TEXT MESSAGES

KYU: What’s going on now, man?

HAE: We’re playing Truth or Dare.

KYU: Anything interesting? By interesting, I mean my interesting, not your interesting.

HAE: I don’t know if this is your interesting but… Hyo just dared Hyuk to make out with Fany for seven minutes in the storeroom.

=

Jessica clapped. “Seven minutes in heaven!”

Everyone stared at her with wide eyes.

Heaven? It sounds more like hell, thought Siwon.

=

In the next second, Kyuhyun found himself bounding out of his house and sprinting his way to Jongwoon’s house.

=

Everyone stared as Hyoyeon put the dare aside and started clapping. “Alright, come on. Seven minutes in heaven it is!”

Donghae stowed his phone aside after he caught the look on Siwon’s face. Jessica was the only one who seemed remotely excited about the current situation.

Jongwoon and Yuri had on faces of contorted surprise. It didn’t seem like they were particularly unhappy about the condition, but it didn’t seem like they were as excited as Jessica was.

When everyone failed to move after a minute or two, Hyoyeon got the hype starting again, to everyone’s chagrin, no less. “Come on, you guys! Only losers don’t do dares! Are you guys chicken? Go for it! Come on!”

Hyukjae reached out for Hyoyeon’s hand. “Um, Hyo, you can always choose the second dare…”

Yuri snuck the dares away back into her pocket. She and Jongwoon shared a look and Siwon could almost guess that the second dare, and the third, and so on were not much different from the first.

Hyoyeon did a weird laughter and swatted her hands in the air. “What are you talking about? I’m fine! Stop looking at me like that! Come on, storeroom it is! Go for it!”

Stephanie and Hyukjae looked up to find Hyoyeon’s eyes flickering between them. They shared a look and fidgeted awkwardly.

“Hyo,” Stephanie began, her voice a bit twisted.

Taeyeon nudged Hyoyeon a bit. “Hyoyeon, come on, you don’t have to do this, you know.”

Hyoyeon swung Taeyeon’s arm away and knocked her off-balance. Stephanie caught her in the knick of time and they shared a look.

“What are you guys talking about?! Come on, head on inside, go!”

When no one moved still, Hyoyeon got up and manhandled Stephanie and Hyukjae, ushering them into the storeroom. She shut the door for them, then banged on it and gave an evil laughter. “Have a lot of fun inside!”

=

Kyuhyun tripped on the way here but caught himself. His slipper – curse slippers! – were almost worn out and he knew that this was the perfect opportunity to go get himself a pair of Havaianas.

Dear lord, he had to get there fast.

(For what, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to stop and think about it, either.)

=

Siwon was the first one who noticed Hyoyeon’s twitching eye. “Hyo…”

“Alright, I’m counting! Six minutes and fifty three seconds left!” Hyoyeon whipped out a stopwatch with all the enthusiasm she could muster.

Everyone stared.

=

The storeroom wasn’t a very nice place to be cooped up in, they both concluded after seven seconds inside.

“Man, this place is dusty,” Hyukjae started.

Stephanie bit her lower lip. “What do we do?”

Hyukjae scratched his neck subconsciously. “I don’t know.”

“We just stay in here, I guess?”

=

Hyoyeon got up at around the fifth minute, going straight to the storeroom. She banged on the door and demanded that she was going to open the door and if the two weren’t joined at the lips, will get real for them.

Taeyeon massaged her fingers. “Good lord,” she mumbled. Yuri heard it and turned to her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um, nothing, just… My fingers are kind of numb, nothing big!”

=

Kyuhyun turned a corner, convinced that he was reaching in the next five seconds.

=

Hyukjae and Stephanie panicked. “What do we do now?!”

“I can’t—I guess—man when she says will get real,  actually gets real!”

“So what now?”

“We—we kiss!”

=

“I’m opening the door!”

Donghae, Siwon and Taeyeon shielded their eyes as Hyoyeon’s hand neared the doorknob. Jessica, Yuri and Jongwoon stared with curiosity, and were this close to leaping up in joy.

=

Kyuhyun found the house. And just in his five-second limit, too.

He burst into the house, almost knocking the door off its hinges.

The storeroom door was open.

=

Hyukjae and Stephanie’s lips had touched.

=

“God, damn it, no…”

Kyuhyun kicked his slippers off and went forward in two big strides, knocking the air out of Hyukjae when he lunged forward and pulled Stephanie away.

Everyone’s eyes were this close to popping out now.

=

“You cannot kiss him!”

=

Krystal was downing a new bottle of milk when it slipped out of her hand and hit the ground with a resounding shatter. She cursed under her breath and went to look for a broom and a cloth.

“What a bad omen.”

=

Hyoyeon and Hyukjae had reunited after Kyuhyun took Stephanie away. Everyone was up on their feet now, trying to ingest the current situation.

Stephanie could only gape in shock.

Kyuhyun swallowed, finding much difficulty to do so. He looked away from Stephanie’s eyes and to the ground, where he saw her feet right before his. Then he felt everyone’s eyes all on him.

“I…”

=

Krystal ransacked the kitchen for some food. Now that their parents were going to be out an unspecified period of time, food supply was running dangerously low. She considered picking Donghae’s lock to get some of his food, until she remembered that she had wiped out most of his supply as well.

Lucky for her, she saw the Koko Krunch boxes that Donghae gave Jessica. She grinned.

“I guess I’ll just eat this. If she finds out I stole her food… Well, it’s always nice to see her freaking out over Donghae.”

=

Jongwoon stood up first, Hyukjae’s soda bottle in hand now. “Why are you here?”

Kyuhyun scratched his hair. “Before I talk to you, let me settle this.” He looked at Stephanie, then Hyukjae, then Hyoyeon, then at Donghae, Siwon and Taeyeon. “I…”

“You…” Hyoyeon breached.

“I…”

“I don’t think your sentence contains three I’s and nothing else, right?”

Kyuhyun cleared his throat. “I just… Alright, fine. I can’t keep this under wraps anymore. I like Stephanie. I like Fany, yes, I do. And she’s the only girl I’ve liked so far. I’m… I’m sorry.”

Donghae looked at Jessica. Jessica’s face was contorted in a mix of dampened excitement and restrained happiness, with a tinge of sourness because she could almost feel Taeyeon’s heart breaking.

As he marveled at how Jessica was such a feeler (he slapped himself for that, but he found no other word to describe how Jessica was this capable offeeling emotions), he also wondered who Kyuhyun’s apology was directed at. Stephanie, or Taeyeon?

=

Krystal went upstairs to ransack Jessica’s room, trying to find something to play with. She saw her room covered in pink and shuddered at how a person could live with this much pink. She knew she couldn’t.

Then she saw that on Jessica’s corkboard of memories, where pictures and photographs of her and her family, including Krystal as well, and her and her friends are stuck up. Right in the middle, in the most prominent area, was the photograph of her and Donghae, joined at the lips in that picture perfect split second.

Krystal grinned. “I really am a great Cupid. Not to mention, a great photographer.”

=

Stephanie regained her consciousness a few silent minutes after Kyuhyun finished his speech. She looked up at him and gave her ugliest guffaw thus far, and smacked Kyuhyun on the chest. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? You’re so kidding!”

Kyuhyun looked hurt at this, but Siwon couldn’t really tell under the dim lighting Jongwoon had put up. He did see, however, that Kyuhyun hands had fallen limply at his side. He wondered how he should feel at that moment.

And as for Taeyeon… Well, Taeyeon was this close to buckling to the ground.

Then Hyukjae and Hyoyeon started laughing along with a hysterical Stephanie, and Kyuhyun gave them a glance. He chuckled too, joining in. “Yeah, yeah, I am. I’m kidding.”

Jongwoon charged forward with the bottle. “So you just wanted to join the party!”

Kyuhyun chuckled more. “Yeah, yeah, I wanted to join the party. I knew it’d be fun.” He flashed a smile to Jongwoon, who reciprocated it.

Siwon saw as the whirlwind settled and as everyone got back to their seats. And he knew that he was the only one who saw the quick flash of regret and hurt and all kinds of ugly things in Kyuhyun’s eyes as he avoided eye contact with anyone.

=

Stephanie was the only one who saw Taeyeon mustering all her strength to keep from cracking. She also knew that as far as it went, she and Taeyeon knew best that Kyuhyun wasn’t kidding.

Taeyeon wasn’t that adept at mathematics, but she did have some wits that became useful at the worst of times.

=

The fifth spin was done by Kyuhyun, at Jongwoon’s suggestion that the new guest should start the new round.

Donghae found himself inexplicably seated opposite Jessica now, and he knew that if the bottle landed in his or her direction, they’d be involved at once. He didn’t know if he should cheer or not.

Kyuhyun’s spin brought the bottle to himself and Taeyeon.

=

Taeyeon laughed her unglamorous laugh, inciting Yuri, Hyoyeon and Jessica to laugh along.

“Ooh, Taeyeon’s going to ask a question,” Yuri commented.

Taeyeon’s laughter got more intense as she high-fived Yuri, and then she turned to Kyuhyun. Everyone expected her laughter to die down, but it didn’t. She got louder instead. “Man, this is just hilarious…”

Stephanie, seated beside Jessica now, felt the pain in her chest get stronger the louder Taeyeon got.

Kyuhyun masked his troubled self behind his eyes, and forced a smile as he made eye contact with Taeyeon. “So, what do you want to ask me?”

“When we first met…”

Hyukjae arched a brow at Taeyeon asking a seeming repeat of his previous question that also involved the theme of ‘when we first met’. But then his brow went down when Taeyeon continued.

“…you didn’t notice me at all.” Taeyeon’s voice was still cheery, evidently an aftereffect from the mock laughter she squeezed out earlier on.

Stephanie knew better. Kyuhyun did, too.

Kyuhyun knew everything, unfortunately.

“Was it…” Taeyeon started laughing again, this time tears threatening to spill out from her eyes. “Was it because of my height?”

Jongwoon did a double take. “Oooooh! This is not going to be good!” He did a swipe at his neck and gestured that this was going to turn ugly.

Kyuhyun wanted to snap at him and tell him that things had gotten ugly already a while ago. But right now, all he could do was focus on Taeyeon’s question.

“No.”

Taeyeon’s tears spilled out this time, but her laughter came nowhere close to a halt.

“It was because I noticed Fany first.”