Jongin awoke feeling exhausted, and he knew why. He hadn’t forgotten anything overnight. He looked at the other side of the bed and saw Kyungsoo sleeping, facing him, with an arm resting in the space between them. Jongin reached over and touched the soft hand with hesitant fingers.

He thought of his mother. She had devoted so much of her life to her husband. They had fallen in love so long ago, way before his father showed any symptoms of Greenbloom’s, but he knew he would have it, just like every other male in his family.

Just like Jongin knew. Just like Jongin had known.

Kyungsoo’s eyes fluttered open and he intertwined his fingers with Jongin’s. “Are you awake?” he asked, voice raspy.

He didn’t feel it, and a part of him wished he weren’t, but he nodded anyway.

He hadn’t seen his father in years. For all he knew, the image he had in his head of the man wasn’t even accurate. He kept the image sacred anyway, because even if it wasn’t a true representation of his father, it was still a representation of all he stood for.

He begrudgingly threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Dizzy from the sudden movement, he held onto the wall as he made his way to the closet. He didn’t have a suit here, he kept that at his aunt’s.

His aunt. His aunt had lost a beloved brother. One she grew up with, who loved and protected her for her formative years. Even after her banishment, Jongin knew the siblings did love each other.

He wondered if his father loved him after his banishment.

The one day he had returned to his home over the break, he had seen countless pictures of his childhood. Did his father ever look at those pictures and wonder where that little boy went?

After a moment of staring blankly into his wardrobe, he pulled a black sweater over his head. He didn’t have the energy to put on pants that weren’t pyjamas, so he didn’t bother.

“Are you okay, Jongin?” Kyungsoo asked.

Jongin shook his head. He didn’t have the energy to lie and put on a smile.

“Do you want to talk?”

He did, but he couldn’t bring himself to. His voice was weak, he could tell without using it.

“It’s okay, Jongin. It’s going to be okay again.” Kyungsoo was standing behind him now, wrapping his hands around his waist. He rested his cheek on his shoulder. “I am always going to be here beside you. You can forget everything, as long as you remember that. And I will always be here to remind you. You can trust me.”

“I do,” Jongin whispered. “I do trust you. It just… hurts.”

“I know,” Kyungsoo said. “I know it does.”

Jongin only had to endure two more days, then he could join his family in grieving. He couldn’t leave just yet because his mother had told Taeyeon to bring Jongin, and she couldn’t abandon her job, not even for her brother’s death.

***

Joonmyun chewed on the end of his pen for a good ten minutes before he felt a warm liquid on his tongue. He took out the writing utensil to find he had chewed through the plastic to the tube of ink. He ran to the bathroom to spit out the blue staining his tongue and wash it out as best as he could. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the first time he’d done this. After all the research he’d done the first time, when he thought he might die from ink poisoning, he knew that the amount of ink in a pen was so insubstantial that there was nearly no risk to his health.

No risk to his health, maybe, but the page that was on his lap was absolutely drenched and the words were illegible.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed to the empty room.

That was supposed to be his monologue.

Oh well. He’d just have to restart. He mourned the witty lines he had given himself that he may never remember enough to recreate.

As if knowing the situation that had just taken place, Yixing called at that moment.

“Yeah?” Joonmyun answered, and he must have sounded pretty pissed, because Yixing took the defensive.

“Whoa. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, just--” Sigh. “I spilled ink all over my monologue.”

There was a pause before a burst of laughter. “What’s next? Your quill breaks? You run out of scrolls?”

Joonmyun rolled his eyes. “It was a pen, idiot.”

“Is this the early 20th century? Why are you writing the monologue by hand? You can’t convince me a rich kid like you doesn’t have a computer.”

“You know I have a computer. I just can’t focus on it. I always end up on, like, Facebook, or Pinterest, or something.”

“Pinterest, huh? So, tell me, what will the colour scheme of your wedding be?”

“Whatever you want it to be,” Joonmyun retorted.

“Is that a proposal, Angel?” Yixing chuckled.

“You wish. Why’d you call, anyway?”

“I got an email reply from professor Choi. She said that it’s way too early in the semester to think about extra credit, but that we would have a similar project soon enough. So we could use that as the basis of our bet.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Joonmyun couldn’t explain why that disappointed him but lifted his spirits at the same time. On one hand, Yixing was actually considering this bet thing seriously, but on the other, he wouldn’t talk about much else.

And then things changed with a single phrase. “So, how are your classes going, Joon?”

***

Hurting Chanyeol was getting to be the thing driving Baekhyun craziest. He wondered if he should just follow everyone’s advice and come clean, but the thought scared him so much, he refused to think much about it. Besides, he was starting to get better at pretending nothing had happened, as terrible as it was.

“Hey, Baek,” Chanyeol started, interrupting Baekhyun’s train of thought. “How did you come out to Nanna?”

Baekhyun blinked. His head was on Chanyeol’s lap, so he had to crane his neck to look at his face. “I kind of just,” he made a vague hand movement.

Chanyeol gave him a puzzled look.

“You know, I kind of just said it. I was bracing myself for yelling or something, but she gushed about how proud she was of how in tune I was with myself. It caught me off guard. Then she threw me a coming out party, which was awkward, so now there is no one in that village that doesn’t know I’m gay. Also, they probably all deduced that you’re my boyfriend.”

“Oh. Well, like, I don’t mind that, obviously. But was it really that easy?”

Baekhyun thought back. “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I didn’t try to ease her into it or anything. I went straight for the kill, just ripped the bandaid off.”

“Wow.”

Baekhyun craned his neck again to get a glimpse of his boyfriend’s face. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

A moment passed. “Is this about your mom?”

Chanyeol’s breath hitched, and then he sighed. “Yeah. I’m worried she won’t accept me.”

“You’re lucky. If she doesn’t, you still have your father and Sohee to support you. I came out to my only living family member with no backup plan.”

Solemnly, Chanyeol nodded. “You’re right, but…”

“I know, it’s not easy to just write off family like that, just because they don’t accept you. I mean, look at Jongin. He hasn’t seen his father in years but the devastation proves he never stopped loving his father. He was probably always just waiting for a moment when his father would have a change of heart and love him again.”

“I feel so bad for Jongin.”

“Yeah…” An air of melancholy took over the room an