“Let’s be friends.”

There was a silence for a couple moments, but it was followed by a loud obnoxious laugh, Jackson’s. Mark looks at him in shock, not expecting such a response.

    “What? Why are you laughing?” Mark asked, worried he said the wrong thing.

Jackson kept laughing, holding his stomach. It took a while for him to calm down, but eventually, he did.

    “Nothing, I just…” he pursed his lips, suppressing his giggle, “You’re not good at this, aren’t you? Because geez, that was unbelievably awkward.”

Mark put his hands to his face, covering his flushed cheeks. It was true. He didn’t have many friends and the friendships he had started off more spontaneously than how it was going with Jackson.

    “Why do you want to be friends with me?” Jackson asked softly.

The swimmer looked through the spaces in between his fingers to see the other looking at the ground, biting his lower lip. He thought of all the interactions they had together, the information he found about the other, but most importantly the odd feeling Jackson gave him.

    “Do I need a reason?” he asked as he dryly chuckled, not wanting to reveal anything.

    “I guess not,” Jackson commented, “I must be that stunning and amazing for someone like you to want to be friends with me.”

The other looked at the floor and shook his head in embarrassment as Jackson showed no shame with his words as his hands were on his hips with a big smirk on his face,

    “So yeah? Friends?” Mark offered, holding out his hand once again after recollecting himself.

Jackson held out his hand, but thought for a moment and put his hand back down, pursing his lips as he looked at the other awkwardly.

    “I have two things first. If that’s okay with you.”

    “What are they?” Mark asked, looking at him curiously, “I swear to god, if it’s something ridiculous like f--”

    “How did you find out about my other name?” questioned Jackson with a blank stare in his eyes, making the other jump just a bit.

    “I… you don’t need to worry about it. No one else has the resources that I do to find out,” the other reassured with a light smile.

Jackson pursed his lips, wanting to say something as he was still curious to how the other found out, but decided against it and let out a small sigh.

“And second? Is it perhaps you want to know my secret?” the swimmer asked on a whim as nothing else popped into his mind on what it could be, but the other shook his head.

“Teach me how to swim.”

Mark furrowed his eyebrows, confused at why the other would want to learn how to swim. He considered asking, but in the end he sighed and softly smiled at Jackson, who looked a bit tense waiting for an answer.

“Okay.”  

“Someone broke into your house again,” the officer stated.

“When? Did they steal anything?” Mark’s eyes widened as he asked, his mind scrambling about what was important in his house that could have been stolen.

“Just last night. We checked the CCTV and there doesn’t seem to be much as they tried entering your room, but once the alarm was set off, the culprit ran away. You can check and make sure nothing has been stolen and file a report if necessary.”

Mark simply nodded, understanding the situation as attempted burglaries had happened to him before. Usually, they were people who followed him around after doing his father’s business that realized he was wealthy. The culprits were usually clumsy and eventually caught. But none of them went into Mark’s room, or at least tried to. There were already enough valuables in the living room to choose from that burglars usually took what they found there.

The officer had him sign a paper before leaving. Mark waved the officer goodbye and waited for the police car to be out of sight before walking away. The boy went to look around his house, checking to see if anything seemed suspicious. However, everything seemed intact, even the money that he accidentally left on the counter from the time he ordered for pizza delivery was still there. Pursing his lips, he walked up into his room and opened his desktop to watch the CCTV where he spotted something unusual.

If Mark rewinded back to the night before the burglary, the cameras outside his house were tempered with so that he couldn’t see how the person entered the building. Mark went to the night of the burglary and saw how the culprit easily walked in and went straight to his room, trying to open it, but was locked with a fingerprint lock. After slamming on the door a few times, the alarm sounded and the suspicious figure quickly left the scene.

After watching the footage, Mark walked to the front door and looked at the knob, which looked absolutely normal. The culprit didn’t need to break it or anything, which either meant he was a good lockpicker or he had a key himself.

I gotta get better security for this place, especially for when I’m gone.

Jinyoung looked through his window from the room and watched Mark come home and his interaction with the police officer. He took a sip of his tea before leaning back in his chair. A deep sigh left his lips as he swallowed the beverage.

“That expensive car is back too.”

He grabbed his pencil and wrote a small note on his notebook before closing it. He got up out of his chair and looked out the window once more, deciding to get some sleep soon after.

“I’m so close that I can taste it.”

The following day, Jackson was told that there was no extended practice for the swim team, via a text from Mark that was as emotionless as could get. He felt jittery throughout the entire school day, but once he saw how excited Jaebum looked to start fencing, he started to worry.

    “Tomorrow is the day!” Jaebum yelled, letting out a grunt in excitement. He then looked towards their fencing coach who seemed all but amused.

    “Control yourself, captain.”

Jackson looked at everyone who all seemed about bored with conditioning every single day, but noticed how much more toned each member looked, including himself, he’d like to admit. Jaebum’s muscles were more than noticeable in his tank top that Jackson assumed he wore for the reason of showing off his developed arms. It was something he would also totally do. Flexing as he crossed his arms, doing heavy work activities to show that he can hand