chapter nine: ix. soccer

My leg had healed, and so had my rib and head injury. I could now walk without crutches, and almost run like I could before. A month had passed.

Jongdae had also been released from the hospital, just one week ago. He was now going through physical therapy to use his legs again; while he still had a few ribs that needed a little bit more to heal.

We had reassured the driver of the car that we would press no charges, and he insisted that he would at least pay for our hospital fees and Jongdae’s therapy.

Jongdae could now stand, by himself, and now he was practicing his walking. I heard that he took his first step by himself yesterday. He was getting better, and eventually, he’d be able to run again. He was in a wheelchair, but we were eager to let him try to stand or walk whenever he wanted to.

I’d gone straight back into dance practice, although the doctor had warned me to be careful and not strain my leg, just in case something happened to it.

As with the boys… we had all grown a lot closer. They were my friends; they were almost completely comfortable with me now. I had learned a lot more about them, and their personalities.

Kai had opened up a lot more, and didn’t try to keep his tough image so much, and I found a new side to him. Not to mention his competitiveness. Junmyeon showed his really weird side when he tried to show his aegyo, which the rest of us couldn’t help but laugh and cringe at. Kyungsoo had showed me his talent for cooking, by cooking some kimchi spaghetti for me and the others. Not only that, he wasn’t as shy anymore, instead showing me his sassy side and threatening to hit Chanyeol and Baekhyun many times.

Chanyeol forever remained my Skinship Monster, always sneaking up behind me and giving me back hugs and holding my hand whenever he could. Lay had actually shown a bit of an evil side, making me change his nickname to Evil Angelicorn, when he had made the master plan to getting revenge on one of Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s pranks where… I couldn’t even begin to explain it. Minseok had shown me a really cute side, when in Yaja time (which was led by Sehun, Tao, and yes, of course, myself) he had shown aegyo to me.

Kris had his cold guy image torn in half when I saw his weird stuffy thingy (Alpaca? Llama? What was even the difference?) that he hugged to sleep every night called Ace. Jongdae had shown his really hardworking side when he had worked with Lay on their song even in the hospital, which was really touching to see. Sehun had surprised me with his mischievous side, assisting Chanyeol and Baekhyun in one of their pranks, substituting for Jongdae who was still at the hospital at the time.

Tao had shown me his badass and persistent side when I saw him choreographing some Wushu, becoming really serious and very dangerous. Baekhyun had stolen my crutches and decorated them with markers and had gotten everyone else to sign them for him, and had given it back to me, telling me to keep them even when I didn’t need them; a souvenir. And Luhan, I had learned, was not only amazing at dancing, but practically all sports. Especially soccer. He was ‘manly’.

This was why we were here today, on a Saturday, when we should be doing our homework, out on the school fields, ready to play soccer.

Jongdae couldn’t play obviously, so he was going to be the coach, of both teams, and the referee, and basically just shout things from his wheelchair.

I loved soccer. Although I also really enjoyed volleyball, basektball and taekwondo as well, soccer had always been my favourite. Soccer made me feel free, flying across the field, connecting passes back and forth, and swish, into the net. Soccer was my thing, while dancing was not. Hey, I had improved at dancing though.

I was glad we were going to play.

It was the eleven boys (not including Jongdae, as he was the referee), Taemin, Amber, and I. There was a perfect amount of people. (Taemin’s friend, Minho, had wanted to play but was too busy. Apparently he was really good too.)

The teams were quickly divided; it was going to be seven vs. seven, no subs. It was Luhan and Minseok team captains, and Minseok was the second best, though, as I heard, nothing compared to Luhan in skill. Seeing Minseok fooling around with the ball, he looked pretty d*mn good, so how good could Luhan possibly be? Minseok, Kai, Baekhyun, Tao, Junmyeon, Taemin, and Amber; Luhan, Kris, Lay, Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, Sehun, and me. We had first ball, and Kris and Junmyeon were substitutes for the first round.

“And let the game begin!” Jongdae called loudly from his wheelchair.

His voice was loud enough to ring through practically the entire field; what Jongdae lacked in movement he made up for with voice, he was always shouting at the others about one thing or the other. He made sure to take full advantage of his injury, making people do everything for him.

And the thing was: they couldn’t even do anything about it, as Jongdae had been the one to save me from the first place, and he had been in pretty bad condition and was only just starting to recover. They just usually shot him a glare and then did what he asked.

I tried to do everything for him, but he would shrug it off and either do it himself or get one of the others to do it, but I really wanted to do something, anything, because it was my entire fault that he had gotten hurt in the first place.

I ran forward as Luhan had instructed me to, glancing back to see how he was doing with the ball. Unsurprisingly, he was still in control of it, and had easily deked Minseok, dribbling the ball and looking for open teammates.

“Open,” I screamed, waving wildly for Luhan to pass to me.

The doctor had said that it was probably best for me to rest, but I said, screw him, because I was perfectly fine and there was no way I was going to miss out on more physical activity-I had gotten out of shape when I had been in the hospital, unable to really move around that much, let alone walk.

Luhan crossed it towards me, and I trapped it with my right foot. I saw Tao coming for me from my left out of my peripheral vision. I dribbled it to my right, faking to my left and then deking to my right, dodging Tao. I looked around me, seeing that Sehun was open. I passed to him, and he proceeded to dribble forward, looking for passes to make.

During this time, Luhan had run forward, and was in a perfect position to shoot.

“Sehun-ah, I’m open!” he hollered, lifting one arm, and Sehun passed it to him, Luhan easily tapping it into the net, Baekhyun missing the ball by far. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for the other team to put Baekhyun into the net.

I cheered, running to Luhan and high-fiving him.

“Nice deking,” he said, grinning at me.

“Nice pass, and nice goal,” I grinned back at him.

“How about me?” Sehun whined, pouting.

I patted him on the head. “You did well too, don’t worry.” I winked at Luhan, not very inconspicuously.

“Yah! I saw that!” Sehun scowled, punching me on the arm lightly.

I grinned at him, showing that I was kidding, side hugging him lightly, before jogging over to Amber.

“Can’t you do better defence than that?” I taunted, playfully sticking my tongue out at her.

“Trust me, I’m not defence. We’re going to whoop your asses,” she threatened.

“Oh really?” I raised an eyebrow. “Give it all you have.”

“The girls are getting feisty,” Jongdae commentated.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the ref?” Baekhyun asked.

“Well yeah. And your coaches. But I can multi-task,” Jongdae grinned.

“Come on guys, we have to beat them! Let’s beat Luhan for once! Plan A, okay?” Minseok said, and their team did a fighting, before jogging back to their positions.

“As for us, let’s just continue on doing as awesome as we are now.” Luhan grinned at us, and we all nodded, before jogging to our positions.

I wondered what ‘plan a’ was.

Right after Jongdae blew the whistle, Amber jumped onto Luhan, wrapping her arms and legs around him. He stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. He couldn’t just shake her off, but the presence of her arms and legs around him obviously threw him off as well. He was blushing like crazy, and our team was doing nothing but watching. Meanwhile, their team had started their offence. So this was Plan A.

“Concentrate!” I hollered, and the souls of my team flew back to them and they started running, leaving Luhan and Amber behind.

Minseok had the ball, dribbling, looking for someone to pass to.

If they were going to play cheap like that, hey, might as well join the party.

“Minseok oppa!” I called, running full speed towards him.

He lifted his head towards me, trying to see what I was doing. When he saw that I was running full speed towards him, his eyes widened.

I jumped at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and legs around his torso just like Amber had done to Luhan. I locked my arms and legs tightly, making sure he couldn’t shake me off and nothing more could happen.

“Sehun-ah, get the ball!” I shouted, and it seemed Minseok had realized what was happening.

With the last of his energy, he kicked the ball, but in the process, lost his balance and fell onto his back-with me on top of him. Although I was nicely cushioned by Minseok, he was obviously winded.

“Oh my god. OH MY GOD. Holy sh*t! Oppa, are you okay?” I got off from him, unsure of what to do.

His face was twisted in pain, and he seemed to be wheezing. No. Not another one of them hurt because of me. Please say that he was okay.

“Are you okay?” I asked worriedly, peering down at him, unsure of if I was supposed to help him up or leave him lying, as it might cause more damage.

The others ran towards us, as they had obviously seen what had happened.

“Is he okay?” Luhan asked worriedly. They were roommates, so they were probably really close to each other, more so than the others.

“I don’t know,” I said worriedly, hands shaking.

I bit my lip, trying to calm myself down. I had had too many anxiolytics when I was at the hospital, my body was used to taking them. No, I wasn’t going to give in to my body. I was not going to take some more now. I took a deep breath. Hell, it wasn’t me that needed help, it was Minseok.

I looked down at his face, and he suddenly broke into a grin. “Tricked you! I’m totally fine! Was my acting good?”

I let out a sigh of relief, before feeling my eyes fill up with tears. I wasn’t weak, no; I didn’t believe myself to be so. But when it came to blaming myself, now that was something I did all the time. I had really believed that I had hurt him, that I had hurt one of them again. Just the thought of someone getting hurt, someone’s life changing that much, because of me… like what had happened with Jongdae… it was terrible. I couldn’t stand it. Especially after my dad… no, I was not thinking about that again.

I looked away, and got up from my crouching position, walking away, passed Jongdae. Jongdae had somehow wheeled himself across the grass to see what had happened.

I didn’t want anyone to see me cry over something like this. But I couldn’t stop myself from crying either. I bit my lip again, trying to force my tears back in. I took deep breaths, hoping the tears would go away.

For some reason, I felt a little mad at Minseok. He was so kind, I knew that he was. And he had just been trying to make me laugh… but this… this was terrible. I had worried so much about him, I had worried that I had done something stupid again to hurt someone, but it had been all a joke. It had been a lie.

I heard Minseok call after me, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around to face him, so instead, I walked faster, further away.

“Leave them alone,” I heard Amber say to one of the others, who had probably been trying to go after me.

I was almost back at the school, practically off the field, when someone grabbed my wrist and spun me around. I blinked, and the tears that I had been trying so hard to hold in finally rushed out, warm salty tears sliding down my cheeks. I looked away from his eyes, anywhere but his eyes.

“Jooeun-ah… I’m sorry,” Minseok said, taking his other hand, the one not grabbing my wrist, and placing it on my face, using his thumb to wipe the tears on my left cheek away.

He let go of my wrist and placed his other hand on the other side of my face, wiping away the tears on that side as well. I blinked again, and the tears were new and fresh, just as warm and salty as the last.

I realized that my body was shaking. It was all just too much.

He pulled me into a hug, my face burying into his shoulder. I let out little gasps of air, trying not to cry, much like Kai had done, back in the hospital.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into my ear, patting me soothingly on my back.

I stopped trying not to cry, and my sobs came freely now, into his shoulder. My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall; his arms were holding me up. He my hair, whispering incoherent things into my ear, anything to get me to stop crying.

“I thought you were hurt, you babo!” I croaked, after my sobs had died down, though now, I was hiccupping, and my cheeks were still wet.

He helped me slump down cross legged on the grass, kneeling in front of me, and wiped my wet cheeks and lashes with his fingers so that they were completely dry.

“I’m sorry,” he said, bowing his head in shame. “I wasn’t thinking properly. I was being really stupid, I’m sorry.”

“It’s… okay,” I said, knowing that it would do no good to say that I didn’t forgive him. Besides, it wasn’t even really his fault. I had overreacted. He had just been trying to get me to laugh.

He lifted his head a little, to look into my eyes. His warm eyes melted me, and I gave him a little smile. He smiled back at me, the cutest smile of all. I still couldn’t believe that he was the oldest out of all of them.

I reached forward and pinched his cheeks, smiling a little, before bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Yah!” he said, pretending to be angry, before smiling with me, dishevelling my hair.

I moved into a kneeling position, and gave him a hug, squeezing him tightly.

“Thank you… I feel like I just needed to cry for a long time and it all came out today. I feel a lot relieved now. Thank you for being there for me, too, oppa,” I whispered into his ear.

With that, I pulled away, and got up. I held my hand down to him. “Well? Aren’t we going to continue our game of soccer?”

He smiled at me, and took my hand. I helped him up, but even after he’d gotten up, he didn’t let go of my hand. I didn’t let go of his hand either and we walked back to the others like that.

A/N: I don't know why but I'm really iffy about this chapter... hope you guys enjoyed it, though. (Maybe it's because it's about my baby Xiu ;-;)

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