(four)    

The boy across the playground is staring at her; she hadn’t noticed until she turned her head.

She squints at his face, and concludes that she doesn’t know him. But something about him --his strange stillness, the way he rests his elbows on his lap, hunching--sets him apart from the other children, like an ebony stone, lying still in a riverbed. He’s sitting on the of the jungle gym, behind metals bars criss-crossing his face like stripes. His expression betrays little of his thoughts.

She shrugs. The boy isn’t important; she has other concerns. Like making this swing go higher, high enough for the wind to cradle her body, to reach the glowing embers of the late evening sun.

She pushes herself harder, propels her legs, stretching them to gain more momentum, to get higher. The chains rattle and squeak against the bars, tensing, sketching half-moons and upturned arcs. She reaches higher, until the noises all but fall away, until she forgets, forgets that she’s only a little girl, and little girl don’t have wings.

“Gaeul!”

She turns her head when her mother shrieks, so loudly that it cuts across the playground. She’s waving her hands, and her eyes are wide and fearful.

“Do you know how dangerous going that high is? Get down!”

“But I can go higher. I need to.”

“Gaeul.” Her mother sounds angry now. “Listen to what I said.”

“But mom --”

“GAEUL.”

Her mother’s tone brooks no argument. With a bowed head, she listens, scraping her feet against the ground, until, swing by swing, she slows, and the air doesn’t whoosh in her ears anymore.

She’s taken firmly by the hand the minute she jumps off; her mother pulls her off the playground as she looks back, sulky, disappointment stirring in her chest as another girl leaps onto the newly vacant swing to lay claim on it, before turning to face front. In doing so, she catches something creeping at the corner of her vision: the brooding boy again, this time on the very top of a slide, still watching her.

She doesn’t have time to think much about it because right then her mother pulls her into the crowd, behind a pram where a baby gurgles at its mother. She forgets about him, losing herself instead in the thoughts of wind in her hair and the sweetness of freedom when she was on the swing.

(five)

The first day of kindergarten is a messy and riotous affair, and Gaeul finds herself scared out of her wits.

She clutches her mother’s hand, steps slow and hesitant. Her wide eyes take in the rough and tumble of older boys scaling a jungle gym, and another smaller group, as young and frightened as she is, watching. She hides further behind her mother’s skirts, pulling the fabric, ducking behind the ripples of swaying of chiffon.

“Gaeul, don’t,” her mother chides, gentle. She takes her daughter’s hand, draws away the fingers that clutch at her. “Be a good girl.”

“I don’t know anyone here,” she says softly, voice shaky.

“You’ll make friends, I’m sure of it.”

Her eyes well with tears, hot and moist. “But I don’t know how.”

“Nonsense, Gaeul. You’ve always been capable of making friends. Remember the little girl? Our neighbour’s niece? Why, you two took to playing with each other even though you don’t even know each other’s names.”

A woman, as slender and tall as a fairy, approaches them. Gaeul notes that her smile is kind, and the touch she lays on her cheek, cool and inviting. The teacher, she remembers her mother telling her, but the words slip and fade easily against the tumultuous atmosphere. The children here are loud and boisterous, almost wild in their manner of playing. The thought of befriending any of them is terrifying.

But, just as she’s about to burst into tears, she sees calmness amidst the chaos. The little boy with dark, dark eyes, sitting across the room with a bright yellow truck, which he drags and runs across the alphabet-patterned carpet. He doesn’t seem to notice her, intent on his task, as though making the little toy move is a serious undertaking that requires great focus and deliberation. He’s wearing the boys’ uniform: shorts climbing over scabbed knees, bright red shirt hanging loose over narrow shoulders.

She doesn’t realise that she’s completely forgotten her tears when he suddenly sets the truck off, shoving it hard, driving it straight onto the legs of the nearest boy. His victim tumbles onto the carpet, and not long after, wails for his mother. The adults descend upon him like vultures, murmuring sweet words over the harsh screaming, promising candy, chocolate and kisses to make it all hurt less.

As the adults busy themselves over the injured, the little boy who launched the truck turns his head, and catches her gaze from across the room. He stares at her openly, and she remembers again those same eyes watching her at park as she swings herself higher for the sky.

Her mother catches her hand, and she tears away her eyes from him, just as her mother bends, brushing her lips against both Gaeul’s cheeks.

“I’ll be back to pick you up at noon,” she says, tapping her nose.

“But --” Her lips wobble.

“Don’t cry, sweetie.” Gaeul circles her arms around her mother, glad for the embrace. “Why not you go ahead and make friends? How about that little boy over there?” She points to the little boy still in his corner, though his hands now are empty, and his fingers curve to dig his nails into the carpet, drawing patterns. “I think he wants to be your friend.”

She hesitates, but stops crying. Something about the idea of walking up to that boy terrifies her, but flutters her heart into excitement.

Her mother sets her down. “Go on. Go and have fun. Mommy will be back for you, I promise.”

Her mother leaves quickly before she can react, bunching her skirts into safety. Gaeul watches her mother sidestep toys and all manner of human figures before disappearing through the open door, much like smoke dissipating in sunlight.

She glances at the boy and finds him gone. Oddly, the absence of his gaze makes her feel lonely.  

***

Funnily, she gets to sit next to the dark-eyed boy.

It’s a fluttery, exciting feeling, and as she crosses the room to her seat, she observes him. His hair is dark and thick, curling against his neck and forehead. He doesn’t smile --she’s never seen him smile yet --but his mouth curves in a manner both petulant and vulnerable. Contrary to his behaviour towards her from a distance, he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t flinch when she pulls the chair and sits.

At first, he seems to be brooding, staring at his hands more often than the board or any other child. She restrains conversation, fearing that she had misinterpreted his intentions. Of all the seatmates scattered about the little classroom, they’re the quietest.

But then came fingerpainting.

There’s something about watercolours that Gaeul loves, the wetness of the composition, the way it bleeds onto fingers and stains nails and joints. As her painting comes to being, she scoops more and more of it liberally, finding solace in designing her stick-figured family and their tumbledown house. She even adds in a cat for the sake of it, even though her mother despises pets, and her brother is horribly allergic.

She reaches for more paint (just to fill in the eyes) and knocks her fingers against something. She looks up just in time to see the boy snatch away his hand, so violently and abruptly that it wobbles the small can of yellow paint they shared, and it spills, an ocean creeping its destructive fingers on the edges of her painting.

She wails, long and loud.

“He destroyed my...my… drawing!” she complains to the teacher fifteen minutes later with watery eyes as the little boy gawks, face hued a furious red.

The teacher shushes her with gentle words in between scrubbing away watercolour from her fingers, and sends her off with her assistant to speak with the little boy in private. The last Gaeul sees before she’s whisked off is the teacher kneeling before him, cleaning his hands with the same spotted rag, speaking gently to him.

When the assistant brings her back in again, comforted and content with clean hands and a cookie, the teacher stands, beams, and takes her hand while the other one holds firm to his.

“Let’s not let such a petty little thing get to us, shall we?” she says brightly. “I’m sure it was an accident, and we’re all friends here. Speaking of,” she turns to Gaeul, and smiles, “he told me that you two have yet to learn each other’s names. Why not we start with that?”

Gaeul hesitates, and when she looks at the boy he’s looking studiously at the floor, as though the patterns hold great interest for him. His cheeks aren’t red anymore, and his face is coldly, enigmatically blank, his eyes dark like stormy rivers.

“Go on,” the teacher whispers at her, smiling in encouragement. She prods Gaeul carefully in the back.

Gaeul stares at the boy, suddenly rueful for her outburst. She hesitates.

“It’s okay,” the teacher whispers to her, prompting a sudden wave of bravery.

“My name is Choi Gaeul,” she says quickly, then snaps shut, almost mortified at herself.

The boy looks at her from beneath his lashes; his expression insinuates extreme indignation at being forced into such a situation, but he surprises her, when he says, in a voice so soft that it’s almost lost in the bang and clatter of the classroom, “I’m Jongin.”

The teacher beams proudly, then them both fondly on the hair. “Now that we know each other there’s no need to be angry, is there?”

***

Two weeks pass, and in those two weeks alone, she learned that Jongin is hardly the quiet, timid child her mind once portrayed him; he's quiet, mostly, but he’s definitely not timid. Jongin has in him an unruly streak, demonstrated plainly in his naughty tendencies. So far, he’d pulled her ponytail twice and made her come to school with her hair down, soiled most of her artwork (decidedly a in a manner less accidental than the first mishap) and had taken and broken most of her pencils. He’s also guilty of a lost eraser, a shaved barbie doll, and missing puzzle pieces.

The teacher tolerates him daily, but it's plain that every deed wears her patience thinner. She’s taken to snapping at him, and although Jongin bows his head, alluding contrition, he’s only remorseful for a few minutes.

What’s even more frustrating is that he’s past watching her from afar, and has developed a proclivity to gravitate towards her during all manner of activities he chooses to engage himself in. She finds herself with Jongin on mornings, throughout snack times, in art lessons, language lessons--and in all hours invading her personal space.

“Teacher!” she screams one evening, after Jongin snapped her pink crayon in half. The offender is now sitting calmly before her, contemplating her tears and the crayon he holds in two halves in both palms.

The teacher visibly rolls her eyes before ambling over, too used to being summoned by this particular pair, most often via screaming, to take it with much urgency. Gaeul babbles the unfairness of it all while bawling, Jongin listens with his legs crossed, neither denying nor commenting, and the teacher sighs again over the cruel design of her fate.

It continues for another week, a month, two. Jongin continuously destroys her things that she’s taken bringing the oldest of all the stationary scattered in her house and the most threadbare of cloth pencil boxes. She doesn’t bring toys anymore, is irritated to such insane lengths that she proposed to her mother that her hair be cut short, and took into habit taking inventory of her things before her mother collected her from school.

Another aggravating consequence of consorting with Jongin is his absolute reluctance to allow her to befriend anyone else; he has, thus far, interrupted all the conversations she attempted with any member of the class.

“Can’t you just leave me alone?” she snaps at Jongin, who stands at her side with his hair in his eyes, armed with glue and sticky fingers, with which he’d just tried to rub into the hair of the girl she just had the courage to approach.

He pouts; his lips doesn’t look as pretty that way, bent at the wrong corners and outlined in shadows. “Why would you want me to?”

“Because you keep chasing away everyone I try to talk to!” She stalks away, furious, and leaves him sulking at the scattered alphabet cards on the carpet.

She went through the whole day without speaking to him and another. By the third day, she has almost gotten used to the emptiness of her soul when intervention introduces itself in the form of their world-weary teacher, smiling at her as she helps Gaeul with her backpack.

“Gaeul-ah?”

“Yes?” She has gotten better at that, those careful, polite words parents often have to drill into their children. Jongin, for all his dreadfulness, did have a positive influence by manner of his courteous speech.

“Why aren’t you speaking with Jongin?” she asks, carefully hanging Gaeul’s coat. Outside, winter winds whip icy lashes against the playground, seeping its chill into all manner of structure, be it metal, glass, or wood.

“He wouldn’t let me be friends with anyone else,” she says moodily. “He always does something that would make them run away from me.”

The teacher sighs quietly in a manner Gaeul thinks she’s not supposed to notice, before plastering on a smile, and kneeling so they’re eye to eye.

“I won’t say what he did is right,” she starts gently, “but by not speaking to him, do you realise you’ve made him very, very sad?”

Something about Jongin being sad makes Gaeul chew on her lip and gnaw away on guilt.

“He might be a bit of a handful,” she continues slowly, as though trying to choose her words to not completely mirror her thoughts, “but I’m sure Jongin means well. He’s only a little boy, I’m sure he’ll grow out of it.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Gaeul, trust me,” she says, tapping her lightly on the nose. “Little boys get better when they’re older, and us big girls have to show them that we can be better. So go talk to him.”

She does so, albeit reluctantly. Jongin lights up so visibly that she doesn’t have the heart to stay mad at him for much longer, and by midafternoon, was back to screaming at the top of her lungs when he scribbles all over her doodles.

“There’s no winning with these two,” she hears the teacher say to her assistant as they wrest her and Jongin apart. “It’s either they fight in screams as though the world has turned over,  or they fight in silence and one follows me around and mopes as though it's his deathday. I’ll need massages every night if I have to endure this for the next two years.”

“You’re the one who signed up for this, Sooyoung,” her assistant says, voice wry, as Jongin thrashes in her arms.

“I know, Yuri,” she sighs as she scoops Gaeul into hers. “I know.”

(seven)

It takes a year for their relationship to simmer from destructive to mildly mischievous, and two for the screaming to stop and the actual conversations to begin. Jongin at seven is a thin, wiry child, hair still as dark as coal dust, and eyes that still swim with mystery. They’ve been friends for three years now, and three years is just enough to ingrain him as a permanent fixture in her life, the constant in the ebb and flow of change.

“Are you ready for the first day after the break?” Jongin asks as they scuff their shoes against the bare soil on their trek to the playground. Behind them ambles his sister, more busy with her phone than her surroundings. She had been tasked to accompany them on their way, and although she conceded to her mother’s wishes, she is by no means willing.

“It’s not enough!” Gaeul picks up a fallen twig and swings it, leaves rustling. “I want another week.”

Jongin snorts. “Nothing is ever enough for you.” He snatches another twig and they play-fight, countering wood with wood, and screams with giggles.

“Is it then?” Gaeul asks, after Jongin’s sister screamed bloody murder when they almost tripped her. “Is it enough for you?”

Jongin shrugs. “No. Who wants to study when you can play all day?”

“Soccer.” It’s a humid day; moisture and heat hang dole and heavy. Jongin’s sister is getting further and further away, and she and Jongin are lost in their own world. “That’s all you ever play now.”

“They invited me, and it was fun.” He mimes kicking the air; his invisible ball spins between two equally invisible goal posts.

“All you do is kick around a stupid ball. What’s the fun in that?”

Jongin casts her a sidelong glance. “It’s better than you think. And I get to be with my friends.”

“Tch.”

Jongin smiles crookedly. “Jealous?”

“Of your friends? Of course not,” she scoffs. “I have mine, too.”

“Like that weird boy who chews on his fingers all the time?” Jongin pulls a face.

“He’s nice to me!” Gaeul argues. “Sehun might be a bit odd, but he never teases me, or pulls my hair.”

“There’s nothing to pull. What girl cuts her hair so short?"

“I beg your pardon?” But her hands itch to touch her cropped locks, much lighter than long, tangled tresses, but boyish, and she is aware, unattractive. “I like my hair short. It doesn’t get in my face when I run.”

Jongin looks at her with a pinched expression “You’re not much a girl.”

She thwacks him lightly on the arm and he cries out, indignant. “Take that back.”

“I won’t,” Jongin argues, apprehensive. “You climb trees, scab your knees falling off bikes; you eat your ice cream all messily and you’re always trying to hit me. None of the other girls do any of that.”

She feels her face going red, Jongin’s words sinking their whittled points deep. That he threw those insults so casually, as though they mean nothing, as though he has no complete regard for her feelings, burned old wounds deeper and cut new ones…

“But then I like you more because of that.”

She blinks. They’re just standing still now, sunlight hot against the back of their heads. It burnishes Jongin’s hair copper, twisting highlights between tendrils of curling black, over eyes she remembers being unfathomable. And dark. So very dark.

But there’s a lightness to their obsidian sheen now, like something of an unlocked box, spilling threads of truth and ribbons of sincerity.

“Keep going, you two!” Areum yells. They turn their heads and find her glaring at them, though the effect is much mitigated by the squinting, the sun burning hot against everyone’s eyes. “I’m not standing out here in this heat any longer! Do you realise how terribly this works against your skin?”

Jongin rolls his eyes; it’s rather common knowledge that he is not fond of his second sister, and that their arguments encompass things of multiple natures, executed in varying stages of aggression.

“Leave then!” Jongin yells back at her, the stubborn child he is. Lightning fast he darts for Gaeul’s hand, tugs her; he pulls her into the mess of moss and gravel, grass blades and dead leaves. She stumbles over the cracks but he drags her on, into bushes and brambles, and up a grassy knoll while Areum yells, furious. They laugh, the wind in their ears taking away much of her words.

They reach a tree, a climbing favourite. Jongin lets go, latches onto a low hanging branch, and pulls himself up, light and nimble. Gaeul follows; the drop no longer bothers her, the danger only a sweet challenge than a call for fear. They slip between branches and leaves and cracks of sunlight, until, at last, they reach the last of the tree’s dependable branches. Jongin sits on a fork and she closer to the trunk, where the sun isn’t as hard and the leaves kiss her cheek.

“She’ll be as mad as a bull,” Gaeul says as they lie still, waiting for Areum to pass, stomping and fuming.

“I don’t care. Areum a bore, anyway. I don’t like having her around. She's always tattling on me.”

“Sisters are always like that.” Gaeul shifts her weight so she sits more comfortably on the branch; it waves, a telling giveaway to their little hiding place. “I tattle on my brother all the time.”

“You’re lucky to have a brother,” Jongin grouches. “Minho-hyung is cool.”

Gaeul pulls a face; all she remembers of her brother is his pompous insistence that he’s always in the right; that he’s always taller, bigger, better; that he always gets the best things. He’s an obnoxious brother, and he is to her what Areum is to Jongin.

“That’s because he never plays pranks on you.” And indeed it’s true; all Minho ever does to Jongin is to dote on him, as though he’s the younger sibling instead of Gaeul.

They hear distant echoes of their names, the slow build of rising syllables. Even from the distance, Areum’s weariness is audible, her irritation clearly impressed in the pauses in between. She and Jongin wait; soon, Areum be will too hot and bothered to look for them much longer.

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” Jongin says when the last echo dies and the wind rushes past, his head tilted to the sky, his dark hair long and curling. “I don’t ever want to leave, Gaeul-ah. I don’t ever want to grow up.”

(ten)

But growing up is exactly what he does.

Three years since their rendezvous on the trees and Jongin is the lanky child, though slightly taller, tanner. He’s developed an addiction to sports, now more than a simple pastime but part of the structure of his life. His current fixation on basketball has led to the purchase of a new ball and a pair of new shoes, which he treasures immensely.

Everyday he grows busy, and each passing day Gaeul finds better company in the supposedly quiet Oh Sehun, the sickly little boy as pale as milk, for whom books are always better companions than sports.

“Here. You try,” Sehun says at lunch, passing her his Nintendo, which she has been quietly observing over his shoulder as he presses buttons and animated the characters. “Try and beat that level.”

“But I don’t know how to play Mario,” she says, refusing to accept.

Sehun shrugs. “I can teach you. It’th not a bother.”

One of the many ways one can observe how Oh Sehun differs from Kim Jongin is by merely monitoring their speech patterns alone. While Jongin is eloquent, his vocabulary advanced and carefully articulated, Sehun slurs. His lisp curses him with the inability to properly pronounce his S’s, often the subject of mockery by many parties that constitute the school’s population.

It’s partly the reason, why, much to her pity, that he’s often friendless.

“I don’t want to break it.”

Sehun shrugs. “I don’t mind. My parenth each gave me one for my birthday.”

She takes it hesitantly and allows Sehun to slide closer until their arms touch, until his voice is so close that it’s all she hears.

He teaches her the buttons to push, the names of the characters she animates. He helps her with the goals and the gold coins, the monsters that come unbidden and the attacks pixellated villains laid siege on her. The pings and little cries of dismay from the little speakers soon become more and more amusing. With Sehun’s encouragement, the game little by little becomes more interesting.

“Thanks, Sehun,” she says when the first bell rings, calling them to return to class. “That was fun.”

“You can play anytime you want,” Sehun says, voice soft.

“Aren’t you afraid I might break it?”

“I don’t mind. You’re the only friend I have.” Sehun smiles shyly. “And I trust you with my things.”

Gaeul finds herself touched, and whatever prejudice she might have for the boy melt. To her eyes, he’s merely the lonely boy with little words to speak, who faces rejection daily and for whom friendship is an all too rare a luxury.

“Sit next to me in class, Sehunnie.”

Sehun looks surprised. “But ithn’t that alwayth Jongin’th spot?”

“He’s busy with his friends most of the time. He always leaves to talk to them. I think having you around would be better."

Sehun’s eyes light up like the sun.

***

“Since when have you become so close to Oh Sehun?” Jongin questions accusingly, catching up with her as she walks, backpack rattling with books and pencils.

“I’ve always been close to him.” She sidesteps a puddle; Jongin, with his longer legs, calmly crosses over it.

“Yeah, but not like this. Not until you let him sit next to you.” His frown lances deep lines in the curve of his lips. “I always sit next to you.”

“Well, not anymore,” she scoffs. “You always sit with your sports buddies. Taemin, isn’t it? And Chanyeol? Most of the time, I end up alone.”

“They always invite me to come over,” Jongin argues; the sun beats harshly against both their faces, and his is already a deep, flushed red. “I can’t say no. They’d say I’m uncool.”

“If you can hang out with your friends then I can hang out with mine. Sehun stays.”

Something in Jongin’s expression startles her. For a moment his eyes are thunderstorms, bubbling like a black, depthless sea. They cross the street tensely to where his eldest sister waits, calm and patient, car keys in hand, to fetch them from school.

“Fine,” Jongin finally says, when they only had a few metres before reaching his sister’s hearing range. “Like I care.”

He storms into the car and shuts the door hard. She only stares at him, baffled, until his sister, appearing concerned, takes her lightly by the hand and guides her to sit shotgun.

***

Jongin plonks between her and Sehun on lunch the very next day, food tray in hand and determination written plainly on the fine lines of his features.

Sehun is startled so badly that he drops his Game Boy; the clatter rings violently across the room and he bends, flushed, to retrieve it from the floor. Jongin stares at him, and Gaeul sees from his eyes that he’s judging, forming opinions on the shyer boy who’s not quite as big as him. Sehun sees and shrinks, inching away further. Gaeul, furious, pinches Jongin hard on the arm.

He breaks the glare, cries out vehemently.

“Go away,” she hisses into his ear.

“I can do whatever I want,” Jongin argues, indignance plain. “If I want to sit here then who are you to tell me I shan’t?”

“You’re being such a stubborn blockhead,” she cries out, almost loud enough for Sehun to hear. From the corner of her eyes, she sees the other boy slide away further, his head bowed low.

“Am not!” Jongin retorts. They’re facing each other now, both with flames in their eyes and hard, set jaws.

“Then prove it and leave him alone!”

Jongin still glares at her stubbornly.

Gaeul grits her teeth. Abruptly, she stands, knocking her knees on the table. The pain stings, but she hasn’t time to mind it. She feels Jongin’s gaze hot on her as she picks up her tray, skirts around him, and plonks it down on his right and Sehun’s left, putting herself in between them. Sehun seems both horrified and surprised.

“Do you want some of my mac and cheese, Sehun?” she asks, knowing fully well that of all the food they’ve dined on, it is Jongin’s favourite.

She can sense Jongin seething next to her, a gloomy presence, his aura dark. Sehun’s hesitation is obvious by the manner his eyes flick over her shoulder, unsure, and by the way his fork hovers in between. Sensing that he’s not inclined to move it any further than those few inches, she picks up the bowl, tips it, and lets its contents spill into Sehun’s, who tears his eyes away from Jongin to ogle at what she'd done.

She ignores Jongin and speaks to only Sehun throughout the entire break, but much to her chagrin, the former doesn’t even as much shift to make his leave. He sits stoically beside them, picking at his food and refusing the calls of his teammates; he chooses to sit through her and Sehun’s shared laughter as they bend their heads together, playing a new game, even when it is to all eyes the more sensible choice to leave. He only broods, part of their group but very much alone.

***

Some internal mechanism in Jongin must have snapped, wires coming loose, for the next day she stops short at the scene before her, where Jongin, against his custom, is now speaking with Sehun. There’re sitting on the far end of the room, isolated from the world, the window crowning their dark hair. Gold light on Sehun makes him look paler, more sickly, but highlights his skin’s flawlessness and turns him to porcelain. On Jongin, it brushes perfect lines and full lips, downturned in concentration.

Sehun looks wary, sitting with with about a foot’s worth of space between them, but he leans forwards sometimes, albeit tentatively, to relay an instruction or demonstrate a sequence of commands. Jongin looks completely absorbed with the Game Boy.

“Gaeul,” he says, as though their argument yesterday never happened. “Can you grab my bag for me? I left it by Chanyeol’s desk.”

“Why should I get it?” she protests, plonking hers on the desk, which, rightfully, by the class’s unspoken law on laying claim to property, is hers.

“Because I’m going to stay here. Sehun hasn’t finished teaching me the rest yet.”

Next to Jongin, Sehun’s eyes widen. He looks at Gaeul with helpless apprehension.

“You can’t do that, taking other people’s seats,” Gaeul argues, partly for herself and partly on Sehun’s behalf.

“Really?” Jongin lifts a brow at her in a half-a-second glance while his fingers move, and whatever creature he controls on the screen performs spinning kicks and mid-air twirls. “You didn’t seem to hold on to that concept last time, when you gave away my seat to him.” Sehun goes even redder.

“Where am I supposed to sit then?” she argues, exasperated.

Jongin lifts a foot, stretches it beneath the desk, and nudges it onto the seat directly in front of him. “Here.”

“That’s Hyunah’s.”

“I talked her into switching. Did you know she fancies Chanyeol? She’s more than happy to leave.”

Gaeul glances at Sehun and finds him gaping, utterly confounded by the turn of events.

Irritation bubbles hot in her chest, but considering the lack of seats to choose from, she’s forced to accept Jongin’s dictatorial arrangement. She throws herself onto her seat furiously; her eyes sweep towards Jongin in a glare.

To her extreme aggravation, he seems completely unaffected.

***

The expansion of their little party to include a third member feels strange at first, imbalanced and not quite right. Gaeul is only used to being with one of them at a time; it’s always her and Jongin or her and Sehun, never both, never a combination.

Sehun, in the beginning, is like a startled kitten, wary of Jongin but too attached to Gaeul to leave and brave the world on his own. He only speaks to Jongin when spoken to, and most of  the time he does, it’s with a soft voice and little words. She does notice that there are slight changes when Jongin is around though; he stands straighter when they’re together, twists his fingers less, though he falls short of completely emulating Jongin’s confident carriage.

Jongin remains his easy, laid-back self, but somehow manages to diplomatically circumvent the mockery of his cooler friends. He manages to drift between the two parties with ease; with Chanyeol and Taemin, he discusses TV shows and interests typical of a boy of ten. With Sehun and Gaeul, he mostly keeps his counsel, but grows more and more intrigued by the games Sehun unselfishly introduces to him. It peaks to the point where they could hold complete, long winded discussions regarding powers and weapons and level-ups such that they no longer needed Gaeul to intervene or present herself as mitigator. In a way, Jongin is Sehun’s friend and Sehun is a part of Jongin’s extensive circle.

“Have you beaten the Champion Wallace in Pokemon Emerald?” he asks Sehun as they huddle underneath a giant tree, under which the class has chosen to reside while Mrs Kwon settles the matters regarding the tickets.

“Yes,” Sehun answers, hugging his knees.

They haven’t walked all that far yet, but already his cheeks show colour, a red that pulses with the heat of the sun. The teachers and his mother had been reluctant to permit him to join the class in the school trip, but Sehun had howled and begged. The final consensus is that Sehun will be allowed to come, under the condition he remains covered (hat and umbrella) and that he has to rest to avoid exhaustion. Also, Gaeul and Jongin were to keep a close eye on him.

“It’s a bit tricky though. I only managed it during a last ditch effort.”

It’s only been six months, but people can already see the evolution of Sehun’s speech. He tries his best to articulate properly and hide his lisp --and he gets better at it --but Jongin still remains as the eloquent one, the one adults like to hear to speak just because it’s so pleasant to hear.

“Did you use your Sceptile? What move did you use?”

As they compared notes on game tactics Gaeul finds herself drifting away. Her mind tunes into the wind and the trees and the clouds floating above. She always feels left out when they get like this; as the only non-compulsive gamer, she feels much of their conversation is unconsciously structured to not include her opinion. She on her straw, growing bored.

“Gaeul.”

She turns, finds both Jongin’s and Sehun’s eyes on her. Jongin has in his a twinkling light, the telltale gleam that recalls the days when he was an extreme menace.

“Let’s sneak away and go see the tigers.”

“No!” Gaeul hisses, horrified. “We’ll get in trouble.”

“The deer then. They’re just right by that fence.” He points. Sehun’s eyes follow its direction, but Gaeul can see the worry that paints them; Jongin’s plans always have a terrifying risk to them.

“No, Jongin,” Gaeul says, firm. “We’ll get scolded and sent home. We’ll feed them when we’re inside.”

Jongin pouts, but concedes, the weather being too hot to proceed with the argument.

He really does seem to be eager to feed something though, because half an hour after they were allowed entrance into the zoo’s gates, he seizes the first chance he gets.

“Be careful with the leaves, children,” their teacher says as the nice man in a dark green uniform distributes branches. “And remember, be gentle. The deer won’t come to you if you aren’t.”

Gaeul feeds hers to the less frisky of the lot, a doe with gorgeous black eyes. She smiles at her as her tongue flicks between the wires to consume the leaves she pushes in.

“Touch it,” Jongin says. Like a ghost, he’s standing next to her, hands empty and curiosity plain.

“Can we?”

“She won’t bite,” he says, reaching forwards, brushing her pelt with the tips of his fingers. The fence allowed for little contact, but he manages to stick his fingers in to touch the curve of the doe’s jaw.

She mimics him; the doe is indeed very tolerant and doesn’t object, letting them feel her course pelt and taut flesh. Their fingers collide frequently, but it’s all part of the fun, the mystery. At the moment, Jongin is no longer the naughty, intelligent child capable of charming and scheming; he’s the tender Jongin, the child sitting behind the bars of the jungle gym, watching her swing.