Sehun shoves a large chocolate bubble tea into Kai's hands, causing Kai's phone to drop to the linoleum floor of their dorm room kitchen.

"Sorry," Sehun apologizes. Kai's aware enough to realize Sehun's probably sorry for more than the fallen phone, and Sehun confirms this when he adds quietly, "You know, Chanyeol and..."

His voice fades but his expression remains solemnly hopeful as he waits for Kai to take a sip of the peace offering he's brought.

Kai does so, obedient to a fault no matter who's asking it of him, and tries not grimace. He's never really liked chocolate. It's too much bitterness under the guise of being entirely sweet, and it makes him uncomfortable when he considers how close that sounds just like himself—too dark and too bitter.

To be honest, Kai would down an entire bucketload of chocolate bubble tea if it would get Sehun, and everyone else, to stop hesitantly bringing Chanyeol's name up in conversation. Kai doesn't want to talk about the boy he used to love, or about the man that boy became, the one Kai's doing his best to keep from still loving. But even if Kai managed to shut Sehun up somehow, he can't control the Internet and he can't control Taemin.

This is particularly clear when Kai finally bends in half to lazily drag his phone from off the floor and glimpses a notice from Instagram on his screen. Taemin's tagged him and Krystal in something—speak of the devil—and Kai's exhausted, suddenly, with the drama of it all.

Does he want to see what waters Taemin's disturbed now? Probably not. Does he care? Of course. That's always been his problem, actually, that he cares too much and believes too little in the idea that not everyone is truly good. 

His finger slides a wisp across the screen and he's opening Instagram before he can think better of it and stop himself. This is going to hurt him, Kai just knows it. But then he remembers Krystal and the soft way she's slipped his phone from his hands to put her number in and the gentle curve of her gaze as she told him how much she thought he was worth it.

"You're not the only one who needs some healing," she'd told him. It was her personal number and he was to call it whenever he felt like he was drowning.

Kai couldn't tell her then, not with his face soaked hot with tears and her hands pressing his head into the safety of her shoulders, that his life is an ocean. There's never a moment when he's not drowning in it; it is always all-consuming and the bruises built by Chanyeol's hands are just the sea foam of another cresting wave.

He remembers this feeling, this helplessness, and clings tight to the sensation of being entirely numb as he gathers enough courage to read Taemin's post.

The picture is seductive, but innocently so, and Kai would scoff at the pretense of it if his time with Chanyeol hadn't taught that reactions can be dangerous and that laughter brings naught but pain. 

And then there are the words themselves, the ones that Kai's sure have already set the outside world spinning.

"May your romance with Kai be as hot and hidden as mine once was." He reads this once in his head and then again, but aloud this time, his voice a broken whisper around the straw of Sehun's apology.

Well, Kai thinks, relishing the burst of chocolates flavor coating his tongue as he takes another sip like a form of punishment, he might not have ever labeled what he had with Taemin as a relationship, but one thing's for sure: it's certainly not hidden now.