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Minho is naturally impulsive.
He’s gotten better at controlling it. In the sprawling woods of the multiverse, there’s now only a slim chance he’ll take the road that leads to shit hitting the fan, an improvement from when he was younger. Working in a coffee shop tests his limits, though.
Minho doesn’t like coffee— he can’t have caffeine — and he doesn’t like people. But he needs the money. So here he is, in the world’s scratchiest outfit, trying not to outwardly judge people on their purchases. It’s been two months and he hasn’t gotten fired, which means that something will go wrong any day now.
That day is today.
It’s break and Minho crouches awkwardly in the bushes outside of the store, dialing Woojin. The call rings three times before going through. “Hello?” Woojin says, after a second of silence. “What’s up?”
Minho takes a deep breath. Woojin will know what to do. Woojin has common sense. He knows how to do functional, adult things like make kimchi and write a resume and wake up on time in the morning. Most importantly, Woojin is taken, so he’ll know what to do in this situation.
“Hypothetically,” Minho says, “What do you do if you accidentally acquire a boyfriend?”
There’s a small cough on the other end of the line, then a snort, and then full-blown, staticky laughter. Right. Before Woojin is a sensible human being, he’s Minho’s best friend since middle school, and likes to laugh at Minho’s problems.
“It’s hypothetical,” Minho says.
“No, it’s absolutely not,” Woojin says. “Who’s the boyfriend? What happened? Please tell me everything, this is hilarious.”
“I don’t know his name yet,” Minho says. “And I also don’t know what happened.”
“Wow,” Woojin says, growing concerned. “Okay, what the fuck, then? Can you get yourself out of this situation? Is it like a blackmail kind of thing?”
No, it’s a me being stupid kind of thing . “No, I’m fine,” Minho says. “I mean, I guess we’re not technically dating yet. It’s more like I swiped right on him but like, in real life. And in public.”
“I don’t think I understand you.” Woojin pauses. “I mean, I don’t understand you even more so than usual.”
Minho is probably being vague on purpose, because he’s embarrassed, and because he likes to mess with people. Unfortunately, he needs advice, his break is running out, and he thinks he might be allergic to the flowers on the bush, so he makes it fast.
---
Rewind an hour prior:
Minho is behind the counter, taking orders and misspelling names. Since it’s a university, the coffee shop is fairly full, with a constant background noise of people talking.
Then, out of nowhere, the talking stops, and the thing happens, one of those moments where everybody just collectively decides to fall silent, but one unfortunate soul doesn’t get the memo. In specific, a guy with brown hair and a blue t-shirt sighs into the dead quiet, “Dammit, somebody date me.”
There’s a second where the guy doesn’t realize anything is wrong, but then his expression freezes, and he shrinks down in his seat. Minho is amused, embarrassed on his behalf, all normal reactions. And then the impulse kicks in, the urge to pick the most idiotic and unconventional choice just because he can.
“Okay,” Minho replies, and everybody in the room looks at him. “I will.”
Minho doesn’t get to see the guy’s reaction. He hears a few giggles but ignores them, straightening out his uniform and taking the next order.
Strange things happen all the time in university, and this incident isn’t even one of the more interesting ones, so after a minute, everything goes back to normal. Well, normal for everyone else. Minho’s internally cursing himself out. But on the outside, he keeps a poker face.
After awhile, the line dwindles, and the guy responsible for the whole thing darts over to the counter, face red. Minho sees a few people looking at them.
“Hey,” Minho says. “Can I take your order?”
The guy turns even redder. “Um,” he says. “Did you mean it?”
Minho decides not to ask for elaboration because while that would be amusing, he thinks it might cause the guy to combust. “Did you mean it?”
The bell jingles, and Minho cuts the guy off before he can say anything. “Look, let’s talk after my shift. I get off at five. We can meet at the tapioca statue on the quad.”
The other nods, and turns away.
---
At this point in the story, Woojin has lost all concern and is now openly laughing at Minho’s misfortune. “I hope someone got that on their Snapchat, I’ll check people’s stories tonight,” Woojin says. What an asshole. “So what happened after that?”
“Maybe I should talk to Chan,” Minho says. “Chan would help me out.”
“You better not, Chan is sleeping, and if you wake him I’ll kill you.” That’s fair, since Chan never sleeps. “You’re stuck with me.”
“As I have been for the past ten years of my life. You’re no help.”
Woojin hums, immune to Minho’s causticity. “So, was he cute?”
“That’s really the question you’re gonna ask,” Minho says. “Really?”
“Listen, you do weird shit, but there’s usually rationale behind said weird shit,” Woojin says. Minho doesn’t respond. “Alright then. You found him cute.”
Yes and no. Objectively, the guy is cute, with his soft face and his innocent demeanor, but Minho doesn’t go for cute. “There’s nothing cute about being unable to take social cues.”
Woojin sighs. “Minho, real talk, you’ve never had a problem with saying no. I don’t get why you even called me. So when you meet up on the quad, you can just tell the guy sorry, you were playing a joke.”
It would be a mean thing to do. But…
“Unless you want to do it,” Woojin says. “You wanna date him?”
Minho stands up. Sneezes. “My break’s over, I gotta go,” he says. “I’ll tell him I didn’t mean it.”
---
Minho doesn’t have the best track record with dating.
Freshman year, he had two and a half relationships. There was Younghoon, which lasted two weeks; Younghoon was boyfriend material, and Minho wasn’t going to let Younghoon waste it on him. And there was Chanhee, which lasted equally as long; Minho dumped Chanhee because he lost interest, and because Chanhee majored in math.
The half relationship was Changmin from dance class. The two of them were neck-and-neck, and Minho liked the competition. The two of them became friends, one kind of dance became another dance, and long story short, Minho caught feelings for his friends-with-benefits.
Changmin was the one who cut it off. “I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.”
“Right, because you know me so well.”
Changmin smiled, dimples showing. “You’re not what I’m looking for, then.”
It was a bruise to his pride, and Minho didn’t date after that. The rest of freshman year, he did one-night stands, which were easier. Later he heard that Younghoon and Chanhee got together— apparently, they’d bonded over how terrible Minho was at keeping a relationship going. So if one thinks about it, something good came out of his inability to date. Minho catalyzed true love or some shit like that.
He should put that on a resume.
---
The tapioca statue is actually a large bronze sphere set on a pedestal, surrounded by benches, but everybody on this goddamn campus (sans Minho) seems to be obsessed with bubble tea, hence the namesake. One day Minho is going to sit on the tapioca statue. He is. Even though there’s a rumor that those who sit on the tapioca statue don’t graduate and will have their smoothie orders messed up for the rest of their lives.
By the time Minho’s clocked out and headed toward the quad, the boy who’s the root of the problem is already there, sitting on one of the stone benches and fidgeting with his rings, looking nervous as hell.
“Hi,” Minho says.
“Hey,” the boy says, rapidly standing up. “Uh— yeah. Hi. I’m Han Jisung. Sorry about... all that.”
Minho shrugs it off. He got a slightly flustered reprimand from his manager, being told not to do something like that again, but Minho thinks that this warning is unwarranted as this is (hopefully) a one-time thing.
“Lee Minho. And it’s fine.”
“Changbin’s roommate?” Jisung says, and Minho nods, surprised. “Oh, I thought you looked familiar!”
Minho narrows his eyes, trying to place where Jisung is from, then gives up. “You don’t look familiar to me.”
At this, Jisung looks slightly offended.
“Anyway,” Minho says, “at least you didn’t ask out a complete stranger, I guess.”
Jisung seems taken aback for a second, but then he cracks a grin and laughs. “I didn’t ask you out in specific, you just took the offer,” he retorts. “Which, back to my original question. Were you being serious?”
This is the part where Minho should say no.
“Hey, no pressure,” Jisung reassures. “You’re allowed to back out.”
Okay.
Jisung doesn’t know him well enough yet for the phrasing to be anything more than an accident, but it’s almost like a challenge. Back out . Like Minho’s been given a dare and has to follow through.
Looking back, Minho realizes perhaps he needs to improve his decision making skills.
“Whoa, what do you mean,” Minho says. Somewhere in the back of his head, Woojin demands, what are you doing? “I just need to know if you were being serious. People talk shit all the time.”
“I wasn’t talking shit! I really— I just said it at a bad time.”
Minho smiles. “So you really wanted somebody to date you?”
“Yes. Well, no? Look, the friend I was at the shop with, Seungmin, runs an Instagram account where he takes a lot of pictures of his roommate. They aren’t dating but they’re really cute, and I was like, I want something like that. It’s just the whole cafe decided to fall silent when I said it, and you decided to be a wild card.” Jisung scuffs his shoe along the dirt. “So here we are now.”
“I suck at taking pictures of people.”
“That’s fine. If I wanted that, I’d date Seungmin. And then I’d die, because that’s what would come out of dating Seungmin.”
Minho coughs into his fist, trying to stifle his laughter. “I suck at dating, too.”
Jisung looks at him, like, clearly this is the bigger problem. “Wait, so why’d you agree?”
“Same reason you said it. Spur of the moment kind of thing. But offer stands. So. You wanna do it?”
Minho doesn’t recall exactly how they got to this point, which signifies that this is a bad idea. But, Minho reasons to himself, he isn’t chicken. He isn’t scared of dating. Besides, Jisung seems like an okay person, and judging by Minho’s dating history, the whole thing will go nowhere anyway. At least Minho will have a story to tell.
Jisung crosses his arms. “Okay, yeah,” he says. “Let’s do it.”
Minho smirks.
“Okay.”
“Alright. Then, um…” Jisung looks lost, the confidence he previously had nowhere to be found. “How do we do it? Here— let’s exchange phone numbers. Yeah?”
Minho fishes his phone out, opening up the contact page and handing it over. Jisung does the same. Minho gets his phone back with a new contact, Han Jisung, with a blue heart where a space should be.
“What’s with the heart emoji?”
“Because we’re going out,” Jisung says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “So there’s a heart emoji. You wanna remove it?”
“No, I’ll keep it.”
He doesn’t see the point of having a having a heart emoji, wouldn’t add it himself, since it isn’t like Minho’s going to forget who his boyfriend is. Well, boyfriend isn’t the right word. That label doesn’t fit when they’ve barely started talking.
They’re just going out, and it isn’t going to last. But the blue is pretty, so the heart stays.
“I really am bad at dating,” Minho says, feeling like he needs to spell out the terms and conditions. “So break up with me anytime you want.”
“Noted,” Jisung says. “And I have no idea how to date, so you can break up with me any time you want, too.”
The way Jisung says it, Minho suddenly wonders if this is the first time Jisung’s dated anybody, which is a terrible possibility so Minho pushes it away. “Okay,” he agrees. He catches the time on his phone and realizes that he’s late for dance practice— they’ve been talking for that long? “I have to go now, but I’ll see you around.”
“Bye,” Jisung says, and Minho starts running across the quad in hopes of shortening the length of the lecture his dance instructor will give, and the amount of time he can spend contemplating his bad life decisions.
---
His dance instructor doesn’t yell at him.
No, but his roommate does. Minho’s surprised to come back to an apartment with Changbin standing at the doorway, looking like he’s about to punch Minho in all of his five foot, six inch glory. Minho wonders what there is to be mad about. Out of the two of them, it’s Changbin who usually doesn’t fulfill roommate duties.
“What the fuck?” Changbin says, as soon as Minho gets through the door.
“Good evening to you, too,” Minho says.
“No, shut up. Han Jisung just texted me saying he’s dating you. Explain.”
Oh, that’s what this is about. “I mean, there’s not much to explain. That’s it. Good job.”
“Do you even know Jisung?” Changbin sputters. “You’ve never even looked at him whenever he came around.”
Suddenly, Minho knows who Jisung is— kind of. Changbin is part of this group called 3RACHA. They have an account on SoundCloud, but Minho has never looked into it too much. He knows Changbin goes by SpearB, and assumes that the internet identity is one separate from real life. Minho is more than willing to accept that. God knows he’ll never show Changbin his old dance covers on YouTube.
“You two make music together,” Minho says. “He’s J.One.”
“I’m pretty sure you just realized that,” Changbin says. “What— how’d you two even end up dating? You’re— you.”
“Yeah. I’m me. It isn’t that big of a deal.”
“It kind of is, he’s my best friend ,” Changbin says, and Minho realizes that all the anger in his voice is real. “You— you better be serious, okay? Don’t mess it up. He’s never dated anyone before and if he’s going out with you he must be serious.”
That stops Minho in his tracks. His suspicion about Jisung never dating anyone before was correct, then.
“I’m sorry,” Minho says. “But you’re wrong. He isn’t serious, he’s trying it out as much as I am.”
Changbin stares at him. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Minho has nothing else to say about it, but guilt tangles in his stomach, a foreign, uncomfortable feeling. Jisung’s picked a terrible person to be his first— Minho can only disappoint.
“You know, Minho, sometimes you really piss me off,” Changbin says, the energy out of his voice.
“I do know, and you piss me off too.”
Changbin turns around, putting his headphones on in the process. Conversation over, even if it looked like Changbin had more to say. Minho heads over to his bed, pulling out his phone. He’s all tired and sweaty from dance practice, but doesn’t have enough motivation to get into the shower just yet.
There’s a new text from Jeongin, brother and bane of his existence. MINHO, WAS THAT YOU IN BOMIN’S SNAPCHAT STORY??
Minho presses call. “Hello?” Jeongin says.
“Jeongin, I have no idea who Bomin is.” Although Minho does have an idea of why he might be in Bomin’s story. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Are you the somebody date me, okay, I will guy?”
He’s been memed.
Minho grits his teeth and smiles, even though Jeongin isn’t there to see it. “Yes, I am.”
“Oh god. Why are you so weird?”
“Well, we know it isn’t genetic. So just try not to follow my example.” Minho knows that Jeongin would never pull shit like this— first of all, Jeongin is a good kid, and second of all, Jeongin likes someone. He refuses to talk to Minho about it, though.
“Is it Jisung you’re going out with?” Jeongin asks. “Bomin’s story was kind of blurry.”
“Who is Bomin? I’ll kill him.”
“He’s our grade’s golden child, I’d suggest you leave him alone. Anyway, it’s not his fault he’s good with a camera. So. Is it Jisung? Both Felix and I thought it was Jisung.”
Minho rubs his temples. “How do you know him?”
“He’s Felix’s classmate, he’s really nice. Wait, I gotta tell Felix this, he’ll lose his mind.” There’s some shuffling, then the flood of background noise.
“Have you done your homework, Jeongin?”
There’s silence on the other end of the line. “I gotta go.” The call clicks off.
Minho heats up some leftover rice before taking a shower. As Minho aggressively scrubs his body with strawberry soap, he wonders how he hasn’t run into Jisung before, since their social circles are so interconnected.
There’s a simple answer to that, and that is that Minho isn’t a good friend. He knows a lot of people, but his social life is an inch deep and a mile wide. Minho and Changbin are roommates, and they’re good at being roommates, and Minho likes Changbin well enough, but that’s it.
When he’s out of the shower, he hesitates for a second before sending a text off. hey han blue heart emoji jisung, changbin just talked to me
Three bubbles. did he freak out? im sorry if he did he probably did
Minho smiles despite himself. yeah i live with him he’s yelled at me worse when i tied all his clothing into bundles , he writes. And then, finally feeling the prick of a usually silent conscious, he adds, he said im the first person youve dated.
Jisung types for a long time. does that make you uncomfortable?
if youre big on first loves or whatever, then we can pretend this whole thing never happened.
my first love was the girl in fourth grade who was the best singer in our choir . look my friend told me that im listening to too many love songs, firsts arent a big deal, i should just put myself out there. so im not expecting anything.
Jisung’s words are reassuring, but not enough. Minho is still regretful of his decision. He puts his phone aside and decides that he’ll try this out for two weeks, really try, even if he doesn’t see things going anywhere. He always gets tired by two weeks, or Jisung will be tired of him before that. It’s fifty-fifty who breaks up with whom.
Minho doesn’t know much about romance, but he can read between the lines to tell that Jisung’s abandoning an idealistic viewpoint for a cynical one. And Minho can’t say that’s a bad thing, as he’s been a cynic all his life. So all he can do is send a mental apology to Changbin for when he inevitably proves Jisung right, that real life is nothing like the love songs.
---
Minho updates Woojin on the development when asked and then changes the subject. Surprisingly (and perhaps suspiciously) Woojin doesn’t pry, lets Minho talk about the five year old kids that escaped the education building the other day and how he can’t believe that Jeongin wants to teach these little gremlins when he gets older.
After Minho has exhausted his spiel and succumbed to the logic that he was, once upon a time, such a gremlin, he lets Woojin know that the chicken place that borders the cafe Minho works at is having a raffle, then hangs up.
He never mentions Jisung by name.
Minho has free time so he starts making dumplings for the next month. Contrary to appearance, Minho can cook without burning the kitchen down. Dumplings are his specialty, the bundles of the food world, and Minho’s cutting chives when someone pokes their head into the communal kitchen to tell him to stop making so much noise. Minho smiles and angles the knife, and he’s left alone.
Two hours later he’s done. He partitions off a quarter of the dumplings to hand over to Jeongin, heading across campus toward Jeongin’s complex.
“Hey,” Minho says, when Jeongin opens the door. He hands over the bag. “Dumplings. Store these in the freezer and boil them for ten minutes when you want to eat them.”
Jeongin’s eyes light up. “Thank you so much.”
“Yeah, yeah. Mom would kill me if I let you die from eating too much instant food and takeout.”
“Wear pink at my funeral.” Jeongin yells over his shoulder, “Hey, Beomgyu, dinner is solved for Thursday!”
“Awesome!” his roommate yells back.
Jeongin turns his attention back to Minho. “So. How’s it going?”
“It’s going.”
“I mean with your boyfriend.”
“I bring you dumplings,” Minho says, disbelieving, “My homemade dumplings, and this is how you repay me? Really? Get a new set of DNA, I no longer claim we’re related. Wait, keep the DNA and give me my dumplings back—”
“No.” Jeongin hugs the dumplings close to his chest. “Mom video-called yesterday, and asked how you’re doing. And if you’re dating anyone. I told her I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Oh, okay,” Minho says. “Uh— for the time being, if she asks you again, say I’m single.”
“You guys broke up already? Damn, Felix will be disappointed.”
“What’s Felix have to do with any of this?” Minho mutters. But when Jeongin is involved, so is Felix— the two of them have been friends since middle school, and it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon. “And no, we’re not broken up. Yet. Point is, please do not involve our mom.”
“Got it,” Jeongin says.
“I’m going to go, then,” Minho says. “Don’t die while I’m gone.”
“Again. Wear pink at my funeral.”
It’s been six days since the start of his and Jisung’s so-called relationship. It hasn’t been nearly as weird as Minho expected. Jisung is no longer embarrassed by the coffee shop incident, has already decomposed it into joke material to work into their conversations.
Texting Jisung is fun, even if Jisung uses too many emojis. It’s a lot better than texting Changbin, that’s for sure— Jisung actually responds. The two of them have only been communicating by text so far. They tried to set up a time for a date and miserably failed.
---
Two days ago:
how do the male leads in dramas do it, Jisung sends. theyre ceos so i get the money part but? where do they get the time? we’re broke AND busy
drama logic, don’t question it too much , Minho texts back. He doesn’t watch rom-coms for that reason; he always questions the logic too much. Along with the whole true love aspect.
you could fit the male lead role. all you need to do is acquire a small conglomerate and an angsty backstory.
changbin ate the last oreo yesterday, how’s that for a backstory. Minho’s smiling so wide at this point that Changbin asks what’s up. small conglomerate part might be a bit harder.
im sure you can do it
sounds like a lot of trouble just to take you on a date .
yeah, save your money for tuition , Jisung replies, and Minho is struck by how funny the other is. He’s underestimated Jisung’s sense of humor.
---
Back to the present, Minho realizes that it’s almost been a week. Jisung has probably already realized that Minho sucks as a boyfriend already, right? Hopefully they’ll end up friends after this, because Jisung’s fun to be around, but if they don’t, that’s fine too. Subconsciously, Minho knows this won’t turn out right.
His phone buzzes. im about to head to your cafe to study with seungmin . you wanna come?
Your cafe . Jisung makes it sound like Minho owns it. Minho kind of likes that. okay .
Jisung and Seungmin are sitting at a table near the corner, and as Minho approaches them, he hears Seungmin say, “Don’t accidentally get a boyfriend today, I nearly died of secondhand embarrassment last time.”
“Won’t happen again,” Jisung says coolly. “Anyway, I’m not even sure if Minho—”
Minho doesn’t get to hear what comes next, because Jisung spots him and says, a little too quickly, “Oh, hey, Minho! Over here!”
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Seungmin mutters, too loud for it to be accidental.
Seungmin has the kind of gaze that makes Minho feel like he’s being mind-read, which is a terrible feeling, but he doesn’t look away. It doesn’t matter what Seungmin’s opinion of him, or this entire situation, is.
Minho focuses on Jisung’s coffee mug instead. “I have employee discounts that I never use. You can use those when you order next time.”
“Oh, um, thank you,” Jisung says.
He turns to Seungmin. “That’s Minho. And Minho, this is Seungmin.”
“Hi,” Seungmin says, cutting a glance at the coffee mug so sharp Minho’s surprised the porcelain doesn’t crack into pieces.
“Hi,” Minho says. “Jisung told me about you. You’re a good photographer, apparently?”
Seungmin raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Yeah.”
Jisung nudges Minho’s arm, clearly desperate to cut the tension. “I’ll show you Seungmin’s Instagram! I told you about it but forgot to link it to you.” He taps on Instagram and types Seungmin’s username into the search bar.
“Why are our study sessions never actual study sessions?” Seungmin asks, opening his notebook. Minho ignores him, looking at Jisung’s phone. Seungmin’s page has a hefty amount of followers— Jisung’s right; he is a good photographer.
“Oh,” Minho says, scrolling through the pictures. “You’re Hyunjin’s roommate. I have dance with him. He talks about you a lot.” Minho shouldn’t be surprised. He’s already connected to Jisung through so many social links. What’s one more?
“Hyunjin does?” Seungmin says, then clicks his mechanical pencil several times like it’s personally offended him. “Wait, Jisung, put your phone away, you told me you wanted to not procrastinate.”
“That’s always before I have Two Dots opened,” Jisung whines, but obligingly puts his phone away before getting out a folder that looks half-beaten to death.
His pencil has barely grazed the paper before his head drops to the table.
“Dammit, I can’t believe I took Astronomy,” he sighs. “I’m so stupid.”
“You are,” Seungmin agrees pliably. “You could’ve just taken physics with me.”
Jisung crosses his arms. “How was I supposed to know Astronomy would involve more physics than actual physics? I thought it was just supposed to be about, like, stars and shit.”
Minho stifles a laugh. He knows plenty of people that took Astronomy in hopes of getting a science requisite over quick and easy; Minho is fortunately not one of them. He likes space, but Astronomy involves more cold, hard formulas than any of the magic embodied in the documentaries he watches when he has spare time. But—
“I’m pretty good at physics,” Minho says. “I could try to help you?”
“Don’t bother,” Seungmin says. “Jisung’s been complaining about Astronomy for the past two months, but he always gets As on his tests. He learns really fast. Honestly, I hate people like that. I really do.”
“And yet you love me,” Jisung says, looking up from his worksheet.
“I assure you. I don’t.”
This statement is undercut half an hour later when Jisung leaves to go to the bathroom, claiming that he needs a break or he’ll die. Minho feels Seungmin’s gaze burning holes into the back of his head.
“So,” Seungmin says. “You’re really his boyfriend?”
Minho nods.
“Mm. You don’t seem to be in a position to break his heart, so I don’t have to threaten you too much.”
Seungmin’s words are well thought-out. Minho respects that and is glad for the confirmation that Jisung doesn’t like Minho enough for a breakup to hurt. Throughout the entire study session, Minho and Jisung have only acted like friends— really, Jisung still seems slightly shy around Minho, in comparison to his ease around Seungmin.
“But because there’s a chance,” Seungmin says. “Remember I’m Jisung’s friend. I’m not on your side.”
“Noted.”
After the hour passes, Minho walks Jisung back to his dorm. Jisung complains about math and rips on Seungmin for his bullet journaling and color coded notes, and Minho thinks, no, he’s really in no danger of breaking Jisung’s heart. There’s no discomfort, no pressure. Jisung asks nothing of him. Minho likes that more than he want to admit.
---
Minho is at the Main Hall at seven in the morning, legs crossed as he types up a paper that he has zero energy to write. He follows a strict sleep schedule, sleeping and waking early. It isn’t something he likes, or prefers, but one needs to make compromises when they’re on meds that react badly to alcohol and caffeine.
At this time of the day, he’s on his own. Changbin is dead to the world. Chan is a zombie without coffee. Woojin is up, but he exercises first thing in the morning. Minho can’t do that; it’s too close to an actual healthy lifestyle, and also, he isn’t sure his self-esteem would survive a workout with Woojin.
He doesn’t mind the Main Hall, though. He gets to be alone without being lonely.
“Hey,” he hears, and looks up. It’s Jisung, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and holding a thermos in his right hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Writing a paper,” Minho says. “What are you doing here?”
“I mean, I wish I wasn’t here, it’s too early to be alive.” Jisung plops down in a nearby seat. Minho shuts his laptop, sensing he won’t be getting any work done. “But I have morning classes Monday and Thursday because I signed up for the wrong slot, so here I am. I’m an idiot.”
“I’ve never seen you around here before.”
“That’s because I’ve never been here. But I stayed up until six last night— well, this morning, I guess. I figured there’s no use to sleep for an hour. So I came here.” Jisung doesn’t look tired enough to match his words, but some people are just lucky like that.
“You’re gonna crash later in the day.”
Jisung points to his thermos of coffee. “I’m hoping this will put the crash off until after the lecture,” he says, and Minho laughs. “Enough about my bad life choices. What are you doing here so early?”
“I’m always here at this time.”
“What the fuck,” Jisung says. “You’re that kind of person?”
“What, the functional kind? Absolutely not,” Minho says, and is amused when Jisung seems genuinely placated by his words. Jisung sets his bag between his legs and pulls out a plastic container with bread.
“Hey, there’s free packets of butter and jam here, if you want any,” Minho says.
Jisung groans. “No, I have to eat this plain. We’re doing this assignment where we have to reduce our ecological footprints, and one-time use plastics are—”
Minho gets up, getting two packets of butter and jam and ripping them open at the table. “Oops,” he says. “Guess you’re just gonna have to eat bread with actual flavor now.”
Jisung smiles a bit, shakes his head. “Shh, this never happened,” he says, and reaches for the jam.
“Are you an environmental science major?”
Minho realizes that he actually doesn’t know what Jisung’s majoring in. The two of them don’t run out of things to talk about over text, but they’re never concrete subjects. Minho feels like they’re talking about everything when they’re messaging, but after he shuts his phone off he cannot remember for the life of him what any of it was about.
“Environmental studies, but I’m kind of a fake since my real love is music.” Jisung pauses, narrowing his eyes. “Although, I will fight anyone who denies climate change.”
Minho laughs. Jisung doesn’t need to worry. Minho’s a terrible person, but he doesn’t question science. “Sorry, I believe in global warming. You’re gonna have to find another excuse to fight me.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Jisung says, with no business sounding so sincere at seven in the morning. “Anyway, I would’ve majored in music, but my parents wouldn’t let me, so I figured I’d get a degree to make them happy while making music on the side. It works.”
“Have you ever considered writing a song about global warming?”
“Already tried that. It’s a hard topic to work with.” Jisung waves his hand. “What about you? I’m assuming you’re not in enviro.”
Yeah, Minho isn’t. He’s pretty much accepted that politicians don’t like science very much, and if the world ends by climate change, he just hopes he’ll be around to say a we told you so. “Physics.”
Jisung looks like he’s about to vomit. “Physics?” he says. “Why on earth would you major in physics?”
“Because I like it,” Minho says, just to see how much he can make Jisung’s face contort in disgust. Minho is okay with physics— it makes the world seem less confusing, to put a formula to its mechanics— but like Jisung, his love lies elsewhere than his major.
“I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Jisung says. “I’m an ENFP. I can’t talk about physics.”
“What does that mean,” Minho says. Woojin once mentioned something about a four-letter personality test but Minho zoned out during the explanation. “Is that like an astrology thing?”
“Okay, absolutely not, let me tell you about it,” Jisung starts. Minho points out that they should start walking across campus unless Jisung wants to be late, letting Jisung school him on the way there, and wishes him good luck with staying awake during the lecture after they get to the building.
—-
To Minho’s surprise, Jisung starts joining him in the Main Hall on Mondays and Thursdays after that. “Don’t think I’m here for you,” Jisung says. He’s a bad liar and Minho feels flattered. “It’s for the free coffee.”
The coffee cart only operates in the Main Hall from five to eight in the morning. “An hour of sleep is a steep price to pay, though.”
“Eh. Still not as expensive as the place you work at.”
“You use my employee discounts.” Minho says, and startles himself when he realizes:
(1) that somehow, their improvised relationship is past the two week mark, and (2) that their lives have naturally intertwined. Minho isn’t certain if it’s due to a conscious effort on their ends or if it’s because their lives weren’t that far from each in the first place.
They don’t go on dates, but Jisung has started visiting him at work, using aforementioned employee discounts to buy a mug of hot chocolate to drink while studying. In return, Minho has started walking Jisung across campus. And now there’s this, the mornings.
Minho likes the company. He really does.
Maybe it’s that Jisung seems to have no idea of what dating entails. Minho thinks about that when he’s at the counter and he’s looking at Jisung two tables over, hand propping up his chin and eyes half-closed. It’s relieving, Jisung’s lack of expectations. Makes things easy, if a little disappointing, although Minho won’t dwell on that.
So Minho doesn’t bring himself to cut things off. Things are fine now, no reason to change them. He doesn’t think about how strange it is neither of them have gotten tired of each other, or how this has lasted longer than any of his relationships in the past. So two weeks have passed and they continue to wear the label of courtship.
But yesterday when it was late at night and he was half-asleep he wondered if Jisung deserves better.
---
Today is not Monday or Thursday, so Minho reconciles himself to a morning alone. Without Jisung, it’s too quiet, the seat in front of him jarringly empty, so Minho sticks in his earbuds to listen to music. He definitely gets more work done without Jisung there, but it’s nowhere near as fun.
Until Jisung is there, hurrying over like a man on a mission. Minho tugs his earbud out, says, “What are you doing here? Set your alarm wrong?”
“This is no time for jokes, it’s an emergency,” Jisung hisses, which almost concerns Minho for a second. “The cake vendor near Building 9 is selling buy one slice get one free, and—”
Minho stands up. Jisung’s right. This is an emergency.
“You got money on you?” he asks. Jisung nods. “Let’s split the cost.”
As soon as they’re out of the Main Hall, they start sprinting as by some silent agreement, both of them out of breath and slightly dizzy by the time that they see a line snaking all the way around the building.
“Guess we’re not the only ones that got the memo,” Jisung says, disappointed. “Will you be late to your first class if you wait?”
“Some things are worth tardies for,” Minho says, but Jisung shakes his head.
“Here, I’ll buy it, then. Text me after your class is done, I’ll bring it to you.”
“I exercised for nothing?” Minho says, but after checking his watch he realizes that he can’t stand in line for too long, and Stats is a brutal class, so he should be probably be there to take notes. “Fine. Tell me how much it was, and I’ll pay for my slice.”
Minho heads reluctantly to the math building, sliding into his seat next to Woojin, who’s playing a game on his phone. Woojin looks up when Minho arrives, and frowns. “You’re sweaty,” he says, suspicious. “Were you running?”
“For cake? Hell yeah,” Minho says. Woojin sighs in relief, like Minho not exercising on purpose equates to all being right in the universe, and returns to his game, blowing something up in a shower of pixelated sparks.
After a lesson that probably has something to do with probability and definitely a lot with getting poked by Woojin’s pen when Minho drifts off, he finds Jisung waiting outside of the building, a plastic container of chocolate cake in hand.
“How many of these containers do you own ?” Minho asks.
“Not as many as you think, so I’ll need this back later.” After handing the container over to Minho, Jisung turns to see at Woojin, who’s watching them with a strange expression. “Oh, hey, Woojin!”
“You two know each other?” Minho asks.
“Through Chan.”
“And through Minho, now, I guess.” Woojin cuts a glance at the container in Minho’s hand. “Why do you get free cake? Do I get free cake?”
“Actually, I’m paying,” Minho says, pulling out his wallet. “How much was it?”
“Ah, no, this one’s on me.”
Minho glares. “Tell me.”
“But—”
“Just tell him, he hates owing people things,” Woojin says to Jisung, and there seems to be some silent exchange that goes on between the two before Jisung caves and names the price.
“But you give me employee discounts all the time,” Jisung says, after pocketing the bills. Minho shrugs. He really hates owing people favors, and besides, he’s seen his mom fight over the right to pay too many times for it not to have rubbed off of him.
“Don’t mind him, you can buy me fried chicken some time,” Woojin says, and Jisung scoffs. Minho watches the exchange, realizing that they’re better friends than Minho thought.
Something’s off. Woojin has asked nothing about how the Minho and Jisung know each other. Minho doesn’t recall telling Woojin that Jisung was the guy at the coffee shop, but Woojin must know. And he hasn’t commented. Before he can properly dwell on the significance of this, Jisung cuts off his line of thought.
“Get Chan to buy you fried chicken, I’m sure he will if you ask nice enough.”
“Chan is such a pushover that I would feel bad,” Woojin says. Minho laughs, grounded; Chan is the link that connects the three of them, so finally, the conversation stops being weird. “Anyway, I have another class now. I’ll see you.”
Woojin slings his bag over his shoulder and heads in the opposite direction. Jisung and Minho watch his retreating back for a few seconds before Minho snaps out of it. “You’ve got class too, let’s go.”
Walking Jisung across campus, it brings him back to middle school, when he’d always walk home with friends, stay over at their houses to do homework in the afternoon. He didn’t do it in high school, though. What a strange thing to outgrow.
Absentmindedly, Minho slings an arm around Jisung’s shoulders, and looks over when he feels Jisung stiffen underneath his arm. Jisung’s face is red, eyes resolutely aimed at the ground. It’s awkward, but Minho thinks that it might be even more awkward if he removes his arm, so he keeps it there.
(Minho doesn’t think he likes cute, but maybe he does.)
“You’re so short.”
At this, Jisung looks up. “You’re just too tall,” he retorts, and Minho feels Jisung’s shoulders relax.
“Hey, this is my building,” he says. He steps away, and Minho’s arm falls to his side. There’s a slight smile on Jisung’s face. “Remember to give me my container back.”
“Will do.”
Minho doesn’t give the plastic container back. The chocolate cake is long eaten, but Minho isn’t good at remembering these kinds of trivial things. At least Jisung doesn’t really seem to mind Minho’s selective memory.
---
Physical affection is Minho’s natural way of communication, and Jisung doesn’t seem to mind, so Minho continues.
It’s only fair that Minho’s way of speaking is without words, with how much he loves dance. It’s a love that will have an expiration date, because bodies give out, which is why Minho has physics as a backup. But Minho made sure to choose a college that had an emphasis on the arts.
Their dance program is demanding, for sure. Minho always ends up sweaty, his body asked to do things that most bodies can’t do. To him, dance is one of the most beautiful things on earth, tied right up there with music. It’s like magic. But like any magic, there’s a steep price to go with it.
“I’m gonna die,” Hyunjin announces. He’s plastered to the floor, and even though his hair is a mess, and he’s a wearing damp gray t-shirt and black sweatpants, he manages to be the prettiest person in the room. Unfair. “I can’t get up.”
“If you get up, I’ll tell you a funny story that happened to me yesterday,” Felix says, and Hyunjin immediately peels himself off the ground.
“What?”
“I got Coke poured on my head,” Felix says. Hyunjin gasps, sympathetic, while Minho laughs. Hyunjin glares, and Minho turns the laugh to a cough.
“That is not a funny story,” Hyunjin says. “What happened?”
Felix groans. “I was mistaken for an ex. It’s fine, really. Now if it were Pepsi, on the other hand, that would suck.”
“Of course,” Minho agrees. He feels kind of bad now; he isn’t superstitious, but he likes the concept of karma, and if anybody deserves some good karma, it’s Felix. “Because Pepsi—”
He’s interrupted by Hyunjin’s small shriek as he pours some water on his own head. “In solidarity,” Hyunjin explains. Felix bites his lip to hide a smile.
So Hyunjin is the guy in Seungmin’s Instagram posts. If Seungmin likes Hyunjin, then Minho is certain that the crush is reciprocated. Hyunjin always talks about his roommate and hates this really flexible guy named Youngtaek in their dance class because it’s a public secret that Youngtaek likes a Seungmin as well. The best part is that Minho now knows that Hyunjin and Youngtaek like two different Seungmins, but Minho is absolutely not going to tell Hyunjin that, since watching Hyunjin suffer is hilarious.
Minho gets out of the dance studio last, and when he walks into the hallway, he sees Felix talking to— Jisung?
“Hey,” Minho says, coming up to them. “Jisung, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, Felix and I have to work on a project together, we’re heading over to the library,” Jisung says. Minho nods, taking Jisung’s hand and interlocking their fingers.
Felix’s gaze darts down to their hands and back up to their faces, trying and failing to conceal his smile. Oh, shit. Felix is a hopeless romantic. Jisung probably knows why Felix is smiling, since he’s fallen unnaturally silent, but to his credit, he doesn’t let go of Minho’s hand.
“Hey, Jisung,” Minho says. “Did you hear that someone poured Coke on Felix’s head yesterday?”
“What?” Jisung says, promptly losing any embarrassment. “Who was it? I’ll fight them.”
“No thanks,” Felix hurriedly declines. “Jesus. Both you and Hyunjin are crazy.”
“Don’t lump me in with Hyunjin,” Jisung says. “I have nothing in common with him.”
Felix coughs. “Sure.” In response to Minho’s confused expression, Felix adds, “Jisung kind of hates Hyunjin. But also, they’re like, friends.”
Jisung overturns the palm of his free hand. “I’m just saying it’s nobody’s business being that good-looking while also being so good at everything at the same time.”
“But you’re running that business pretty well.” Minho says. He doesn’t know why he says it. Jisung goes speechless, Felix looks like he’s about to scream. Minho decides he needs better impulse control. “Anyway, I gotta go now. Bye.”
Minho frees his hand and walks off.
---
when i die, i bequeath you my rings and half of my student debt , Minho texts Jeongin. He promptly receives a ????? in return, but Minho shuts his phone off without providing any context.
---
The next day, Minho gets a text from Jisung. so this has been going on too long , he types.
In the seconds between this text and the next one, Minho feels himself freeze. It’s not enough time for the chemicals in his brain to respond.
IM COMING TO COLLECT MY CONTAINER , Jisung writes next, and Minho realizes that he’s misinterpreted Jisung’s words. He can’t shake off the feeling, though, that a Jenga block has been removed from his chest, righted right before he could tip over.
okay, Minho types back.
im omw , Jisung says. Five minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. Minho opens it, and Jisung comes in, toeing off his shoes. “Is my container clean? There’s not, like, mold in it or anything?”
“I would never let your beloved plastic container become a petri dish,” Minho replies. Jisung snorts, then looks around the room. It’s tiny and lived-in, with Changbin’s side slightly messier than Minho’s.
Minho finds the container and hands it over. There’s a moment where Jisung’s awkwardly standing there with his box in his hands, and Minho says, “Are you just here for the container?”
“Um, I don’t have anywhere to be, I was just planning to study. So we could, study together? Or something?”
“Or something, probably,” Minho says. He means it like procrastination and doesn’t notice how Jisung’s eyes widen, face flushing red. “Have you been in here before? Since you’re friends with Changbin.”
“Not really, Changbin and I usually meet up at Chan’s, since he’s got his own place.” That explains how Minho’s never seen Jisung around. “I think I’ve been here once or twice. I’ve definitely seen you before, that’s how I recognized you.”
“Huh. You could’ve hung out here, you know.”
“You kind of intimidated me,” Jisung blurts out. Minho quirks an eyebrow. “Cause you were like…”
“Like what?”
“LIke, you know, you,” Jisung stammers.
Minho wants elaboration but red is crawling up the sides of Jisung’s face at a truly astonishing rate, so Minho decides to let Jisung live.
“You and Changbin meet up at Chan’s to make music?” Minho asks instead, and Jisung nods, looking immensely relieved at the subject change. “Changbin’s mentioned your SoundCloud account. 3RACHA.”
“Yeah! 3RACHA,” Jisung says, eyes sparkling. “Have you listened? Do you like it?”
“No,” Minho says, and Jisung’s expression falls. “Just because I thought it was like, an internet identity thing. Like I wouldn’t want Changbin to see my old dance covers. You know?”
“I absolutely want to see your old dance covers.”
“You won’t, not now, not ever,” Minho says. The only reason he hasn’t deleted the channel is because he forgot the fucking password. “But we could listen to some of your songs together, if you want.”
“Absolutely,” Jisung says, pulling out his phone and searching up the link. “I’ll just show you, like, three or four of the best ones we’ve uploaded. The new tracks we’re working on are way better now that Chan’s taking classes in music, but these aren’t bad, either.”
“So these are original songs?”
“Yeah. Usually all three of us work on the lyrics together, while Chan does a lot of the producing.”
They listen to three. Placebo, Broken Compass, and For You .
In the short span of ten minutes it takes for the songs to play, Minho decides that he should respect Changbin more— he might be lacking at times as a roommate, but he’s a lyrical genius and can spit fire— and Minho already knew Chan was good at music, but this just seals the deal.
Minho can tell the three are amateurs, but there’s so much raw talent that it more than compensates. He listens in particular for Jisung, who doesn’t rap as fast as Changbin, but has a passion to his voice that makes every line hit hard. Minho wonders where his tone comes from. There’s more than a surface-level pain in these songs.
“So, do you like them?” Jisung asks, clearly nervous. “I mean, I haven’t listened in awhile, my voice is a lot better now—”
“I like them,” Minho says, before Jisung can critique himself. “You guys are really good. I’m sorry I didn’t listen sooner.” He’s relieved that his voice comes out genuine, because at times his compliments sound false without him meaning them to.
“Oh, okay,” Jisung says, trying to hide his smile. “Yeah, we’re working on other stuff now.”
“How many songs do you have on here?” Minho asks, taking the phone and scrolling. He wants to see if he can go through their discography tonight. “Hmm. Well, I can say I knew you guys before the peak of your fame.”
“Shut up,” Jisung says, pleased. “We just really like making music.”
“The lyrics,” Minho starts carefully. They resonate with a chord in his chest he never previously knew existed, but they also make him wonder what’s on Jisung’s mind. “Are they about, like, you?”
“Yeah. I always write lyrics to express myself.” Jisung crosses his legs. “I make music about the stuff I can’t make small-talk about. I’m really glad I got into music, I’m pretty sure I’d have zero idea what to do with life if I hadn’t.”
Minho discerns that Jisung really loves music, as much or maybe more than Minho loves dance. For Jisung, music is also a chase for perfection, frustration when he can’t get the sound down just right, but also an art he breathes, creating melodies like new running shoes and lyrics like liquid sunlight.
Minho gets it. He might not ever share this, but music, a long time ago, was one of the only things keeping him going, giving meaning to life. He can’t make music himself, but he is always glad for its existence, four-minute packages of expression that come free, able to be heard again and again without breaking or wearing out.
“We really have not gotten any studying done,” Minho says, and Jisung blinks.
“Oh, shit, let’s do that.”
They wind up like this, sprawled out on Minho’s bed, Jisung’s hands propping up his face while he stares at his textbook. It makes his cheeks bunch up and Minho fights the urge to stare. Minho himself is sitting cross-legged, occasionally pouring crushed Pringles into his mouth while he does a worksheet.
“You wanna take a break?” Jisung says, an hour in.
Minho nods. Jisung puts an earbud in, offering the other one to Minho, who takes it and lies down, closing his eyes and letting the beat of Handclap filter through the speakers.
They’re on a Charlie Puth song when Minho hears a scream through his free ear. He rips the earbud out, eyes snapping open, to see Changbin at the doorway with his hand covering his eyes.
“I DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING,” Changbin yells.
Minho corrects his previous decision to respect Changbin, decides that Changbin is a total loser who just happens to be good at making music, much like Minho is an asshole who just happens to be good at dance. “Because there wasn’t anything to see ,” Minho says irritatedly. “We were listening to music. Is that a R-rated activity now?”
“Oh,” Changbin says, removing his hand. “Sorry.”
“Changbin, I am going to kill you,” Jisung mutters. “Sorry, Minho, I’m gonna leave now.”
He gathers up his stuff before heading out the door. Minho stands in complete silence until Jisung is outside, and then he rounds on Changbin. “You really went there.”
“Look, obviously I assumed wrong,” Changbin says. “It’s just…”
He trails off. Changbin is being fair. Minho’s had people over before, and Changbin would find somewhere else to crash for the night. But Jisung, Minho hasn’t touched him in any way that isn’t mostly platonic.
“Hey,” Minho says. “Has Jisung ever kissed anyone?”
Changbin takes a step back, and Minho tries to gauge where that question falls on the I’ll kill you if you hurt him scale. “You think I’ll answer that for you?” Changbin says. “Ask him yourself.”
“Maybe I will,” Minho says. Or maybe he won’t— Jisung seems like he might die of embarrassment. “Anyway, we really were just listening to music. He showed me some of your music.”
“Thoughts?”
“You guys are good,” Minho says coolly.
Changbin smiles, knowing that Minho would never compliment him so effusively to his face. “Thanks,” he says, then adds something that unsettles Minho more than it should. “You know, you and Jisung are pretty cute.”
---
Minho listens to all of their songs, splitting it between two nights. He starts from the most recent and works his way from there. The further down he gets on the SoundCloud, the less professional they get, and it’s interesting, to see the trajectory of improvement.
He’s mildly amused that Jisung’s voice is noticeably higher in their older songs. It’s cute.
Near the bottom of their account is a song called Wow , one of the last that Minho listens to. He’s frozen for the first few seconds, then laughs his way through the next three minutes. The only way to describe the song is a dark history, and Minho figures he’ll have enough ammunition to lord over Changbin for the rest of his life.
A day later, Changbin’s out for a class, so Minho’s alone. Jisung comes over to study again.
“Hey,” Minho says.
“Hey.”
“I listened to your discography last night.”
“Really?” Jisung says, before his eyes widen. “Wait, all of it?”
“All of it,” Minho says.
They stare off at each other, Jisung struggling to deal with the implications of that statement, and then, because Minho can’t resist, he starts rapping. “Excuse me, noona, do you have a boyfriend? A-ah sorry, that must have been—”
Jisung cuts him off with a loud scream. “I’m leaving,” he yells. “From Earth . I heard Mars is great this time of year.”
Minho laughs, grabbing onto Jisung’s arm before he can leave. “No, I’m sorry,” he says, not sorry at all. “If it makes you feel better, the song is really catchy. I couldn’t get it out of my head in Stats today.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, oh my god, I forgot that song existed,” Jisung groans, hiding his face in his hands. “You listened to that? We made it ages ago. Damn, we should clean out our SoundCloud.”
“No, don’t do that, keep everything on there so you can see how far you’ve come. Besides, there’s a lot of good stuff on there. I liked Scene Stealers , the lyrics in that one were great.”
“Thanks,” Jisung says, face still hidden. He drags his palms down his cheeks. “I’m really sorry about Wow. I can’t believe you had to listen to us hit on an imaginary girl for three minutes straight.”
“It was really, really entertaining, and I will have power over Changbin for the rest of my life, so actually I have to thank you. But I mean, I was surprised. It’s completely different from the rest of the stuff you have on your account.”
“Yeah, that’s because at some point, we acquired brains,” Jisung deadpans. “Actually, it was probably that song that made us realize that love songs weren’t our thing.”
“What went on in your heads when you were writing it?” Minho asks. Jisung glares at him. “I’m curious !”
“Okay, you know what, it was Changbin’s idea,” Jisung says. “But really it was because— at that time, none of us had any experience with dating, so we wrote the lyrics and then dared each other to rap them. It got a little out of control.”
“Have you written any love songs after that?”
“I mean, I write lyrics in my notebook sometimes.” Jisung fidgets with his sleeves. “But I don’t— post them, because I feel like, who am I to say anything about love, when I’ve—” he pauses, coughs.
“What?”
“You’re really going to make me say it?”
“You can rap it, if you want,” Minho says.
Jisung throws him a look, hands going up to hide his face again, but Minho grabs his wrists before he can. “When I’ve never even kissed anyone,” Jisung says, so fast and quiet that Minho barely hears it.
“But like I am an expert on confidence and self-doubt so that’s why my lyrics on those are so good!” Jisung says, trying to erase his past words.
“You don’t need qualifications to write a love song,” Minho says. “Right? It’s not like you’re applying for a job.”
“But if I were, I’d have to write no experience on my resume,” Jisung grumbles. “I have no idea why I’m telling you any of this, I’ve never been embarrassed in my life. I want to crawl into a hole and—”
“Do you want experience?”
And this is when they both go dead silent. Minho lets go of Jisung’s wrists, taking a step back and sealing his expression off.
“What do you mean?” Jisung asks.
“I could kiss you, if you want.”
Minho isn’t qualified to write a love song either, with the excess of emotions in the lyrics and all that, but the physical aspect of a love song, he’s run the whole gamut of. He has confidence in his looks, in his body, and doesn’t need to be drunk to pick someone up for the night.
Minho isn’t innocent. Kissing doesn’t mean much to him. Jisung has a nice mouth, with his heart-shaped smile and the bowed curve of his upper lip. Minho wouldn’t mind kissing Jisung. (Actually, maybe Minho really wants to kiss Jisung.)
“Okay,” Jisung says, and Minho looks up.
Minho doesn’t expect how Jisung suddenly looks very casual, and asks, “You sure?”
“Yeah, I kind of want it over with,” Jisung says. He quirks an eyebrow. There’s something off about this situation, but Minho can’t place what it is. “So are you going to do it or not?”
“Alright,” Minho says. “I will.”
He doesn’t expect the anxiety that floods his whole body. Minho has kissed people before. He’s kissed strangers. Maybe it’s the whole first kiss thing, but Minho’s first kiss was terrible, took place behind a portable bathroom. Maybe it’s a Jisung thing.
No, but Jisung just wants experience.
So Minho tilts Jisung’s chin up and leans in. When he’s about two centimeters away, Jisung scrambles backward, and Minho realizes that Jisung’s laughing . “I’m so sorry,” Jisung says, looking down. “I’m just, nervous.”
“Don’t be,” Minho says, laughing as well. All of the tension in the room has left. “You wanna try again?”
Jisung nods, and Minho leans in, but Jisung starts laughing again. “Okay,” Minho says. “What are you nervous about?”
“I don’t know,” Jisung says. “About it not being good for you.”
“Forget about me,” Minho says, then cuts Jisung off before the inevitable witty comeback. “Look, how about this, I’ll close my eyes, and you can just… go whenever you want. Alright?”
“Okay.”
The last thing Minho sees before he shuts his eyes is Jisung looking mildly apprehensive. Minho stays still, feels a tentative hand on his cheek, then a softness against his mouth two seconds later. Minho kisses back, and he feels Jisung freeze, before trying to mirror the movement.
A few seconds later, Jisung pulls back. “Was that okay?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Minho says. The whole thing feels backward.
“Well, I hate being bad at things, so I need to know if I sucked,” Jisung says, and it’s such a Jisung thing to say that Minho cracks up. “Give me an honest evaluation.”
“You’re not bad,” Minho says sincerely. “I enjoyed it.”
Jisung narrows his eyes. “So I wasn’t good, either,” he says, which causes Minho to laugh harder. “Minho, what’s so funny?”
“Everything,” Minho gasps. “Okay— you know what, you can’t expect to be good all at once, right? I mean, you guys weren’t music-making geniuses right out of the womb.”
“Chan probably was,” Jisung says stubbornly, before looking down, embarrassed.
Minho smiles, then leans in for another kiss, less than a second in duration. Jisung stares at him, wide-eyed. “We can practice,” Minho says.
“You don’t mind?”
Jisung’s voice is so sincere, and Minho feels some kind of inexplicable fondness overtake his entire body. It isn’t the way Minho usually feels after he’s kissed someone, or the way his usual kisses go, so Minho almost questions himself when he says, “Not at all.”
---
Practice might be the wrong word for it. Generally, practice isn’t supposed to be so much fun.
Jisung doesn’t kiss him in public, considerate of other people, but it takes about a week for kissing to become natural, just another thing in their inventory of physical affection.
Minho is surprised by how quickly Jisung learns. Two weeks in, and Jisung kisses like he raps, knows how to make Minho’s head spin and his mind melt. If they’re making out, Minho loses all sense of the world around him, the entire scope of his senses narrowing to the feeling of Jisung’s mouth on his and wherever else they’re touching.
Studying together becomes slightly inefficient because, well, Jisung’s distracting . Changbin walks in on them, barely managing to say a “hey what’s up” before he starts screaming again, this time justified.
Minho isn’t embarrassed. Jisung, on the other hand, curls into a ball next to him, face between his knees.
“Jisung,” Changbin says, voice disgusted and mildly proud, “I can’t believe you.”
“Sorry, lost track of time,” Minho says.
Changbin groans. “I can see. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go bleach my eyes so I can never see anything again.”
---
Minho is packing up after class when he gets called over by his dance instructor. He walks over to her, wondering if he’s done something wrong, but what he gets isn’t a reprimand. “Your dancing’s been a lot more energetic recently. Keep it up.”
“Thank you,” he says, making sure not to smile until he’s walked away. His dance instructor’s compliments are hard to come by.
Hyunjin and Felix are waiting next to the doorway, Felix scrolling on his phone and Hyunjin yawning into his hand. They walk to the end of the hall, where Hyunjin feeds a bill into the vending machine and punches in a few numbers. Nothing happens, and Hyunjin gasps. “They jacked up the prices!” He leans his head against the glass. “No…”
“Here, I’ve got some loose change,” Felix says, hiking his bag up. He frowns, hand over the zipper. “Hey, Hyunjin, aren’t you on a diet?”
“Oh, fuck, I am.” Hyunjin deflates further. “This is a terrible day.”
“Seungmin posted a new selfie on Instagram,” Felix says, and Hyunjin immediately drops his bag to search for his phone, a smile on his face.
Before Minho can comment, his phone starts ringing.
“I can’t believe you still have your ringtone as default,” Hyunjin says, and Minho sticks up his middle finger before looking at the caller ID. It’s his mom.
“Ooh, answer,” Felix says. “I love your mom.”
Minho’s mom also loves Felix, maybe more than she loves Minho. Fair enough. Minho presses answer. “Hey,” he says, and sets it on speakerphone. “I’m heading home from dance practice right now.”
“Hi, Mrs. Lee!” Felix chirps.
“Hi, Felix!” Her voice is tinny through the speakers. “Minho, is this a bad time? I just wanted to ask how you’re doing.”
“It isn’t a bad time, and I’m doing fine,” Minho says. He feels guilty— he likes to make time for his mom, but he’s been occupied recently. Hyunjin waves at them to let them know he’s heading out, and Minho waves back. “I’m heading into finals season.”
“Ah, I’m sure you’ll do fine,” she says. Felix winces at the mention of finals. “I’m so excited for when you and Jeongin come home for the holidays. Felix, are you staying on campus, or no?”
“Ah, no, I’ll be coming home.”
“Make sure to drop by if you do, I’m trying a few new recipes out.”
Minho and Felix look at each other in horror— Minho’s mom is a scientist, but her genius in mixing chemicals doesn’t translate to genius in combining ingredients.
“How are you? How are Soonie, Doongie, and Dori?” Minho asks. He will never not be pissed about their campus’s anti-pet policy.
“Oh, you know, Soonie’s a princess, Doongie’s demonic, and Dori might miss you or she might just be hungry, I can’t tell. They’re nice company. And I’m fine.”
“That’s good.”
“What about you, Minho? How are you? Anything new in your life?”
“ Wait, have you told her about Jisung? ” Felix mouths, and Minho shakes his head.
He can feel Felix’s questioning gaze on him. Minho ignores it, there’s no need for an explanation. But why hasn’t Minho told her about Jisung yet? He and Jisung have been going out for over a month now— which is impressive, given Minho’s track record.
It’s simple, right? They’re friends who make out and are technically together, but Minho never thinks of them as boyfriends. Minho’s just being careful, for the possibility of— it’s hard to explain. He can’t tell his mom that Jisung’s his boyfriend when Minho can’t even tell himself that Jisung’s his boyfriend.
But there’s nothing else they can be.
“Same old,” Minho says.
“Funny. That’s what Jeongin always says, too.”
“There’s the shared genetics.”
She laughs. “The only shared genetics you have, really.” Buzzing emanates from her end of the line. “Sorry, I have to go now, my boss is calling me. I don’t know what he could want with me at this time… I’ll see you, though.”
“See you.”
The call clicks off.
“Goddamn, finals season starts next week, I forgot,” Felix groans, swinging his backpack to his other shoulder. “I can’t study under pressure. My brain explodes.”
“Guess natural selection didn’t account for college,” Minho says. “You doing anything tonight, then?” A lot of people are going to a club, or drinking— it’s Friday night, after all, and the last one before finals season.
“I’m heading over to Jeongin’s to play Mario Kart. Woojin’s coming too. You wanna join us?”
They both know the answer, which is that Minho’s ego can’t take getting twelfth place three times in a row again. He’ll get his ass kicked plenty over the holidays, when Felix’s gamer friend, Olivia, will be there too. “No thank you,” Minho says. “I’d win every round and it wouldn’t be fun.”
“Sure,” Felix agrees amiably.
Minho is going to be in his dorm watching cat videos or reading a book— he’s never claimed to lead an exciting life. When he gets back, Changbin is sitting cross-legged on his bed, headphones on and staring intently at the screen, occasionally tapping on his keyboard. Probably writing lyrics.
Jisung’s said that Changbin takes forever to come up with a single verse, but the verse is always good, which is completely different from Jisung’s own style, which is to write as much as he can and fix it later. Minho wonders if Jisung is over in his dorm, writing lyrics, or if he’s at a club like everyone else.
Minho’s phone goes off. yoooo , Jisung says, with perfect timing. are u doing anything?
Jisung probably isn’t at a club— the text is too sober. i was gonna get some cereal, Minho replies. so i guess i was about to do something
my roommate is out drinking , Jisung writes. i owe him for cleaning the dorm so im gonna have to haul his ass back at like two or smthn smh
lol
I DIDNT ASK HIM TO CLEAN THE DORM . A pause. anyway so would you like to come over?
will coming over involve me constantly falling off rainbow road?
pfft who hurt you? but no im just binging the great british bake off
Minho is about to send yes without hesitation, but then he squints. Does that sound clingy? But Jisung is the one who texted him, Minho reasons. Nevermind that Minho was thinking about him before the conversation even started.
sounds good you got yourself a deal.
It’s nine or so at night when Minho treks his way toward Jisung’s dorm, which he’s never seen before. It looks exactly like his own dorm, because their university mass produces everything, including housing. The room is neat, probably due to his roommate.
“Hey,” Jisung says, looping his arms around Minho’s neck and kissing him. It’s short but Minho feels dizzy anyway. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
Red warning signs flood Minho’s body, but it’s an innocuous question, a false alarm, so he chooses to ignore them. “No.” Friday’s his usual takeout day.
“Uh, well, we have ramen,” Jisung says. “I actually haven’t eaten dinner either. I was preoccupied.”
“By the Great British Bake-Off?”
“Yeah,” Jisung says. “So you wanna order pizza?”
There’s a deal on pepperoni, so they order a large then head across campus to pick it up. Matryopizza is fairly empty, most people having chosen the delivery option. Jisung yawns into his hand, and Minho puts his arm around Jisung’s waist, letting the other lean onto his shoulder.
“I gotta start cramming this weekend,” Jisung says, scuffing his shoe along the grass on their way back. “Today’s my last day of freedom.”
And you choose to spend it watching the Great British Bake-Off ? Minho wants to ask, but it would be hypocritical, so he stays silent. “You’ll do fine,” Minho says. “I’ve heard you’re good at cramming everything into your brain right before the test then forgetting everything afterward.”
“Yeah but there’s so much to cram this time and I don’t know anything,” Jisung says petulantly, which makes Minho laugh. “Whatever. I won’t think about it until tomorrow.”
They settle onto Jisung’s bed, pizza box open on the table next to him, and Jisung restarts the episode that he was on. They get through several episodes without any interruptions, because there’s something extremely addicting about this show, but after the fifth or so they start losing focus.
“Can we just talk about this pizza, though,” Jisung says. It’s so badly cut that the cuts don’t even go through the middle, and there’s little triangles of pizza in the center that aren’t supposed to be there. “This should be illegal.”
Minho takes a little triangle pizza for himself and pushes the other one into Jisung’s mouth. “Whoever cut this should enter Hell’s Kitchen, I’m sure Gordon Ramsay would have a lot to say.”
“You watch Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Not often,” Minho says, after he’s chewed and swallowed. “I keep my binging to a minimum.” This is a lie. He’s downloaded apps to restrict his time watching cat videos, to no avail.
“I feel like you’re lying, your voice got all arrogant,” Jisung says, and Minho looks at him in surprise. “You said you liked documentaries at some point. Any recs?”
“I forgot, I watch a lot of documentaries,” Minho says. “But I really like ones on psych and space.”
Jisung smiles. “You’re such a nerd,” he says. Minho takes offense, but honestly, Jisung is right— whenever he watches Star Wars and Star Trek , it’s near impossible for him to suspend his disbelief and ignore plot holes. “Do you believe in aliens, then? Watch conspiracy theory videos?”
“Aliens are real, I don’t need conspiracy theory videos to prove that. It’s just math. The universe is so big, we can’t be the only ones.” Minho has his eyes on the laptop screen, so he misses the mixture of adoration and fondness that Jisung’s expression becomes. “Do you believe in aliens?”
“I don’t think I’m qualified to have an opinion on that, I just think that an alien invasion would be pretty cool,” Jisung says. “I’m kind of an idiot in comparison to you, all I’m concerned with is music and cheesecake.”
Minho scoffs. “If you’re comparing yourself to me, you need to raise your standards. But really? Cheesecake?”
“Cheesecake is a serious business,” Jisung says. “You have to have something you care about that pretty much nobody else does. Like, my friend back home, Daehwi, is obsessed with candles. And Yerim, this girl in my English class, really likes stationary. And—”
“I like cats.”
“Cats?”
“There’s mine.”
“Oh my god, do you wanna watch cat videos, then?” Jisung says. “I have some saved on my watch later on YouTube.”
They watch cat videos, and Minho talks about his cats back home and Jisung talks about how Jeno, his roommate, tried to sneak a cat in and got caught due to allergies, and they’re both nearly asleep when they get an extremely drunk text from the aforementioned Jeno.
Minho and Jisung go to pick up Jeno and his three other intoxicated freshmen friends and dump them off at their respective dorms like a reverse scavenger hunt, and after everyone’s been dropped off Minho returns to his own dorm. He hates freshmen but he kind of wishes Jisung had more drunk friends so that the night wouldn’t have to end, and before he falls asleep he thinks that might be a dangerous thought to have but it’s probably just because he’s so tired that he can’t think straight. Yeah. That’s why his heart is beating so fast and his chest feels like it might explode.
---
Minho doesn’t get to dwell on the issue of his recklessness because final season arrives, and the campus transforms into hell.
The first snow arrives on top of that, so Minho goes class to class with his eyes half-closed and shoes and socks damp. The line at the coffee shop he works at exceeds the floorspace, and customers get worse this time of year— there are several accounts of dropped coffees, messed-up orders, and complaints.
“How are you holding up?” Minho asks Changbin, who doesn’t answer, but continues to furiously rap formulas under his breath. Math majors, Minho swears. “Not good? Okay.”
Minho doesn’t get to see Jisung in the mornings anymore, because Jisung is too tired to wake up early. Minho also doesn’t get to see Jisung in the afternoons either— once, Minho went over to study, and Jeno, his roommate, opened the door and said, “Minho? Yeah, Jisung said you’re not allowed to distract him.”
From the back, Minho hears, “PLEASE LET HIM IN, I’M DYING.”
“This is for your own good,” Jeno says over his shoulder, then shrugs at Minho and shuts the door in his face.
It isn’t worrying, because it isn’t like Jisung’s avoiding him. Jisung still walks Minho from class to class, shivering and melting into Minho like a human shaped blob of jelly. Minho won’t say it, but winter Jisung is cute, bundled up into layers like a puffy marshmallow, cheeks red from the cold. Minho steals his scarf and puts snow down his back.
What might be slightly worrying is that Minho hates the decrease in contact more than he should, but then again, it’s finals season, so everything is worrying, and therefore Minho doesn’t think about it. Physics is the bigger concern at the moment.
When the actual testing part of finals hits, Minho’s already dissociated, so he’s just a bundle of atoms moving from room to room, reading questions and filling little circles of graphite into endless stacks of scantrons. He watches videos between tests and forgets to drink water. He also probably annoys the living hell out of Jeongin by asking about his test schedule and asking if he’s prepared his student IDs and No. 2 Pencils.
how do you think you did? Minho texts after Jeongin’s English final, just to be annoying.
probably failed will live in a cardboard box later , Jeongin sends back. Minho rolls his eyes. Jeongin’s strategy is to go with the flow and not stress out about it, which doesn’t sound like a strategy at all to more studious students, but it works. idk i dont want to think about it.
Minho’s last final is Friday morning, and after he finishes, he doesn’t even register that he’s done for the semester; all he feels is numb and disinterested. He microwaves some ramen and eats it while staring at the ceiling. Sunday, he’ll go home for the holidays. He should start packing.
Later.
At around two, his phone vibrates with notifications. Jisung’s profile picture flashes onscreen, with the message, IM FREE I JUST FINISHED!!
nice job , Minho says. Warmth pools in his chest.
tbh i dont remember anything i put down . probably failed
Minho remembers Seungmin’s words and gets an inkling of suspicion that Jisung’s one of those people who always say they fail but never do. no, u probably didn’t.
doesn’t even matter if i did im just so glad im done , Jisung replies. gonna celebrate this afternoon with bubble tea
tell me youre not obsessed with bubble tea like the rest of campus , Minho replies, groaning internally.
EXCUSE ME BUBBLE TEA IS MY RELIGION
i thought cheesecake was your religion? Minho types, then looks up when he hears the door open. It’s Changbin. He looks even shorter and dead to the world than normal, and he’s probably in no shape to judge Minho’s facial expressions, but Minho kills the smile that’s somehow bloomed on his lips anyway.
the cheesecake on this campus sucks so im a temporary convert
ive never had bubble tea, actually.
Three bubbles dance for a long time. Unnecessarily long, in Minho’s opinion. This is always the reaction he gets.
WHAT THE FUCK? Jisung types, following it with a flood of exclamation marks that cover the whole screen. okay you know what im not even gonna ask, meet me at tmt @5 you are trying it out.
are you asking me on a date?
It’s a joke, made on impulse, but as soon as he presses send, his whole body locks up with nervosa. It’s confusing. Minho can never predict when he’ll panic when it comes to Jisung. The way they met should have immunized them to any further anxiety or embarrassment, and they’re dating, but—
Minho’s phone is silent, and he curses himself for making it weird. They hang out together all the time. Why does using a term for it suddenly make things difficult?
okay imo its an intervention , Jisung types, and Minho laughs to himself, relieved. but it can be a date if u want?
ill meet u at 5 , Minho says, avoiding the question.
It’s a date. It definitely is a date, and Minho resists the urge to call Woojin and ask what he usually wears on these occasions, because he and Jisung — they aren’t like Woojin and Chan.
Instead, Minho peels his body off the couch and packs for home, making sure to be extra careful with the mug with their university logo emblazoned on it; it’s a gift for his mom, who collects coffee mugs.
Ten minutes to five o’clock, Minho searches up the directions to TMT (Too Much Tapioca) and heads out. He doesn’t wear anything out of the ordinary— it would probably be ruined by the snow, anyway— and walks across campus.
He pushes open the sliding doors The cafe is cute, walls artfully decorated, a quote about enjoying life written across the wall. Minho recognizes it as his friend’s work— Kevin sometimes gets paid for his calligraphy skills. Jisung is already at a table. He looks good, but Minho can’t tell if it’s more so than usual. He wonders if it’s probable that Jisung just picked that outfit out by random chance, but he wouldn’t know. The Stats final was the worst one.
“Hey,” Minho says, sliding into the seat “I’m here for the intervention.”
Jisung looks at him, smiles, and Minho wonders if it’s his imagination that the air between them is different. “Yeah, let’s order, then,” he says, and then Minho notices the metal tube between his fingers.
“What’s that?” Minho asks.
Jisung looks down. “Oh, a bubble tea straw,” Jisung says. Minho looks again. It’s thicker than a regular straw would be. “Since, like, no plastic.”
Jisung always talks about how he’s a sham environmentalist, is only doing the major for the degree, but Minho is really questioning that at this point because of shit like this. “You have a metal straw specifically for bubble tea?” Minho sputters.
“We make sacrifices for religion,” Jisung retorts, and any tension between them cracks and leaves like helium from a burst balloon. Minho laughs, hard. “Okay, stop making fun of me now! Let’s go get you some tea.”
Minho gets strawberry and, after finally managing to stab a straw through the top, takes a sip. It’s not the best thing he’s ever had, tastes like a regular smoothie, but the texture of the bubbles is very interesting.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Jisung says.
Minho shrugs. “Meh.” And then, just because Jisung cares so much, “I don’t really like it.”
Jisung’s mouth drops open, and he pulls his phone out, pretending to make a call. “Hey, NASA?” he says into the black screen. “So I’ve discovered that aliens actually are real—”
“Sorry to interrupt, but I was, unfortunately, born on Earth,” Minho says. He takes another sip, contemplating the cup. “I didn’t expect that the tea would be cold.”
“You were born on Earth yet you know nothing of the world,” Jisung says, and Minho pretends to dump his bubble tea on Jisung’s head. “Is Changbin out, by the way?”
“I mean, when I went out he was asleep, and when he’s asleep he usually doesn’t wake up unless there’s a natural disaster,” Minho says. “Why?”
“Wanna go back to your dorm?”
It’s a testament to how burnt out Minho is by finals that his usual gutter mind doesn’t immediately catch on— Jisung actually might have gotten away with the question had he not immediately flushed and held his tea in front of his face.
Minho feigns confusion. “Why?”
One could probably fry an egg on Jisung’s cheeks with how red they are. “You know.”
“Mm, last time I checked, I know nothing of the world,” Minho teases.
“You’re really gonna make me say it?” Jisung says. He crosses his arms over his chest, looks around to make sure no one’s within earshot. “I’m leaving for home tomorrow. I want to—”
At this, Jisung skids to a halt, looking mildly as if he were to combust, and Minho lets Jisung off because (1) Minho’s impressed that Jisung managed to even get this far and (2) Minho kind of really wants to make out with Jisung too, since they’ve seen little of each other the past two weeks and Jisung refuses to do anything in public. So they walk back to his dorm, Jisung talking fast to conceal his embarrassment, about how all of his friends are smart and it sucks and how the bubble tea is basically a heat pack compared to this cold.
Once they get back to the dorm, Minho sets his cup down and shuts Jisung up.
---
“Dude, my head hurts,” Felix groans. “I am never drinking again.”
“Well, Sundays are for repentance,” Woojin comments, and Felix glares at him.
They’re on a train back home for the holidays, Woojin and Minho sitting on one side and Felix and Jeongin on the other.
Woojin adds, “We got six hours until we arrive, you can sleep it off.”
“Alright,” Felix mutters. He leans his head against Jeongin’s shoulder, closing his eyes, then jolts upright. “Wait, I didn’t do anything stupid last night, right? Eric and Bomin told me I was fine, if a little more Australian than usual, but I have watched too many rom-coms where you drunk-dial the guy you like to feel safe.”
“How would we know?” Minho asks. Then, “Wait, Felix, is there someone you like?”
“Hypothetical scenario,” Felix says quickly, before leaning his head on Jeongin’s shoulder again. Jeongin’s face flushes, and he shifts his torso to better accommodate Felix’s form. “Time to sleep. Goodnight.”
Six hours pass by surprisingly fast. Minho watches the scenery outside the windows, trees and shrubs weighed down by snow, while listening to music and mouthing along. Woojin gets Felix’s Nintendo Switch out of his backpack and boots it up, Jeongin craning his head to watch.
At the two hour mark, Jeongin falls asleep on Felix. Woojin takes a picture, and Minho shoots him a look. Woojin shrugs.
By the time they get off the train, Minho can’t feel his legs. He and Jeongin slosh their way through the snow back home. The house is empty, and Minho blinks at the interior of their house, so familiar yet a little out of shape. Jeongin drops his backpack on the ground.
“Good to be back,” Jeongin says.
“Yeah,” Minho says. “It is.”
---
Winter break is nice. Minho cuts himself slack on his diet, pets his cats, and annoys his Instagram followers by spamming their feeds with pictures of said cats. Soonie and Dori welcome his return, while Doongie gives him the cold shoulder. It’s irritating, but part of being a cat owner is dealing with grumpiness.
He and Jeongin meet up at Felix’s house a lot, because Felix’s house is the biggest and has all the new gaming equipment. Most of the time, Woojin and Olivia join them. Minho holds his own in DDR but gets his ass handed over to him at Mario Kart, as expected.
Minho doesn’t talk much to people from university, including Jisung, these two weeks. Being home is like being in a different sphere, and since he isn’t going to be here for a long time, he spends more time catching up with old friends and talking to his family. This year is different from last year, though, in that at the end of the day Minho can turn his phone on and be guaranteed to have a few messages waiting for him from Jisung and occasionally Changbin.
Minho doesn’t want to admit it, but he looks forward to the handful of texts. Changbin’s are more practical, like yo do you like this kind of candy [image attached] lmk , while Jisung’s are more random , like my friend daehwi and i are getting cheesecake from the local bakery i cant explain how happy i am rn.
Jisung video-calls him one time and demands to meet his cats. They end up spending an hour just following Soonie, Doongie and Dori around with the cam, which only ends with Jisung saying, “Wait, I have to go now, I’m going Christmas shopping.”
Which reminds Minho.
“Are you buying Christmas presents?” Minho asks Jeongin. Their family’s never been big on gifts, and it’s rubbed off Minho as well.
“Not really. I bought candy and that’s it,” Jeongin replies. “Wait, speaking of which, let me give you your Starburst.”
Minho only likes the orange kind, so he gives the yellow and pink ones to Jeongin and the red ones to Felix, who for some reason likes the taste of artificial cherry. Felix is a big celebrator of Christmas, and both Minho and Jeongin panic when Felix hands them their presents— a gift card to the local pet shop for Minho and rings for Jeongin. Every year, they forget to buy something for Felix in return to avoid the embarrassment.
“I got you nothing,” Woojin reports.
“Oh, thank god,” Minho says. “I got you nothing either.”
This is why they’re best friends.
---
On Christmas, Minho spends the afternoon chopping vegetables. Over the years, Minho’s family has developed an unspoken rule that Christmas is for family, while New Year’s is for friends, so on Christmas, Minho, Jeongin, and their mom attempt to collectively make a dinner like they see on the Internet and perhaps achieve it fifty percent.
Minho pulls most of the weight with his noodles and dumplings— he makes extras to portion off to Changbin and Jisung as return Christmas presents— and Jeongin will argue that his stir-fry is edible. With their mom’s dessert—
Minho cuts a look at Jeongin. One bite .
One bite, and then we say we’re full , Jeongin agrees with a small nod. They take a bite simultaneously. Minho tries to keep his face expressionless. Jeongin’s eyebrow jumps, but other than that, he maintains a poker face.
“Not good?” their mom asks.
Minho is honest. “Terrible.”
“So polite.” She smiles. “I suppose it’s fair that now I can mention that a coworker of mine has a son around your age, and—”
“No. Just, no.”
“Hear me out,” their mom says. “Of course, if you aren’t interested in dating, I won’t force it, but I promise his son is really nice.”
Minho cracks his fingers. He could just say he isn’t interested, he knows she won’t push it— his mom has said that she’ll accept cats instead of grandchildren if it really comes to that— but he can’t think of any logical reason to avoid telling the truth. Jisung’s part of his life.
“Actually, I’m seeing someone,” he blurts out, wincing at the phrasing.
“Minho,” their mom says, crossing her arms. “Please don’t make an entire boyfriend up.”
Jeongin cracks up.
“I’m not making this up,” Minho says, mildly offended.
“It’s true,” Jeongin says, deciding to help him out. “His name is Han Jisung and he’s saved with a heart on Minho’s phone. I can vouch for his existence.”
“Oh, wow,” their mom says, stunned. She pauses while cracking open a package of pre-bought cake, having predicted the inedibility of her own dessert. “When did you start dating? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because Minho never tells his mom this kind of stuff, even though he knows she won’t judge him for things not working out. Minho’s pulse spikes. “It was pretty recent. It’s not, serious. So don’t make a big deal of it.”
Minho wonders if Jisung’s told his parents about him yet.
“What does he look like?” she asks. Jeongin fishes his phone out of his pocket, pulling up Instagram and handing it over.
It happens fast. Their mom has quick thumbs— she scrolls down several months in thirty seconds, then taps on a photo in specific that has good lighting. “He’s cute,” she says, then tries to zoom in to his face. A little red heart appears in the center. “Wait—”
“OH MY GOD,” Jeongin yells in panic, and Minho doubles over in laughter. “HOW MANY MONTHS AGO WAS THAT POSTED?”
“Nine?” she says, checking the timestamp, and Jeongin slumps, face buried in his hands. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s gonna think I’m stalking him,” Jeongin says, peeking out from between his fingers. “Oh my god. Jisung’s gonna think I like him. My brother’s boyfriend.”
“Can I unlike it?” she asks while Jeongin melts down. Jeongin stares at the ceiling, shaking his head. “Nevermind, forget I said anything.”
“Why do we never ask Jeongin about his love life?” Minho asks.
“Because we all know the situation and it hasn’t changed since ninth grade,” their mom says. “I’ll hold out for another two years or so. If Jeongin hasn’t made his move since then, I’ll start setting him up with my coworkers’ children, don’t worry.”
“Kill me,” Jeongin mutters, and takes another bite of cake.
In reality, there’s only one person who Jeongin could be so enamored with, one person that Jeongin could have liked since freshman year and one person that their mom would be so desperate to have as a son-in-law, but Felix is a good person and Minho would prefer not to have to murder him, so Minho likes to pretend not to know who it is.
“Stop being so protective of him,” is Woojin’s evaluation. “He can make his own life decisions.”
“I made my own life decisions, and look where I am now,” Minho says, to which Woojin just sighs.
On New Year’s, Minho spends the night at Woojin’s. They watch anime and eat fried chicken and pizza, and right before midnight Woojin puts on a Tori Kelly song so they can be (in Woojin’s words) blessed with her amazing vocals for the next year. Minho’s lost track of how many New Year’s they’ve celebrated together in this fashion.
To Minho, Woojin’s friendship is strange. People come in and out of Minho’s life at whim, but Woojin has stayed for over a decade. It’s firsthand evidence outside of family that people— fickle, capricious people— can stick together despite changing over the years, and Minho doesn’t believe in or understand love, but he thinks that maybe whatever version of love does exist, it might exist like this.
---
There are noises emanating from the dorm when Minho gets back, yawning into his hand. The train had been delayed, and now it’s night.
Minho presses his ear up against the door. They don’t sound like sex noises, but Minho can’t be too sure. He won’t be able to live with himself if he sees Changbin with a one night stand.
“We’re not deleting the ad-libs!” Changbin says, words muffled. “Get your hand away from the keyboard!”
“The ad-libs don’t sound good !”
“Woojin agreed to do them and you know what Woojin’s harmonies are like, are you an idiot?”
Minho is ninety-nine percent sure that Changbin is fully clothed, so he opens the door to see Changbin strangling Jisung with a neck pillow. They freeze. “Oh, hey,” Changbin says, removing the pillow. “We were just, making music.”
“Or, you know, making the neighbors want to call the cops on you. Lucky not everybody’s back from the holidays,” Minho says, grimacing. “Is this what your songwriting process is usually like?”
“We have Chan around to mediate most of the time,” Changbin says. “But he’s still not on campus, so Jisung and I did some stuff on our own. We kinda lost track of time, we’ve been at it for like six hours.”
Six hours. That’s how long Minho’s train has been delayed. Maybe Jisung has been waiting for him. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to it, then,” Minho says. “I can crash over at Woojin’s—”
“What, no, I’m leaving, I’m not gonna third wheel,” Changbin says, standing up. “Don’t copy me.”
Minho stares in disbelief. “I was the one who was gonna leave—”
“Hey, this is your room, so if anybody should be leaving, it’s me,” Jisung says, which is such a good point that it makes both Minho and Changbin freeze in their tracks. “We’re calling it quits for the night, anyway. Changbin stopped being able to rhyme an hour ago.”
“Wait, so who’s the third wheel?” Changbin asks. Minho squints, opening his bag and pulling out freshly-laundered clothing. He’s too tired for this debate. He gets a cloth and ties it around the clothing in a neat bundle, putting it into his drawer. Changbin snickers from the side because he’s a prejudiced asshole who doesn’t believe in alternative ways of organization.
“Nobody’s the third wheel,” Jisung says, after looking like he’s solved an intensely difficult calculus problem. “You guys wanna watch a movie? Changbin and I bet awhile ago on It but never got around to seeing it.”
“Stephen King’s It ,” Changbin explains, when Minho is confused by the pronoun. “We both like horror movies. Whoever screams more has to buy lunch.”
“You can join the bet,” Jisung says.
“Minho isn’t allowed to join,” Changbin disagrees. “I watched The Conjuring with him last year. He laughed when the crosses turned upside down. Sometimes I don’t think Minho’s real.”
“I’ll referee instead,” Minho says.
Half an hour into the movie, it’s clear that Jisung’s going to have to buy lunch. Changbin’s scared, but it’s more a passive kind of scared, expression contorted and wide-eyed, while Jisung is shrieking at every turn of frame, holding onto Minho’s arm like that will be any use if Pennywise crawls out of the screen and attacks them. Meanwhile, Minho’s comfortably invested in the storyline. Everything is fictional, so he’s more fascinated than anything else.
When the credits roll, Minho goes to turn on the lights and laughs when he sees that Changbin’s stuffed Munchlax has migrated its way onto his lap. Changbin is still frozen in the same position as he was at the start of the movie. Jisung looks like he no longer has a soul.
“Okay,” Minho says. “So Changbin won.”
“What the fuck goes on in Stephen King’s mind,” Changbin whispers.
“I don’t know, but I should probably go back to my dorm,” Jisung says, slowly getting off of Minho’s bed then making his way to the door, glancing around the room suspiciously. He then eyes the windows. “Shit, it’s dark.”
There’s an obvious solution to that, and it’s for Jisung to stay the night. Minho doesn’t notice Jisung’s questioning gaze, and Changbin’s subtle head-shake— the two of them have always been best friends and can communicate nonverbally. “I guess I’ll just have to avoid the sewers on the way back, then,” Jisung laughs, nervous.
Minho suggests, “I can walk you.”
“No, you don’t have to,” Jisung starts, but thinks better of it and immediately changes tracks. “Actually, please do. Please .”
“Alright,” Minho says, putting his coat on.
They walk out into the night. Jisung’s dorm is only two blocks away, but Jisung still laces their fingers together in a death grip. “You really weren’t scared at all?” Jisung asks.
“No.”
Horror movie scares have nothing on the anxiety that sometimes floods his mind.
“Were you at least disturbed?”
Minho thinks about it. “Well, that red balloon Pennywise had was a bit much,” he says. “What if it just, like, exploded? Helium everywhere?”
Jisung starts laughing and doesn’t stop until they reach his doorway. Before Jisung goes in, he tilts his face up to give Minho a kiss, lips chapped from the weather. Minho thinks he hears something like an I’ve missed you before the door closes and Minho’s alone.
---
Two Fridays later, Minho’s eyelids are half-closed when his phone goes off. He frowns, checking his texts.
hey are you awake right now? this is jisung’s roommate , the text flashes. can you come pick him up hes veeeery drunk
Minho rubs sleep out of his eyes and stands up. Changbin removes his headphones, raising an eyebrow in question. “Jisung is drunk,” Minho says wearily. “I’ll go pick him up, who needs sleep anyway.”
sure, send me the address, Minho types back, then pockets his phone and heads over to his car. He recalls Jisung telling him yesterday about plans to go to a club with his friends. Minho can’t remember the last time he himself went to a club, since he doesn’t drink and being the only sober person in the vicinity is distressing. He used to go to dance, and to get laid. Dance practice covers the first thing for him, and the second thing— he’s with Jisung, and Minho has morals. Skewed morals, but they’re there.
The club is dark, but Minho can tell that he’s dressed way too responsibly for this place. He grits his teeth and starts wading through the crush of people. Somebody accidentally grinds on him. He rubs his temples.
“Minho! Minho, is that you?” a vaguely familiar voice says, and Minho turns to see Jeno, who looks way too done with everything. “I’m really sorry for calling you—”
“It’s fine.”
“Minho,” a much more familiar, and much more drunk, voice says, latching onto him like an octopus. Minho slides his arm around Jisung, holding him up. “You’re here!”
Minho is tired, and the club is stuffy, but he feels his mouth curve up into a small smile. “Alright, let’s tow your drunk ass home.”
“I’m not a drunk ass,” Jisung protests. “I just took some shots cause the music was sooo bad but, it still doesn’t sound good.”
Minho laughs, takes a good look at the other. There’s a flush settled high on his cheeks, a bright sheen to his eyes. In this state, Jisung is cute, but Minho has also never seen him in attire like this, which is decidedly not cute. But Minho isn’t about to think about that while they’re standing like this on the dance floor.
“Alright, I’ll leave you to him,” Jeno says. “Your boyfriend has high standards for DJs.”
Minho takes Jisung by the arm and starts pushing through the crush of people toward the door. As soon as they step into the night air, Jisung shivers, presumably because his jeans are ripped and the cold must be like knives against his skin. “Shit, it’s cold,” he mumbles.
Minho eyes Jisung critically, then takes off his scarf to wrap around the other’s neck. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” Jisung says, leaning into him. “Thank you for… picking me up, too! Did you hear Jeno call you my boyfriend?” He laughs, and it’s like drunk music. “I can’t believe that. You’re my boyfriend.”
Minho doesn’t think Jisung has ever called him that to his face before, but then again, Minho won’t think anything of what Jisung says when drunk. “How many drinks?” Minho says, rolling his eyes. “Lightweight.”
“Not a lightweight,” Jisung protests. “Okay kinda a lightweight but still. You’re so mean. I might break up with you.”
“Yeah, well, get in the car first,” Minho sighs, opening the door. He won’t think anything of what Jisung says, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t amusing.
“I’m just kidding please don’t break up with me.”
Minho revs up the car and drives over to Jisung’s dorm. Light spills over the pavement, cuts shadows across Jisung’s face. Minho wraps an arm around his shoulder and walks in. He knows what dorm it is by now, and fortunately, Jisung’s retained enough motor skills to get his keys out of his pants.
Jisung is going to have to sleep in those pants unless he manages to get them off himself. Minho is not about to try his hand at peeling extremely tight jeans off Jisung’s legs. “Where’s your aspirin and shit?” he mutters. Jisung waves in the direction of nowhere, and Minho goes to search the cabinet.
“Yo, look at this fruit,” Jisung says, talking about the fruit set on the desk. Minho does look at the fruit, because they’re all exotic, tropical fruits, a pineapple and a mango and maybe a passion/dragonfruit.
“Why do you need this fruit,” Minho says, not expecting an answer.
He gets one, though. “We wanted to see what kind of fruits Jongho across the hall could break,” Jisung says, like this makes perfect sense. “These were the survivors.”
Fruit spiel over, Minho continues his cabinet search, until he hears Jisung say, “Hey, mom?” and then Minho nearly hits his head on the cabinet top trying to stand up. “Can you come over, I don’t know how to cut this uh, pinecone?”
Jisung’s talking into his phone, to his mom . Drunk . Minho immediately snatches the phone out of Jisung’s hand, and Jisung looks at him, confused. “Hey, Mrs. Han,” Minho says. “My name’s Minho. Jisung’s kind of sick right now. Fever.”
“He didn’t sound sick to me,” comes a dry voice from the other end of the phone. Minho wonders if Jisung vomiting— oh, shit, that’s a possibility— will help or hurt his case. “Anyway, you said you were Minho? Lee Minho?”
“Yeah.” He is Lee Minho, and this is really his life. Changbin would give him so much shit right now.
“Jisung talks about you.” Her tone of voice gives absolutely nothing away. “All good things, I promise.”
Minho coughs. “Thank you.”
“It’s a bit late to be calling, so I’m going to go to bed now,” she says. “Take good care of him.”
“I will,” Minho says, wondering why his mouth suddenly feels so dry. “It’s nice to meet you. Goodnight.”
“Nice to meet you too.”
The call clicks off, and Minho stares at the phone for a few seconds before he starts back to reality. Jisung’s dozing off, and Minho kicks his shin to keep him awake. There’s a water bottle on the nightstand, half-full, and Minho opens it and hands it over. “You gotta drink some of this, alright?”
“Okay,” Jisung says, taking a sip. “This tastes weird.”
“Why were you talking with my mom?” Jisung mutters.
“I was talking with her because you called her.”
“Makes sense,” Jisung says, closing his eyes. “She doesn’t know that we’re dating. I wanna tell her but I’ll feel stupid if it turns out you don’t really like me.”
Minho doesn’t get why it feels like a bucket of ice water has been poured atop his head. Maybe it’s a question of even ground— he’s told his parents but Jisung hasn’t. That’s it. Minho turns on his heel and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.
Jisung is drunk. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
---
Minho forgets that Valentine’s Day is a thing until Felix starts talking about how he bought a five pound bag of gummy worms because they were on holiday sale. “I’m an idiot ,” Felix complains. “What am I gonna do with them?”
Hyunjin can’t stop laughing. “You’re this close to turning into my dad. He bought ten boxes of peanuts once because they were fifty off.”
“Can I tell someone I like them with a five pound bag of gummy worms?” Felix wonders. “Is this a viable option?”
Minho laughs along, too, until he realizes that this year Valentine’s Day is an actual concern of his, and then he stops laughing. Last year he just pulled faces at the heart decorations around campus and reposted grumpy cat memes, pulled from the cemetery of the internet to embody bitter single souls everywhere.
He doesn’t give a crap about the holiday, he doesn’t do romance. But—
yo han jisung , Minho types, suddenly feeling discomfort about the blue heart emoji that is still part of Jisung’s contact name.
hi lee minho
Minho decides to just kill Jisung’s expectations right off the bat. i forgot vday existed you arent getting anything
oh thats okay , Jisung says. i forgot it existed too. can i just come over and hang out feb 14 w/ u?
yeah sure
This Valentine’s Day, Minho pulls faces at the heart decorations around campus but reposts regular cat memes. Felix posts a picture on Instagram holding up a peace sign, captioned no date no problem. Jeongin comes over with a cup of gummy worms; at Minho’s confusion, Jeongin just wearily explains he now has a lot. Changbin covers their beds in clothing because he’s going on a date and can’t decide what to wear.
“It really doesn’t matter,” Minho says. “Your face will kill the vibe anyway.”
Changbin looks up, gaze murderous. “I swear, Minho—”
Minho decides to stop teasing and picks up a navy blue shirt and black jeans. “Wear this.”
Jisung comes over in the afternoon, bag slung over his shoulder, saying that he has a paper due and needs to focus, so nobody bother him. Changbin points out he could just go to the library. Jisung retorts that the library is so quiet it makes him feel like he’s in a cemetery, before opening his laptop and pulling up Google Drive.
Minho makes Jisung close Atari Breakout, which is open on another tab.
Changbin leaves for his date at seven, and Minho and Jisung make fun of him on his way out the door. “Like you guys are any better,” Changbin says finally, which actually succeeds in shutting Minho up long enough for Changbin to successfully get out the room.
“Don’t tell him I said this, but he looks good,” Jisung says.
“Don’t tell him I said this, but I agree,” Minho says. “Do you know who he’s meeting up with? He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Wouldn’t tell me, either, but it isn’t anyone we know. I hope it goes well for him.”
Minho nods, cracking his knuckles, then flips another page of his book. Jisung yawns and types for another ten minutes before he slams his laptop closed. “If I have to write another word I’ll die.”
Minho understands the feeling. “Does the paper have to have a certain word count?”
“Yeah, eight thousand. I’m pretty close, I just need another five hundred or so, but literally I can’t think of anything,” Jisung groans. He rolls over onto his back, shifting until his head is on Minho’s thigh, legs dangling off of the bed. “Damn, too many muscles. You’re not comfortable at all.”
Minho tenses up his thigh just to be irritating, and Jisung looks at him, betrayed.
Minho gets through another chapter of his book before he sets it down. “Changbin said you were a romantic,” he says. “But you’re really not.”
Jisung lifts his head. “What do you mean?”
Minho shrugs. “I thought you would care about Valentine’s Day and stuff, but you don’t.” He frowns. “Unless you do. Then I’m wrong.”
“Chocolate usually comes from underpaid labor, and don’t even get me started on the environmental impacts of flowers, so you’re right about the Valentine’s Day part,” Jisung says. “But I am a romantic.”
“I don’t see it.”
“You know how Changbin basically lost it on you when we first started going out? I had to tell him to calm down.” Jisung sits up, resting his weight on his palms. “I used to have the worst crushes on people, but I would never do anything about it.”
This is new information. Minho doesn’t get it, he never let any crushes balloon to unmanageable sizes.
Jisung bounces his knee. “I was good at crushing on people, but I didn’t think about what came after. I guess I thought if I liked them, and they liked me, then it would solve everything. Happy ever after and all that.”
Minho can’t stop himself from making a face. “ Really ?”
So Minho doesn’t know his dad, only knows that he left sometime after Jeongin was born. He doesn’t think about his dad, and doesn’t psychoanalyze the effects of being raised by a single mother, but he figures he has a good enough reason not to believe in happy ever afters.
“Don’t judge me,” Jisung pleads. “But what happened was that senior year of high school, Changbin told me maybe I should try to ask the person I liked out. I did, because we were both going to college anyway. I got rejected, it sucked, and I ate a lot of ice cream. I was bitter. And then after awhile I forgot to be bitter.”
Huh.
“Being a romantic doesn’t sound like such a bad thing,” Minho says. He can’t imagine having such thought processes himself, but he’s never liked how cynical he was, either.
“Maybe.” Jisung hums. “But chocolate and flowers, that was never what I thought a relationship was supposed to be like. Not even then.”
“What’d you think it was going to be like, then?”
There’s a pause. “Nevermind. Don’t worry about it.” Jisung cuts a gaze around the room.
The easiest way to make sure Minho will never let something go is to make it classified information.
“Tell me,” he says, bracing his hands on Jisung’s shoulders.
“This is embarrassing enough, I’m not telling you.”
“Yes, you are,” Minho says, narrowing his eyes.
Jisung says a final no, I’m not , before leaning in to press their lips together. Jisung kisses to kill, wrapping his arms around Minho’s neck and pulling him close until there’s zero space between their bodies. Minho forgets that he’s supposed to be asking a question. He probably forgets his own name.
They finally break apart after being reminded that oxygen is a necessary component of life. Jisung’s mouth is shiny, swollen. “I think I should go back to writing my paper now,” he says, like the distraction is all on Minho.
“You asshole, I hope you never hit eight thousand words,” Minho says, except the statement is probably undermined by how breathless he is.
Jisung does, however, hit eight thousand words. After he does so he pulls up the karaoke app on his phone, and after three songs where Jisung sings solo he finally succeeds in getting Minho to try it out, too, where Minho embarrasses himself trying to hit high notes and riffs.
Changbin comes back glowing. He does the rap in Super Bass and gets a 100, which irritates Jisung to no end, and when Jisung leaves Minho finally remembers that he was supposed to get Jisung to answer the question.
It’s okay. He thinks he gets it.
---
Some things, though, Minho will never get. Or predict.
“Are you gonna tell Minho?” he hears Hyunjin whisper to Felix after dance practice.
“I can’t tell Minho, he’ll kill me,” Felix whispers back.
“Well, start digging your grave now,” Minho says, startling both of them. “Because you’re gonna tell me.”
Felix and Hyunjin jump apart, expressions like deer caught in the headlights. Hyunjin says, “Oh, look at the time, I gotta blast,” and hightails it out of there. Felix stares after Hyunjin’s back in betrayal.
Minho looks at Felix expectantly, and Felix’s Adam’s Apple bobs as he swallow. But then Felix’s eyes glint, determined, standing his ground.
Minho’s more curious than anything as to what this is about. “So? What’s up?”
“I—” Felix reaches up, checking his pulse. “I like Jeongin.”
Oh.
Minho should have seen this coming. Or maybe not— Felix always seemed to look at Jeongin in a platonic way, but Minho hasn’t seen much of their interactions since they started university.
“You’re right,” Minho says. “I might kill you.”
Felix smiles. “Good to know.”
“Are you going to do anything about it?” Minho wonders if Felix knows that his feelings are returned. To Minho, Jeongin is obvious, but it’s often those who are involved that are blind to what’s happening. Minho pushes down the part of him that starts losing it over the idea of Jeongin dating somebody, trying to focus.
“Maybe.”
Minho scoffs at Felix’s uncertainty.
“I like him a lot,” Felix says, firm. Paired with how deep his voice is, the sincerity is enough to stop Minho in his tracks, enough to make Minho wonder . “I’m only sorry it took me so long to realize.”
Minho shakes his head, and eyes Felix with a glare. “This isn’t my issue,” he says, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Figure it out yourself.”
He starts to walk back to his dorm, then switches tracks to head over to Woojin’s place. Woojin is better with this kind of shit than he is.
While Minho and Jeongin are on good terms (although Jeongin likes to complain about Minho’s personality and generally be all-around disrespectful), Jeongin never updates Minho on his crush anymore.
It was around the two-year mark of Jeongin liking Felix, when Minho was in eleventh grade and Jeongin was in tenth, that Jeongin stopped. Because Minho told him to cut it out if Jeongin wasn’t going to make a move, since it wasn’t going anywhere. Jeongin said that he’d wait. Minho said that was stupid. Jeongin said Minho just didn’t get it, and then didn’t talk to Minho for two weeks after that.
Jeongin’s right. Minho doesn’t get it. He’s never gotten this stuff. He doesn’t get why people have crushes, when it turns their faces all red and renders them stupid and incoherent. He doesn’t get why anyone would continue to like someone even when it’s clearly one-sided and brings pain— that one month in twelfth grade that Felix went out with Eric Sohn, Jeongin’s smiles were slightly fake.
Minho doesn’t get feelings, period.
“Hey,” Minho says. Woojin is sitting on the bed, eating Pringles and pretending to do homework. His roommate is out with a class. “Guess what?”
“Haikyuu!! is being renewed for another season?”
“I mean, I actually did read something about that, but that’s not the point here. Felix told me he likes Jeongin. Please. What the fuck .”
Woojin gestures at Minho with the Pringles container. “Tell me you’re not gonna kill Felix,” he says, and Minho shrugs. Woojin knows him well. “I don’t see a problem with it. I’m happy for them.”
“Yeah but like,” Minho says, “What if they start dating?”
“That’s generally what happens when two people like each other,” Woojin says. Minho crosses his arms, not buying it. “Hey, Minho, heads up. You’re in a relationship.”
“No, I’m not.”
Woojin looks at him, unimpressed.
Because are we ?
“Jisung and I, we just work,” Minho says. He doesn’t know how else to explain it. The two of them match well, and the context they chose to match in just happens to be that of a relationship. “The dating part is more a label.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he can tell they’re wrong. Woojin’s eyes narrow, latching onto his poor phrasing. “What do you mean, a label?”
Minho fumbles, unsure of when this became about him. “Like…”
Woojin stares at him as if he’s re-evaluating everything he knows. “You do like him.”
“Of course I like him,” Minho says. Jisung is fun and easy to be around, they can talk about anything, and Jisung doesn’t shrug him off when Minho wants to hold hands.
“Like, the way Jeongin likes Felix.” Minho wonders how Woojin is stating facts but manages to be asking questions at the same time.
Really, Minho doesn’t even understand the way Jeongin likes Felix. Jeongin gets all starry-eyed whenever he looks in Felix’s direction, and back when Jeongin still talked about Felix to Minho, Jeongin had described a fast heartbeat and an inability to think straight.
To Minho, it sounds like a disease. Heartbreak sounds like a disease, too. Minho never knows what to say when it afflicts one of his friends. Romantic relationships don’t tend to last, and Minho doesn’t want for Felix and Jeongin’s friendship to sour because of a break-up.
“Look, I know what I’m doing, alright,” Minho says at the present moment. He doesn’t know why his words come out so defensive, but Woojin’s eying him like they’re back in tenth-grade chemistry and Minho’s about to blow up another beaker.
“You better,” Woojin says. Minho looks away. Why does he have to explain himself? He and Jisung function, and that’s the most important part. Not everybody can be as smart and understand their lives as well as Woojin.
“Can I drink some of your Pringles?” Minho asks, changing the subject, and Woojin passes him the can. Minho shakes the can to pulverize the Pringles to shards then tilts it to his mouth.
Woojin presses his fingers to his temples, muttering, why are we friends again?
---
Wednesday, Minho comes back to his dorm room to see Jisung and Changbin hunched over a laptop. As soon as Minho walks through the door, Jisung pulls his headphones down and slams the laptop closed, like some incompetent hacker caught mid-act.
“What are you doing?” Minho asks, quirking an eyebrow. “Wait, do I even want to know?”
“We’re not doing anything bad, Jisung’s just being dramatic,” Changbin says. “He’s—”
Jisung slams a hand over Changbin’s mouth, which Changbin removes, to continue speaking. “He’s putting together a piece to submit to the music showcase.”
“Oh, that’s it?” Minho can’t figure out why Jisung wouldn’t want him to know that.
“Anyway, I’m telling him that his song’s plenty good and he should stop fussing over it,” Changbin says. “But you might want to leave the room right now so headphones don’t get accidentally thrown in your face.”
Minho obliges.
Still, the incident is on his mind, and when Jisung slides into the seat across from him the next morning, he asks, “So why didn’t you want me to find out about the music showcase thing?”
Jisung groans. “You’ve got your interrogation voice going. It’s too early in the morning to be grilled.”
“Would you prefer to be grilled later in the day?”
“You know, I can’t stand you sometimes.”
Minho stares him down.
Jisung shifts and caves. “So, the music department does this annual showcase.” Oh, Minho knows about that— Jeongin and Woojin are auditioning for it. “Changbin and Chan are focusing on getting 3RACHA on the university radio so they don’t care, but I do. There’s limited performance spots and I want one.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Minho says. As a dancer, he fights for performance spots all the time— he lives to be onstage.
“Yeah, there’s just the chance I won’t make it,” Jisung says. “I didn’t want to tell you unless I made it in.”
“I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem getting in,” Minho says. He qualifies his words because the university is full of talent, and art is subjective. “But in the case you don’t, you don’t have to feel embarrassed around me. God knows how many times I’ve been shot down during auditions.”
Minho gets it, though. The need to prove himself, the humiliation when he falls short. Even more, he understands the painful process of muscling through the pain of being second best, dusting off his knees and getting back up to try again. Jisung is like him in that sense.
“I’m just scared of not being good enough,” Jisung says quietly.
Minho shakes his head. “Don’t be scared of that.”
He personally doesn’t let himself think he isn’t good enough anymore, because it gets in the way of improvement. But with Jisung, Minho doesn’t want Jisung on that train of thought because it’s a lie. Jisung is more than good enough.
“You would say that, you aren’t scared of anything,” Jisung says, words teasing in an attempt to lighten the mood. “You didn’t even blink when we were watching It.”
“One, I think you did enough screaming for both of us,” Minho says. Jisung huffs, opening his mouth to retort. “And two, I’m scared of heights.”
“Really?” Jisung asks, and Minho nods. “Huh. Why?”
“It’s too early in the morning for this kind of conversation.”
“You started it. But I won’t ask you too much about it if you don’t want.” Jisung smiles as he pulls his breakfast out of his backpack.
Minho hates his fear of heights. He’s never been able to shake it, although he’s tried — he’s gone on rollercoasters, climbed on rooftops, the whole nine yards. But the sight of the ground so far from his feet always makes him dizzy.
He remembers when he was little, he and his mom had walked into the first floor of a skyscraper, and she took him up to the top to surprise him with the view. Minho hadn’t realized they’d been in an elevator, and when they walked out onto the observation deck and looked to see the ground miles under, he started screaming. Suffice to say, they haven’t visited many skyscrapers after that.
The fear is part of why he chose to take physics, to understand the world and the mechanics of gravity, but even though he now knows the exact formula of a fall, when he’s up there, it doesn’t matter. He’s terrified. The fear is usually irrational— his brain knows that he won’t fall, but his body never listens.
Humans are strange like that.
---
This time, Jisung’s fear prove to be irrational as well.
A few days later, Minho is walking across campus when Jisung comes sprinting across the field. Jisung stops and falls forward, hands on his knees. “I got in,” he gasps. “I got a spot in the showcase.”
“Told you so.”
“You’ll come, right?” Jisung says, swinging his backpack over to his stomach to pull a ticket out. “You better come.”
Minho gets his wallet and swaps bills for a ticket. He’s bad at compliments— if he tries to tell Jisung he’s happy for him, it will come out fake. “I don’t know,” Minho says, just to mess with him. “I might forget.”
“You’re just kidding, you wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jisung says, so confident now that he’s secured a spot. Confidence looks good on Jisung, though. There’s a shine in his eyes and a glow to his cheeks.
Minho wonders what Jisung looks like onstage. Jisung’s seen Minho perform before, coming to a couple of competitions and recitals, but not the other way around.
Changbin says that Jisung does a one-eighty when he’s performing, and Minho knows this is true just from hearing Jisung rap on SoundCloud. It makes sense that Jisung would change. He’s a multifaceted person, and Jisung has said before that he’s okay with being seen as cute, but he’s tired of being seen as cute all the time.
Minho doesn’t get why Jisung would be so bothered, but Minho doesn’t have a cute bone in his body and therefore can’t relate. Minho doesn’t think cuteness and innocence are bad traits at all, though. He could use some more of both.
“It’s just that it’s hard to get people to look at me,” Jisung has tried to describe. “People don’t look at me when I’m me.”
“I’m looking at you just fine.”
Jisung just blushed and turned away, clearly not agreeing but done with the conversation just the same. Minho thinks he understands. Jisung isn’t his type, if Minho even has a type anymore. And Minho likes Jisung just the way he is, likes all the parts of the personality Jisung has presented to Minho thus far.
However, he can’t deny that he’s curious to see what Jisung is like onstage.
---
Woojin and Jeongin make it in as well, and both try to him sell him tickets. Minho already has one courtesy of Jisung, and as much as he talks about forgetting big events like this, he really won’t.
It’s t-minus three weeks until the showcase, and Minho has the ticket in his wallet and the notification set on Google Calendar, when Jisung knocks on the door of Minho and Changbin’s dorm.
Changbin opens the door. “Hey.”
Jisung’s holding a pillow shaped like a cake, annoyed. “You know, when people text, you’re supposed to text back,” he says. Changbin shrugs, as if to say, sorry . “I was just here to ask where the place in the library you usually pull all-nighters is.”
“Oh, wow, what paper did you procrastinate on to have to pull an all-nighter?”
Jisung glares. “I’m going to the library to sleep . I’ve been sexiled. Or, well, I’m sexiling myself. Jeno’s too nice to ask.”
“Nice wingman skills,” Minho says. “My roommate would never do that for me.”
“Fuck you,” Changbin says, then turns back to Jisung. “Can’t you, like, un-sexile yourself?”
“You can’t un-sexile yourself,” Jisung says, rubbing his temples. “Anyway, thanks for your nonexistent help. I guess I’ll find a spot in the library on my own.” He turns around, hugging his cake pillow to his chest.
“You can just stay here,” Minho suggests.
Jisung’s eyes widen, and he hesitates, unsure. It’s a strange reaction to a strange truth— Minho and Jisung, despite having spent many hours in each other’s company at this point, have never spent a night together.
Changbin makes a face of disgust. “Do I have to sexile myself?”
“Oh my god,” Jisung says, slamming his face into the pillow. “ No . You know what, I’m just gonna go now, okay?”
“We’re not going to have sex,” Minho says, immune to embarrassment. “Jisung, if you really want to spend the night in the library, you can, but since you’re already here, I’m giving you the option to stay.”
It isn’t a big deal. He doesn’t understand the sense of vertigo that overtakes his whole body.
“I guess I’ll stay,” Jisung says, after awhile. “I mean— are you two okay with it?”
“I’ve just got some worksheets I need to finish up, I’m going to go to sleep soon, too,” Changbin says. “As long as you guys don’t do anything, I’m okay with it.”
“You have such little faith in us,” Minho says. Well, he personally has no issue with making out in front of his roommate, but he knows Jisung wouldn’t do that. “And yeah, I’m okay with it. Your pillow’s cute, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Jisung says, and closes the door behind him. “So, uh— do I sleep? In your bed?”
Changbin makes an obnoxious show of gagging and putting his headphones on at these words. Minho flips him off, then scoots over so that he’s lying close to the wall, patting at the space next to him.
Jisung eyes him in hesitation, then climbs onto the bed, mattress dipping under his weight. The bed is tiny, so there isn’t much room for both of them, but it’s a cold night and the extra body heat is welcome. Minho shuts his eyes and turns around. After awhile, he feels Jisung’s forced stillness relax into something more natural, and then Minho falls asleep and feels nothing at all.
---
Minho wakes up early by habit.
Early morning sunlight spills through the windows, turning everything gold. Minho can’t move his limbs, because Jisung has his face tucked into Minho’s neck, an arm slung around his waist, legs tangled together.
For a second, Minho thinks that Jisung is a one night stand.
But no, it’s the complete opposite. Both of them are fully clothed, and Minho feels warm rather than sore. There’s a moment when he’s wholly at peace until he’s overtaken by a flood of anxiety that drowns out all logic, all reasonable thought, leaving him with only a mind set in overdrive. Minho extricates himself out of Jisung’s grasp, trying to contain his panic.
Jisung’s eyes are buttoned shut, expression relaxed. He makes a small sound when Minho pulls away but doesn’t wake up. Minho stares, wide-eyed, heart racing. Jisung isn’t a one night stand, he won’t leave in the morning never to be contacted again, but Minho can’t even stand thinking about that scenario.
He wants Jisung to stay forever.
But Minho doesn’t believe in forever. He makes fun of love songs and is allergic to discussions of relationships and can’t understand why his little brother is willing to wait for something that could turn out to be nothing.
Everything with Jisung has been so natural. So natural that Minho hasn’t felt anything. Jisung took his hand and led him into the elevator, and Minho was too enamored from the start to feel the floor dropping out from underneath his feet. He looks out onto the observation deck now, to see the ground a mile away, and he’s so scared.
He’s been afraid of falling his entire life, and now, the glass is shattering underneath him, gravity poised to bring him to earth.
---
The discovery that Jisung owns his heart prevents Minho from contacting the other for the next two days, but Minho, while one to like space, has never been one to run away. When Monday rolls around, he gets up and goes to the Main Hall, steeling himself for confrontation.
Jisung is already there. He doesn’t ask why Minho hasn’t been responding to his texts.
“Hey, how was your weekend?” Jisung says instead, taking his plastic container out of his backpack.
Minho blurts out, “Let’s just be friends.”
Something snaps in Minho, brittle. He regrets the words almost as soon as they’re out of his mouth.
It takes Jisung a moment or two to register what Minho said, and then he puts the container away. “That isn’t funny.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Jisung stands up, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “Let’s go talk outside,” he says, and Minho follows him until Jisung sits on one of the benches next to the tapioca statue. At this time, nobody’s here.
“Okay, what the fuck?” Jisung asks. “What brought this on?”
Minho forces himself to shrug. “I just figured we shouldn’t date.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Finally, Jisung’s voice loses its tone of disbelief, seeming to accept that this is reality.
“No. We’re just better off friends.”
Jisung doesn’t say anything for a long time. Minho can’t tell what’s going on in Jisung’s mind, doesn’t even know what’s going on in his own mind. His words are garbage. Are they even capable of being friends?
“How are we better off friends? We were never friends,” Jisung says, anger coloring his words. “We started going out right away, after that stunt I pulled in the coffee shop—”
“All you said was that you wanted to date someone,” Minho says. “It didn’t have to be me, I just agreed to the experiment.”
“An experiment.”
“Yes.”
“I’m a fucking experiment,” Jisung says. “Our relationship was a physics lab?”
Not a physics lab, maybe a psych one , Minho thinks. Jisung said that he wanted to date someone, and Minho happened to volunteer. It could have been anyone. Minho was just there. He isn’t that good of a person. He can’t be that good of a boyfriend.
One day, Jisung will find somebody to actually match his personality and talent, and all Minho can do is hold him back.
“I can’t believe you,” Jisung says, when Minho doesn’t respond. Jisung laughs, dry and humorless. “But you aren’t kidding.”
Minho shrugs. “I thought we already established that.”
Jisung shakes his head. “I should’ve listened to Changbin,” he says, tilting his head back. There’s a moment of unbelievable tension before Jisung snaps. “Look, I must be crazy. If you said it was an experiment a week after we went out, I’d be fine with it. I’d be sad, but I’d be fine with it. I didn’t know you were this much of a sadist.”
Minho isn’t scared of anger, but the sheer acidity of Jisung’s words scrape like a knife at his chest.
“I’ll let you lead me on up to here, but fuck no, we’re not going to be friends,” Jisung spits. “We weren’t friends before and everything was just fine, and we’re definitely not going to be friends now.”
Minho tilts his head. “Alright.”
It’s probably better this way, anyway. A clean cut.
“I’m gonna go to class now,” Jisung mutters. He walks off, but not before sending Minho another scathing glance. Jisung’s eyes are glossy, and it should dull the effect of the glare, but all it does is make Minho’s chest hurt more. Minho fidgets with his backpack to have something to do with his hands.
This is for the best. He’s back to the first floor, both feet on the ground. But there’s no sense of safety. Instead, he feels untethered and lost, a balloon without a string.
---
Minho must be stuck in a sitcom or something because not even five hours after he loses a boyfriend, Jeongin gains one. felix asked me out , Minho reads from his phone. i said yes
Minho’s stomach feels stretched out, like saltwater taffy. Jeongin’s text doesn’t sound that excited, no exclamation marks or firework emojis, but Minho knows better. Jeongin is just hesitant to talk to him about Felix because they never talk about Felix. Minho isn’t about to kill Jeongin’s vibe with a sarcastic retort, though.
good for you, he types, and realizes that it sounds like a sarcastic retort. Oh, well. He chucks his phone to the side and stares up at the ceiling. He is happy about this new development, he realizes, but the happiness is flavored bitter.
His mind is so confused from the influx of emotion that Minho swears off feelings for the rest of his life.
Changbin walks in, and considering that he doesn’t spare Minho much of a glance, Minho figures that shit hasn’t hit the fan yet. Or maybe Changbin has heard and he just doesn’t care. Minho hopes that he’s that lucky.
But Minho knows he isn’t lucky at all, judging by the root of regret that’s rapidly growing in his chest. He doesn’t go to the Main Hall the next morning, unable to peel himself off his bed for the first time in months. In class, he’s distracted, notes a mess. He can’t bring himself to care.
The reality of what he did is sinking in.
“Hey, you okay?” Woojin asks. “You’re like, more dead than usual.”
Minho rolls his eyes. “Thanks. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure, did anything happen—”
“Mind your own business,” Minho says, tone sharp, and by the hurt expression on Woojin’s face Minho registers that he’s being more of an asshole than usual, but instead of apologizing he just heads off to his next class. It’s like there’s an anvil weighing him down, he’s surrounded by people but he feels so goddamn lonely.
By the time he gets to dance practice, he’s torn between skipping and punching someone, but he tells himself to get over whatever the fuck he’s feeling right now. He’s been single for the majority of his life and been just fine with it. Cutting things off with Jisung is just like going from a hot tub to a cold pool. It’s a shock at first, but he’ll get used to it.
Fine. He might be just a little heartbroken.
---
In dance class he finds out that heartbreak isn’t the creative inspiration that some people insist it to be. It dulls his movements, fills his bones with lead, slashes his concentration. Minho trips, bruising his legs. His mouth feels like acid. The pain in his kneecaps is almost a welcome distraction.
“You good? You seemed kind of out of it today,” Hyunjin remarks.
Minho bites back a sharp response. “Yeah, I just need to practice more,” he mumbles. “By the way, I promise I’ll have the choreography for that audition by next week.”
Hyunjin waves a dismissive hand. “I know. You’re going to do fine with that,” he says. He shifts his weight, and Minho gets the feeling that he isn’t going to like what will next come out of Hyunjin’s mouth. “And… Seungmin says he wants to kill you.”
Minho laughs. It’s harsh and it hurts his throat. “Understandable. He listens to you, right? Can you tell him not to get blood on the bed when he does that? Changbin’s kind of sensitive about that kind of thing.”
“Minho—”
“Seungmin’s majoring in pre-law, too, right? Damn, he’ll probably be able to argue himself out of jail time even if he does get caught,” Minho continues. “Some people just have it all.”
“Can we not talk about the logistics of your murder?” Hyunjin scowls. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Too bad.” Minho clenches his teeth, pulling the straps of his duffel bag so tight he loses circulation. “Do you want to kill me, too?”
“No. I’m your friend,” Hyunjin says simply. It sounds a whole lot like taking sides, and Minho is grateful for Hyunjin’s words but mostly he’s just so tired. He wishes he could rewind time back to the coffee shop and slap his past self in the face, or at least yell at himself for playing with fire.
“Where’s Felix?” Minho asks. Felix usually waits up for them so that they can walk out altogether.
“Uh,” Hyunjin says, eyes shifty, and Minho just knows. He grabs his bag and runs outside, taking a turn to the hallway with the vending machine. Felix and Jeongin are standing in front of it, holding hands and talking. Even from this distance, Minho can see the blush on Felix’s face, the starry look in Jeongin’s eyes.
Felix raises a hand to check his pulse and Minho walks away.
Hyunjin is still standing in the dance room. “You forgot your deodorant,” he says, throwing it over.
Minho nods in thanks and sticks it in his bag. “I can never buy anything from the vending machine again,” he says. “I mean it’s okay because I never had money anyway.”
Hyunjin’s eyes widen. “They were kissing?!”
“No, they were holding hands.” Kissing would be infinitely worse, though. Minho makes a mental note to himself to always knock on Jeongin’s door from now on to preserve his own sanity.
Hyunjin smiles. “Cute.”
“Not cute,” Minho says, then checks his watch. “Shit, I got a paper due tomorrow, I’ll see you.”
He practically sprints out of the building. His eyes burn, and he doesn’t understand why. On the way back, Minho stops at the convenience store to buy ramen, then heads back to the dorm. He sees a boy with brown hair on the way back and for a split second thinks it’s Jisung.
Minho messes with the ramen package and flashes back to the scene in the hall. He wonders if he’s happy for the and finds he is. Romance novelists and scriptwriters might exaggerate, but they’re not as wrong as Minho thought. It’s the sentiment that’s important. The part about liking and being liked back.
And Minho can’t do that. He isn’t cut out for relationships. Whoever built him didn’t leave room for another person at his side. And that’s fine , he thinks, as he gets back to the dorm.
When he opens the door, it’s to see Changbin with every inch of his body puffed up in anger. It isn’t a lot of inches, but it’s intimidating nonetheless.
“What the fuck?” Changbin screams, and Minho is taken back to a few months ago, right when the coffee shop incident went down.
“I’m sorry, the store was out of the spicy chicken ramen so I had to go with the beef instead,” Minho says, holding the package up. “Don’t look so mad about it, I tried my best.”
“You know what I mean,” Changbin snaps. “Jisung’s sad. Whatever you did, fix it.”
“I’m not responsible for Jisung’s feelings,” Minho says, clicking into the zone where he’s cold and emotionless and untouchable. “Whatever I did, he’ll get over it.”
“Are you serious ? You hurt my friend! You’ve been dating him for months and then suddenly you just cut things off, what is wrong with you?”
“So you want to force me to date him again?” Minho asks, even though Changbin didn’t mean it like that. They both know it.
Changbin is so mad that Minho wonders if Changbin will punch him. Minho wouldn’t mind it. “I want you to fix this.”
“Weren’t you the one who was so against us dating, anyway?”
“I said that months ago,” Changbin says. “And then I took it back, because you guys were good together. What happened?”
“I found I couldn’t do this whole dating thing,” Minho says. If one asked him to explain the logic behind his words, he wouldn’t be able to. There’s only this big tangled knot in his head. “I told him we could be friends.”
“You put a bullet wound in his pride, that’s what you did.”
“Pride heals.” Minho sets the ramen down. “Look, I’m sorry he’s sad, but I can’t fix it. Okay?”
Changbin stares at him with a mixture of disbelief and loathing. “Why are you such a goddamn asshole ?” There’s a moment where Changbin’s hand raises, ready to strike, but then he stuffs his laptop in his backpack, and walks out the door.
Minho takes his own laptop out of his backpack, sitting down on the bed. He does have a paper due the next day, but he finds himself switching aimlessly between tabs. By the time he looks up again, two hours have passed and he’s gotten two paragraphs written. He puts music on and tries to focus, but it’s a love song.
Fuck this shit.
Changbin doesn’t come back for the night, and Minho wonders if he’s pulling an all-nighter at the library. Minho wonders if Changbin will just avoid him for the rest of time. Minho pulls twenty dumplings from his frozen dumpling stash and heats them up for dinner.
The dumplings taste good, make him feel slightly better. He falls asleep with a half-finished paper, still wearing his clothes from yesterday.
---
Minho might as well live in a single room after that, because Changbin becomes a ghost, and the one time Changbin is in the room at the same time as Minho, Changbin pretends that Minho doesn’t exist, and the temperature in the room plunges a whole two degrees with how cold Changbin’s expression is.
It’s okay. Minho’s life is the same as it is six months ago, studying and dancing and working and procrastinating, except for some reason now it feels empty, and Minho constantly feels sick. His stomach hurts and the hours feel too long. He wakes up at night with his whole body tense. He would blame it on malfunctioning meds, but he knows that isn’t the case.
On Friday, Minho dresses to go to a club for the first time in months.
His jeans feel scratchy and the silver necklace he’s wearing seems to choke him. When he walks in, he’s overwhelmed with a sudden wave of exhaustion. It’s too dark, and he’s here to dance and get laid but he doesn’t want to. His whole body feels heavy. Half an hour later, he finds himself with a drink in his hand. Shit, alcohol smells terrible.
He stares at the cup and wonders if he should drink it. It isn’t a good decision with his meds but he can’t bring himself to care right now. “Should I drink this?” he asks the girl next to him.
She pats his hand. “No,” she says, and Minho has never been one to question the wisdom of drunk girls so he slides the drink away and stands up, walking out the door.
He checks his watch. It’s barely ten at night, and he doesn’t want to go back to his dorm, so he finds himself walking down the street toward Woojin’s complex.
He knocks on the door. By some miracle Woojin opens it. “Is Jungwoo in?” Minho asks.
“No.” Woojin eyes his attire. “Did you get lost on your way to the club?”
“Very funny. It’s just the DJ was terrible so I left,” Minho says, and his voice cracks because that’s something Jisung would say. “I’m bored, do you wanna watch anime? Or kick my ass at Mario Kart?”
Woojin looks at him. “Do you wanna change?”
Minho thinks for a second that Woojin is referring to his personality, but then Minho realizes that Woojin is talking about his clothes. Right. Minho’s jeans are cutting off his circulation. “Yeah, but I left my bundles back in my room so I’m stuck in this.”
Woojin lends him sweatpants and a t-shirt. Minho changes into them, sticking his jewelry into the pockets, and settles next to Woojin on the couch. Woojin has his laptop balanced on his thighs, window open to a simple two-player game that they found back in third grade and have occasionally played since. Minho poises his fingers on the ASDW keys and accidentally kills his avatar moving her to the right.
“Why am I not dying in real life,” Minho mutters.
“Not funny.” Woojin glares at him. Minho looks away and Woojin’s gaze softens. “Do you want me to make tea?”
“Not liking coffee doesn’t equal liking tea.”
Woojin shrugs. “Fine, then I guess I’ll ask you about Jisung dry.”
“Suddenly I like tea. Preferably with copious amounts of alcohol in it,” Minho says. Woojin looks at him, unimpressed. “Who told you about that, anyway?”
“Well, it wasn’t you ,” Woojin says. “So I had to hear it from everybody else. But I want to hear your side of it now.”
“There are more important things to talk about. Like, for example, what did you and Jungwoo end up doing with the forty-eight pack of Pepsi that Jungwoo got for modeling in that commercial?”
“He used it in a science experiment.”
Woojin then says nothing else. He’s the kind of person who is okay with silence while Minho is not, which makes it easy for Woojin to stage an interrogation. Minho tries to keep his mouth shut, crashing his avatar onscreen multiple times. The bottom of the laptop heats on their thighs.
“I’m doing fine,” Minho finally says, when he can’t stand the quiet anymore. “Really.”
“Really? I don’t think you are.” Woojin leans back. “Why’d you cut things off?”
“It wasn’t working out,” Minho says. Well, it was, but Minho was eliminating the risk of things not working out in the future. Woojin isn’t convinced by logic like that, though, so Minho won’t explain it to him.
“You and Jisung were good together,” Woojin says, and Minho wishes he’d accepted the tea so he could pour it on Woojin’s head. Or the laptop. The latter would hurt more and would probably result in Minho’s murder.
“I lost interest. People do that.”
Woojin looks at him with something like pity. “Are you coming to the music showcase, at least?”
“Of course I am,” Minho says. He might not be on speaking terms with Jisung anymore, but Woojin and Jeongin will be performing and Minho will support his best friend and his brother. “Next week, Friday night. I’ll be there.”
“Good.”
Minho and Woojin watch One Piece when they get tired of finding random games around the internet, and Minho leaves after midnight only when Jungwoo returns. There’s a small puff of fur peeking out under Jungwoo’s jacket, shifting underneath the fabric, and Minho internally wishes him good luck keeping whatever it is from the RA.
Changbin is in the dorm when Minho gets back, asleep with his headphones askew. Minho looks at Changbin and frowns. It’s late at night and Minho admits to himself he must miss Jisung, if the side effects are so strong that he misses being friends with Changbin, as well.
Minho is the one who pulls the all-nighter at the library this time. Let Changbin think he had a one-night stand.
---
The auditorium is standing room only when Minho finds his seat. It seems like the entire university is there, and then some. It makes sense. The music department at their school is huge.
Minho takes his neighbor’s program when he isn’t looking and flips through it. Woojin, Seungmin, and Jeongin’s cover is in the first half of the show. After clarifying this, he sticks the program back under his neighbor’s seat and pulls a leg up to his chest, resting his chin on his knee.
Ten minutes later, the curtains go up, and the chatter in the auditorium dies down.
The showcase is made entirely by students but there’s something professional about it. The hosts have people laughing in the first two minutes, and then the actual acts start— Minho’s watching for Woojin and Jeongin, but he finds himself mesmerized by everything.
Woojin, Seungmin, and Jeongin’s act comes ninth. Minho already knows that Woojin is amazing, but he can’t help but feel a streak of pride for his best friend anyway, and he grudgingly admits that Seungmin has the voice of an angel, disregarding their lack of a relationship in real life.
When Jeongin sings, Minho gets the strange urge to cry. He isn’t sentimental, will definitely be the weird uncle at family gatherings later on, but Jeongin’s day by day improvements are so subtle that Minho is shocked by how good Jeongin sounds onstage. It’s strange to see Jeongin through the lens of an audience member— Jeongin looks so mature, and Minho feels a strange mix of sadness and pride.
Surprisingly not a bad feeling at all.
There’s an intermission after a dozen or so acts, and Minho purchases a small bag of cookies from the bake sale in the hall, eating them while he walks around. He runs into a couple of people he knows, which means he ends up sharing over half his bag of cookies.
“Everyone is so talented,” Jungeun, from his Stats class, comments through a cookie, and Minho nods in agreement. “Are you here for anyone?”
“Ah, yeah, my best friend and my brother both performed. They were the ones that did Tomorrow, Today.”
“Oh, that’s them? They were so good!” Jungeun says, and Minho accepts the compliment on their behalf even though he took no part in the actual stage. Maybe he’s an okay person sometimes, if he can be happy for other people’s accomplishments.
“Are you here for anyone?”
“Yep. My girlfriend’s act is in the second half,” Jungeun says. She gestures to the end of the hall. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom now. Nice running into you.”
Minho’s throat seizes up when he registers that Jisung’s act is in the second half also. He looks at the double doors and contemplates just going home, but then decides that it’s a cowardly move and heads back into the auditorium.
Jisung is the second half’s third act. When he walks onstage, Minho’s throat closes up. Jisung looks good, untouchable. A slow, dark instrumental starts, and Jisung starts to rap. His voice is low, and while the song isn’t as catchy as other songs he’s written, there’s a certain depth to the lyrics that drags the audience in, like the entire soul of the room has been transcribed to music.
Minho can’t breathe. The song hits doubly hard: the lyrics resonate so much, the gentle pain of growing up and molding oneself to fit a new age, and it makes Minho want to go back to a time when he was free of fear. The pain is coupled with longing because it’s Jisung and his voice is so powerful and—
Minho has made a mistake.
The realization hits him like a brick, knocks the air out of his lungs and punches him in the gut. He shouldn’t have been afraid of heights because he’s already fallen. Maybe not in love, but he’s definitely fallen and the impact has already bruised his bones and knocked him flat on his back, and he has zero idea what to do about it.
He just knows he’ll fall again and again if it means he gets to call Jisung his.
Jisung glows under the stage lights, like nothing can bring him down, and the audience roars when he’s finished. The rest of the acts pass by in a blur— Minho does recall the audience losing their shit over a girl named Soyeon, whose rap makes Minho question whether she even needs to breathe.
When the show’s over, Minho robotically walks into the hall determined to at least congratulate Jeongin and Woojin before going home. The hallway is flooded. Minho stands awkwardly to the side, waiting for Woojin and Jeongin to show up. When they finally head out from the backstage entrance, Jeongin carrying a bouquet of pink flowers, they’re swarmed by people who want to congratulate them. By sheer stroke of bad luck, it’s Seungmin that spots him first, and Seungmin’s expression, high off stage adrenaline, morphs into a scowl.
Okay. Minho deserves that.
“Minho!” Woojin yells, spotting him. “You came!”
“You sang well!” Minho yells back, pain momentarily dissipating to compliment his friend. “No surprise there!”
Jeongin sees him and waves, smiling so wide it’s contagious. “I took a video of you, I’ll send it later,” Minho yells, but he isn’t sure if his voice is heard over the noise.
The music department is heading to a bakery later— Minho pities the poor employees who are on shift tonight— and Minho sends a text to Woojin asking him to get him pie before pocketing his phone and heading outside.
It’s spring, and the night air is a strange mix of warmth and chill. People stream out of the building, chatting while standing on the sidewalk. Minho stops and stares. Jisung is standing on the curb, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, looking at some unknown point in the night.
Jisung turns around and their eyes meet. Minho’s heartbeat spikes, and a compliment is halfway out of his mouth before he manages to swallow it down. Minho breaks eye contact first, walking away with his head down and his footsteps aimless.
---
Minho winds up in the library, pulling an all-nighter. He writes part of a paper, plans a choreography that he realizes doesn’t work halfway through, and listens to 3RACHA songs while looking at pictures of space even though he knows that isn’t healthy.
Nothing about this is healthy , he thinks, wry.
Which is how, when it’s seven o’clock and he’s watching the sun bleed through the windows of the study room he’s in, he ends up video-calling his mom. “Can I see the cats?” he asks.
“Are you okay, Minho?”
“No.”
The camera shakes as his mom gets up, panning to Dori sleeping on the couch, curled up into a ball, then to Soonie as she walks past, tail high. His mom stays silent, filming the cats, for fifteen minutes, before she asks, “Do you feel better?”
“Kind of.” He can’t really feel anything. Pulling an all-nighter isn’t a good idea, considering that Minho doesn’t react well to coffee and this means his sleep schedule will be messed up for the next week. Already he’s lost feeling in his legs. “Do you remember when I told you about Jisung?”
“Yeah, of course, I look at his Instagram sometimes. The pictures he posts of you two are really cute.” Minho is torn between the urge to cry and the urge to laugh because his mom stalks his ex-boyfriend’s Instagram . “Oh, is this what this is about? Did he break up with you?”
“No.” Minho rubs his eyes. They’re burning, and the back of his hand comes away wet. “I broke up with him.”
“Why?”
He’s so tired that both logic and control has abandoned him. “I— I don’t know.” The camera turns to Doongie eying him with what can only be described as a judgmental expression.
Minho never thinks about his dad, he doesn’t, but after having gone twenty-four hours without sleep his mind goes haywire and digs out thoughts that don’t even feel like his. Like wondering if his dad’s genes are embedded somewhere in his body, the kind that might prevent him from having a functional relationship.
“I guess because I felt like I didn’t deserve him,” Minho finally says.
“You can’t think stuff like that,” she answers, blunt. “Not just because you deserve everything, but because you can’t make the decision that you don’t deserve him. Only he can.”
“I’m too tired for wordplay.”
“Did you not sleep?” she shrieks, and Minho’s guilty silence answers her. “You know what, after this conversation take a nap, you’re in no shape to do anything right now. I swear you need to be kept in a burrito and taken care of, you and Jeongin both—”
“ Mom .”
“Sorry.” She coughs. “Anyway, what I want to say is, communication is important in a relationship. Don’t assume what the other person thinks. But do what you can from your end. In your case, just reach out and apologize.”
That sounds terrible. Minho’s pride is of the worst sort— he hates apologizing, hates admitting that he made a mistake, hates reaching out for help. Even the idea of asking Jisung to take him back fills his body with a mixture of terror and dread.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work out,” she says softly. “And that’s okay. In that case you can let go. But if you don’t try and fix things, it’s on you.”
This isn’t about genes. No such genes exist. It’s just Minho at crossroads and his desire to pick the easier route.
Minho curls into a ball. “I need sleep.”
“Yeah, you do.” The video cam abruptly swings around to an empty wall. “I’m cutting off you off from your cats. Go to bed.”
Minho is too tired to argue that there are plenty of cat videos on the internet that are eager to take the video call’s place, so he just mumbles, “Alright, I’ll see you,” and then the other end of the line goes dead. Minho stands up, blood rushing to his legs. Yeah, he needs sleep, but before that he has dance practice.
Shit.
---
In the end, Minho is spared from taking initiative.
He should have seen this coming. However, he isn’t at his best, so when Woojin asks him to move some potted plants over to Chan’s room claiming that they might help him sleep, Minho doesn’t really question the logic and just grabs one of the pots, following Woojin across campus.
“What kind of plant is this, anyway?” Minho asks, when they reach Chan’s building. “Is this a flower or something?”
“It’s a bush.”
“A bush?” Minho frowns. Something isn’t right here. “What kind of bush?”
Woojin doesn’t answer. He opens the door, sets the pot down, and grabs onto Minho’s arm in one swift motion.
An ambush .
Chan is sitting on a swivel chair; next to him, on the bed, Jisung has his headphones on, typing on a laptop. He doesn’t even bother to look up when the door opens, just says, “Changbin, you’re really late this time.” Minho freezes, but he doesn’t struggle against Woojin’s iron grip, knowing it’ll be futile.
“These are plastic plants,” Minho says lifelessly, and Jisung’s head snaps up. His eyes widen in horror, and he immediately goes to stand up; before he’s able to, Chan grabs his arm and pushes him back on the bed.
“You guys need to stop working out,” Minho says. He turns to Woojin. “You can let go of me now. I’m not gonna run away.”
Woojin narrows his eyes, but releases him. Minho walks further into the room, crossing his arms. He’s pissed off, even more pissed off when Changbin appears, clearly also a part of this operation. “Don’t blame Woojin, it was my idea,” Changbin says.
“Don’t worry, I’ll blame you plenty too,” Minho says, gritting his teeth.
“What the fuck is going on?” Jisung asks, setting his headphones aside.
“You know what the fuck is going on? You’ve been sad lately and so has my roommate and I’m so done ,” Changbin snaps. “Talk. Don’t leave the room until you guys figure it out because I swear to god I will do this again if I have to.”
Minho glares at him. “Fine.”
Changbin glares back, and then Woojin and Chan leave so that it’s just Minho and Jisung in the room. Jisung twirls his headphones around his fingers. Minho looks at the shut door. It’s awkward and the tension is so thick it’s suffocating.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was going to happen,” Jisung says. He doesn’t look angry. More than anything, he sounds hurt.
“Me neither, you can leave now, if you want,” Minho says. “Setups only work in sitcoms.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Jisung says, and Minho’s eyebrow jumps in surprise. Jisung takes a deep breath, staring at the floor. “I mean, I will if Changbin was lying about you being sad. Was he lying?”
Minho could say yes . But Changbin didn’t lie, he understated— Minho been a ghost these past few weeks. His body is fine, sans the typical bruises and soreness from dancing, but for some reason, everything hurts . The breakup has been more than a sting from loneliness or a bruise to his ego— the pain goes bone-deep.
When Minho let Jisung go, it was in fear that Jisung was too good for him and would eventually realize this and cut things off. It’s still true to Minho that Jisung’s too good for him, but now Minho wants to do things differently.
Minho takes a deep breath. “He wasn’t lying.”
“He wasn’t lying about me, either.” Jisung’s mouth twitches. “You broke my goddamn heart.”
The reaction to that should not be hope, but that’s what Minho’s mind goes to.
“I was an asshole when I cut things off,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“No, well, yeah, you were an asshole but like, I’m not talking about how you— broke up with me,” Jisung says. “It wouldn’t have been better even if you were nicer. I mean, I was pissed. But—”
“I can’t believe there’s a but.”
“Woojin told me you were bad with words,” Jisung says. “And I got pretty far listening to Woojin so maybe I should take his advice because it’s not like I have anything left to lose.”
Jisung tips his head up, staring at the ceiling. Minho wants to hold his hand and folds his fingers around his shirt to make sure that won’t happen.
“When did Woojin say that?”
“I don’t know. It was some time ago. I didn’t want to mess up dating you so I kept asking him about what I should do,” Jisung says. He smiles, slight. “We had a joke that he was your instruction manual.”
Dating Minho comes with an instruction manual. Unbelievable. Well, that explains why Woojin always knew so much even though Minho never told him anything. “I came to your showcase,” Minho says. “You were really good.”
“Thank you,” Jisung says. “I really wanted you to see me.”
Despite himself, Minho smiles. “What, so I could see what I gave up?”
Jisung doesn’t smile. Actually, he frowns. “Don’t say stuff like that. Don’t say stuff like that unless you actually mean it.”
Minho is about to say yeah I do but Jisung talks right over him. “You never let me know whether you even liked me or not, you know?” he says. “I was too afraid to ask. Most of the time people date each other when they like each other but I couldn’t even use that as a benchmark because we went out without even knowing each other.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be, it was confusing,” Jisung says, and Minho laughs.
“I do like you.”
“Like… in what way?”
Minho forces himself to clarify, even though it makes him feel like he’s twelve. “As in the love song kind of way.”
“Okay, good, I like you like that too,” Jisung says, and then he punches Minho in the arm so hard it actually hurts. “So why the hell did you cut things off?”
“I was confused, too,” Minho says. A hundred pounds lift off his shoulders. “You’ve never dated anyone. I figured at some point you’d realize I wasn’t doing things right.”
“What do you even mean by ‘doing things right?’” Jisung asks, making quotation marks with his fingers.
“I don’t know,” Minho says. “I’m a shit boyfriend.”
“Well, you seemed to be doing alright to me, up until when you cut things off when it was ass o’clock in the morning and I couldn’t even think straight,” Jisung says. “Really. You made me so happy.”
Jisung says it so genuinely that it makes Minho blush. “I didn’t even do anything.”
“You always text me right when I’m sad and insist on giving me food and dragged my drunk ass home,” Jisung says, rolling his eyes. “I could list off other examples but then we’d be here all day. You just don’t see yourself clearly.”
“No—”
“Shut up.”
Minho is about to argue more but maybe Jisung is correct.
Everything has been so natural, and being with Jisung has been so easy, that it doesn’t feel like expending effort. But Minho has put in the work any relationship needs, cutting open their schedules to fit each other into the spaces, giving parts of himself for Jisung to hold and vice versa. Jisung has made even falling easy.
Fear is different from reality. Sometimes you fall and someone’s there to catch you.
Minho realizes with dread that he later he’ll have to thank and apologize to Changbin, and wonders if he can get out of that by promising to do the laundry and dishes for the rest of the year or buy silence with free dumplings. But he’ll say sorry because Minho actually really likes his roommate, and their current dysfunctional coexistence grates on Minho’s nerves more than he’d like to admit.
“I’m kind of an idiot,” Minho admits.
“You are,” Jisung agrees pliably. “Will you be my idiot again?”
Minho squints. “Are you re-asking me out?”
“At least I’m directing the question at you, unlike the first time,” Jisung says. Minho concedes this— the coffee shop scenario is easy to top, or hard to top, depending on how one looks at it. “So?”
Jisung’s eyes glint.
Minho threads their fingers together. Jisung is beautiful and good and so easy to love and yeah he’s too good for Minho but Minho is going to accept that Jisung chose him. He is going to hold on to Jisung and stay by his side until Jisung doesn’t want him to anymore.
Maybe Minho doesn’t deserve that kind of luck but since he has it, he’ll take it.
“You’re gonna be stuck with me, just a warning,” Minho says.
“I know what I’m getting into,” Jisung says, and leans in.
Kissing Jisung feels like coming home. Minho smiles wryly into the kiss when he realizes that it’s only been a few weeks but he misses this like he’s been deprived of it for months. Minho pulls away, though, when he realizes that Jisung is crying, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Minho brushes a few of the tears away with his thumb and resists the urge to say, don’t cry , because that’s unhelpful. “I’m sorry,” he says instead.
Jisung doesn’t tell him it’s okay , and maybe that’s fair. “So make it up to me,” he says instead. “And take me out on a date.”