- they never knew  (before the competition) -

If Jongdae had to name the most uncomfortable moment in his life, it would have been his grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary that had happened two years earlier. Everyone in the family and the neighbourhood had been invited to it. Days had been spent preparing all the chairs and tables and all the food. His mother and his aunt had cleaned the house until it had looked like a page in an interior catalogue. That year it had been one of the most spectacular events in their street but all Jongdae could remember of it was the way his cousin Haneul had been ignored by almost everyone around her.
Haneul was seven years older than him and a year older than his brother Jongdeok, so he had grown up looking up to her. She had taught him how to do calligraphy and had helped him learn to play the piano. As children they had constantly played sloppy duets and there were times when he wondered whether he had only ever improved because he had always wanted to keep up with her. Looking back to it, his devotion had been almost crazy because in his memory Haneul almost seemed like a fairy who came down from heaven. No one was as pretty or as lovely or as elegant as her and for years that had screwed up his expectations in what a female was supposed to be like.  No girl was like her and he had been sure that the guy who got to marry her would become the luckiest man on earth.
When Haneul went to the United States after high school Jongdae had been devastated despite knowing that they would meet again. They were family after all. She had to return eventually.
The odd thing was that for years after that he had barely heard anything about her. A child going abroad usually was something people boasted about but whenever he had asked his aunt about her, he had only got clipped answers. Yes, she's fine. She's studying. No, she's not coming home for New Year's. Maybe next year, who knows. Where in America is she? Oh, on the east side. Pretty far. No, we don't have the time to visit her. She's busy, too.
It had made no sense to him.
And then she had come back for the big anniversary and had brought her American girlfriend and hell had broken loose. Everyone had talked about her but no one to her while her mother had looked as if she had just swallowed a bucket full of slugs.
Jongdae had tried to approach her and her girlfriend at some point but Jongdeok had called him over to help him and his father carry a table outside. It had been so obviously deliberate. They had all known that. Jongdeok had always liked Haneul, too, but with her decision to be different, he had simply given up on her without giving her the slightest chance. Jongdeok had probably thought that he was doing Jongdae a favour by allowing him to flee. But in the end that really was what it had come down to. He had fled. He had left Haneul standing in the living room and the look on her face in that very moment had haunted him for years. She had smiled but there had been something in her eyes he had recognized from every time he had told her that he couldn't play a song because it was too hard. It was the look that had made him want to become more than he was. But this time he hadn't been able to live up to it.
Thinking back to it, he always felt ashamed. It didn't matter who Haneul was with. Haneul was still Haneul and she would forever be one of his most dear persons on earth. But by acting like a coward that one time and by allowing his family's opinion of her to influence him, he had involuntarily also put even more than just the Pacific Ocean between them.

To him Chanyeol had never been more than a random high school friend. Had nothing ever changed in their lives until graduation, they probably would have simply parted ways until whatever high school reunion they both attended. Then they could have talked about whatever career they had and about what their families were up to lately and after getting severely drunk they would have lost contact until the next reunion. That was the natural course of most high school friendships and in that pool of friends Jongdae kept, Chanyeol had really never stood out that much. If anything, he was just harder to keep up with than most other people.
But then Minkyung and her brother happened and Jongdae suddenly felt thrown back to the moment when he had seen Haneul for the last time. To see Minkyung simply accept her brother for who he was made Jongdae feel even worse because it prove how much of a coward he had been all this time. It really was so simple. No matter what, neither he nor Minkyung were ever going to have it rough. The ones who struggled were her brother and Chanyeol and Haneul and her girlfriend whose name no one had ever even bothered to ask.
His decision to stand on Chanyeol's side was not anything Jongdae did our of the goodness of his heart. He did it because of Minkyung and because it helped him a little in dealing with the shame he hadn't been able to shake off for two years.

For him it was easy. He wasn't family or a very close friend. He only stood at the sidelines as a random spectator who half-heartedly rooted for a team he barely knew.
But for Baekhyun it was different. Baekhyun had always been part of the game.

It was on the Tuesday before the competition that Jongdae realized that something must have finally broken when Baekhyun didn't leave the classroom during lunch break and instead put his head on his arms to take a nap. Normally, Baekhyun spent 19 out of 20 lunch breaks wandering off to Chanyeol's classroom. The only times he didn't were those when he either hit on someone or had to finish an urgent homework he had forgotten about. Napping wasn't something Baekhyun usually wasted his time on. Baekhyun always needed to occupy his mind with things. But here he was. Napping.
"Did he break up with his better half?" Hyuk asked jokingly when Jongdae followed him and Yangil out of the room.
"Isn't he the better half though?" Yangil asked a they headed towards the cafeteria. "At least he's right in the head."
Hyuk seemed to think about it for a moment and the said, "I kind of doubt that. Show me one guy who's right in the head and who'd make out with The Fist."
"At least The Fist is a girl," Yangil noted.
"There's no proof for that," Hyuk said and they both burst out laughing. Hyuk and Yangil had been Jongdae's best friends since grade school and for years he had spent his 19 out of 20 lunch breaks following them around. Their opinions had been his opinions with the solemn exception of his being part of the band club. They had never liked it and he had never argued with them because he had never thought of the other band members as close friends. He had only ever done it for the music.
But this time he stopped and watched their backs as they continued their way along the hallway until Hyuk eventually turned around. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"I forgot something in the classroom," Jongdae said.
Yangil just frowned at him and Hyuk took a tentative step in his direction, so Jongdae quickly added, "I'll catch up to you later."
"Okay," Hyuk said in his most bored tone while Yangil simply shrugged.
Jongdae took a few slow steps backward until they had disappeared behind the corner to the staircases when he turned around and walked back to the classroom. He wasn't even sure what he was trying to do but something irked him.
The door to the classroom was open, so he didn't even need to enter to hear Baekhyun singing 'Flying Butterfly' by himself. He was accompanied by the soft sound of fingers drumming on the surface of his wooden desk. When Jongdae stopped in the doorframe he saw that Baekhyun wasn't pretending to nap any longer. Instead he had his headphones on and looked out of the window at the grey noon with a forlorn expression, quietly singing along to the song he refused to sing on stage for the competition.
Nothing about the situation was easy. Baekhyun was Jongdae's younger self who helped his brother fill up glasses and collect dirty dishes while Haneul and her girlfriend sat at a table by themselves.
Jongdae wanted to say something but didn't know what. He wasn't even sure what had happened. Maybe there was a different explanation. Maybe Chanyeol was busy doing something else and it was only for that reason that Baekhyun was here by himself. Jongdae randomly talking about his cousin probably wouldn't be of much help either way. He and Baekhyun were classmates who happened to be in the same school club. There was not much more to their friendship to begin with.
So before Baekhyun could notice him, he quietly walked away. At first he turned towards the direction of the cafeteria but he didn't really want to join Hyuk and Yangil yet. For a moment he thought about looking for Minkyung but knew that she was probably eating somewhere with her group of friends. Even if there were people who happened to know about them dating, he didn't really want to make it obvious to a group of potentially giggly girls.
After another moment of hesitation he sighed and figured that he might as well try and act up to his decision of wanting to be a better friend.

In a way it was both comical and sad to find Chanyeol in his classroom sitting on his desk next to the window humming the same song as Baekhyun. Hyuk had probably not realized how close to the truth he was by describing Baekhyun and Chanyeol as two halves, only that none of them was better than the other. They were both stupid and by being together, they usually were simply even more stupid.
"I'm glad that when the competition is finally over, I'll never have to sing that song again," Jongdae said and startled Chanyeol enough for him to choke on his breath.
After an awkward round of coughing, Chanyeol gave him a look that expressed how little he understood Jongdae's sudden appearance but only said, "I like the song."
"Well, you picked it," Jongdae said. "But you're not the one who has to sing it over and over again."
Chanyeol shrugged, "I could though. Only then we wouldn't win."
For a moment Jongdae thought of mentioning Baekhyun who had been their top star until then. When Lay had been the leader of the club, he had tried to distribute the singing parts equally but Chanyeol had always been a little biased towards Baekhyun. It probably wasn't even that strange. That's what it meant to be best friends.
But this didn't seem like the right moment so Jongdae let out a mock sigh and said, "I guess I have no choice but to sacrifice myself then."
Chanyeol grinned half-heartedly. "I'm sure Minkyung will appreciate it. I bet your voice is the only reason why she likes you in the first place."
Jongdae was about to argue when the ringing of Chanyeol's phone interrupted them. Chanyeol quickly fished it out of his back pocket, frowned at the screen and then rejected the call.
"Minseok-hyung?" Jongdae asked and had to remember that time back in the club room when Chanyeol had received random calls. Maybe that was when the whole story had actually begun and it felt strange to imagine those days to overlap with the presence. It seemed like ages since all the club sessions that had been dull and normal and full of stupid arguments and jokes and laughter.
"Hm?" Chanyeol asked and threw him a quizzical glance before he understood what he meant. "Oh. No," Chanyeol said and wrinkled his nose. "I don't think he's the type who ever calls anyone out of his own free will unless there's some accident."
Jongdae laughed at that but realized that Chanyeol didn't actually explain who else would be calling him in the middle of the day then. They weren't that close after all.
The moment was becoming awkward, so Jongdae said, "I'm going to the cafeteria. Want to tag along?"
Rather than to immediately reply Chanyeol looked past Jongdae and into the direction of where the noisy cafeteria was. It was the place where more than half the school hung out during lunch break and Jongdae almost wished he hadn't asked. Chanyeol looked troubled. He probably figured that he was running out of friends but that the cafeteria at the same time was the worst place for him to be. Bullies weren't the ones who hid. They were the ones who turned crowded spaces like that into their very own stages while the bullied sat in empty classrooms.
Before any of them could say anything, Chanyeol's phone rang again. This time he picked up.
"Noona?" he asked and Jongdae took the cue to point at the door behind him and take one step backwards. Chanyeol looked at the door and then at him and nodded. "No, I'm in school right now. I'm in high school, noona," he said and sounded both polite and annoyed.
Jongdae unwillingly frowned at him for a second because he didn't seem to be talking to his sister. When Chanyeol noticed him looking, he pulled a grimace and Jongdae hurried out of the room.
"Friday night?" Chanyeol asked inside the room. "This week is a little...  I mean... no, I don't know. I'll see if I can make it but..."
Jongdae didn't linger around long enough to hear the rest of it the conversation.

- the chaser -

"So what you're saying is that I'm a pawn in a game," Tao said and took a bite off his hot dog.
"Yup," Luhan said and took a sip from his iced coffee. Right afterwards he swore under his breath, gave his cup a mean look and then took another sip. Luhan apparently was stupid. "That's what you are. You're a pawn."
"And you think I'm just going to play along," Tao said and stared at a group of people from his school who passed by the window. The day he could finally stop wearing his damn grey school uniform would easily become the happiest day of his life. No matter what his family members tried to convince him of, high school wasn't going to become the best time of his life. If high school was the peak, he didn't want to know how much more tedious the rest was going become.
"I am," Luhan nodded and moved around in his plastic chair until he sat comfortably enough to be able to lean his head on his hand. "We're friends, are we not?"
"Not really," Tao said and Luhan sighed in annoyance. He really was easy to read sometimes. Luhan was the kind of person who could persuade almost anyone to do anything and who was so used to that idea that, whenever his normal tactics didn't work, he immediately became passive aggressive. He had come all the way to Tao's school and had invited him to a cheap meal in a nearby fast food restaurant, probably believing that this was going to become easy. Tao had previously always acted along to his whims out of sheer boredom but if this kept on, he was probably going to get as stupid as Luhan and Kris combined.
"Okay, so we aren't friends," Luhan said in a flat tone. "And maybe I'm using you and that's not cool. But do you want to see her again or do you not?"
Tao could feel his face twitching. It was a nervous tick he couldn't really seem to get rid of.
"No," he said.
In return Luhan gave him the same belittling look Tao really hated to see in anyone's face. That was another thing he hated about his high school uniform. It gave everyone around him a false impression of who he was and made them feel entitled to look down on him. Even if Luhan technically was older than him, Tao didn't really think that there was anything he could have learned from him and his questionable life choices.
"You said she's the most gorgeous girl you've seen in your entire life," Luhan said as if that was persuasion enough and almost made Tao laugh. Of course he knew what he had said. His opinion on that hadn't changed. Ahn Hari most definitely was one of the most beautiful people he had ever seen in real life. Even if he took a thousand pictures, he didn't think he could capture her beauty. But like a man dying of thirst in a desert he knew that it was futile to chase a fata morgana.
"She is," he nodded.
Luhan sighed again. "But you don't want to use the chance to visit her house and eat her home-made food?"
"No," Tao said and neatly folded the wrapping paper of his hot dog when he finished it. To him this was the end of the conversation.
He was about to stand up and leave, when Luhan said, "So basically you're giving up because you're scared." There was something about his tone that bothered Tao enough to stop and frown at him. Upon realizing that his attention was on him now, the corners of Luhan's mouth lifted in something like a cold smile when he continued, "I bet you texted her once and she never replied but rather than to try again, you probably cursed at your phone and told yourself that from now on you would have to set the bar lower because it's too embarrassing to try again. Deep down you probably think that you're not even worth as much as her ugliest toe."
When Tao's face twitched this time, even Luhan seemed to notice it because his smile grew a tiny bit worse. For a second Tao actually felt offended because he knew that Luhan technically wasn't wrong in saying that he was giving up. He was. Chasing someone like Ahn Hari was time-consuming and annoying and hopeless.
But before he could snap like most people Luhan tried to offend probably did, Tao reminded himself what kind of person Luhan actually was.
"I think you're confusing me with yourself," Tao said and something in Luhan's face made it obvious that he had hit a nerve. "At least I know when to give up. That's still better than to half-heartedly chase someone for eternity."
Luhan's expression darkened but he didn't say anything in reply. He just took another sip from his coffee and looked outside the window. It was the exact same expression he'd had in the train home after Kris had thrown them out that one morning after getting drunk in his house. Tao had woken up by himself in Kris' bed, Luhan had lazily zipped up his jeans in the living room while his hair had stuck up from his head like a bird's nest and Kris had not looked amused at all as he had stood in his kitchen like a tired bar owner at dawn.
"I have no more food, so I suggest you go back to where you came from," Kris had said while scratching his collarbone as if their mere presence caused him physical discomfort.
"Rude," Luhan had said and for a moment he had looked as though there was more he wanted to say. Tao had seen Luhan and Kris together a couple of times before that so he had known that look. It always followed all the stupid arguments and exchanges.
Luhan had insisted that Tao should take secret snapshots of Kris for his exhibition and had then spent at least fifteen minutes laughing about them when Kris had been around and annoyed. But later Tao had caught him staring at the picture they had eventually chosen like a guest at a funeral. As if he knew that the picture was all he had left to stare at.
During the dinner party, too, Luhan had at first got on everyone's nerves but the more he had drunk, the more he had eventually focussed his efforts on Kris. Still, everything he had said, had sounded like him circling around whatever he had really wanted to talk about.
That's what it always was like. For every step he took forward, he took two steps back. But he never fully stopped and Kris never went overboard enough to make him leave either.
Just to watch them made Tao sick sometimes. To him it made more sense to give up than to spend all his time and energy in preparation of something that was not going to happen.
But he had no right to judge either, so rather than to continue with the topic, he asked, "Why do you even want me there?"
Luhan shrugged. "Well, everybody else seems to bring high school students and you're the only high school student I know. I don't want to be accused of not following the latest trends."
Tao's face twitched again and this time Luhan laughed.
Tao honestly couldn't wait for the day when the word 'high school' was a thing of his past and not something people could use to describe his current state of being.

- jealousy -

Hari wanted to support Minseok with all her heart. His happiness was her happiness. Because they were friends. That's why she stole his phone to get his boyfriend's number and texted him behind Minseok's back. That's why she convinced Minkyung and Luhan to come to her house on a Friday night. That's why she actually tried to figure out how to cook along with her mother who was also usually preferred to dine out. If only Minseok was happy, she could think about her own happiness for once.
Minseok liking the Park Chanyeol boy really was all she needed to know to agree that it would be good for them to be together. That was what she had told herself.
But then Chanyeol was the first one to arrive on that Friday night. He had been the one who had made the biggest fuss about being busy. But while Luhan and Kris and Luhan's yoga instructor were still on their way and while Minkyung was waiting for Minseok to return from running, Chanyeol stood in front of Hari's apartment door in his messy high school uniform, completely out of breath. And now that there was no Luhan to distract him and no Kris to ignore him and no Minseok to throw him shy glances, she felt as if she saw him for the first time. Just his height was imposing and she unwillingly straightened her back, as if she had a chance to compete.
She knew that she wasn't the one to judge, but part of her wondered whether he really was the right one. The bandage on his forehead, the ruffled hair, the dirty duffel bag, the dusty guitar case, the crooked tie, the wrinkled shirt, the pants that were a little too wide and a little too short and the blazer with the sleeve that looked as if it had been ripped off and reattached in a wrong angle... All of it made him look so young, much younger than he had appeared from the distance that had usually been between them.
"I have to inform you that all my other guests told me that they're late," she said and tried to sound casual. He meanwhile looked like an oversized rabbit that had accidentally hopped into a snake den. It unnerved her and even she could tell that there was an edge to her voice when she jokingly added, "I mean, can you imagine? Minkyung says that Minseok went running rather than to get ready and with him being such a neat freak, he probably insists on taking a shower before they can leave. And she doesn't want to leave without him either. So who knows when they will be here? He's such an idiot sometimes."
Chanyeol gave her a strange look and she realized that she was babbling and that she hadn't technically invited him in yet. He still stood in the entrance with his worn-out sneakers.
"Anyway," she said and took a step backwards to show that he was allowed to enter. "You should meet my Mom. She likes Minseok for being such an idiot because she says he reminds her of a puppy she used to have as a kid. So I guess she's curious about you. You being the new puppy owner and everything." It was supposed to be a joke but the edge in her voice was still there. The wariness in his expression made it even more obvious.

Minseok wasn't a simple person. Behind each single dull expression and every tiny move there was an ocean of thoughts and worries and processes. It had taken her years to understand that much about him but she knew that none of the things he said or did that appeared very simple were anything but.
When he saved new contacts in his phone for example, he never gave them nicknames or added funny characters. Everyone was neatly saved under their full name, whether they were family members or friends or random acquaintances. The only exception were people who happened to have the same name and who had their place of origin in brackets behind their names. His system was so hilariously simplistic that Hari had often about it.
"What if you get into an accident and the people in the ambulance try to call your family but they don't know who's family and who's not?" she had laughed once and he had given her one of his usual thoughtful looks, only to then add the words 'emergency contact' in brackets behind the names of his parents and his brother.
The system only seemed simplistic because Minseok had probably spent hours wondering whether it would be strange for some people to have nicknames and for others to have none.
That's what Minseok was like. In his phone she was Ahn Hari and his siblings were Kim Minkyung and Kim Minkyoo and friends he hadn't talked to in years were still there as Yang Taekgi and Jang Kangho.
But when she had gone through the list of Parks, Park Chanyeol hadn't been there. At first she had thought that she had maybe remembered the name incorrectly, so she had simply gone through his complete lists of contacts alphabetically.
And then she had found him as just 'Chanyeol' and a pit had opened in her stomach. It couldn't be a simple mistake in Minseok's system. Minseok being Minseok meant that there had been a lot of thought gone into the choice to categorize one single person differently.
It was probably in that moment that something in her feelings changed. Something dark and disgusting crept up inside her, something she hadn't felt since that moment when Minseok had found another girlfriend right after she had broken up with him.

Luck wanted it that her mother immediately seemed to find a liking in Chanyeol and that he had a surprising ease in dealing with her. He helped her cut things in the kitchen and she asked him casual questions about his school life, as if he really was only a random high school student who happened to be in her house.
Shortly after that Luhan arrived with the grumpy-looking Kris and a girl with a friendly smile and very long legs in very tight jeans.
"This is Vicky, my yoga instructor," Luhan explained cheerfully while ditching his shoes in the entrance as if he owned the place. "I wanted to bring my friend in high school but he didn't want to come, so rather than to bring down the average age of our group, I figured I might as well bring it up. Vicky is much older than she looks."
Vicky, who held a paper bag and offered it to Hari, smiled graciously while slapping Luhan's arm. "I'm so sorry we're late," she said in slightly accented Korean. "These are cream puffs. I thought we can maybe have them after dinner."
"We had to make a detour to this bakery she likes. That's why we're late," Luhan explained.
"Oh, that's so sweet of you," Hari said in her best impression of a regular girl as she took the paper bag, which lightened up Vicky's smile and caused Luhan to raise his eyebrow at her. "Come on in. Chanyeol is already being interrogated by my Mom in the kitchen."
She unwillingly looked at Kris who stood behind the other two and who threw a glance in the direction of where her mother's and Chanyeol's faint voices could be heard. When he noticed her looking, their eyes met for a split second that made shivers run down her spine.
Just a day ago she had been sure that her idea to invite them all was brilliant but now that she had almost all the players in her house, she began to wonder whether she hadn't actually made a grave mistake.

It didn't exactly help her opinion of him when Kris evntually joined the group in the kitchen and when Chanyeol seemed almost relieved to have him there. Sure, out of them all, Kris was the only person he really knew but after everything she had heard until then she had not actually imagined them to be very close. What she wanted the least was for Minseok to open up to someone who was going to let him down.
Vicky helped Hari set up the table while Luhan pretended to help but looked more confused than anything. Her mother bustled around the kitchen and made Kris and Chanyeol prepare the dumplings she was going to fry. Hari hadn't told her how they were all related because spelled out it sounded even worse. Due to that however her mother couldn't know how awkward it was to help two guys who had dated before engage in an idle chat. Watching them Hari could easily picture what their relationship must have been like. As cold and unfriendly as Kris usually was around her, Luhan obviously wouldn't have been so obsessed with him if he had actually been a bad guy.

"You know, maybe you should actually try to get between them for once," Hari said when she noticed Luhan frowning into the direction of the kitchen as she placed two bowls with kimchi on the table in the living room. Chanyeol's laughter could be heard even from where he sat.
At that Vicky laughed as she folded tissues into roses although no one had asked her to do such a thing. She probably was one of those women whose whole existence was centered around the idea that one day they would be wives and mothers in pretty houses.
"He's terrified of being rejected," Vicky smiled knowingly and Luhan looked flustered. Which was strange for someone like him.
"Well," Luhan said and cleared his throat while nervously tapping his finger on the table. "I told you, didn't I? My friend and your friend's boyfriend did date and they did seem pretty close, or else I wouldn't even have known about it. My friend rarely ever gives enough of a about anyone for him to actually date them. Did you know that they met in a club and had and that Kris only found out that he's in high school afterwards? And yet he dated him although he normally hates anything related to high school."
Hari's eyes unwillingly widened. "," she said which caused Vickly to sharply in the air through her teeth. Hari honestly hated people who thought that swearing was beneath them. "You could have told me that in more detail before I invited you all over."
"I mean, you did see them kiss at Tao's exhibition, didn't you?" Luhan asked lamely, still tapping his finger.
She frowned and tried to think back to that day. In her memory it had already become a haze. It was odd how her brain filtered memories until she only remembered what she wanted to remember. "What I mainly saw that night was Chanyeol running after Minseok like a crazy person," she said. She had been sick with worry that day because she had never seen Minseok so spooked before. "And I also very clearly saw Kris ignoring them in his apartment while they both looked like all they wanted was to jump over the table and sob into each other's shoulders."
At that Luhan laughed and said, "That's a very specific thing you imagined there."
She rolled her eyes at him and secretly felt a little embarrassed for mentioning it because that was what she had seen in high school on that day when Minseok had broken his hand. He and Chanyeol had both been crying like the last two people on earth and it had broken her heart. That imagine had somehow stuck with her all this time.
"But anyway," Luhan said with a shrug. "I saw that, too, so that's what I'm waiting for right now. Once your friend turns up, he will get between the two in the kitchen and it will cost him a lot less effort than it would cost me." His tone made him sound almost pitiful and Vickly stretched out her arm across the table to gently touch his hand. She smiled at him warmly and said something in Chinese Hari didn't understand.
It was such a small gesture but Hari knew that she couldn't have done something like that for him. Even if she thought of them as friends, she probably wasn't on the same level as someone like Vicky. All she and Luhan could do was to edge each other on.

When the doorbell finally rang a little after that Hari a first felt very relieved because, unlike the others, the two remaining guests were people she actually knew well.
But then Minkyung and Minseok entered and like the caricature of twins both their gazes immediately turned to the guitar case in the entrance.
"Oh, is Chanyeol already here?" Minkyung asked happily as she took off her shoes. Behind her Minseok looked unusually impatient as his gaze wandered from Minkyung to the guitar case to Hari to Chanyeol's shoes to the living room door and back to the guitar case.
"He was the first to arrive actually," Hari said and tried hard not to show her distaste.
"Really?" Minkyung asked in surprise and turned around to Minseok. "Isn't the competition tomorrow? Jongdae said he was going to practice all night."
Minseok shrugged with a frown and Hari felt even more as if she was completely detached from the lives of those people she had considered close.

It satisfied her to see that at least she hadn't been the only person who was worried however. While Minkyung hurried of the the bathroom, Minseok at first walked past the kitchen and into the living room to nod hello to Luhan and Vicky. Then he walked back but didn't enter at first and simply watched Chanyeol and Kris who were in the middle of a conversation about music while piling up more and more dumplings.
"I don't know, I just don't think that people should be so narrow-minded. Oh, I only like ballads. Oh, I only like rock. That's just weird. There's no bad music," Chanyeol said and admittedly sounded more mature than Hari had given him credit for before.
"And that's why you lie about your age and go to clubs? For the music?" Kris scoffed.
Chanyeol laughed, "Sure. What else would I want in a club? I'm just an innocent high school student."
"Yeah, right," Kris said and sounded amused.
Minseok meanwhile timidly bit his lips as if he was unsure whether he was allowed to interrupt and Hari unwillingly smiled as she got closer to him. At least he still needed her.
"I know what you're thinking, buddy," she whispered and he shuddered when her breath tickled his ear. "Why are those two so tall?" she asked in a mimickry of his voice. "Why is that tall Chinese dude always so rude? When did I last go to a club? Why did I have to go running rather to be in time to prevent those two from talking about whatever they're talking about?"
Minseok shook his shoulder to force her away a little but smiled when he said, "Don't put words in my mouth."
He hadn't even raised his voice but Chanyeol suddenly spun around in a comical way.  "Sunbae," he exclaimed and everything else around them immediately faded into the background. For a second Chanyeol seemed about to just dash towards them but then he realized that his hands were covered in dumpling stuffing and he awkwardly looked at them. Then he let out a mock sigh and said, "Sunbae, you're late."
Minseok seemed about to reply when Minkyung behind him already said, "We were late because he fell into a ditch when he was out running and couldn't get out for a while. When he came home, he was completely covered in mud."
Minseok pulled a face while Minkyung shook her head in exasperation and Hari unwillingly burst out laughing. That was the kind of thing that constantly happened to him whenever he ran off into the mountains behind his house. The funniest part about all his encounters always was how embarrassed he looked when people confronted him with it.
"Oh," Chanyeol only said and the concerned tone of his voice almost caused Hari's laughter to get stuck in . "Did you get hurt?"
"He cut open his hand," Minkyung explained eargerly and took hold of Minseok's arm to show everyone in the room the huge bandaid on the palm of his left hand. He quickly freed it and awkwardly held it in his right hand.
"It's not a deep cut," he said to Chanyeol who looked at it as if he genuinely considered calling an ambulance.
"But it's a long cut," Minkyung added in an usually teasing tone and bumbed her shoulder into Minseok's. "At least this long." She spread apart her thumb and her index finger and held it out for Chanyeol to see. Minseok's palm wasn't even long enough for a cut that size but rather than to laugh at her exaggeration Chanyeol just frowned and then turned to the sink to quickly wash his hands. Oddly enough no one said a word as he dried them off, as if they were the audience of a theatre play and had to wait for the protagonist to recite his next lines. Hari stood in the door with her arms folded in front of her chest, Kris continued to prepare misshaped dumplings and Minkyung chuckled. When Chanyeol then walked towards Minseok and took his hand to inspect it, they all simply watched.
"You didn't cut it on a rusty nail or something, did you?" Chanyeol asked and this time Minseok, too, actually smiled.
"I think it was a rock," Minseok said.
"There are many rocks in the area around our house," Minkyung added helpfully which caused Minseok to grimace uncomfortably. Instinctively he was about to pull away his hand away so that he could flee the scene but Chanyeol simply held on.
"Maybe you should get yourself a head lamp or something," Chanyeol said and used his free hand to mimic the shape in front of his face.
For a second Minseok just looked at him quizzically but then he looked down on their hands with a tiny hint of a smile and said, "I'm not a cave excavator."
"Also," Minykung said and clearly enjoyed to play the role of the annoying sister. "He falls even on bright days. When we were little he and Minkyoo-oppa went out running all the time and Minseok-oppa almost always came back with scratches because he fell into bushes and down slopes. I guess that's why he liked baseball so much because there people expect you to fall, so it's not as embarrassing."
Hari laughed at the idea because she also remembered Minseok to constantly slide across the baseball field of their school but something about the whole situation was odd. She almost felt as if she was being suffocated and only slowly noticed the physical effect.
Minkyung had never talked to her that much, especially not in such an animated way. Like Minseok and the rest of their family she had always seemed very reserved. The easy explanation was that she and Chanyeol were classmates so they had probably always attended the same schools. But something told her that it wasn't simply that.
Hari wondered whether Chanyeol would have already met the infamous Minkyoo, too. It was strange to think that he would be that involved after such a short period of time because Minseok normally was awfully secretive. If she thought about, she herself had only met Minkyung months after breaking up with Minseok. And after all the disaster that had happened around the great Minkyoo, she had only actually seen him from up close when he already was a boring employee in a suit and with the tired expression of someone who had nothing to look forward to anymore.
For all she knew, Chanyeol could simply march into the Kim Family Sanctuary and steal the middle child without anyone there to stop him.
That was probably it.
That was what bothered her.
Park Chanyeol made it look so easy. Just the way he could make Minseok stand still in a kitchen full of people, just because their hands touched.
Park Chanyeol, the high school boy in the messy uniform, made Minseok react in ways that were unusual for him.
And the sad truth was that Hari had never had such an effect on him.
She felt a lump in when she laughingly took hold of Minkyung's shoulder and told her to help her put the food on the table in the living room. As she moved past Minseok and Chanyeol her eyes met those of Kris and she felt her smile die down on her lips. He knew.

"Can I borrow a cigarette?" she asked when she found Kris smoking outside the apartment block. Inside everyone was eating and chatting cheerfully but although they were all in her house, she didn't actually feel as if she was part of the whole scene.
Kris regarded her cooly and blew smoke into the chilly air. For a moment she thought that he was simply going to turn away and ignore her because that was what he usually did. But then he put his hand in the pocket of his jacket pocket and handed her his pack of cigarettes.
"Thanks," she said and as she lit herself a cigarette they stood next each other in silence. That he wouldn't start a conversation with her probably was obvious.
"So I have a question," she began when she couldn't bear it any longer and turned towards him.
He remained still like a statue but said, "Shoot."
"In all honesty, are you not the least bit jealous?" she asked and immediately felt ridiculous. She was like the y side character in a drama who wanted to be with the hero so badly that she tried to manipulate everyone around them. It never ended well for those characters. In the end the hero always either hated or pitied them.
"Jealous of what?" Kris asked as if it wasn't obvious.
"You know what I mean," she said. "The two lovebirds inside who act like characters in one of those stupid high school romance comics for girls."
Rather than to reply Kris let out a choked noise that told her that he tried not to laugh at her. She shuffled her feet on the dirty pavement in annoyance and he took another puff before he asked, "Are you?"
"Yeah," she immediately said and just that made her understand how stupid she had been all this time. For years she had believed that all she needed was for Minseok to find someone who meant as much to him as he had meant to her. But secretly she had always believed that he would never change either way. He would never be blindly in love. He would never become so silly and adorable and real. "I'm so jealous, I feel as if everything inside me is slowly rotting away. I had no idea that it would hurt so much."
It made her feel so small.
"Well," Kris said thoughtfully and looked up at the greyish evening sky as he blew even more smoke into it. "I'm not jealous of them," he said and sounded as if that answer had only just fully formed in his mind. As if he himself hadn't been completely sure until then. "But I know the feeling."
"Is that related to Luhan and whatever happened to you in high school?" Hari asked thoughtlessly and his calm expression turned into the constantly annoyed mask she usually saw on campus. She must have lost her sense of tact for that day. It had probably disappeared together with her sense of self-worth. "Did you tell him? That you were hurt?"
He scoffed. "Are you going to tell your friend? That you hate to see him with the person you know means more to him than you do?"
Rather than to immediately reply she blinked at him. This was not what she had expected him to say and his awkward expression made it obvious that he already regretted his words. All this time she had thought that he would understand Luhan as well as she did. To her Luhan was an open book, a sarcastic, sneaky, stupidly fragile open book.
"Wait a second," she slowly said as he averted his eyes and took a long puff. A wall of smoke left his lips as if he tried to disappear behind it, when she continued, "Is that what you think? Do you really think that Luhan-."
"Look," he interrupted her harshly and flicked his cigarette on the ground. "I'm not meddling with your life, am I? So I'm sure we can agree that you shouldn't meddle with mine either."
"What, I'm only trying to," she began but then stopped herself. She knew that he probably misunderstood something in his and Luhan's relationship and that she could maybe help, exactly because she wasn't really emotionally involved. But she also knew that he was right. She was meddling. And meddling had never got her anywhere.
She had constantly meddled with Minseok's life. For years she had tried to push him in the right direction, always cheering him on, always telling him that she was on his side, that she would forever be on his side. All that ever got her was that she ended up being alone while he was obliviously happy.
Luhan and her weren't even that close, so why did she have to help him, too? If he and Kris got back together thanks to her they would not exatly erect a statue in her honour. In the end she would only lose another friend to a relationship.
And anyway, who could guarantee that it would end well? For years Kris and Luhan had been in limbo because it hadn't worked out the first time around. Even if she tried to help, maybe she only made things worse. Maybe it was for the best if they all stayed the way they were now.
So rather than to argue she shrugged, "Know what? You're right. It's none of my business."
For a second he only frowned at her and she wondered whether he hadn't secretly hoped that she would meddle. Then he stomped on the still glimming cigarette and headed back inside without another word.

She didn't know when Minseok and Chanyeol had left or when Luhan and Kris had decided to do the dishes but it was already late when she found herself in the living room with her mother, Minkyung, Vicky and a pot of tea. All she knew was that she felt exhausted, strangely miserable and ready to take a long nap.
"Chanyeol and his friends are taking part in a music competition tomorrow," Minkyung said while holding the warm cup with tea to her lips and softly blowed on it.
"Is your boyfriend one of those friends?" Vicky asked and Hari looked at her in surprise. In return Minkyung only smiled shyly and glowed in a way that made Hari oddly envious.
She wanted to say something because it didn't feel right that a stranger would understand more about Minkyung than she did. But then she already heard Luhan's voice from the door. "Wait, is that why he and Minseok were sneaking off early?" he asked as he folded a wet dishcloth. "I thought they just wanted to make out somewhere in some bushes."
Behind him Kris put on a grimace as he walked past him and into the living room. Vicky said something in Chinese and held up her tea cup, probably to ask whether they also wanted some.
"Did he invite you?" Luhan asked Kris who ignored him and muttered something to Vicky. Luhan looked at him for a second as if he hoped for an answer and then turned towards Minkyung. "What kind of music?"
"What kind of music do you think? Didn't you see the guitar?" Hari asked.
"Last time I checked you could do plenty of music with a guitar," Luhan said meekly and sat down next to Vicky as she poured him a cup of tea.
"Rock music," Minkyung answered with a proud grin. "They're doing rock music. And the entrance is free, so anyone can go see it. They're really good."
Hari didn't want to go. After an evening of standing at the sidelines she really didn't want to stand by and watch Minseok admire his boyfriend in a situation that was even less in her favour. She could easily picture how potentially awkward it would be if Park Chanyeol really was that good at playing the guitar.
But then Luhan said, "I think we should all go and cheer them on since we're their support group and everything."
Before she could refuse, she noticed the side glance Kris threw her. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought of it as almost concerned and something about that rubbed her the wrong way.
So she said, "I mean, I'm free in the afternoon so if it doesn't take too long I might as well go."
And as Minkyung and Luhan smiled and Kris scowled, she knew that she would regret it.

- the swings -

"Hari-noona's Mom told me that your brother is handsome," Chanyeol said as he swung forward on the rusty swing and in surprise Minseok nearly fell off the climbing frame he was climbling like a monkey.
Chanyeol tried not to laugh when he continued, "She said that when she saw him for the first time she told her daughter that she had wasted her time on you and that she should have gone for your brother right from the start."
Minseok sounded earnestly betrayed when he turned around halfway to the top as if climbing took no effort at all and asked, "She said that?"
Chanyeol surpressed a grin when he shrugged, "Those maybe weren't her exact words but... yes. Pretty much." As he swung back, a screeching noise filled the neighbourhood. "But I'm 60% sure that she was joking."
Minseok continued to climb and didn't even look the least bit tired as he sat down on the top like the king of the world. "My brother is tall," he said as if that was explanation enough. He and Hari were about the same height, so to her mother that probably was a key factor.
"So I heard," Chanyeol said and leaned back as he swung forward so that it looked as if his feet were touching the dark sky. Minseok didn't reply and the evening was filled with nothing but the sound of the swing.
"Also, I noticed something today," Chanyeol said while Minseok pulled the collar of his jacket a little higher. His feet were idly dangling down the metal frame. "The people around you, they all tend to be, you know..." There were hundreds of words circling around his head but none really matched completely. Everyone around Minseok had one thing in common but it was hard to put into words.
"Obnoxious?" Minseok asked helpfully with such an expressionless face and in such a flat tone that Chanyeol at first thought he had misheard him.
Minseok's face swung by three times until Chanyeol laughed, "So you noticed that, too."
There was a tiny hint of a mischievous smile on his lips when Minseok scanned the ground and said, "They're around me all the time."
"Makes sense," Chanyeol said as he swung backwards so for that for a moment all he saw were his knees and the dusty ground below him. Something about that image that felt strange so that when he swung forward and saw the brownish sky, he stopped moving. His knees were bent, the swing slowed down and something crept up to him that he had managed to ignore since he had run to Hari's house after school.
When he finally stopped, Minseok jumped off the climbing frame and landed in a way that looked less like a professional gymnast and more like a cat. For a moment Chanyeol wondered whether Minseok only fell so much, because he moved around so much. Who knew what he had done to end up in a ditch? Maybe he had backflipped down the road.
The thought unwillingly made him laugh but then he felt stupid for trying to avoid something serious by thinking of something absurd.
"So I have something to confess," he said and there was a lump in his throat when Minseok turned to look at him. There was something about the way Minseok sometimes quietly gave him his complete attention that always got to him. That also was why he had become so obsessed two years earlier. It was hard to make up a lie on the spot when the person he talked to actually seemed to care.
When Minseok sat down on the swing next to his with a curious expression, Chanyeol tried to sound light-hearted when he said, "To be honest, I'm a little envious of you for having all those obnoxious people around you."
In return Minseok blinked at him as if he had trouble determining whether it was a joke or not. His was the genuine reaction of someone who had no idea how lucky he was.
"I'm serious," Chanyeol unwillingly laughed and Minseok frowned, as if still not convinced.
"Why?" Minseok asked.
Chanyeol wasn't sure what to say. The answer was screaming in his mind like a siren but the words wouldn't come and when he felt his smile dying down on his face, he pushed himself off the ground and swung backwards.
"They're all nice to me," he said and Minseok's imcomprehensive expression swung by. "They know who I am but they're still all trying to be nice to me. They invite me to dinner and go to the movies with me just so that I have a chance to see you and they tell me stuff about you and..." Suddenly the cold of the budding night began to seep into his pores as his swung pushed him into it. "And they're not doing that for me but for you. Because they still like you for being you. And I just, I just wish..."
He didn't look but saw that Minseok stood up from the swing in the corner of his eye. Suddenly he felt ashamed for having mentioned it at all. It was stupid. His envy was stupid but the more he thought about it, the more he felt as if the air was squeezed out of his lungs as the world moved past him more and more quickly.
"Stop," he heard Minseok say quietly and for a moment he had the urge to just push forward, as if he had a chance to escape. But then he simply sat still and hunched forward to wait for the world to stop moving. When he was slow enough, Minseok eventually moved in front of him and took hold of the chains of the swing to finally make him stop.
"The people around me, they..." Minseok began and searched his gaze. There it was again, that strange sincerity.
"This is awkward," Chanyeol interrupted him with a half-hearted grin. "Me having to look up to you."
Minseok looked down on him with an unreadable expression and then sighed as he crouched down in front of him and rested his arms on Chanyeol's knees.
"Sorry," Chanyeol said. "I'm being stupid."
Minseok didn't reply and there was something oddly comforting in his silence. Everything took longer with him because every moment was dragged out and somehow that was nice. There was no need for quick explanations and no room for hurried lies.
"I'm going to lose my best friend tomorrow after the competition," Chanyeol eventually said and let go of the chains. He had held onto them of so long that his fingers felt like stiff claws. Minseok meanwhile looked up to him sadly. "We have been friends for so long, I barely have any memories without him. He was my first real friend. But after tomorrow he won't talk to me again because he realized that I'm different and now we can't be friends any longer."
Minseok bit his lips and cast down his eyes.
"He was the one who wanted to marry my sister, you know," Chanyeol added and choked out a laugh. It suddenly felt so absurd. All his memories of Baekhyun and Yura and the distance that now was between them. "And my sister, she... I told her and she acts as if I'm an imposter who killed her brother. She and my best friend were always the people I trusted the most, so if not even they accept me the way I am..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Part of him still hoped that it wasn't real, that it couldn't be real, that this wasn't the end of his life as he knew it.
Minseok sighed again and put his forehead on Chanyeol's knees. "Sorry," he quietly said.
"It has nothing to do with you," Chanyeol said and realized too late that he probably sounded bitter. His finger still felt stiff when he nimbly touched the crown of Minseok's head. There were dark roots at the base of his dyed hair and for a moment Chanyeol had to think of summer and baseball and the stuffy air of the club room. It didn't make all the bad things go away but he immediately felt a little lighter. Not everything in his life went wrong. "You're not the cause. This would have happened sooner or later anyway," he said. "You're what makes it bearable."
"Hm," Minseok mumbled into his knees and Chanyeol wondered whether he simply dismissed his words.
For a moment none of them said a word and when Minseok eventually moved, Chanyeol let go of his hair in reflex. Minseok let out a strange noise and then let himself fall back until he sat down on the ground. When he stretched out his legs in pain, Chanyeol laughed, "I thought you baseball players all can spend hours squatting down."
"I wasn't a catcher, so I could only run for hours," Minseok simply said as he massaged his legs. "And I'm getting old."
"Right," Chanyeol nodded with a grin. "So I'm sure you groan every time you sit down, too?"
Minseok looked up to him with a smile but as their eyes locked, playfulness was replaced by thoughtfulness.
"The people around me," Minseok began once more and made a pause, as if he feared to be interrupted again. This time Chanyeol waited patiently.
"The people around me are obnoxious," Minseok said. "So they wouldn't be nice to someone unless they actually like that someone."
At first Chanyeol wanted to crack a joke again. It would have been easy to turn the situation into a joke. But then he said, "Thank you."
Minseok gave him a tiny smile before he averted his eyes and slowly stood up.
Chanyeol watched him pat the sand off his pants before he asked, "You'll be there tomorrow, right?" He sounded a lot more anxious than intended, so he added, "I mean, you're not going to go running and end up in another ditch, are you? Because that would be pretty stupid."
Minseok grimaced. "I didn't try to end up in a ditch."
Chanyeol stretched out his arm and opened his palm which caused Minseok to frown at him. When Chanyeol then wrinkled his nose in annoyance and nodded at Minseok's bandaid-covered hand, Minseok looked at him curiously but eventually got a little closer and put it in his. It was the left hand. The broken hand. The worrisome hand.
"So can you not go running and not get hurt and be there to witness the best untalented high school band you will have seen in your entire life?" Chanyeol asked and accidentally squeezed Minseok's hand in a way that made him wince. "Ah, sorry." He tried to let go but Minseok held on.
"Why untalented?" Minseok asked and Chanyeol wasn't sure whether he was trying to be a tease on purpose.
"Well," he said and squinted his eyes at Minseok's suspiciously blank expression. "We're not untalented per se, but I'm the only member left in the club who can actually play rock instruments. Everyone else graduated already so now we have a dancer and ballad singers and me."
"And you're the talented one," Minseok concluded in an even tone that sounded almost mocking for his standards.
"Don't avoid my question, sunbaenim! Will you be there?" Chanyeol asked again and this time Minseok definitely smiled teasingly. Before he could reply however, Chanyeol continued, "And don't say, 'Maybe' or 'Who knows' or something stupid like that. I'm serious. If you're not there, I swear I'll make you regret it."
His last words made Minseok laugh which put Chanyeol so off guard that he couldn't even pretend to be offended. Minseok laughing was one of those sounds that were impossible to describe. It was like witnessing a wonder happening. Like moments that felt surreal in their perfection. Like a rainbow on a rainy day and lightning on a sunny day and just by trying to find words for it, he took away some of its spell.
"I'll be there," Minseok laughed and Chanyeol was too distracted by his bright expression to be able to do anything but stare at him in awe.

-  name-calling -

"What do you want me to say, noona? Do you honestly believe I need your approval?" her brother snapped and protectively moved further in front of the wide-eyed boy so that Yura couldn't do anything to him. As if she was a wild boar in attack mode. "I mean, did I ever ask any of your boyfriends to prove themselves to me? I never told you not to see someone just because I thought that they weren't good enough for you, did I? It's your life and this is mine. I'm the one who has to choose, not you. You have no right to tell me that I'm ruining my life just because I make my own decisions."
Just the fact that he would raise his voice at her made her shut up in dumbfoundedness. She tried to think back to the last time he had spoken to her like that and but nothing came to mind. Because he normally didn't talk back. He often ignored her or refused to answer or became snarky. They argued about meaningless things like whose turn it was to put up the laundry or what to watch on TV when their father wasn't home. But in the end her brother almost always listened because she was the older one so naturally she was right. That was what they had both grown up to believe.
But this was different.
And suddenly a tiny voice at the back of her mind asked whether she wasn't actually in the wrong this time.

She frankly had had a terrible day so when she had walked home from the station late in the evening she had already been in a bad mood.
In the morning someone had spilt coffee over her light grey jeans.
At lunch her friend Hwajung had told her in way too much detail how she had made out with her boyfriend's best friend to get back at him for hooking up with some girl at a party. Hwajung had talked so much that Yura hadn't even been able to slip in the question on why she still dated him if he was so awful.
After lunch then, her professor had critized the bits of her graduate thesis she had given him to have a look at. "This reads like an article in a magazine for teenage girls and not like a scientific paper," he had said. "I suggest you rewrite it." It had taken her all her might to nod and smile and not throw the sheets at him. He hated female students, that's what it was. Had she been a guy, she could have handed in a sheet with nothing but a doodled on it and he would not have found a single issue with that.
After that it had only become worse. Hwajung had pretended to listen to Yura's worries but had clearly only cared about her own, and the cute guy at the coffee shop Yura had a crush on had laughed at her upon noticing the huge coffee stain on her jeans she had already forgotten about at that point. "You're not two-timing, are you?" he had grinned and she had only realized afterwards that by paying for her americano without another word she had missed out on a chance to flirt. Instead she had probably only seemed completely dense.
In short: Her day had been the worst.
So when she had seen her brother with his guitar case and the boy from the hospital walk around together, something in her brain had short-circuited. Normally she would have pretended not to see them. Maybe she would have tried to talk Chanyeol afterwards but she wouldn't have made a scene, not when the whole neighbourhood could listen to them. She would have kept it cool.
But this time she had been in a foul mood so she had run up to them and had yelled like a crazy person. "Are you completely out of your mind? Did your brain finally combust? What did you bring him here for?"
Anyone listening would have probably thought that her family and the boy's family were in a deadly feud. It had been ridiculous. She had been ridiculous and when the boy had stared at her as if she was the incarnated devil, she had unwillingly gone too far when she had spat, "Who the hell are you anyway? What makes you think that you're so great that you can waltz into our lives and-."
It was then that her brother had interrupted her. "Noona, stop," he had said coldly and had taken the first step between her and the boy.
"Park Chanyeol," she had said threateningly and for a moment he had flinched the way he had done throughout his whole life. "What are you even doing? Just look at him." She had nodded at the horrified boy hiding behind her brother's back. "Is that really the kind of person you want to ruin your whole life for?"
And then her brother had snapped and all the tension of the last weeks finally broke loose.
Her brother was becoming a different person and she had believed that it was for the worst.
But maybe he was simply growing up to become someone she had not expected. Maybe it wasn't her turn to judge.

She could tell that he was serious and that blind insults would only fuel his anger.
"Did you have dinner?" she asked and tried to keep her voice even and to not glare at the boy.
"We had dinner at a friend's house," her brother said in a similarly strained voice, as if he was ready to bite at any given moment.
For a second she wondered how well his brother and the boy actually knew each other for them to have common friend and whether those friends knew their relationship status. How long had this been going on? She also worried a little about who clearly must have been an alibi right from the start. But rather than to argue, she noted, "So you're on your way home from there."
Her brother nodded.
"Does he live close-by?" she asked.
"Not exactly," he said. Behind him the boy bit his lips with a troubled expression. For a tiny moment her eyes met his and he immediately looked down like one of those graciously shy daughters of noblemen in period dramas on TV. She didn't know why that was the first thought that came to her mind but as her brother clearly attempted to defend the boy's honour, Yura couldn't really shake that image either.
"Did you invite him over?" she asked and her brother raised his eyebrows at her. "It's Friday night, " she added and his expression made it clear that he had not idea what she was implying. She herself wasn't completely sure either. "I'm sure Mom and Dad are still up."
He frowned at her for a split second but then his eyes widened. She wasn't sure what it was that appeared in his eyes but it did look like numb shock.
"So you could invite him over," she said. "And introduce him to them and tell them what you just told me."
It was a dare. The ultimate dare.
And to her surprise he didn't step back. She could almost see the resoluteness budding in him and she hated to admit that her brother had grown up.
But before he could live up to it, the boy behind him took a step to the side and said, "I should go."

"He ran," Yura said when she and her brother slowly walked back to their house with him lagging behind a little. The boy had literally run off. After a few tentative steps away from them he had eventually dashed off like either a professional sprinter or a thief. He had not even turned around when her brother had yelled, "The competition starts at 2 p.m., sunbae! Don't forget!"
Rather than to reply to her, her brother only let out a grunt which caused her to turn around to him and wait until he caught up to her.
"Chanyeol, I'm not saying that he has to prove himself but he literally ran away when I tried to give him a chance," she said.
Unlike before, he didn't get angry. With the boy gone, the fight had left him, too, and she thought that he was back to the way he had always been. Obedient on the surface.
"So imagine this," he eventually began after a moment. "You're dating a guy and he tells you that his sister and his best friend hate you although they don't even know you. And then you meet his sister and she literally screams at you. Would you like to see his parents right after that?" He asked it in a calm voice but she knew that she was only words away from another argument. This time he probably wasn't going to let anything slide.
She sighed and stared at the rough ground below her as they silently walked along the familiar streets. Then, she said, "Probably not."
"Exactly," her brother nodded.
She wanted to ask whether the boy's parents knew about them but then didn't want to face the possibility that they did and were not even bothered by it. The boy's sister probaby knew or else they wouldn't have been at the hospital together. Yura had never heard about a friend called Minkyung, so she doubted that she and Chanyeol were close. Which meant that her trying to help him by calling her brother probably meant that she supported them.
Suddenly Yura felt stupid. She had always believed herself to be the most supportive sister in the world but the more she thought about it, the less she understood what that even meant. Was it better to accept everything her brother did or to force him into the direction she saw fit? In the end she had probably always done the latter. But who was she to tell him what was right and what was wrong when she had walked around with a coffee stain on her jeans?
"You told Baekhyun?" she then asked when it occurred to her that her brother had mentioned two people who hated the boy.
By the way her brother's expression immediately darkened even further she could tell that she really only was half the problem after all.
"No," he said. "He figured it out himself. He's not stupid."
For a split second she was about to crack a joke. Baekhyun being stupid had been a running gag among her family members since the first time he had stepped foot into their house back when Chanyeol had still been a fat little boy. But this wasn't the right moment, so she asked, "How did he take it?"
Chanyeol shrugged. "Badly."
"Right," Yura said and hated the dull satisfaction at the realisation that she wasn't the only person who had a hard time dealing with her brother and his situation.
There were dozens of questions on her mind. She wondered about Boyoung and the bullying and the band competition and the dinner at a supposed friend's house but she knew that her brother probably wouldn't be to be too eager to talk about any of those things.
They were close to the entrance of their apartment block and she knew that once they were inside, he would immediately hide in his room and play sad guitar music until dawn. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to understand because she didn't. It made no sense to her that her brother would even risk to lose his stupid best friend for a boy who ran.
But maybe she had simply asked the wrong questions right from the start.
"What's his name anyway?" she asked and was already a couple of steps in front of Chanyeol when she noticed that he had stopped. He gave her a strangely measuring look. "I only just realized that you always called him 'sunbae'. And at the hospital he was introduced as 'Minkyung's brother'. I don't think anyone ever mentioned his name," she shrugged.
At first she thought that he wasn't going to answer because he drew down his brows as if she had offended him. But then said, "Minseok," in a low voice. "His name is Minseok."
"And he's older than you but younger than me?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said and almost made it sound like a question, as if he wasn't sure what she tried to imply.
"So I don't have to be polite to him but he to me," she noted and nodded as she walked inside. "That's good. If I'm the evil in-law, I at least want that advantage."
She started climbling the stairs when she heard her brother blew out air through his nose in a toneless laugh.

- after the breakup -

"I don't think you should go there," Jungyoon said a day before the competition when Boyoung asked her whether the band's starting time had changed. She knew that Jungyoon would know. As little as she pretended to care about Baekhyun and the rest of the group, Boyoung knew better. Jungyoon would be there, even if she wasn't going to cheer.
"I won't do anything stupid," Boyoung said and held onto the hem of her blazer to stop herself from fidgeting with her sleeves when she noticed Jungyoon frowning at her hands. "Unni, if you're worried that I'll throw myself at Chanyeol..." she began and Jungyoon sighed.
"That's not it," Jungyoon said with a strange grimace. "You're like a saint so I'm sure you won't do anything stupid."
Boyoung tried to protest when Jungyoon her lips uncomfortably and said, "Look, don't get me wrong. Obviously you can do what you want and I think it's cute that you want to support them and everything but honestly? You're the most naive person I know and if you go there, I'm afraid you might see something you're not ready to see."
Boyoung looked at her in confusion. She searched Jungyoon's gaze and by the way Jungyoon stubbornly stared out of the window behind her, she could tell that there was something she had missed.
"You mean, Chanyeol's...?" Boyoung asked and could tell that Jungyoon knew what she meant by the heavy sigh she let out. Of course. The one Chanyeol had broken up with her for. That other girl. It would only make sense for her to be there.
"Just trust me on this one," Jungyoon said and sounded almost pleading.
Boyoung wondered how Jungyoon would even know about it and as she thought about it, she felt something like cold mist wash over her. In the end she had maybe been the only one not to know. Maybe it had been obvious to everyone but her.
"But," she began and had to look down because she felt a sting in her eyes. She didn't want to cry again. "They're my friends. I've supported them since I started high school and I always wanted them to play in front of a big crowd. I can't miss that."
When she finally looked up, Jungyoon's expression was filled with pity.

Boyoung loved music although she didn't play it herself. She didn't want to be a musician herself, so in the end all the people who had ever called her a groupie probably were right. She didn't make music but she loved to be around people who did. Music was like magic. Music coudn't be seen, it couldn't be touched and although it could technically be written down, words and symbols were never enough to actually describe it. Music could only be heard, it could be felt, and it could stir things in her.
Musicians were magicians. They managed to create emotions and ever since she had been a little child, she had always looked up to them in awe.
No matter what the people around her said, following the band club had never been about trying to look cool or to be edgy, or about finding a boyfriend. She could have happily lived watching them from a distance forever. But then Lay noticed her and told her that she could come over any time.
"There are so many people in that room every day, one person more or less won't make much of a difference," he had smiled. Back then the club had actually consisted of so many members that not everyone always got a chance to play on a stage.
She had liked Lay right from the start but even then she had never really set her eyes on anyone romantically. Everyone was nice to her and everyone had fun just messing around with music and over the months she had fallen in love with them all. She loved everything about the club. She loved the musky smell of the room and the constant noise and the arguments and the friendship between all the members. Every time they sat down and seriously played a song, her heart burst and she thought that she would never be happier than during those moments.

Then, over half the members of the club had graduated and things had immediately changed. It probably was mean to think that way but when she had entered the club room on the first day of the new school year, she had wondered whether there was any future to them because the members who had been left had always been the ones who had been pushed along by the older ones. Kyungsoo and Baekhyun and Jongdae could all sing beautifully but apart from the occasional piano solo by either Baekhyun or Jongdae, singing was all the three had ever done.
And then Chanyeol had barged into the room with his guitar and it had felt as if he brought the spring with him.
She had never really thought much about Chanyeol in her first year of high school. It wasn't so much that she hadn't liked him but there had always been something about him that felt a little distant. Chanyeol was like a mountain in that his head was constantly in the clouds. Chanyeol was the kind of person who either talked nonsense or said nothing at all as he was immersed in playing his guitar. He was both approachable and hard to read and in that first year she had preferred to talk to Lay and some of the others who had been happy to explain things to her. They had all acted like older brothers but among them Chanyeol had almost been like a stepbrother who didn't really care whether or nor she was there.
Before, it had always been Lay who had held the club together. With him gone, that duty had immediately become Chanyeol's and as their supporter Boyoung had tried to help him. And somehow, as she had tried to cheer him up and had helped him convince Jongdae to play the bass and Mr Lee, the club advisor, to buy them a drum kit, she had fallen hard. Because from up close she could tell that Chanyeol was not actually filled with nonsense. If he was a mountain, he was a mountain filled with gold.

It was her who had initiated everything between them. She had been the one to kiss his cheek one afternoon after they had cleaned out the boxes with old scores when everyone else had already gone home. She had asked him if he maybe wanted to go out with her when he had stared at her like a nervous deer. She had always been the one to call and to take his hand. Normally she wasn't that brave but something about him had always felt so reluctant that she had naturally wanted to hold onto him.
In hindsight she maybe should have known that, had he really cared about her the way a boyfriend was supposed to care about his girlfriend, their relationship would have been different. But she had been so blindly in love with him that she had ignored all the signs.

Still, no matter what, even if they could not even be friends any longer, she didn't think she would ever not like him. She would always support him. She would always support the band.
So she knew that she wouldn't be able to live with herself knowing that they took part in a competition and that she wasn't there to cheer for them.
"I'll go with you," Jungyoon said and Boyoung smiled because she knew that Jungyoon would have gone either way. Just like her she already was under that spell.

When they entered the hall the competition was held in, Boyoung immediately felt that buzzing excitement she felt every time before the band played. Only this time it was a thousand time magnified. There were hundreds of people who loudly chatted and who held banners. Boyoung should have brought their own banner but Jungyoon had told her that banners were embarrassing, so Boyoung had given in. Usually she had always at least brought a sign but this time she simply had to scream a little louder.
"Do you think they're already backstage?" she asked excitedly when she craned her neck to see whether there were any people she knew around.
"Probably," Jungyoon shrugged and then hurriedly added. "And I'm pretty sure we shouldn't go there and find out."
"We should go further to the front," Boyoung said and pulled at Jungyoon sleeve to make her follow. She chose to ignore Jungyoon's comment because normally she actually would have tried to get backstage. She would have brought the boys juice and told them that she was sure they would do great. But she wasn't so stupid not to understand that this time they were off limits.
Jungyoon sighed in annoyance and Boyoung happily linked their arms with a smile. Jungyoon simply rolled her eyes at her but didn't push her away either.
"Come on, unni," Boyoung laughed. "We should be so close that Baekhyun-oppa can actually tell you're here. I'm sure he'll fall off the stage in surprise."
Jungyoon scoffed but when Boyoung lightly bumped her head into hers, she could tell that Jungyoon was not actually opposed to the idea. Jungyoon was all about pretense and for a second Boyoung felt a sting in her heart. Without pretenses everything could have been so much easier. Jungyoon pretended not to like Baekhyun. Chanyeol had pretended to like Boyoung. In the end all pretenses did was to cause hurt.
She tried to swallow her discomfort before Jungyoon could take note of it and turned her gaze around. It was then that she saw Chanyeol's sister Yura who talked to a boy who was half a head shorter than her. Boyoung unwillingly laughed. There were few boys who didn't look like miniatures next to Yura.
"Yura-unni," she yelled happily and Yura turned her head into her direction but clearly couldn't make out where the voice had come from.
"Over here," Boyoung yelled and waved her free hand while pulling Jungyoon into her direction.
When Yura saw her, she at first smiled the way she always did. But then something odd happened and her eyes widened, while the smile froze in her face. Boyoung unwillingly stopped. For a split second Yura glanced at the boy next to her who frowned at her and then at a group of people behind him. Boyoung automatically followed her gaze. There was a girl she thought she had seen in school before and a boy with bright hair and another girl with very long hair.
Boyoung wasn't sure what it was she saw but when Jungyoon forcefully dragged her away, panic washed over her.
"Let's go to the front before it gets too crowded," Jungyoon said and Boyoung threw another glance back. It must have been one of them. The girl. Chanyeol's sister would have known. It must have either been the one from school who looked like a gentle classic painting or the one with the long hair who was as beautiful as an actress. Compared to them Boyoung probably looked like a child.
"You said you won't do anything stupid," Jungyoon hissed in a way that immediately confirmed Boyoung's suspicion.
"Who...?" Boyoung asked.
Jungyoon didn't look at her when they finally stopped in the middle of the crowd close to the stage and the way she continued to fimly hold onto Boyoung arm made it clear how serious she was when she said, "Don't go there. Don't talk to the people over there. There are things you don't want to know."
Boyoung bit her lips and then finally nodded, "Okay."
But she couldn't just ignore it. She felt completely numb and even when the competition started and the jury assembled and the first band started, she couldn't concentrate. It felt as if hell had opened behind her and the flames flicked at her back but she was not allowed to look. The moment she looked, she was going to fall into a burning abyss.

It was only when the band, her band, was called on stage that she could focus again. Just to see them brought back that familiar feeling she loved so much.
Jongin looked as if he couldn't be bothered less but she could tell how nervous he was as he sat down behind the drum kit. His posture was upright and elegant and not at all like that of a musician who was confident in what he did.
"Kim Jongin, you'll do great!" she yelled and he nervously looked into her direction but she didn't think that he could see her. Still, even if the corner of his mouth lifted only a little, she was sure that he had heard her.
Jongdae meanwhile arranged the position of the mic and tuned his bass with ease as if he had never done anything else in his whole life. Baekhyun threw him a skeptical glance as he stood behind the keyboard and flexed his fingers. He had no mic on his own and Boyoung wondered why. Normally Baekhyun tended to argue his way into getting more singing parts and during their weeks of preparations it had always seemed clear that they would split the song. For a moment Baekhyun then looked into the direction of Chanyeol who had his back turned to the crowd and she could swear that she saw sadness in his eyes. When Chanyeol turned to the side and said something to Jongin, Baekhyun quickly looked down and shook his head with a dark expression.
Jongin looked annoyed while Chanyeol probably cracked a joke but he eventually seemed to loosen up a little. Jongdae meanwhile laughed but stopped when he noticed Baekhyun. Chanyeol fully turned around and scanned the audience.
Something must have happened, something she didn't know about.
When Chanyeol's gaze lingered on a spot behind her, she again had to fight the urge to spin around. She knew what group of people stood there and by his sheepish expression she could tell that he did not simply stare at his sister.
"Baekhyun, stop looking like an ," Jungyoon yelled. "If you don't win this thing, you can forget about tomorrow." Boyoung slapped her arm with a laugh that seemed to be stuck in . At first she didn't think that Baekhyun had heard them but then he grinned at them. He blew a kiss into Jungyoon's direction and she pretended to throw up in return which consequently caught Jongdae's attention. He cracked up which in return caused Chanyeol to follow his gaze.
His eyes met Boyoung's and for a second he froze.
And then they were told to begin and all the nervousness and all the hidden animosities were immediately forgotten. That was the beauty of music. Jongin kept the rhythm, Baekhyun's finger flowed over the keys and Jongdae's voice filled the hall. But all Boyoung saw was Chanyeol being the way she liked him the most and her heart beat so loudly, she was sure that everyone around her could heard it.

She had promised not to do anything stupid and she had honestly meant it. She never wanted to push herself onto someone who didn't want her in return. But then the band, her band, her gang of noisy boys, got an honorary mention and she was euphoric and Jungyoon left her behind to look for Baekhyun.
She hadn't meant to do anything stupid but then she stood in front of Chanyeol in the crowd that was slowly scattering apart  and felt like a nervous girl trying to confess to her crush.
"You were great," she said earnestly and her heart continued to race. "I mean, I knew you were great but..."
"Thank you," he said with a guilty smile.
"I really want to hug you right now," she said and immediately bit her tongue. This was probably exactly what Jungyoon had been worried about. Her not being able to let go. The way Chanyeol looked behind her, probably afraid that his girlfriend could see them, told her how pathetic she must have looked to him.
"Boyoung-ah..." he said when he noticed the tears budding in her eyes. She tried to smile them away but her emotions were just too much to bear. This was not just about her being unable to let go of a boyfriend. Chanyeol had always been more than just a boyfriend. He and her and everyone else had been part of this great things that had filled her life with happiness, even if it had only been for a short while.
"Sorry, I..." she hurriedly began and wiped one tear away but another immediately took its place. "It's just... I'm proud of you."
He sighed and then bit his lips and at first she thought that he would just leave her behind. He had already set their boundaries and she had overstepped them, so it would have been his right to leave. But instead he took a step forward and pulled her into his chest. When she threw his arms around him and held onto his back the tears wouldn't stop but she was immediately filled with warmth.
"We didn't win though," he said into her hair. "What would you do if we actually had?"
She laughed and realized that she probably spread tears and snot and spit all over his shirt when she said, "I probably would have fainted."
"That makes it sound like you didn't expect us to win," he said jokingly.
"To me you won," she whispered and he patted her head with a laugh.
"You are our one and only fan after all," he said and something about his tone made it obvious that there now was a distance between them that would always be there. Even if he held her now, even if he let her be so close, they were back to the way they bad been before she had kissed him. She was just a random person who happened to be around him.
"We probably shouldn't hug right now, should we?" she said and moved back a little so that she could look up at his face. "She's here, isn't she?"
He looked at her curiously and when he realized what she meant he looked down awkwardly. She let go of his back, he let go of her shoulder and the air between them felt stuffy as she wiped her burning face.
"Who is it?" she asked although she knew that it made her sound stupid and jealous. "Is she kind? Does she...?"
Chanyeol seemed torn and all she wanted was to tell him that he didn't have to worry about her. She genuinely wanted him to be happy. She only wanted to make sure that the new girl would take care of him, that it was someone who understood him. But she didn't know how to say it without sounding ridiculous.
His bit his lips when he looked behind her and searched the crowd. When his eyes finally settled on a spot, his expression softened a little, as if he saw something that immediately calmed him down. "There's something..." he slowly began and she fought the urge to spin around to see what he saw. "There's something I'm not sure you want to know."
She frowned at him.
"That's what Jungyoon-unni also said." She looked down at the ground and felt something like madness boiling inside her. It was only a tiny flame but it bothered her. "Do I look like I'm so weak?" To them she probably appeared to be just an idiot girl who was incapable to accept that Chanyeol would chose someone prettier than her or smarter than her, someone she couldn't be.
"No," he hurriedly said. "That's not... It's just... I don't want you to hate me even more."
"I don't hate you," she said and searched his gaze. He looked oddly vulnerable and she didn't understand why. "No matter what, I would never hate you," she whispered.
He looked at her as if he wasn't sure whether he could trust her. After a moment of thought he then quietly said, "The one next to my sister..."
She took a deep breath and tried to give him a reassuring glance when she turned around. Yura immediately stood out in the crowd but there was no one next to her. The girl from their school was gone and the beautiful girl was a little further away with the boy with the bright hair. The only person close to Yura was the boy she had talked to before.
"But there isn't...?" she began and suddenly it hit her. It became even more obvious when Yura noticed her looking and first frowned, only to then stare at her brother with wide eyes when she realized that Boyoung had seen the boy.
"He...?" she asked and her voice sounded hollow.
"He," Chanyeol said in a barely audibe voice.
And then everything around her turned black.

- they never knew (after the competition) -

Jongdae had never meant to become involved. Other people's relationships were their business, not his.
But as he watched Baekyhun treat Chanyeol like a slimy creature that had crawled out of the deep sea, he felt as if he was thrown back in time. Chanyeol wasn't Haneul. He told himself that over and over again. And there really were major differences. Haneul had not only looked hurt, she had looked disappointed. On the party when everyone around her had scowled at her, Haneul had not flinched. She had not picked any fights but she had not given the impression that she had done anything worth being sneered at for either. Haneul had seemed proud. Chanyeol just seemed lost and guilty.
Chanyeol wasn't Haneul, so Jongdae frankly cared a lot less about him than he cared about her. It wasn't his place to fight anyone who made things hard for Chanyeol.
The issue really wasn't so much Chanyeol as it was to watch Baekhyun. Because Baekhyun being an reminded Jongdae that he had acted the exact same way.
So he knew that Baekhyun would regret it sooner or later. One day he would wake up and realize that someone important had left his life for a stupid reason and that he could have easily prevented that from happening.

The days before the competition had been tense because Baekhyun had attended practice but had not actually talked. He had done what he had been told but it felt as if his spirit had left him.
In return Chanyeol hadn't really said anything directly to him either. He had made suggestions into the room and Baekhyun had sometimes chosen to follow them with a glum expression or to ignore them completely.
"What's going on anyway?" Jongin had whispered one day and Jongdae had only shrugged.

It really was a wonder that they had made it through the competition at all, especially with everyone watching. He saw Jungyoon and Boyoung and Minkyung with a group of people and Minseok who talked to Yura. And just that threw him back even further because Yura had been extremely cold towards Minseok when she had met him in the hospital. She had acted the way everyone in Jongdae's family had acted towards Haneul. But now they talked as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Because that really was what it was all about, wasn't it? They both cared about the same person and by trying to get along, that person consequently became happier. It wasn't even complicated.
Baekhyun though didn't seem to see what Jongdae saw. Once he spotted Jungyoon, his attention was on her.

That they would even get an honorary mention at all had frankly felt wrong. Jongdae didn't think that they deserved it because he knew what they normally were capable of and this time it had felt completely off. None of them really seemed very happy either. Jongin seemed relieved to have survived it but must have sensed that this wasn't the time to cheer.
"Baekhyun, can we...?" Chanyeol began when Baekhyun already turned away to get his stuff.
"Just piss off," Baekhyun muttered under his breath and started to walk off. Behind him Chanyeol balled his hands into fists but didn't even attempt to follow him.
Jongdae didn't mean to get involved, he really didn't. All he wanted was to find Minkyung and spend the rest of the day with her the way he was supposed to. But he hated to see someone make his mistakes, so he sighed and said, "I'll talk to him."

He didn't know when things had started to deteriorate after that.
It had begun innocently enough with him saying, "Look, I get that you're mad but trust me, you'll regret it if you stop talking to him now."
Then, at some point Jungyoon had joined the picture and had hit him in the face after he had shoved Baekhyun for saying something along the lines of, "If you want to him, you can do that as often as you want but leave me out of your messed up ."
He had still been on the floor when Minkyung had yelled his name and had tackled Jungyoon who had tried to help him up after realizing that he was not going to harm Baekhyun.
After that there had been a lot of incoherent shouting.
"Are you seriously telling me that you don't think it's disgusting what he's doing?"
"Why, what is he doing? Do you think he was checking you out? I mean, trust me, if girls aren't into you, he wouldn't be either."
"Look, can't we all...?"
"Oh, right, whatever, you're so understanding and such a brilliant friend. I wonder if you could still act so tough if he had spend hundreds of nights at your house in your room."
"You're completely delusional. Being into guys doesn't mean that he tries to every dude he sees. He's not some random animal in the forest."
"And you know that, how? Out of experience?"
"Oh my god, just stop insulting each other, will you? You're acting like children."
"Does it honestly not bother you? All this time he wasn't the person we thought he was. We thought he was like us and now it turns out that he's sick in the head."
"Don't talk like that."
"Why? Why can I not talk like that? Because your brother is in on it, too? Because you like the idea that my friend is ing your brother?"
"Oh, shut up."
"I'm just saying-."
"No, seriously, Baekhyun, you should shut up. You have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
When Jungyoon also snapped at him Baekhyun turned quiet for a moment and narrowed his eyes at every single one of them because it was obvious that none of them were on his side.
"I know what I'm talking about," he eventually said meekly. "I know that all this time my supposed best friend lied to me and that I'm the last person to find out what the was wrong with him."
For a second he genuinely only looked hurt but then that mask of anger clouded his face again. Still, they all managed to see through him. Jongdae could tell by the way Jungyoon's and Minkyung's expressions softened instantly.
"Have you considered the possibility that he didn't tell you because he was afraid that you would act the way you do now?" Jungyoon asked and sounded unusually patient.
"And how am I acting now?" Baekhyun scoffed.
"You're acting as if you're afraid that he's going to you," Jungyoon said flatly and next to her Minkyung sharply in the air though her teeth. Baekhyun, too, winced and Jongdae had a feeling that that was the desired effect. It was one thing to spout profanities and another to bring on serious accusations like that.
"Also," Jungyoon continued matter-of-factly. "If believe you were the last one to find out, that honestly is your own fault. Do you think he told any of us?" Baekhyun frowned at her but avoided to look her in the eye. "Because you see," she continued. "He didn't have to. If you had actually paid attention and not chosen to ignore that he was troubled, you would have understood what was going on. What do you think he was chased around the school for?"
He scowled but didn't reply because he probably had to acknowledge that she wasn't wrong and because she had hit his blind spot. His friendship to Chanyeol was something that was not be questioned. To him it must have always seemed obvious that he had always done everything he could for Chanyeol. But the truth was that he had not actually openly defended him either. When Boyoung had hurt her classmate and Minkyung had got hurt, Baekhyun had always stood at the side, supportive but not active. He had been there, and yet not.
Jongdae couldn't exactly blame him because he himself had done even less. But exactly because he had done less, he knew that dull sense of guilt that came with watching a friend be hurt. And that was what Baekhyun and Chanyeol had been all this time. Friends. Best friends.
"In all this there's really only one person I feel sorry for," Jungyoon said. "And that's Boyoung. Because she always did her best and still doesn't know what is going on and although I told her not to, she's probably out there and tries to talk to him while his boyfriend is around. And even if she finds out, I know she won't begrudge him. She'll smile and quietly hide her pain. You know why?"
Baekhyun half turned away from her, so she raised her voice and repeated, "Byun Baekhyun, do you know why?"
"Why?" he asked flatly.
"Because she's a good person and she knows that these things can't be helped. We like who we like. There's no reason. She likes him although she probaby always knew that he couldn't like her back the same way. I like you although you're an idiot and Minkyung likes Jongdae although he's a coward and Chanyeol likes Minkyung's brother who managed to do what you failed to do when Chanyeol needed to be brought to a hospital but hid because he was scared."
For a moment something like regret flickered up in Baekhyun's face and Jungyoon continued in her strangely calm voice, "There's no right or wrong here and by liking who he likes, your friend didn't betray you. If anything, he obviously only was terrified that you could stop wanting to be his friend the moment you find out about him. And now look what happened. You're not just mad that he lied. You hate him for who he is although he's still the same person he always was."
It was odd to be told these things by The Fist Lee who was supposed to be an emotionless badass. She was supposed to fight all her battles with brute force but in the end nothing probably was that simple. Jongdae had always thought of himself as relatively calm but all he had done was to shout at Baekhyun.
Baekhyun furrowed his brows and for a moment Jongdae thought that he had actually listened and understood. But then he shook his head with a sad smile and said, "Maybe he's the same person but I have no idea who that person is any longer."
He turned away from them and when he left, none of them really seemed to know how to stop him. Jungyoon only sighed.
"I'm not a coward though," Jongdae said after a moment and Jungyoon rolled her eyes at him before she nodded at Minkyung.
"Without her you are," she said.
Minkyung smiled in return but the exchange with Baekhyun still hung over them heavily.

When he came home, something had changed in him. He felt as if he had grown while his house had remained the same.
When Jungdeok tried to put him in a headlock after he ignored him Jongdae didn't even know how to pretend to fight back. He felt like a wet towel and Jongdeok let go of him with a frown.
"So did you lose your band thing or what?" Jongdeok asked in a tone that made it clear how little he actually cared. He only asked out of default brotherly concern.
"Do you know how to contact Haneul-noona?" Jongdae asked.
The shock in Jongdeok's eyes felt like looking into a mirror.
Jungyoon had been right. Jongdae had always acted like a coward.