[CONTENTID1]Smoking and STIs [/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]"No, you do it because you're angry with yourself, and you're a masochist."  [/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3]

10 Months Ago 

It was ten-thirty in the morning, Yeseul had exams to study for, and Baekhyun had dragged her to the house for a Sunday meal. This was apparently going to be a new tradition, but Yeseul didn't see it lasting long. The lot of them would probably stress (self-designated) chef Chanyeol into oblivion. Despite saying multiple times that he needed as much as space as possible to cook, Yeseul, Baekhyun and Sumin loitered in the kitchen while Chanyeol worked around them, workstations set up wherever there was free counter space. He hadn't started complaining yet, which Yeseul had to give him credit for. 

"How's the new job going, Chanyeol?" Baekhyun hauled himself up onto the counter next to Yeseul, further limiting the space available to Chanyeol. 

"I clean tables, Baek. I'm a bus boy. It's not exactly the Banyan." 

"Isn't that the name of the hotel you're working at?" Yeseul asked, brows wound high on her forehead. She took a sip of her tea and grimaced. Too much milk. 

"It's the Signiel," Chanyeol said, his voice dripping with smugness, completely ignoring the fact that Yeseul was making fun of him. She supposed he had a right to. Even as a lowly bus boy, The Signiel was the fanciest, most prestigious hotel - with the fanciest, most prestigious restaurant - in the city. "And I think they're gonna promote me to cook already, at least for the morning shift. I made a bet with the sacier I could do a better Hollandaise, and the whole kitchen liked mine more than his." 

"I have no idea what you just said, but I'm proud of you!" Baekhyun cheered. Yeseul rolled her eyes. 

Kyungsoo appeared in the kitchen doorway, dressed to go out into the cold. "Chanyeol, can I borrow your car to go pick up Iseul?" 

"Sure, the keys are in my room," Chanyeol answered, without turning away from the cooker. 

"Thanks," Kyungsoo said, and then he was gone again. Yeseul heard his footsteps on the stairs, then, "Shall I wake up Sehun?" 

"Good luck with that!" Sumin shouted. 

Baekhyun laughed, then leaned towards Yeseul and did the thing where he thought he was being sneaky but in reality was no less obvious than his normal behaviour. "Hey, did I really see Lee Kiseong come out of your room this morning?"

"What?" Chanyeol exclaimed, head whipping up. His fringe, pulled into a mini-ponytail, stuck straight up from the top of his head. Yeseul had already pointed out how ridiculous he looked several times since her arrival fifteen minutes ago. 

Because Chanyeol was the last person Yeseul wanted to know about her personal life, she gave Baekhyun a sharp jab in the ribs with her elbow. He cried oiut and scooted away from her. "Thanks a lot, Baekhyun." 

"Did you actually have with of the Year Lee Kiseong?" Chanyeol asked, looking at her with the most serious expression she'd ever seen on someone whilst saying the word '.' 

"You're the only one that calls him that," she replied. 

"Doesn't make it any less true," he said. "Answer the question, Seullie." 

The nickname was newly designated, he'd come up with it while drawing out the syllables in her name in an effort to annoy her. Yeseul glowered. "A few times now, yeah." 

"You've got to be kidding me. That guy is a ," Chanyeol scoffed. 

"He's not all that bad," Yeseul said. She was actually beginning to suspect that Kiseong liked her, which wasn't a good sign. The whole reason she entered into a casual relationship with him was because he was the last person she thought would develop feelings. That was his entire reputation, after all. 

"I heard he was sleeping with Kim Lina," Baekhyun said. 

"Probably is," Yeseul shrugged. "I really couldn't care less." 

"See, I don't get that." Chanyeol washed his hands, then went over to the enormous piece of meat he had on the cutting board, an array of spices lined up on the counter next to it, and started preparing it for roasting. "You're seriously comfortable with the person you're sleeping with being with other people? Especially someone like Kiseong? What if you get, like, an STI with association?" 

"I'm not an idiot, Chanyeol," Yeseul defended. "I know what I'm doing, all right?" 

"You've got to be pretty dim to sleep with Lee ing Kiseong," Chanyeol muttered. 

"What do you have against him, anyway?" 

Chanyeol didn't respond, but he was practically beating the spices into the pork shoulder - or whateer it was he was cooking - which indicated some kind of backstory to the problem he had with Kiseong. Baekhyun, being Baekhyun, didn't see the harm in sharing. "Kiseong was on Chanyeol's dorm in first year," he said. "Had it out for him from the start, after he and this girl Kiseong was after hit it off during Orientation Week. Didn't you two only go out for, like a month? Anyway, the idiot managed tio get with all the girls Chanyeol went out with after that." 

"All of them?" 

"All of them," Chanyeol sighed. "Aside from the academic stuff, that might have been the biggest reason for me leaving. Getting away from dickheads like him." 

"You still hang out with Baekhyun," Yeseul pointed out. "He's slept with half of our building and it's only December." 

"Hey! I've got rules, you know. Separates me from guys like Kiseong." 

"Your rule are bull." 

"Why don't we get back to how you're sleeping with the of the Year?" Baekhyun suggested with a smirk. 

Yeseul narrowed her eyes at him. " off, Baekhyun." 

The bar was suffocating. There were always too many people on Thursday nights, due to cheap drinks, but this was so much worse that usual. It was only the four of them - Yeseul, Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol - and their table still felt overcrowded. Just to make matters worse, Chanyeol had been teasing her ever since Joonmyun and his friends passed by on their way out and he asked her to come along to the party they were headed to. All his friends stood by and snickered when she said no, then they told Joonmyun (very loudly, and with more laughter) that he'd 'get her next time' as they left the bar. It seemed everyone found his persistence ridiculous, not just Yeseul. 

She waited until she was certain Joonmyun and his friends would be far from the bar before excusing herself for a cigarette. Kyungsoo, who preferred spliffs to cigarettes but smoked the latter anyway, politely declined the offer to join her. He and Baekhyun seemed to have some plan in the works, and Yeseul suspected it had something to do with the bartender everyone (aside from Chanyeol) had been admiring all evening. 

The rain from earlier had stopped. Yeseul moved away from the other smokers outside the door, and closer to the alley on the side of the building. Sometimes Kyungsoo and Sehun went down there to get high, when the atmosphere in the bar was boring or they had a craving for tteokbokki, since the food in the bar was only good if you were really drink or on something. 

"Smoking's bad for you, Seullie," Chanyeol said, strolling out of Gallery several minutes later, one hand in his pocket and the other clutching that battered journal of his. She noticed with a flicker of surprise that it wasn't battered at all, and the cover was orange instead of black, the pages not yet warped from the constant thumbing or marked up by the cheap pens he always carried around. He had to be writing in it a lot to have a new one already, though she couldn't say how long he'd had the black one before it. She hadn't been paying attention until recently. 

In Chanyeol's hand, the notebook looked tiny, the bright cover peeking out from between his ringed fingers. The other one, lying open on the counter in her kitchen, uneven writing scrawled across it's pages, flashed in her mind. Yeseul wondered again what Chanyeol could possibly be writing in it. Perhaps something he didn't want anyone else reading, due to this immediate reaction to cover it up when he'd caught her looking. 

Pushing all of this from her mind with the reminder that it didn't matter anyway, Yeseul fixed Chanyeol with a glare. Constantly reminding her how unhealthy her habit was had become a favourite pastime of his, like he thought he could annoy her into quitting. "Well, we can't all drink ing green smoothies. Somebody's got to be killing themselves to balance out all you healthy people." 

"That's possibly the worst reason I've ever heard from someone trying to justify their smoking," Chanyeol said, not teasing anymore. "Don't do it just to spite other people." 

"Haven't you realised?" Yeseul lifted the cigarette to her lips with a malicious smirk. "I do everything out of spite." 

"No, you do it because you're angry with yourself, and you're a masochist." 

" you," Yeseul muttered, turning away from him. She leaned a shoulder against the brick wall, bringing the cigarette up to her lips. But this time all she got was a foul taste in and none of the calm she wanted. With an angry flick of her wrist Yeseul flung the stick onto the pavement and stomped on it with the heel of her trainer. She hated that she was giving Chanyeol the satisfaction of knowing he'd had a part in her throwing the cigarette away. When she looked up, she was surprised to see that he was still standing there, watching her curiously. The lack of self-satisfaction was peculiar on him. 

"Gotta head off," he said, after a moment of them staring at each other in unusually meditative silence. "See you later, Yeseul." 

Back inside, Baekhyun and Kyungsoo were still conspiring, but they'd shifted the focus from the female bartender to a group of girls a few feet away. Though she'd never say it at the risk of seriously offending Baekhyun, Yeseul wanted them to get mercilessly rejected by the girls. They could use that sort of thing now and again. 

With the boys ignoring her, Yeseul wished she had Sehun or Serin there to talk to. But Serin had a paper due, and Sehun was at some big event at the art gallery where Sumin worked. Yeseul wasn't too sure what they were doing there, whether it was an exhibition or a party; he'd been very vague over the phone. 

Drink in hand, Yeseul left their table and grabbed a seat at the bar. She made sure to bring her purse along too, since Baekhyun and Kyungsoo couldn't be trusted to look after someone else's belongings.

Before she even got the bartender's attention, a hand was brushing her shoulder and someone was sitting down next to her. Caught off guard, Yeseul whirled around, prepared to give out a verbal lashing at whoever it was for sneaking up on her, but it was only Sumin, and she let out a sigh of relief. Though her blonde hair, knowledge of art movements, and affection for denim usually made Sumin blend right in at the hipster-heavy bar, tonight she looked quite out of place. Her dress was tailored to flatter her slender frame. Her hair was curled, and her lips were a deep, matte red. If Sumin looking this amazing, Yeseul imagined that her and Sehun would induce fainting spells just by standing next to each other. 

After returning Sumin's greeting hug, Yeseul glanced over her shoulder and saw Sehun slouched next to Kyungsoo at their table, dinner jacket hung over the back of his chair and the sleeves of his black shirt rolled to his elbows. He had loosened his tie and mussed up his hair, so that it looked more casual. 

"How was the thing?" Yeseul asked, still without the faintest idea of where they'd been. 

Sumin groaned. The shiny badge on her wrist slid around while she gestured, glinting under the lights above the bar. "So boring, I'm obligated to go to these events, but I don't think I've ever stayed the entire time. Sehun and I always end up leaving once we've said hello to everyone." 

"What was it for again?" 

"There's a new investor. They planned this big do for him, but I really couldn't be bothered with any of it," Sumin explained. "The exhibitions are much more fun. Tonight was just an excuse to drink expensive wine, make business dat