Enter Chanyeol and Sehun: the old cafeteria was as busy as always, with kids rushing to claim a table or grabbing a quick bite on the go. There’s never any peace to be expected in an eating hall full of high school students.

Weaving through the excited hordes of young campers, the two boys finally got to their regular table at the very end of the hall, farthest from the food line and away from the most busy tables.

“Hey guys!” one of the older looking boys at the table waved to them as they approached, a bright smile lighting up his almost angelic face.

    “Greetings, Suho. Everyone.” Sehun nodded aloofly at the boys sitting around the table. He tossed his sandwich on the table (he got ham), and plopped down on an empty seat at the circular table. Chanyeol took the seat next to him and exchanged hellos with the other guys.

    “Sehun, you’re so weird dude.” Next to Chanyeol was a roguishly handsome boy with tan skin the color of milk coffee and dark brown hair to match. He looked at Sehun and laughed, shaking his head in amusement. Sehun didn’t bother to lift his head from the sandwich that he was now devouring. On the other side of the table, a boy stood up and cleared his throat ceremoniously, the corners of his mouth upturned in an almost devilish way.

    “Well, now that everyone is here,” the boy threw his arms open wide. “I would like to introduce… drum roll please… Baekhyun!” He pointed a finger directly in the face of the guy sitting next to him, who jerked his face back looking annoyed at the other boy’s grand gesture. Baekhyun turned to face the other guys at the table who looked on at the two in amusement.

“Hi, I’m Baekhyun.” He reached up to delicately flick away a strand of burgundy-red hair that hung over his eyes. “Me and Chen go to the same music academy and--”

    “‘Chen and I’,” Chen corrected, lifting one impertinent finger. Baekhyun proceeded to smash his fist into Chen’s side. “Ow!” Chen cringed away from Baekhyun, cradling his injured side and looking betrayed.

    “As I was saying. Our teacher recommended me to come here and so yeah, it’s my first year.” Although Baekhyun demonstrated high levels of sass towards Chen, as soon as he turned back towards the boys, his impassive features were unreadable.

    “Okay, thank you… for that punch and the beautiful self-introduction,” Chen slowly sat back down in his seat, still rubbing his side because damn, Baekhyun was small but he packed a punch. “So now that everyone’s here, let’s go over names.”

    “This is Suho,” Chen said, patting the shoulder of the angelic looking dude next to him. “He’s the oldest. He’s basically a grandpa.” Chen smiled sweetly at Suho, knowing that he was the one person in their group who wouldn’t throttle him for his dumb jokes.

    “Hi, Baekhyun, nice to meet you. I’m in Piano Performance.” Suho reached over Chen to exchange a firm handshake. He was particularly gifted in piano, but wasn’t looking to pursue piano professionally. As the heir to his family’s corporation, his future was already laid out in stone.

    “And on the other side of you is Kai.” Chen continued. “He dances.”    

The aforementioned roguishly-handsome, milk-coffee-colored guy looked up from his sandwich and shot Baekhyun an annoyingly wide grin.

“Very well, might I add.” Kai said of himself, grin relaxing into an equally annoying smirk as the others booed.

“Ugh, stop.” Chen rolled his eyes. Even after knowing Kai all these years, Chen still got annoyed every time Kai’s ego flared up. Which was very often.

“Hi Baekhyun, I’m Chanyeol.” Chanyeol flashed one of his characteristically wide smiles, which Chen noticed wasn’t as characteristically wide as usual. He tucked away that knowledge away for later use.

“And that pig is Sehun. He thinks he’s a DJ.” Chen stuck his tongue out at the white blond boy who was busy gulping down his sandwich.

“Mmhey,” Sehun offered through a mouthful of sandwich, seemingly unperturbed by Chen’s name calling.

“And yeah, that should be everyone.” Chen finally sat back in his seat, satisfied by the successful introduction between one of his best friends and his camp family. Although he acted like he didn’t care much, Chen was actually very anxious about bringing Baekhyun to camp and whether his camp friends would react well to a new member to the group. To Chen, this group was like family. He’d known some of them since grade school, like Kai and Chanyeol, who he’d been going to school with since forever. Some of them, like Suho and Sehun, he had met when he first came to camp with Chanyeol three years ago. It felt like just yesterday 14-year-old Chanyeol had come up to his locker at school, excitedly shaking a shiny pamphlet in his face and saying, “My friend Sehun goes to camp and he says it’s really awesome, dude, oh my gosh, we have to go this year!”

Back then, he only talked in run-on sentences.

In that very first summer, they had all fallen together naturally, kids of all different ages and concentrations, and formed a kind of friendship that lasted over the long periods of being in different towns and states. And every time they met back up at camp, it felt like no time had passed at all.

“So, Kai, are you still dating that girl?” Suho asked, curious as to whether last summer’s fling had endured the test of time. Kai wiped at his mouth with a napkin.

“You mean Seol-Ah? Nah.” One side of his mouth jerked up as he tossed his napkin to the table with a rough hand. “She was crazy, you know? She would come by my dance studio, like, all the time, and you know she lives like thirty minutes away, dude.”

“Is she here this year?” Chen asked, looking around just in case she came around for revenge or whatever broken-hearted girls do. Ex-girlfriends could be scary. Not that he would know, since his dating experience was limited to a one-sided love he’d nursed in middle school.

    “Uh. Hope not.” Kai laughed. Suho shook his head and sighed.

    “I don’t know what to do with you,” Suho said, half smiling. “Some day you’ll find a girl who’ll set you straight.”

    “Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.” Chen scoffed. He really didn’t think it would happen. After attending a school in one of the richest districts in the area, Chen had come to know a lot of players. So it meant something when he recognized Kai as the worst of the worst. Every summer, he undoubtedly hooked up with a naive, bright-eyed girl who knew nothing of his reputation, and at the end of every summer, that girl was undoubtedly left with a broken heart as Kai moved on to his next conquest.

    Baekhyun was quiet as he listened to the easy banter of the friends around him. Although Baekhyun liked to act as if he hated Chen, that short, scrawny kid actually meant a lot to him and was sadly one of his only friends. So it meant a lot that Chen wanted him to meet the camp friends he was always going on about and he hoped that he could be one of them too.

Chanyeol was pretty quiet too, but for a different reason. Chen noticed that he kept glancing at the tables around them, listlessly picking at his taco salad bowl.

“Who are you looking for?” Chen asked Chanyeol with a sly smile. Chanyeol’s head snapped back, his face blank.

“Huh?” He obviously had not been listening to the conversation going on around him.

“His new girlfriend,” Sehun taunted, flicking some bread at Chanyeol’s face with a mischievous look.

    “Damn bro, you already got a girl?” Kai leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs on the table. “Good on you, my man.” He lifted his half-eaten sandwich to Chanyeol in a mock toast. Chanyeol groaned. He was used to Kai’s usual frat-boy-esque banter, but today it was oddly getting on his nerves.

    “No.” Chanyeol shook his head gruffly and knocked Kai’s sandwich away.

    “Hey, my sandwich!” Kai scrambled to pick his the separated pieces of his sandwich off the table. He gazed mournfully at the lump of sandwich gathered in his hands and shot an angry look at Chanyeol, who didn’t look like he really cared.

    “Who is it?” Suho asked. As the self-appointed mom of this group he felt obligated to keep up with everyone’s dating lives. And as someone who didn’t have much of a dating life himself, he felt it a necessity to live vicariously through his younger counterparts.

    “It’s nothing,” Chanyeol lowered his head to pick at the bun of his untouched burger. Leave it to Sehun to start a witch hunt over nothing. When it came to girls, his stupid friends suddenly became like, secret agents or something.

    Suho gave him a look. A mom look. You know the one.

    “Seriously!” Chanyeol put his hands up as if to protect himself from the CIA-grade interrogation he knew would follow. “She’s just new here, so I was worried if she had anyone to, you know. Sit with and stuff.”

    “And you weren’t worried if she had anyone to, you know, date her and stuff?” Kai wiggled his eyebrows at Chanyeol, who shoved his annoying face away.

    “Well what’s her name then?” Chen threw a grape at Chanyeol, which he easily dodged. “Is she, like, hot?”

    “I don’t know!” Chanyeol shot his hands up exasperatedly. “You douchebags only care about what I have to say when there’s a girl involved, for real.”

    “Yeah, ‘cause nothing else about you is interesting.” Kai lazily peeled a banana. “At least you date around.”

    “You’re one to talk, lover boy.” Chanyeol growled back.

“Anyways, Sehun, you met her right? Who is she?” Chen turned to Sehun to see if maybe he could coax out of Sehun what Chanyeol wouldn’t reveal. It wouldn’t be easy though; Sehun wasn’t talkative and he was even less observant.

“Well. Her name is Eunji Park-” he bit off another mouthful of his sandwich. “She’s in our production class.”

“She has long black hair. Is maybe around 5’4.” Sehun absentmindedly marked a spot a little below his shoulder.

Everyone at the table went quiet; even Kai stopped throwing pieces of banana at Chanyeol. Sehun continued chomping a mouthful of sandwich loudly, oblivious to his friends’ dropped jaws.

“She’s got these big eyes.” He cupped his hands into rings over his eyes and stared at Chen in complete seriousness.

“How… how did you even know her last name?” Chanyeol stared at Sehun in disbelief. “I introduced her to you and I didn’t even know her full name!”

Sehun shrugged. “I saw it on her notebook.”

Everyone at the table shared a collective wtf? look. Sehun was usually kept his head strictly grounded 5,000 feet up in the clouds, not bothering himself with the details of those around him, and definitely never showing interest in any girl.

    “Sehun, you might not even know that much about me, your friend of over, what, 3 years?” Chen shook his head in disbelief.

    “Because. I don’t care about you.” Sehun said with a straight face, staring into Chen’s wide eyes.

    “Ouuuch.” Chen clutched at his chest and pretended to collapse on the table. Now this was more like regular Sehun.

    “You’re kind of creepy, dude.” Kai gave Sehun a little side-eye.

    “Says the neighborhood ert.” Sehun shot back effortlessly. He might be the youngest of the group but he had the sickest burns.

    “Geez, that’s a little harsh.” Kai said. He just rolled his eyes and continued eating his banana; he was used to the player/boi/ jokes and he didn’t really care anyways.

    Suho just smiled knowingly. “Maybe someone else has a little crush.”

Before Sehun could even respond, the table erupted with laughter.

“Hah! Sehun? Has a crush?” Chen pretended to clutch at his stomach as if he had a cramp from laughing that hard. Everyone else at the table nodded and laughed in agreement (Baekhyun laughed as if he knew what they were talking about).

Sehun just continued to eat his sandwich, his face impassive as usual.

    Outwardly, Sehun’s personality essentially worked like… a meme. He never really took anything seriously, going through life armed with epic comebacks and an always dry humor. Anyone who knew him at a surface level only saw the 2D, completely meme-able version of him, and most of the time, Sehun was fine with that. That image of himself was easy to present and maintain. It meant he never had to go too deep with people because they never really expected him to. But the friends sitting around him at the round cafeteria table, they knew there was more to Sehun than he liked to let on. It just might take some more time for him to present that side to the world.