“You’re like a crazy man up there.”

“You haven’t even seen crazy,” he winked.

I gave a disapproving stare and he laughed while ruffling my hair.

“Jongin flirts on and off stage,” Sehun, his bandmate, said as he walked toward us.

He sat down next to me on the bench and smirked at Jongin, “You sure Krystal’s okay with this Kai?”

Jongin rolled his eyes, “Yes, you know you shouldn’t worry about my relationship. My girlfriend understands what fan service is.”

“Is it really fan service when you flirt with your ex?” another voice said. I turned towards it to find it belonged to none other than Joonmyeon, the leader of the group. Jongin and I stiffened at the reminder of what we once were. I saw anger flash on Jongin’s face, but all he did was pick up his towel and water bottle and ran out of the practice room.

Sehun sighed, “You need to stop that dude. Just because you two don’t get along, doesn’t mean you have to keep throwing at each other.”

Joonmyeon smiled at me apologetically and I smiled back. I knew he and Jongin had history that complicated their relationship. That was between them and I tried not to get involved as much as possible. I’ll admit his comment took things a bit too far, but I’ve heard Jongin say worse…

I had known Jongin since we were in high school. It wasn’t until our second year that we became best friends. Attending a performing arts school was difficult considering everyone had pretty much the same dream: to have their talent noticed. Jongin’s specialty had always been dance while I specialized in song composition.

Our first year we had no classes together. Second year, we had only one class together. This wasn’t special or significant in any way, it was just a basic math class. What was significant was that we were assigned seats next to each other. The class was designed to be easy, because if it were any harder the school feared it would interfere with the “star making” process. It was basically a free period since our only assignments were partner projects. This allowed for Jongin and I to just talk as soon as our project was complete. We realized that we greatly enjoyed each other’s company and had been inseparable since.

Jongin debuted soon after our graduation and it was difficult to spend as much time together as we used to since I had become busy attending university as well. He brought me around whenever I was free and introduced me to different artists. He never made me feel like my friendship was worthless and I was eternally grateful for that. After my graduation from university, he helped me get a job as a songwriter under his company. So far, I had written a few songs here and there, but nothing too popular. It was a great job though, my fellow songwriters were encouraging and I got to spend more time with Jongin.