She doesn’t like all the people clinging to her, asking her questions. Like how it felt like to almost drown. How the world must seem underwater.

She feels going a little drier and the discomfort beginning to manifest into gentle tremors. The people she’s talking to --the two girls and a boy who had cornered her in the hallway --remain oblivious and unrepentant. They form a tight crescent surrounding her, eyes swimming with erse curiosity.

“You poor thing. It must have been completely dark down there,” one of the girls say, her lips turned downwards in sympathy.

“Is it true,” butts in the boy, “that your brain shuts down after five minutes? Did yours?”

“Did yours shut down, to be as senseless so as to ask a question like that?” another smooth voice counters.

She blinks her eyes to find a figure slipping in front of her, toned and muscular. His dark hair brushes the collar of his shirt a thought crosses her mind that it is in desperate need of t. Jongin is all languid limbs and easy posture, but there's a coiled tenseness that hints he’s on defensive mode.

“What he means,” Sehun says, materialising next to her, a cooling breeze to Jongin’s rather heated presence, “is that that’s not a very nice question to ask anyone, least of all a person who’s still recuperating.”

The boy is quick to pale, backing away. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s not us you should apologise to,” Jongin says, shrugging. He has his hands in his pockets, but he hasn’t budged an inch, a solid wall in front of her.

The boy has to bend around him, looking extremely apologetic but mostly terrified when he says, “Sorry, Gaeul.”

She shakes her head. “It’s alright.”

“Now that,” she says when Jongin slowly turns to face her, “is not nice either. You didn’t have to be so harsh on him.”

Jongin nods, almost placid. “Hmmm. Of course. But sometimes, you have to make people understand so that they don’t try to do or say stupid things again.” He tosses a casual glance at Sehun. “Even you have to agree to that.”

Sehun, who hasn’t said a word thus far besides his single statement to the boy, glances at Jongin and sighs. “You needn’t have been so acerbic, but it’s true. Some people just don’t see sense sometimes. But,” Sehun uncrosses his arms, relaxing. “I guess that’s what I’m here for. To neutralise whatever results from your lack of tact.”

Jongin chuckles. “I think we have this good cop bad cop nailed down. We could bring criminals down between us. ”

For the first time since many days, Sehun smiles at him. “All I can see in that future is me cleaning up your messes for you.”

Jongin smirks.

Smiling despite herself, she grabs both their arms, drawing them close to her. Both boys look down at in her surprise, confusion written on their features.

“So does this mean we’re alright again?” she asks, glancing at each of them in turn.

“I’ve never been angry at you,” Sehun remarks slowly. “Did I do something to make you think that I was?”

“Not me,” she says, exasperation colouring her tone. She squeezes both their arms tighter. “You two.”

Sehun blinks owlishly at her; on her right, Jongin stares at her slack-jawed.

She gave both the look. “You don’t honestly think that I haven’t noticed the tension between you two right? I don’t know what you fought about, but I hope this means all’s right and resolved.”

Both of them look up, meet each other’s gazes. The heaviness of it all implies a silent conversation, a message passed through the eyes. Much of the mirth has left Jongin’s expression, and he looks almost vulnerable, even helpless. Sehun only wears an unreadable one, but she senses neither resentment nor heat in the gaze he bends at his best friend.

Finally, it’s the latter who speaks, “It wasn’t really much of an argument as it is both of us trying to put things to right. The only conflict,” Sehun hesitates, glancing at the other boy again, “is our different ways of resolving the matter.”

She notices, from the corner of her eyes, Jongin’s expression: the relief, but also the heavier, insurmountable guilt.

“I hope you’re both okay about it now.” She pats both their backs. “I really hate to see you both fight.”

“It’s okay,” Sehun says in a gentle tone, brushing his fingers lightly on her cheek. It comes to mind that this is the first time in quite some time that he’s shown any intimate affection towards her; he has been distant since she was discharged from the hospital, refraining physical contact with them both. “We’re both okay.”

“I hope so,” she says, resting her head briefly against Sehun’s bicep, relieved.

She turns to look at Jongin --

--and ends up slightly weak on knees when she sees the look in his eyes, the softness of the edges, the darkness of colour. The way he looks at her is indescribable in words, just a little beyond tender; it’s a look freighted with thoughtfulness and fascination and deep, unexplainable affection.

It lasts only a split second though before he looks away, upwards, towards Sehun, whom she clings to with her other arm.

“Yeah,” he says, with that devil-may-care smile, as if the world had no weight, and life is without troubles. He jostles Sehun lightly on the arm, says something that she can’t catch as she drowns, deeper than she already had --just a little deeper than she had ever intended.

Jongin is a wild card, rough and impetuous and beautiful. But always, always, he is a little out of her reach.

 

***

 

Jongin catches Taemin at his locker later in the evening, muttering to himself, shoving his face close to peer into the minuscule crack between the door and frame. He pieces together the scattered words into a string of insults with his name thrown somewhere in between.

Jongin glances over his shoulder, makes sure no one hears or sees. He pads softly to where Taemin stands and the latter is quick to sense his presence, whirling, his scowl dark and deep.

“There you are.” His voice goes up slightly in a frantic whisper. “I thought you were coming to get these earlier.” He grabs Jongin’s shirt and drags him towards the locker, towards the crack between the door.

“I’ve been trying to get the scent from leaking out since morning!” Taemin says. “Barely scraped through a warning bell when the girl who has the locker next to mine started sniffing the air and remarking that she can smell something fragrant.”

“I’m here now,” Jongin says, patiently. Taemin does have a tendency to snap in tense situations, which in truth puts him as an absolutely terrible choice as a partner in any crime. When Jongin chose to go to him of all people, it is only after careful contemplation of Taemin’s virtues in comparison to other known individuals. Chanyeol, for example, has a motor for a mouth that is too impulsive to appear as a trustworthy candidate for any covert ventures; Taemin, at least, has been known to keep the secrets entrusted to him. That, and because he still owes a favour to Jongin, and through careful manipulation Jongin is able to extract a pledge of secrecy over the entire transaction as well.

“What did you tell her?”

Taemin mumbles something under his breath.

“What?”

“I told her it was my girlfriend’s perfume, goddammit.”

“I thought things didn’t work out with that one,” Jongin says, curious. “Didn’t you say that she had an obsessive side to her personality?”

“Thank you for reminding me.”

“You could have gone with sister,” Jongin offers, amused.

Taemin fixes him an unamused look. “Just take your damn roses.”

“I intend to.” Jongin slips the bills into Taemin’s jacket pocket, crisp against his fingers.

Taemin scrutinises both ends of the hallway, the closed doors, even the ceiling simply for good measure, before reaching, quickly, into the depths of his locker. He brings out the goods in one smooth motion and shoves them against Jongin’s chest, petals flurrying.

Jongin salutes him. “Thanks, man.”

“Wait!” Taemin catches him by the arm. Jongin turns and meets the boy’s curious frown questioningly. “What are you going to do with them?”

“What do you do with flowers?”

Taemin shoots him a disdainful look. “I know what you do with them. But why go through such ridiculous lengths to make me make your covert purchase. You could have just gone and --”

“Taemin.” Jongin smiles indulgently at him as an adult would to a child. “There are some things in life that you will not understand. Let this be one of them.”

“Don’t get all cryptic on me,” the other boy snaps. “Who are those for?”

“I only have one person to give them to, don’t I?” Jongin answers, smooth as silk.

Taemin scoffs. “Please. They’re not for Chorong. That’s blatantly obvious.”

Jongin shrugs, gives him a parting gesture, and backs with his smile intact. Unwavering. Confident.

A mask, so Taemin keeps guessing what he needn’t know.

 

***

 

It’s hard to get in touch with Jongin, but Sehun finds him anyway, holed up in a place ranked third in his list of guesses of Jongin’s most likely haunts.

The dark-eyed boy looks up when the door creaks open. He’s wearing a cloak of shadows, legs propped up on the desk, grazed sneakers up and aloft. His uniform is slightly askew, his hair thick and unbrushed.

Sehun expects the lazy smile Jongin flings to him from across the room, wide and blithe and insouciant.

“Found me,” the boy grins, tilts his head, wire uncoiling on his torso. A white earbud is fitted snugly in his ear, pouring music into the palace of Jongin’s thoughts. “Never really could hide from you. You’ll be pleased to know that you’re the first one to find me. Count that as a victory over Gaeul.”

“You’re not good at hiding.”

Sehun crosses the room. The classroom is eerie, as all empty classrooms are, but Jongin takes to the gloom and silence as though he’s built from it, as though the shadows are but a part of his person.

“I know you were expecting something more extravagant,” the other boy counters, as though their banter of words is but a game. “But simplicity really reaps the best pleasures. And peace is peace regardless of the means one might take to acquire it.”

“The question is really more of who you’re hiding from,” Sehun says. He’d already reached where Jongin is sitting by now, right before the desk where Jongin plants his long legs. Unprompted, he slides out the chair from the desk beside the latter and sits. “I have a hunch on what his name might be.”

Jongin’s eyes lose their mirth, but he keeps the smirk on, the one Gaeul had once said drove her insane over its blatant carelessness. He doesn’t object to Sehun sitting, but doesn’t move to bump his fist or jokingly punch his shoulder either. It takes Sehun little time to recognise, in contrast to his nonchalant manner, the guarded look in his eyes.

“Really? Because I have no idea at all.” He leans back, twining his fingers together to rest behind his head.

“You can stop trying to play off the cool guy card. I’m the only one here.”

“Which begs the question why. Didn’t the principal call for an assembly? You should be down there with the rest.”

“You’re here, so you’re not the one to talk.” Sehun tosses something at him: one of the sodas he’d snagged from the vending machine on his way here, thinking Jongin needed assurance that he still thinks of him as a friend.

“Oh Sehun breaking rules. That’s rare. Usually, you’d be the one dragging me to places we have to be, but don’t want to.”

Sehun shrugs. Truthfully speaking, the weight of any punishment is beyond his care now. He rarely commits acts of delinquency, but when he does, he often wonders if this is how it feels like to be free. Wonders if that freedom is the very reason why Jongin, always one to take things to stride, revels in his occasional acts of rebellion.

“Figured I could afford it, for once. Who’d miss two boys when they have hundreds?”

“And Gaeul? Wouldn’t she look for you?”

“She’ll know that if I’m not there with her, I’d most probably be with you. Besides, Haera is likely with her now. She won’t be lonely.”

Find him, Haera had told him, catching his arm before the stream of students could pull them both away. He might be hiding, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be alright being left all alone. I’ll handle Gaeul.

“I’m not mad at you, Jongin,” he starts, wincing as the words leave his mouth. “I never have been.”

“Your face at the forest said otherwise,” the other responds softly, smile light and without hostility.

“I was mad because you didn’t tell me. I was also mad at myself, for being so blind.” He twists his fingers together. “The last thing I want to do is to hurt you.”

Jongin hesitates, but says, “It’s not your fault. We share the same sentiment, about hurting the other person thing.” He smiles tightly. “I kept it a secret because I didn’t want to hurt you as much as I wanted Gaeul to be happy.”

“I’ve something to say about that. That foolish protectiveness of yours.”

“I can’t really say your guiltless in the same crime,” Jongin points out, tone dry.

“Hmm,” Sehun nods, eyeing him intently. “You gave her those roses, didn’t you? The one on her desk this morning, and other mornings before that.”

Jongin’s face drops, complaisance falling. “It’s not what you --”

“You gave her the roses,” Sehun interrupts, bent on finishing, “and tied a tag on the stem. A tag signed with my name.”

Jongin looks caught, cornered, stripped of the haughty character he wears like a mask. “You should change your signature into something that isn’t so easily forged,” he says finally, his voice soft and guilty.

Sehun casts him an exasperated look. “Don’t brush it off. Why did you do it?”

He shrugs; in the slanting light, he looks helpless, a child. The little boy Sehun remembers seeing when he looked into the mirror years ago, timid and afraid. A little boy he’d never imagine seeing in Jongin, who’d always been so sure of himself, who flies through life like a kite in the high wind.

A broken boy, trying to put together pieces of sharp glass.

“I was trying to make everything right again,” he says.

Sehun breathes a sigh, feeling overwhelmed. “Damn it, Jongin.”

“It worked.” Even the smile, too, seems broken. “She thought it was you.”

“I’m going to tell her it wasn’t.”

“And put all my efforts to waste? That’s a cruel thing to do.” Jongin loosens the tension in his shoulders and leans back against the chair, turning back to watch the trees again.

Sehun closes his eyes. “I don’t love Gaeul.”

He doesn’t see it, but he can sense Jongin start, hear the shocked, disbelieving tone when he says, “What?”

“I don’t love Gaeul --not as much as you do.”

He opens his eyes. Jongin is frowning. “I know you’re lying,” Jongin says, tone dark.

“If that’s what it’s going to take to get you stop these stupid attempts of reconciliation of yours, then,” Sehun fixes him an equally dark gaze, “I don’t love her.”

Jongin darts up, body coiled in warning. “If you break her heart --”

Sehun shakes his head. Already, he’s backing away. “It’s not her heart that’s going to be broken here,” he says, and leaves.

 

***

 

Jongin stumbles down the hall, crashes his shoulder against the door frame. He’s yelling Sehun’s name, but every call rings hollowly against the emptiness. It’s deathly silent; he bets that there’s no one to hear his frantic footfalls, his desperate cries of his best friend’s name.

He tries to track Sehun’s steps, but he ends up in the main hallway instead, head whipping left and right, lost. His eyes are wide, his chest rising and falling. He’s restless and hollow and scared to death, and just so he can keep his heart from falling out of his ribcage, he yells out Sehun’s name again.

It’s at that exact moment that the door rattles. Jongin whips his head towards it, eyes wide. It flings inward to admit a stream of blue uniforms and red faces. Voices wash in, a tidal wave, lapping at the shores of a faraway beach. Jongin stands stock still like a rock and peers at the faces, his gaze a hot, searing brand. He doesn’t find the copper hair he’s looking for, the classically good-looking face that could’ve belonged in potraits of lost princes. He doesn’t find, also, the dark, raven coloured locks that he secretly loves to thread his fingers through, and the beautiful eyes that always looks at him as though they saw all his secrets, the cracks and tears of his soul.

Jongin panics.

 

***

 

Gaeul is strolling towards the field when he finds her later that evening. (Much too late, Jongin thinks, while his heart continuous hammering and his ears ring.)

Without thinking, he catches her by the arm, spins her around like a doll. A flash of a memory flickers in the back of his mind; it’s old and suppressed, embers more than a fire, but it lights like a candle when Jongin bends his head and looks into her eyes again and sees the same girl he danced with the night of the school dance.  

“Jongin?” Gaeul looks mostly glad, but there is the lightest hue of confusion in her expression. “I was just on my way to look for you.”

Her eyes flick downwards, towards Jongin’s fingers, curled against her forearm. The confusion edges towards worry. “Are you okay? Your fingers are shaking.”

Jongin pulls away as though burnt. He forces his hands to his sides and tries to will the tremors away.

“Have you by any chance seen Sehun anytime after the assembly?”

“Yeah, I did, just now. He told me --”,

“It’s not true!” Jongin cries in utmost panic.

Gaeul pauses, shuts . Slowly, they hear the birds restart their song, the crickets renew their mournful ode.

“What do you mean, Jongin?”

“It’s not true,” Jongin says, straining to keep his voice low. No one’s here save for him and Gaeul (and most likely no one’s going to even dare to come here after witnessing the intensity of emotion he put in that one yell), but he tries anyway, just to remind himself to keep control. To not drop to his knees and weep for his mistakes. “Whatever he said is not true.”

Gaeul is watching him intently, but her face does not mirror anger. It’s an open, curious expression, inviting further explanation, but not prodding for the details. Jongin looks at her and quails.

“I confess to the roses,” he starts, just desperate to get it all out, hoping to staunch the guilt. “All the roses you found on your table came from me, not Sehun, but I did it just so you remember the good times you had with him. So that you know how much he loves you.” He his lips. They’re so dry, it’s painful. “But whatever beyond that is not true.”

“What do you think he told me?” she asks. Her voice shakes ever so slightly.

Jongin looks away. He can’t do this while staring at her in the eyes; he can’t lie to her in the face, croaking a poor speech on how his heart hadn’t shut itself away from other girls because she’s the one that fills the empty spaces, how he hadn’t noticed that he'd fallen for her a little more deeply all those years ago when she gracefully slips a flower behind her ear and Jongin had realised he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

He forgets it all when it came time to transfer the thoughts to his lips, however, and all that spills out is: “That I’m in love with you.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. But her eyes grow wider, lips parting.

Jongin looks straight over her head and tries not to hear his heart breaking when he says, “It’s not true when he said that I’ve loved you all these years. That I gave way for him because I wanted the both of you to be happy.”

The silence stretches, punctured only by rustling leaves. It's too long before she says, “Jongin?”

Jongin’s breath hitches slightly but he forces himself not to look at her. “What?”

“Sehun only told me to go look for you, because he thought there’s something bothering you. He said he thought it might be that basketball game you lost in the interschool championships. He thought I might be able to cheer you up.”

Jongin’s jaw drops, horrified. He makes a mistake of letting reflex take over reason and finds himself faltering at the sight of her big, dark eyes, stunned beyond compare. He backs away stiffly, the voice in his head screaming that he is a dreadful friend.

“I--they’re all not true,” he attempts again in a squeak.

Gaeul shakes her head. “You’re a good liar, Jongin. An excellent one, in fact. But now...” She just shakes her head.

Jongin exhales through his teeth. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t wait and sprints off.

 

***

 

Sehun doesn’t even flinch when Jongin catches him by the collar and hauls him closer so that they are nose to nose, flames leaping from his eyes. Wary, Sehun watches the sparks dart through liquid obsidian, like lightning on a watery night sky. Jongin is angry beyond reason.

“You set me up, didn’t you?” Jongin growls, but not loudly. Jongin’s temper had always leaned on the fairly hot side, but Jongin at the height of his anger is cold and quiet and callously brutal. Even hurtful, for he never cares for the weight words he recklessly tosses out.

“Answer me!”

Sehun can feel his eyeballs rattle with the force of Jongin’s strength, fingers curled under his collar, shaking him like a child would a ragdoll. “You made me think you told Gaeul what I told you, made me run after her like a fool to explain myself so that I can save your relationship, only to find out you’ve told her nothing at all!”

And just like that, Jongin breaks, a puppet snipped off its strings, falling limp, head bowed. Sehun feels him shaking, tremors running through the fingers he digs in Sehun’s shoulders. “You made me confess my feelings without knowing it.”

Quietly, Sehun reaches for his friend’s hands and gently peels them away from his shoulders. Firmly, he sets both to Jongin’s sides. The boy doesn’t object, and now he only stands still, fists clenched. A mannequin, perfect of build, motionless as a rock, and hopelessly broken.

“I confess to being guilty,” Sehun says quietly, honestly.

Jongin slowly looks up. His eyes are red, and Sehun imagines he must see Sehun burning in some hellish fire.

“Why?” He enunciates the word slowly and perfectly.

“I knew you wouldn’t have done it otherwise.” Sehun says, leaning against the wall.

He’d checked the coast when he saw Jongin storming towards him from the distance and there had been nobody. It’s still empty now, and Sehun prays it’ll stay that way. Nobody needs to see Jongin punching him; Jongin doesn’t deserve detention, especially when he’s feeling so betrayed, especially when Sehun had done too many things to deserve it.

“You manipulative son of a--” He stops, catching himself. Sehun can see him grinding his teeth.

“Go on,” Sehun prods. “Finish it.”

Jongin’s dark glare arrows into him. “Are you challenging me, Oh Sehun?”

“No. Just trying to get you to stop bottling up your feelings. You do that a lot, you know, and it’s a hell of an annoyance.”

He foresees the right hook Jongin aims towards his jaw even before the words fully leave his mouth. But Sehun lets it hit home, lets his head hit hard against the wall, bones juddering. His jaw sears like fire.

“Better, isn’t it?” he asks, speaking slowly to get the words out around flashes of pain. “When you let it all out.”

“Bastard,” Jongin retorts, but Sehun sees the dissipating heat, the slow ebbing away of his anger. Jongin’s eyes flick towards his jaw, as though assessing the damage he’d done and worrying he’d done too much.

“But really though,” Jongin starts, this time sounding like himself, though tired, physically and mentally. “Why did you do it? I don’t understand why you’re so hell bent on destroying your relationship with the first girl you ever loved by purposefully forcing yourself to lose to another .”

Sehun scoffs softly. “Never have I thought that I’d see the day of you being this self-deprecating. But you’re not just ‘another ’.” Sehun shoots him a soft smile. “You’re my best friend.”

“For the love of --” Jongin throws back his head, having reached his wit’s end. “What do I have to do to burn this stupid, naive trust you have on everyone? You’ll end up dying before you even reach thirty.”

“I don’t trust everyone. I only trust you and Gaeul, because you two are my friends that are too priceless to lose or give away.” Sehun closes his eyes, sighing. “I won't be able to live with myself knowing that I’ve lost you both forever.”

Tentatively, he reaches a hand towards Jongin’s shoulder. When the latter doesn’t object, he continues, quietly so the words lie between them and between them only, and no third party can thread the wrong things together into a story to spread and tell.

“I love Gaeul. You do too. And if that’s so, I’ll back away, because you’ve always loved her. Even before we met, before she became the glue that brought and stuck us together, you had always loved her. It took me this long to see it, and I can’t say I’ll ever forgive myself for it.”

“Great speech.” Jongin’s head is bent, his eyes on the floor. “But you forgot one thing. What makes you think Gaeul even loves me? You’re basing all your conclusions on my feelings and that’s possibly the biggest mistake you can make in your life. She never saw me as anything other than a friend.”

Sehun smiles. “Trust me. You have no idea how wrong you could be.”

 

***

 

“Hey,” Sehun only says when she sways unsteadily down the path, crashes into him, and grabs hold of him to keep herself upright.

Sehun’s arms are warm and comfy, very much like Minho’s, though less muscular on the arms. But they’re good at holding things up, at keeping them from crashing down towards the ground to crack and break.

She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his shoulder.

“I take it you’re not feeling well,” he asks, ever so gently, as he cradles the back of her neck with long, slim fingers.

She mumbles something against his shirt.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said I’m sorry,” she says, pulling away. Her voice rings clear; too clearly in fact, that she hears a strange, discordant note. “Jongin he --and I don’t know --I just can’t --”

Sehun grabs hold of her shoulders, smiles encouragingly, and says, “Take a deep breath and go on.”

She tells him. Every word, every gesture. Even the silences in between, which she thinks spoke all the things that words failed to convey. Jongin had come a haphazard mess, chaos personified, but then he left a broken boy, hopelessly inconsolable, while Gaeul herself stood uselessly mute when she could have stopped him and told him so much more.

“I don’t know what I should do, Sehun,” she finishes, completely in tears, burying her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey.”

His fingers are soft, slipping around her wrists, drawing her hands away. She looks up to Sehun’s classically handsome face, every plane and hollow artful; a beauty that meanders its way into you slowly, but when it finally strikes you, it’s something you won’t forget.

“Why are you apologising?” Lightly, he wipes her tears away.

“I --” she pauses, thinks. Slowly, she says, “I don’t know.”

Sehun hums, brow scrunched, as though he’s concentrating very deeply in catching every last one of her tears. “Are you sure you don’t? Because I think deep inside, you do.”

Her heart beats loudly in her ears; her fear bubbles up, chokes her by the throat.

“Listen,” he says, catching her gaze and holding it intently. “It’s okay to go to him. To love him back.”

“But I can’t do this to you --”

Sehun shakes his head with a light laugh. “Sometimes, you can afford to be selfish, even towards the people you care most. I was selfish when I took you for myself.”

Unable to respond, she only stares at him.

“I only thought of only my feelings and not other people’s.” He shrugs, smiling good-naturedly. “I should have. Thought of Jongin’s feelings too, I mean. I should’ve seen it, but I made myself blind. Now I do, and I know that he loves you and you… you love him too.” He pauses, as though to let the words root itself in. “Haven’t you always?”

Her chest constricts; it’s painful, everything ripping, tearing. Every wall crumbles, the truth put to light, overwhelming.

But she shakes head, sorrowful. “But I can’t. He loves Chorong, remember. I can’t just --”

“Gaeul-ah.” His gaze is soft and so is his tone. “Chorong broke up with him around a week after you were hospitalised. Don’t look at me,” he adds shaking his head to her shocked expression. “He didn’t tell me either. He didn’t tell anybody. It’s right after Taemin saw Chorong casually flirting with Illhoon that we all realised. I tried to corner him on the subject. Tried to get him to tell, but all he said was ‘It didn’t work out’ and left it to that. But…” he bites his lip, hesitating.

“But..?” she prompts  

“Haera… sort of heard rumours about the fight. She didn’t know who started the story, but there’s word that it was bitter. Chorong was screaming and crying. Jongin was furious. The fight… the fight was about you.”

Gaeul is absolutely speechless.

“She made him choose. Her or you. He chose you.” Sehun brushes another tear off her cheek, smiling. “So you see? You two were meant to be.”

She feels a fresh wave of tears coming. Slowly, she buries her face in Sehun’s shoulder again. He pats her head, tender and comforting, murmuring that everything will be alright.

“Look, Sehun.” She pulls away, stopping him, and looks at him directly in the eye. “I never wanted to hurt you. You were special to me. You still are. I did love you.”

“We can love more than one person in our life, but in the end, it’s all about choosing. I love you and so does Jongin. You have us both, but you can only take one. But I,” he sighs softly, “I love you both too much to choose whom to keep. So, I’ll let you go. This way, I can still have the both of you. Just perhaps,” he tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, his eyes wistful, “not the way I wanted.”

Her heart aches for him and she reaches out, touches his cheek. “Why are you so benevolent, Sehun?”

“Because,” his shoulders rise, then fall again in a deep, thoughtful sigh. “I lost you both once and I can’t lose either of you again. I can’t love you if it means making Jongin suffer. I can’t be the rift that tears us apart.”

“You’re making it very hard to leave, you know,” she says, feeling her eyes grow watery.

“But you still want to.” He smiles, takes her hand and presses his lips against the back of it. “That shows who your heart truly belongs to.”

He drops her hand, then turns her around by the shoulders. “Now go. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

 

***

 

Haera doesn’t even think when she spreads her arms and goes up to him to give him a hug. Sehun lies still in her arms, but he bends his head, rests his cheek against her hair. He’s strong and steady but there’s something fragile about his breathing, like glass teetering at the edge of a precipice. So close to falling. To cracking.

“I’m so sorry you had to do this, Sehun,” she says, pulling away, taking a few steps back, embarrassed to have expressed such a level of intimacy that he would never return.

“It had to be done,” he says. His voice is so soft, but firm. One thing about Sehun that she’d always found fascinating is his steadfastness. Sehun is gentle, but unfaltering in seeing through his decisions. In doing what’s right.

“But this.” She bites her lip, glances at the floor. “This is sacrifice.”

Sehun smiles, bends his warm, dark brown eyes on her in such away that turns her world up and over. “You’d do a lot of things for the people you love.”

“And you love them both.” She feels, suddenly, so very alone.

“Too much, I’m afraid,” Sehun sighs, tips his head back towards the sky. He shakes his head as though to shed his sorrow, to leave behind his broken heart, then straightens himself and somehow manages from the depths of his misery to draw out a smile. “This is getting boring. How about we go get ice cream?”

 

***

 

She doesn’t exactly know how to begin and it’s hard to think with blood pounding in her ears.

In the late afternoon sun, everything is hued gold. There are clouds bobbing about, so the heat is less intense, less likely to creep down your neck and burn into exposed skin. The wall is warm when she rests her hand against it, if only a slightly mossy. On the other side, Jongin’s house looms like a lopsided castle.

Gaeul remembers that his house had never been this big to start with, but as his father’s business went booming, the years passed with year after year of multiple renovations. It started out as a single unit, but then, like a child’s toy, bits and pieces were added up. A bigger kitchen, attached to the side. A nicer living room, extending across the yard. A larger driveway, to accommodate the cars of visiting in-laws.

She clutches the rose to her chest. It’s a new one, fresh from the gardens, the florist had said. She had smiled when Gaeul had asked for the nicest one of the bunch and freely offered a card without her having to ask. She’d given her a simple one, small enough to attach to the stem, just the right size to accommodate the few words Gaeul wanted to write.

She takes a deep breath. There are multiple other roses in her bedroom, kept in a vase on her bedside. Minho had walked in once, scrunched his nose and remarked that it smelt like an out-of-place flower garden, then muttered a brief comment on how kids these days could afford to spend their lunch money on pretty, useless things that can’t be eaten. Gaeul had rolled her eyes at him, but she didn’t care. The roses were beautiful.

Now or never, she thinks, peeling herself off the wall. Slowly, she tugs open the gates; the Kims rarely do lock it in the middle of the day, what with Jongin frequently coming from or going to some practice or another and his tendency to forget the keys to everything that’s locked.  

Her heart beats loudly, her hands, sticky and sweaty. But there’s also an air of euphoria in her, a lightness that hums like a song. Gladness that the weight of having her heart torn between two people finally alleviated.

She braves herself and knocks on the door.

There’re pattering footsteps on the other side, too light to be an adult’s. The door swings open widely to a child standing on the other side with bare feet. She beams at him, going down to her knees so that she and the child are eye level. Jongin’s nephew is a pretty thing, with eyes as dark as his uncle’s and the gentle slopes and soft expression of his mother’s. He’s the second of Jongin’s first sister’s naughty brood, and also secretly Jongin’s favourite, for the child shares the same mischief he had when he was younger.

“Minjun-ah,” she says, lightly patting his hair. “Is Uncle Jongin in?”

“Yes!” Minjun beams back. “I can call him for you if you want.” He in a deep breath. “UNCLE JONG--”

Gaeul quickly presses her palm against his mouth before he can finish, alarmed. “No no. That won’t be necessary.” She smiles sheepishly and lets go when she’s sure Minjun won’t yell anymore.

“I just want you to give him something for me.”

Minjun’s eyes are bright. “Okay!”

“You have to promise to give it straight to Uncle Jongin,” she says sternly, hiding the rose behind her back. “No one else, not even your parents or your brother.”

“Okay!” Minjun whines, hands outstretched. “I promise! Now let me see.”

He’s a adorable, and Gaeul can’t help but laugh as she unveils the rose and places it in his hand. The card dangles from it’s stem, folded, the words inside hidden.

Minjun’s eyes are wide. “A rose? You like Uncle Jongin, too, don’t you?” He beams again, more widely this time, showing his missing front teeth. “I told them you would be together!”

Gaeul smiles indulgently at him. “Just give this to him and tell him.”

“He’ll be so happy,” the little boy says, running up the stairs.

Gaeul smiles to herself again, then slowly closes the door before someone wanders past and makes her stay. She hops down the steps, her cheeks red, her heart singing. It’s done, she thinks, happy with herself.

She’s in the midst of closing the gate when she hears the crash, as though someone had just tripped going down the stairs. Gasping, she quickly plasters herself against the wall. The door slams open, and her name floats in the air in the low baritone of Jongin’s voice.

Slowly, she peeks around the wall. Jongin is standing on the doorstep, ruffled as though he’d just leapt out of bed, looking around wildly. He’s barefooted and his t-shirt hangs askew on his shoulders. He opens his mouth and calls her name again.

Gaeul slaps her hand against , forcing herself not to make a sound.

Jongin looks lost and confused, scratching his head, hair sticking out all over. In his other hand, he clutches the rose she’d given him, card still dangling from the stem. The petals bleed red against his sun-kissed skin.  

Finally, he plops down smack in the middle of the doorstep, running his fingers through his hair and looking dazed. “Goddammit woman,” he sighs heavily. “Why do you have to be so mysterious? Why make me go to the cliff when you can just tell me everything here?” He groans, messing up his hair even further.

Gaeul suppresses her laughter behind her hand. Quietly, she slinks away, leaving him to mull on his doorstep, completely at a loss.

He’ll come, she thinks.

 

---

 

(twenty.)

Despite their promises to always be together, they branch out eventually. Jongin went the furthest --to beautiful, magnificent Seoul --to attend one of the top universities in the country. Somehow, during his journeys to find himself, he’d ended up wandering into the threshold of Mechanical Engineering, and has thus far excelled everything flung his way. A good thing, for Jongin is far too intelligent and too full of potential to be kept locked up in a cage, to keep in one place.

Both she and Sehun chose a safer alternative, one closer to home. They both applied for a nearby university, the same one Minho is attending. Gaeul delves into Economics and Sehun takes an interest in computers, spending the better part of his freshmen year dismantling source codes and wending his way around the university’s prohibition for after 12 0’clock online gaming. They see each other frequently, both in and off campus, for coffee and movies and trips to the library.

“So, what shall we do today?” Gaeul questions when Sehun plops down on the seat in front of her, toting an armload of books and balancing a laptop, looking comically frazzled.

She narrows her eyes. “You’ve been gaming the whole night again, haven’t you?”

Sehun’s glasses (he’d been forced to wear them after getting increasingly short-sighted, though on usual cases that don’t involve studying, he’d slip on contacts) sit askew on his nose and he fixes them impatiently. He tosses back his long hair when they slip into his eyes and sets to work prying open his clunky laptop.

“Blame Jongin,” he says, his words slurred and fast. He must have filled up on too much caffeine again. “He made me stay up with him for an online multiplayer battle.”

“You two are such children,” she sighs, reaching out to fix Sehun’s hair and clothes for him. The boy turns willingly, letting her fold his collar and smooth his hair. He grins down at her, savouring the attention.

“I bet he’s in every bit a terrible state as you are right now,” she says, frowning disapprovingly.

“He has a presentation today,” Sehun answers. “I bet he’ll excel. You know Jongin. A hot mess who has everything in order.”

“Yes he is,” she says softly, drawing her hands back and pushing Sehun’s mug towards him. Hot chocolate this time, because she knows more coffee would agitate him further.

Sehun raises the mug to his lips, but his eyes linger softly on her as he tips his head back and chugs down the drink. “He misses you too, you know,” he says. “He told me last night.”

She feels her eyes growing a little bit teary. She smiles and wills them away. Sehun, from past experience, has developed a talent in handling girls in tears, but she doesn’t think she can take being comforted by him now, in a public place, with too many eyes watching.

“Haera’ll be here in a few,” she says, changing the subject. Haera’s attending the same college too and is her roommate to boot, so naturally, they’d gotten close. Close enough to be best friends even.

“She’s coming here too?”

“Yeah, you should be happier,” she teases. “Sometimes I think you prefer her company over mine.”

“We share the same classes.” He shrugs as he types. “And she’s easy to talk to.”

“Of course,” Gaeul agrees, smirking slightly.

Sehun flicks her a glance, hints of a small smile starting to show. “Anyway, I want to tell you this, but I’d probably get killed by Jongin if I do.”

“What?”

Sehun looks at her, head tilted, then grins mischievously and shakes his head with a broad smile. “Nah.”

They end up spending the better part of the hour arguing, all the way until Haera comes along, remarking that she could hear them even from the other side of the glass wall.

 

***

 

That summer break, Jongin comes to visit. Sehun chuckles in laughter when Jongin stops on his heels just a few feet away from Gaeul and roars that Sehun’s a poor keeper of secrets.

“Hey, to be fair, you didn’t keep my secret when I came back from Jeju,” Sehun points out, smug, “Now you get a taste of how spoilt surprise feels like.”

“You brat,” Jongin mutters, making to chase him, then pausing, spinning around, and sweeping Gaeul into his arms and burying his face into her hair. He says nothing, just holds her close, letting his fingers tangle with her long locks, before he lets go, smiles that beautiful smile as he backs up, and resumes his attempt at Sehun’s life.

“Hey, I took care of her for you while you weren’t here!” Sehun laughs, ducking under a branch and leaping over patches of flowers, just shy of Jongin’s reach. “You should be thankful at least for that. I even chased off potential suitors!”

Jongin pauses, hands on his knees, panting for breath. Sehun leans against the wall a few feet away, his bangs plastered against his brow, his grin brilliantly bright. Jongin inhales deeply, stands upright, and squints at Sehun in the late afternoon sun. “Suitors?”

“Yeah, suitors,” Sehun laughs, straightening up too. He rakes his fingers through his hair fluidly, revealing a clear forehead and flushed cheeks. “Gaeullie is too pretty to not have any, don’t you think?” He laughs. “I made sure to discourage them in your stead, although they may or may not have ended up having the impression that I’m her boyfriend.”

“Oh, God, Sehun,” she sighs, coming to stand between them both. “Do you have to tell him that?”

Sehun laughs. He still has that same laugh from when he was a teenager and child; light and soft like the wind, though now, it has to it an undertone of maturity and a touch of Jongin’s influence.

“Well,” Jongin says, and she feels arms wrapping around her shoulders from behind. “Better you, I guess, than anyone else.”

“Yeah, because then someone might get in between --”

“Sehun!” She feels the hot glare Jongin aims at Sehun over her shoulder.

Sehun snaps his mouth shut, chortling. “Okay, okay. I’ll let you be the first to tell her this one. Would you like me to leave too?”

“Yes,” Jongin says, tone flat, and Sehun leaves, trailing his laughter behind him.

She stares in confusion when Sehun turns and winks at her, his face oddly alight, as though he’s keeping something too good to not tell. Under the sunlight, his joy is infectious, and everything about him glows. His hair, frays of copper, burn like sunset and embers in the soft touch of sunlight.

“What was that all about?” she asks, after Sehun had wandered off far enough that she couldn’t see his expression anymore.

“Sehun being a brat,” Jongin mumbles.

She glances at him over her shoulder. “That used to be you, you know.”

“I know,” Jongin sighs. “I regret to say that I think I understand his desire to pay me back.”

Gaeul laughs. “So what is it really about?”

“A question that I am going to ask,” Jongin says softly, producing a small box wrapped in velvet in one hand.

 

***

 

Haera has gotten used to seeing Sehun like this, looking like he’d just sprinted like the wind, hair flying. On most mornings, it’s usually how he would make it in time for class, jamming his foot in before the door closes at the strike of eight, or, in cases when he was lucky enough to have it held for him, smiling charmingly at the good-hearted person until the person can’t help but smile back.

She receives the same, charming smile when Sehun greets her through the glass window, a windblown mess of six foot something tall, shouldering a partially ped bag that hangs like a sack over his shoulder. He taps the glass as he passes by, still grinning, breezes on, and few minutes later the chair in front of her scrapes and he drops on it like a log. He rakes his fingers through his hair, sits still, and spends about a minute or so trying to catch his breath, staring at his finely boned hands.

“Take your time,” she jokes, grinning at him over her notes. “I have all the time in the world.”

Sehun laughs, a light, breathy sound, and straightens, hauling his bag to his lap and pulling out the supplies.

“Sorry. Turns out delivering Jongin to Gaeul took longer than expected.”

“How are the lovebirds?” Haera pushes a mug at his direction, along with a plate of half finished biscuits. He takes them gratefully.

“In love,” he replies, grinning through the crumbs.

“Must have been a sweet reunion.”

Sehun chuckles softly. “After Jongin spent a good ten minutes chasing me, yeah, it was sweet.”

The drift off into silence. She resumes typing away on her laptop and Sehun lingers over her shoulder at one point, reading her paragraphs and offering suggestions to make the proposal for their joint assignment more presentable. She tries not to think too much about the scent of fresh, clean air lingering about him whenever he leans over to point at the screen, coloured with only the slightest hint of musk.

There’s a question that has been drumming in her mind since the very beginning, loitering about her thoughts and wending it’s way into half-formed paragraphs. She chances a glance at Sehun, languidly folded over the table, the chair and table not quite accommodating the length of his long legs. Occasionally, especially when he’s mulling over a particularly difficult decision, he would run his fingers through his hair, raking through wayward strands. In the sunlight, his bangs seem tipped in gold, skeins of light brown running through a darker base of chocolate.

He catches her staring and the corner of his lips pull in a light smirk. “What?”

She blinks, feels herself flushing, and quickly gets back to work, mortified to have been caught. “Nothing.”

“What is it?” There’s something teasing about his amusement, the way he his head to the side and leans back in his chair.

She stops, looks over at him, and says, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“That complicated, symbiotic three-way relationship. How do you manage it? How are you not jealous at all that your best friend ended up with the girl you’ve always loved and that you’ll always be the odd one out?”

Sehun coughs, straightens. He leans forwards, folds his arms, but his gentleness of expression assures her that he’s not offended.

“I do get jealous --did, to be specific. My heart did break all those years ago, when I gave Gaeul a choice and she chose Jongin instead of me. But then,” he pulls a mug close and plays with it, studying it under the light, “I thought of all the things they’d done for me, the sheer sacrifice Jongin made for my sake by keeping his feelings a secret --the sacrifice he would have continued to make until now, hadn’t fate woven it’s cruel design and almost drowned Gaeul, and I realised that I wouldn’t gain anything from it.”

He catches her gaze, his eyes soft and warm. “People think that I let her go because I love her, but it’s more complicated than that. I let her go because it was Jongin, my best friend and practically my brother, the person who had, in his own way, watched out for me and protected me always. The person to whom I can’t be the cause of his broken heart.

“And,” Gently, he places the mug on her side of the table, smiling, “I’ve never been the odd one out. I’m always a part of them as they are a part of me.”

For a moment, she says nothing. Then, softly, she releases the breath she had been holding. “Wow.”

“It’s weird, I know.” Sehun shrugs, laughing.

Haera shakes her head. “It’s not weird. It’s amazing. What you three have is not something everyone in the world can share. Nothing could get in between your love and friendship.”

“They’re special to me. I won’t be able to love anyone the way I love them. But,” his eyes linger on her, holding a kind of weight she hasn’t yet understood, “that doesn’t mean I can’t love anyone else.”

 

---

(twenty-three.)

It’s sweltering hot standing on the paved road, and Gaeul can only wince as she pushes her sunglasses higher up her nose. She glances around, scans her surroundings. People stream by her: businessmen, young women with effortless style, teenagers, snapbacks tossed over messy heads, fingers flying over all manner of gadgets. Seoul is warm and balmy but it’s people are cold, its rhythm discordant.

A boy zooms past with headphones and a skateboard, his expression blank and idle. She backs up just in case he didn’t see her toes and ends up thumping her head against the glass. She reaches up, cradles her head with a wince, just in time to spot his reflection in the glass, speed-walking across the street.

She watches him dodge the traffic with exasperated amusement. His long legs take him far, distance closed in one step when most people would have taken two. In the glaring light, his hair is luxuriantly dark; she remembers, long ago, it having the sheen of bronze and copper, the burning shade of metal in the sun.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Sehun says, casting pitiful eyes at her, large and doe-ish.

She eyes him from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

He laughs, slips his thumbs into his pockets, shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Yes, truthfully. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

Gaeul links her arm with his and gently pulls him inside. “It’s just a ring. Hardly something to be afraid of.”

“What if--”

He’s cut off when she cups both hands against his cheeks, drawing his eyes so his gaze meets hers. Sehun blinks at her in a manner reminiscent of a very lost, very hopeless, child.

“Oh Sehun, you will listen to me. Don’t think about the ifs. They’ll get you nowhere. Just bulldoze your way in and deal with the damage control later.”

His lips pull in the slightest smirk. “Jongin’s philosophies have rubbed off on you, I see.” It’s unsettlingly uncanny, how different it makes him look. She remembers Sehun’s smiles as sweet; the alteration in its symmetry is slight, but it makes him look mischievous and disarming.

“They’re not conventional,” she admits. “Hell, they’re pretty much crazy. But Jongin’s odd way of seeing things did get him this far, so it’s worth a try.”

“I suppose so,” he sighs, straightening his collar. “He did somehow convince you to marry him, so I suppose there is some right in his ways.”

She smiles, turns her hand so the ring faces up --the beautiful ring Jongin had proposed to her with that summer when they were twenty, his hands sweaty against the velvet box, his heart laid bare.

“It’s a pretty ring,” Sehun says, his expression soft, as though having read her thoughts. “Jongin is helpless when it comes to taking care of himself, but when it comes to you, he always tries his best to please.”

“We’re getting you one just as pretty,” she promises, then pulls him over to one of the counters, where the smiling attendant waits.

It takes a while for Sehun to describe what he wants. The pretty attendant lays out their collection atop the glass counters, gorgeous rings in gold and platinum, all with thin bands, because it’s what Sehun thought would fit her best.

“Your opinion?” he asks, holding two up, one with a single stone and the other with scattered shards around the top band.

“Why don’t you let your fiancée try them on?” the woman cheerfully offers. “You can decide which looks best.”

Sehun’s smile has in it his beguiling amusement as he inspects the rings. The woman doesn’t waver, but Gaeul sees the slight rise of her chest, as though she’s catching her breath.

“No need,” he says, putting down the ring with the scattered stones. “She makes anything look beautiful.”

“Maybe a potato sack,” a silky smooth male voice intervenes, as sudden as a summer shower on the sidewalk. “No one looks good in that. It’ll probably be the only thing that’ll best her.”

Jongin slips into view with his hair pushed back, his smile wide and broad and playful, and every inch as beautiful as she remembers him being. He looks slim and limber in black jeans and a shirt in a colour that reminds her of smoke and morning mist. He hooks an arm around her waist, draws her towards his chest, and presses a kiss against her temple. She laughs as she feels his lips pull into a smile. Jongin’s tall enough that her head always fits in the crook of his shoulder when she leans back.

Gaeul sees the woman gawking at the three of them and feels inclined to explain, lest the current proceedings end up irreparably misinterpreted. “My husband,” she says, inclining her head towards Jongin, still with his arm around her.

“Where have you been?” Sehun says, barely looking up at Jongin.

“Ice cream parlour. Down the road. Gaeul wouldn’t join me, on account of you. She insisted to wait for you, even though I told her that you’re more often late than not.”

“It was just by ten minutes,” Sehun whines with a pout.

Jongin casts a smug glance at her. “I told you.”

“You were late joining us too, so you’re hardly one to talk,” she scolds him absently, reaching for a ring on the far right. “What do you think of this?”

“Why do you always side with him?” Jongin says. “Yeah, it’s nice. Seems a bit too thin though.”

“She likes simple but pretty things.” She plucks another out of the row. “How about this? It’s gorgeous in the light.”

“All of them are,” Sehun says, frowning pensively as he inspects it.

Jongin leans over to inspect it with him, an elbow on Sehun’s shoulder. “I like that. If you’re not getting it, I will. It can be Gaeul’s anniversary gift.”

Sehun casts him a sidelong glance. “I thought those things were meant to be a surprise.”

“Well, she already admits to liking it so…”

“This is not about you, Jongin,” she chides, squeezing his arm reprehensively. “Or me. This is about Sehun, and if you’re not going to be helpful, I’ll make you wait in the car.”

Jongin tsks at her, but his lips tug into a playful smirk. “You’ve gotten more demanding, love.”

“Marriage,” Sehun grins, then ducks with a laugh when Jongin aims a playful swipe at him.

When Sehun’s back to inspecting the rings, fretting over his choices, Jongin leans closer to her and whispers, in a voice both parts anxious and helpless, “We have a problem.”

She pauses in the midst of fiddling with a ring and bends a querying gaze at him. She doesn’t like his tone. “What?”

Stripped of his jovial facade, Jongin’s handsome face is twisted into uncharacteristic worry, something like panic swimming in his dark eyes. He glances at Sehun briefly, as though to make sure he’s still busy, before he whispers, “I may or may not have bumped into Haera at the ice cream parlour.”

She freezes; the ring feels a little too cold against her skin. “And?”

“I may or may not have accidentally told her that were here.”

“What?” Gaeul whirls at him with narrowed eyes.

“What?” Sehun chimes along innocently, overhearing her outburst. He looks as clueless as he is curious.

Jongin opens his mouth, seemingly fighting an internal debate as to who he is to give a reply to first, when the door swoops open and a familiar head of light blonde hair pokes in. Sehun jumps in his seat and almost drops the rings he’s holding. Beside her, Jongin wears the expression of one regretting his recent life choices.

“Jongin told me you’re all here so I thought I’d pop in and say hi,” Haera says chirpily, entirely oblivious of the situation she'd walked in on.

It takes only half a second for Sehun’s dark glare to meet its mark. In the intensity of it, Jongin visibly quails, making an ungentlemanly attempt at trying shuffle into hiding behind her.

“I really didn’t mean to do it,” he whispers to them both. Somewhere in the past is an echo of the child he’d once been, pleading innocence for the unintended consequences of one prank or another. A memory of them being ten surfaces, a vase between them, Jongin’s pretty dark eyes wearing the same guilty expression.

“I thought we still have months to go for a birthday,” Haera says, drawing all eyes to her. She steps into the threshold, hair twisting into a gorgeous waterfall down her back and shoulders.

They find themselves helpless in stopping her when she strides towards the counter where the rings lie in plain sight, Sehun having yet to make his choice.

“Rings,” she raises her brows, impressed. “My my, Jongin. You do spoil Gaeul a lot.”

Jongin attempts to say something. Both she and Sehun shut him up before more damage can be done.

It’s Sehun who speaks first. Tentatively. “Which do you like most?”

She chuckles, absently sliding a ring into her finger. “My opinion hardly matters on the subject, but this is pretty.”

She holds it up under the light, tilts her head left. Haera has long, thin fingers and enviously slender wrists; made for gold and silver and rings and gemstones. The ring is a gorgeous fit, and Gaeul notices, hovering behind her, Sehun’s eyes had gone wide, entranced.

“You shouldn’t be here, you know,” Haera says, oblivious to her boyfriend’s apparent speechlessness, peeking at Gaeul with a glitter in her eyes that is more teasing than it is chiding. “Birthday gifts are supposed to be a surprise! Otherwise, they’ll just lose their magic.”

She only smiles. She hears, beside her, Jongin murmuring to Sehun over their heads, “Now or never, man.”

“Shut up,” Sehun hisses. It’s Sehun’s reflexive response to ideas from Jongin that he finds silly or incapable of being physically executed.

“What was that, sweetie?” Haera asks absently, her attention only half on the conversation.

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“Just say it!” Jongin whispers, exasperation colouring his tone.

Haera gives them both a funny look. “What the hell are you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” Sehun insists with a warm smile. It remains intact when his gaze lands on Jongin, though it had gotten sharp enough to cut glass.

It’s rather unfortunate, in this particular circumstance, that Haera happens to be one of the sharpest girls Gaeul knows. “It’s definitely not nothing.” She turns narrowed eyes at Gaeul. “Gaeul, what is it?”

Cornered, Gaeul can only afford a tight smile. “I really can’t say.”

“Goddammit,” Jongin, at his wit’s end, blurts, “just tell her for my and Gaeul’s sake. It’s not that hard to propose --”

He lets out a jumbled yowl when Gaeul’s heel meets his foot again, harder this time. He doubles over at the waist, leaning heavily against the counter, which is a good thing, seeing that Sehun looked absolutely murderous.

Haera’s frozen, eyes wide. She opens , closes it, then opens it again to ask Gaeul with a look of vacant shock, “Did I hear that right?”

Through his pain, Jongin seemed to have sensed Sehun’s murderous intentions. He’s already detaching himself from her, backing away slowly with a nervous smile. Sehun advances on him, every step careful, a stalking wolf. She hears Jongin attempting to plead his case, hoping to appeal to Sehun’s better nature.

“It slipped!”

“You can’t keep secrets at all, can you?”

“Well, to be fair.” Jongin’s close to the exit now, lingering near counter by the door. Sehun’s on the other side, watching him with a hawk’s eyes. “You did almost botch my proposal --”

“Almost!” Sehun cries, sounding as though he was personally violated. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Okay, I--” Jongin starts to back off when Sehun takes another step. “Ey, ey, Sehun. Come on. Think about Gaeul. You wouldn’t want her to leave her widowed for the rest of her life, would you?”

“Gaeul. Can I kill your husband? I promise I’ll resurrect him back from the dead.”

Gaeul is still shaking her head with a sigh.

Both of them take off, Jongin making for the door and Sehun hot on his heels. She hears the mangled start of a colourful curse just before the door slams behind Sehun and can’t help the laughter that bubbles in her chest. They’re still so much like children, no matter how far the years had carried them. But at least they were hers; one her husband she loves with her soul, the other the truest friend that’ll always have a place in her heart.

“They’re idiots,” Haera finally says, looking as though she’s just recovering.

“True,” Gaeul agrees, seeing no possible premise with which she can base an argument on.

“I still can’t believe that you’re married to one of them.”

“So will you,” she points out, rearranging the scattered rings in an attempt to restore order to the chaos brought forth by Jongin and Sehun. “You are going to say yes, aren’t you?”

Haera smiles. “When he comes around and actually asks, then of course. Of course I will.”

 

 

---

A/N: I finally get to hit the complete button! Look, I’m really sorry for the delay. The reason this fic took so long to finish is because I was juggling two at once, the other starting off as just a fanciful plot bunny, but somehow becoming a story. I also had problems with the ending for this one. I wrote a version of it some weeks ago but somehow it just didn’t seem satisfying. It took time to come up with this one (you have no idea how slow going everything went), but I’m happy with it. It’s in keeping with my original plans on how this fic is going to end :)

Some fun facts for you guys, just for the sake of it (and because I can’t seem to find a place for it in the fic):

1. Sehun, Gaeul, Jongin and Haera all work in Seoul. 
2. Sehun and Haera have been dating for a little over six months before he proposed (let’s just say it was a slow blossoming romance)
3. Jongin and Gaeul kept their engagement a secret from everyone but Sehun, announcing it only months before their wedding. 
4. Before they married, Jongin and Gaeul dragged Sehun along in a lot of their dates, and because they always make plans to go to places Sehun likes, he finds it really hard to say no, 

And a final note: Thanks you guys, for reading. Do comment and see you soon :)