Jongdae's Saturday should have gone differently. At least, when he woke up that morning, he had planned for it to go differently.

He had slept the night on Baekhyun’s floor and while he was down there, he had a lot of time to think.

Junmyeon and he had rarely fought, and the very few times they did, it had always been blown out of proportion. Junmyeon was a bottler, and a lot of his true thoughts only surfaced when he was drunk or fed up to the point where he couldn’t contain it. Usually, at that point, it was little things that set him off, and the confusion that came with Junmyeon’s overload sent Jongdae on high-alert. Truth be told, Jongdae was a bull of a defender, and when he saw red, there always ended up being more messes to clean up than they initially started with. After the smoke cleared, the feeling of dread and stupidity settled in quick, but the biggest obstacle in their reconciliation was none other than their pride.

Example #1: Jongdae ignores all nineteen of Junmyeon’s calls from Friday night and all eleven of his long-paragraph text messages that had woken him up Saturday morning. He reads them and listens to the voicemails Junmyeon leaves, of course, but he doesn’t respond. I’ll make him squirm a little , Jongdae thinks.

“When are you going to give up the act and go back home to your future husband?” Baekhyun had asked.

Jongdae is smug when he tells him, “I know what I’m doing.”

Baekhyun had rolled his eyes. “If you say so. Better not prolong it too long, I don’t know if I can feed three mouths.”

“Three mouths? Who else are you feeding?”

Baekhyun had grinned. “That’s a secret.”

Jongdae had tried wrestling the truth out of him, but Baekhyun had managed to keep up.

“I’ll tell you about the guy I met after you go back home and kiss and make up with that delectable hunk-of-a-roommate of yours.”

“He’s already begging for me to come back,” Jongdae had snickered. “I have to milk this while I have the opportunity. You just wait, and then later we can share our stories.”

“Your’s better be funny,” Baekhyun had warned.

“It will be,” Jongdae had replied, but maybe he should have paid more attention to Baekhyun’s warning because hours later, nothing about what had transpired between him and Junmyeon had been “funny”.

***

Why did you come back?

Why did you think the worst of him?

Why did you…

“Jongdae, are you listening to me?”

Jongdae lifts his head from the window and rolls it around until he’s facing the woman. “Hmm?”

parts, but only a sigh passes her lips. She focuses back on the road in front of her, and the car accelerates forward at the turn of the light.

Jongdae doesn’t shift his attention away from her; instead, he looks for a single flaw in her seemingly perfect appearance.

Her hair is styled differently from whenever Jongdae saw her last—was that about a month ago?—and true to her character, not a single strand of her angled, jet-black bob is out of place which, when considering all the events that had transpired within the last hour, deserves to be acknowledged, at least. In fact, most of her profile is hidden behind her hair… until it’s not. Until she tilts her head slightly in his direction, and her perfectly sharp everything comes into view—her shapely eyebrows, her hypnotic eyes, her untouchable jawline.

Jongdae knows her words could be sharp, too. He’s overheard her and Junmyeon arguing a couple of times before in the past, and he can honestly say he would never want to be on the opposing side of her wrath. Her ability to (and not simply the fact that she could, but the ease in which she could) wound others so directly regardless of her relationship with them and with just a string of well-calculated words, no less, had been a sobering experience.

If gorgeous and deadly were mixed together, she would be the result. He’s heard of her being described as some type of Ice Queen by some of Junmyeon’s friends, but Jongdae had never felt like that was quite accurate. She was a step above the current standard of “queens” nowadays; her presence and her grace alone had outmatched them. Queen Slayer is what Jongdae silently preferred.

Why did you come back?

The woman faces Jongdae as soon as the thought crosses his mind, and she squints, almost as she’s asking the same thing. Why did you come back, Jongdae?

“We’re here. Get out.”

Jongdae sits up straight. “What? Hey, where are we—”

The door shutting cuts him off. Jongdae looks out the window and judging by the abundance of high-rises, he comes to the conclusion that they’re either in a different part of the wealthy neighborhood Junmyeon and he—that Junmyeon lives in—or in another high-end part of the city he has absolutely no business being in while looking like how does now. He’s really wishing he had taken Baekhyun’s advice this morning and put a little bit more effort into his outfit choice as the hideous, bright-yellow sweatshirt and black sweatpants he donned weren’t exactly cutting it.

Suddenly, there’s a knock at his window.

“Hurry up, Jongdae, let’s go!”

“No! I look ugly!” Jongdae shouts back.

The sight of her face falling and shoulders dropping loosely reminds Jongdae of his older sister.

“Get out, Jongdae,” she demands, and even if her voice is muffled by the rolled up window, the edge it still holds rattles his core. Jongdae shakes his head.

She rolls her eyes and before Jongdae knows what’s going on, she’s already opened the door and is reaching over him, trying to unbuckle his seatbelt.

“What- no, stop it!” Jongdae protests. He does his best trying to keep the buckle covered, but her freakishly strong grip nearly leaves him with severed fingers as she peels them away like the skin off of a banana. Jongdae cries of pain turn into startling yelps as he’s dragged from his seat and pulled to the ground. He lands hard with somehow his legs in the air.

“What the heck, Bora?” Jongdae whines. He feels humiliated by everyone staring as they walk past.

“B-Bora? Who the hell is Bora?” Not-Bora(?) kicks Jongdae’s side with her sharp heels and Jongdae yelps again, rolling on his side and covering himself with his arms.

“Is that not your name? How could you kick a man when he’s already down?” he whimpers with a little pout. Staring up at her from the ground, Angry-Not-Bora(?) convinces Jongdae that maybe God is indeed a woman.

“I’ve been Junmyeon’s girlfriend for how long and you still don’t know my name?”

“Junmyeon never really talked about you so, I don’t know, I guess it’s never really stuck.”

Definitely-Not-Bora(?)’s glare softens and she looks elsewhere.

“Get up,” she says, changing the subject, “you’re drawing attention.”

Sorry-I-Thought-Your-Name-Was-Bora(?) helps Jongdae to his feet and wrinkles her nose at his dirty clothes.

“You should really change—”

“—This is your fault—”

“— You should’ve known my name—”

“—Well, I’m sorry—”

“Let’s just go.”

Jongdae follows Still-Sorry-For-Thinking-You-Were-Bora about two blocks to a building where he has to crane his neck back to see the top of it. They walk through a large, lively lobby and Jongdae just knows there are people staring at him—or… them. He forgets Wait-What-Is-Your-Name-If-It-Is-Not-Bora draws attention in her own right with her looks. A pretty woman like her in a perfectly clean and crisp, white dress next to an unruly-haired man like Jongdae in a (perhaps, tacky) colorful yet dusty ensemble must have been an odd contrast, he thinks.

They stop at an elevator and Back-To-Not-Bora pushes one of the higher numbered buttons.

“What’s on the eighth floor? Do you live here or something?”

Not-Bora looks at him out of the corner of her eye, smiling. “I told you let’s get something to eat, didn’t I?”

Realization sets in and Jongdae’s brows shoot up in panic. “Oh… I’m sorry, I didn’t bring my wallet with me—”

“Don’t worry about it, Jongdae. It’s my treat.”

Jongdae frowns, following her into the elevator. “No, I can’t let you do that. I—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Jongdae. I’m buying you lunch. End of discussion.”

The final look she sends him has him shuddering and leaves no more room for objections. Her power, Jongdae thinks.

***

“My name is Bomi, by the way. Not Bora.”

Jongdae blinks owlishly with his cheeks bulging full of a delicious four-star hamburger. Bomi quirks a brow, waiting for a response, as she stares down her wine glass at him. Jongdae maybe thinks he swallows too early, but after forcing everything down he— drinks a glass of water first — he chucks up a peace sign.

“Hi, Bomi!”

Bomi chokes on her wine and ends up spraying it across the table and all over Jongdae. She laughs while Jongdae wipes himself down and whines about his sweater being ruined.

“One wash cycle and it’ll be just as new,” Bomi says as sincerely as she can between trying to catch her breath.

“Least you care,” Jongdae says, chuckling, “Junmyeon would’ve already snapped a picture of me if he was here.”

Jongdae freezes. “I—” He takes a labored breath.

“We should talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Jongdae says with a plastic smile, but also holding his head back and blinking rapidly.

“That is a good question. Where do we start?” Bomi asks, tapping her chin. After a moment of “pondering”, she leans forward.

“Oh, here’s one: You and Junmyeon—have you ever slept with each other?”

Jongdae's eyes are still wide as saucers even when she repeats it for him.

“Uh… the answer to that question is one hundred percent no , what the heck? Why would you even ask that?”

“Ever kissed?”

“No—” Jongdae’s mind and expression betray him as the memories of Junmyeon drunk-kissing him... and that time… and that other time from years and even more years ago flash through his mind. “Well… not while you were dating,” Jongdae clarifies, though even then, he feels like that only makes it sound worse.

Bomi sits up in her seat. She crosses her arms, tilts her head, and purses her lips.

“Tell me about them. The times you kissed Junmyeon. I already know of one of them, but I—”

“—You do ?”

“—but I won’t say which. So just talk. Let’s have a storytime.”

Jongdae clenches his jaw. He hated feeling cornered. “If I do, what will you tell me?”

Bomi smirks. “I paid for dinner, didn’t I?”

Gorgeous, deadly, and tactical. Jongdae had to give it to her.

“Okay. I’ll talk.”