“Why isn’t Park Chanyeol picking on you anymore, Soo?”

Chanyeol glances up from his soondubu jjigae to look at the puzzled expression on Lu Han’s face. The person who’s sitting next to him has the same face as well, and Chanyeol knows that Jongdae, who’s sitting next to him, no doubt has a similar expression as well. Well, it’s nigh time they asked. Chanyeol had been waiting (impatiently) for the bomb to drop for the past five weeks, noticing the pointed exchanges of looks amongst his friends.

Yeah, Chanyeol considers Kyungsoo’s friends his friends now. Five weeks of hanging out with them have changed Chanyeol’s perception of them. Lu Han is surprisingly cool (and manly but no one tell Lu that please), despite his delicate features. He’s so brilliant at soccer, doing all those suave moves Chanyeol knows he would never be able to. Plus, he’s amazing at the Rubik’s cube, solving it in less than a minute. Chanyeol is ing impressed. Jongdae is witty, a tad too snarky for his own good (sometimes), and he reminds Chanyeol of Sehun: usually quiet and speaks only when he has something to say, yet the words spoken are never wasted words. Yixing, though. Chanyeol still very much reckons that he’s an angel from ing heaven. Seriously. Where else can you find someone who tolerates your mistakes, keeps smiling even as you mess up (when Chanyeol is trying to remember Kyungsoo’s recipes and Yixing is just standing next to him and ‘supervising’), and encourages you at the most spontaneous of times? You can’t, because there’s only one Zhang Yixing. And Yixing does those things without expecting anything in return. If he’s not an angel, Chanyeol doesn’t know anyone else who can be. (Not even Kyungsoo, even if he’s still helping Chanyeol’s bad-at-english .)

Chanyeol swallows the mouthful of soup in his mouth and lowers his hand, gently setting down the spoon back in the bowl. He props a hand on his chin, hoping that he looks casual and not affected because he’s not. He’s been waiting, and he has an answer. “Because we’ve agreed on a truce.”

“A truce?” Yixing asks, eyes suddenly looking downwards and catching Lu Han stealing a piece of his tofu from his bowl. He knocks the tofu out of Lu Han’s spoon with his own. “Since when?”

“Since the day he asked to talk to me,” Chanyeol smoothly replies. It’s not a lie per se, since they did kind of talked about it that day when Kyungsoo expressed his concern on whether he should continue Chanyeol’s routine of picking on himself. It didn’t make sense for Kyungsoo to pick on himself because it’s his body, plus Chanyeol didn’t exactly want to be on the receiving end of Kyungsoo’s revenge antics. Kyungsoo agreed, and so, they drew up a truce of some sort: no more picking-on until they’ve returned to their bodies.

“So he’s given up on bullying you?” Jongdae finally speaks up, his face still having that puzzled look. “He’s totally given up?”

Chanyeol winces, having caught Jongdae’s blatant change of diction. Bullying. He gulps, despite knowing fully well how his—Kyungsoo’s—friends feel about Kyungsoo’s bizarre predicament. Chanyeol suddenly feels smaller than he usually is (since Kyungsoo is shorter and kind of smaller than the other three boys) and he instinctively curls a little into himself. His spoon lays forgotten in his bowl, the soondubu jjigae a little cold now.

“Um…” Chanyeol trails off, because he doesn’t exactly know the answer to Jongdae’s question. Kyungsoo hasn’t brought it up at all and Chanyeol doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s thought about it, though. Pondered about it when he’s alone in Kyungsoo’s bedroom, on his bed and trying to sleep. Would he stop picking on Kyungsoo after they’ve returned to their bodies? Does he want to stop? And what ran through Kyungsoo’s mind when he was being… bullied by Chanyeol for all these years? Was he angry? Confused? Furious? Hellbent on seeking revenge? Or was he resigned as he seemed to have been when Chanyeol had looked into his eyes while they were falling off the stairs weeks ago? Chanyeol doesn’t know, but now that his interest has been piqued, he finds himself wanting to find out.

“I think he’s totally given up.”

Three heads immediately snap to Yixing. There’s a thoughtful expression on his face, similar to the ones that Chanyeol catches on his face sometimes when Yixing was staring at him only to quickly turn his head away when Chanyeol met his eyes. Those times were strange and made Chanyeol wonder if Yixing’s figured something out, if he had found out that his best friend isn’t his best friend. Yet, Yixing’s never come up to him; he just keeps not-so-subtly staring at Chanyeol with that same bout of thoughtfulness. If Chanyeol wasn’t so afraid of Yixing exposing him, he would have thought that Yixing was being adorable. But Chanyeol was, is afraid of being exposed.

“How do you know that, Xing?” Lu Han asks, his skepticality flooding his countenance.

Yixing sets his spoon down on the tray before looking back up at his friends. “I’ve been observing him. And it seems that he’s somehow changed. It’s like he’s not as ‘Chanyeol’”—Yixing quotes in the air with his fingers—“as before.” At the confused expressions on everyone else’s faces, Yixing pouts. “Don’t ask me how I know. I just know. He’s changed.”

Fear floods Chanyeol. Oh . Has Yixing found out this time? Besides observing Chanyeol—Kyungsoo—has he been watching Kyungsoo—Chanyeol—too? Chanyeol now fears for those times he’d caught Yixing looking thoughtfully at him. Was Yixing assessing him, and finally realising that Kyungsoo hadn’t seemed so… Kyungsoo? Chanyeol needs to talk to Kyungsoo asap. This is a ing emergency.

“Well, Xing always has been the more perceptive one,” Jongdae says, shoving his piece of kimchi into his mouth. “So if he thinks that Chanyeol has changed, then I guess he has. Somehow.”

Lu Han just nods and when the three boys return their attention to their respective lunch trays, Chanyeol unconsciously lets out a rather loud sigh of relief. Which immediately catches attention and Chanyeol mentally laments at his lack of thought and brain-to-body filter.

“Soo’s just so relieved about that.” Jongdae grins, an arm circling around Chanyeol’s shoulders and Jongdae pulls. Chanyeol’s cheek lands uncomfortably on Jongdae’s bony shoulder and he squeaks when he realises (too late) that he’s being pulled into a headlock. “So, so relieved that Chanyeol’s not picking on you anymore, aren’t you, Soo?” And Jongdae noogies Chanyeol’s head.

Chanyeol can’t help but squeeze his eyes shut and yelp at the pain assaulting the top of his head but as quick as Jongdae’s headlock had happened, it disappeared just as quickly. Chanyeol straightens himself to find one of Jongdae’s fingers between Yixing’s chopsticks, and judging from the way Jongdae’s face is scrunched up so tightly, his finger must be hurting real bad. Well, serves him right.

Amidst laughter from both Chanyeol and Lu Han and Jongdae’s mumbled complaints of Xing you biased piece of , Yixing suddenly pipes up, “Though, Soo, where have you been going after school? You've been so secretive lately.”

Chanyeol instantly freezes. Ah, . Just when he’d thought he'd climbed over a mountain of danger, he meets with another. And this one is yet another question that he hadn’t expected. So, armed with nothing concrete in his blank mind, Chanyeol just says the first thing that surfaces in his thoughts.

“It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Y-Yes.”

The three boys look utterly unconvinced, and Chanyeol’s stutter only makes it worse as evident in Yixing’s reply. “You’re keeping something from us, Soo…”

Chanyeol visibly bristles as he attempts at trying to mask his anxiousness with some of Kyungsoo’s renowned stoicness, hoping that it'll stop the questioning and simultaneously save Chanyeol from an early death by cardiac arrest because oh my god I cannot take this interrogation any longer. He slaps on his most unamused expression ever, furrowing Kyungsoo’s caterpillar brows. “I am not hiding anything. If you’ll excuse me.” And Chanyeol smoothly gets up from his seat, grabs his emptied lunch tray, and walks away from the table.

The loud whack of flesh on flesh isn’t enough of an incentive for Chanyeol to want to turn back to see who had hit whom, so he makes a beeline for the tray return rack before exiting the canteen. And despite feeling a pair of eyes on him throughout the short journey, Chanyeol doesn’t bother to return it.

---

“We need to come up with a reason,” says Kyungsoo in the first of many breaks (that Chanyeol always requests on behalf of his dying brain) that happens in the fourth session of their two-way tutoring. “We can’t keep avoiding their questions forever.”

Chanyeol looks up from his can of chilsung cider, lips still glued to the opening of the can. He’s never been afraid of accidentally cutting them on the metal, and it has never happened. So Chanyeol doesn’t understand why Kyungsoo snatches the beverage out of his hands and places it far out of his reach. (Which is pretty far since his Kyungsoo arms have lengthened to Chanyeol arms.)

Kyungsoo tsks and chides, “Stop drinking and help me think of a valid reason that we can tell our friends as to why we keep disappearing every Wednesday and Friday after school.” He slaps Chanyeol’s hand when he catches it wandering near the vicinity of the cider can. “I don’t think I can last another day of Sehun’s kicked kitty look. I swear that boy’s out to get me.”

“Sehun wouldn’t hurt you,” Chanyeol replies as he tries to reach for his beverage again. He fails spectacularly and watches, with a twitching eye, as Kyungsoo downs the cider and bins the can with a beautiful throw that would put Kris and his basketball skills to shame. Chanyeol promptly attributes that shot to beginner’s luck; there’s no way Kyungsoo-the-non-athlete can do that on purpose. Not when Chanyeol-the-somewhat-athlete has never had an arc so pretty.

Kyungsoo scoffs. “You probably haven’t seen him playing Super Smash Bros, thrashing everyone with his Lucas and causing Kris to weep into his pillow at the consecutive deaths of his beloved Ness.” He pauses, then continues. “I also cannot take anothe