was bothering him, Hansol would usually say something about it, but he’d probably been holding whatever it was in to deal with Seungkwan and his messy feelings all week and had to talk to Joshua about it instead. God, he was such a shitty friend.
“Hey, you’re in that video, right?” A low voice spoke from behind him, interrupting his internal misery monologue. Seungkwan turned around to see a man standing behind him. He looked up. A tall man. Kinda cute, too.
“Uh, yeah.”
The guy suddenly broke into a sheepish smile, and a faint blush decorated his cheeks. Oh no. Seungkwan had seen that face on quite literally dozens of people in the past few days, and he knew exactly what was coming. “Please help me,” he tried to say with his eyes, but there was no one around to save him. Here we go again, he though blithely.
“I was just wondering—” he began, but he was interrupted abruptly by Hansol appearing quite literally out of nowhere, hugging Seungkwan with so much force that he nearly fell over
“Kwannie!” he shouted, obviously a little more than tipsy. “There you are!”
“I, uh,” Seungkwan tried to look back towards the guy, but Hansol grabbed at his wrist, demanding his attention.
“Come dance with me and Shua,” he said, and he pulled Seungkwan out of the kitchen. Seungkwan very carefully did not look behind him.
Hansol had said “dance with me and Shua,” but Joshua was nowhere to be found when Hansol tugged him somewhat haphazardly toward the speakers in the living room. Hansol threw his arms around Seungkwan’s neck, leaving Seungkwan to awkwardly place his hands on Hannsol’s waist. He was warm underneath his hands. Hansol smiled a million-watt smile back at him, and Seungkwan’s traitor heart beat wildly out of control.
“You’re the cutest, you know. I wasn’t just saying that, for the video. You’re, like, so cute,” Hansol said, slurring a little.
Seungkwan’s heart thudded in his chest. God dammit, Soonyoung, this was all his fault. He’d had it all under control before he ruined it. “You’re a little drunk, yeah? We should go home. You have class tomorrow.”
“But I like it here with you,” Hansol whined and then proceeded to nuzzle his face into Seungkwan’s neck. It tickled. Seungkwan giggled in spite of himself.
“I’ll be at the apartment, too. We live together, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Hansol lifted his head and gave Seungkwan a wide smile. God, Hansol was cute. “Good, because I won’t let anyone else take you home.”
“Oh, shut up,” Seungkwan said, face burning.
-
“Um, Boo Seungkwan?”
Seungkwan looked up from where he’d been sitting in the library to see Eunji the barista standing across from him. Wow okay, here’s someone he’d never thought he’d see again, especially since he had been very carefully avoiding The Coffee Bean for the last two weeks or so. She had a look on her face that suggested she would rather be anywhere else than here, talking to Seungkwan. Well, that made the two of them.
“Yeah, Eunji, right?” he said, as if he hadn’t spent at least an hour committing her name and face to memory after she wrote her number on the back of his iced americano.
“Yes, hi, I, um, I just wanted to apologize for being so forward, before. It clearly made you uncomfortable, and, uh, yeah. I’m sorry.” She looked both genuinely sorry and also genuinely like if she had to rank all the conversations she could possibly have in her entire life, this one would be dead last.
To that, Seungkwan had absolutely no idea how to respond. “Ah, it’s okay,” he said. And then, before he lost his nerve, he asked, “Why did you, I mean, why did you give me your number anyway? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Ah, I recognized you from your videos,” Eunji admitted with an embarrassed laugh, "and my coworkers were teasing me about being single, and then I saw you in line and thought, ‘why not.’ Well, know I know why not,” she added sheepishly.
“What, really?” Seungkwan was floored. Before their last, they averaged maybe 300 views a video. Was one of the 200 or so subscribers they’d had before their last video really Eunji the barista? “You saw our videos?”
Eunji laughed. “Yeah, one of you always posts them in the university meme page. You guys are funny.” Seungkwan watched her shrug, a light blush dusting her cheeks. She was cute, he thought, and she thought he was funny, and she gave him her number, and it wasn’t a joke, after all.
Seungkwan thought about Hansol. He thought about being the pathetic fool chasing after his best friend for years, never dating anyone at all. He thought about Hansol, who hadn't really dated anyone since they were 16 and how he would feel when he finally did again.
He thought, it’s now or never, isn’t it?
When Eunji turned to leave, he said, “Hey, you should give me your number again.” Eunji turned around, shock poorly hidden on her face. “I might text you, this time,” He said with a small shrug.
Eunji laughed. “Okay,” she said, “give me your phone.”
-
“You’ll never believe who I just ran into,” Seungkwan said when he got back to his and Hansol’s apartment later that day.
“Who?” Hansol looked up from where he was eating cereal in the kitchen.
“Eunji, the barista.”
Hansol scrunched up his face for a second before he seemingly remembered the existence of Eunji, the barista. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, apparently, she recognized me from our videos. Can you believe she watched them before the last one?” Seungkwan put his things down and joined Hansol in the kitchen. Here goes nothing, he thought before saying, “I, uh, I got her number again.”
Hansol looked up from his cereal in surprise. “Wow, she must be really into you.”
“I asked for it.”
“You, what?”
“I asked for her number, figured, I don’t know, maybe this time I’ll text her.”
Hansol’s face was carefully schooled into a blank expression as he eyed Seungkwan silently. Seungkwan felt awkward under his gaze, but before he could turn to leave, Hansol grabbed him by the wrist.
“I don’t want you to text Eunji,” Hansol said, eyes wide.
“You…what?”
“I don’t want you to text Eunji,” Hansol repeated, looking directly into his eyes.
Seungkwan’s lungs abruptly stopped working. There was no way that Hansol was saying what he thought he was saying, absolutely no way. After all this time? Seungkwan tried to quell the feeling building in his chest, to no avail.
“Okay, why not?” he said weakly
Hansol’s grip tightened around his wrist, and he pulled Seungkwan closer. He wore that same, slightly uncomfortable expression that he’d been wearing around the past few weeks. “Because I want you to text me,” he said.
“I text you all the time,” Seungkwan whispered, breathless.
Hansol frowned slightly. “Seungkwan, I—we’ve known each other for a long time, and for a long time, for a long time I’ve thought—for a long time I’ve thought that, fuck, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.” He wiped the hand not currently occupying Seungkwan’s wrist down his face.
Seungkwan stood stock still, terrified that this was going where he thought it was and also terrified that it wasn’t. “How what was supposed to go?”
Hansol steeled his expression into one of determination. “Seungkwan, I like you. I like you a lot. I want to date you, if, ah, if you’ll have me.” Hansol’s lips turned up in a nervous smile.
“Hansol, in what universe—” Seungkwan could not believe this was happening “—in what fucking universe would I not want you? I, uh,” he reached a tentative hand up to touch the side of Hansol’s cheek, “I would love to date you,” he said, not quite able to make eye contact.
Hansol smiled so widely his face hurt a little. He reached his arms around Seungkwan’s neck, just like he had on the dance floor the day before, and asked, “Can I kiss you?”
“Okay,” Seungkwan said. “Okay.”
Kissing Hansol was like giving an acceptance speech for an award you never expected to win, like singing karaoke and absolutely crushing the high note when you didn’t think you could quite get there. Kissing Hansol was like telling a joke you had spent the last 5 minutes workshopping in your head, and having it land perfectly. Kissing Hansol was like getting kicked in the chest, but you were really happy about it.
There were so many things running through his head, but when they finally pulled apart, the thought his brain decided to say out loud was: “So, you weren’t kidding when you said you wouldn’t let anyone else take me home, huh?”
Hansol turned bright red. “Oh, shut up,” he said, and then he kissed him again.