Word Count: 1,887

After a few more stupid questions from the rudest doctor the three of them had ever met, Sehun was deemed healthy enough to be discharged four hours after he had woken up, it was approximately 8:00 pm. He came out of the hospital with a blind person’s cane and the sourest face anyone had ever seen. His pinched expression was accompanied by the worried ones of his friends. At this point all he wanted to do was return to his flat, flop down on his bed, and cry his eyes out, literally. He didn’t need them anymore, anyways, he thought bitterly. He wanted to be left alone.

No matter his protests, Luhan and Yixing refused to leave him to his own devices, fearing he might injure himself in a rage of frustration.

“What does it matter anymore? I won’t be able to make anything of my life anymore,” he all but cried as they slid into a taxi, Sehun sitting between Luhan and Yixing.

“That’s a lie. I’m sure you’ll be able to do something,” Luhan insisted.

“Shut up. Just shut up with your infinite optimism. I’m not in the mood,” he snapped at Luhan in Mandarin. That really shut Luhan up.

Sehun had been studying Mandarin in university, half because he wanted to understand Yixing and Luhan’s occasional side-conversations and half so that he could participate, but now he was just using it to be verbally abusive in two languages instead of one.

“Please don’t be like this, Sehun,” Yixing said softly. For some reason, he sounded much more subdued than usual and his Korean was slipping to the point where Sehun could barely understand him.

It was something about Jongin. When Sehun asked to visit Jongin, he heard the skritching of pen on paper, the sound of a door closing, and Luhan’s voice. “You can’t visit him right now,” Luhan read slowly. Sehun could have sworn he had heard the sound of quiet sobs outside the room, but he thought it was merely n his head.

--

Jongin was in Sehun’s grade so they often had classes together, and because they were both in the same dance club, they were best friends. They gossiped during the free time they shared but Yixing and Luhan did not. Rumours around the school had it that Jongin and Sehun were dating, but neither Jongin nor Sehun really cared what anyone else thought. The petty rumours were merely spread by a boy who was jealous of Jongin, who got to spend time with Sehun all the time and who was one of the few people who could make the emotionless boy actually laugh.

Jongin wasn’t the only one who was on the receiving end of jealousy; Sehun was as well. Many of the girls at the school wanted Jongin, so sometimes Sehun got dirty looks shot at him across the room in classes when he sat next to Jongin and they conversed so naturally and casually. Jongin had the problem from girls and boys, boys more often than girls. Sehun was popular with the boys because he was such a pretty boy, so Jongin had to face envious boys, although which was more formidable, boys or girls, was up for debate. Despite the rumours of Jongin and Sehun being a couple, neither of them saw their relationship like that, mostly because they each had their sights set elsewhere.

--

It was their third year when Jongin finally admitted to both Sehun and himself that Yixing was more than just a friend, or that Jongin wanted the two of them to be more than friends. It was lunch break when Jongin slid the confession into the conversation. Jongin and Sehun were eating out on the quad and Sehun had just taken a drink.

“I’m in love with Yixing hyung,” Jongin said casually as Sehun spat his drink out in surprise.

“What!?” Sehun looked at his friend in total surprise.

“This is how you react to me confessing about who I have feelings for? I’m hurt Sehunie!” Jongin joked.

“I just wasn’t expecting the conversation to escalate so quickly,” Sehun replied, wiping his mouth. “How did the conversation go from ‘I really like the new song we’re working on in the dance club’ to ‘I really like everything about Yixing hyung from the dimple on his cheek to the perfect way in which he moves when he dances’ to ‘I’m in love with Yixing hyung’?”

“I was just trying to be casual about it. That approach obviously didn’t work.”

“Trying to say things like that casually is like saying that you murdered someone yesterday afternoon casually. It just isn’t done,” Sehun replied flatly. “So what prompted you to finally realise this or to finally voice it to your best friend?”

“I guess for the past couple of years, I’ve been deluding myself into thinking that Yixing was just a friend, even when my heart fluttered whenever he smiled that heart-melting smile of his, even when my heart beat just a little faster when he danced a solo.”

“Thank you for going writer on me Mr. Kim. I know you want to be an author once you graduate from university, but you seriously need to save this sappy stuff for the pages or for class.”

“You understand what I’m getting at, though.”

“I suppose so, but what prompted you to admit it?” Jongin turned bright red before replying.

“I was reading a romance novel and the words seemed to describe the situation too well.”

Sehun laughed. Jongin was a secret bookworm, even though he managed to convince the rest of the school that he was a y and arrogant prick. The dance club knew of Jongin’s secret identity but they were the only ones in the school. The dance club were also the only ones who knew that Sehun was capable of emotion, instead of being an indifferent pretty boy and they knew that he had a dorky and awkward side to him.

“Shut up Sehun! I know who you like,” Jongin retorted. That stopped Sehun.

“And who might that be?” Sehun asked, wondering whether it was really so obvious. He took a nervous sip of his drink, which was not the best course of action.

“You like Luhan hyung. I see the way you are when he is too busy with university work to visit or when he has free time and comes to the school for surprise visits.” Sehun spat his drink out for the second time before setting it aside, giving up on it. “I don’t even need a confession at this point, that was proof enough,” Jongin added.

“Why would you say that right now?” Sehun spluttered.

“Now we know that we are on even footing,” Jongin replied casually.

“You’re the on who was confessing to me. I did not agree in this conversation that I would be handing you the key to my heart on a silver platter.”

“It was bound to come up sooner or later,” Jongin replied nonchalantly. Sehun just rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. You’re changing the subject. This is about you and your feelings, not me and mine.”

“Right. So, I guess I wanted to ask you whether I should tell him, when I should tell him, and how. Somehow I feel like if I take ideas from the books I read it wouldn’t turn out well.”

“That, and if you confessed like the girls in the novels, people will see you for what you truly are, not a y beast but a fluffy bunny,” Sehun teased.

“If I’m a fluffy bunny, they you’re a puppy,” Jongin replied.

“I am not!” He pouted and he really did look like a puppy.

“What ever you say, Sehun chan.”

“You really need to stop with this anime thing too.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re mixing your Korean with those weird Japanese words again.”

“Oh come off it. It isn’t that difficult to understand what I’m saying. These are simple phrases.”

“Yeah, they are simple, I just don’t care. Besides, you’re getting your ideas of romance from books with vampires in them and cartoons in which the characters have eyes that take up half of their faces.”

“Hey! He advice works some of the time. At least I don’t watch those corny soap operas,” Jongin retorted.

“They’re good!” Sehun replied a little defensively.

“Whatever you say.” Jongin and Sehun dissolved into giggles at that point.

--

For half of their third year, all Jongin and Sehun did was talk about various tactics Jongin could employ to confess to his fellow dancer. Sehun didn’t really feel like discussing how he planned to tell Luhan, so they agreed not to deal with that topic until Jongin and Yixing were sorted.

“I think you should do an interpretive dance to ‘Every Time We Touch’,” Sehun suggested during one of their informal planning sessions, more formally known as lunch breaks.

“Sehun, I want to win his affections, not make him think I’m crazy.”

“You don’t want him to know you’re crazy,” Sehun corrected.

“I’m not crazy, I’m simply eccentric,” Jongin replied with mock indignation.

“You can say it one way and I’ll say it another but it means the same thing,” Sehun teased.

“Seriously, Sehun. The clock is ticking and his graduation is coming soon. Then what?” Jongin fretted.

“He’ll still be here. He’ll still come back to the dance club as often as he can, like Luhan. It’s not like he’s going back to China,” Sehun pointed out.

“I guess you’re right…” Jongin conceded.

“Of course I’m right.”

“You’re humble too,” Jongin added.

“Hey! I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“You’re probably the most helpful friend I’ve ever had.”

“But you still love me.” Sehun made an aegyo face that would turn straight guys gay.

“That cute face is the only thing that keeps you from getting punched in the face whenever you make comments like this”

“Whatever it takes to keep one of my best assets in tact.”

“One of your only assets,” Jongin corrected.

“I know that this came up a while back as well, but why did you finally decided that you liked Yixing and that you needed to confess to him this year?

“Life is short, shorter than you expect to say the least,” Jongin replied as if he were expecting Sehun to have asked sooner.

“You’re getting sappy again,” Sehun commented.

“I’ve got to practice somewhere before I actually put pen to paper.”

“You could write him a corny poem declaring your undying love,” Sehun mused.

“Look who’s getting sappy now.”

“Well apparently this is just a sappy day.”

“Why don’t you try to suggest something doable and not nearly as outlandish as what you have been up until now.”

“How is this? Why don’t you just try saying ‘I love you. Marry me and have my children’.”

“You realise we can’t have children, right?”

“I was joking, but you get my meaning, right?”

“Simple and to the point?”

“No novelist fluff either.”

“Okay…” Jongin and Sehun put their heads together to come up with a short and sweet message that could say everything that needed to be said.

“It’s as you say, ‘Life is shorter than you expect it to be,” Sehun said, not knowing how right they were in saying this at the time. “Make every word, every moment count.”

A/N: 1) Sorry for the Anterograde Tomorrow reference... 2) Sorry for making Jongin someone who likes anime. It seems to fit a little later on. 3) Some chapters will have two parts of flashback while others may have only one, it just depends on how well it flows together. Some chapters may not have a part in the present, but I try and have the two timelines running fairly parallel throughout this story. 4) You might have yet to be bashed by feels but please be patient I swear that it will pay off. If you want something fluffier and like my writing style, check out my other stories.