(fifteen)

“I think Jongin has his own fanclub,” Gaeul declares one Thursday evening, shifting the phone into a more comfortable position in her ear.

“A fanclub?” Sehun sounds more amused than he is surprised. She can picture his expression, the slight smile that would touch the corners of his lips every time she reported Jongin’s misdeeds to him.

She nods, even though Sehun isn’t able to see. The sun burns against her eyes as she squints across the field, studying closely the interaction between the boys of the basketball team and the league of pretty girls that had shamelessly sashayed up to them. Jongin, in particular, is in the midst of entertaining three. Though she stands too far to be able to see his expression, she notices the peals of laughter and adoring eyes all three turn up to him.

“Yes, a fanclub.”

“Is it a bad thing?”

“It’s an obstruction,” she says, her tone flat. “I can’t go anywhere with him without everyone staring.”

Sehun laughs, and it is as sweet as the sound of gentle currents in a river. His voice has gotten husky lately --similar to Jongin’s --but it’s pleasantly pitched, she thinks, like lemon and honey.

“I could imagine how annoying that is. Is he enjoying the attention?”

“I don’t know.” She hears her tone going sour. “He never complains, that’s for sure. Oh God,” she mutters, eyes narrowing further. “They’re flirting with him; they’re giggling and playfully slapping his arm and flirting with him.”

“You know,” Sehun says in her ear, “not all of us like the flirting. I think Jongin’s just too polite to turn them away.”

“Jongin is also good at getting his point across. If he objects to all this, I think he would have done it before all the giggling.” She rubs her temple; the scene is starting to hurt her head as much as it is hurting her eyes. “Forget this. I’m going home.”

“I would gladly accompany you,” says Sehun.

“You’re not here.”

“In spirit then, and over the line.”

Her lips twitch, and she spins in her heels, walking away from the nauseating demonstration of poorly executed flirting techniques.

Jongin can find his way home himself.

 

***

 

    “‘My Last Song’,” she reads. “This looks good.”

It’s Friday and they’re combing through newspapers, scanning reviews and suggesting titles for their weekly Saturday movie night. Jongin had offered his home as the venue of research and all the available newspapers of the week as the material. They have been at it for nearly an hour, as neither one had been able to agree to anything the other suggested.

As is their custom, they tend to go by a system: if in that particular week there’s a showing of a blockbuster, there would be no question of seeing anything else. If they’re two, they’ll flip a coin. If they aren’t any, they would rotate: romance in one week; thriller or action in the next.

“It says here it’s the story of a nurse who loves playing the piano and a soldier with a penchant for hearing them. They met when he was brought to her care after a devastating--Jongin are you even listening?”

Jongin’s head snaps up, but his fingers still move, tapping and dancing across the keypad of his cellphone. “A soldier falls in love with a nurse,” he says, and blinks.

She puts the newspaper down with some frustration. “Who on earth are you texting?”

Jongin’s hesitation is brief, but she catches it --how his eyes flicker down, dropping his lashes over them like a veil, and how his fingers twitch. “Chorong. She’s been contacting me rather frequently lately, asking questions.”

“Questions.” Gaeul repeats emotionlessly.

“It’s just concern,” he says. The airiness of his tone suggests that it’s not something he thought much about anyway. “About my health. Whether or not I’ve eaten. Stuff like that.”

“Oh.”

Jongin shifts his position with a grunt and finally puts the phone away, leaning closer to peruse the titles marching across the page in austere lines. He presses thin hands on the corner of the page and traces elegant fingers across each line he reads.

“What about this? Two best friends fall in love --”

“I think,” Gaeul declares, brandishing a new newspaper and planting it resolutely down on the table. “I’m in the mood for something else this week. Action sounds really good at the moment.”

Jongin looks up, brows raised slightly. “You want to break the rules you’d set yourself?”

“Life’s all about breaking rules.”

Jongin’s cool facade breaks into a wide grin. “I see you’ve adopted my philosophy. Alright then.” He flicks towards the next page, eyes lighting up rather frighteningly as she sits frozen in her chair, a vague sense of foreboding setting her heart into a hectic, irregular pace. “I hope you feel the same way about horror.”

 

***

 

“Damn you, Jongin,” she hisses, burying her head deeper into the collar of his jacket. She grits her teeth against the blood-curling screams, the grate of knife against bone, teeth on flesh.

She feels his laughter rumble through him, the soft amusement in his voice when he says, “You’re missing the best part.”

“I’d miss a thousand ‘best parts’ if it involves dismemberment.” She goes rigid again more screams rip through the theatre, interspersed with words she no longer recognised, a string of distorted syllables that sounds like part of an eerie, hellish tongue.

“If you won’t enjoy it then I will,” he says, relieving her of the popcorn bucket and leaning back happily.

It takes almost the entire movie for her to realise that at some point, he had shifted his position so that she’d be able to rest her head more comfortably between his shoulder and neck, and had voluntarily laid his hand out for her to take during that scene with the bloody heads, decapitated and hanging bodiless from the ceiling.

 

***

 

    It’s a late Tuesday afternoon and she’s watching Jongin and Chorong walking the school gardens from the window.

It’s break time; the class is empty, the inhabitants of the institute having relocated to the halls. Gaeul is only here because she had forgotten her wallet. She had entered the room distracted, weaving between the tables, blissfully ignorant of what she might encounter in the window.

In retrospect, she shouldn’t have looked out in the first place.

They’re hardly doing anything scandalous; by all appearances it seems like a harmless walk, with green grass curving away under their feet and only trees and rosebushes privy to their conversation. Jongin has his hands in his pockets, walking in that languid, graceful manner that she has only ever seen him perfect. Chorong is speaking animatedly with him, her pretty face alight and delighted, though it seems to Gaeul that their discourse is incredibly one-sided.

They’re not walking at a snail’s pace, but there isn’t much urgency either. Chorong seems content to lead Jongin in circles around the garden and the latter seems unnaturally willing to oblige, though there is something in his manner, his gait and posture, that denotes an absent mind, a mind more given to pondering over the shapes of the clouds or the origins of the rosebushes than the effort to maintain the conversation.

Gaeul takes the forgotten wallet and walks away without another glance.

 

***

 

Sometimes, Oh Sehun would send her letters.

It’s an alternative form of communication, utilised not quite as often as say, phone calls in the night. Almost all the time, it ends up a surprise (Sehun never tells when one is on the way) but in all times and circumstances a rather welcome one.

An envelope slides over the table where her head rests, stopping to touch the tips of her fingers. She turns sleepily, blinks at the tall figure loitering by her chair, dark, form-fitting shirt hugging the breadth and fitness of his frame.

“I looked in the mailbox this morning and found this for you,” Minho says, fresh from the shower. He smells of musk and soap. Damp, lanky strands of his hair hang limp over his eyes as he towels it. He has taken a fancy to dyeing his hair ever since he turned sixteen and befriended a boy with a finesse for styling (he brings him around sometimes. Kibum, she remembers the boy being called, who is as kindly as he is frank.) At this half of the year he wears it in the colour of rosewood, deep and rich and extremely becoming.

“Thanks,” she yawns, taking it carefully and slipping a finger to loosen the flap.

“There such a thing as email, you know. I think you should tell him that.”

She glances sideways and finds that contrary to the usual routine, her brother hasn’t left yet, and has perched himself lightly at the edge of her table, watching her.

“He sends pictures sometimes.”

“He can always use the attachments button.”

“It’s not quite as nice as ones that are printed,” she responds patiently. There are days when they bicker like there’s no tomorrow, and times when their conversations hold a note of affection for each other. It’s usually on late nights, when Minho is exhausted from soccer, that he becomes a more subdued brother, and unexpectedly, a ready listener.

“I never thought you’d still be this close after this long you know,” Minho admits. “Distance plays a great hand at parting two people.”

“He’s close to Jongin too.” The flap opens, and just as she suspects, there are photos slipped in with a folded letter. “We’re different. Nothing could separate us.”

Minho smiles; it’s not condensing, a version that he’s used on her more than just a little often, and neither is it teasing. It’s the soft, kindly one that she rarely gets, but knows, somewhere in the deep corner of her heart where a cord binds them together, that it’s a smile he reserves just for his little sister.

“I hope so,” he says, and reaches over to lightly ruffle her hair. He leaves behind the strong scent of mint and green tea soap after he’s gone, and she’s left alone to peruse the contents of Sehun’s letter.

Dear Gaeul,

Hi,

I missed you. I’ve told you this a thousand times: Jeju is beautiful and breathtaking, but it doesn’t quite compare to our little town --it doesn’t compare to home. There’s the sea here, and the grass and the trees and animals, but it has neither you nor Jongin, and because of that it falls short of making me feel like I belong.

You know, I talked to the fool the other day. It seems that he’s only vaguely aware of his popularity. I’ve been in contact with the both of you and it doesn’t seem that you two have changed much. Jongin is still adventurous and self assured, and you’re still cool and calm.

I hope you reply me with pictures. I want the details --as much as you can supply. I might not physically be there when I see them, but it’s easy to imagine that I am, that I'm there with you. As a trade off, here’re a few of mine from the ranch I visited the other day with a few friends. Do you remember Jongdae? The ranch is his grandfather’s, and he took us there to see the horses and ride.

It’s in the pictures, if you care to take a look. (I know I look like I’ve been through hell and back on some of them. Please. Don’t comment.)

She smiles to herself. Despite his distance the warmth of Sehun’s voice bleeds into everything he touches, into the words he pens. She has seen his letters take on many tones: cheerful and excited and thoughtful and agitated, but never one this nostalgic. For him to start a letter with such a bleak expression of loss and longing… he must had been very homesick.

She slides the pictures out and peruses them, smiling privately. Most of them are of the ranch, all its beautiful colours and distant horizons because Sehun knows she favours landscapes when she paints. Others are of himself, smiling toothily at the camera, dark, windblown hair curling at the corners of his temples, falling into the softness of his eyes. There’s something mesmerizing about the colour of his eyes when the sun filters it with its touch, a shade of cinnamon both light and deep.

There are some that featured him with other people: a boy with chocolate hair, scruffy but at the same time neat, whose smile curls ever so slightly at the edges. There’s another with two others, one a boy with black hair, the other a girl with a pixie cut.

The last one features Sehun atop a horse, grinning widely. He’s holding the reins tight, his fisted hands revealing elegant juts and curves. He’s dressed rather simply: jeans and a faded polo, but looks to in be better trim than she remembers, having lost all the sharp edges of a bony frame.

Something about that smile and mouth and the longish hair he drapes over his eyes recalls gentility --the wistful boy she remembers with a pacific, kindly soul.

She tacks the picture up on the wall, next to one of Jongin, a candid shot she once took on whim, where he perches on a rock of the cliff he so loves and still takes her to. His is head half turned, staring at the sprawling vista of glass and trees against a smear of clouds on the blue sky.

They’re the two most important people to her besides her own kin.

 

***

 

It takes her breath away sometimes, when she thinks of months and seasons that had crept and rotated with she and Jongin and Sehun stuck in the currents of time, growing up. The day she saw Jongin was at the height of summer, hot and balmy and golden. The day she established a quiet comradeship with Sehun was in the chilly reign of winter, frost and snow scattered about paths and gathering underneath windows. Sehun himself had looked like a child of winter, with his pale complexion and long, dusty lashes, while Jongin was doubtless the offspring of summer, copper-skinned and beautiful, as mischievous as the summer breeze that tugs at scarves to whisk them to flight.

It’s in late spring that Jongin drops a flower on her lap and bends a solemn gaze on her.

She’s startled far more greatly than she lets on, but somehow, she manages to keep her tone even and her creeping blush at bay when she says, “What’s this for?”

Instead of replying, he returns her question with one of his own, “What do you think of it?”

She picks it up, brushes her fingers over the petals. Its scent is both heady and soft; the fragrance of spring, one she secretly wishes to have bottled and hidden. “It’s pretty.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Jongin says as he slides, graceful, to sit by her on the grass. His eyes rake the flower, contemplating. “It’s one of the extras from Taemin’s bouquet. You know how he’s a er for sales pitches? The idiot managed to let himself get convinced by a shady florist that flowers are a must when you ask a lady out on a date --and only realised later that he’d bought five stalks too many.”

“So he… distributed the bouquet?”

Jongin lifts his lips in a small smile; the delicacy of his amusement sets his eyes aglow. “Yes, though Chanyeol had adamantly refused to walk home laden with flowers in his arms. Says his sister will never let him hear the end of it.”

“I see.”

“It’s called a gardenia,” Jongin supplies, leaning against his elbows. He keeps only a hair's breadth worth of space between them, and with the shift of his limbs she catches that subtle scent of fresh rain in his hair and collar, soft and sweet with the flower's perfume.

“And why are you giving this to me?”

“Because I’m a good friend and I want to relieve Taemin of his misery.” The spark is there, the darting playfulness that colours and darkens his eyes. “And like Chanyeol said: I can’t be caught walking home with a flower with the whole world watching.” He crinkles his nose. “It would be strange, wouldn’t it?”

The disappointment is subtle, but she couldn’t help it, no more than the pressure she feels, squeezing her heart.

She tries to match his playfulness with an airy statement of her own. “All the more reason for me to force you into doing just that. It would be pretty entertaining, I think.”

Jongin casts her a look of exasperation. “It is a principle of yours, to question everything I do? Why can’t you just take what you’re given? I thought girls liked flowers --we all did, otherwise, Taemin wouldn’t be making a fool of himself right now in front of the girl of his dreams with a bouquet considerably reduced of its floral variety.”

“Whether or not a girl likes flowers is entirely dependant on personal preference.”

Jongin looks at her with half lidded eyes. “And what’s yours?”

"If I tell you, it would take the fun out in guessing wouldn't it?”

Jongin sighs, then drops onto the ground. His hair, thick and dark, brushes his eyes, fans about his head like coal dust and silk. “You love to go around in circles, don’t you?”

“If it makes you as ruffled as a hen, then yes,” she laughs. She brushes her hair back, tucks the flower behind her ear, just to see how well it would fit.

When she turns her head, she finds Jongin watching her. He coughs when she blinks inquiringly at him, turning to lie on his side, his back to her, body cradled by the grass.  

 

***

 

“I’m not good at this.”

“Obviously. Loosen your shoulders. Don’t be so tense.” His liquid midnight eyes search hers, but in them were a playful light, a strange innate gentleness that she finds rather matching with the song. “It’s just dancing.”

“You know I have two left feet.”

Around them, other couples spin. Jongin had the wisdom to lead her to sidelines, as far away from the spotlight as possible, and even then she struggles not to collide with anything that moves. Her cheeks flame with every mistake, for what better way to highlight your faults than to have them executed in perfect form by a partner to whom its art is natural as breathing, as wind and water and fire?

Jongin leans close as though to whisper a conspiratorial secret; his breath is sweet with the scent of punch with a trace of mint underneath. “It would make it easier for the both of us if you’d just let me lead.”

She blinks, surprised. “Am I leading?”

He chuckles under his breath, and the sound weaves with the notes and chords of the ballad. “Yes. For quite some time now actually. I just thought you deserved the chance.”

She freezes, stays there stock still.

Jongin sighs, shaking his head, cinching his arm around her waist. He tugs her gently along into a set of steps that she suspects is an impromptu simplification of what she has been trying to mimic for the past fifteen  minutes.

“That’s better,” she hears him say. Satisfaction floods through her veins at his approval, and underneath the hair that falls with her bent head, she allows a tiny smile.

“Now, the only thing left…” She feels fingers under her chin, long and light, and then she feels the pressure, the slight force that tilts her head up.

She’s looking at his eyes, dark and haunting, legions deep with the occasional smattering silver and gold, like stars on a midnight ocean.

“You have to keep your eyes on me.” Even when he keeps his voice soft she can still hear him smirk.

“Just because you might be pleased with how you look in the mirror doesn’t mean that other people do, too.”

Jongin laughs; from the corner of her eyes, she sees a girl watching, her eyes strangely cold underneath the pulsing light.

“Touche,” Jongin says, drawing her attention away, guiding her through circles that put them far away from Chorong’s blank coolness. “You should be nice to me. If it weren’t for my generosity, you would pitifully be without an .”

“I’m sure I could have wrangled one up.”

“From where? I never knew you had a list.” His smile is slow spreading, teasingly beautiful. “You should have let me seen it. I’m sure I could have offered insightful suggestions in helping you choose your potential candidates.”

She glowers at him and squeezes hard at his hands. Jongin neither flinches nor falters, watching her with those hooded eyes, that luxuriant half smirk.

“Don’t mock.”

“Whatever made you think that I would do such a thing?”

She grits her teeth. “Jongin.”

“Gaeul,” he replies, in a voice that is infuriatingly solemn.

She sighs, closing her eyes. The music is both beautiful and sorrowful; the voice that sings it is sweet with yearning, weaving romance into the tale the lyrics tell.

“Sometimes, you’re unbearable.”

“Well, so are you. I could have done perfectly fine without all this,” He flicks his eyes onto dance floor, the food tables, the people. The decorations that hang overhead next to a string of letters spelling the word ‘dance’. “You just had to barge into my home and drag me into this pageantry.”

“You know perfectly well why I did,” she says as Jongin guides her into a spin. She sees the smirk again; he knows that he’d managed to distract her, enough that all her movements became automatic, and that instinct had begun to lead her more than reason. She pretends she doesn’t notice.

“I did it because this is the last time we’d ever be in this middle school. It’s a special memory, and I want my best friend to be in it.”

His eyes turn a fraction darker, water surging deeper. “I see.”

He loosens his grip when the last note ends. Her hands drop, hanging awkwardly at her sides as he buries his into the depths of his pockets. “And I agree. All I’m saying is that I would have come if you had just asked. You needn’t have used all that force.”

He surprised her with that. “I never thought you would.”

“I would,” he says earnestly, just before the mike crackles to life and their principal steps centre stage for his parting speech.

 

---

(sixteen)

High school is a riot, chaos in the guise of order.

They go in with trembling hearts and high hopes. In terms of architecture, the buildings are a disappointment: standard blocks, as tall as five storeys with colours like mist and faded sunset. Jongin found solace in the fact the sports amenities are not as disappointing; there are fields for football and track, a baseball diamond, a fenced court for basketball and tennis and a swimming pool tucked away in the underground.

They end up getting separated in the division of classes. To Jongin’s benefit, those that he got to call his classmates are the friends he’d known and played with throughout elementary and junior high. Taemin is tall and rather pretty for a boy, with almond-shaped eyes in the hue of damp soil and the same shade of hair to match. Chanyeol is taller, gangly and not yet at ease with his size; he collides with the tops of door frames frequently, and often has a bump to show for it. He’s even taller than Jongin, who, contrary to Chanyeol’s awkward build, is a mannequin of silk and muscle and fine proportions.

She gets their previous class president Naeun as her classmate, and Baekhyun, the petite boy with the magic fingers, the genius behind Jongin’s surprise for her three years ago. He smiles at her on the first day, eyes crinkling behind his glasses in warmth. There are also others she knows and remembers: Eunji, now no longer a cohort of Chorong; Hani, tall and beautiful like a princess; a boy with laughing eyes and the large-eyed one sitting beside Baekhyun.

Jongin joins as many teams as he can manage. Whenever she steals time to meet him, it would be near an open field, his hair damp from sweat or the shower. Some of the boys she knows, like Taemin and Chanyeol, would just smile at her warmly and wave her over to Jongin whenever she comes to look for him.

“It’s like he’s obsessed,” she tells Sehun as she leans against the bench, the bag Jongin left in her care lying limp on her lap. “Really, I can’t get a word out of him that does not involve team stratagem.”

“I’ll talk to him about it,” Sehun offers helpfully. On his side, the line is quiet, as though he’d snuck off the hills near his school to talk to her. Knowing Sehun that’s probably what he did.

“No need.” She plucks a grass from her feet and toys with it. “None of us have ever been to able to drill into him sense. Jongin does whatever he wants.”

Sehun chuckles, his voice low. It’s strange, hearing that sudden dip. When he was younger his voice was light and breathy, like the wind. Puberty had deepened his tone, but refined what had been rough edges; he doesn’t have that lisp anymore, and the words that pour from his lips have a charming, gravelly touch to them.

“Don’t be so frustrated. It’s not worth it. It’s Jongin!” Sehun laughs. “You’ve never been able to change him and neither could I, so I think it’s high time we accept his faults and failures,” his voice turns soft, fondness seeping into his words, “and because he’s Jongin, we know that his strengths and virtues far surpasses them.”

“What have you been up to?” The sun is bright today but the wind is gentle; she remembers that day from so many years ago, when the same wind cards through her hair and Jongin and Sehun are both with her, one with kind, encouraging eyes and the other taking her lightly by the hand to guide her.

“Horseback riding,” he says. Unexpectedly, Sehun had developed an affection for those unpredictable animals, riding them for sport.

“Jongin would be disappointed when you visit. It’ll be the only thing you’ll have him completely beat.”

“I look forward to the novelty.” The idea seems to amuse him.

“Sehun?”

“Yes?”

“When will you visit?”

“Oh, Gaeul,” his voice grows gentle, but there’s something else in it now. Oddly, it’s not a duplication of the sorrow she always hears whenever the subject or its variants are broached.

“Please come,” she begs. “I’d like someone to talk to when Jongin starts talking game.”

Sehun laughs. “The day will come, Gaeul-ah. Trust me, it will.”

 

***

 

The day came, though only when she least expects it.

Jongin accosts her in the hallway, just before she could set a foot in the class. His eyes are bright, brighter than the sun and stars and hued with the lightest colours of conspiracy. He’s been growing his hair out, a mop of dark soot that tangles with the wind and catches blades of grass.

He grabs her arm and drags her to the corner of the hall, though his grip is soft.

“What’s going on, Jongin?” she asks. Seeing him smile always leaves her chest light and fluttery; Jongin’s happiness is oftentimes infectious, easy to fall into.

“Sehun,” he says. His eyes are dancing, light and shadow, water and fire.

“I just spoke to him a couple of days ago. He’s fine --”

“He’s coming back,” Jongin bursts and stuns her by pulling her close. He holds her tightly, excitement rolling off of him in waves. “He’s coming back,” he repeats, as though he himself can’t believe it.

She squeals. Her arms find their way around him, and she returns Jongin’s crushing embrace. “When?”

“This Friday.” Jongin pulls away laughing.

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“It was supposed to be a secret. He wanted it to be a surprise, but I had to tell you. I know how much it would mean to you.”

“Sehunnie’s coming back,” she mutters, wondering if it was a dream, and Jongin’s words were merely an outburst born from endless, cumulative hope, her brain tricking her with the hallucination of her wish coming true.

“Permanently.” Jongin grins. “He’s stuck in our lives now.”

She smiles.

“I wonder how much he’s changed. He sure looks different, if all the pictures he sent are indicative of anything. The little brat. He’s trying to outdo me, I know it.” He chuckles. “I’ll give him a good fight.”

She smiles and reaches out squeeze Jongin’s hands. Jongin returns her affection in kind, smiling softly down at her. From this angle, she notices how much baby fat had been sloughed off by sweat and sun, leaving planes and angles and a jaw that slopes into a perfect curve.

“Do me a favour,” he whispers, leaning closer. “Act surprised, will you?”

 

***

 

She did as Jongin asked, but Sehun saw through the facade like a bottle of water and glares at Jongin over her head.

“You told her, didn’t you?”

She laughs in his arms, and feels the low chuckle that vibrates in his chest. His arms are soft and his shirt smells of salt, sea and the perfume of leaves and wildflowers, and however long she stares she cannot find any trace of that ill, skinny boy from all those years before.

Sehun had grown. That much is plain when she ran to hug him and he towered over her. Sixteen years old, Oh Sehun is no longer the fragile and breakable boy she first met. He has muscle in place of bone, long-limbs in place of stubby fingers. He’s as tall as Jongin and carries his height well, with hair like burnt copper and eyebrows like a painter’s brushstrokes.

“You would have done the same,” Jongin says, though he had the grace to look slightly sheepish. He’s watching their exchange w, leaning against the door frame.

“You dyed your hair,” she says, reaching up to run her fingers through it. Sehun always had soft hair, but after experiencing firsthand how puberty could take your assets and make everything go horribly wrong, she’s surprised to find that it’s still as soft. Softer, even.

“Thought a change would be good.” He smiles and shakes his head, mussing it up with his fingers. “Does it look good?”

‘It’s incredibly attractive’ was what she wanted to say, but for the sake of maintaining her pride (and because Jongin is watching) she settles on “It looks good” instead.

“You went all out for the first day of school, didn’t you?” Jongin nudges him on the shoulder. “Looking to make an impression?”

Sehun shrugs off his touch and playfully cuffs him on the neck. It’s a gesture of affection, one she’d seen him use many times on Jongin, but never on anyone else.

It is on that exact moment that Minho strolls into the kitchen. He pauses, does a double take and booms a greeting loud enough for the whole house to hear.

Her mother thunders down the stairs and envelops Sehun in an embrace; her father drifts out of his makeshift workshop in the attic to join his wife in the impromptu interrogation. Sehun looks a little overwhelmed, but pleased, answering every question charmingly.

Jongin catches her eye from the door and they share a secret smile.

 

***

 

The first thing Jongin does to reintroduce Sehun to their quaint little town is to take him to the cliff. With so many inches added to his legs, Sehun keeps up easily, almost effortless in his avoidance of roots and other similar obstacles. But like the child that had waited for her back then, he patiently puts up with her now and waits as she struggles over what Jongin easily overcomes, stretching out a hand to help every now and then.  

“More than four years and I’m still not used to this,” she grumbles as she carefully watches her step.

“It’s been that long, hasn’t it?” Sehun says, wistful, as he carefully steps over a puddle. She’s been trying to get him to faster, to keep apace with Jongin, but although he doesn’t say anything to oppose, he silently defies her wishes by refusing to leave her.

“Haven’t you noticed?” She silently peeks further into the line of trees. Jongin is metres ahead of them, and he appears intent on focusing on the path. She wonders if there’s something wrong, because he always helped her on the path whenever they went to the cliff, waiting for her as Sehun did now.

“Of course I have,” Sehun says. “I always count the days when we were apart.”

She smiles at him thankfully, but something at the back of her mind nags her that the we he meant didn’t involve the entirety of their trio. She sees something untold swim behind his eyes.

“You haven’t even broken a sweat,” she says, changing the subject. “Wonderful. I guess I’m the only one who’s gotten terribly unfit.”

Sehun laughs. “I had practice. Jeju is full of forests and rocky coasts.”

“I bet you have a beautiful view every time you look out of your window.”

Sehun shrugs. “Yeah, I suppose so, but it depends on your definition of beauty. Jeju is an absolute gem, but I’ll love this town and its little secrets more.”

She trips over a root then and Sehun’s arms dart out, catching her. He circles them around her waist and smiles when she looks up at him. She sees that flutter of tenderness underneath the curtain of hair, and recalls all those years ago, when the candle flames of his birthday cake are warm against their faces, and he looks at her with those same eyes.

“We’re here!”

She scrambles out of Sehun’s arms, slightly flushed. Jongin is standing at edge of the treeline, smiling as brightly as ever, but something in the way the shadows shift about his face hints that he saw more than he lets on.

“Take a look. View’s still as great as ever.”

Sehun scrambles over a few bushes and leaps over the last few puddles in his eagerness to see the town he missed. When she looks at Jongin again, the shadows on his place are gone and he winks at her. “Still a bit of kid in him left after all.”

 

***

 

Sehun turned out to be a head turner. The revelation isn’t much of a surprise.

At first, they don’t recognise the handsome boy with the angular face, walking their halls for the first time. But then his name rolls off of his tongue and everybody is staring, ogling the perfect specimen of proportionate height and muscle.

She walks down the halls and sees girls eye every inch of him, pausing when he passes, and staying at the spot, even when he’s already halfway to the other side. She notices Choi Eunha making eyes at him, and Kim Mina, the residential queen, blushing after he’d asked her for directions.

“It’s amazing,” she remarks softly to herself, which, despite trying to be discreet, someone hears.

Haera slams her locker door closed and smiles at her. “Isn’t it? Who knew a few years could do that to you.”

“Not that.” Gaeul frowns. “I’ve known half of these people since elementary school, and they’d never even spared a glance at him when he was young and small and needed friends the most. And when he’s --” Gaeul gestures exasperatedly, unable to put it into words.

“Tall and ridiculously handsome they all want him?” Haera supplies. “People can be such hypocrites sometimes, right?”

Gaeul scoffs and slams her locker door shut--

Only to come face to face (chest, technically) with the boy in question. She tilts her head up and finds him smiling at her, clutching the straps of his backpack in tightly curled fists.

“I don’t think anybody showed me the way to the cafeteria.”

“All you have to do is follow the flow. It’ll lead you straight to it”

Sehun chuckles. “Let me rephrase that. Will you have lunch with me?”

From the corner of her eyes, she sees Haera quietly slink away.

“Just like the old days,” Sehun adds, grinning widely now.

She thinks of that soft-spoken boy sitting lonelily by the window, head bent over a Game Boy. “Of course.”

 

***

 

Jongin lures Sehun into a game of pickup basketball a week into Sehun’s permanent return. He gets Chanyeol to join too and throws in Luhan for good measure. They hustle about the little court in the park, dribbling and stealing.

Gaeul sits in the sidelines with an ice cream cone in the company of Naeun, who’d just recently declared a relationship with Chanyeol.

“He’s fast,” Naeun remarks in awe, delicately patting away the ice cream that stains her lips. “He’s good.”

Gaeul mistook the person in question as Naeun’s beloved. “Chanyeol’s always been good.”

Naeun shakes her head. “No. Not Chanyeol. Sehun. I don’t remember him playing anything this well before, apart from those video games. Now he’s almost, if not entirely, as good as Jongin.”

Gaeul says nothing. Their surprise of Sehun’s prowess hadn’t been a surprise to her at all, merely a source of smug pride. He’d been invisible as a child; now, as fate would have it, he’s irresistible.

Naeun hoots when the ball leaps in a perfect arc into the hoop. Sehun stands nearby with a small smile, shaking off his damp hair. Jongin reaches a palm at him, and Sehun returns his grin and slaps it in a high five. Both catch her gaze at the exact same time and smile.

“Lucky.”

Gaeul turns her head to find Naeun smirking at her, ice cream demolished, the crumbs on her fingers the only indication of its existence. She brushes them away, her eyes catching the light of the sun.

“Not many of us get to choose between two boys,” she continues.

“There’s nothing to choose,” Gaeul says, shaking her head. “They’re both my friends.”

Naeun laughs. “Come on. It’s been what? Almost ten years? You guys can’t still be stuck in that phase.”

Gaeul raises a brow. “What phase?”

“The friendship phase. Chanyeol and I went through that for like four months before I realised he liked me and I had a crush on him.”

Gaeul tosses her ponytail off her shoulders and studies the game. Jongin has the upper hand, but Luhan is working on distracting him while Chanyeol steals seconds to steal the ball.

“You can’t lie and tell me that you don’t like one of them at least a little bit.” Naeun’s eyes spark with mischief. “Is it Jongin? He is awfully good-looking, isn’t he? And you did go to the dance with him.”

Gaeul winces and stares at the game more intently. “We went to the dance as friends.”

Fate must be feeling merciful; before Naeun could prod more into their relationship, Chanyeol jogs over, all puppy eyes and bouncing hair. Naeun hands him a towel and a bottle, and Chanyeol smiles at her as though she’s the most beautiful girl in the world.

Gaeul’s heart twists just a little at the sight of them, and she looks away. For the first time, she feels a twinge of longing.

 

***

 

It’s not much of a surprise really when she spots Sehun three days later, staring dumbfoundedly into his locker. Quietly, she tiptoes up to him. He’s too tall to see over (just like Jongin, who uses it to his full advantage to hide things from her just to ) so she bends to see around him.

Jammed in his locker, in heaping boxes tied with ribbons of red and pastel colours, are chocolates.

“Are you going to eat all those?”

Sehun jumps, flails slightly to catch the door. He’s about to slam it when he spins around and sees her. He breathes a relieved sigh.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

She grins, coy. “Sorry.”

Sehun peers into the locker again, confusion clear in his eyes. “I don’t know where these came from.”

“I do.” She stretches an arm, plucks a box out, turning it with her fingers. “It’s from your new fanclub.”

“Gaeul,” Sehun says, and bends a defeated smile at her. Something about the lighting makes him look paler than usual today. It’s not the sickly pastiness he used to have as a child, but a more ethereal manifestation, like the whiteness of doves’ wings or the moon in full silver.

“What? I’ve seen Jongin open his locker to gifts for ages now.” She s it back at him. “You have a fanclub.”

Sehun takes it and carefully places it atop the pile. He edges an arm around the heap, feels about, and produces a set of crumpled papers that he eyes with some dismay.  

“My history essay,” he says, staring at the crumpled edges. “Of all the things it could have crushed.”

“You should have filed that,” she says, but the scene he poses is of such a pitiful sight that she reaches for papers, tries to right the damage as best as she can.

“So what are you going to do?” she asks as she slowly smooths the edges. “Not more than a month and people already know your locker combination.”

“I don’t know. Though I think could do without the fanclub.” He takes them back from her, not perfect, but presentable enough to be handed in. “I highly doubt their exclusively mine anyway. They’re probably Jongin’s.” He smiles, innocent. “Maybe they saw me with him and think they could get to him through me.”

Gaeul stares at him, and then shakes her head in disbelief. She takes his arm and he reaches out for the locker door to slam it just in time before she pulls him away.

“We’ll both be late.”

“Really though, those chocolates.” Sehun looks equal parts hesitant, flattered and uncomfortable. “Do you think Jongin will take them home with him? I don’t think I could eat that much.”

Gaeul smiles slightly. “Jongin gets plenty enough that he’s just as confused as you are in terms of finding a way to get rid of them.”

“What about you then?” he sounds mildly desperate. “Can you take some home?”

This time, she really does laugh. “You have no idea how much Minho brings home in a week.I don’t have any fridge space left.”

 

***

 

The months pass by quickly. Sehun worms his way into a lot of hearts that everyone simply can’t help adoring him a bit more every time he smiles. Teachers are fond of him; most people don’t have much of a bad word for him.Still, he looks for her and Jongin nevertheless, even when he has so many people trying to be his friend.

Jongin is a stalwart presence by his side, but where Sehun dips his head and offers shy smiles, he flings out half smirks and Cheshire cat beams wherever and to whomever he pleases. Together, they make an intimidating pair, both so tall, so very intelligent.

But popular as either one may be, it's plain as day, the air of inseparability between them. How Jongin slides in front of Sehun whenever the other starts to feel bothered by the questions they pester him with; how Sehun silently puts up with Jongin when he’s in one of his thunderous moods. How Jongin always picks Sehun to be in his team and how Sehun sides with him, yet unabashedly disagrees with him on anything he couldn’t tolerate.

When they stand next to each other, it’s so easy to see how staggeringly different one is from the other. Jongin with that careless smile inspires in his subject of attention a keenness to do whatever he asks; Sehun, by contrast, is a quiet companion, and is more disinclined to ask for assistance then he is to provide them.  

Now, she’s watching both approach her, winding a path through the crowd, a head of brown and another of dark midnight, jostling each other, laughing. The respect they command is easily seen by way the sea of students part for them, bodies twisting to allow a clear path. Gaeul knows Jongin is mildly aware of it, but Sehun, sweet, innocent Sehun, seems completely oblivious.

“Gaeul!” Sehun beams, making a beeline straight for her. “Shopping or movies. Take your pick for our weekend outing.”

Jongin groans. “No. Not shopping. I hate picking out clothes.”

“You never do, remember?” Gaeul says, lifting her brows ever so slightly. “Your sister buys most of yours for you, and when you’re so utterly desperate, you drag me along and force me to help you replenish your closet.”

Sehun laughs softly. “I don’t know how you even function in all these years,” he says to Jongin.

Jongin rolls his eyes. “Whatever. It’s not that what they choose is terrible or anything.”

Which is quite true actually. Truthfully, the only reason Jongin comes out dressing so attractively is because the selection and replenishment of his closet is governed entirely by females. It’s a bonus when one of which is a sister set on becoming a fashion designer. And as for herself, well. It’s purely instinctive that, when you have a mannequin whose looks lean a little on the model side, you’d want to dress him like one.

“Alright, how about this? We’ll still go to the mall, but we’ll just grab lunch and maybe a movie --”

“Jongin!” Chorong slides into the conversation with a bright smile, eyes on Jongin. Jongin straightens out of his slouch and replies with a polite ‘yes?’.

“Thank you so much for helping me. I finally got an eighty seven on my maths quiz!” Excited, she shoves a paper up at Jongin, where, scrawled atop the page next to her name, were two digits that make up her marks.

“No problem.” Jongin smiles at her warmly.

“Are we still on on Saturday? Maybe the coffee shop near fifth street? I know it sells amazing hot chocolate…”

Gaeul and Sehun gape at him.

Jongin pays no mind to them, his smile still plastered on his face, nice and pleasant. When Chorong is done ranting, he says, “Maybe the public library would be a better place to study? Quieter environment.”

It’s quite obvious, the sudden drop of her smile. Though she remains cheery nevertheless. “Okay!”

After the girl has skipped away, Jongin turns to the both of them, looking sheepish. He rubs the back of his neck, smiles an endearingly apologetic smile. “I forgot I’m booked this weekend. Sorry you two.”

“Well…” Sehun starts, shocked enough that he looks like he’s trying to find the right words to say.

“I didn’t know you were studying with Chorong,” Gaeul says. The effort to keep her voice neutral is somewhat excruciating, not when her heart is beating so irregularly. Not when the world seems oddly tilted and wrong.

“I was assigned to her actually,” Jongin explains. “Mrs Hwang thought she’d do better with a tutor.”

“So is this going to be a routine thing now on?” Bless Sehun for asking the question she couldn’t quite find it in her to phrase without seeming abrasive.

“It’s just a couple of days a fortnight. Don’t worry. I’ll still help you guys out when you need it.” He nudges Sehun lightly on the head. “Not that you’d need it. We’re pretty much head to head. Water in Jeju must be a miracle.”

Sehun brushes off his hand with a roll of his eyes. “I’ve always been able to score just as high as you.”

“Yes, well,” Jongin shrugs, grinning widely. “You were always just slightly lower.”

“You pompous brat,” Sehun scowls, cuffing him on the neck. “It was by two marks.”

Jongin laughs, ducking out of his grip. In doing so, he catches Gaeul’s gaze. He looks away quickly, rakes a hand through his dark bangs and layers it over his eyes.

“I guess I can’t join you guys.” He smiles, eyes on Sehun. “Have fun.”

He scoots away, walking quickly. Both watch him slip into between bodies, weaving himself a path, gone before they realised it.

“Well,” Sehun says, turning, apologetic. “I guess it’s just you and me then.”

Gaeul smiles and shuts her locker door. The lock clicks home decisively. “I don’t feel like going to the movies. How about lunch and we can just… find something else to do.”

 

***

 

Sehun picks her up on Saturday with a smile and a quiet greeting. She had padded downstairs to find him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with her brother on the other side, frowning at the fridge.

“God, these things will be the death of me,” Minho is saying, scrunching his brows as he peers into a plastic container with rattling green clumps. “Broccoli.” He shudders, shoves it aside.

He sees her coming in and perks up slightly. “Gaeul! Tell me she has something else stashed somewhere besides this monstrosity.” He points to the container with a curled lip.

“Cabinet under the sink. Ramyun.” Gaeul says, ducking under his arm, snatching a tall bottle. She finds two glasses, sets them on the counter, and pours out the juice.

“Here you go, Sehun.”

He steps forwards, taking his glass with a quiet thanks. As he tips his head and downs the water, she glimpses his elegantly shaped jaw, a strip of a sharp collarbone. His jean jacket sits on a pair of nicely built arms, collar brushing the white column of his neck.

There is a bang and a slight crash, and Minho emerges victorious from his hunt. There’s a bit more clatter as he looks for a pot to cook it in.

“So, where’s Jongin?” he asks, running the tap.

“He’s not coming,” Gaeul says, standing next to him to stash her glass and Sehun’s in the sink.

Minho pauses, turns to look at her in surprise. “Really? I thought you said he never missed an outing?”

“He had other prior engagements.” She sweeps past him, snatching the towel from its hook with a clean swipe

“Huh.” Minho tilts his head, his gaze thoughtful. “So it’s just you two now?”

“Hey, if he’s not coming why should Sehun and I stop ourselves from having fun?”

Minho casts a meaningful glance at her. “No, I --it’s just. Never mind. I guess I’m just used to seeing you three out together. Have fun then. I guess you’ll have to deal with my sister without backup this time, huh?” He raises a brow at Sehun.

“Oh, shut up, Oppa,” she says, rolling her eyes and tugging Sehun, who was now chuckling, out by the sleeve.

“It’s amazing that he’s nineteen,” she grumbles as they slip into their shoes.

“It’s gotten better since the last four years.” Sehun laughs. “You used to be at each other’s throats. Anywhere with you two in it would end up as a war zone.”

Gaeul laughs softly, slipping out of the door when he holds it open for her.

 

***

 

Somehow, they end up smack dab in the middle of an ice skating rink, tracing slow circles with the metal blades of their skates.

“This is one more thing I missed,” Sehun says as he glides beside her, his footing sure and graceful. “Remember the pond nearby the park? How it completely freezes over every winter? We’d gather our skates and sneak out for a day on the ice.”

“Remember how furious Jongin’s father had been when he saw?” Gaeul adds, her tone wry.

Sehun’s grin widens. “His parents phoned my mom and dragged yours over. I never thought I’d ever be the one to witness a shouting match as great as that when everyone started talking over the each other. I swore my ears bled.”

“It was all Jongin’s idea,” Gaeul chuckles, soft.

“Jongin, he troublemaker. He’d been such a devil as a child that it seems odd how much he’s toned down now.”

“He suddenly got that way sometime when he turned fourteen. Grew less crazy. More… thoughtful.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to explain it. He was the only calm one amidst a sea of a billion screaming fangirls that one day when I dragged him to the DBSK concert.”

Sehun, familiar with the story, gives her an amused look. “It was a DBSK concert. I thought girls tend to up the bar in hyperactiveness when it comes to quintets of good-looking idols.”

She grins. “Yeah, true. I guess Jongin’s craziness is more of the eccentric genius kind, the type who ponders and listens but never does what he’s told.”

They pass a point in the rink that she’d been using for a benchmark for the third time since the conversation. That many already? Time spent with Sehun is so easy to lose track of, especially when the world simply falls away into blurs of colours when they talk, when light just shatters and when voices grow soft. When she’s among hundreds but feels just one presence by her side.

She’s surprised when the brush of his hand against hers turn to steady warmth; his long fingers curl around hers, settling into the crevices of her palm. Sehun’s voice is melancholic when he says, “I miss this so much.”

“We can always go again, you know.”

He smiles. To her eyes, it looks dreadfully wistful, the softness and frailty of unrealised dreams. “Of course,” he says. Then suddenly, the gentle smile twists into a smirk of mischief, and he holds her hand tight and spins her on the ice.

She shrieks, but Sehun’s grip is tight. His other hand hovers close in a promise to catch her if she falls, and sometime during the fifth spin she feels her hair coming loose and her screams turn to laughter. The world falls away just like when she was five sitting on that swing, reaching for the sky.

 

***

 

“So it’s on,” Jongin says, smile absolutely breathtaking against a backdrop of shattered jewels. The night is thick as tar, but the song it whispers in the breezes it sends across the flat plane is melancholic and touching.

That year ends with a bang.

The sky stands as a velvet backdrop to a magnificent show of fireworks, splintered colours chasing each other in between whirls of smoke. The turnout this year is better than the last, which had been a rather modest show, its only moment of consequence the harmony of collective voices counting down to the twelfth hour --the strike of midnight.

Bits of burnt paper rain down on their picnic blanket, a dusty film over a checkered cloth of red and blue. Sehun closes his eyes as a vindictive burst of air blows it all to his face, his expression somewhat comical in its resignation.

Gaeul, with her hands plugged in her ears, laugh as he coughs and spits onto the grass, wiping furiously at his face.

“That’s why you don’t sit downwind,” Jongin calls at him, grin wide and and wild.

Under the flashes of a ruby spattered sky, Jongin’s smile is beatific and reckless. His hair is a weave of shadows and silk, and since he hadn’t bothered to gel it up that evening, it’s spilling into his eyes. Even without sprays of ruby nestling into his irises, they’re already like gemstones, which he slides easily to meet her glance, sensing her stare.

He smiles at her slightly; it's the warmest smile she had received in quite some time. Jongin’s brilliant smile these past several weeks had dimmed from absolute radiance to a soft glow around her. It’s as lovely as any of his smiles, but she can’t help but feel disappointment over its mutedness --especially when the ones he threw at Sehun during their victories were as bright and blazing as the sun.

He must be thinking about the memories to have smiled at her like that, the years before when they’d gathered on the same blanket to watch the stars and the fireworks. The picnic is a sort-of tradition for the dawn of every new year, and since Sehun is back, he’d naturally been drawn into observing the practice with them.

“Now,” Gaeul says, pulling her fingers out of her ears. “The secrets.”

Sehun blinks between the two of them, confused as Jongin sighs while Gaeul smiles mischievously between the two of them. “Huh?”

“It’s something we came up with once when we were fourteen,” Jongin says, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. “It started as a game but then she,” he jabs a finger at her direction, “decided to make a tradition out of it.”

“It was your idea.”

“It was meant to be played once,” Jongin says, rolling her eyes. “I never said anything about a freaking series.”

“Anyway,” she says, brushing him off. “The idea is that every new year, right here, we tell a secret that we haven’t told yet. One would be enough, more would be welcome.”

Jongin shakes his head and runs his fingers through his hair. Stray debris fall between his fingers unnoticed, like forgotten snowflakes. “Get on with it then.”

“Shall I start?” Gaeul’s eyes glimmer. “My secret is…” she drags it out, watching them lean in, anticipating. Even Jongin, who had made a show of his reluctance, demonstrates his interest by keenly watching her. She lets out a breath and a small laugh. “There’s corkboard I keep at home in my closet. It’s filled with pictures and drawings, and most of them are of you.” She slides her gaze away from Jongin’s enrapturing dark eyes, towards Sehun, whose face glows an emerald hue as a new barrage of rockets are sent into the air. “Both of you. I’ve never shown it to anyone.”

Sehun meets her gaze with a small smile. “I hope they’re good ones.”

“Of course they are. I doubt Gaeul would stand having them tacked up if they weren’t.” She flicks a look of annoyance at Jongin’s direction and finds the intentness of his stare gone, replaced with playful wink.

“Okay my secret done. What’s yours?” she says, flicking plucked grass at him.

He bats them away easily. “I’ve dressed up as a girl once.”

Sehun chortles, earning himself a good ol’ smack on the back of the head.

“My sister’s model didn’t show up,” he explains after Sehun is appropriately subdued. “She forced me into a dress and made me stand in front of the mirror for a fitting, pinning needles on me. It was the most harrowing experience of my life. We were at her workplace back then. It was a blessing that no one walked in to find me in silk and taffeta and stuck with needles like a porcupine.”

“She didn’t make you walk around? Sashay up and down the runway a little. You know,” she tries to sound serious, “to get the feel of the dress. Who knows, you could have worn it to prom.”

Sehun chokes a little and doubles over, shoulders shaking. Jongin jabs him on the arm, then the back when he still won’t stop.

“Whatever. I bet I would have made a stunning girl, if I ever were one.”

Sehun snorts in the midst of his giggling fit, muttering something within the lines of “I’ve seen better.”

Jongin side eyes him with a flat, deadpan look. “What about you? We should have done this session with you alone, seeing as you had so much you hadn’t told.”

Sehun sits up straighter, coughing into his fist. “Well, what do you want me to tell then?”

“They’re your secrets,” Gaeul says. “You decide which.”

“How about the deepest, darkest secret that plague the pits of your soul, forcing you into sleepless nights?” Jongin says, holding up curled fingers to mimic spooky claws.

“Sleepless nights,” Sehun his lips, gaze fluttering towards his hands. “I suppose this one does have that effect.”

“Please tell me you’re not Dr Jekyll and you have a Hyde stashed somewhere in your garden shed.”

Sehun shoots Jongin a look. “I’m not bipolar Jongin, neither am I mad.”

“Can’t take a joke nowadays, huh?” Jongin chuckles. “Alright, go for it. And I promise I won’t make fun.”

“My secret,” Sehun scratches his head, doubting. He smiles, hesitant, and meets their curious gazes, Jongin’s for a second, Gaeul’s for much longer. “Is that I’m in love with Gaeul.”