“You seem like you’re in an extremely chipper mood this morning.” Renjun’s voice travels through the walls and through the empty space separating them both. Jongin smiles and makes his way to the chair positioned across from Renjun. “Why did you want to see me?”

“I figured I have some explaining to do.” Jongin sighs. “I would ignore this altogether and not care, but you’re more of a friend than an authoritative figure to me.” 

“Alright, that sounds serious. What do you have for me?” Renjun leans back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest as a way to prepare himself for whatever type of wind Jongin’s going to hurl at him. He has a feeling it won’t be all unicorns and rainbows.

“Do you want to know who beat Jaehyun up and why?” Jongin doesn’t leave Renjun a chance to answer and proceeds anyway. “I’m just going to say this, okay? The one who beat him up was me. Alone. No one else. And I beat him up because he tried to do… me.”

“Do you?” Renjun’s eyes widened into two full moons, lacking any traces of disbelief in his tone and his physical reaction. Jongin’s slightly taken aback by how easily the boy before him believes everything. “I knew there must have been a reason. Why didn’t you just tell me? I could’ve talked to the other Professors and convinced them that your actions were justified.”

“There’s no need for that.” Jongin waves the tempting thought of winning back that title as Representative away and purses his lips in genuine vexation. “Now I just want to get back at him.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Renjun asks with his voice full of caution. 

“Do I have to?” Jongin quips back.

“No, you don’t. I believe you, anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I knew you weren’t a bad guy. You can’t be, I had a bet going on for that.” 

The room falls silent as the impact of Renjun’s words hovers over the space the two inside the room take up. Jongin blinks once or twice in confusion as Renjun does the same but more in regret. Judging by the gurn on his face, maybe pain too. 

“Bet with who?”

Renjun looks away in guilt. “Myself,” he mumbles. 

To Renjun’s shock, Jongin bursts out laughing at the prospect of Renjun betting with himself about him. It’s adorable. It’s moments like this that remind Jongin of Renjun being much younger than his intellect misleads others to think. The conversation easily stirs back on track with Jongin offhandedly claiming Jaehyun as an out of nowhere. 

“Is there anything I can help you with?” Renjun drums his fingers on the cover page of his file, lightly, distractedly, like it’s part of his thinking process. There’s something assuring in watching that action unfold, and before Jongin could stop himself, he mimics the action. “Like bringing him in so he would confess to it.”

“I’m still not fully sure. I’d have to discuss it with the others first before doing anything. They were affected by this as much as I was. They were victims too in a sense.” Especially Baekhyun, Jongin wanted to add but decided otherwise. “I want to get this over with and live on.”

“With Sehun?” Renjun teases with a quirk of his lips. His playful smirk doesn’t leave and opts to stay put, flashing in a way where it’s dangerously innocent. Jongin reckons Renjun isn’t such an easy character to win against. What with that menacing glint in his gaze, his laidback, uncaring posture, his sharp words. To make the situation more embarrassing for Jongin, Renjun adds, “How sweet. Two of my top students.”

“Shut up. Stick with your own love life.” Jongin rolls his eyes, tries his best to save whatever is left of his pride. “Nothing’s going on.”

“Really?” The prodigy questions disbelievingly. He muses, “That’s not what I heard.”

Sehun, that er, really likes to babble. Jongin drops his head on the table, ignoring the searing pain that spreads in the upper half of his face and, instead, focusing on tuning everyone and everything out. It’s not as easy as it sounds because Renjun just won’t stop cackling like a madman. 

“Don’t be shy. I know everything.”

“One more word and I’ll annihilate you. Why do you enjoy third-wheeling us so much?”

Jongin doesn’t know what he’s thinking. Maybe he doesn’t even realise what he’s doing, but when he’s managed to connect his gaze with Sehun’s steely stare, a jolt of thrill shoots up his bones, his flesh, through his racing heart. Jongin doesn’t stop. He’s not done with eye contact. 

When Soojung pulls away to break the kiss, Jongin pulls her in one last time, kissing harder, more. She makes a sound of surprise in the back of but gets over it in a second before dropping her eyelids to savour the moment. That’s when Jongin darts his eyes back to Sehun. 

There, standing under the Sun, waiting for Jongin to be done with saying goodbye to Soojung for the weekend, Sehun stares. It’s one that scares Jongin, one that he can’t quite figure out, can’t read for the life of him. That stare doesn’t mean harm, but it means more. More of which Jongin wouldn’t stop thinking about. 

Sehun diverts his eyes away right as Soojung pulls away with a heave of her breath, conspicuously delighted at Jongin initiating something so intimate without her asking him to. She slaps Jongin’s chest, laughs as he does so too. 

As soon as she’s left to visit her family in the city for the weekend, Jongin stalks back to Sehun who’s still standing under the Sun as if the Summer heat wasn’t making him sweat buckets. Without a word, Sehun starts walking ahead, ignoring Jongin’s desperate cries to ask him to wait. 

“Why should I wait for you?” Why should I wait for you while you’re busy smooching your girlfriend mad? That’s what Jongin heard in the way Sehun snapped at him. It’s a delusional assumption so Jongin shakes that thought away and grins wide. “Why am I always the one waiting?” 

There goes that tone again. Why am I always the one waiting for you?

“You can just stop waiting.” Jongin shrugs.

“I don’t want to.” Sehun turns to petulance now. To anyone else, it’d sound like he’s mad but Jongin knows better. He’s always known Sehun best. “I want to wait.”

“Then?” 

“But I don’t want to always be the one waiting in this relationship.” Sehun slows down so he’d walk right next to Jongin. His strange choice of words strikes Jongin a little harder than it should. “Stop making me the third wheel, Nini.”

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do here,” Jongin mutters. 

Although he says it vaguely, the exhaustion in his voice reverberates a message entirely different than just being clueless. He’s confused. More so when Soojung sends his heart racing laps around and around but Sehun sends his existence itself flying free in the highest tier of clouds. Jongin looks to the side, gives Sehun a sympathetic pout and deflates.

“First off, stop looking at me.” 

Stop looking at me like that. Stop looking at me when you’re kissing her. Jongin goes red at the realisation that Sehun’s still thinking about that. 

“Why not?” Jongin shoots back, all verbal inhibitions lost. 

“Just because. Don’t stare at me like that the next time you kiss her.” Sehun glares, but only for a brief second so short Jongin almost didn’t catch it. 

Like what? Jongin wanted to ask aloud. Before doing so, he asks himself in secrecy. Jongin was staring like he was thinking of Sehun, of how he’d feel like up close, of how it’d feel like to be tipping his head up instead of down as he kissed him. 

Albeit it being too late, Jongin realises just how he’s given himself away.

Jongin flushes red at the memory, cowering into his seat. That Sehun seems so far away compared to how close he is now. He’s within reach now. A little stretch is all it takes for Jongin to grab a tight hold of him. Sehun naturally gravitates to him now. 

“You’re blushing,” Renjun points out, cocking an eyebrow up. 

“In embarrassment,” Jongin drawls out as he slowly picks his head up to stare at Renjun with an exasperated twitch in the corner of his lips. 

“Your ability to deny everything so unrelentingly amazes me.” Renjun scoffs when Jongin looks about ready enough to swing a punch at him. 

“Stop ing denying everything! I thought I was bad, but you’re even worse. We all know you like him. I just want to know what I was then. Why ask me out if you don’t even like me? Was I just an experiment to figure out what your can and can’t get up to?” 

“It’s not that. I don’t like him. I got over that.” Jongin waves his hand around a little too unconvincingly. He stabilises Soojung with the mere action of placing his hands on her shoulders. In such a benign manner, he’s calmed her down. “I like you. You’re who I like. I don’t like him.”

“Are you sure? Because that’s not what I’m seeing!” Soojung shoves Jongin back, stumbling back herself from the impact. She shakes, she trembles, her hands jittering in anger as she brings one up to brush her hair back. “I’m just asking… I’m not asking much. Just tell me the truth. Tell yourself the truth.” 

“I like,” Jongin points at himself then at her, “you.” 

“Shut the up. I can’t stand it!” Soojung screams, finally bursting from having to hold in so much. She’s shaking twice as hard, heaving breath out after breath in again and again. Jongin has never seen her this enraged, not since she threw a fit while she ranted about her parents pressuring her to do more, more, more. “You’re the most annoying er I’ve ever had the chance to meet.”

“Please let me prove to you that I like you. What do you want me to do?” Jongin lowers his voice, softens it too so it sounds soothing enough for Soojung to hold herself back from snapping at him. “I like you, I really do. And it’s my fault for not spending enough time with you—”

“But it’s not his fault. Never his fault. He makes up excuses for you to run back to him every single ing time we have something planned and he’s never at fault.” Soojung’s tone turns into poison. She enunciates her words with as much venom as she can. “Open your eyes, Jongin.”

          Jongin can’t stop bouncing his feet no matter how hard he tries to. He has half the mind to force one hand on the top of his knee to make himself stop but throws all care to the side when he realises his fidgeting isn’t bothering anyone. Right next to him sits a distracted Sehun looking through his social media.

“Look, this looks tasty,” Sehun mumbles as he flashes an image of a lava cake to Jongin. “Should make it.”

“Me? Why don’t you make it yourself?” Jongin says in a joking manner, taking a second look at the lava cake on Sehun’s phone to marvel at how deliciously it’s decorated. 

“Why don’t we make it together?” Sehun suggests, smiling brightly.

“No,” Jongin deadpans, “that’s even worse ‘cause you’ll mess everything up.” 

“That’s not very nice of you.” Sehun turns away with a small overly exaggerated pout. 

“Why are you acting like a kid—” Jongin’s sentence gets cut off when his queue number flashes on the small screen in the corner as a soft ding goes off. He throws a brief look at Sehun, telling him this isn’t over. 

Sehun gets rid of his pout once Jongin stands up to attend to his own matters. He continues scrolling through his Instagram when a random thought pops into his mind. Even though he knows Jongin has Instagram, he hasn’t asked for it. Why? He doesn’t know. 

Resolutely, Sehun scrolls through the hundreds of accounts linked to his contacts until he reaches one that’s quite obviously Jongin. If not because of his profile picture which is just Jongin posing next to a smiling Romeo, it’s his username: kimjongout. 

How lame. Sehun loves it. He loves it so much he laughs at it. As he giggles about it like a little kid, Sehun goes through Jongin’s pictures that he posted. There’s a lot of selfies, a lot of Romeo, and even more of his friends acting stupid with him. One post, however, catches his attention. It’s about a week ago, and it’s a video of Jongin filming a sleeping Sehun.

Sehun’s heart stutters.

The lecturer’s voice comforts him into a hazy state. Before he could even stop himself, Sehun’s already drooping his head in unconsciousness. His eyelids seemingly weigh a ton on both sides, his existence falling into a slumber so deep the lecturer calling him a few times and Johnny by his side couldn’t even wake him up.

When the lesson ends and his friends gather around to try to wake him up, Jongin starts recording the whole thing, thinking it would be funny. He blows in Sehun’s ear, whispers in a demonic voice next to his ear. 

Sehun remembers how he’d woken up when Jongin decided to brush his ear with his sleeve, face so close their breaths mingle together in a hot swirl. They collectively froze. Sehun waited, he waited for his friends to scream and laugh, but it’s as silent as being stuck in a coffin. Sehun waited a little more, for Jongin to get flustered right as he backs up.