- white noise (& questions) -

"So," Baekhyun said into the quiet waiting room of the hospital and nodded into the direction of the guy who paced around the corridor outside like a leopard in a cage. "Who's that?"
"That's my older brother," Minkyung answered from across the room in a worried tone. It didn't seem to occur to her that although she technially literally answered his question, she still did not clear up anything at all. Why she was there he somehow understood because it answered the question as to whom Jongdae secretly dated. Minkyung was in their class and Baekhyun had seen them talk before, so it wasn't that unlikely. Out of all the things that had happened that day, it actually was the least puzzling thing. Because them dating didn't explain why she would have fallen down while trying to push away one of the boys who hit Chanyeol. Or why she would have called her older brother who climbed into the toilet stall Chanyeol hid in, only to make Baekhyun wonder why he hadn't done the same.
"So what is your older brother doing here?" Baekhyun asked in frustration and leaned back in his grey plastic seat so that the back of his head touched the greasy wall.
Jungyoon who sat a few seats apart from him scoffed, "Does that really matter now? You should be glad that, unlike you, her brother actually managed to get your idiot friend to a hospital."
"They're friends," Minkyung quickly said before Jungyoon could say more and Baekhyun frowned at her. Next to her Jongdae stared at a poster that urged people to donate blood and pretended to have nothing to do with the situation. It was obvious that he knew something Baekhyun didn't. When Jungyoon had forced Baekhyun out of the toilets, Jongdae had been the first one to explain that Minkyung's brother supposedly was a friend.
"If he's a friend, how come I've never seen him before?" Baekhyun asked and could tell that he sounded stupid by the tired side glance Jungyoon threw him.
"What are you, conjoined twins?" she asked in annoyance. "I'm pretty sure there's no law according to which he can't make friends without your prior approval."
Baekhyun sighed but didn't reply because he didn't want to argue with her. There was something she didn't understand. It was not at all about approval or about the fact that he didn't want Chanyeol to make friends. Baekhyun would in fact not have been able to stop him anyway because Chanyeol constantly found new people to talk to. Jongdae, Kyungsoo, Lay and most people in the club had been Chanyeol's friends first. Chanyeol had music friends and baseball friends and neighbourhood friends and cousins and Baekhyun was sure that he had not met all of them yet. Even during the worst bullying phases, Chanyeol had never really been alone.
But that wasn't the point. The point was that Jungyoon and Jongdae had made sure that Baekhyun couldn't overhear whatever Minkyung's brother was going to tell Chanyeol in the closed toilet stall. The point was that Minkyung's brother had Chanyeol's blood all over his clothes and that he had been the one Chanyeol had stared at before the nurse closed the door between them. The point was that Chanyeol always introduced important friends to Baekhyun and that he hadn't done so this time. They were supposed to be best friends and although Baekhyun didn't expect to know every single detail of his life, he had still believed to know at least most of them.
After a few more rounds of pacing around, Minkyung's brother entered the waiting room and sat down on the other side of his sister. For a moment Jongdae seemed about to say something but then chose not to when Minkyung took her brother's hand and held it in her lap.
It didn't feel right.
Baekhyun was the official best friend but here he felt left out as he sat by himself across a group of people who weren't even supposed to care about Chanyeol.

Time crawled by and none of them really engaged in a conversation. Minkyung whispered something to her brother and then left the room with her phone. Jongdae looked at her brother but still didn't say anything. They seemed to have met for the first time, which made Baekhyun wonder even more why Jongdae would have known about him being friends with Chanyeol in the first place.
When he looked at Jungyoon, she had her arms folded in front of her chest and her eyes closed. She and Chanyeol weren't exactly close either and yet she didn't leave.
Baekhyun thought about calling Boyoung but then decided against it because he didn't want to worry her. When he had asked a nurse whether they could see Chanyeol, she had told them that only family members were allowed to, so Boyoung wouldn't have been able to do anything either. Instead she would have just added to the number of people who aimlessly sat around and waited.

After almost an hour, he saw Yura rushing by and jumped up. She gave him a short glance and then disappeared with a nurse.
Baekhyun sat down again.
"Who was that?" Jongdae asked because he probably hadn't seen her from his position.
"Yura-noona," Baekhyun said and Jongdae nodded.
Jungyoon made a disapproving noise and something about the way Minkyung's brother visible tensed up really bothered Baekhyun. Maybe that was the connection between them. If Minkyung's brother was older than them, he maybe was as old as Yura. Maybe he actually was her friend and not Chanyeol's.
The theory immediately collapsed however when Yura came back into the waiting room with a tired expression and told them that Chanyeol was fine. The wound on his forehead was stitched up and apart from that his head seemed to be fine. She seemed incredibly relieved and thanked them for having been there for her brother with a smile.
"Do you think it's okay if we see him?" Minkyung asked and it was then that Yura seemed to notice her for the first time. Until then she had mainly talked to Baekhyun with an occasional glance at Jongdae. Yura blinked at her and then let her gaze wander to Minkyung's brother who looked uncomfortable. There was something like dull recognition in Yura's eyes. She and Chanyeol were awfully alike in their reactions at times and for a moment Baekhyun thought he saw subdued horror in her expression. She looked like someone who didn't believe in the existence of ghosts and then pretended hard not to notice one as it appeared in front of her.
"I think he should better rest," Yura said as if in trance and her tone immediately grew colder. "Our parents will be here soon to pick us up, so you should probably all leave before your families start worrying."
"You just said he was fine," Jungyoon said bluntly and gave Yura a chance to act like the protective sister.
"I know what I said. But he did hurt his head so I highly doubt that it does him any good if you all suddenly barge in there," she answered bossily which caused Jungyoon to look even more annoyed and Minkyung and her brother to flinch. The funny thing was that, had Minkyung protested, Yura probably would have let them see her brother after all. Baekhyun had no doubt that Chanyeol really was fine or else she wouldn't have been as relieved. And Yura had trouble dealing with quiet people like Minkyung and her brother who both looked easily intimidated. She had told him before that introverted people made her feel like a monster so she usually tried to act extra nice around them.
"Are you a doctor or how can you be so sure of that?" Jungyoon asked angrily and unknowingly took away their last chance of seeing Chanyeol that night. "We're the ones who saved his sorry . Minkyung over there," she pointed at Minkyung who looked startled when Yura immediately glared at her, "barely ever raises her voice and I used to think that she's mute but when your brother picked a fight with guys who are way out of his league, she charged in there like a tiny army. See her bandaged leg? She was fine before she thought that she could stop a fight between grown- boys." Minkyung instinctively tried to hide her knee behind her unharmed leg and Yura's expression softened a little. But then Jungyoon continued, "And her brother climbed inside a public toilet to drag your brother out. So who are you to act all high and mighty and tell us that it wouldn't do him any good if he saw us?"
Yura looked at Minkyung's brother and there was something very strange in her expression. It wasn't just anger or worry but something like disgust.
"I'm his sister," Yura said and her voice sounded like steel.

Baekhyun didn't understand a thing.
Yura went back to see Chanyeol, Minkyung's brother took hold of her sleeve while muttering something about having to return to the station to catch the bus home and Jungyoon marched off without sparing Baekhyun as much as a tiny glance. They quickly scattered apart like leaves in the wind and in the end Baekhyun found himself standing at the bus stop in front of the hospital with Jongdae.
"The Fist sounded mad," Jongdae said after a moment of awkward silence. "I'm pretty sure she overheard you when you declared your love for Yura-noona."
Baekhyun grimaced, "I was joking."
"Yeah, right," Jongdae grinned and stared into the distance to see whether their bus was coming. It really was easy for him to not be serious about the whole situation and just to think about it made Baekhyun oddly angry. For weeks Chanyeol had been bullied and Jongdae had done nothing about it, only to return as if nothing was wrong. Chanyeol had always run rather than to fight back and now that he suddenly was, their whole lives seemed to derail. Jungyoon and Yura were mad and Baekhyun was as confused as never before.
"What the hell is going on with Chanyeol?" he asked and looked at Jongdae who continued to stare at the street.
"I'm as clueless as you are," Jongdae shrugged but clearly avoided his eyes.
"Right," Baekhyun said.
He was supposed to be Chanyeol's best friend but for weeks now he had suspected that Chanyeol was hiding something from him. This was maybe the beginning of the ultimate explosion he had feared. Maybe it was the end. Maybe this was as far as their friendship would go.
Just the thought scared him.

- closed curtains -

When Yura entered the room her brother half sat, half lay on the hospital bed and immediately tried to straighten up. He craned his neck and when she closed the curtain around his bed behind her he frowned.
"Did they already leave?" he asked in his most stupidly innocent voice. He always talked that way whenever he wanted something from her and just that realization made her anger finally burst out.
"Was that him?" she asked and could have slapped him when he simply looked at her in confusion. He must have known exactly what she meant. "Is that why you wanted me to get your friends? Because he was there?"
"Noona," he said and made it sound like a question, as if the crazy one was her, as if it wasn't him who was slowly turning their lives into a circus event. There he was with a bandage around his head and dried blood encrusted in his shirt and a look full of disappointment because she hadn't brought the waiting room full of people she had never seen before. An aggressive girl had snapped at her, two timid-looking people had looked at her hatefully and the only people she had known were those friends of Chanyeol his father liked the least.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she asked and tried hard to keep her voice under control. "Do you have any idea how worried we all were?"
"Sorry," he said quietly and looked even worse. He looked groggy and worn-out and deep down she knew that her worry as she hurried to the hospital was nothing in comparison to what he must have gone through. He had been bullied before but this was the first time he had to be stitched up. It almost made her feel bad to be so angry at someone who cleary just needed someone to hug him and tell him that everything would be all right.
With a sigh she sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Well," she said and tried to sound gentle. "What happened?"
His deflated expression made it very clear that he didn't want to talk about it. But then he shrugged and said, "I tried to fight back and it didn't work out."
"Stupid," she muttered and for the first time that day he gave her a weak smile.
For a moment they both just stared at the floor without saying a word. Outside the curtains she heard people talking and machines humming and the air was filled with a lingering smell of chemicals and disease. Hospitals had to be the most uncomfortable places on earth.
"So who was that girl?" she asked when she couldn't stand it anymore and he gave her a questioning glance.
"Girl?" he asked in return.
"Yeah," she said and waved her hands around her shoulders to describe the length of the girl's hair. "The one who looks like a bully."
He drew his eyebrows together and said, "Oh. I guess that was Jungyoon." Then his eyes widened a little. "She was still there?"
Yura nodded and felt her expression darken. "Yeah. She sneared at me. Didn't even address me formally."
Rather than to say anything he simply burst out laughing and then threw up his hands in pain because the sudden motion must have hurt his wound. Instinctively she leaned forward to check whether he was okay when he grinned, "Baekhyun somehow tricked her into dating him, you know. My guess is that she was angry because he loudly told me that I can't die before he manages to marry you."
She pulled a grimace. "That boy," she scoffed and found it hard not to smile at her brother's bright expression. She knew how much he loved his friends and suddenly she wondered whether she maybe should have allowed them to see him after all. Even if the nervous-looking boy had been the one her brother had told her about, even if Chanyeol had lied about it, what could possibly have happened if she and his other friends were there?
It was easy to think that way in retrospect because her decision couldn't be changed. Had she been in the same position again, she probably would have done the same.
"And who was the other girl?" she asked and looked at the grey floor. "The one called Minkyung?"
It took her brother a second too long to reply. "Jongdae's girlfriend."
"Huh," she said at the floor. "Jongdae's girlfriend and her brother?" She probably could have left it at that. It was explanation enough. Under normal circumstances she would have simply wondered whether Boyoung had been there as well, as one of the girlfriends. "Can you promise that that's the whole story? The older brother of your friend happened to be around and happened 'to climb inside a public toilet to drag you out', as Baekhyun's girlfriend so nicely described it? There's nothing more to it? Can you promise that?"
He sighed, "Noona, look...," and made it very obvious that her initial assumption had been correct.
"So that was him," she concluded and turned her face to him as he looked away. "That was the one you wanted to break up with Boyoung for."
He didn't even need to reply. His face said it all.
"You said he rejected you," she said and just to say those words made shivers run down her spine. It sounded even more wrong to have a face attached to it. She didn't know what kind of person she had imagined when her brother had drunkenly told her about the older boy from his school, but secretly she had probably filled in the missing picture with the kind of guy she usually went for. But the boy had been completely different. Her brother needed someone like Boyoung, someone who had his back, not someone who flinched at the sight of his sister.
"He did," her brother said quietly and made it even more real.
"So why was he here?" she asked and bit her tongue.
"I don't know," her brother replied and looked at the ceiling as if he also searched for an answer. "I think Minkyung told him to come."
"And he just did?" Yura asked and felt like an interrogator when his expression became even more troubled.
"Yeah," he said but sounded as if he himself didn't understand it either.
She gave him a hard look but he made sure that their eyes didn't meet, so she didn't really know what to say. Although he technically still was a minor and her younger brother, she knew that she couldn't simply forbid himto do anything. She wasn't his mother so it had never been her duty to scold him. That was also why her mother had asked her to go to the hospital first while she waited for her father to return. 'Your father forgot his phone at home and you know what he is like. If he comes home and all he finds is a note, he will panic and do something stupid,' her mother had said over the phone. 'If you're there with your brother, I know that he's in good hands.' She had sounded calm but that was always the trick with her. To outsiders Yura's mother always sounded cheerful but there were signs that made it clear whether or not she was distressed in any way. And as she had told Yura that Chanyeol was hospitalized she had definitely been distressed.
It would have been fine. Normally they would have been fine and she would have been able to cheer him up and to embrace him the way he was.
But the way things were now she felt as if she looked at a warped copy of who she had thought her brother was. She still loved him but part of her wanted to grab his collar and shake him until he finally woke up from whatever delusion he had. But as the child of his father that would only make him become even more stubborn.
"I don't like this," she said and knew that those words weren't even close to conveying what she really felt.
"I know," her brother said and looked sorry but didn't actually apologize.

- inside the wheel -

When Hari turned up at their table in the cafeteria that day, she didn't even greet them properly. Instead she loudly knocked on the table while flopping down on the chair next to Luhan which startled him so much, he nearly choked on his fried rice.
"You have no idea how glad I am that you two losers seem to spend all your free time here," she said excitedly which caused Kris to make a disapproving noise as he chewed on his tuna sandwich. Being predictable was one of the few things he hated to be accused of. Although it was definitely true.
"Good to see you, too," Luhan said with a strangled voice. He felt as if a single rice corn was stuck somewhere in the back of his throat but even when he chucked down half his bottle of water, it wouldn't go away.
Clearly unimpressed by other people's discomfort Hari simply continued chattily, "I have news for you."
Luhan didn't mean to fall for it because he didn't want to encourage her behaviour. But it was true that Hari was the kind of person who pretended to hate gossip but then blurted out the most incredulous things, so he asked, "Good or bad news?"
She threw a quick glance at Kris which already made it quite obvious what her news were about. "I believe we can all agree that they're good," she then said.
"Is it about your dear ex-boyfriend and my angry friend's object of affection?" Luhan asked with a grin at Kris who pretended to stare into the distance. There was a tiny movement of his head that made Luhan think of a watchdog that could turn its ears.
"Do you want the long version or the short version?" Hari asked with a conspirational smile and Luhan was about to reply that the answer to that was pretty obvious, when Kris said, "The short one, please."
Hari shot him a glare so Luhan quickly tried to mediate. "Well, what's the difference between the two? We're busy people, you see. The shelves of the convenience store my friend here works for don't restock themselves."
Kris shook his head with a sigh which made Hari click her tongue in mock offense. She put on a silly expression when she shrugged, "Oh, not much. The long version includes breaking and entering, fist fights and near death experiences but, you know, I'm sure you don't want to hear about all that."
Her words clearly had the desired effect because even Kris turned his head to frown at her. No matter how little he pretended to care, even he would worry about someone he had dated for months. It actually was also his reaction that took away the excitement for Luhan. Had Kris not been there, he probably would have begged Hari for more details but the way things were now he wondered why Kris' boyfriend couldn't have instead fallen for someone who had nothing to do with them at all.
It also bothered him a little because he did think of Minseok as a friend, so he didn't see why two people he liked apparently both had a thing for the same high school boy who had very much looked like a tall village idiot to him.
Before either he or Kris had a chance to ask any questions however, Hari half jumped off her chair and waved her arm in a way that would have seemed very stupid, had she been less naturally beautiful. "Minseok, over here!"
They all looked into direction of the lunch counter where Minseok stood like a deer in the headlights of a truck. The grey lunch tray in his hands almost looked like a shield and for a second he gazed into the direction of where the track team sat, as if he pondered whether he had a chance to escape there. Hari squinted her eyes at him to dare him to avoid her again and with a nervous glance at the empty chair next to Kris he slowly came closer.
"He doesn't look like he was in a fist fight," Luhan said like the insensitive little he was and had to admit that Minseok barely looked betrayed or angry as he sat down. Hari telling everyone about his secrets probably was why he had a tendency to avoid her.
"That's because he wasn't the one fighting," Hari explained as she swiftly stole the juice from Minseok's tray. Rather than to react to her, Minseok simply arranged his healthy selection of pickled vegetables, soup and rice and began to eat. "His boyfriend was."
It really was such a simple word but no matter how much Minseok and Kris pretended not to feel bothered by it, their reactions were like a slap in the face to Luhan. While Kris's expression turned a tiny bit darker, Minseok's ears were definitely getting more pink in colour. They were both equally stupid about the same person.
"So they're at that stage already?" Luhan noted and didn't care how sulky he might have sounded. "Now that's quick. It's been like, what, a week since Kris invited them both over?"
"Yes," Hari said brightly while Minseok appeared to shrink in his chair as he picked up a drippy piece of kimchi and nearly dropped it on his rice.
"How awkward," Luhan said and turned to Kris. "Did he even really break up with you?"
It was a stupid thing to say in that kind of situation. Even he knew that much. He wasn't even sure why he said it and immediately felt that dull sense of regret as the atmosphere at the table shifted. Minseok's stopped moving his hands, so that his chopsticks awkwardly hovered over his pickled radish slices and Hari's eyes widened. She clearly must have thought that they would all weep in joy over her revelation.
"I mean," Luhan began and tried to sound clueless as to how much his words could ruin between them. "My friend Kris here usually acts all tough but he has been seeing that boy for a while now. He told me all about it and to me it sounded as if they spent all their time together. So, I don't know, am I missing something here? Isn't it strange for one boy to just jump from one relationship into another?"
The worst thing about the moment weren't the glares. Glares were something he was very well used to. But the way Minseok looked as if something in him shattered was hard to watch. He didn't yell or protest or even look up. Instead he continued to mechanically shove food in his mouth with visibly shaking hands.
"Are you done now?" Kris asked in a cold voice that almost made Luhan flinch. He hated that voice. And he hated it even more when Kris threw a quick side glance at Minseok and Hari, and then continued in Mandarin, "Are you jealous or what is this about? Do you see me talking about how you spent weeks telling me every single detail about his life? You can't win people over by acting like an ."
Luhan opened his mouth to respond, when Kris already turned to Minseok who instinctively backed away a little. "Just to put things clear," Kris said in Korean. "Chanyeol and I, that was never really a thing. It happened due to a lack of better alternatives."
Minseok blinked at him in confusion, so he added, "Before he even knew that I know you, he constantly talked about you like you were some idol he worships. I couldn't stand it, so honestly, do with him whatever you want. It has nothing to do with me." The way he said it was so rude that for a moment Hari seemed about to snap at him while Minseok still looked at him warily. To Luhan meanwhile it was clear that Kris was only trying to be nice in a clumsy way. That was what he was like. It was just like the dinner invitation and him allowing Luhan to make a move on him despite knowing that Minseok and the boy would see them. Kris constantly tried to push people into a certain direction while acting like the bad guy.
No one said or did anything until Kris eventually packed up his things and stood up.
"Where are you going?" Luhan asked and almost wished he hadn't said anything because Kris shot him a look full of reproach.
"Restocking shelves," he replied and left with a nod at Minseok and Hari.
Kris' figure disappeared in the crowd of hungry students and Minseok continued to chew on the lunch as if nothing had happened. Hari looked as though she wanted to say something but then chose not to. When Minseok was finished, he also stood up and attempted to leave without a single word but Hari quickly held onto his arm and said, "Minseok, I'm sorry."
He looked down at her with a strange expression and then lifted the corners of his mouth in a smile that never reached his eyes. "See you later," he said in the tiniest of voices and walked off.
The silence that followed was stifling and Luhan tried to think of things to say that could liven up the mood a little when Hari muttered, "I'm in the wrong here, too, but you know what? I finally understand why you and and your friend didn't work out. You just don't know when to shut up."
He folded his hands on the table in an attempt to stop himself from snapping. As the master of low blows he knew when other people tried his tricks on him.
"You're the worst possible friend," Hari continued and rubbed her eyes as she shook her head. "To think that you're the one complaining about terrible friends... Ridiculous."
For a moment they simply sat next to each other in the cafeteria while the world around the continued to move. She continued to sigh in disapproval but rather than to leave, she seemed to wait for something. As if after all he had said, there still was an open question that needed to be addressed.
"So what's the long version of the story?" he asked and she threw him a poisonous glare but still seemed relieved. That was the truly sad part about Ahn Hari. To her Minseok was a long-term project, something she believed she needed to fix in order to carry on with her own life. But there probably was no one she could talk to about it. So even though Luhan most probably wasn't a good friend to either her or Minseok, she still needed him to listen. It was almost as if they were all trapped in a hamster wheel, forever spinning and spinning and spinning. The moment they stopped, they were all going to tumble down.
"I've never seen him like this," she said in a low voice that made her sound uncharacteristically vulnerable. "I mean, he was in dozens of relationships since we broke up but it was never like this."

- changes -

It was cold that afternoon and Jongin wasn't completely sure whether that only was because the heating wasn't working yet or because it was because of the atmosphere among the club members. Kyungsoo and Boyoung had never come back and Baekhyun seemed to be in a bad mood, so all conversation was kept at a minimum. The only sounds came from their instruments and from occasional humming by Jongdae. Jongin honestly had no idea what had happened but it felt as if he was trapped in a movie right after the zombie apocalypse. As if all the colour was drained from the world and they all knew that they could never go back to the way they had been before.
Chanyeol was trying to teach Jongdae his bass lines in one corner of the room, when Baekhyun stood up from the keyboard and left the room. He left the door open and his clothes behind so he probably only went to the toilet but just the fact that he didn't announce his short absence was strange. Baekhyun normally used any opportunity to hear his own voice.
When it seemed clear that he would not return immediately Jongin could see in the corner of his eye that Jongdae threw him a short glance. Jongin had his earphones plugged in although there currently was no music playing. But Jongdae clearly didn't know that because he quickly interrupted Chanyeol who was in the middle of explaining how finger exercisess were necessary to gain enough strength to be able to play faster.
"Are you free on Sunday?" Jongdae asked in a hushed voice and Chanyeol didn't immediately reply. Even without looking at them Jongin could easily imagine his dumb-founded expression. People who didn't comprehend the graveness of music obviously were Chanyeol's least favourite people.
"Depends on who's asking," Chanyeol finally said in his normal loud tone and managed to sound both annoyed and amused. "Why?"
"Minkyung is asking," Jongdae said quickly.
"Oh," Chanyeol said and made an unbearably long pause during which Jongin pretended to be preoccupied with looking something up on his phone in an idle manner. He had a feeling that the two were very much aware of his presence. "Yeah. I'm free," Chanyeol finally said quietly.
Jongin would have loved to turn around when there was nothing else to hear for a moment. is muscles ached from trying to look inconspicious. Something about knowing that he wasn't supposed to see what was going on made it all the more difficult to stay still.
"I don't get why she doesn't just come here," Chanyeol eventually said loudly, as if to show that nothing about his and Jongdae's conversation was in any way suspicious. "I mean we already know about her anyway."
"She doesn't come here for the same reason why The Fist doesn't," Jondgdae scoffed and turned back to his bass.
Chanyeol seemed to think about his words and then held up the index finger of his right hand like a detective in an old-fashioned mystery movie. "Because she's choleric?" he suggested which caused Jongdae to blow the air through his nose in a toneless laugh. "Or because you told her that you have a crush on my sister?" At that Jongdae kicked his leg. "Not that I'd judge you if you had," Chanyeol continued jokingly. "Nothing against Minkyung but no one can compete against my sister. I'm sure even Minkyung would admit that."
Jongdae shook his head but sounded like he had to surpress a laugh when he said, "Well, she probably would but only because your sister scares the out of her. While you were relaxing in your hospital suite the other day your sister looked like she was going to swallow her alive when Minkyung asked whether we could go see you."
"Oh," Chanyeol said and suddenly sounded oddly serious. "I forgot they met there."
"Yeah," Jongdae said and awkwardly rubbed his neck, as if he had realized too late that he had hit the wrong topic. "I mean, Minkyung did kind of save your life and everything. Your sister should at least give her credit for that."
Chanyeol nodded and looked down on the floor. "You know what she's like," he said apologetically. "She thinks that she knows best what my life is supposed to be like."
Jongdae shrugged. "My brother sometimes is like that, too. I guess they think they know everything just because they happened to be born a little earlier. Like a few years really make a difference."
Chanyeol laughed lamely. Jongin didn't know why but everything about that conversation was oddly tense, as if they were skirting along a sinkhole.
"When you were all in the hospital," Chanyeol finally began and sounded troubled. "My sister, did she say anything to...?"
He never got to finish the question because right at that moment Baekhyun walked through the open door. Chanyeol stopped mid-sentence and probably looked like a trapped rat because Baekhyun threw both him and Jongdae a questioning glance. Jongin unwillingly looked at them, too.
Before it could become even more awkward, Jongdae dryly said, "We were wondering whether you still believe that you have a chance with Yura-noona."
Under normal circumstances Baekhyun would have used the opportunity to joke around, but instead he just grimaced at them and sat back down at the keyboard. "Obviously," he said but didn't sound very convincing. It was as if he knew that banter was part of what made them who they were but as if it was hard for him him to keep up the facade.
Jongdae and Chanyeol looked at each other helplessly and then seemed to come to the conclusion that all they could do was to continue practicing.

Something had happened but Jongin had no idea what it was.
There were less than two weeks left until the competition but the whole thing felt even more unreal than ever before. Yes, they did practice and now that Jongdae was back it was supposed to be easier because now they at least were a proper band by the looks of it. But they barely ever practiced together and Jongin wasn't even sure whether they had really made a decision as to who was going to sing. Before, the obvious answer had been Baekhyun but suddenly he wasn't so sure about that any longer.
Kyungsoo never came back and Jongin never really got to speak to him about it. Whenever he actually saw him, Kyungsoo seemed busy with his studies, as if they were the only thing occupying his mind.
Boyoung had also suddenly disappeared and had left a gaping hole that everyone seemed to ignore. No one talked about her which in itself made no sense to Jongin. Without Boyoung they were nothing but a limp body without a heart but no one seemed willing to acknowledge that.
Something had happened, something that slowly turned their lives into an ocean of mismatching puzzle pieces.
Jongdae was back and suddenly was closer to Chanyeol than Baekhyun was.
The name 'Minkyung' was thrown around and although Jongin gathered that she was Jongdae's girlfriend, he had no idea where she had come from the moment Boyoung had left. Jongdae and 'Minkyung' and Chanyeol were going to meet behind Baekhyun's back. Chanyeol was still being bullied, as the bandage around his head clearly prove, and the competition was supposed to be looming over their heads, but they all seemed to be preoccupied with something no one actually bothered to tell Jongin about.

There were moments when Jongin wondered why he actually bothered. He wasn't actually attached to any of them so it would have been easy for him to just walk away.
But something prevented him from actually doing so.
Whether it was curiosity or loyalty or boredom, something made it hard for him to just turn away without having a clue was to why everything around them was suddenly shifting and changing.

- the support group -

He and Luhan weren't friends.
That was what Kris reminded himself of whenever he got carried away. Every time he saw something he thought Luhan might like and every time he wondered what Luhan was doing and every time he had the burning need to talk to him about something, every single time he told himself that they weren't actually friends. That was how he always managed to stop himself from doing something he would have regretted.
Luhan had been more than a friend at one point and now was less than a friend. He was a mildly annoying chronic illness, like Kris' mother's pollen allergy and Chanyeol's asthma and his co-worker's acne. There was no cure but most of the time it was possible to ignore all the feelings that came with Luhan's existence.
No matter what, they were never going to be friends.
"Just look at how great a friend I am," Luhan said as he put his bottle with sparkling water on the counter. "I came all the way here and I'm actually helping your workplace's turnover, just to give you the latest news. I'm literally moving myself to tears." He loudly sniffed and pretended to wipe a tear from his eye with a ridiculous expression.
Kris meanwhile scanned the bottle and said, "That's 2,300 won in total."
Luhan squinted his eyes but pulled his wallet out of his bag anyway. "Are you trying to rip me off?"
"The prices are clearly written below the products," Kris said and provocatively held out his hand to speed up the whole process. There were no other customers in the store but there were security     cameras and if the store manager ever actually bothered to look at the footage he surely wouldn't have liked to see Kris wasting time. In return Luhan clicked his tongue and slowly counted the coins in his wallet like an elderly lady.
"So anyway," Luhan said as he let 300 Won in coins drop into Kris' open palm and proceeded to look at his paper money. "I have news and whether you want to hear them or not, I have an urge to share them."
"I'm working," Kris said as Luhan handed him the remaining 2,000 Won in crumpled bills.
Luhan looked around them at the empty store and only grinned, as if Kris had cracked a joke. Rather to respond in any way, Luhan simply opened his bottle and took an audible gulp he then finished with a loud sigh. "You know, this fancy convenience store water really does taste different," he then said.
"Might be because it's carbonated," Kris said as he put the money into the cash register and put the receipt on the counter because he knew that Luhan wasn't going to take it. He at least needed to pretend to follow protocol.
"You think?" Luhan asked and inspected the bottle for a second before he shrugged. "So anyway, the news."
Kris sighed because he knew that it would be no use to repeat that he was working or to say that he didn't care. The more he protested, the more eager Luhan eventually became. That ultimately was the reason why they still talked. Luhan never gave up on anything.
"A credible source told me that your ex-boyfriend and my friend Minseok are going on a date on Sunday," Luhan said and sounded a lot less excited about that idea as he normally would have. "At least that's the short version," he continued in an exasperated tone. "The long version is so convoluted, I'm not sure whether I even understood everything about it. I'm sure you're happy to hear that although your ex indeed was involved in a fight, he's as fine as a person with a stitched up face can be. And he's the classmate of Minseok's sister or something, so I guess the date isn't actually a date but more of a group activity because they're all going together. And when I say 'all together', I'm not even sure how many people that involves."
Kris just frowned at him because he didn't even bother to try and process the information. Part of him was worried about Chanyeol but he forced himself to think that it was none of his business to care. "Right," he said.
Luhan looked at him in a way that made it clear how little he appreciated his lack of enthusiasm, so he asked, "Was that credible source supposed to tell you all those things?"
Luhan shrugged, "Probably not. But honestly, if Minseok actually trusts her with his secrets, that's his own fault. She's like a leaking bucket."
Kris unwillingly let out a toneless laugh that encouraged Luhan to put on one of his suffocatingly bright smiles. Something about them always irked Kris. Luhan's smile was like the knowledge that air pollution was one of the reasons for some of the most beautiful sunsets. No matter how much he liked to look at them, sunsets and Luhan's smile never actually seemed genuinely innocent to him.
"This is all developing in a really strange way," Luhan said and shook his head. "It's as if I tried to crack a code but before I actually came to any conclusion myself, the code just cracked itself but I still don't know how. It's a little dissatisfying to be honest. What am I supposed to preoccupy myself with if I don't have the mystery around Kim Minseok any longer?"
Kris scoffed. "Is that your issue with the situation?"
Luhan sighed again, "I guess so. I'm quite ambitious, you see." He pulled a face and then seemed to realize something. "Why? You didn't actually think that I'm jealous, did you?"
In return Kris simply shrugged. He wasn't even sure what he had thought because he had tried not to think about anything at all. Whatever they did had never had anything to do with him but it was true that Luhan had spent quite a lot of time talking to him about Kim Minseok.
"So did you find out why he's not playing baseball any longer?" Kris asked and the surprised look in Luhan's face made it obvious that he had probably already forgotten about that.
"No," Luhan said and looked at the ceiling to think about it for a second. "Well, judging by what I know about him now, he probably had a crush on someone on his team and it turned out badly or something."
Kris had to think about everything Chanyeol had told him about Kim Minseok and something about the theory seemed wrong, especially because Chanyeol had been involved as well. But before he could pursue his thoughts, he reminded himself that he wasn't even supposed to know these things. He had no right to know anything about Kim Minseok's life and yet he was constantly told about.
"Hari says that she wants to support Minseok and asks whether we could help," Luhan suddenly said. Kris must have looked at him incomprehensively because he quickly explained, "So, as I said, he and his sister and your ex all go on a group date and Hari thinks that's a really smart idea because, you know, it can be awkward to just openly date and have people stare at you. She says that if she doesn't push Minseok, he might just give up on your ex again."
Kris just frowned because he didn't like the direction this was taking.
"So she asks whether we can hang out as a group sometimes," Luhan said and clearly only pretended to be oblivious to the implication. There was a strange edge to his voice. "You know, as a support group for them."
Kris barely knew Ahn Hari but he knew a meddler when he saw one. "And she has no other friends she can drag into this," he stated because he already knew the answer.
"None she can simply tell that, oh, by the way, Minseok seems to be gay," Luhan said jokingly but still sounded almost pleading. "And I mean, think about it, with his sister around he probably can't really do much either. Relatives are the worst."
"And yet his sister is arranging a date for him?" Kris asked and Luhan shrugged helplessly.
"I guess," he said.
It was obviously a trap by Ahn Hari, who apparently believed that she had the power to fix relationships. Kris wasn't so stupid not to see that.
But it was true that he wouldn't get rid of Luhan either way. Even without Hari's meddling, Luhan would pick him up to go to the cafeteria together and he would continue to bother Kris during his shifts at the convenience store. At this point Luhan already was like a rash.
So rather than to argue, Kris shrugged and said, "Whatever. Sure. I'm all for supporting others."
Luhan put on an unreadable smile and Kris was glad that right at that moment another customer finally entered the store.
He and Luhan weren't friends. They had never really been friends. But the problem was that they were never going to be strangers either.

- fish tank -

There were many things in Chanyeol's life that caused him to constantly lie wide awake in bed and feel as if the flimsy darkness around him was trying to suffocate him. It was as if a hundred voices constantly screamed at him. Because he didn't know what he was doing with his future. Because his sister wouldn't stand on his side any longer. Because he had betrayed Boyoung who had always been kind to him. Because Baekhyun was drifting away. Because he was terrified of those people who were trying to hurt him. Because he wasn't sure if he could hold the band together. It scared him, it honestly scared him so much that all he wanted to do was to put his hands over his ears and close his eyes.
For weeks he had felt as if he was grasping at straws. Working towards the band competition and old memories and hiding out in Kris' apartment, all those things had allowed him to keep his mind off his problems for a while but they all were eventually followed by that inevitable feeling of guilt. After a while not even music could fully drown it out. Behind every note he played there was a split second of dread.
At times he thought that it would probably only grow worse.
Maybe he didn't deserve any peace of mind.
Maybe that's what it was.
But then he ran into the train station on a chilly but sunny afternoon and saw Jongdae and Minkyung and Kim Minseok waiting for him and it was as if his burden was instantly lifted. His lungs burned from hurrying all the way from his house but he still felt as light as he hadn't felt in ages. Just to see Minseok already made him feel that way.

"So I hope you understand that this would all be a lot less stressful if you had actually made it in time," Jongdae said in distaste as he held onto the hanging strap and watched Minkyung who had managed to secure a seat and Minseok who stood in front of her and leaned forward to glance at her phone. She probably looked up the schedule of the movie theatre they had meant to go to while he gave moral support. It was one of those moments when the social rules of their group weren't fully determined yet. So although it technically wasn't supposed to be that way, the siblings stuck together while Chanyeol stood next to his friend Jongdae who clearly wasn't thrilled.
"You've met my mother so I'm sure you understand that when she tells you to wait until she wrote that list of things she wants you to fetch on the way back home, you wait," Chanyeol said and leaned his head against his upper arm. The truth was that her shopping list wasn't what had taken so long but her long speech on how he would have to take better care of himself. After promising for the third time that yes, he was trying to stay away from any dangerous situation and no, he was not going to fight anyone, she had finally let him go. But by then he had already been twenty minutes late.
Jongdae only made a disapproving noise, so Chanyeol said, "Also, I doubt you actually wanted to see that movie anyway. I doubt anyone but Minkyung wanted to see that. The poster already looked boring. So who knows, maybe we're in luck and now we actually can watch something more exciting with explosions and stuff."
In return Jongdae looked at him skeptically and said, "I don't think she picked it though."
When Chanyeol threw him a quizzical glance, Jongdae added, "You might want to talk to Minseok-hyung about his taste in movies and not on my girlfriend. She would have picked something funny."
Chanyeol frowned and stole a look at Minseok who was clearly unsuspecting as he passively stared at Minkyung while she talked about whatever she saw on her phone.  For a moment Chanyeol wondered what he actually knew about Minseok apart from basic facts about his former school life and his sister and some of his strange friends. The movie he had supposedly chosen probably was one of those movies that were artsy and deep and consequently depressing. Movies like that were enjoyed by people who thought of themseves as profound and well-educated and Minseok didn't seem at all like that kind of person.
He must have stared for a while because Minseok suddenly blinked and looked into his direction. Like a child Chanyeol quickly averted his eyes and cursed himself for it.
"Whatever," Chanyeol said which caused Jongdae to grin knowingly. "Also," he added and raised his eyebrow. "What makes you think that you can just call him 'hyung'?"
Jongdae squinted his eyes at him for a moment and then shrugged, "Maybe the fact that I asked politely while we were waiting for you and he said that he's okay with it? Give me some credit. I do have manners."
"Uh-huh," Chanyeol said and looked outside the window. He wasn't even so sure why it bothered him. Normally he was not at all concerned about formalities.
"I mean, you can obviously call him whatever you want and it won't make a difference," Jongdae continued, as if he sensed that there was a need for further explanations. "Even if I say 'hyung' and you say 'Your Highness', that's not going to change where we all stand. I'm just a random bystander in your story."
At first Chanyeol just laughed at the image but then the reality of the situation crept up to him and before he could stop himself he asked, "Does it bother you?"
"What, being a bystander?" Jongdae said and blew air through his nose in a toneless laugh.
"No, I mean," Chanyeol began and vaguely gestured with his free hand. "This. Me and him and... everything."
For a terrifyingly long moment Jongdae didn't reply and just frowned at the concrete scenery they were passing by. Just like Chanyeol he probably wondered how honest he could be without destroying everything around them. When Jongdae then finally turned his head back into his direction, Chanyeol felt as if he stood in front of a teacher who tried to test his worth.
"Are you in any way attracted to me?" Jongdae asked matter-of-factly and in response Chanyeol could only make a disgusted face and quickly look around them. What he needed the least was to be witnessed by yet another person from his school and to give them a chance to spread more stupid rumours about him.
His reaction meanwhile seemed answer enough to Jongdae who said, "My point precisely. It would probably bother me if you were but the way things are now..." He shrugged. "I don't really care."
"Huh," Chanyeol said and looked outside because he wasn't sure what to think. It was strange and for a second he felt incredibly stupid. Deep down he had believed that his decision to not follow the regular path would have a major impact on every person around him. But in the end it was probably exactly the way Jongdae had described it. His own story circled around him but to most people he was nothing but a side character.
"There's one thing though," Jongdae said after the train had pulled in and out of yet another station. People had pushed past them to get out and the new people boarding the train had caused them all to shift their positions a little. They were now even further away from the Kim siblings.
Chanyeol looked at Jongdae who nodded into the direction of where Minkyung sat. All Chanyeol could see of her were her legs because Minseok had leaned in even further due to guy with a huge backpack right behind him. For a second Chanyeol had the urge to push through the crowd and shove the guy with the backpack away. But he had the feeling that Minseok wasn't the kind of person who appreciated random heroics like that.
"That's where I'm supposed to be," Jongdae said. "But because you and her brother are coming with us, I have to stand here and talk to you instead. If you could do something about that when we get off the train, I'd be much obliged."
Chanyeol unwillingly grinned as shrugged in what he hoped to be a casual way. "I guess that can be arranged."
"Very kind of you," Jongdae replied and pretended not to smile.

Once they were outside the train however Chanyeol had trouble keeping up. Minkyung shouted something at them about having to hurry to make it in time of the next movie, Jongdae dashed after her and Chanyeol felt like a man who tried to swim against the current during a storm. He was drifting away and although he still saw the others, he couldn't get closer. There were simply too many people pushing and shoving and walking into too many different directions at once.
When a lady with sharp heels stepped on his toes, he almost yelled at both her and at the others who just seemed to leave him behind. He could barely make out Jongdae in the crowd any longer although he should have been tall enough to have a perfect view of his surroundings. This was exactly why he sometimes hated to be in the city. Crowded trains and crowded station and crowded streets and the constant noise of thousands of people talking at once.
In his desperation he stubbornly stopped in his tracks. It was then that a hand took hold of his sleeve and pulled him away like a lost child.
"Sunbae," he said and Minseok turned back to him for a second with a concerned look but didn't slow down.
"We should hurry," Minseok said and his voice was almost drowned out by the commotion around them. Chanyeol just nodded.
He didn't even look where they were going. Minseok weaseled through the masses of people and Chanyeol stared at Minseok's fingers grasping the fabric of his sleeve. For a moment he wondered whether he should just take his hand but then he hesitated for too long.
He told himself that there still was time.
There still was so much time for that.

Outside the station Chanyeol felt as if they were all trying to compete in a race. Minkyung was in that awkward stage between quick walking and jogging while Jongdae took extra big steps which consequently made him look as if he was rushing towards a toilet. Chanyeol would have laughed at them, had he himself not struggled as well. The only reasons why he managed to keep up at all were his long legs and the fact that Minseok never let go of his sleeve.
"What are we even going to watch?" Chanyeol shouted and Minseok just shrugged while avoiding to run into a woman with a black monster of a dog.
Chanyeol only got his answer when he was completely out of breath and when Jongdae shoved two tickets at him in the entrance hall of the threatre.
"They didn't have four seats next to each other, so we got two and two," Jongdae quickly explained. "These are yours. Just give me the money afterwards."
Chanyeol barely managed to look at the title of the movie when Minkyung, who was already halfway up the stairs, shouted, "They're already running the commercials."
"But what are we even," Chanyeol began when Jongdae abandoned them to follow Minkyung. "Watching?" he finished in a deflated tone.
Minseok curiously leaned over to him and they both stared at the tickets in Chanyeol's hands to make out the title. When their eyes met, Chanyeol had a feeling that they were equally clueless.

The movie turned out to be a romantic comedy and Minseok nodded off within the first thirty minutes of the whole will-they-won't-they story. The amazing thing was that he managed to still sit straight like a nerdy student in school so that Chanyeol only realized that he was asleep when he directly looked over to him. For all he knew Minseok had been asleep right from the start. That in itself definitely was a talent.
The frustrating thing about Minseok being asleep however was that Chanyeol felt completely isolated within the rows of females and straight couples around him. His guess was that Jongdae probably was similarly bored but Jongdae at least had Minkyung.
When the protagonists kissed in the rain, Chanyeol considered to elbow Minseok but then decided not to. Instead he used the time to just stare at his sleeping face like an enormous creep.

By the end the movie completely changed its tone and became something more to Chanyeol's liking with drama and gun fights and explosions. An exploding truck was in fact also what woke up Minseok who nearly fell of his seat in surprise.
"What the?" he muttered while the protagonist shot a gangster. The girl on Minseok's other side threw them a nasty glance and it took Chanyeol all his might not to burst out laughing when Minseok looked at him in confusion.
"Sunbae, in case you're wondering, this is already the next movie. You've been asleep for hours," Chanyeol whispered and for a split second Minseok's eyes widened in shock before he realized that it was a just a bad joke. Rather than to reply, he boxed Chanyeol's arm and sunk back into his seat.
For the rest of the movie Chanyeol simply smiled like an idiot.

After the movie they looked for Jongdae and Minkyung and listened to her raving about the story on their way to the exit. Jongdae meanwhile clearly tried hard to not look as though he had just survived the dullest two hours of his life. When she then turned to her brother to ask how he had liked it, he simply shrugged.
"He doesn't know because he slept through the whole thing," Chanyeol said and shook his head as if he had no clue as to why anyone would nod off during that beauty of a movie. In return Jongdae simply rolled his eyes at him while Minseok looked betrayed.
"Well, that other movie was already halfway over," Minkyung said and sounded oddly defiant as she glanced at her feet like a child who was caught doing something bad. It was such a stupid matter but just like how Chanyeol always wanted Yura to think well of him, Minkyung probably was the same. "So I thought we should maybe just watch something funny instead and this movie looked funny," she continued meakly. "And, oppa, you said you only wanted to watch that other movie because Hari-unni told you she liked it anyway." At her last words her eyes suddenly widened for a second and she quickly looked at Chanyeol to see his reaction.
Chanyeol tried to keep a neutral expression. If Minkyung's 'Hari-unni' was the girl he had met before, he understood the implication. The girl who had still such a huge impact on her ex-boyfriend's life that even his younger sister knew about her? At least that explained why the movie choice had seemed strange to Chanyeol.
Minseok, who also knew that Chanyeol knew about Hari, muttered, "I was just tired," and began to walk out of the theater.
Before she followed him, Minkyung leaned towards Chanyeol conspirationally and whispered, "He said that he couldn't sleep last night. He gets nervous easily."
She gave him a smile that was both knowing and apologetic and then quickly followed her brother outside.  "Oppa, slow down!"
Jongdae sighed like a father who had ended up watching his daughter's dance recital despite being less than thrilled about it. "I hope you remember that we agreed that I should stay with her and you with him today," he said.
Chanyeol shrugged, "We're obviously both not capable of keeping up or we wouldn't stand here together right now."
"She plays volleyball, you know," Jongdae said in mock exasperation as they began to walk towards the exit. "She doesn't look like it now but she's fierce when she plays."
Chanyeol unwillingly laughed. "It's no wonder then. They're dynamic and we're only good at sitting around and making noise."
Jongdae let out another sigh but grinned anyway. Outside the sun blinded them while Minseok and Minkyung were again hunched over her phone to look for the next thing to do.

There was something about the utter normality of the whole day that began to feel like an annoying itch to Chanyeol. Normal was good, normal was comfortable, but normal wasn't what all the good moments with Minseok had been like before. Even if they had been in places Chanyeol had spent hundreds of hours before, something about it had always felt like an image in a fun house mirror. Hanging around in his club room with him hadn't been normal because Minseok had never been like the club members. Compared to the others he had always seemed almost too clean and straight-forward. When they were all impulsive, messy melodies, he was a single note played in the silence of an empty room.
Watching baseball practice hadn't been normal either. Due to his father's obsession with it, baseball had always been part of Chanyeol's life but he had never thought much about the players. They were just chess pieces that moved across a board. Even if he wanted a team to do well, he never cared about what would happen to the players if they didn't. But watching Minseok play meant that he saw him only. So when Minseok's hand had been broken during that one game, Chanyeol didn't worry about the outcome of the game but about whether Minseok was well. Likewise, when Minseok had once dropped by to watch the band during the school festival, Chanyeol had stopped caring about anyone else in the audience.
The moments that had really mattered had always been strange in a way, like a song played in the wrong key that still sounded good. Sitting on Kris' balcony while Kris made out with some guy inside hadn't been normal. Breaking into the school hadn't been normal. Bleeding into Minseok's jacket in a public restroom hadn't been normal. But to sit in a burger restaurant with friends from school and Minseok was, and, unlike all the strange moments, it felt as if they were actually miles apart despite sitting next to each other.

"Oppa, are you not hungry?" Minkyung asked when Minseok continued to slowly chew on his fries while his burger was still largely untouched. When they all turned their heads at him, he finally seemed to snap out of his trance and looked embarassed.
"No, I'm fine," he said and picked up his burger as if to prove a point.
For a moment Minkyung just watched him with a concerned expression while he took small bites. Then she turned to Chanyeol and said, "You know, he normally eats like a pig." Next to her Jongdae burst out laughing and almost choked on his soda, so she added, "I mean, he doesn't look like a pig when he eats. He's not gross or anything. But the amounts he eats are crazy."
Chanyeol looked at Minseok and unwillingly smiled when he noticed how red his ears were getting. Rather than to say anything though, Minseok just continued stuffing food in his mouth so that by the time he finally started chewing, he looked like a hamster.
"He never gains weight though," Minkyung continued chattily. "When we were little our parents were so concerned about that because our big brother also always ate that much but he is also very tall." To show what she meant she vaguely held her hand above her head and looked at Chanyeol. "I think he might be around your height," she frowned and look at Minseok for help. "Oppa, is Minkyoo-oppa taller or shorter than Chanyeol?"
"Shorter," Minseok said without hesitation between bites.
"Hm," Minkyung said as if she didn't really trust him on that but didn't want to argue either. The way she described him, her other brother already sounded like an amazing person.
"So I guess your other brother also plays volleyball?" Jongdae asked jokingly. When he was met with blank stares, he awkwardy explained, "I thought that most volleyball players are tall."
"Isn't that basketball?" Chanyeol asked and Jongdae shrugged.
Jongdae replied, "I guess most people who do sports are very tall."
"Unless they do gymnastics," Chanyeol said thoughtfully. "Gymnasts are tiny."
They probably would have continued their banter, had the Kim siblings not both looked at them as if they thought of them as stupid.
"Baseball," Minkyung said. "Our big brother also played baseball."
Chanyeol nodded knowingly which caused Jongdae to frown at them all and ask, "Also?"
"Minseok-oppa also did," Minkyung said in a tone as if she thought of it as common knowledge. Maybe that was what she had identified herself with for years. She was the younger sister of two boys playing baseball. If their older brother was a good as Minseok had been and also tall, he had probably been popular. And yet she spoke of it as something in the past and had obviously never told Jongdae about it.
"Wait a second," Jongdae said and squinted his eyes at Chanyeol and Minseok. "Is that the connection here? Hyung, were you in the baseball club in high school? Because, you know, Chanyeol used to be obsessed with-."  It was in that exact moment that he seemed to have a big revelation because rather than to say anything stupid, he simply finished the sentence with, "baseball." He also didn't look as though he planned to probe any further. That was probably were he drew his limit in how much he wanted to know.
Next to him Minkyung looked at him in puzzlement for a second before it also dawned to her. "Oh," she said. "That's how you met?"
Minseok nodded again while continuing to chew and Chanyeol wondered just how much he had told her. To him it had seemed as though she was aware of  everything that had happened. But no matter how kind and supportive she was, in the end she probably still only knew as much as Yura did. The difference was what she did with that information.

It was slowly getting dark when Minkyung suggested to go to the aquarium because it happened to be close and because they still had so much time. As she said it, she nervously glanced at her brother and then at Chanyeol as if she could sense that her whole plan of them all spending the day together wasn't quite working out the way she hoped it would.
It was true that Chanyeol and Minseok had barely talked throughout the day. Chanyeol wasn't sure what he had expected but that was probably what was bound to happen. Minseok most likely always was quiet in groups. That's why he had seemed so odd when he was among his friends in high school and that was what had made the situation in Kris' living room so awkward.
Maybe that also was the reason why the whole day had felt so wrong. The situations he had previously perceived as 'not normal' had all been situations in which it was just them. No one to push, no one to ask anything, no one. Just him and Kim Minseok and the secrets of the universe.
But he had no idea how to recreate that kind of moment and he didn't want to go back home to face all his problems either, so he shrugged and tried not to laugh at the pleading look Jongdae threw him.
"Look, I really want to be alone with her," Jongdae whispered quickly when Minkyung called her mother to tell her that she and her brother were not coming home for dinner after all. Next to her Minseok seemed to be occupied with giving her moral support.
"In the darkness of the aquarium?" Chanyeol asked mischievously. "I mean, I'm not the one you have to ask for permission here." At that Minseok turned his head into their direction but Chanyeol wasn't sure whether he had actually listened to them.
"Just do me that one favour," Jongdae hissed and kicked Chanyeol's foot in annoyance before he walked towards Minkyung to play the concerned boyfriend. When Minseok gave him a questioning glance, Chanyeol could only laugh but part of him was getting oddly nervous.

Although it was already late afternoon, the aquarium was still relatively crowded. Instead of families with children there were many young couples who had probably felt exactly like them that it was still too early to return home. Because there were enough people around however, Jongdae eventually also managed to shoo Chanyeol and Minseok off. When Minkyung was distracted with looking at a tank with long, pink jellyfish, Jongdae quickly turned around to them and nodded into the opposite direction with a deadly glare that startled Minseok enough to stop in the middle of the room. A middle aged lay bumped into him under swears and Chanyeol took hold of his wrist to pull him to the side with a grin.
When Minseok just looked at him in confusion, Chanyeol explained, "I'm relatively sure that he will kill us if we continue to tag along." Minseok quickly glanced into the direction the others had already disappeared into, so Chanyeol added, "Not that I think that he could actually harm anyone. He's more of an arts and crafts and music type of person. She could probably easily punch him unconscious."
At that Minseok smiled but still looked concerned.
"He's a good guy," Chanyeol said earnestly although he wouldn't have been able to say so a few weeks ago. During the last couple of days Jongdae had actually proven to be a better friend than Chanyeol had ever given him credit for. "Let's give them half an hour and then we'll ambush them."
Minseok sighed and bit his lower lip before he said, "I guess that's the least we owe them."
"And if he tries to do anything icky, we can still always kick his ," Chanyeol nodded which caused Minseok to smile in a more genuine way before he wandered off to the nearest fish tank.

For a while after that they still didn't actually talk. Minseok went from tank to tank to stare at the fish and Chanyeol followed him like the overly eager security guard in a museum. He did want to say something but whenever he tried to think of anything witty, his mind turned out to be a blank page.
It was when Minseok absent-mindedly touched the glass of a tank with bright corals and sea anemonas that Chanyeol asked, "I always wondered whether your hand is okay."
"Hm?" Minseok asked as he turned around to him and then looked at his hands as though he saw them for the first time. When he realized what Chanyeol meant, he awkwardly flexed his left hand and let it drop to his side. "It's not as good as before but I'm right-handed, so it doesn't really impact my life. It healed much better than I thought it would."
"I see," Chanyeol said and walked up to the tank to stand next to him. Tiny fish inside swam around in total oblivion. "That's good, right?"
It took Minseok a split second too long to say, "Yeah."
"So are you playing again?" Chanyeol asked and gave him a cautious side glance because Minseok suddenly seemed tense. He was probably supposed to just drop the topic but he couldn't help but be curious about it. Baseball was the reason why they had met in the first place after all.
"No," Minseok answered shortly and then, after a moment of agonizing, added, "But that's not because of my hand."
"But because you don't want to?" Chanyeol asked and the look on Minseok's face was answer enough. "Why?"
He only realized that he had gone too far with his question when Minseok turned away and walked towards a bigger tank with bigger fish swimming in quick circles. For a second Chanyeol simply muttered curses at the tiny fish and the corals and then quickly followed him. "Sorry, I mean, that's none of my business, obviously," he said apologetically.
He thought that this probably was how far their conversation for the day would go because Minseok's mouth was reduced to being a thin line as he stared at the fish in front of him. It was no use. Things weren't as easy as they had been two years earlier when they had lived in bordering spaces. Back then he only needed small excuses for them to meet but now tiny mistakes could cause them to sway back into completely different directions.
"If I confess something, you have to confess something, too," Minseok suddenly said quietly without looking at him.
"What?" Chanyeol asked because he felt as if he had missed something.
"That's..." Minseok began and then hesitated for a second. "It's a game Minkyung and I sometimes play. For every secret she tells me, I have to tell her one in return."
"Secrets?" Chanyeol asked.
Minseok nodded and sounded oddly insecure when he explained, "Yeah. Secrets or anything that's hard to talk about. It helps to talk sometimes." He tried to smile but instead only grimaced at the fish tank.
"Oh," Chanyeol said and blinked at his reflection. "Does that mean she knows all your secrets?"
"No," Minseok said a tad too quickly and Chanyeol realized that he had probably missed the point. This was not about what Minkyung knew but about what Minseok was willing to tell him.
"Oh," Chanyeol said once more and hated how stupid he definitely sounded. "Okay. I mean, yes, okay. I have to think of something."
Minseok smiled while looking at the bottom of the tank. "The one who suggests it usually goes first."
"Oh, okay," Chanyeol said. "I guess that makes sense."
Minseok at first didn't say anything after that and instead seemed troubled, as if it was had to muster up enough courage to actually continue. It was strange because the longer he hesitated the more nervous Chanyeol felt in return. He wasn't even sure whether he deserved to know any great secrets.
Eventually Minseok said, "My older brother and I, we both used to play baseball ever since we were old enough to stand. So our parents wanted us both to become professional players."
It was such a simple introduction but the way Minseok looked at him helplessly made it clear how much greater the problem behind it was. He sounded like someone who tried to describe the scale of a mountain to someone who had always lived in a flat desert.
"Right," Chanyeol said because he wasn't sure what else to say.
"Our parents, they..." Minseok continued and seemed lost for words. "They did everything they could. They bought us all the equipment and drove us to games and moved to the middle of nowhere because our high school is known for its baseball team. In theory it should have been easy for us to become successful. We had everything." For a moment he seemed as though he was thrown back to that time, as if that was still his life, as if it was a constant ordeal. It was odd because Chanyeol had always thought that Minseok must have loved baseball or else he wouldn't have tried so hard. But that probably only was half the picture.
"What happened?" he asked and Minseok sighed before he continued.
"When he was in his second year of high school my brother broke down," Minseok shrugged. "Destroyed his whole future within a few months."
He said it in such an almost dispassonate way that Chanyeol didn't think much about it when he asked, "What did he do?"
Minseok lowered his head as if it took him all his effort just to talk about it this much. That probably was what younger siblings were all like. They all trusted their older siblings so much that, when they messed up, it felt as if the world was breaking down. He understood what that felt like, so he quickly said, "I mean, you don't have to tell me."
Minseok threw him a strangely measuring side glance and then said, "Drinking. He started drinking. He did all the stuff a classic no-good does. He stayed out all night, skipped practice and hung out with people who smoked and fought. But the drinking was the worst because that was how he got suspended from school for a while. He then ran away and was arrested for picking up a fight with a guy on the streets." The odd thing was that Minseok still didn't sound very emotional as he recited the story of his brother. If anything he seemed like someone who had to retell something he was sick of remembering. As if all he wanted was to purge that memory from his mind.
"," Chanyeol unwillingly said. "But why?"
In response Minseok put on a grim smile. "That's what everyone asked. Our parents and the people in school all confronted him but he never made excuses for himself. But he didn't change his behavior either. And then they all eventually gave up on him."
"Oh," Chanyeol said and tried to imagine what that must have been like. People didn't just turn bad for no reason, that much even he knew. "And you never found out why?" he asked.
Minseok shrugged. "He was too proud to talk about it."
Chanyeol frowned because the idea of a family just watching one of their members falter was just wrong. Minseok and Minkyung both didn't seem like the kind of people who would just let their older brother hang like that.
And that's when he realized that this wasn't supposed to be the story of Minseok's brother but a story about Minseok himself, so the answers probably lay in everything he hadn't said. This was the story of two brothers whose parents wanted them to be a certain way but rather than to succumb, they both found a way out. Minseok's older brother had ruined everything and Minseok...
"Did you break your hand on purpose?" Chanyeol asked quietly. There was a tiny movement in Minseok's face that showed him how close to the truth he must have been. This probably was the beginning of the actual confession.
"No," Minseok said but sounded uncertain. "I mean, I don't know. I kept thinking about it but I'm not sure. Many batters get hit by pitches so it's not even that unusual."
Chanyeol furrowed his brows. "But you..." He tried to think back to the day, back to the gasps going through the rows and the people panicking on the field and Minseok crouching on the ground and holding his hand in a strange angle and then Minseok looking so lost behind the school that Chanyeol had not known what to do but to hold onto him. "You were so upset."
"I thought I had lost everything," Minseok simply said. "It scared me. But then I realized what it meant for me to become physically incapable of playing. That's when I finally understood my brother. I thought I was free."
"But you weren't," Chanyeol said.
"I wasn't," Minseok nodded and looked down on his left hand. In the light of the fish tank it looked weirdly pale and fragile. "I was never going to become a great player anyway. Unlike my brother I don't have the right physique, so I could use that as an excuse to stop playing but..."
"You still feel like you disappointed everyone," Chanyeol said helpfully and Minseok balled his hand into a fist.
He laughed humourlessly and his hand shook visually as he put it down again. "It's all so stupid."
Chanyeol sighed. In a way that was the exact same thing that had happened with Yura and that would eventually happen with his parents, too. Even though he had always been allowed to do the things he liked, no matter how silly his father clearly thought they were, there were also things they all simply blindly expected. That's why they had all liked Boyoung so much because to them it seemed natural that he would one day marry someone like her. He could only imagine what it must have been like to have parents with a much bigger dream than that. To Minseok and his brother it must have been a burden they constantly had to carry with them.
Minseok suddenly looked extremely worn-out as he stared at the fish swimming by in a forlorn way. As little as Chanyeol actually knew about him, he still understood how much it must have cost him to open up that much. But Chanyeol was terrible with heavy conversations, so he wasn't sure what to say either and they simply stood next to each other in silence.
"Well, personally I'm glad that you broke your hand," Chanyeol finally said and could tell how tactless he sounded by the way Minseok frowned at him. "And I'm glad that it healed but if it had never been broken, we wouldn't be here on a Sunday evening, admiring fish," he grinned which caused Minseok's expression to soften into something that was almost a smile. "And I wouldn't be able to do this," he continued and idly took Minseok's left hand in his.
It was such a small gesture but as Minseok curiously looked down on their connected hands as if unsure what to think, something immediately changed as if they were at the bottom of the cold ocean and a warm current swept them away. Or as if they were a stiff melody that was broken up by a change in rhythm or a black and white movie that was bursting in colours from one scene to the next. That's what it felt like. So when Chanyeol eventually leaned in to kiss him, there really wasn't anything else on his mind but the way Minseok's hand felt in his.

The world never stopped moving and problems rarely ever went away without causing at least some damage. He knew that. Eventually he would have to go home to face Yura and then he would have to go to school and watch everything around him fall apart because he had spent too much time lying about things he shouldn't have lied about. He would still have trouble sleeping and there would still be moments in which he just hated it all.
But because the world never stopped moving there would also always be moments like this in which he felt at peace.
Again he simply followed Minseok on his way around the aquarium but, unlike before, this time he actually had a sense of belonging.

It was only when they finally found Jongdae and Minkyung who sat in front of a huge tank with sharks and tuna however that he remembered something.
"Sunbae," he said quicky and took hold of Minseok's upper arm before he had a chance to sit down next to Minkyung. "I still haven't confessed."
At his words Minkyung looked up with a curious expression and he bit his tongue. She was the only other person who knew what he meant and he didn't want to seem as if hewillfully  took something from her she shared with her brother. Rather than to be upset however, she simply searched Minseok's gaze and then smiled slyly.
"Next time," Minseok said quickly and switched back to his quiet people mode.
Jongdae meanwhile clearly felt left out and noted, "I thought you weren't religious."
"I'm not," Chanyeol grinned and decided to sit right next to him just to annoy him. "So did you have fun?"
"Not thanks to you," Jongdae said and made it a point to move away from him and closer to Minkyung.
"Why, you told me to stay away so that you could be alone with Minkyung and that's what I did, right?" Chanyeol loudly asked in mock exasperation. "I even distracted her brother and everything."
On Jongdae's other side Minkyung's face flushed as she lightly slapped his arm and muttered, "You said you lost sight of them."
"I did," Jongdae said helplessly while she gave him a look full of reproach.
"On purpose," Chanyeol added with as serious an expression as he could muster without breaking out into laughter. On the far end of their group Minseok looked at the tank but the corner of his mouth clearly lifted while Minkyung rambled and Jongdae made excuses. And really, Minseok smiling was all that mattered to Chanyeol at that moment.

- white noise (& answers) -

Baekhyun wasn't an idiot but sometimes there were things he didn't want to see the way they were. Whenever his mind subconsciously changed the truth in front of his eyes, he himself didn't even understand that he was being ignorant about something. It simply happened. A pile of garbage turned into hill covered in flowers and in the end he was probably happier with his version of the truth than with the actual one.
At least that was the only explanation he could think of when he wondered how he could have been so blind about Chanyeol.

Jongdae and Jongin had already left and the sun was setting when Chanyeol also finally stood up and stretched. "I think I'm going home," he said in his typical idle tone and just the familiarity of it made Baekhyun feel something like homesickness. Chanyeol had always been his best friend and he liked him. But something had changed and he couldn't deny it.
"Remember Yoo Hyenhwa?" he asked and continued to play the opening bit of "Flying Butterfly" without turning towards him.
"Yoo Hyenhwa?" Chanyeol asked and pretended to think about it. There was an edge to his voice that prove that he knew exactly who Baekhyun meant. "From middle school?"
"Yeah," Baekhyun said as he kept the melody flowing. "You know, the one who hooked up with Han Jaehong." He didn't even have to look to be able to tell that Chanyeol immediately tensed up. For years Chanyeol had hated that name and it had never occured to Baekhyun that he had maybe misunderstood the reason all along. "The ballet dancer."
"Yeah, I remember," Chanyeol said a tad too quickly. Just the fact that he didn't ask why Baekhyun would mention her also made it clear that he wanted to avoid the topic. In middle school the still slightly chubby Chanyeol had spent hours talking about Yoo Hyenhwa and Han Jaehong and ballet. But then Hyenhwa and Jaehong had become a couple and Chanyeol had started to hate ballet and to lose even more weight. Back then Baekhyun had simply accepted the sudden change because it meant that he had his best friend back.
"I always thought that it made you angry because you liked her and because he betrayed your trust and stole her from you," Baekhyun said and still didn't stop the melody. It was such a happy song but in the silence of the room it became oddly eerie. "But you never said that, did you? That was just my interpretation. You said nothing at all."
Behind him Chanyeol kept quiet but they both knew that it was his turn. They couldn't move on unless he made a move.
"What do you want me to say now?" Chanyeol asked and for a second Baekhyun wavered. Maybe he could simply continue to ignore the truth. Maybe that way he at least wouldn't lose a friend.
But then he asked, "Did you like her or did you like him?"
He honestly dreaded the answer. The moment the question had popped up in his mind, he had already known the truth but he could only hope that Chanyeol had the decency to lie. He had lied before. There were years of lies behind them, so if he lied now, maybe there still was a chance.
"I liked him," Chanyeol said and without meaning to Baekhyun slammed his hands on the keys.
"Look, I never-." Chanyeol began but Baekhyun quickly interrupted while he stood up from his stool.
"The festival is this weekend and I said I would do it, so I will. Jongdae can do the singing and I'll do my best. And after that..." Baehyun's voice trailed off. He couldn't even look at Chanyeol as he said those words. Chanyeol had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. He knew every single one of his stupid expressions and it was strange to know that he had not actually known him all along. "Let's just stop talking to each other after that."