Okay, maybe Luhan was letting his curiosity eat him up too easily. All he wondered, day-in and day-out what Sehun meant by “love”.

And he couldn’t answer his own questions, either. What would he do if it meant romantic love? Did Luhan romantically love Sehun back? If he tried, could he? He’s always known he had the capacity to like boys, but the last boy he’d loved was now 6 feet under. So did he really want to love Sehun?

No answers.

But that didn’t help the onslaught of questions.

What if it was just friendly? Would that be simpler or not? If it turned out to just be platonic love that he was implying, then what should Luhan make of all of this self-reflection? Did he secretly hope it was romantic?

Did he hope it was ual?

Finally, an answer. The answer being: no, probably not.

Truthfully, he felt creepy, thinking about all of this as he watched Sehun sleep.

Lately his dreams hadn’t been giving him any respite, either. He found only one good course of action.

Poking his roommate in the face, he whispered, “Sehun, wake up.”

Sehun groaned and tried to pull the covers up over his head. “Go to sleep, Luhan,” he mumbled.

“I can’t. I need to know if you still love me.”

There was a moment of calm before Sehun flipped himself to face the older man. His eyes were cracked open. “What?” he asked.

“I need to know what you meant. When you said you used to love me. On New Year’s Eve. Do you still love me? And love me how?”

Sehun blinked. “Seriously? That’s keeping you up at night?”

“Yes,” Luhan said. “Please answer me. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about what happened in the alleyway. Please.”

Sehun sat up. “You first.”

“What? Why?” Luhan frowned.

“Hey, you proposed the deal. That is my condition. Take it or leave it.”

Luhan rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll take it. What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Who was that girl? Who was her brother? Why did he have the money? Who did you think I was when you attacked me?”

“Okay, I didn’t attack you--”

“Luhan,” Sehun said with an eyebrow raised. “If you’re going to lie, the deal is off.”

The Chinese man sighed. “Sorry. Sorry for attacking you. That girl was my best friend’s sister.”

“Wait. A sister? Aren’t Chinese people restricted to one child per family?”

“Only if you’re Han Chinese. My friend was Zhuang. Can I not be interrupted for five seconds?” Luhan took a breath and restarted. “That girl was my best friend’s sister. My friend and I had known each other since we were in diapers. Our families lived in the same apartment building. My grandmother looked after both of us while our parents worked. So naturally, we were close. We were very close. We loved each other. Now, before you ask, it was romantically. I don’t like keeping people in the dark, unlike some people.”

Sehun rolled his eyes.

“In our last year of high school, he got himself into trouble. Big time. He’d started gambling for the rush he felt after a big win. Unfortunately, he didn’t always win. Sometimes he would lose everything he went in with. Now, gambling is illegal in China. It’s all underground. And at every underground gambling table, unfailingly, is a loan shark, ready to pounce at a player’s weak point.”

Sehun grimaced. He could tell where this was going.

“My best friend was not a smart boy. Whenever he lost, he would get into this blind rage, and he was easy to manipulate and trick in that state. The loan sharks knew what would happen. They would lend him money to keep playing with the condition that he pay them back double. Sometimes he would win back their asking price immediately. Sometimes he wouldn’t be so lucky.”

Luhan took long enough of a break for Sehun to feel the need to prompt him to continue. “What happened? When he wasn’t lucky?”

Luhan flinched at the memory of the boy he loved coming up the stairs to his third story unit covered in crusted blood and hardly able to open his eyes. “He paid. Not with money.” Luhan remembered the countless nights he stayed out in the corridor until his friend came home, and how he wouldn’t meet his worried eyes. He would hardly utter a ‘Goodnight’. He remembered how hurt he felt. “It was incredibly painful. To watch someone you love go through something like that, all because of an addiction bigger than them. I was naive to think it would be enough to ask him to stop for me. If he loved me. I said that. I regret that every day. Instead of helping him when he needed it most, I was making him feel like he was just this weak-willed idiot who got himself into trouble.”

Sehun noticed the tears flowing. “Luhan, you don’t have to continue if you don’t want to.”

Luhan shrugged. “We’re right at the end anyway. He died when his debt piled up so much that the loan sharks wouldn’t just let him go. They were merciless. I stayed up all night that night, waiting for him to come home. I woke up in the corridor the next morning when the police came to his house to inform his parents that they found his body.”

Sehun closed his eyes. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much that must have hurt.

“After his death, his family started treating me more like a son. Maybe replacing him was easier than feeling the void he left. So that’s why I treat his sister like my own, and his parents, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Sehun said.

“When I found you in the alleyway, I thought you were one of the loan sharks who would harass his family even after his death. The poor souls have yet to pay off his debt, and it’s been four years. All they can do is chip away at it, penny by penny.”

Luhan wiped all of the tears off of his face and plastered on instead a bright smile. “Your turn!”

In the wake of what Luhan had just confessed, Sehun’s confession seemed so trivial.

“Yeah, I still love you. Romantically.”

“Cool!” Luhan said, and leapt into bed. “Goodnight!”

“Wait, wait, wait! That’s it? ‘Cool!’? That’s all you’re going to say?!”

“Yep!”

***

Lee Taemin and Kim Jongin were closer friends than either Do Kyungsoo or Byun Baekhyun were comfortable with,  but neither could do anything about it.

Taemin was good, though. He knew that his best friend would probably knock him out cold if he knew what he had done to get information