THREE

 I say we should take a day to break away from all the pain, the game is not played alone.

And I say we should take a moment and hold it and know that life has a hopeful undertone.

"Are you being serious right now? Did you even bother to put in any thought into this?" Mino runs his tongue over his top row of teeth, and dumps the file onto the table. He rolls his eyes, turns to his Mac desktop, and continues to type furiously, not even bothering to look at the poor intern's eyes. "Don't bother to show me anything until you've created something with actual potential."

The nameless intern bows deeply and scurries out of his office with a terrified and aspirated expression painted on his face. With fingers that run across the keyboard, he types in html codes that he had memorized by heart, as if it was another language he spoke with such natural ease. He doesn't even bother to give the intern a second look as the younger man slams his office door close. He just runs a hand through his hair and leans back on his swivel chair. He sighs and looks intently into his empty mug with dried coffee drips decorating the side of the white porcelain. He needs another cup of coffee.

His office door swings open again, this time without any knocks before hand. Mino instantly knows who it is and sinks deeper into his chair, letting out an annoyed groan. "What do you want, Seunghoon? I have work to do."

"Are you being ?" Seunghoon crosses his arms and looks down at him with a judging look, and god, does Mino hate it. "Because we all know very well that you're ."

"C'mon, hyung, I just--" Mino sighs and loosens his tie in frustration. He was usually better with words, but it’s almost midnight, he's sweaty and his dress shirt feels too thick and think against his skin. His cologne had worn off hours ago and he had been coped up over his desktop without a blink of sleep for two days. He really needs that goddamn coffee.

"Stop pissing everybody off just because you haven't got laid in like-- ages, man." Seunghoon scoffs. Heaven forbid, if Seunghoon wasn't Mino's best friend and his business partner that was of any valuable asset, he would've thrown the entire stack of files piled on his table towards Seunghoon's head. "This is the third intern today, Mino! If you keep this up--"

"Drop it, Seunghoon. There’s plenty of people who are queuing up outside our door as we speak, begging for a job here." Mino waves him off and stares at his computer screen. If he just ignores Seunghoon, maybe he would go away eventually.

"That’s not the point! If you keep throwing people away like they’re nothing, how are you going to expect to move forward?" Seunghoon bites back, and there’s this hidden meaning behind his words that just hits the right nerves in Mino's heart.

Mino stares at the codes on his screen, the contrast of the bright neon letters against the black background is harsh on his sore eyes. His fists are balled into fists, blunt fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms. “What do you want from me?” He asks honestly.

Seunghoon’s glare softens and he gives him a pitiful look. He turns from Mino’s savvy business partner who had help him raise his small business into a global multimillion programming enterprise to Mino’s best friend. He had been there for him since high school, the only one who knows that Mino still bathes with rubber ducks and cracks immature elementary school level jokes. He knows Mino all to well, maybe a little too well for his liking. He sees right through his facade and reads him like a book, every page and every word memorized.

“Take the rest of the week off. I’ll take care of everything for the time being.”

Mino looks at him in disbelief. “What? No.”

“Look, I don’t want you to have a goddamn mental breakdown by the end of this month. Now listen to your hyung and take a break. You need it.”

Mino sighs for the umpteenth time that day, and he clicks save on his desktop. “I’ll think about it. Now leave me alone. I’m working on something.”

Seunghoon walks over to his desk and pats his shoulder in a comforting and reassuring way, and proceeds to lean down to look at his screen. “Personal file? You’re still working on that?” He continues when Mino doesn’t speak. “At least go home today, Mino.”

He pats his shoulders again for added emphasis. “Go home.”

/ / /

Mino learns how to love at the age of sixteen

The love of music. The love of standing on stage to perform. He wears clothes that are too large for his body that it practically drapes over his shoulders, he hides behind snapbacks and he limps intentionally along to the beat. He raps passionately into the microphone, lyrics flowing rapidly from his throat to his lips. It all seemed fine, it all seemed to make perfect sense. The dotted lines were set in front of him and at the end of it, he could see himself standing in the middle of a stadium, millions of people screaming his name as the heavy beat of the bass thumps against his bones so loudly he could feel it in his chest and adrenaline flowing down to the edge of his fingertips.

/ / /

Mino falls heads before heels, heart before mind.

He knows he’s balancing on the fence, she’s way out of his league. She’s the school’s smartest and prettiest girl; Jung Eunji. She has long wavy hair and a charming smile that makes the corner of the eyes crinkle. She laughs with him, she sits beside him during lunch and she rests her head onto his shoulders.

Mino’s heart swells with something. Maybe its euphoria, maybe it was just because he was a lonely high school teenage boy, but Mino likes to think it was love.

/ / /

Mino learns how to dream again at the age of twenty.

He’s older and wiser, he has lost all that weight, features now sharp and shoulders now broad. His dream had changed along with him as time went by. A high school certificate from a performing arts school could only get him so far. His childhood dream of being a rapper or an artist was now tucked and hidden away in the depths of thousands of proposals and business documents.

A new dream had sprouted from a hobby of programming websites. He had started small at first, a social media website he had created transformed into a business company built purely of his and Seunghoon’s hands and brains. Now, he has two skyscrapers under his company name and multiple branches worldwide. He had traded in his baggy shirts for white button-ups and fitted Armani blazers. His snapbacks were long gone, Rolex and Zenith proudly displayed on his wrists. He was in Forbes’ 30 under 30 and he was declared most eligible bachelor of the yea. He had worked so hard, all of the cups of coffee, all-nighters, stuffy meetings and the hopeful dreams of his younger college self in his dorm room, he was finally here. Living the dream.

He lives in a mansion of riches and luxury, and once in awhile he looks back and wonders if what he’s doing is right. He wonders if what he was doing was worth it all. He had long forgotten how his mother’s home cooked food tasted like; how to be happy. Hell, he probably couldn’t even recognize happiness if it was right in front of him. He sees the world through colourful html text against the black background. He sees the world through business ideas and opportunity costs. He sees the world through money. And it all scares him, because it’s not like the Song Mino he wanted to become.

Mino doesn’t know when it started, but somehow, along the way he had lost the way his younger self had viewed the world. He lived his life in a world filled with colorful music notes and lyrics, and he was surrounded by people who viewed the world the same way he did; Jiho, Jihoon, Jaehyo.

It had changed into programming codes halfway through, and he goes through it with bright new ideas. He saw the tech world as what it could be, not as what it already was. But now he rests in piles of project proposals, budget plans and the weight of a million dollar company on his shoulders. He doesn’t recognize who he is anymore.

He goes back to an apartment and it all just felt wrong. It was large, sleek and glamorous; a place that had been accustomed for two, feels oddly emptier and colder than usual. He should be happy, really, but it makes Mino feel even more miserable because he isn’t. Mino dials Eunji’s number out of habit but all he hears is the monotonous automated voice of the dial tone, and it’s like a stab to the heart. She had left home, and he had no idea where she was. She had left home, and she had left him to be lonely and empty. It has been over five months.

Mino would blame all the wealth and fame that had changed him to become the monster that he was, but honestly he has no one to blame but himself. It’s a repetitive process of pushing and pulling, and he pushes, pushes, pushes until they get tired and leave.

Dread takes over his whole body, and suddenly he is too tired to deal with the whole world. He peels himself out of his work clothes and slips into his sweats, and flops down onto his bed. He sends quick a text to Seunghoon.

To: Weird Hyung

The company better not go bankrupt while I’m gone.

/ / /

Seunghoon is a meddling and prying brat.

Mino knows whenever he’s up to something when his lips tug a little wider and his left eye twitches slightly in excitement. And so when Seunghoon pries into Mino’s home, uninvited, mind you, and asks him to go out to some a hybrid store an hour’s drive away with a wide smile and an ever so slightly twitching eyelid, on Mino’s off day, he’s a little more than annoyed.

“Do you remember Jinwoo hyung from social sciences?” Seunghoon asks enthusiastically at 11pm, with a canned beer in his hand and his legs propped up on Mino’s coffee table. Of course Mino remembers Jinwoo, he’s the senior who worked in the café next to the business campus. The senior whom Seunghoon was obsessed with throughout his sophomore year. He also notably remembers Seunghoon being overly dramatic and sappy when Jinwoo graduated, and he is not overly fond of what follows.

Seunghoon doesn’t wait for Mino’s reply. “Yeah, well, I found out he runs this town’s hybrid center branch, so I thought we could go visit him! Just like old times!”

Mino raises an eyebrow. “You want to adopt a hybrid?”

Seunghoon chuckles, but there’s a suspicious twinkle in his eye, the one that Mino doesn’t trust. He learn it the hard way back in freshman year of college during The Great Tic Tac Accident of ‘09 (capitalization mandatory). “No, no, no, not me— Oh, I mean, there’s no harm in just visiting an old friend of ours, right?”

But then again, Mino could never really ever say no to Seunghoon, and it’s not like he had anything better to do.

/ / /

The adoption center was large, sharing the building with just two other shops, located right in the center of the heart of Seoul.

A girl with black and sleek short hair behind the reception counter looks up as they enter. Seunghoon smiles and picks up small talk, something he was good at doing. He’s a natural charmer, and truth be told Mino likes to think he quite the charm himself. But the only difference between Seunghoon and Mino is that Mino is just too lazy to give a damn.

Jinwoo comes out with a cheerful smile, and damn, he looks as youthful as ever. His features had grown somewhat more mature, his shoulders were now slightly broader and his hair was now dyed a nice shade of brown, trimmed and tousled to the side. His eyes are sparkling with non-existent tears that made him look like some goddamned mythical prince and he has a smile on his face that could make any girl, any man, any hybrid melt. In fact, Seunghoon was basically swooning (and possibly drooling) beside him.

“Seunghoon, Mino! You guys made it!” Jinwoo practically glows as he holds a hand out, offering a handshake. “It’s been too long! You guys look… wow!”

“Speak for yourself, hyung.” Seunghoon replies with a wink, and Mino wonders why Seunghoon even bothered to invite Mino.

/ / /

Mino has never seen a hybrid up close before.

They had stayed a distant enigma to him, something that he never bothered to look deeply into. Hybrids had spread to South Korea only less than a decade ago, at first only the rich, wealthy and famous had adopted the perfect pretty felines and dog boys. Well, technically, Mino is part of that social circle, but he doesn’t have his brain shoved up all the way in his . They dressed their hybrids in expensive clothes and perfectly styled hair and flaunt them around the streets of Gangnam. They were a glamorous accessory, fluffy cat or dog ears displayed proudly atop their heads as their tails swish around from behind them. It was only a five years ago that the middle class had started to adopt hybrids, though it was still not as common for people to have hybrids.

Mino had seen two different extremes.

He has seen a hybrid with dead, expressionless eyes as the catboy stands beside one of the most influential actors in South Korea on the charity event Mino was invited to. The hybrid follows the man obediently, and everyone coos at how pretty he looks. But Mino thinks that the leash attached to the jet black leather collar wrapped around the catboy’s neck is too contrasting against his pale skin. The suit is too big for the hybrid’s skinny and frail figure, that the thought of everything about it leaves a sickly unpleasant aftertaste in Mino’s mouth.

But he has also seen a hybrid being absolutely spoiled rotten by his owner, showered with complete affection and admiration. Seungri’s head was rested on Jiyong’s lap as the older man the dogboy