Final

“SOONYOUNG. SOONYOUNG HE POSTED A PREVIEW OF HIS MIXTAPE.” A yell was heard coming from a room and the person in mention sighed. “HOW ABOUT YOU COME OUT OF YOUR MANCAVE AND TALK LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. AND IT’S HYUNG, YOU IDIOT. CALL ME HYUNG,” Soonyoung yelled back, refusing to move from his very comfortable spot on Seokmin on the sofa.

There was a solid thump before Mingyu emerged out of his room. He dropped into the other sofa and promptly started babbling, waving his phone around like a madman. Soonyoung sighed, long used to this behaviour. He waited until Mingyu ran out of breath before he opened his mouth, while Seokmin watched amusedly. “Now, repeat that again, but slowly this time,” Soonyoung said.

Mingyu sighed, and opened his mouth to speak, at a normal understandable pace this time. “I said, Jeon Wonwoo released a preview for his new mixtape that he’s releasing on the 23rd of January, which is two weeks away. Since you used some of his songs for your performances, I wanted to let you hear it first.” Soonyoung nodded in understanding and took the phone from Mingyu, playing the short 15-second video that Instagram offered. After repeating it twice, he returned the phone back to the younger.

“I can hear some sections that I might want, but I’ll wait for the full mixtape to come out first before I make up my mind,” Soonyoung commented, snuggling back into the open arms of Seokmin, which promptly wrapped around his middle again. “Okay,” Mingyu replied as he headed back to his room, having already liked the post and left a short comment on it, the fanatic Jeon Wonwoo fanboy that he was.

“Mingyu-ah, what time was your class again? I think you’re going to be late,” Soonyoung called after a few minutes. There was a loud ‘!’ as Mingyu rushed out of the room a few seconds later, hurriedly putting on his shoes. He yelled out a thanks as the door slammed shut behind him, and Seokmin murmured to Soonyoung, laughing softly, “A familiar routine that he refuses to change.” Soonyoung shrugged, and turned back to the movie that they were watching.

Wonwoo had just posted his preview for the mixtape that he would be releasing in a few weeks a few minutes ago, and already it had gathered more than seven hundred likes. He would never get over the fact that he actually had a fanbase, no matter how tiny, and was incredibly thankful for that fact. He liked to scroll through the people that liked his posts and see what kind of people they were. He spotted a username that he had noticed multiple times now and tapped it, and was not prepared for the photo that he was currently staring at. The username, mingyu.png, and his About Me gave Wonwoo the guy’s name, but wow, did he make Wonwoo’s heart skip a beat. He looked like a puppy and the angle and lighting of the photo made him look extremely attractive.

Wonwoo squinted his eyes at the guy’s icon and groaned inwardly as he realised that yes, this guy looked attractive in any photo he took. After debating over it for a while, Wonwoo tapped the 'Follow’ button. His About Me said that he was a 'Jeon Wonwoo enthusiast’, but hopefully he wouldn’t be one of those crazy fans. After a while, he decided to go all in and liked the selfie that got him hooked onto the guy the moment he tapped his username.

Meanwhile, Mingyu nearly shrieked as he checked his phone habitually during class and saw that a certain Instagram account with the username of 'jeonww’ had started following him. Not just that, he had also liked his selfie that he had posted a few days back when he thought the lighting made him look good. He took a screenshot of the notification that informed him that 'jeonww started following you’ and sent it to the group chat with ’!!!!!’ as a caption. It was met with much skepticism, though once Seungcheol had checked the underground rapper’s 'Following’ and confirmed that yes, Mingyu was not lying, the chat erupted with variations of 'Aww, our Mingyu’s dream came true!’ and the like.

Just as Mingyu was about to type out a reply, he got another notification that Jeon Wonwoo had sent him a private message on Instagram. The tall boy muffled a squeal at that, which got odd glances from his seat mates. He tapped the notification and the Instagram application loaded, and Mingyu read the message that the Jeon Wonwoo had sent him.

hello ?
wanna add me on fb? : ^)

Wonwoo frowned down at his screen. “Maybe that was too forward of me?” he said out loud, wondering why the other wasn’t replying. He was quickly reassured with the appearance of the three dots that signified that the other was typing out a reply.

hi omg! I’m such a big fan!
I don’t mind! only if it’s okay with you, though! my fb name is Kim Mingyu, though I can’t accept your request right now.
I won’t be replying that often, too! I’m having class right now, so sorry for that!

Wonwoo smiled down at his phone and tugged on his sweater so that the sleeves covered his palms from where they had slid up. He was relieved that Kim Mingyu, attractive as he was, wasn’t some crazy fan that sent things in capital letters.

that’s perfectly fine with me! I’ll send you a request now!
sorry if I’m distracting you from your lessons! you can message me when you’re done with class :)

Mingyu stared wide-eyed at his phone screen as more messages came up in the chat. “How in the world am I going to be able to focus on class now?” he yelled at his phone in his mind. He looked at the time and groaned. “Just twenty more minutes until class is over,” he whispered to himself as he sent a quick reply.

it’s no problem, really. I’ll message you in about twenty minutes or so! :D

Wonwoo smiled at the short reply Mingyu had given him, and went to send him a friend request on Facebook. He tapped on his profile picture, which was of him and a few other people, and spent a minute or so just staring at it and observing what he could. “Maybe,” Wonwoo thought to himself, “if he’s an interesting person, they could arrange to meet up in real life.” That decided, Wonwoo got up from the sofa and went to find some snacks as he sent off a message to Hansol and Jisoo regarding the meet-up that they had planned for the next day.

Much to their collective friends’ amusement, Mingyu and Wonwoo started messaging each other daily and got to know each other better. Wonwoo learnt that Mingyu was a year younger than him and in his first year of college, that he liked making fun of his friend Jihoon because he was a full twenty centimetres shorter, and on one occasion had chased after Mingyu with his guitar. Mingyu learnt that Wonwoo’s love for sweater paws ran even deeper than he thought, and that he came up with his mixtapes with the help of two of his friends, Hansol and Jisoo.

After talking to each other through Instagram and Facebook for a few months, Mingyu approached the topic about meeting up in real life hesitantly. To his relief, Wonwoo agreed immediately, and they agreed to meet up in a few days at one of the cafes in Mingyu’s college campus.

When the day arrived, Wonwoo waited outside the cafe, scrolling through various social media on his phone. When someone hesitantly called his name, he looked up from his phone… and looked up even more when he realised that he was staring at a nose. “Wow, you’re even taller than I expected,” Wonwoo blurted. The guy in front of him laughed. “You’re Mingyu, right?” Wonwoo asked, just to check. Mingyu nodded.

Just as Mingyu opened his mouth to speak, someone shouted his name. “Yah, Kim Mingyu!” Both of them turned in the direction of the shout, and saw two guys running towards them, one chasing the other. “You don’t get to call Mingyu for help, that’s unfair!” the blonde one in front yelled. “You stole my notes, I have every right to ask someone to help me!” the pink-haired one yelled back. Mingyu audibly sighed as Wonwoo looked on in confusion. The taller had just enough time to say, “I’m sorry, please wait for a moment.” before the blonde guy ran past them and the pink-haired one launched himself at Mingyu’s back, who promptly started running as soon as he was on his back. Wonwoo could hear a faint scream in the distance after a few minutes and saw Mingyu jogging back a while later.

“I’m sorry for that. Those two are my friends, Soonyoung and Jihoon,” Mingyu explained. “It seems like you’re extremely used to this,” Wonwoo said, laughing. Mingyu laughed as well, saying, “I sort of am. Jihoon’s the shortest one of my group of friends, and I’m the tallest, so he likes climbing onto my back and treating me like his transport because quote unquote 'I have long legs’. Also, he pulls my hair when I refuse to move and that seriously hurts, so there’s also that.” Wonwoo laughed harder at that. “Isn’t he the one you told me who chased after you with a guitar?” he asked. Mingyu nodded with such a pitiful look on his face that Wonwoo broke out laughing again.

After that eventful first meeting, the rest of the day went well. There were not many awkward pauses between them, as they had many things that they had in common and hence could talk about. When they bade each other goodbye, it was with a promise to text each other soon, having exchanged phone numbers.

As the months passed, Wonwoo and Mingyu became even closer, and when their two social circles met, it was a chaotic mess that ended with the thirteen of them falling asleep at Wonwoo’s house after emptying his fridge. It also involved five tutus, six packs of beer, three separate tussles, a near-death and a very interesting game of truth or dare, all of which was never mentioned again, apart from them hiding smiles whenever the word 'seventeen’ or strangely enough, 'tree’, was mentioned.

Soon after, Wonwoo invited Mingyu to do a mixtape with him, and Mingyu excitedly accepted, with the only condition that he remained anonymous. When the mixtape with their collaboration was released, a lot of fans asked Wonwoo on his social media who the unfamiliar voice was, and Wonwoo spent a few days convincing Mingyu to allow him to announce who he was before Mingyu finally agreed. It caused a lot of hype amongst Wonwoo’s fans, who immediately started shipping the two of them together and spamming the comments whenever they posted a photo of them hanging out.

The topic of the mutual attraction that they knew they felt and knew the other felt was never talked about directly, but they became closer naturally, and understood each other better even without speaking, until finally when Mingyu kissed Wonwoo on his cheek for the first time, they had no need for talking at all. All they needed were some reassuring shrugs and looks, and that was that. All their friends and fans thought they were dating long before they actually were, so they saw no need to tell anyone that they were officially dating.

A year after they officially started dating, Mingyu graduated from college, and they soon decided to get an apartment together, with their friends all living in the neighbourhood. It was a common sight to see thirteen guys fooling around at the basketball courts in their neighbourhood, messing with each other and just having fun.

(Half a year later a YouTube channel called SEVENTEEN that posted its own self-composed and choreographed songs appeared and steadily gained a fanbase. When questioned about their name, they just looked at one another, shrugged and said that it was an inside joke.)