Seungcheol opened the door to find Wonwoo, holding a grocery bag. “What took you so long?” Seungcheol asked frantically as he let his friend in.

Lifting up the bag, Wonwoo replied, “I went to get snacks. Seokmin said you didn’t have any food.”

Shutting the door, Seungcheol sighed and leaned against it. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

“Hey guys!” Wonwoo smiled as he placed the stuff on the counter.

“Hey!” Seungkwan and Seokmin chimed back.

“So what’s all of this about?” Wonwoo asked, looking back to Seungcheol.

“He’s having a crisis,” Seungkwan explained.

Wonwoo furrowed his eyebrows and fell into the couch next to the two of them. “About what?”

Seokmin shrugged. “We’ve been waiting for you. He hasn’t said anything yet.”

“Yes, and now that you’re all here,” Seungcheol said, rubbing his forehead and making his way over, “I can get this off my chest.”

“But, we’re not all here,” Seokmin pointed out. “Jeonghan and Jisoo aren’t here.”

Seungcheol sighed and stood in front of his friends. “It’s probably a good thing they aren’t.”

All of them glanced over at each other, confused. “Why?” Wonwoo asked.

Seungcheol began to pace back and forth, staring at the ground, battling with where to begin. His friends just waited, not sure what to anticipate. “Okay!” he finally blurted out. “Okay, okay, so…” He looked over at the three of them and felt his chest sink. “I haven’t told any of you guys this.”

On the edge of their seats, Seokmin uneasily replied, “Ooookkkkaaaayyyyy…”

Seungcheol sighed one last time before taking in a deep breath. Then, he let it all out. “I confessed to Jeonghan.”

Immediately, all of their faces changed. Wonwoo’s eyes grew to the size of his face. Seokmin’s head shot forward and his jaw fell open. Seungkwan’s shoulders fell and he dropped to his knees, smashing his hands on the coffee table in front of him. “WHAT?!!?!?!” he screamed.

Seungcheol took another deep breath and kept pacing. “I…”

“YOU WHAT?!” Seokmin interrupted.

“I…”

“WHAT THE ACTUAL MAN!?!” Wonwoo shrieked, throwing his hands by his ears.

“WHAT?!?!?!” Seungkwan yelled again, unable to contain himself.

“AND YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING?!!?” Seokmin shouted, jumping up on the couch.

“Guys…”

“I CANNOT—!”

“ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!”

“YOU FREAKIN—!”

“WHAT?!?!?!”

“GUYS!” Seungcheol finally screamed, covering his face and rushing over to the kitchen. All shocked eyes followed him. He leaned over his elbows above the kitchen counter. “I KNOW! I KNOW YOU ALL SHOULD BE FREAKING OUT!”

“YOU ING CONFESSED!?” Wonwoo shouted, unable to wrap his head around what was happening.

Seungkwan stood up and went up to him. Standing behind him, he exclaimed, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU HAVE TO CONFESS ABOUT?!”

Seungcheol groaned. He was drowning in his self-loathing body as he finally admitted to his friends what he had never told anyone except for Jeonghan himself. “I fell in love with Jeonghan.”

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?” Seokmin hollered.

“DUDE!” Wonwoo added.

“WHAT?!!?!?!”

“GUYS!” Seungcheol shouted again, flipping around and staring at them all with the most distraught look you could think of. “CAN YOU PLEASE NOT FREAK OUT TOO MUCH? THIS IS REALLY HARD ALREADY!”

It took them a second, but his friends slowly closed their mouths and loosened their shoulders, trying to grasp what Seungcheol was telling them. Seeing them a bit more relaxed, Seungcheol nodded. “Thank you. Now, you all have a right to freak out, but I really need your help on this one.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said, softly. “Sorry about that, Seungcheol. It was just kinda…”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed.

Seungkwan took a moment to make sure Seungcheol was ready before asking him anything else. He stepped beside him and leaned on the counter. “When did this happen?”

Seungcheol groaned and closed his eyes. “I confessed to him a few months ago.” He leaned his head down and chuckled pitifully into his chest. “But I was in love with him ever since we met.”

Seokmin sat back down and fell into the couch cushion, not sure how to respond. This was too foreign for all of them, but they had to be there for their friend. “Oh my god…” Wonwoo uttered.

“And you never told any of us?” Seungkwan pondered, concerned since he had never heard anything about this.

Seungcheol glumly shook his head. “No. No one knew.”

Seokmin turned to face him. “So…,” he calmly asked, “What happened?”

Blowing some air into his cheeks, Seungcheol hesitated before telling them the story. “It was a few months ago when I told him.” His friends all listened intensely as he continued. “Ever since...well, ever since I met Jeonghan, I always felt something there. I never really knew what, but it was always...something. So, Seungkwan knows this part, when we were in school, Jeonghan, Jisoo, and I all hung out a lot after school and on weekends. Jeonghan would stay at my house a lot cause we lived near each other. And I just…fell for him.” He took a second to catch himself. Everyone else kept listening sympathetically. “And it just kept getting worse. Every time I saw him, it felt like my heart was gonna fall out of my chest. Every time he smiled at me, I wanted to curl into a ball. Every freakin time we talked like we had talked for years, I would just stare at his damn lips and want to cry. And everything was even worse when we were living together. Seeing him every morning and every night. He was ALL I saw. And I was SO in love with him.”

He stopped for a moment. Seungkwan could see him slowly getting more upset, as if recounting all of these emotions was physically hurting him. He placed his hand on his back. “Seungcheol…”

But Seungcheol just turned and walked towards the door as he kept going. “I was so ing in love with him! And I never said anything! EVER!” He was frantic, gripping his hair and screaming at the sky.

Concerned, Seokmin cautiously asked, “And then you decided to confess?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I decided to confess.”

They all took a minute to just sit in silence, Seungcheol trying to work through the load he just dumped on his friends and the others trying to grasp what was hidden for so long. Finally, Wonwoo said, “Wait…” Seungcheol looked up at him with sad, angry eyes. “You said this was a few months ago.”

“Yeah,” Seungcheol nodded, knowing where this was going.

Wonwoo sat forward. “That was when…”

“...Jeonghan and Jisoo started going out,” Seokmin finished.

All of them waited for Seungcheol’s confirmation. And he nodded, sinking to the ground as he leaned against the door. “Yeah.”

“Seungcheol…” Seungkwan’s expression dropped as he looked to his friend, who was being eaten away by his own emotions.

“I confessed the same time Jisoo confessed,” Seungcheol admitted.

There was a pause before he kept going. “I confessed because…” He scoffed at himself, hurting inside from how ridiculous everything felt. Leaning his head against the door, he closed his eyes and said, “...because I wanted him to pick me over Jisoo.”

“Seungcheol…”

“But he didn’t!” Seungcheol blurted out, laughing at himself. Seungkwan glanced over at Seokmin and Wonwoo. They all wore the same concerned face. “I freakin told him everything an HOUR after he and Jisoo got together! A WHOLE ING HOUR! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL I WAS EXPECTING!” he cried out. “I told him everything! I confessed my freakin love for him and basically just threw every part of myself at him and was ing hoping that he would just drop Jisoo and jump into my arms and we would live happily ever after!” Completely pissed, he buried his face in his hands as he mumbled, “And that obviously didn’t happen.”

Silence filled the room again as they all waited. Seungcheol breathed heavily into his hands and he knew this was why he needed his friends. He needed someone to pull him through all of this because there was no way he could do it all alone again. He sighed and dropped his hands. “Go ahead,” he said. “Ask your questions.”

Seungkwan was the first one to say anything. “Why are you telling us this now?”

“Is it because of Jihoon?” Wonwoo asked.

“Why are you two living together again?” Seokmin questioned.

“Does Jisoo know about this?”

“How are you and Jeonghan still talking?”

“Does Jihoon know?”

And seeing his expression fall even more, Wonwoo asked, “Are you okay, hyung?”

Seungcheol gave a weak smile and shook his head. “I’m not okay.” He sighed before answering everything else. “So after I confessed, Jeonghan moved out, as you guys know. He went to live with Jisoo. And without him, I couldn’t afford to pay the rent so I found a really small place pretty far from campus. Well, at the time, Jeonghan was still trying to make things...normal between us. In his mind, we were still friends and my confession was just a setback.” He scoffed before going on. “So, Jisoo’s place was also far from school and he found this apartment. He couldn’t afford it alone and asked me to move in with him as long as I felt okay with everything. Obviously, I couldn’t say I wasn’t okay, so I moved in.” Drawing circles on the ground with his finger, he sighed. “I knew it was a really dumb idea, but there was a small part of me that hoped if we lived together again, he could somehow…” He shook his head and clutched his knees.

Wonwoo’s eyebrows drooped as he asked, “Is that why you didn’t look for a place with me? All those times I was searching for somewhere to stay, you kept saying you were fine where you were. You were just holding out for the chance to be with Jeonghan again?”

Seungcheol slowly nodded. “I’m a horrible person. I wasn’t thinking about Jisoo or Jeonghan during all of that. I was just thinking about myself and how much I wanted him. It was so selfish and now I don’t know what to do.”

“So Jisoo doesn’t know about this,” Seokmin commented.

“No, Jeonghan never told him.”

There was another pause before Seungkwan sighed. He sank to the floor and sat with his legs crossed, leaning over his thighs. “So where does this put Jihoon?”

At the sound of Jihoon’s name again, Seungcheol felt his chest fall in on itself. A huge pang of guilt rushed through his body. “That’s why I’m telling you all this now. I don’t know what to do.”

Seokmin asked, “Well, you’re not still in love with Jeonghan, are you?”

“No,” Seungcheol immediately responded. But then he slowly added, “No...I…” he felt his eyes start to sting. “I don’t know,” he sighed.

“What about Jihoon?” Seungkwan firmly asked.

Seungcheol groaned and banged his head against the door. “That’s the problem!” Seungcheol exclaimed, throwing his arms up. “I met Jihoon! Jihoon, this amazing, wonderful person who I just found in the ing hallway as I was moving in, thinking about how I would steal Jeonghan’s heart. Jihoon, this freakin awesome guy who makes me want to shoot myself for ever even thinking about Jeonghan. Jihoon, this ing pretty boy across the hall who has no idea that the REASON I even live across from him is because I was in love with the guy I call my roommate!” Frustrated and exhausted, Seungcheol felt tears well up in his eyes. He sighed as he tried to calm himself down. “I...really like Jihoon. I didn’t expect to be able to like anyone so much right now, but it happened. And now, I don’t know what to do.”

Silence.

“Do you want to be with him?” Wonwoo gently asked.

“I really do,” Seungcheol said, shutting his eyes again.

Silence.

“Do you want to be with Jeonghan?” Seokmin asked.

Silence.

Seungcheol shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Finally, Seungkwan softly asked, “Are you gonna tell him about Jeonghan?”

Seungcheol swallowed. His vision blurred from his tears, he looked up at the ceiling. His friend’s all watched him, now more sad than concerned. Knowing the situation made their hearts ache for him. And as Seungcheol blinked, the saltwater flowed out of his eyes and down the cheeks that Jihoon so adoringly kissed, not knowing what was wracking in Seungcheol’s brain. A quiver in his voice, Seungcheol whispered, leaning deeper against the door, “I don’t want to hurt him.”

But what Seungcheol didn’t know was that was already too late. Out in the hallway, Jihoon sat and silently cried. Sitting with his back against Seungcheol’s door, he felt his heart crack in his chest.

At the beginning of it all, he was giddy, coming out to knock on his door and invite him over to meet his annoying friends. But as Jihoon was about to knock, he heard Seungkwan’s familiar voice scream, “WHAT?!?!?!” Jihoon was so startled, he decided to listen in a bit just to see what all the commotion was about and whether it may not have been an appropriate time to interrupt. From then, he overheard everything, from Seungcheol’s undying love to his sorry confession to the reason why they even met. And as he listened, his whole body gave out. Every word that came out of Seungcheol’s mouth made him hurt, so much so that he had to sit down. But as much as it crushed him, Jihoon couldn’t pull himself away. He couldn’t believe what was happening and it was like Seungcheol became a stranger all over again. His eyes were as pink as his hair and he was no longer shaking from nervousness like he usually was when thinking about the pretty boy across the hall. He was shaking from sadness. From embarrassment. From disappointment.

And as he continued to sit there and torture himself, Jihoon heard Seungkwan on the other side say, “Jihoon’s amazing, hyung.”

And Jihoon’s heart finally broke as he heard Seungcheol softly reply, “Jeonghan’s amazing, too.”

That was all he could take. Jihoon stood up and quickly wiped the tears off his face. He immediately went back into his apartment and slammed the door behind him.

“HEY!” Junhui cheered from the couch. “WHERE’S SEUNGCHEOL!?”

The others all laughed as Jihoon stormed to the room without a word. As he was going by, Soonyoung noticed the water stains on his face. Instantly, his expression changed to the appropriate concern. He shot off the couch and jumped to block Jihoon’s path. “Hey, you okay?”

But Jihoon didn’t reply and walked right past him. He was in the doorway when Soonyoung grabbed his wrist. “Hey!” Jihoon twisted back to reveal himself. The rest of the room froze, surprised as Soonyoung slowly asked again, “You okay?”

But Jihoon just scoffed, letting a few tears escape. He raised his eyebrows at Soonyoung and flatly said, “Did you know you can hear really well through these doors?”

With that, he yanked himself free and slammed the bedroom door shut.

i feel like i owe you all an apology! thank you everyone for being so sweet with your comments and i know you all say you love this story cause its so cute and fluffy AND IM SO SORRY I DONT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED CAUSE ITS AN ANGST NOW I HOPE YOU STILL LIKE IT IM VERY SORRY