Around eleven at night, Youngjae let out a sigh and slapped the desk with finality, making you jump slightly and glance at him.

He spun around in the study chair, straddling the backrest coolly and you absently wondered if you would ever be able to have a boyfriend who was this cute and smart.

It did not occur to you that Youngjae might be available, or that, maybe, you could have him as your boyfriend or whatever. Because, dude, it wasn’t that you weren’t interested, but things like boyfriends seemed so farfetched for you that even if it was staring at you right in the face you would be too busy looking over its shoulder to actually see what was in front of you.

To put this in nicer terms, you were an innocent little young lady. Did that sound better?

“Where do I sleep?” asked Youngjae flatly, both elbows leaning on top of the backrest.

You blinked, ready to tell him to take the damn floor when he continued.

“I pick the bed.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, “Are you kidding?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” the junior nipped, running a hand through his newly washed hair. Your brother’s clothes fit him almost too perfectly.

“No. Probably just crazy,” you said. “Are you even done with my work?”

He rolled his eyes and stood up from the chair, gingerly stretching his muscles, stiff from sitting in the same position for several hours.

You were expecting a ‘yes’ when he said, “No.”

You opened your mouth to argue as he made his way towards the bed you were on, but was cut off again.

“Are you even aware of how many assignments you have?” pressed Youngjae, dumping his skinny on the edge of your bed. “I couldn’t even go through half of them,” he carried on. “And I am just so tired?” he raised his palms to rub at his face. “You wouldn’t know how much energy people have to exert fighting with their parents, would you?”

He shot you a pointed look, which you couldn’t help but make a face at. But you kept your mouth shut, because, no, he was right, you did not know ducks about family feuds.

(And you only had one parent. Not that you would tell him that. It was his time to play victim, not yours.)

You absently slid the vibrating phone off of the bed and it landed on the rug with a safe sounding thud. Naturally, you sat up and patted the spot in the middle indicatively for him to scoot over.

“You are an honour student. What could make them not happy?” you asked softly, the effect of your sympathetic voice was enhanced by the fact that you were almost yelping at him before.

The junior blinked at you, as if as surprised as you were at the change in your tone. Without questioning, he obediently scooted right to the spot where you patted and leaned back horizontally against the wall beside the bed. He toyed with your mechanical pencil in his hands, spinning it around his fingers with the ease of somebody who’d done it far too often.

He probably spent too much time studying, you thought.

“There’s more to life than just school,” said Youngjae, dully. “Honours or no honours, those things in no way could make life happier,” he then scoffed almost bitterly, not looking at you. “A good future? Don’t even wanna think about it. The future will never end. Never.” Youngjae sighed, finally looking up at you, who was busy staring at the spinning pencil. You were chewing on your lip, letting his words dance like a ballet spectacle with a tragic end inside your mind. When you looked up to meet his sad sad eyes, Youngjae said, “There will always be a future. That is the problem. But you wouldn’t understand, I suppose…?”

His voice almost sounded as if he intended to be teasing or sarcastic, but the ending lost its colour and trailed off like a sad ending, the lights of the stage dimming down instead of the usual grand finale.

You let out an involuntary chuckle, soft and sentimental. You wouldn’t say you were a sad person or that you could fully comprehend Youngjae’s words but you understood it on some level, and Youngjae seemed to be waiting for you to either prove him right or wrong.

You had a strange feeling that he wanted to be…

“Wrong,” you gave him what he wanted. Hopefully.

His eyes seemed to light up momentarily, his eyebrows raising a bit before his expression morphed back to its handsome neutral.

“What could I possibly be wrong about?” asked the boy, along the lines of curiosity rather than arrogance.

“You are right about happiness. Life is not happier nor easier with or without the grades. You are right when you said that there are more to life than school,” you tilted your head to one side, thinking of how to put your thoughts into words. “The future? You are only right if you want to be,” you said with a smile, making Youngjae raise his eyebrows in turn. “But you are hoping to be wrong. So, I am going to tell you that you are wrong, Youngjae…sunbae.”

The boy frowned slightly. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yes, it does. The past makes the present and the present makes the future,” you said slowly. “You are saying that life is a future that never ends, like- like running without a destination, right?” Youngjae nodded, intrigued.

You continued, “So, what I’m saying is, it’s all in your head. The present is the future, and vise versa. Have you ever thought that, maybe, there will always be a present too?” Youngjae had gone still but you continued to babble anyway. “You could, you know, think that way, and life wouldn’t seem so pointless. Because if you keep looking for a point to aim at, the future is never the place to search,” you shrugged, “Not for me at least. To me the future is like, like- uh, a thick fog and really cloudy days and why would I want to look at cloudy days? What if it rains? Rain is good but it isn’t very poetic when you look at the sky and the rain suddenly drops into your eye, is it? Do you even know how much pollution there is? I–”

You suddenly stop and looked back at Youngjae, because the bed was slightly shifting and when your gaze met his, you realised that he was chuckling. He wasn’t depressed or upset anymore, he didn’t even look as worn out as before—he was laughing silently.

You blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

“What did I say?” you asked earnestly. “Was it something stupid? I’m–”

“No, no,” Youngjae replied, quickly waving dismissively between his little giggle fits. “It was, it was interesting. Really interesting, thanks.”

“Uh…okay,” you said unsurely, suddenly self-conscious for unknown reasons. You didn’t dare say anything else although you know you should. Tell him you were sorry for sounding dumb, for instance, but you couldn’t even manage that because you didn’t even remember what you two were talking about now.

“Don’t worry, I get your drift,” said Youngjae after recovering, a small smile still on his face. “Enjoy the present, don’t look too far ahead, right?”

You blinked. “Right.”

“Anyway, I’m tired, can I sleep? I promise I’ll get more work done tomorrow, but I’m gonna turn in, like, right now.” Youngjae said, standing up from the bed and making his way to the mattress that was made for him on the rug beside your bed. Without complaint, he flopped down and groaned a little, before reaching for something behind his back and tossed it to you. “Go back to giggling over your boyfriend or whatever. Good night.”

It was Uppie’s phone you’d pushed off the bed earlier.

Youngjae pulled the blankets over his head, not appreciating the bright light. You considerately got up to switch off the lighting, trying to not step on him. Then something occurred to you.

“You’re staying here tomorrow?”

The boy stiffened and poked his head out of the blanket, squinting at you.

“Objection?”

You shrugged. “I’m cool, as long as you do me…” you trailed off, concentrating on finding your way back without tripping over the junior’s body.

“Do you know how wrong that sounds?” Youngjae snorted, pulling the blanket over his head once more.

“Not really,” you confessed, making it back to your bed without harming the boy on the floor too much. He only let out a grunt or two when you accidentally kicked him in the back, or was it the ribs? Whatever.

Once situated on your bed, making yourself comfortable, you flicked on Uppie’s phone, but was momentarily distracted from it when you heard Youngjae mumble something that sounded like, ‘your boyfriend is one lucky bastard.’ You frowned at that, sure that you must be hearing things or he was already sleeptalking. You went back to the phone, browsing through the contacts to see who was interesting enough to bother.

You stopped at a particular status message that made your eyebrows shoot up.

‘abt to do smth so fckn stupid’

You read the name associated with the status.

mr.BANG

You checked the profile picture and it was a photo of an orange doll that looked like a smiling tiger. You made a face.

Quickly opening the chat, seeing this tiger worthy of your attention, you quickly sent it a message.

Uppie: would it ruin your life?

As you wondered whether mr.BANG would reply, the response came.

mr.BANG: wht?
Uppie: this stupid thing ur about to do
Uppie: ur clearly smart enough to know that it’s stupid
Uppie: ur still gunna do it?

You typed courageously because it was not your phone anyway and this person clearly needed some kicking in the head. It was a win-win situation. You would teach all these stupid people in Uppie’s contacts to be better humans and then Uppie would have better friends and, all the while, you could relief your boredom, so, there.

mr.BANG: wtf do u kno

You frowned. That wasn’t very nice of him.

Uppie: i know enough to stop u from doing smth tht might ruin ur life
mr.BANG: its non o ur bizz
mr.BANG: prick

Wow, another rude contact, once again. He clearly put that status message up for a reason. He could be scared and he may need somebody’s reassurance that they care if something happened to him.

Uppie: i care u know
Uppie: what happens to u
Uppie: i don’t know who u think i am but i wouldn’t want u doing anything that will make u regret for a lifetime

You paused for a second, deciding to add anything that would prevent you from sounding like a boring old grandma trying to preach her grandson. Uppie would not appreciate being seen as an old grandma.

Uppie: YOLO is there for a reason
Uppie: it is not an excuse for u to mess up your one and only life

Your eyes became bleary from sleepiness and, slowly, you began to drift off in deep slumber. The phone slid to your side before the number one sign disappeared, indicating that the chat had been read.

x

The next day, a grumpy Jongup made his way to school and dumped himself onto the seat opposite Himchan in the cafeteria. They still had a while before first period and this was where they would usually meet. Himchan made a quick glance up from his phone once and looked back down and then did a double take at his sophomore friend.

“Something wrong?” he asked worriedly.

Jongup shook his head and rested his cheek on his hand atop the table. He was too irritated to speak. Suddenly, a hand clapped him on the back and a tall Junhong slid into the bench beside Jongup.

“Good morning,” he greeted both of them, before turning to Jongup. “Where’s Youngjae hyung?”

Frowning, Jongup twisted his head to stare at Junhong and the latter stiffened.

“Uh, something wrong?” the boy asked tentatively, eyes darting to Himchan for some clue. “Did you and Jae hyung fight last night or…”

Junhong quickly trailed off when Jongup’s scowl deepened and Himchan was looking as if he had no idea what happened to the dancer either.

“Last night?” Jongup grumbled, confused. “What d’you mean? I didn’t see him at all yesterday.”

That made both Junhong and Himchan stare at each other.

“But Jae got kicked out of his house again and he said he was going to go to your place,” explained the oldest.

Jongup sat up a little, his frown slipping off.

“What? He never came,” he said. “And I had practice until really late. And…” his face soured again, “I still haven’t gotten my phone back.”

Silence stretched for a moment, only interrupted by the sounds of conversations and footsteps from the hallway by the other students.

“Then where did he go?”

“You lost your phone?”

Both Himchan and Junhong spoke at the same time.

x

“If you keep on doing that, you’ll look even uglier,” said Youngjae, glancing over his shoulder at you as you two walked to school.

You grimaced even more. “Not my fault you woke me up so early,” you kicked a pebble on the gravel agitatedly. “You could've just gone to pack your things without me. You did this on purpose.”

The early morning was nice, you had to admit in your head. But you were never a morning person. And having to sneak into Youngjae's house with him to get his stuff wasn’t what you would consider a good morning exercise. You were only half awake at that time, and you still were, even now as you two made your way passed the school gate.

Without a word, Youngjae yanked your schoolbag from your shoulders and hauled it over his own. Now he was carrying two backpacks, his head tilted to the side and stared at you challengingly. 

“How about I carry your things for you and you belt up?” he bargained, flicking his hair out of his eyes. “Not that I don’t like it when you talk, but you could really spend your time on something more productive. Like, keeping up with your own homework, for instance.”

You said nothing but you did not move. You probably looked like a kicked puppy because you have always hated being scolded, and from the tone of the sunbae’s voice, it really sounded like he was irritated with you. You didn’t ask for him to wake you up, nor walk with you to school and carry your things. You gave him a place to stay only that he help you with your assignments in return. You were starting to miss Daehyun (who was probably going to be late as always) because you preferred to be the one scolding more than being scolded.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed you by the arm and a deep sigh brushed against the top of your head. You looked up discreetly at Youngjae who gave you an almost knowing look and began tugging you with him.

“Come on,” he said in a softer tone. “I’ll introduce you to my friends.”

Oh, great, you thought grimly.