"You need to eat, Jihoon."

"I'm not hungry."

"Bull"

"I don't want anything right now. I'll eat later."

"We both know you won't. Can you at least pretend to care about your health? Seungkwan and I can't do all the worrying for you."

Soonyoung actually sighs as he leans back on Jihoon's bed, eyes flicking from the bowl of hot soup he's holding on a tray to Jihoon's bowed head, the angle making his fringe cover his face entirely. He refuses to look his friend in the eyes. It's his fault he's in this situation, he just had to go and 'catch feelings'. What is this, a badly scripted drama? Even Soonyoung has had enough of him, he's tiring everyone, tiring himself and falling behind in his work, despite working even harder than before since-

Jihoon closes his eyes and breathes hard through his nose. Why can't he do anything right?

"Hey, I can hear you blaming yourself from all the way over here. Once again, it's not your fault, you melodramatic bastard, and my offer of kicking Seungcheol's still stands."

Jihoon lifts his head at the voice, watching as Seungkwan strides into the dorm, a bag of doughnuts in hand. He has to restrain himself from almost drooling at the sight of them. The two other boys in the room notice his hungry gaze and share a smirk as Seungkwan tosses the bag to him. Jihoon cautiously peeks inside the bag before extracting a doughnut and taking small bites, all the while glaring at Soonyoung, daring him to say anything. He just shakes his head and grins in response. Mission accomplished.

Soonyoung turns back to the room's latest arrival.

"Seungkwan, you couldn't beat up a ten year old. And I mean that literally, you shouldn't have tried to fight that kid over the store's last tootsie roll. He almost gave you a brain haemorrhage with that thing."

"I keep telling you I felt sorry for him so I let him win!" Seungkwan protests. Soonyoung gives him an incredulous look.

"Is that why you ended up snivelling into Hansol's shoulder?"

"Oh, shut up!"

At the sight of his friends' bickering, Jihoon finally manages a smile for the first time in a month, dusted sugar still on his hands and doughnut crumbs covering his mouth. He lets a small laugh escape him and the two in front of him cease their argument at the sound. The sight of him chuckling at them causes relieved smiles to bloom on both of their faces. It may have taken a while, but Jihoon was going to be okay.

He's standing in front of the mirror, fingers fiddling with the hem of his shirt and worrying his lip with his teeth. Jihoon is about two seconds from cutting his lip deep enough to make it bleed when Soonyoung swings open the door and waltzes in, twirling dramatically around the room to show off his outfit. The performance is rather underwhelming considering he's only wearing a Spiderman shirt and boxers. Jihoon stares on at his friend, unfazed.

"I don't know about you, but most people tend to wear pants outside." Soonyoung grins.

"My dear Jihoonie, I think we've known each other long enough to know I'm not most people."

"You're still wearing pants in public though."

"I don't know, Minki bought a pretty cute skirt the other day-"

"Only Choi Minki can pull off a skirt well and you know it. Now get dressed before Seokmin gets here, I'm not letting you two finish off what you started the last time one of you was half dressed in the dorm."

On receiving nothing but a snort of giggles from the older boy in return, Jihoon deftly kicks Soonyoung out his room so he can return to criticising every inch of his reflection. He inwardly growns. Why does he even care so much? It's just a stupid college party. A stupid college party that the ever gentlemanly, sweet and most definite school heartthrob Choi Seungcheol is going to. Not that he's thinking about that at all.

The loud bang of the dorm door being slammed open and a strangled war cry ("And so we march into battle!" cut off by a shriek