Thursday at lunch Jongdae came up to me already heading towards the auditorium like we usually did, when I stopped him. “I think we should sit in the cafeteria today.”

    “Why, did you forgive that Chanyeol, I swear you are way too nice sometimes,” Jongdae said already ranting.

I chuckled and pulled him towards the cafeteria, “No, I still want nothing to do with him. But there are some pretty cool people I think we forgot about.” I started scanning the cafeteria as soon as we walked through the doors. My eyes briefly paused at Chanyeol’s table, but I looked away as soon as we made eye contact. I looked towards the back of the cafeteria, where we used to sit and quickly found Baekhyun excitedly waving at the both of us. Baekhyun threw grapes at us once we got to the table, acting as if he were mad.

“It’s nice of you two to finally join us again,” Baekhyun yelled, pulling me to sit next to him. I looked at the two other people sitting at the table, Sehun gave me a smile and said hi to both Jongdae and I while Jongin on the other hand looked away and started to awkwardly cough. I shrugged it off not letting it bother me.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, when I looked to my left I saw Sehun giving me a kind, and somewhat guilty smile. "Hey I’m sorry about how people have been treating you lately, I’ve seen some of the stuff they do to you in the hallway.”

I awkwardly started to play with my fingers, “No need to apologize, it’s not like you’re the one doing it.”

“Yeah, but I never did anything to stop it, and I’m really sorry about that. But I swear if I see anyone do anything stupid like that again I’ll punch them. You shouldn’t be treated this way, you’re so brave Kyungsoo,” I smiled and said thank you, I could tell how genuine his words were. But I couldn’t stop thinking about those last few words he said, he called me brave, Michael called me brave. I shook my head mentally slapping myself, there was no way Sehun was Michael right, I really needed to stop trying to find Michael in every guy I meet.

I looked at the other occupants of the table. Sehun had joined in on Jongdae and Baekhyun’s conversation as they all laughed and yelled at each other. I smiled watching the interaction, noticing everyone’s genuine happiness. I looked over to Jongin who was quietly keeping to myself. My eyes met his as I realized he had been staring at me, he flinched and what looked like a grimace crossed his face. I was about to ask him what his problem was, when he abruptly got up and walked away from the table and out the cafeteria.

“What was that all about?” Jongdae asked, already getting ready to go and beat Jongin up if it had anything to do with me.

“Don’t worry about it, he just does that sometimes. He’s really busy so he usually leaves in the middle of lunch to go practice in the dance studio,” Baekhyun said as Sehun nodded along.

The next day, before I even walked into the cafeteria, I could hear Baekhyun, Jongdae and Sehun laughing and screaming. As I approached the table I realized Jongin hadn’t even bothered to come sit with us today. I know it shouldn’t hurt since most of the school chose to either ignore me and show their obvious disgust. I accidently let out a sigh while thinking about the fact that I probably grossed out Jongin. The other three occupants of the table stopped what they were doing and turned to me. “Hey, like I said, Jongin is busy I doubt it has anything to do with you.”

“His glare says otherwise,” this made the other three look at me in question. “You guys didn’t see it yesterday? I’m pretty sure he was glaring at me the whole time he was here, I’m pretty sure he even sneered at me.”

“Kyungsoo, maybe you’re just looking too into it. I bet Jongin is just super stressed,” Sehun tried to defend. I brushed him off and tried to change the topic. What was the point anyway it’s not like I cared. I barely even interacted with Jongin before I was outed. We might’ve been seat partners and hung out with the same people but we still barely ever talked to each other, I barely knew him.

My plan to just ignore Jongin wasn’t that hard on Monday since he wasn’t there at lunch again. But then I realized there was a flaw in my plan come Tuesday. Today was the day I always dreaded but I was always excited for, except today there was no excitement and only more dread. Today we’d be practicing the choreography for the musical, and Mr.Lee decided he wanted to focus on the main cast today which meant it was only Jongdae, Baekhyun, Wendy, Irene and I. But the thing is Irene was also in the dance team so she usually worked with Wendy and Jongdae on their big number while Baekhyun and I worked with Jongin. And stupid Baekhyun just had to get sick over the weekend and has been absent the past two days, meaning today’s rehearsal would be only Jongin and I.

I took a deep breath before I walked into the dance room, trying to prepare myself for the next two hours. I started stretching, the room filled with silence since Baekhyun wasn’t here to fill in the awkward tension. “Why don’t we go over your and Baekhyun’s duet, I’ll fill in for Baekhyun,” Jongin said, getting into position and getting read to turn on the music. I quickly got up following him to the center of the room getting into the right position. I couldn’t look anywhere but the ground, every time I tried looking at us in the mirror my eyes were always drawn to Jongin. He’s an amazing dancer and it’s almost impossible to keep your eyes off him, he was just so beautiful and passionate. But I was scared he’d take my looking wrong, as in I was checking him out cause he’s a dude. I don’t know Jongin that well, what if he got violent and decided to beat me up for being gay and “checking him out”. Midway through the song Jongin paused it and stopped, motioning for me to do the same. “Kyungsoo you need to watch yourself, or you won’t know what mistakes you’re making and how you could fix them,” he sounded irritated.

I blushed and started to stammer, “I’m sorry, it’s because well, I mean, like, um… you’re kind of a distraction.” My face immediately turned red as soon as I said it.

It looked as if Jongin’s cheeks started to turn red too. “Okay why don’t you do it alone then, it’s just one day without Baekhyun so you should be fine.” He sat down in the back of the room and grabbed his water bottle, as he began to drink my eyes were drawn to his neck as his adams apple bobbed with every swallow. When I realized what I had been staring at, I quickly looked away and asked him to start the music. I tried to focus on only myself as I watched every move I made through the mirror. After a few more run throughs we decided to call it a day a few minutes early since Baekhyun wasn’t there anyway. I quickly changed out of my sweaty clothes, choosing to take a shower at home rather than the schools gross gym showers.

As I was about to head towards the student parking lot to go to Jongdae’s car, I heard Jongin call after me. I took a deep breath and slowly turned around, hoping he wasn’t mad about what had happened earlier with my staring. When he got close to me he stood there for a few minutes, not saying anything.

“If you aren’t gonna say anything, I kinda gotta go,” I was about to walk away when he tried to grab me, making me flinch away assuming he was about to hit me. When I looked at him it looked like he was about to grab me again so I quickly walked away. I was about to exit the school when I turned around and headed back to Jongin, I was so tired of this and I was not gonna let him get away with it. “Look Jongin, I get that you’re Baekhyun and Sehun’s friend and I also get that you don’t like me for being gay or some other idiotic reason. Like I don’t know, you’re scared my gay will spread to you or that I might be checking you out which targets your masculinity or some bull . But I don’t care about you or anyone in this school. I mean why do any of you care about the fact that I prefer , most people at this school didn’t know my name till a few days ago and now everyone cares because I’m the gay kid. Like I’m not shoving it down anyone’s throat, excuse the innuendo I didn’t mean it that way but my point stands. Like I didn’t even want to be out I just came out to one person, who I thought was my best friend who turned out to actually be a homophobic and felt the need to out me to the whole school. And I’m trying to be strong and brave but it’s so hard because I may have Baekhyun, Sehun and Jongdae but I still feel so alone every time someone calls me a or someone decides to trip me because it’s funny. And all because I’m trying to be who I am, there’s no other reason for the way I’m being treated other than I am being myself.” After I ended my rant I realized I was crying, I quickly wiped away at my tears and turned back around to leave.

“It, it doesn’t matter to me,” I barely heard Jongin say before I was out the door. He ran up to me to say it louder, “It doesn’t matter to me, I’m so sorry if I made you feel that way I just didn’t know how to act around you, which I now realize is a pretty ty excuse. I mean you are gay but you’re also still Kyungsoo so I don’t have to treat you different because you’re still the same person. I’m so sorry, I’ll never be able to apologize enough.” He awkwardly stood there, crouching a bit making him look so small and scared that I wouldn’t forgive him. “I never meant for you to feel that way.”

“I’m sorry for blowing at you like that. Just most people at this school have been real and it’s getting hard to ignore, I may be a little stressed.” I gave him a smile and slowly got closer to him, giving him a small hug. “Thank you for saying that though, for realizing I’m still Kyungsoo no matter what.”

So so sorry about the super late update. Did y'all stream ElyXion Dot because Jongin in a crop top had me SCREAMING and the new ver for I See You is so good, if SM doesn't release a studio version I'm goin to go there myself and fight them till they do. Also the Chanhun stage was so cute it makes me feel bad about making Chanyeol such a in this story, maybe he'll turn around ;) . Anyway I hope you enjoyed this chapter and don't forget to tell me who you think Michael is and who you want Kyungsoo to end up with :)