Chapter Text
It was nowhere near as climactic as Jeongin had thought it’d be.
The summer was almost entirely insufferable, the end of the hallways lined up with coolers despite the constant requests for the school to get the fucking air conditioners already, someone sure was to faint at the end of the day assembly today—like every other year, it’s a tradition as they’ve been told, bets go around on who’s not gonna make it—Jeongin hogs the damn cooler, pushing Jisung away, he needs his share or else he’ll be down before the principal could even walk up the stage for the closing address, Jisung seems to disagree with how he whines.
Jeongin swats his head, “You’ve been at it for the past 10 minutes.”
“What?!” Jisung screams back incredulously, “It’s been a hot minute and you—”
Jeongin tunes it out, lifting his shirt slightly as he eases into the cold air hitting his skin, pure bliss. The hallways remain crowded, students forming groups near the window, fanning themselves with notebooks, trying to stuff the watermelon into their mouths as fast as they could, eyeing Jeongin and Jisung down for the mere fact that they beat them to the coolers, sore fucking losers, the bunch of them. Jisung finally pushes him aside, Jeongin pushes back until the air can hit them both and Jisung still grumbles as though it isn’t fair, that spoiled brat, Jeongin hisses under his breath.
The cooler rumbles in front of them, the slight ringing of cicadas in the air (or at least that’s what Jeongin guesses they are), somebody laughs inside the staff room, the girls on the opposite end giggle, if Jeongin concentrates he can hear the disjointed conversations too—'You promised!’; ‘Seriously, this summer I’m going to-’; ‘Guys, let’s go to the mall after school today?’—and it’s then that a certain someone appears at the hallway intersection in front of them, panting and laughing as he runs, almost immediately spotting Jeongin and Jisung and making his way to them.
“It’s Doi!” He shouts, laughing at the same time, his eyes wide and sparkling almost as animated as his way of speech, “He’s like—mad—” and it’s the perfect comedic timing for a booming voice to resonate from the opposite corridor.
“Shit.” Jisung whispers from beside him, shit indeed. Hyunjin laughs again, grabbing Jeongin’s bag and pulling him away, stumbling into the nearest classroom that is surely not their block 5 physics but to escape the grade coordinator anything works really. They pull themselves into the first empty seat, sitting beside each other, Jisung comes into the class a second later, kicking at their table before dragging a chair and joining in.
“Whose class is this?” Jeongin questions, Hyunjin shrugs in response and they sit waiting, hushed conversations between them.
“Felix!” Jisung yells from beside him after a while, “Doi still out there?”
Felix peaks into the corridor, thoroughly inspecting it before replying, “Nah dude. Clear.” He puts a thumbs up. Jisung imitates it back and the three stand up again, a few other chairs scraping behind them probably for the same reason, they are out in the hallway, the few students trickling out one by one, teachers shuffling into their classes, some stare at them but it seems that the summer has sucked out their ability to actually care whether or not they loiter in the corridors, good. Jeongin, Jisung, and Hyunjin take their place back in front of the coolers.
“Shouldn’t we head back?” Jisung asks but neither of them moves away, the silent hallways are somehow an entirely different place to be at right now, classes have settled down, there are barely any teachers left in the staff room, no one to object to them lounging around like this, quiet whispers of summer wafting along with the tunes of the fans, Jeongin’s back into a daze again.
“Let’s go to the jungle gym.” Hyunjin says, Jeongin has the bare understanding to start to protest but Hyunjin cuts him off, “I know, Jeongin, I got permission, today’s self-study, miss allowed us to chill.”
Jisung whoops in victory beside him, screaming let’s go as he jumps to leave the block and go to the opposite courtyard, most likely to get to his very specifically chosen favorite swing, Hyunjin can probably sense Jeongin’s hesitance, he nudges his shoulders, “Trust me.”
The cooler rumbles in front of them, the slight ringing of cicadas in the air (or at least that’s what Jeongin guesses they are), Jisung laughs as he skips outside, Hyunjin tugs at his hand and Jeongin has three distinctly comprehensible thoughts in the muddled state of his brain.
The summer heat is getting into his head. Hyunjin is lying. Jeongin maybe likes Hyunjin.
---
It's, as he said before, anticlimactic, that revelation. What is he supposed to do now? Address the elephant in the room? As if.
By all means, his current crush is Sohye from his Chem class, they are in the same homeroom, they get along well, they have the same niche interests. It’s already been established by the grade that they are secretly dating and that they just need to come clean. Yeah. Sohye and Jeongin.
Jeongin slaps himself and then slaps Jisung.
“What—What the fuck?” Jisung sputters while flailing his arms around, it takes him a minute to get his shit together before he charges again, “Jeongin.”
“Yes?” Jeongin innocently questions, already back to his side of the room. He considers folding his blanket but decides against it, they’re not gonna bother him about it today, it’s summer vacation, technically they are out of the stupid weekend room checks (what a stupid name, what a stupid concept, to think that they have the audacity to not give them their laptops if the rooms are not clean as though theirs are in any better state, it pissed Jeongin off more than he likes to admit).
“Would it kill you to wake me up like normally?”
“It might.” Jeongin can hear Jisung’s shrill whines ring in his ears before he even starts, “You know that I try, right? I’ve been calling your name for like the past five minutes, continuously, you just don’t wake up like that.”
“You’ve got me addicted to this kind of shit, that’s why!”
Jeongin rolls his eyes, “Yeah, as usual, it’s my fault. I’m so sorry.” No actual hate in his words, as Jisung always says, his barks are worse than his bites.
They go about their day from there, the usual, the unusual.
---
It’s during the night. After dinner. Tucked under his soft blanket. The blanket that reminds him of home. A home he cried to escape from. Independence. Freedom. Something cringe along those lines. What immature concepts. It’s during the night. Long, unhurried, undisturbed, where Jisung sleeps on his bed four steps away, where Jeongin clutches his blanket until his knuckles turn white, he knows he doesn’t long for home.
He wonders then, what the emptiness means.
---
Summer is unforgiving, Jeongin’s glad he’s not on the school team as he watches Jisung grumble his way through getting ready, both their eyes barely open, Jeongin can fall back asleep in the next ten minutes while Jisung can absolutely not. Being on a successful school soccer team has its merits on the college application but not quite enough to entice Jeongin to wake up at 5:45 every morning on holidays to run laps or whatever, sports be fucked.
“Am going.” Jisung says, his voice drooping heavy with sleep as he pushes his feet into his shoes.
Jeongin just hums in response giving Jisung a small wave, turning his back and snuggling into his blanket once he leaves, Jeongin thinks that living in a hostel is weirdly domestic as he falls asleep again.
He wakes up later, Jisung’s asleep then, his legs hanging off his bed, as usual, not even bothering to take off his shoes. Jeongin lets him sleep. Wakes him up gently in the next half an hour or so, his bed made, hair barely dried, he asks Jisung softly whether he wants to go to breakfast or not, Jisung replies as usual by grumbling and turning away. Jeongin huffs an alright under his breath, wears his sandals, and leaves for the dining hall. He drinks about a cup of milk and hides two boiled eggs and toasts in napkins to take back to Jisung wondering how Jisung never appreciates his gentle demeanor on days like this, therefore, he shall not have the right to complain of the occasions where Jeongin is not so gentle, he decides on an entire speech to tell him of this equation the next time Jisung sputters out about his mean methods of waking him up.
When Jisung will wake up and get his shit together Jeongin will hand him the wrapped food, Jisung will gaze at him like he brought down the stars from the sky just for him. He will ask about what all was there for breakfast and Jeongin will reply with a list of dishes he memorized from the menu stuck at the bulletin board downstairs; Jisung would lament his loss, Jeongin would sneer at him.
Jisung will ask what he ate and Jeongin will lie straight through his teeth.
---
They decide to set up group studies outside of their study hour (what a waste of time, Jeongin often laments, rants to his parents, bitches about to Jisung, most of the students there are not studying, the internet's unpredictable, changing like the weather. Study hour is an abomination of a productive concept, looks good on paper but cannot be implemented for the love of it. Study hour is to wrap your shit up with a headache that threatens even the cursed junior hostel hallways induced fever during end-of-semester exams.) On the weekends they meet up in Jisung and Jeongin's room (it wasn't half as planned as it sounds; Hyunjin barged in one fine Saturday, on the verge of tears, blabbering about how he was going to fail the physics FA which would drag down his final grade which means he won't get into a good university meaning his university life that was supposed to be his grand turning point would be in absolute shambles–and ever since then it's part of the routine because nobody wants their grade idol to breakdown like that.), they have an agenda, they want to revise a specific topic, bring out (stolen) materials from other classes and get shit done. Like today!
Jisung lays on the floor, his notebook pages fluttering right in his face in a way that's entirely impossible to read anything from. Hyunjin's resting comfortably on the bed frame, his legs folded, he seems to be inching Jisung's blanket slowly off the bed and wrapping it around himself and Jeongin sits in a way that completes the odd triangle, hunched over in a position that guarantees a broken spine in the next few hours or so, quickly skimming through the (stolen) materials they have gathered today.
"When's the senior gonna come, dude? My brain's melting I can't assure you it'd be intact to get through this in the next few minutes." Hyunjin speaks up, at last, his patience thinning most likely.
Jisung groans from beside him, "I don't know, he said he'll maybe come." he chucks his notebook on the floor turning around to lay on his stomach, "My favorite senior's a very busy person, ya know?"
Jeongin and Hyunjin roll their eyes at the same time, Jisung doesn't have a favorite, he'll give that label to anyone and everyone he comes across. "Well, what's your senior so busy doing?" Hyunjin asks.
Jisung waves his hand over his face, “Oh you know, the usual, getting rid of the dangers of the world.”
“You are the danger to the world.” Jeongin chimes in mindlessly.
“Aha!” Jisung exclaims, hands slamming on the floor as he sits up, finger pointed at Jeongin, “A hyperbole!”
“The fuck’s a hyperbole? I forgot.” Hyunjin looks genuinely distraught.
“As if I’m telling you,” Jisung scoffs, “fail English for all I care, I am literally in cluster 3, I am above all you dumb fucks.”
“Jeongin is also in cluster 3,” Hyunjin hisses back, “Do you even know what sibilance is?”
Jisung sputters just for a second and Hyunjin hammers in the nail, “You are the dumb fuck here.”
They both spit out comments and it fills Jeongin’s ears like white noise. He stares at Jisung’s desk, the supposed deity statue, the size of his palm, standing perfectly in the middle of his deranged collection of things that Jeongin cannot absolutely comprehend—Jisung has a habit, a downright horrifying habit of buying shit that doesn’t make sense, whether it is to maintain an aesthetic (what aesthetic is another question Jeongin wonders about, the things he buys do not make collective sense nor do they have any matching stylistic feature, it is the aesthetic of non-matching items? Would that even be an aesthetic?) or to live up to his pristine and untouchable title of the shitstorm bringer, Jeongin simply doesn’t know—But Jeongin stares at that statue, a mixture of what he guesses is a three-headed dragon, a turtle, and a serpent? (He doesn’t know, Jeongin genuinely doesn’t know.) Jisung bought it last outing—Another tic, Jisung just doesn’t have any sense of money organization, he spent almost all of his allowance from the last outing on this deity because it’s supposed to fulfill wishes? And because it looks cool, Jisung’s voice still rings in his ears as he first laid his eyes upon the horribly crafted, tragically overpriced thing that emits every aspect of negative energy (it doesn’t look cool, Jeongin wanted to scream, it doesn’t, it doesn’t! But alas, he loves to indulge Jisung.)
Jeongin stares at its beady eyes that seem to stare both right into his soul and in two different directions (the devil’s spawn, he thinks, there’s no doubt that statue is some sort of dark magic artifact that’s gonna be the end of both Jisung and Jeongin), he wishes—since that statue is the closest thing to something he could wish on (and the furthest away from it too but Jeongin’s willing to ignore that because he’s desperate)—he wishes for some semblance of patience and sanity—
“You should analyze better!”
“Well, you should write better!”
—Jeongin finds none.
They were supposed to study physics. They were supposed to study physics.
---
Jeongin's crying. Jeongin can't stop crying.
Tears drip down his face, landing on the pages of his notebook, he thinks it will make the ink bleed, he thinks this isn't helping at all, his eyes are blurry, he can't read anything no matter how much he concentrates.
His hands shake as lets go of the pen to wipe the tears off, the near-silent sobs that leave him sound pathetic to his ears. The tears just won't stop. It's frustrating and his sobs grow in volume as he curls inward, legs coming up on the chair, his head rests on his knees and that's how Hyunjin finds him.
"Oh," Hyunjin says out loud, his voice mellow, his hand hovering at the door halts at an awkward angle, "Oh." It takes just a second for Hyunjin to be right beside him, his hands comfortably resting on his back, "Jeongin." He sounds miserable, "What happened?"
The ugly sob Jeongin lets out doesn't feel like an appropriate answer.
"Up," Hyunjin says, pulling Jeongin from his forearm, "Up, up." He repeats as he hauls Jeongin to his feet, Jeongin burns with shame while Hyunjin softly brushes away his hair, he rests his cold palm over his forehead and lets out a near-silent hiss, Jeongin screws his eyes shut at that.
"Come with me." Hyunjin says, starting to pull him out the door, Jeongin knows his hold isn't strong enough, Hyunjin gives him the chance to run away, to choose what he wants and Jeongin just wants something. So he lets himself be pulled down the hallway, his eyes glued to the ground.
Hyunjin slams a door open and Jeongin knows where he is, he looks up and stares right at Jisung, in the midst of pulling himself up from the bed, stopped at the very beginning of whatever comment he was gonna throw at Hyunjin. His eyes widen before they melt into such pure understanding that Jeongin can't help the new onslaught of tears.
"Oh," Says Jisung, the same as Hyunjin, Jeongin laughs somewhere in his mind, "Come here Innie." Jisung gently opens his arms, just slightly, giving him a way out. Gosh, Jeongin thinks, I love the two of them so much as he all but collapses into Jisung, ignoring how loud his cries grow, he grumbles half-sentences into Jisung's shoulders of how he just couldn't study and Jisung shushes him throughout it all. Hyunjin sits down beside them on the bed, a comfortable presence and like that, Jeongin's cries die out.
Even as he calms down, Jeongin continues to rest his head on Jisung's now very disgustingly wet shoulder, "Sorry." He mumbles out, his entire being drained of any energy.
Jisung hums, "There's no need to say sorry, Jeongin, it's okay, we understand." He watches Hyunjin nod in agreement.
"Still." Jeongin persists.
Hyunjin's hand comes up to mess with his hair again, "Did you expect me to apologize when I cried about that physics exam?" Jeongin knows he has been set up to be proven wrong so he simply snuggles further into Jisung who lets out a soft laugh. "No, right? Then stop apologizing. Don't make different rules for yourself, you know?"
"Alright!" Jisung jumps to his feet immediately, pulling Jeongin along like a ragdoll, "Let's head out! These rooms are fucking depressing no matter what." and Jeongin very much wants to protest that notion because their room is not depressing, not after the hours they had spent sticking their dumb artworks and random bullshit up on the wall to give them at least some sense of two dumb teenagers' room, but what he does end up protesting is how he has certain issues to address.
"Jisung," his tone bashfully guilty, "I really do have to study, it's okay I've cried it out now…" he trails off for a moment, "…I'll probably be able to study better now, I have to…" he continues half-heartedly, eyes glazing over as he misses Hyunjin and Jisung sharing concerned looks over his head, "I have to study, I don't know anything."
Jisung immediately smushes his cheeks at that, "You know things okay? You know everything you studied in class. Now it's all revision!" his grip grows stronger as he simply does not allow Jeongin to shake his head in denial, "Nope, it's all revision! We are gonna take a tinee-tiny break and then we'll all gather in our room where I'll study for my econ exam and you can study your chem while Hyunjin can entertain us–"
"–I do have my business exam tomo–"
"So, no harm done! Its decided, room 216–"
"–I am in room 218 thou–"
"Let's go exploring!" Jisung bursts out, all smiles as he pulls Jeongin's arm between his and starts moving without a single glance to the other two occupants of the room. Jeongin stumbles a bit but Hyunjin reaches out to straighten him almost immediately, sighing loud enough for Jisung to hear and brush it off like all his prior interjections. Hyunjin follows them out of the hostel regardless, wandering aimlessly within their grand school campus, sometimes on the amphitheater stairs, under the tree, recounting weird anime reviews, sometimes on the main stage acting out their last school play, on the backstairs of the stage–bitching about people, then next on the school field stands, watching the sunset and scuffling about.
Heading back to the hostel uphill, Jisung and Hyunjin push each other around while simultaneously using Jeongin as a meat shield, no matter how much he yells, he thinks quite loud in his head:
He loves the two of them.
---
Jeongin laughs as he launches into another one of his mindless babbling. He has long past shed all of his intelligence, locked it up in some deep corner of his brain. He knows full well, the later it gets into the night, the stupider he grows but alas, even knowing his own shameful weakness he can't help but stay up now, nearly 2 am, to finish his art FA submission due tomorrow first thing in the morning.
It's not that he has that bad of a habit of procrastinating, it's just, art is special like that. There is absolutely no way he touches anything regarding art a day before the submission, his genius strikes at moments of pure desperation.
To further save his case, if you'd look to his right, you'd find an equally, if not more, unhinged Han Jisung. Painting so furiously in his sketchbook you'd think he'd tear a hole straight through all of the leftover fifty pages with just a single stroke.
They can't stop their downright moronic chattering. The AC runs in the background while they themselves lay down completely comfortable on the floor, around them covers a variety of things, ranging from literal trash –random pieces of paper, color test sheets, wads of crumped up trial sketches that were too horrendous to be anywhere near their art journals–to quite possibly priceless possessions–a filthily expensive professional watercolor set, drawing inks just centimeters away from a potential disaster, their goddamn art journal with an entire year worth of artistic exploration–but it's that brain-dead after midnight work mindset fueled purely by doing their absolute best to submit their shit on time all while making sure it stands up to their unfortunate perfectionist standards.
On another one of their pointless, intangible conversations came forward Jisung's outcry of how Hyunjin's face was very punchable.
“Yes, yes, you wanna punch him, you wanna kiss him, one and the same thing.” Jeongin had replied cheekily, his hands steadily moving onto the last step of redrawing some of the details over the dry areas of paint.
As Jeongin predicts, Jisung starts his fake gagging skit the very next second, "How do you even equate those two things as one and the same?"
Jeongin shrugs, "Telling someone they have a punchable face is just a very dudebro way of saying they have a kissable face." His hands hover once again at his painting, his pen nib dipped down into the ink, making its way back to trace the image in the corner of the artwork, minutes away from completion.
"That is wrong on so many levels I can't even start." Jisung has picked up his finished artwork, twisting and twirling it under the light to admire it for a minute until he's satisfied, "There's something wrong with your brain, please get it rewired."
Jeongin's hands stutter to a stop on the surface of his artwork, the black ink from the nib spreads into the swirls of pastel yellow, the paint wasn't dry, he suddenly feels like everything went wrong this very moment, where his impatience ruined his artwork, where the pretty pastel yellow turns unbearably ugly to look at, the artwork swirls in front of him contorting into something he knows it's not. There's something wrong with him, he knows what it is, he hopes Jisung does not.
"You done?" Jisung asks from beside him, moving to sit on the floor. Jeongin immediately picks up a piece of paper and swabs at the corner, once, twice, until the paint has soaked up the paper and only the tiniest of smudges remain on his artwork. The faint traces of black ink remain even in the almost wiped off yellow, it pricks his eyes unlike anything else and he wants to curl up on his bed and never wake up again to look at it, he can't wipe it off, any more and the paper would tear, he knows it, he knows it. He crumples the paper in his hand feeling the paint cover his palm, he lets out an affirmative hum.
"Clean-up time?" Jisung asks excitedly from beside him, smiling ear to ear, happy to be done with his work.
Jeongin smiles back, "Clean-up time."
---
Jeongin stares down at his notebook, his writing almost scribbles at the near end of his notes. He has never liked the chemistry class, his miss spoke too fast to take notes and understand the concepts efficiently but he somehow manages, most likely due to combined efforts of the study sessions and Sohye.
The fans in the classroom are utterly useless now, they say that by the start of the next academic session there will be ACs in every classroom but apparently they've been saying the same shit for the past two years now so, the students hold no hope. Jeongin can only wish for the bell to ring already so he can leave for his room, at least they had the decency to have the hostels equipped with ACs otherwise it'd be pure torture, 3:30 to 5:00, the AC runs in the afternoon as soon as the school ends and students start trickling back into the hostel and then from 10:00 to god knows when at night, during the weekends they are even generous enough to turn it on at noon. It's also by god's blessing that evening sports are no longer mandatory meaning Jeongin can simply lounge in the room, in contrast, to skillfully try to avoid his houseparent every damn day.
Jisung is on the second floor right now, attending his bio class, it's Jeongin's turn to go pick him up to walk together to the hostel (they have a schedule; Jeongin has his chemistry classes in the lab hence, why every Monday it's his job to go to the second floor to meet Hyunjin and Jisung, on Wednesday it's Hyunjin's turn and finally on Friday it's Jisung's.).
The bell rings, it feels like an eternity has passed waiting for the two minutes on the clock to get over, his few other classmates slam their notebooks shut, he hears their teacher complain about it but he lets her words simply slide over his ear. Sohye murmurs a quiet goodbye to him as she leaves first, he does the same and makes a run for the stairs.
Jisung stands in the foyer, tapping his foot impatiently, when he catches Jeongin's eyes he gives his the nastiest look, as though Jeongin had caused him the greatest inconvenience known to mankind.
"Old man, can't you hurry up?" Jisung says to him, one step away from dramatically flicking his imaginary hair, "Do you know how long I had to wait? Do you know how weird it looks standing here like a loner?"
At that exact moment someone runs by, excitedly waving goodbye at Jisung and Jeongin knows there's absolutely no way that Jisung with his arsenal of friends from literally everywhere could be considered a loner, he was most likely talking to someone from his class, from the upper grades, from the lower grades, god knows who, as he was waiting for Jeongin to show up but the utter shamelessness of the man to look him straight in his face and say things like that.
Jeongin looks around and asks, "Where's Hyunjin?"
Jisung mockingly replies, "In the fields, you don't even have the decency to look guilty for how long you make me wait, just go to your Hyunjin."
Jeongin doesn't even have that many brain cells left to discern each questionable word that leaves Jisung's mouth, he instead just shakes his head, "Yeah yeah, let's go get Hyunjin I want to sleep already."
Jisung drags him down the stairs at a terrifying speed, he does this every time but Jeongin still can't get used to his feet almost flying like this, if he falls someday he thinks his head would split open, not an unwelcomed turn of events but still a gnarly sight to think about. They sit at the seats on the edge of the football field, Jisung moves his head around searching for Hyunjin like a lost mom, Jeongin's more subtle with that.
"There!" Jisung exclaims and Jeongin brushes off the dust and stones from the concrete steps/seats, they've baked in the sun for so long, his hands burn, it's most likely gonna sear their asses through their pants, Jeongin takes his jacket off from where it's tied around his waist and lays it down. Jisung jumps down on it the very next second, Jeongin's too tired to give him an appropriate jab, he hopes pushing him off his jacket for a second was enough to display his anger. Jisung scoffs in his face.
Jeongin follows Jisung's line of sight to Hyunjin, clad in his jersey, near the goalpost. The sun shimmers in the sky above them, the landscape fuzzes near the end of his eyes, the bright blue of the sky, the bright green of the mountains behind, the grass beneath, it creates the perfect canvas of a hazy summer dream.
"Why aren't you down there?" Jeongin asks, his voice already drooping, sweat gathering on his palms pressed into his jacket.
Jisung looks straight ahead, "It's not like it's an official practice," both their heads turn as Hyunjin screams for the ball, "History class got a free period, that's why he's there."
Jeongin hums, Hyunjin scores a goal, his hands clench, he holds a breath. Hyunjin runs around, acting all crazy, it pulls a grin out of both Jeongin and Jisung, their eyes catch his and Hyunjin sends a dramatic kiss their way.
Jisung tuts beside him, "What, he thinks he's all that pretty?" It sits in silence between them, Jeongin thinks yes, he's indeed all that pretty, he watches the same realization flash across Jisung's face and his shoulder shake from suppressed giggles as Jisung lets out an offended whine before both crumble into unrestrained laughter.
Hyunjin looks at them from the field, deft fingers brush away his bangs as he lets out his own silent puff of laughter, against this hazy summer dream, his friends sure do paint a pretty picture.
---
The extra classes are done with. Jeongin packs up the last of his things, notebooks he probably won't even open once he reaches back home are tucked away carefully under his pile of clothes in his luggage, books he doesn't need left behind in the corner of the library, some others on the stairs of his hostel, the designated study material dustbin. He picks up a few materials he guesses would help next year, packs them up in a random cardboard box to store in the hostel's luggage room.
Jisung barges in, throws his shoes, and scans Jeongin's side of the room, "Fuck," he runs his hand through his hair, "already done with the packing?"
Jeongin rolls his eyes in response, "I've been telling you to get at it since last week." He notes down a list of things he'll pack last minute, the clothes he will wear tomorrow to the airport are neatly laid out in the near-empty wardrobe.
Jisung starts packing then as Jeongin flops back comfortably on his bed.
"It's been a complete year." Jisung says absentmindedly, he isn't even trying to fold his clothes properly, "Fuck, we actually made it through that shit show."
Maintaining high grades throughout, it felt unreal staring at his report card with such stellar marks through the semesters, with ups and downs definitely but overall pretty decent, pretty good even. He had tried his hardest, he had cried so much to himself trying to get these marks, his parents had been proud, his brother had promised if 11th grade went as good as this he'd get him whatever he'd ask.
It's around nighttime, the greys and pastel purples are on the verge of changing to dark blues and blacks, Jisung whispers into the quiet of the room, "Gosh, I'm going back home," he sounds happy, Jeongin can't tell the kind of face he's making as he stares at the ceiling, "but I…" Jisung's voice tapers off, unsure, unlike himself; ah, Jeongin knows what he'll say, it tastes bitter at his tongue too, "I don't want to leave, ya know."
"Of course, who would if they got someone like me cleaning up their mess every time?" he barks at him, a fond I will miss you too, idiot goes down his throat. Jisung laughs his loud laugh and Jeongin exhales in relief.
(Jisung hears clear as day the words Jeongin doesn't utter, he thinks, equally as fond, his idiot doesn't need to know how obvious he is.)