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I manage to catch Kun alone in the kitchen one afternoon. He’s carefully cutting up and portioning a watermelon—no doubt, a present from someone’s parents with summer fast approaching. I don’t know if I even plan to ask Kun and I certainly don’t plan to ask him first. But I have no idea who to ask anyway. Taeyong is always torn between a million things, so was Mark (and I had a sneaking suspicion that he’d know just as much as me about this little problem anyway). And Taeil and Johnny always seemed worlds away from me. And Kun was here, right within my grasp, the question still bouncing around my head demandingly. And Kun had been there for me since he got there. Even if I felt, in my heart of hearts, that he was meant for Renjun and Winwin and Chenle, Kun had been there for me just as much. But me and Chenle had been straddling boarders so long and so well that we might as well have created our own country.
So I swing my body to perch on the counter next to him but far enough away that I don’t get my pants wet with the remnants of melon on the counter.
He smiles at me invitingly but doesn’t stop what he’s doing. “Aw, Jisungie, looking to get to the watermelon before anyone else does?” He teases. And we call him ‘mom’ exactly for moments like this, scolding us and babying us in exactly equal parts.
“Actually, I have a question for you.”
He actually looks up from the melon to study me and I squirm under the scrutiny. “Well?” He prompts, looking down again.
The question’s run ragged through my brain for at least a month now but I haven’t managed to get it out of my head yet (except, late one night, into a secretive google search but that didn’t get me anywhere). So it comes out in an explosive, rushed burst. “What do you do when you like someone too much?”
He freezes what he’s doing and brings his curious gaze back up to my face. “What do you mean ‘too much’?”
And I totally lose my words and my sense under the returned scrutiny. “Y’know, when it gets… distracting? When it starts to really affect your life?”
He snorts and his gaze softens. “I hope you’re listening really well, Jisungie.” He prompts and I make a show of leaning towards him and cupping my ear to hear better. “You are in SM.” He starts off. “You are the maknae of NCT, the dance king of Dream and you debuted when you were, what 14?”
“Yeah, fourteen.” I answer, withering under the praise disguised as simple facts.
“What that tells me,” he pulls the knife out of the melon and taps the point onto the counter for every point he makes, “is that you’re determined, hard-working, goal-oriented and stubborn.” He punctuates the last one with a gentle but firm poke to my chest.
“So, what should I do?” I press.
“You should stop worrying.” He brushes off easily. “A little crush isn’t going to kill you. You’re Park Jisung! And you’re only young like this once.” He warns. Every one of Kun’s lectures seemed to end up with some warning about getting old. The importance of making the most of my youth or whatever was firmly ingrained in me by this point.
“Alright,” I answer unsurely, “thanks, hyung.”
He stops me once I plop off of the counter and I expect the real, life-changing advice he kept from me until now. “Wait.” He calls out to me. But when I turn around all he does is pop a jagged, imperfectly cut chunk of watermelon into my mouth. “Watermelon. And put your clothes in the dryer for god’s sake.”
“Will do.” I tell him, heading down the hall so I don’t forget again.
Kun’s faith in me is warm and sweet and almost overwhelming and it keeps the rest of my concerns lodged firmly in my throat. Because you can like someone too much. I mean, specifically, I like someone too much. It wasn’t always like this. But somewhere along the line, it turned from liking to liking too much. And I couldn’t portion off “liking” to just shared hotel rooms and sleepovers in the dorms and planning unrealistic trips to take when we were older, more successful, finally had the time. It leaked out into the practice room, fansigns, concerts, videos that fans could pause and analyze and clip and put onto twitter to rewatch them a million more times.
It just hit me one day. Not like a sudden realization but like a sucker-punch to the gut, like something that would change my life forever. He’s laughing—or maybe he’s just smiling, dancing, complaining, god it really could be anything—and I’m just watching. And then my whole world turns upside down, inside out, topsy-turvy. My whole world—my whole universe—narrows down to him, leaving everything else an unrecognizable series of blurs and buzzes. Even my heartbeat pulses on an even beat of you, you, you.
And just as fast and disorientating as it starts, it leaves. The world fades back into existence and I just like him again—I mean, I like him more than Jeno or Renjun, even Mark but I don’t think like him too much.
It’s too much, it’s overwhelming and it’s prone to strike at any moment. And that’s why I call it a problem. But Kun makes me wonder if it’s only like this because I am so young. If it would always be like this, no matter when I fell first. If this is just what it feels like for everyone until they get used to the dizzying feeling of falling. But it’s so incomparable to any crush I’d had before—so intense and debilitating, so unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It can’t be normal. It has to be a problem.
I don’t plan on asking Lucas either. It seems like a disaster before the words are even out of my mouth. But Chenle is back in Shanghai and Kun found the time to go home too and there’s something familiar to Lucas even if he’s so different at the same time. And it feels like all my feelings are constantly hanging outside of my body—visible and vulnerable—with Chenle so far away. And Lucas is the only one that actually sticks the Switch into the TV and plays games with me in the living room. So the deck is really stacked against me to begin with.
It just slips out, unceremoniously, while we’re waiting for some loading screen, “what do you do when you like someone too much?”
At first he looks at me like I’m a fucking alien before his whole face lights up in excited recognition. “Too much?” He questions but steamrolls right over me when I try to explain myself further. “There is no such thing as ‘too much’.” He puts the phrase in sarcastic air quotes.
I open my mouth to try and explain again but he is unstoppably enthusiastic.
“They deserve everything.” He impresses upon me like it is the most important lesson he could ever possibly give me. “If you like someone, they deserve your whole heart. Your whole. Heart.” He emphasizes, poking at my chest somewhere near my heart. I don’t think biology was ever Lucas’ thing.
“So…what do I do?” I try.
“You’re already doing everything right.” He laughs. “The only other thing you should be doing is passing me the chips.”
So I pass him the chips and our Fortnight game starts. And absolutely nothing is solved for me. Maybe doing things with his whole heart worked for Lucas but I never managed to put my all into anything that wasn’t dance. Everything else came in weak and embarrassed spurts. Even this was only overwhelming and took up my everything when I couldn’t control it. I don’t even know if he would want my everything, my whole heart. So it’s probably best to quietly find a solution, like him like normal and keep things the way they are.
Which is why this was a spectacularly stupid and impulsive move. But Chenle isn’t paying any attention to me and I really want him to and all the functioning parts of my brain are solely focused on getting him to pay attention to me. We’re in the middle of a VLive so he really should be paying attention to the fans and not me, it’s our job after all. But I’m hit by another one of those unpredictable waves of liking—longing, obsession, affection—not one that flips my world on its head but it’s still intense and impossible to ignore.
“What should I do if I like you too much?” It just comes out of my mouth. No effort on my part, like it’s not even my own mouth it comes out of.
Chenle finally looks at me, mildly amused. “Hm?”
I point at a comment that doesn’t exist but the chat is scrolling fast enough that it’s impossible to tell anyway. “Someone asked ‘what should I do if I like Chenle too much?’” I explain.
He laughs, his head still tilted back towards me. And I finally understand why it’s called a “heart attack.” Fireworks. Explosions. Something as big and strong as a dragon beating its wings inside my chest. The panic of entire tiny city under siege. A giant, destructive flower blooming that tears through everything around it. My insides are being attacked by everything I feel for him. But there’s no confetti pouring from chest, no heart emojis in my eyes, nothing to show for it. I’m just left ravaged and unsteady while the world moves along, uncaring and unknowing.
Chenle turns his eyes back to the camera, still smiling and amused. “I’ll send you ten ugly selfies and you won’t like me that much anymore.” He brushes off easily.
But I can’t even fathom a world where ten measly, little unflattering pictures could solve this. Not with my heart still pounding, with my whole body still recovering from him smiling at me. He could turn my world upside down, could shake me to my core, could make me doubt everything about myself. And he thought a handful of ugly faces could change anything? There was no way he understood the scope of liking too much. But I guess there was a difference between the infatuation of a random fan and whatever he did to me.
There are few chores I am allowed to help with in the dorms but I can’t really ruin anything while folding and sorting laundry. So, when Taeil finally gets a spare moment to get the laundry machine going, I am immediately slotted next to him. It’s not an impulsive, snap decision to ask Taeil. I’d always thought of asking him. There’s an intangible warmth and comfort to him like, no matter what your concern is, he’s seen it before and it’s no big deal. So the question slips out of my mouth easily. “Hyung, what do you do when you like someone too much?”
He looks up from folding clothes with warmth, ease and recognition, like maybe someone already leaked information to him (I bet it was Lucas) or he just innately knew somehow. The silence stretches out like when a particularly gentle tutor wants you to solve a difficult problem on your own. But I don’t have an answer for him aside from what Chenle told me himself. And I don’t think that’s a good answer. “There’s not much you can do, huh?” He finally answers.
And it’s an answer I had expected and feared. “What? Why?”
He looks at me like he thinks more of me than this. “You already knew that, though, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think there wasn’t an answer.” I tell him. “I just thought I couldn’t figure it out.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.” He responds easily, going back to the laundry.
“Someone told me that I should look at him when he looks really ugly and I’ll get over it.” I simplify the story to try and drag some secret answer out of him.
“But you already know that won’t do anything.” He rolls his eyes. “You’ve already seen him look ugly a million times and you wouldn’t be asking still if you thought that would work.”
And he caught me. He knew everything already. Even what I was thinking before I said it. Like I was no more opaque than a piece of plastic wrap in front of him.
“Well…” He teases out, “I guess there’s one thing to do.”
The bait seems fishy but I go for it anyway. “What?”
“The only way to get over infatuation is to fall in love.”
And my stomach drops to the floor at the word. It’s like one of Chenle’s little spells but the whole thing makes me feel sick instead of star-struck and light.
Taeil laughs and rubs his hand soothingly over my back. “I guess you’re a little young for that, yeah?”
There’s something about not rooming with Chenle. Something about retaining that last shred of privacy. Something about it that makes getting to actually spend the night together (in foreign countries, on vacation, in pensions, even in our regular dorms) feel like a sleepover every time. Something about texting Chenle furtively, late into the night that was so close to just being normal kids.
This isn’t normally how I text Chenle though. I just did particularly well at PUBG one round and sent him a screenshot of my score. This isn’t trading jokes and mundane stories until secrets and quiet dreams leak into them, turning Kakao Talk into a surrogate diary.
what r u doing up? He responds. I’m not known for being up late. I sleep easy as my notorious snoring attests to. Whenever I’m not sleeping soundly, it’s because there’s something truly exciting or interesting to talk about. Or I’ve spent too long replaying that one time Chenle smiled at me or laughed at something, that one time he looked straight into the camera and called my teaser photo “the cutest,” and it’s turned my brain into useless, oatmeal mush.
Usually he’s the one keeping me up. But not tonight. Tonight I’ve been actively trying not to think about him and the advice Taeil gave me earlier. The whole interaction is still stuck in my stomach like a harpoon right through my body. I refuse to believe that there is only one way out of this. send me 10 ugly selfies. I answer.
The app tells me he read my message but there is no response. There is not even the reassuring little dots to let me know he was typing. There is just radio silence. I flip through about eighteen other apps to distract myself—to overload my brain with so much information that it just stops working—because if I think about what is actually happening to me instead I’ll cry or throw up or something.
Instead of a notification on my phone, I get a series of quick and firm knocks at my door. I guess it probably is better to do this in person. Chenle always was the brains of the operation.
He’s standing on the other side of the door in his PJs, hair soft and fluffy from air-drying after a shower and his skin still naturally reddish from the dry weather. He tries to peek around my shoulder when I open the door. “Where’s Jaemin?”
“Passed out on the couch, I think.”
He steps forward, crowding me back into the room and that’s all it takes. That’s all it ever takes, the barest suggestion, the gentlest hint and I already know the plan and am onboard. He shuts the door behind him once he makes it through the doorway. “So you were the one that likes me too much?” He asks, eyes glinting. “You should know you’re no good at bluffing, Jisung.” And it’s the way he always draws out the ‘g’ in my name like it is its own syllable.
This was never an unthinkable outcome. It crossed my mind one or two times. It was always possible that Chenle would take this whole thing as a sincere compliment, an admission of undying allegiance—both things he loved. I rarely ever imagined him finding out as a nightmare. But it was the small rifts, the barely perceptible changes that scared me the worst anyway.
But it’s out in the open now. Everyone knows everything. No take-backs. So I grab one of his hands, loosely, our fingers unlinked. “So what are we gonna do about it?”
And I see the panic in his face—the instinctual avoidance. I can almost make out the words, “we? This is a you problem,” in his big, expressive eyes. But the words don’t quite make it out of his mouth. Instead, for once in my entire life, I’ve stunned him into silence. He looks at me and down at our joined hands, still hanging awkwardly mid-air like this is a new development for us, like we’re still finding where our fingers fit and whose thumb goes on top even though we’ve done this a million times. “Well…” he finally starts, drawing the word out, “what can we do, really?”
I laugh in disbelief. “That’s what all the hyungs said.”
“And this is the time you decide not to listen?” He finally pulls our hands down, pulling me over to my bunk. “So what do you wanna do?” He proposes. “Kiss me?” He puckers his lips at me comically, like a little fish.
And I never got that far. Never got to the point where I was imagining things to do with Chenle, like I hadn’t already done everything in the world. This had always been a problem to solve, not a privilege I could unlock. Even with the offer waved in front of my face I could only think of when I hit my last growth spurt and finally got too tall for Chenle to rest his chin on my shoulder when he was feeling tired and could only plant his forehead into my back, holding me from behind. That’s all I wanted more of. “I mean, probably, eventually.” I stutter out.
“You’re no good at confessions.” He laughs at me. “Even if you are cute.”
It never occurred to me that any of this would be considered a confession and word weighs heavy on my heart and mind. "Does that mean you accept my confession?"
Chenle holds his hand over his heart like he's being sworn in to some important position. "I solemnly swear that I accept your confession." He jokes and drops his hand. "So do you wanna get lunch or something tomorrow? Just the two of us?"
"Lunch?" I question. "But we get lunch all the time."
"Look, you've met my whole family! We even live together already! I don't know what you want to do that we don't already do all the time. I don't know what comes next here." He explains, his free hand waving wildly to punctuate his points.
And he's right. He's unfortunately, unbelievably right. "I don't either." I admit softly. "But do you wanna stick around to find out?"
He laughs, our hands still conjoined, making no move to leave my room or my bed. "Yeah," he promises sweetly, softly, sincerely, "I'd love to stick around and find out."