“I like you.”

“I can't help but think, 'Isn't she beautiful?'”

“Just can't say 'no'.”

“Sometimes I wish she was more like you...”

“Boy, girl, what's the difference?”

“I bet I could beat you in test scores!”

“He loves me, I know he does.”

“He won't care. He'll understand, won't he?”

“Do you think, maybe, just maybe, he might chose me instead?”

“This isn't a fairytale.”

“Don't shoot too high, you'll just end up falling harder.”

“There's a fine line between friendship an-and whatever, this is,”

“I don't want to be your 'girlfriend' or 'boyfriend', I just want to be yours-”

“Why can't you just grow up?”

“I'm sorry.”

Taemin blinks blearily, glancing up from his studies to find Kibum standing beside his desk, eyes jumpy in an attempt to seem nonchalant.

“You should be,” Taemin sighs, running a pale hand through his golden locks.

Kibum purses his lips, looking down at the complex arithmetic equations that Taemin is breezing through.

“There's no reason for those,” Kibum murmurs, eyes softening.

“There is,” Taemin replies coldly. “I won't waste my time here, I've got places to be.”

Kibum breathes heavily, walking past Taemin's desk and to the classroom door. “Without him?”

“Exactly,” Taemin mutters.

His eyes furrow on a particularly challenging question, not from emotion. Obviously not emotion.

“He won't get over you this easily.”

Taemin pretends that he didn't hear.

Sniffle, Sniffle

Taemin gasps as tears start to drop on his wide ruled scrap paper.

What's this? He thinks, watching the salty liquid spread on to his notebook. And all of a sudden, he's crying. No, not crying, sobbing.

He feels a warm, familiar palm rub his back as he hunches over.

“Shh,” Jinki's warm voice doesn't dispel the emotion that chooses to arise for the first time since the soccer captain decided that friendship was too much for him.

It's not his lost love or the newly healed bruises that elicits this sudden emotion. It's the lost innocence that Taemin mourns for.

Another wave of tears overcome him, and Taemin is forced to shove his books away and let himself be pitiably encompassed by Jinki's big, warm hands and soft, solid chest.

The two boys sit there, in the abandoned library. And Taemin sobs, sobs of regret and sorrow, but mostly anger.

It's time to settle things.

Taemin's tired of running. And he knows it's running because he didn't have the nerve to face the past, no matter how much his significant other wanted him to.

But things have changed.

Two months have passed since any of the soccer captain's underlings have approached him, begging to give his ex another chance.

Taemin reckons that maybe enough time has passed to make his last stand.

“You actually came.”

Hours in the pouring rain under the flimsy bus stop shelter had held the least bit of fun for Lee Taemin but he doesn't say so. Instead, he leers into the mysterious orbs of Choi Minho and sighs, taking a seat on the damp plastic.

“Don't pretend like you doubted me,” Minho leans on the knees of his long legs as he takes up the space beside his schoolmate.

Taemin scoffs, “But I did.”

“I'm sorry,” Taemin looks up to find Minho's regretfully staring at him. “I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know, I wasn't thinking, I was-”

It's like a dam breaks and suddenly, it's Minho, the strong, manly, capable upperclassman who begins crying. “You were just so- And I didn't think you would- How could I- I'm so-”

“Sorry, yeah, I get it,” Taemin groans in annoyance as he pulls out a handkerchief for his ex boyfriend from his back pocket. “Ironic. I thought I'd be using this, not you.”

Minho takes a few minutes to wipe up the tears and calm himself from the onset of emotions that threaten to influence him once again. But one embarrassment is enough.

“I honestly am sorry,”

Minho murmurs quietly. His voice is hardly audible over the splash of water on the sidewalk and the rustle of wind blown trees. “She blinded me. I thought that you wouldn't care, I thought you would stay-”

“You took me for granted,” Taemin says bluntly, staring out into the fog as if something captured his attention.

“I did,” Minho agrees mournfully. And the tears fall once more.

“God, Choi! Get a hold of yourself! Maybe you really did change...” Taemin wipes furiously at the older boy's tears as the rain starts to lessen and a ray of sunlight peeks from lightened clouds. Taemin doesn't notice when Minho's fingers begin to tremble from his soft touch.

Taemin scowls, but on the inside, he's smiling because maybe they really could start out fresh.