Why am I here? I've answered this question for… well, once. No matter what, with this innocent person in front of me, I couldn't bring myself to speak. As his best friend, I left him for a high salary job underground. How am I going to explain? There's no way I'm going to throw the truth onto his face.

“Italian bread. Lettuce, olives, Mexican pepper. Honey mustard. D-“ I flatly said, pretending not to hear.

“Double chocolate chip cookie and a cup of coffee, right. Your favourite combination, Mr. Jung. Dae. Hyun. Answer my question.”

“Take away.”

“No, you're eating here, under my surveillance until my shift ends in… half an hour.” The boy said after checking the time on his watch. He has short, dark hair with a mild shade of purple now, but those chubby cheeks are still visible and very squishy. He had slimmed down a bit though.

He threw fierce, sharp stares at me as he made my food and I could see him scanning my body from head to toe as if I were an alien or a wanted criminal. “Have a seat there.” He flatly ordered me as he slipped out of the counter. I refused and that was why he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, dragging me along and pushed me onto a chair. He settled down at the other side of the table and put my sub in front of me. His burning stare hadn’t left me all these time and it made me tensed. “Eat.” He ordered me again.

I reached out for my food with my slightly trembling hands and started to unwrap the packing. I peeked inside the sub. My mind suddenly went all ‘LOL’ and I burst into laughter with my free hand covering my mouth. He finally gave up and broke into laughter as well… He put an extremely large amount of stuffing in my sub and it looked horrible with all the sauce leaking out.

“Ya, Yoo Youngjae, you don’t make all your customers this, right?” I chuckled as I took a huge bite. He murmured ‘bastard’ and grinned with his cheeks almost popping out. He propped up on his elbows with palms cupping his jaw, staring into the depths of my eyes. I stared back in a teasing way. It felt like our old days, having random starting contests in the middle of lecturing, until the professor looked at the two of us with judging eyes.

“No. You’re blacklisted and that’s why I made you that.”

“Your boss is so unlucky to have hired you. A worker who gives blacklisted people double the amount of stuffing. He’ll soon be broke.”

“Then I’ll quit and find another part time job. It’s not like I’m working to support myself you know, I’m working for extra pocket money. And what is more important, you have a black hole in your stomach and I have to throw something in it before I’m inside.” He removed one hand from the position and checked the time again. “Are you busy?” I shook my head, mouth filled with food. “I’ll take you somewhere. You might as well update me on everything. By everything I mean literally everything including the frequency of you going to the toilet or jerking o-“

“Shut up!” I talked with my mouth full and he threw me a disgusted look. “Okay fine, fine, fine…” I spoke after swallowing the contents in my mouth. He painted a satisfied smile on his face.

I ate slowly to kill time. I didn’t have much to do anyway, and socialising was one of my tasks. As I munched on my food, I watched Youngjae serve his customer in his smart, polite way. My lips unconsciously curled up into a smile as I chewed. He worked so diligently, so Youngjae-style.

I swallowed the last bit of my food and didn’t realise I’d been zoning out until Youngjae waved his hands in front of my eyes. “Jung Daehyun, you okay? I’m off! Let’s go!” He teased, “Are you hungry again?” I ignored his comment and wiped the corners of my mouth with a napkin before I stood up and followed Youngjae out of the shop.

“Are you done with your work yet?” He excited voice rang through the phone.

I shook my head as I typed on the keyboard, carefully holding the phone between my ear and shoulder until I gave up and hold it properly I remember he couldn’t see my gesture and replied with a simple ‘nah’. He wasn’t pleased with my answer and nagged, asking if I was having problems or not.

“I’m coming over.” He was disappointed as he flatly said and hung up. I sighed – it was the third time this week, did he really thought I was stupid?

Within half an hour I was typing non-stop on my keyboard as Youngjae bombarded me with a several tens of ideas out of the few hundreds he came up with so that I could finish my essay and hang out with him.

“Okay, now press Ctrl+S and Ctrl+P and Enter and let’s get out of this room. You don’t need to stare at the printer right? Now go.” He ordered and shooed me away from my home. Mum and dad sighed, though there were grateful smiles on their faces. “Bye auntie, bye uncle! I’ll see you soon and stay healthy! Daehyun will be back for dinner~” And this was how I ended up being dragged around the streets of Hongdae.

Youngjae had always been a very good friend and I enjoyed every minute I spent with him. However, he just couldn’t get rid of his nasty habit of ordering people all the time, no matter how trivial the thing was: “Eat!”, “Go!”, “Walk faster!”, “ off!”, “Get your books out of your bag!”, “Put those things back into your bag!”… Somehow, I learned from him and started ordering people around. I guessed Jongup was one of the poor victims, haha. It felt good to order people though, so I didn’t stop my best friend.

“You sound in love with the Jongup guy.” Youngjae spoke up for the first time after I told him about my recent life. “No I’m just kidding, chill bro.” He laughed by himself and I pulled a stupid face.

Again, we were strolling on the streets of Hongdae. I was drinking plastic bag cocktails while he rested his hands across my shoulders, looking around as if he hadn’t been here in this place before. ‘So he wanted to take me here…’ I sighed.

“How was school without me? You’re in your last year, right?” I asked and he hummed.

“Well, I can’t admit that I’m not bored. I got over your absence though, Jung Daehyun.” He pinched my cheek with the hand across my shoulders as he continued, “But everything’s fine. At least I could focus on my own studies rather than yours.” He patted my head.

“What’s with this babying, can you stop?” I slapped away his hands and halted as he went a few steps forward. He signed ‘sorry’ and waited for me to catch up.

“So tell me more about your new friend.”

I told him. Youngjae and Jongup had similar family backgrounds – rich, single-parented, etc. It was just that Youngjae’s parents were still alive and as a child, he had to travel between the two homes every week. Perhaps this was the reason why Youngjae wanted to meet Jongup after my storytelling. I agreed and texted Jongup about it. The younger boy was very excited about meeting a new friend and offered to cook. “No thanks, hyung can cook.” I replied. I didn’t want a disaster to happen.

“Can we have another movie night?” The excited boy replied again. Youngjae replied the text for me while I went to the toilet but never mind; I was going to reply that anyway. However, when I came back, Youngjae had already discussed with him about what movie were we going to watch. I expected for the worse, and the worse happened. Paranormal Activity. I felt helpless because of the fact that the two of them knew me too well and decided to attack my weakness, together, even though they hadn’t even met each other before.

We stopped by the supermarket for ingredients for our dinner. Everything went smooth… until we bumped into a person I didn’t want to meet.

Surprisingly, Youngjae didn’t want to meet her either. He pushed the cart to the cashier quickly without looking back, and rushed out of the store, dragging me along again.

“Don’t talk about it. Don’t ask. I’ll tell you later. Promise?” He ordered with his index finger pointing at my nose as he spoke. I gulped and nodded. Curiosity boiled fiercely in my stomach. No, that was a lie, my stomach was growling loudly. I immediately blushed when the boy in front of me sighed. “You should go remove and donate a part of your stomach, really, or give me half the speed of your metabolism.”

“Why do you always speak like that, acting like a smartass 24/7…” I mumbled.

“Pardon?” I shook my head and took the chance to drag him along back home.

The girl we saw was one of the twins. I couldn’t recognise who she was but apparently, Youngjae did. ‘Was he one of the guys dumped by Cheri?’ I asked myself. Nonetheless, this made me judge the sisters even more. I told Youngjae when we passed by the café owned by them. “I’ll make sure I won’t ever step into that place.”

“I made the same vow.” He chuckled when I spoke.

“Great minds think alike, bro, I love you.” He pulled me close and pretended to attack me with his lips.

“Eww off!” My reaction only made him laugh more. I was about to ask him how the twins pissed him off but I remembered my promise. ‘Later, later.’

“No not like this!” Youngjae almost screamed in shock in the kitchen when Jongup cut the meat in the wrong direction. “If you cut like this I swear you won’t be able to chew it. Cut perpendicular to the direction of the muscle!”

No matter how similar the family backgrounds of Youngjae and Jongup were, their mind weren’t similar in any way. Youngjae nearly wailed as the three of us cooked together in the chaotic kitchen. He was the kind of person who loved everything done in his every own way and Jongup couldn’t help but feel puzzled. “He could barely cut things, and you’re telling him to cut in your way? Yoo Youngjae please…”

“But… But…” Youngjae looked at me with a frown on his face, while Jongup was trying hard to figure out what ‘perpendicular’ and ‘direction of the muscle’ meant. “Okay, Jongup, here. You can see the direction of the muscle, right? It’s horizontal, from left to right.” He pointed at the piece of meat with his finger. Jongup nodded as if he understood. Well, I wasn’t sure about it. “So you cut the piece of meat vertically with the cuts forming a right angle against the direction… Understand?” Youngjae tried to sound patient. “By right angle I mean 90 degrees. You don’t have to be exact, by the way.”

“I know this… 90 degrees, right?” Jongup looked at Youngjae, confused, and started to slice the piece of meat.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Genius! Marvelous! Excellent! Perfect! Good job!” Youngjae cheered as Jongup sliced the piece of meat, finally, according to his will. I laughed by myself while making kimchi fried rice on my own.

“You sound like the sound effects in computer games,” I teased, “Okay! Good! Great! Perfect!” I mimicked. They both laughed, but Youngjae laughed in a more awkward way.

“It’s not the first day you’ve known me…” He rebutted. I nodded with a grin.

“So I assume that you’ll do nothing to help us?” I teased again. He didn’t help much except for bossing over Jongup and I. He faked an insincere toothy smile. “Go set up the table, butler Jae.”

“Yes sir.” He bowed 90 degrees and started to take bowls and chopsticks out from the drawer beneath the counter. He walked out afterwards.

“Moon Jongup.” I called. He looked up at me and hummed adorably. “Happy? Do you like Youngjae? He’s not too bothersome right?”

“Of course not!” He flashed a toothy smile, a sincere one. “He is interesting.” I laughed so hard at his choice of adjective and let my focus return to cooking.

I leaned on the railings and let out a relaxed sigh. Staring into the dark sky, I found serenity. Youngjae joined me soon, holding two cans of beer. We had finished watching the movie and sent Jongup to bed since it was getting late. Despite the hour of the day, Youngjae decided to stay and talk to me as he promised to. So here we were, on the building’s rooftop. The place was open to all residents and beautifully decorated with plants, tables, etc. Yet, no one seems to notice. It was empty most of the time and if it wasn’t, I was quite sure that I was the only occupant. I hadn’t even brought Jongup here before. This was a private garden to me, the place where I enjoy being alone, with the moon being my only company.

“I dated Cheri.” Youngjae confessed while opening the can, breaking the silence twice at once.

“I’m not surprised. I’ve seen her in a club before, around.” I replied flatly. He didn’t seem to be affected in spite of my intended, horrid choice of word.

“Don’t use that word. She’s my half-sister. The twins.” I widened my eyes and turned to him. He continued staring down to the highway a few blocks away. “I didn’t know though, I know now, but I didn’t.” He added.

There was a comfortable moment of silence between us, though the topic we were discussing should create a tenser atmosphere. I broke the silence by opening my can of beer as well. “Did she cheat on you?”

He shook his head slowly. “The other twin, Hyeri, she liked me too. I couldn’t differentiate the two of them…”

“You accidentally dated her as well.” He nodded, grateful that I completed his awkward sentence. “I understand. They look similar. I mean… the same”

“Cheri was actually a pretty innocent girl. I never thought she’d become that she is now. And Hyeri, the lazy one hanging on the streets all day, she was the bad girl…” I bit my lips and hummed in response, just to tell Youngjae that I was listening and he can continue. “Anyway, I was sending one of them home one day, whoever she was, and I bumped into my mother, and the real Cheri.”

“That’s when you realised.”

“Yeah. You won’t know how awkward and disgusting that was.”

“Well, that seems worse than my condition.”

“What condition?”

“Replaced by a random kid at home when you’re gone. An adopted kid, whom a part of your salary fed without you knowing.” I tried to sound casual while I sipped on my beer.

“Sorry dude. You must’ve cried a lot about that. Your parents are your world.” I shook my head. “So I guess we’re on the same page now? Anything more?”

“Nah, at least for now.”

“Cheers, for our messed up lives.”

“Cheers.”

YAY! so i finally introduced a new important character in this novel - YOUNGJAE!
no lol, he's not that important. you'll know later, though

anyway~ i finally updated ;u; with a long chapter (in my opinion lol) and i hope you enjoyed the random daejae chapter lol. it's boring, right? ><
i'm too used to writing daejae XD but well, this was more bromance than romance ~____~
if you haven't noticed yet, i'm trying to make the story longer by creating more complications here and there, but i'm confused myself T__T so, sorry if you're confused as well
i'll plan more interesting chapters later on T_____T until then, bye!

p.s. COMMENT! please. c: