I twirled my pen distractedly between my fingers before it dropped, clattering on the table top. I straightened it compulsively before I resorted to drumming my fingers nervously instead. One, two, three, pause, one, two, three—

“Stop that,” Jongin said. I looked up, startled. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“Sorry.” I splayed my fingers on the smooth surface contritely, looked over at him. His eyes were closed, but his dark circles were less obvious. At least he got enough sleep here in the hospital—well, really, he had no choice since there wasn’t anything to do other than sleep. “Do you need painkillers?”

“No,” he sighed, opening his eyes. “Just water, please.”

I poured a glass, pushing my chair closer to the bed and scooting over to hand it to him.

“Thanks.”

“Mm.” I looked down distractedly at the notebook in my lap. I was supposed to be finishing a holiday assignment since school started next week, but I had procrastinated, and now I only had about three days to complete an assignment meant to be completed over the course of almost a month, give or take the time I would spend at Soojung’s party.

Any comfort I had around Jongin’s familiar presence melted away, and my stomach tightened in anxiety as I realised with a start that I was approximately thirty hours from seeing Sehun.

“What’s that?” 

I was startled again.

“Just homework,” I sighed, flipping a page back and forth morosely like doing that would magically make the empty pages fill up. “This is so stupid. Why the hell do we get goddamn journal entries as a holiday assignment? What are we, twelve?”

“You’re really pushing it late.” Jongin raised an eyebrow; it wasn't like me to procrastinate. “School starts on Monday.”

"I was occupied," I grumbled. Honestly, I had dropped everything to spend time with Jongin at the hospital and left a lot of homework incomplete but I didn't mention it. I wasn't trying to guilt trip him. “Have you done your homework?”

“No.” He folded his hands at the back of his head, leaning back against his pillows smugly. “But I have an excuse—I’ll just get one of the doctors to write a note for me.”

“You were admitted for back and waist pains, not a sprained wrist, moron,” I said wryly. “Mr. Choi will just throw the note right back at you.”

“No, he wouldn’t, I think he likes me.”

“No way." I corrected him with a snort. "He only tolerates you because I always make excuses for you and help you out with your homework. Without me, you’d be flunking class.”

Jongin made a face. “Teacher’s pet.”

“What would you do without me?”

“What, indeed,” he laughed. “Have a girlfriend, maybe.”

I smiled delicately but remained silent, scribbling some nonsense onto the blank page. Perhaps it was sheer willfulness, but I didn’t want to think about what Jongin meant. It may have seemed a throwaway comment to anyone who didn’t know us well, but I knew how true it was. Jongin was incredibly popular at school, with boys and girls alike, and never lacked female attention once he hit puberty. There were many girls who had confessed to him, some he had dated for awhile but it never worked out, mainly because his friendship with me made them uncomfortable and insecure, or he always prioritised me over his girlfriends. Other people started spreading rumours that Jongin and I were in a friends with benefits kind of relationship, which pretty much killed any romance he had going on at that time and any interest other guys might have had in me. When those brief flings ended, he hadn’t been too torn up about it and only declared jokingly that I was the only girl for him in the end, which only made the rumours worse and Seungwan and Seulgi tease me more. I could never tell if he was being serious or not.

In that sense, he had always been as unreadable as Sehun.

I realized with a start that I had been staring at my notebook blankly for quite awhile, and Jongin was looking at me out of the side of his eyes. 

“Hey, relax. Glaring at the paper isn’t going to make the words come any quicker.”

I exhaled, tried to let the tension melt away, wrote a sentence then another.

“‘Today, I spent my afternoon at the hospital with Jongin',” Jongin read aloud over my shoulder. “‘He told me I was giving him a headache. I’m going to pump him full of painkillers later in his sleep.’” He laughed, amused as he ruffled my hair. I yelped, batting his hand away. “Aw, are you mad at me?”

“Not the hair, Jongin,” I grumbled, trying to fix it before giving up and shutting my notebook. “I just can’t think of anything.”

“Don’t bother then,” he