D-30

Mark craned his neck over the clamouring and chattering crowd, who were evidently excited by something pasted on the school’s main noticeboard. Girls were squealing and clutching one another, giggling louder than usual, and boys were nudging one another - painfully - in their ribs while pointing to the notice.

Mark sighed. Even the above average height of 1.74 metres plus tiptoeing could not help him catch a glimpse of the poster amongst the excited crowd. He spotted Jaemin coming his way and gestured to the noticeboard with a jerk of his head.

Chuckling, Jaemin clapped Mark on his shoulder.

“It’s about the end of year school dance. It’s in about a month, so you better have a few candidates in mind, before the good ones are taken,” Jaemin explained, wagging his eyebrows suggestively.

“Or… maybe just get down to asking someone,” he suggested, with a hint of laughter in his voice, his immaculate eyebrows threatening to disappear into his halo of brown hair.

Mark elbowed Jaemin hard in the ribs - just like the other boys had - and rolled his eyes.

“You’re full of , Jaemin, I’m not gonna ask Hyuck anything, “ he snorted derisively and attempted to pull a casual face, in spite of his hammering heart.

“Who ever mentioned anything about Donghyuck?” Jaemin burst into laugher, winking at Mark, clapped him on the shoulder again and left the hallway, leaving Mark in a trainwreck of thoughts running through his mind.

Why was his heart beating so hard? Why was it at Jaemin’s very suggestion at the word “someone”, Mark’s thoughts had gone directly towards the image of a bright and noisy boy, with reddish brown hair, sun-kissed skin, whose his eyes sparkled with mischief every time he spoke to tease somebody (usually Mark), whose unconventional beauty seemed to render Mark retort-less all the time? Mark shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and quickly made his way to English class, where he was overdue by five minutes.

Mark had a secret. Well, a secret he thinks only he is in knowledge of, although his actions had pretty much revealed it to his close friends since day one. Except him. His best friend.

Mark had a crush on his best friend of many years, Lee Donghyuck. There was no way around it, no way he can escape it, except for resigning himself to the fact that the chances of Donghyuck ever reciprocating his feelings were incredibly slim, akin to the chances of Donald Trump realizing what a bigot he is and removing himself from the presidential elections. In other words, almost impossible. Almost.

Mark himself had no idea when his feelings towards Donghyuck had changed, it just happened one day, when he started seeing his friend in a completely different light; unable to retort back when Donghyuck made a comment about how his hair looked, or thinking to himself how adorable he looked with whipped cream smeared around his heart-shaped lips during one of their routinely after-school ice cream ‘dates’ - instead of calling him a pig or taking a picture as blackmail material like Mark usually would. Mark guessed that maybe it was because they had spent almost every breathing moment together - at school, during lunch, hanging out after school together, staying up together until the wee hours of the morning during their regular sleepovers - practically growing up with each another.

“It’s natural,” declared Johnny - the self proclaimed expert on dating and relationships - “You spend almost every waking - and sleeping moments together, gradually it will turn into love. Just like in the movies. Look at Ron and Hermione.”

But this was not a movie, nor a fairytale, it was real life. The chances of Donghyuck loving Mark back the same way was almost negligible, hence forcing Mark to throw any thoughts of that out of the window, and focusing on how best to keep his feelings hidden from him.

Oh boy, did that fail miserably.

D-25

“So, who do you have in mind to ask to the dance?” Donghyuck asked brightly, bouncing a little on Mark’s bed, after uninvitingly leaping on it upon seeing Mark sprawled on the covers, staring at the ceiling.

Mark jerked his head away instinctively, sensing that Donghyuck’s knees were dangerously close to his head. The number of times Donghyuck’s parkour attempts to leap onto Mark as he lay down on his bed had resulted in a few minor injuries for the latter, most of them usually involving his head.

“Uhh… no one as for now. I kind of forgot about the whole dance thing,” Mark lied through his teeth, averting his eyes under Donghyuck’s piercing gaze. Jaehyun had always told Mark how his emotions could be read like a book and that “the eyes are a window to one’s heart”, as he so dramatically put it, thus Mark simply had to avoid that kind of situation with Donghyuck.

“Who are you going to ask though?” Mark questioned hastily, willingly averting the topic away from himself.

“I dunno… can’t think of anyone I would like to go with, but…” Donghyuck trailed off, dropping his gaze from Mark. Weird, Mark thought to himself.

“But? Ey, don’t tell me you have a secret crush that you’re hiding from me! Go on, spill,” Mark egged on, the facade of his mischievous grin hiding the whirlwind of emotions in his chest, willing Donghyuck not to tell him something he did not want to hear.

“Shut up, it’s nothing like that!” the younger scoffed, smacking Mark’s arm. Mark couldn’t help but notice the deepening colour of his already rosy cheeks, rising all the way up to his ears. Mark peered into Donghyuck’s face, who seemed to be at a loss for words for once.

“Anyway,” Donghyuck continued quickly, to cover up for the awkward silence that began to permeate the room, “I was thinking that if we both ended up partnerless - unlikely, since you and I are such hot stuff - we should go together. So that we don’t look, you know, stupid,” he finished hastily, flashing one of his bright grins at Mark’s direction.

“Ah, sure. Just hit me up whenever you realize no one wants to go with you,” Mark shrugged casually, earning another painful smack on his arm. Mark grinned at his best friend, his heart aching with emotions he would never allow the latter to catch wind of.

D-20

Wolf-whistles and catcalls could be heard from the jocks’ table in the cafeteria as Mark and Donghyuck passed by, earning a pointed glare and scowl from the latter. Mark rolled his eyes and his hand enclosed upon Donghyuck’s wrist protectively, and proceeded to pull him away from their vicinity before a familiar voice stopped them in their tracks.

“Hey, pretty, you’re looking fine today,” drawled Hyungwon as he eyed Donghyuck head to toe, with a sleazy expression on his face.

Hyungwon was one of the most popular and sought after basketball jocks, not to mention, the biggest of them all. Whatever came to Donghyuck’s mind when he decided to date that parasite for four months was incomprehensible to Mark even at that point in time - to the point that Mark had to rope in all their close friends - Johnny, Jaehyun, Jaemin and Jeno, to convince Donghyuck to finally break up with him. It was not a tough decision for Mark to make, as he watched everyday with increasing disgust how Hyungwon would treat Donghyuck like a toy, a pretty accessory made just to accompany him to his games and outings with his friends. Mark endured through the many times Donghyuck was mercilessly tossed away when his ‘job’ was done, how he was treated with such little care and respect under the hands of that bigot, til many of their nights were filled with comforting an upset and sobbing Donghyuck, convincing him that he deserved to be loved and respected by anyone in the world - and that Hyung-won was too much of a self-loving jerk to see that.

Mark had endured, and watched his best friend being mistreated that way, til the last straw came when Donghyuck burst into his room, tears spilling down his cheeks, and launching himself at a startled Mark. His body racked with uncontrollable sobs as he gripped the back of Mark’s shirt as though it was the only thing holding him together, while the elder held onto him tight, trying to coax him into telling him what was wrong. When Donghyuck finally choked out - “He tried to touch me” - Mark had snapped, his protective instincts telling him that this had to end once and for all.

“What do you want, ,” Donghyuck hissed, glowering at him. If looks could kill, Hyungwon would be seven feet in his own grave. But they didn’t, and he maintained his unaffected composure and shameless body-scanning of Donghyuck.

“Just wondering if you’d come with me to the dance. You know, I can’t be there without my precious by my side,” he declared, following a cacophony of supportive catcalls and wolf whistles by his fellow lackeys sitting by the table.

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter