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Jaemin believes he may have found himself in a lifelong predicament. Something he might never escape. A problem so unsolvable that he thinks he would rather live with the mental turmoil for the rest of his life than dare to solve it at all. And he probably can. Of course he can live with it.
What’s the harm in being secretly in love with your best friend, anyway?
The best friend he’s had for more than a decade. The person he’s spent most of his life with. The one he would rather suffer for than try to imagine a life without. Life has become unimaginable without Jeno.
Sometimes, Jaemin can’t believe it has come to this. But really, what’s the harm in keeping it to himself?
Surely no one dies from being secretly in love with their best friend.
What’s the worst that could happen? What could be worse than the possibility of ruining both a friendship and a career if he chose otherwise? What is there to gain from confessing, other than the greater chance that his feelings won’t be returned?
Because what Jaemin has learned, after realizing he’s in love with his best friend, is that maybe—just maybe, because he may never know—love can simply linger without needing to be returned.
What difference would it make, anyway?
He can already do anything he wants with Jeno. He can have Jeno anytime he wants. So why make it complicated? Why take a risk that holds a greater chance of losing?
Jaemin realizes he can simply love Jeno, and do nothing about it.
Because that’s what loving Jeno means. It’s just there. Simple.
Jaemin’s love for Jeno is greater than anything he could ever receive in return, and he doesn’t need any of it. He’ll be just fine loving Jeno quietly, in his own simple ways.
Maybe that’s what love is.
Jaemin didn’t believe it at first. As an idol, he barely had the time or chance to meet and surround himself with people outside of work. His coworkers had inevitably become his closest friends—his best friends, even—mostly because there had never really been another option. It’s not that he doesn’t adore them. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy their company.
It’s just that maybe these feelings are simply one of those things that had nowhere else to go, settling on the nearest person convenient for his suppressed romanticism.
So that must be it. Right? Nothing more.
Maybe it’s because he spends too much time with Jeno, and often Jeno alone. Maybe it’s because, of course, he cares about Jeno. But how is he supposed to draw the line between loving someone platonically and loving them romantically when there’s so little, maybe nothing at all, to compare it to?
Jaemin realizes he doesn’t really know anything about love after all.
Who is he to call these feelings love?
How does someone even know when they’re in love? How do you define romantic feelings?
So maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it’s not love at all.
Slowly, Jaemin learned to allow himself to be honest. If not with the subject of his feelings, then at least with himself.
Of course, his friends matter to him. He cares about all of them, equally. He’s always at everyone’s beck and call. He’d do anything for them.
But he doesn’t care about Jeno the same way he cares about the others.
He cares about Jeno much more than he would like to admit.
At first, Jaemin felt guilty for feeling this way. For how he feels less excited, less willing to move, when it’s Jisung inviting him out for dinner. When it’s Haechan asking him to play online games. When it’s Chenle and Mark inviting him to the court to play basketball. When it’s Renjun asking him to go shopping.
Unless it’s Jeno.
Unless it’s Jeno’s name flashing across his screen. Without even reading the message first, Jaemin finds himself grinning, sitting upright, already ready to leave his apartment.
Because it’s a rare occurrence!
Once, Jaemin tried to argue with himself about it. Whenever he felt a pang of guilt for what seemed like unintentional favoritism, he would defend himself by saying it was only natural. After all, getting Jeno out of the house was always a struggle.
But slowly, Jaemin began to come to terms with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there’s nothing wrong with Jeno being more special.
It doesn’t have to mean anything romantic.
He’s just being a best friend. That’s all. Right?
Sometimes, Jaemin feels sorry for himself. How could he have ended up in this situation? How desperate, how hopelessly romantic must he be to discover that he’s in love with his best friend of all people?
The best friend he can never be publicly with, no matter how much the public claims they would support it. Of course, there would always be those who wouldn’t.
And the best friend himself probably wouldn’t, either.
The best friend who has most likely never even thought of Jaemin the way Jaemin thinks about him.
It’s not like he hasn’t tried to see other people. He thought that maybe, if he could feel even a fraction of this with someone else, he could save himself from this predicament. Maybe he could escape a situation where there is no real way of winning.
But sometimes, Jaemin thinks the only way to save himself is to keep convincing himself that none of it is real. Until, eventually, he grows tired of believing it.
He’d heard a lot about it before. The constant teasing from the other members, the intense shipping online. Sometimes, Jaemin wonders if it’s possible that everyone had known long before he did. The thought unsettles him: that everyone might discover the truth before he even fully understands his own feelings. As if all this time they’ve simply been waiting for the perfect moment to say, we knew it.
Jaemin tells himself it might fade eventually. Maybe it will.
Fine. Say he’s in love with his best friend. What is there to do about it anyway? What could possibly change?
He can’t help but circle back to the same thought: he’s in love with his best friend, and…?
Jaemin feels defeated by it. The feeling is immense. Something he realizes he has no way out of except to let it exist. One day, he hopes, he’ll grow so used to it that he’ll forget it ever felt this overwhelming. Maybe he’ll even laugh at the memory of thinking it mattered so much.
But it’s been years.
And instead of fading, the feeling only grows stronger.
Sometimes Jaemin looks at Jeno and finds himself in quiet disbelief, realizing that he carries a love far bigger than himself. Something constant. Lingering.
Present in the way he cares for Jeno in every way.
In the dreams he won’t tell anyone about.