I N N E R C I R C L E

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2.

It was a chilling autumn morning, back then when they were still boys, so eagerly facing the world and anticipating anything coming across their way. He just turned twenty and Seunghoon twenty one, coming out of a brutal competition where they bitterly won against their own brothers. Their dreams were young, bright, and big, and the stages seem like heaven, they would smell the air every single time they got to perform in a big stage. The bright light and heart-thumping music mesmerize them. Too innocent, too young, fallen in mad love with life, laughters and tears coming without warning, they absorbed everything around them with the curiosity of a ten year old leaving his home to a school trip for the first time.

It was the first trip abroad that they took, and while secretly holding hands waiting in line at the airport, they decided to run away for a day, faraway from their teammates just so that the little thing between them, back then, it was still a thing, wouldn’t get too out of hand. Until now, Mino still remembers how they pulled a prank in front of other guys, Seunghoon acting like he was tricked into the trip to Kawagoe and everyone else was laughing so hard it was easy for Mino to play along. Seunghoon was always an amazing actor, Mino thinks, you never know what he really thinks. He never knew what Seunghoon really thinks. That night, when Jinwoo fell asleep and kept snoring loudly into his ear, Mino laid on his side facing Seunghoon, his arm reaching to the other bed and soon enough his fingers met with Seunghoon’s warm palm, as they silently hold each other’s hand tightly without even saying a word.

On that chilling autumn morning, he woke up at eight in the morning (he almost never does that voluntarily, even until now) because of the excitement, who cares if some cameramen actually followed them. They ran to the closest train station nearby, Seunghoon with his broken Japanese tried to figure out how to get to Kawagoe, and Mino remembered telling a very confused Seunghoon that knowing how to ask questions in Japanese is