- what is love  (an introduction) -

What was "love" anyway? People constantly threw the word around as if it was on sale and the more he thought about it and the more he tried to apply it and the more he repeated it in his mind, the less he felt as if he actually understood it.
He knew that was he felt for his family was love, so whenever he felt unsure, he tried to put every other feeling in comparison. He cared more about his siblings than about his friends, so he figured that friendship wasn't love but somewhere between it and indifference. The only issue he had with that theory was that he rather spent time with his friends than with his siblings. He loved them but didn't like to be around them for too long, whereas he liked to be around his friends but was fairly sure that he didn't love them. Love clearly was irrational like that and made him wonder if he could only ever feel it for someone who was related to him by blood. By that logic he would feel love for his children, but not for his future wife, which seemed like the wrong conclusion.
It didn't help that when he asked his father how he had known that his mother was the right one, his father smiled, "She was the most beautiful girl on campus. When I saw her I knew I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life."
It didn't sound like love to him, but like desire. His father had merely reacted to a physical appearance. So he implored further, "And what is Mom to you now?"
At that his father gave him a quizzical look and some thought before he finally said, "Well, she's the mother of my children who are the most precious thing in my life." He seemed quite satisfied with his answer, but upon realizing that his son still frowned, he added, "And she's my best friend."

Love. Desire. Friendship. Words to describe the status of a relationship.
In high school he thought that he had finally figured them out to some extent. He liked his friends, but knew that once they graduated they would probably lose contact. Friendship was strong but fleeting. That much he had painfully realized when he entered high school and lost some of his best friends from middle school. Naturally they all had different goals, and no blood-ties that held them together.
Desire meanwhile he only slowly began to understand. There were enough girls hovering around him and his friends and he was popular enough, so when he first asked one of them out, he tried to follow in his father's footsteps and chose the prettiest one. Her name was Sora and she had long black hair and long black lashes. She smelled like flowers and summer and warmth when he kissed her for the first time and he figured that if he had children with her, they would be pretty, too. He couldn't quite picture them being friends, but maybe that had to wait until after the first period of infatuation. He liked her, he really did, but...
"You have no idea how much I love you," she said one day after practice, when she slung her arms around his sweaty neck. He knew he stank, but she kissed his cheek as usual. "You were great today." Of course she had watched again. Her watching all his club activities was the reason why he had noticed her in the first place. She etched even closer to him, and whispered in his ear, "My parents aren't home tonight."
She winked at him and ran away before he had a chance to reply. Later that afternoon he texted her that he thought they should break up.
He hoped he could just end their relationship the way had started it. Without a fuss. But then she cried and word got around and she was labelled a and all his friends stood behind him because 'he was a good guy'.
He had never meant to hurt her and it was his fault that he had realized too late that she and him had clearly felt completely different for each other. To her he was a trophy she liked enough to believe that she was in love. To him she was a pretty girl. He liked the idea of being with her, but not the actual physical aspect.
He thought that he had just not found the right one yet, so he dated again. Mina, like Sora, regularly watched his club practice and was pretty and smelled nice. After a few weeks he got the feeling that she wanted to sleep with him, so he broke up with her. His friends stood behind him, although they began to see a bit of a pattern. "Nothing wrong with being a , but, you know, people talk," his best friend said one day.
So he dated again. Hari, like Mina and Sora, was pretty but that was where the similarities ended. They were classmates and she was fierce and made him feel insecure. His brother had once given him the advice that the right girl was the one that made a guy feel weak in his knees, so he thought that it was that. He could see himself being friends with Hari even after school because he actually liked to listen to what she had to say. So he thought that she was the one. He slept with her and it changed nothing. The world still looked the same. He thought that was a good sign.
But then, one night, when he sat on the edge of a hotel bed in the twilight and buttoned his shirt, she said, "Be honest, you don't actually like to have with me, do you?" It didn't sound accusing, just resigned, so he turned around to her in puzzlement. Her long hair was tousled and fell around her bare shoulders effortlessly. She was beautiful. "It doesn't excite you, does it? Looking at me. Being with me."
He frowned at her. "Is it supposed to?" he asked and immediately realized how stupid it made him sound. Of course it was. It had never even really occurred to him that he was not excited and probably should have been.
"I'm sure you know the answer to that," she said with a sad smile and looked down. She really was beautiful and he had thought that it was enough. He saw her the way he saw beautiful paintings. But if he thought about it, that probably wasn't what his father had talked about.
"I want us to at least be friends," she said after a while, as if it was already clear that they were going to break up.
He looked away from her and stood up. "I'd like that," he said and felt a bit of a lump in his throat because he couldn't shake the feeling that he had failed both her and himself.
Before he left the room, he heard her say, "I hope you find that person." He half turned, when she added, "The one that excites you. I hope you find them."
He looked away from her and at the light from the bright corridor outside the filtered through the gaps of the door. "Me, too," he said quietly and opened the door to leave her behind.
It only registered to him afterwards that she hadn't said 'her'.
She hadn't said, 'I hope you find her' but 'them', as if there was a question behind it.

When he was in his last year of high school, he had so many short-lived relationships behind him that he slowly grew sick of it. His girlfriends were always pretty and always nice, but he never really got himself to care.
"Look, you're clearly running in circles," Hari, still fierce, still his friend, would say. "You're always hitting on the same kind of girl. You always ask out those that you know won't refuse because they liked you in the first place. It's not actually that you choose them because they're your type. They chose you because you're theirs."
He heard those speeches from her over and over again and it grew him tired and more and more confused. They were all still young and the world was filled with so many people, of course he wouldn't immediately find the right one. Like his father, he was sure that he would know when he saw her, the most adequate one to be his future wife.
"You're looking for a birthing machine, not a girlfriend," Hari would say in distaste and he regretted telling her, because she didn't understand it. "It's because you were never in love that you can say those things."
He didn't want those conversations, because he didn't believe that he would ever feel what others so casually described. Not once in his life had he felt so strongly about someone that he would have identified that feeling as 'love'. Others probably couldn't really tell their feelings apart.
"You were my first love, you know," Hari would then say, and the budding tears in her eyes made him shut up. "You don't have the right to say that my feelings aren't real, just because you're too afraid to actually figure out what you really want. You meant a lot to me and that's why I couldn't just be with you as your girlfriend knowing that to you I was nothing but a cross between a friend and an accessory."

What was 'love' anyway? He didn't understand it and even if such a thing as 'romantic love' really existed, he didn't think he would ever feel it.

But then it hit him on that day when he had reached one of the lowest points in his life thus far. He had successfully disappointed everyone around him. Hari still wasn't talking to him, his friends all avoided his eyes and he knew that when he came home, his parents would pretend that everything was fine and that he hadn't ruined his future. And then there was the boy he had become friends with only a few months ago. And the boy threw his arms around him and for the first time in years he cried. He stank and was drenched in sweat and dirt, but that only occurred to him afterwards. In that moment all he felt was a lifting burden and the fabric of the boy's t-shirt his head was buried into. After a while the boy's chest began heaving violently and when he looked up, he saw tears streaming down his face.
"What's with you?" he asked in a strained voice and the boy showed him a lopsided grin.
"Can't see people I like cry," the boy answered simply and he felt as if something shattered in his chest. His heart beat the way it usually did after a long run, as if it wanted to escape and couldn't be contained any longer by his body. He was high on adrenaline and suddenly painfully aware of single details that should have been meaningless. His drenched shirt and the way he was pressed against the boy's chest. His ragged breath and the way the boy's Adam's apple moved. The smell of tobacco and something he couldn't quite identify, but decided he liked. The muscles under the fabric that his fingers were still clawed into and the soft skin under the boy's jaw. The way he looked at him, waiting, wanting, hoping maybe?
He didn't know what he was doing when he kissed his jaw, and his wet cheeks, and his dry lips. Even after months of thinking about it afterwards he still didn't know. All he knew was that in that moment he thought he had finally understood something, only to then realize in horror that he had made another big mistake.

What was 'love' anyway?

- band practice -

"Chanyeol, someone's calling you," Baekhyun shouted across the room, when Chanyeol and Jongdae attempted to set up the new drum kit they had finally managed to buy. Now all they needed was a new drummer and maybe someone who was actually good at playing the guitar. It had been months now since they could perform properly, because the last drummer who had actually owned his own kit, had graduated in spring. It was almost autumn now.
"Ignore it," Chanyeol said and looked at the mess of metal parts in front of him. Jongdae gave him a questioning glance and it was obvious that neither of them really knew what they were doing.
"It's annoying though," Baekhyun said in a resigned tone from his seat at the keyboard. Chanyeol's blazer with his phone inside lay next to him on a pile of boxes. "Maybe it's your sister," he then said and immediately sounded excited.
"Pretty sure it's not. She never calls me," Chanyeol said and looked at the manual again.
Jongdae, who had sat down on a stool and lamely started to hit one of the drums with his hand, asked, "Don't you think we should first look for a drummer and let him figure out how this works?"
With a sigh Chanyeol let himself flop to the ground. "Maybe," he said. But he wondered whether they would really be able to find new members, even with a new drum kit. The band club had steadily lost members. When they had just entered, there were over ten members and now they were down to four, with one member barely attending. They were all in their last year of high school, had three great singers, two people who could play the piano and him, who could play the guitar. He figured that he could probably be the drummer because he had played around with percussions before, but then they wouldn't have a guitarist. After being unable to attract new members at the beginning of the term Jongdae had picked up playing the bass, so that Baekhyun could get the keyboarder position, but they were still not enough members. Kyungsoo had already made it clear that he didn't mind singing, but with all the time he needed to spend in preparation for university entrance exams, he couldn't learn anything new. Maybe they should have just become an acapella group instead after all. If he put some effort into it, his singing probably would have been good enough to do some of the background noises for that. His Three Ballad Kings probably wouldn't have been opposed to the idea either, but just the thought of them all trying to outdo each other while he just sang lines full of 'bom bom bom's and 'dum dum dum's made him sick to his stomach.
He let out a frustrated sound and buried his head in his hand, when Baekhyun said, "What the hell kind of weird nicknames do you give people?"
Chanyeol looked up in confusion, when Baekhyun pulled a face at a phone in his hands. "Who's 'Kimchi ist'?" He held the buzzing phone out in front of him so that the other two could look, and Chanyeol felt his blood rushing to his ears. The phone was his. He tried to jump up but realized too late that his left foot had fallen asleep and stumbled. His luck was that Baekhyun was too confused at his sudden overreaction that Chanyeol could snatch his phone before he even had the chance to do anything stupid. Chanyeol quickly rejected the call and shoved the phone in his back pocket, only to be met with seconds of awkward silence before Jongdae said, "Now that is what I call suspicious behaviour. You're not cheating on Boyoung with the lunch lady, are you?"
He managed to laugh, and said, "She's not my style." But his hands shook more than they should have and he hoped that the others didn't notice.
"Yeah, come on, Chanyeol hates to address people formally," Baekhyun said and turned back to the keyboard. "I bet that was Boyoung. She loves Kimchi and I bet she calls all the time." He pulled a face, hit random keys and continued in a high-pitched voice, "Honey, have you eaten? Honey, you look so think. Honey, you're so much better than your friends."
Chanyeol had to bite back a laugh at that because they all knew that they all had pinned for Boyoung at first. She was in the grade below theirs and had been a fan of the band ever since she had entered the school. She had originally had her eyes on Lay but when he had graduated, she had eventually settled on Chanyeol instead. He figured that it was because she had a thing for guitarists.
His phone buzzed again in his back pocket, and he felt his stomach drop. This really wasn't the moment, not when he had to think about Boyoung and Baekhyun and every lie he had told them so far.
Because the truth was that he was cheating on her with 'Kimchi ist', who wasn't only older than him but also very, very different from her.
"You're not going to pick up?" Baekhyun asked and nodded into the direction of the still buzzing phone.

- baseball fans -

The only reason why Kyungsoo had joined the rock band club at all was the fact that Chanyeol could be extremely persuasive the moment he cared about something. He and Kyungsoo were in the same class in their first year, so when everyone was still in the middle of figuring out which cliques they wanted to belong to, Kyungsoo ended up in a karaoke box with Chanyeol and a bunch of other people from their grade. Up until then he had not really liked public singing, but when he realized that everyone was awful, he mustered up the courage and sang an easy ballad. It wasn’t even spectacular, but apparently good enough to get Chanyeol on his trail. No matter what he told him, no argument was good enough. He had already joined the poetry club. He couldn’t play any instruments. Singing in public terrified him. He didn’t like rock music. He did in fact not like any loud music. Chanyeol simply explained that he believed Kyungsoo would fight right in. And somehow that had made him join.

Even after two years he still wondered how he belonged though because he was still the only one who couldn't play any instruments and because the music they played still hadn’t fully grown on him. But after two years he also had many fun memories of music festivals and fans and scandals and members who came and left and of hours hanging around the club room that always smelled a little musty but yet alive. Although it was their third year in high school and although he knew that he didn't really have the time for club activities any longer, he couldn't bring himself to abandon the band, especially now that no one new had joined this school year. He figured that with the exception of Chanyeol it was the same for all of them. They knew that their time was running out, but Chanyeol had enough enthusiasm for them all.

When Kyungsoo entered the club room that afternoon right after his last lesson, it also was Chanyeol who was already there. He was always there first and Kyungsoo kept wondering whether he skipped the last minutes of each class or whether he actually ran all the way from his classroom. He had never seen him out of breath in the club room, although he definitely tended to be out of breath easily, but that probably depended on how long he had been there. Normally, when Kyungsoo entered, Chanyeol was already playing his guitar in thought.
This time Chanyeol however sat on the low shelf in front of the open window and stared outside. Voices were carried to them from the baseball grounds. He had never realized how shouty a sport it was until he joined the band club with its windows facing the training field. He always thought it was a bizarre contrast. On the one hand there was a huge club that the school actually put money into, and then there was a small club that was shoved into the oldest part of school because there was no money to make the walls soundproof and there they at least didn't bother anyone. Except for the baseball club. There constantly were complaints and two years ago the baseball club’s coach had actually made an official complaint to the principal. Back then the situation had almost deteriorated badly when the baseball club’s coach and Lay, the person who cared the most, had been at each other’s throats with Mr Lee, the reluctant rock band club advisor stuck in the middle. Thinking about it now the situation had been nothing but ridiculous.
"When is baseball season over anyway?" Kyungsoo asked when Chanyeol didn't seem to notice him and startled him enough to almost fall off the shelf.
", you scared me," Chanyeol muttered and touched his chest as if he feared a heart attack. He shook his head as if to clear it, and finally wrinkled his nose when he said gravely, "Technically it's never over. Baseball is always in the hearts of its players. It's not merely a sport, but a philosophy."
Kyungsoo laughed and probably would have left it at that, had he not still had the picture of Coach Kim and Lay shouting at each other fresh in his memory. Back then Lay, whom they had never seen so furious again, had almost banned Chanyeol from the band. "When did you stop being a fan anyway?" he asked with a grin, and Chanyeol gave him a quizzical look.
"Me? A fan?" He said it in mock indignation but Kyungsoo had the suspicion that he knew exactly what he meant.
"I mean, two years ago you constantly watched the team," Kyungsoo slowly said and it was almost as if the temperature around them had dropped. They topic had never really come up again, but back then Chanyeol had actually occasionally skipped practice to watch practice games of the baseball team.
"Did I?" Chanyeol asked with a waning smile. "I can't really remember. I mean, it's a fact that the baseball club has more girl fans than we do. They're all gyaaaaaah and ohhhhhh," he continued and turned away to free his guitar from its case. "Remember Shin Eunhye? She was a hardcore fan of that pitcher, what was his name again? Yang Taekgi? But then when they lost that one game, the game when..." He trailed off, and seemed lost in thought for a second, before he concluded, "Anyway, I think I met her during that game."
It was obvious that there must have happened something Kyungsoo didn't know about. “Right,” he just said. Two years ago a lot of strange things had happened. He figured that Chanyeol wouldn't pursue the topic and that they weren't close enough for Kyungsoo to pry, so he instead said, "You know, I think I might have found a new member for the band."

- lunch break -

It took Luhan all his energy to not laugh at Kris when they sat in the cafeteria and when he alternated between checking his phone and eating a spoonful of curry while tapping the table with his left index finger. If he drew his eyebrows any lower, they would eventually cover his eyes.
"Relationship trouble?" Luhan asked and felt proud of himself when he managed to keep his voice relatively even. Before Kris could glare at him, he looked down at his bibimbab as if there was anything interesting to see.
"I hope not," Kris said and Luhan had to admit that he sometimes admired him for being so frank. He himself probably would have pretended that there was nothing wrong. Issues were something he only talked about once they were long forgotten and worth being told as a funny story. 'Oh, you know, when I told my mother about my first boyfriend, she threatened to kill me with the kitchen knife she had just used to cut carrots. Talk about irony.' Back then it hadn't been funny, but now, over five years later, it made him laugh.
"Have you done anything worth being ignored for?" he asked when Kris just continued to scowl at his lunch. "I'm sure we can all agree that you're not always the easiest person to be around."
Kris gave him another mean glare at that, but he managed to withstand. Then, after a few seconds of digging through his curry and of frowning at his phone again, Kris finally said, "I haven't. Or at least I think I haven't." He leaned his face into his hand and touched his temple, again looking at the phone. "I mean, we talked."
"Aha!" Luhan said triumphantly. "That's where you went wrong. I told you not to talk too much. It makes you look stupid." When Kris rubbed his eyes as if the joke caused him physical pain, Luhan couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out into laughter. He still had his head thrown back and held his side like an idiot, when he saw Kim Minseok walk by and tried hard to force himself into looking normal again. He gave him a wave and a friendly smile, but the damage was done. Minseok lifted the corners of his mouth a little, but never even slowed down on his way to a different table. He obviously wouldn't want the track team to see him hang out with the gay foreigners.
"Relationship trouble?" Kris asked mockingly, and Luhan sighed heavily.
"No, unfortunately," he said and unscrewed his water bottle to take a sip. "I don't think he's into it."
"I didn't know you were into runners," Kris said and sounded suspiciously unconcerned as he looked in the general direction of where the track team always hung out. They always were easy to spot because they tended to move like a herd and consisted of people who all constantly looked oddly healthy and energetic. Like outdoor equipment catalogue models.
"I'm not," he said with another sigh. "And I don't think he's a runner at heart. I heard he used to be a baseball prodigy. Nearly got a scholarship and everything."
Kris noisily moved his spoon over his plate to scrape up more curry and had another bite, when he asked, "What happened?" His tone made it clear that he only asked because he knew that Luhan expected the question and not because the topic interested him in any way.
"I don't know," Luhan said. "But that's what intrigues me." He liked the mystery, especially a mystery that was as little apparent as Kim Minseok's supposed lost baseball career. He didn't really look like a player. He wasn't tall or bulky or overly tanned and at first Luhan had actually only noticed him because he looked a little intimidated at the world around him. They shared a course in psychology and something about Minseok had felt a little out of place. Almost a little like a kid that was forced to pretend to be an adult. As if his shoes were too big for him. And then Luhan had seen him running like a crazy person one day, as if that was the only thing that held him together, and it had got him hooked.
But to Kris that would have been hard to explain. Even to himself it barely made sense on a rational level.
"So, your boyfriend is in high school, right?" he finally said, and nodded at Kris' phone. "And you talked and now you can't reach him?"
Kris frowned as if he wanted to complain that they were getting back to that topic again. But Luhan knew him well enough to understand that even the mighty, the glorious, the untouchable Kris Wu sometimes needed to get his feelings off his chest.
"We talked," Kris resumed.
"I hope that wasn't the first time you did that," Luhan asked jokingly, because the way Kris said it was just simply too good an opportunity to pass. "I didn't really picture you to be the kind of guy who s first and asks questions later. Did he even know you were Chinese? Although, yeah, your accent probably gives you away."
Kris didn't look amused. "If you don't actually to care listen," he began angrily, when Luhan held up his hands and tried to pull himself together.
"Okay, sorry, I'll stop," he said and his voice came out strangled. "I'm all ears. So you talked."
Kris eyed him suspiciously for a second, and then said, "We talked and well, he asked questions." Luhan bit his tongue at that. Another joke and Kris would probably drag him up the cafeteria building to then push him off the roof. "When did I figure out I'm gay? What was my first kiss like? That kind of stuff."
"What did you say?" Luhan asked, although he knew the answers to that. He had figured it out early, his first kiss in middle school with a girl had been wet and awkward and his first actual kiss in high school had been amazing. Luhan knew because he had been there.
"Everything there was to say," Kris simply said.  
"Did you tell him about me?" Luhan asked a tad too quickly and for a second there it was, the disappointed face he hated so much. It was the face that reminded him of how much he had broken between them before.
Kris saved them the awkwardness and didn't answer. So that was a no. Instead he said, "I don't think it was anything I said, but the things he didn't say."
Luhan looked at him for a while and for the first time it occurred to him that Kris dating a boy in high school maybe wasn't just a hoax or an experiment or a meaningless fling. The boy being in high school maybe meant nothing at all, so what remained was just that: Kris dated a boy. A boy who caused him to stare at his phone like a lovesick girl. "So, what, you think he's hiding something?"
"No," Kris immediately said, but then hesitated to continue for some reason. "I mean, I don't know. He could. I've known him for what, maybe two months?" He frowned and Luhan wondered whether it had already been that long. When had Kris told him? Probably not right away. "But that's not really my issue. Maybe he's hiding things, but so am I. It takes time to really know someone. But it's as if, I don't know, he sees me as someone who is only there to help him figure something out."
Kris stared in the far distance absent-mindedly and it made Luhan nervous. "And now you're afraid that he got everything he wanted from you and won't need you any longer," he concluded.
Instead of an answer Kris sighed and gave him the face again. The face that looked as if the world had broken his back and as if he wasn't sure he could stand any longer.

- the art that is music -

"That's the new one," Chanyeol said and looked almost annoyed as he pointed at a sullen-looking boy behind the new drums.
"Is he the new drummer?" Boyoung asked and gave the new one a smile he didn't immediately return. Still, she thought, he looked cute enough.
When Chanyeol didn't comment any further, Kyungsoo helpfully said, "He's actually in the dance club but I thought that being good at dancing probably meant that he has a good sense of rhythm, too." He gave Chanyeol a quick glance after that, as if he was scared of a blow. It was odd for Chanyeol of all people to not welcome a new member with open arms.
"So that's good, right?" she asked and gave him a quizzical look.
"Yeah," Chanyeol said shortly and sat down on a chair that made him face the wall instead of their new drummer. "It's great. Brilliant. Can't contain myself. A dancer. Awesome."
There was an awkward silence, when Baekhyun moved a little closer and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, "You know, someone from the dance club stole his first girlfriend in middle school. Since then everyone who can actually move to a rhythm is his sworn enemy. Because, you know, he can't."
She didn't mean to but a short laugh escaped her and Chanyeol turned around to glare at them both. The boy at the drums and Kyungsoo gave him incredulous looks at that. So obviously that was new to them, too.
"But that's only half the issue here," Baekhyun continued perfectly unconcerned. "When Chanyeol told us to look for new members, he said that what we first needed was another guitarist. Why not a drummer, you may ask now. And the answer is that he secretly wanted that position for himself."
They all looked at Chanyeol and he looked caught in return.
"Are you serious?" Jongdae asked from his position in the back of the room where he had played around with his bass rather than to take part in the conversation. "That's stupid. Even if we find a kid who actually knows how to play the guitar, that doesn't mean they're as good as you."
Chanyeol looked as if he was about to reply, when Baekhyun said, "You know what he's like. It's because he's good that he feels it's time to move on."
Jongdae frowned at Chanyeol, as if it was him who had talked. "Not that again," he sighed.
Boyoung gave them a confused glance, when Kyungsoo explained, "Last year Chanyeol joined the marching band for a while because he felt that he needed fresh ideas."
"Oh," she said, when Chanyeol pulled a face. "What happened to that? He's not in the club any longer, is he?" It honestly wouldn't have surprised her if he was. They dated but that didn't mean that she knew everything about him. There were enough times when he didn't return calls or acted strange, so for all she knew he had a second identity as a marching band member.
"They threw him out," Baekhyun grinned. "Zero lung capacity, close to zero discipline."
Boyoung nodded at that because it probably made sense. Chanyeol had never struck her as a wind instrument person, just like how she knew that he wasn't a born singer although he had a nice enough voice. But whenever he did sing, there were times when he ran out of breath and had to breathe in audibly, just as if he was drowning. He was definitely a little short-breathed and being a typical string instrumentalist he had never bothered with all the exercises to expand his lung capacity. She liked that about him though. There was something earnest about musicians who created music with their hands instead of their mouths. No matter how much nonsense Chanyeol actually said sometimes, to her the one she had fallen for, the one she believed to be the real him, was the boy behind the guitar. Still, she also admired him for trying to challenge his shortcomings. He loved making music, so he probably knew best what he was capable of and how to improve. "So did he give up on the brass band?" she asked excitedly and Chanyeol threw up his hands.
"I think what you're all forgetting is that I'm still in the room," he said and stood up. He directly looked at her and she felt a little intimidated. "First of all, I had to leave the club, yeah, but once I have the money, I'll invest in a brass instrument, so technically that's a no. I didn't give up."
"What did you play?" she asked genuinely interested, and he hesitated for a second, as if he thought she was mocking him. "Trumpet," he said.
"Cool," she smiled when she tried to imagine him in the colorful marching band uniform in perfect unison with everyone else. The thought was strange because he treasured his individuality over everything, but she still couldn't really think of anything music-related that didn't suit him at all. He seemed a little taken aback at her reaction however, which gave Baekhyun a chance to talk again. "I still don't get why you didn't choose something easier like a clarinet. Of course you don't have the lungs for a trumpet. You're already out of breath from running up a flight of stairs."
Chanyeol was about to give an angry reply, when Jongdae loudly said, "So can we maybe get back to the original discussion? I don't mind looking for another guitarist but only as long as we have a drummer that's not Chanyeol."
At that Kyungsoo nodded and Baekhyun agreed with something like a grunt. Chanyeol only sighed and muttered, "I never said I would not play the guitar any longer..."
They spent a few seconds in resigned silence, when the boy at the drums asked, "So, uh, does that mean I'm in?"
They all looked around at him, and Boyoung knew that she probably wasn't the only one who had half forgotten about him. No one said a word, because in the end it was Chanyeol who had the final decision. He was their leader after all and the person to whom the band probably meant the most.
"What's your name anyway?" Chanyeol asked, and the boy shrugged, "Kim Jongin."
Chanyeol didn't move for a second, before he sighed, "So now we have two people with almost identical names. Great."
Kim Jongin's expression remained blank. He was cute, but definitely expressionless. Boyoung wondered how he looked when he actually smiled.
"I'm sure you'll manage somehow," Jongdae said and went back to looking down at his bass. "I'm Bass Kim Jong, he's Drum Kim Jong. Just look at our positions."
"Yeah," Baekhyun snickered mischievously. "Or if that's too hard I'm sure you can remember that the singing Kim Jong is your friend and the dancing Kim Jong your enemy."
"Funny," Chanyeol said and almost looked as if he had to hold back a grin. He met her eyes, and she couldn't not smile. She really liked him, all of them. Just being able to spend her afternoons with them and all their bickering made her fall in love with their band more and more.

- young love -

"Where did you even meet him?" Luhan had asked that afternoon before Kris headed home to clean his apartment. "Are you lurking around high schools to catch boys when they're still fresh and don't know better?" He made a movement like a fisherman pulling a fish out of the water and although it registered to him that Luhan was joking again, Kris only frowned in return.
"I didn't know he was in high school," he said and it wasn't even a lie. It had been less than two years since he had graduated high school himself and people didn't miraculously age just because they entered university. The fact that he had met Chanyeol, the high school student, in club at night had been the only clue to his supposed age at first and that one Kris had clearly misjudged.
"You can usually sniff them out from a mile away though," Luhan said with a curious look. "Let's be honest, even in high school you hated high school students."
Kris hadn't said anything to that because he knew that Luhan wasn't actually wrong. It was true that Kris had never really liked to be in high school himself. His family had moved to Korea when he was in middle school and he had to get used to yet another lifestyle in yet another foreign country. Being around a bunch of boys in the middle of puberty had not exactly made that whole process any easier. Due to that the three years of high school had easily been the most exhausting time in his whole life. He had to keep up with his studies while learning a language that was different from any of the languages he had already known at that point. How he had still managed to not only graduate but to also be accepted into university was beyond him but it definitely had to with him giving up the idea of making friends. It hadn’t mattered to him then, because he had never meant to stay in Korea. All he wanted was to graduate, to go back to Canada and to continue his life there the way he was supposed to.
But it obviously couldn’t be that easy. happened and he was so unfortunate to learn the full meaning of being an outcast in a rigid environment like the Korean school system. By the time he graduated, he hated school blazers so much, he doubted he could ever work in a suit.
So in theory it certainly didn’t make sense for him to hook up with someone in high school who looked like someone in high school and talked like someone in high school and wore his high school uniform like someone in high school (pants too low, tie too loose, shirt too wrinkled, blazer always open). But oddly enough he liked it exactly because Chanyeol's high school experience was absurdly different from his and just to listen to it made him feel as if he was taking part. Chanyeol was the type of high school student who actually made the best of it with friends and music and life and seemingly little to no worries.

Later that evening that carefree Chanyeol lay on his back on the floor in front of the TV, stared at his phone he held in his outstretched hands, and suddenly asked, "Have you done any sports in school?"
It was a typical high school question, so Kris, who half watched a quiz show, didn't really think much about it when he said, "Soccer."
Chanyeol looked up to him with a skeptical glance that made Kris oddly self-conscious. "What?" he asked unwillingly and looked down on himself. Although he had spent hours cleaning in preparation for the high school student who had ignored him for a week, and had sweat quite profoundly due to that, he had still made sure to wear some of his nicer clothes. But those probably didn't make him look very sporty.
"I thought you grew up in Canada," Chanyeol then said and rolled around to prop himself up on his elbows.
"Your point being?" Kris asked. The course of the conversation seemed predetermined after that, so he turned back to the TV. Him being Chinese Canadian apparently made people think that he probably played a combination of hockey and kung fu.
Chanyeol, clearly more socially aware than Kris had given him credit for, didn't answer and instead asked, "So, soccer, huh? Are you still playing?" He amost didn't sound mocking.
Kris shrugged, "Not really. I last played in 6th grade." He had stopped when his classmates had started to make fun of him for looking like a Mexican immigrant because he used to be so tanned. For him it was the year he not only realized that being dark-skinned was an issue but also that he was vain enough to stop doing something he liked just because it made him look bad.
"Which means that you're not actually into sports," Chanyeol concluded and rolled on his side, away from Kris.
"Are you?" Kris asked with a laugh because he had to think of Chanyeol dancing and that had been terrible enough. Especially for someone who supposedly breathed music.
"My father always wanted me to," Chanyeol said. "He loves baseball more than anything in life, so I guess he always wanted me to be a star pitcher or something."
"Huh," Kris said and probably immediately sounded disinterested. Baseball really was the last thing he wanted to hear about after a week of Luhan loudly trying to figure out the rules. There was nothing more awkward than a too detailed knowledge of other people's obsession.
Chanyeol's shoulders hunched and Kris couldn't even see much of his neck anymore, only his back. "I couldn't really play sports as a kid though," Chanyeol continued, and Kris figured that it probably had to do with his suspicion that he was asthmatic. Chanyeol himself had never said anything about it, but Kris had a cousin with asthma so he knew that wheezing and coughing at night weren't necessarily just signs of a cold. "But well, my father loved it so I couldn't really not like it, " Chanyeol continued chattily in a muffled voice. He was resting his head on his arm. "He always made me play catch for as long as I could. And I mean, that really was good enough and I'm glad that I instead got into music because I can still do music when I'd be too old to play baseball. But sometimes I still watched the baseball club in school and wondered what it would be like to be one of them." He let out air through his nose in a soundless laugh and rolled on his back again, giving Kris a mischievous grin. "Two years I almost got thrown out of the band because I spent more time watching the practice games of the school team than I did actually practicing myself. Though to be fair, I still practiced at home. Just not so much in the club room."
Kris smiled at that because he liked to hear those stories from him. Everything seemed so simple. But then he frowned, when it dawned to him that Chanyeol skipping practice actually was a big deal for someone as clearly music-obsessed. "Was that because you secretly wanted to join but couldn't?"
Chanyeol shrugged as if Kris had uttered the wrong question. "Not really. At that point I probably could have joined but didn't want to."
"So what did you like about it so much?" Kris asked and when Chanyeol's expression slightly lit up, he realized that he had finally phrased it correctly.
There was a hint of an awkward smile when Chanyeol turned away, pretended to look at the TV and said, "The shortstop."
It was cute, it really was, and if it had been anything else, Kris probably would have smiled. High school crushes were adorable. But just at the mention of the word 'shortstop' his mood immediately dropped. Thanks to Luhan's constant rambling, Kris now knew enough about baseball to have a vague sense of what defense positions there were and how they were called. He knew that shortstops, situated between second and third base, were pretty essential and that the job was pretty demanding. 'I read that they're usually not great at batting,' Luhan had said. 'So being a strong hitter and the shortstop is kind of a big deal.' Kim Minseok, the centre of Luhan's obsession, had of course been both and Luhan, oblivious to other people's lack of interest, had pointed it out over and over again to a degree that Kris had started to dislike that guy he knew nearly nothing about. It really didn't help that he unwillingly had to imagine the boy Chanyeol had a crush on as someone who looked like Kim Minseok.
Chanyeol meanwhile misunderstood his lack of reaction, sat up and began to explain, "That's a player in-."
"I know," Kris interrupted him a tad too harshly and immediately regretted it. Chanyeol bit his lip and Kris suspected that he was the first person to hear that story. The whole questioning around his sports career had obviously been the introduction to this confession. For all he knew, this was a first crush story and to act like a douchebag now would not exactly strengthen whatever strange relationship they were having. "So, a player, huh?" he asked and tried to sound casual but probably didn't. "Did you ever tell him?"
Chanyeol pulled a face and didn't answer immediately. For a few seconds he just gave Kris a suspiciously measuring look as if he didn't know whether he could really trust him after all. Then, finally, he said, "Not exactly. But he did find out."
"What happened?" Kris asked, this time genuinely curious. His own first crush had never noticed it and even if he had, it most definitely wouldn't have gone well. At all.
Again, Chanyeol bit his lips and sighed. "Not much," he said. "He found out somehow. We..." He trailed off, probably lost in his memories. "We kissed. Then he stopped talking to me and left school. Never saw him again. I'm not really sure myself what really happened. Or if I imagined everything." He tried to shrug it off and finished with a strangely humourless grin that made Kris a little uncomfortable. He never thought of himself as someone who got jealous easily but that didn't mean that he had to be interested in feelings that were directed at someone else. Chanyeol obviously still was hung up.
"So I guess he's a not a famous player yet?" Kris asked and hoped that the question would steer them away from the core of the story.
"No," Chanyeol said. "Something happened to him and he stopped playing."
There it was, that phrase. 'I don't know what it is but something happened to him,' Luhan had said. 'And then he just stopped playing. I'm pretty sure he's fine or else he wouldn't take part in the marathon next week. So why isn't he playing any longer? I don't get it.' Luhan had never shut up, so whenever Kris saw Kim Minseok he had to think about it. The guy didn't look like a star player but like someone who had just found out that his grandmother had died. Even Kris had to wonder. But even worse, now the imagine of Chanyeol fawning over Kim Minseok became even clearer in his mind. Before he could stop himself, he asked, "What's his name?"
Chanyeol narrowed his eyes at him and Kris really couldn't blame him, but he needed a different name attached to the story or else it would drive him crazy. "Why, you gonna look him up online?" Chanyeol asked jokingly and turned to the TV.
"I just want to be prepared," Kris said and when he sounded too earnest, added, "In case he gets famous."
Chanyeol laughed at that and lay down on his back again. "I forgot," he shrugged. "I always called him sunbae."
"Right," Kris scoffed and unwillingly felt even worse. 'Sunbae' meant that the guy was older than Chanyeol and not a classmate, which meant that 'him leaving school' most likely meant that the guy had graduated already. Kris, Luhan and Kim Minseok were supposedly all the same age. Which meant that they had all been in their last year of high school, when Chanyeol began his first. Just that knowledge made it hard not to see at least a tiny connection. "Like I'd believe that," he continued mockingly. "I bet you have his name tattooed somewhere and secretly dread the day I find out."
Chanyeol just blinked at him for a second and then cracked up hard. "Is that jealousy I hear, my comrade?" he laughed. "I'm pretty sure you'd have spotted that tattoo by now. Unless, you know, I got tattooed somewhere inside my body. Want to check my gums first?" He pulled open his mouth with his fingers and tried to show Kris the inside of it, still chuckling.
Kris looked away in disgust and hoped that his face wasn't as red as it felt. He probably deserved it.
It took Chanyeol maybe a minute to calm down and he still wiped tears from his eyes, when he said, "You know, the great thing about stalking someone who plays sports is that you don't even have to ask anyone what they're called. You just have to watch a game and the people around them shout all the players' names like crazy. My sunbae, he, I only even noticed him because I watched the team practice one day and when he hit a ball, it flew so far that the boys in the outfield didn't even bother running after it. It wasn't even a homerun but it had rained all day, so the field was really slippery and no one felt like running. The girl watching it didn't know that though, so they shouted his name and he looked so, I don't know, awkward. Like he knew that he didn't really deserve it." He smiled, absorbed in thought.
"What name did they shout?" Kris asked quietly, and Chanyeol's smile faded when he looked down. Something hindered him from saying it out loud and Kris thought that he understood that feeling. Names could be spells sometimes.
"Kim Minseok," Chanyeol said barely audible.

- what is love (a conclusion) -

Minseok was only months away from graduating high school when he realized that all his life he had followed an illusion. When he kissed a junior and liked it more than he should have, he finally understood that something about him was inherently wrong. He didn't have the right physique to be a player and now it also made sense that he had never found the right girlfriend

He ran and ran and ran and tried to shake the feeling.

But right from the start he had not been wired correctly. He was nothing but machine with an internal error that was too much of a coward to pull its own plug.