Something changed after that day in the cupcake store. Not with Jinyoung, who had thus far been doing the majority of the changing, but with Mark. He wasn't a noisy person to begin with, but if anything, he became quieter and more introspective in their conversations together, letting Jinyoung lead the discussions while throwing in remarks here or there. Jinyoung couldn't quite put his finger on why that was. He didn't think Mark was embarrassed about being discovered as a silver spoon or nervous about Jinyoung being angry with him again. His mind simply seemed to be fixated on something internal, something he was puzzling out on his own.

The problem with it was when he was lost in his thoughts, he had a habit of staring. Usually at Jinyoung's face, with a pensive, searching expression, but depending on the day, it could be elsewhere. One day when Jinyoung was wearing a button down shirt with the first three buttons undone, Mark stared fixedly at his collar bones. Another day, it was his lips, as if Mark had never noticed them before and was suddenly amazed at their existence. And once, on one of the skinny jean days, he was pretty sure he'd caught Mark staring at his crotch region several times, which made him feel on the verge of catching fire in embarrassment. It was like he was assessing Jinyoung part by part for some mysterious purpose, and Jinyoung had no idea what Mark was determining from all his staring and thinking. And other than the part where Jinyoung had figured out his secret from Youngjae, he had no idea what would have fueled Mark's sudden shift in attitude. If anything, Jinyoung felt like he was the one who had earned the right to be this quiet and internal since he had just realized that he was in the middle of forming a giant sized crush on the same person who was now awkwardly staring at his crotch.

Eventually, it got so pointed that he couldn't get away with not saying anything anymore. “Um, Mark,” he said, crossing his legs and pulling down his shirt so there was literally nothing left there for Mark to see. “Is something going on?”

“Hmm?” Mark snapped to attention, looking a little out of it. “Um, sorry, did you say something?”

“You've been zoning out a lot lately. Am I boring you?”

“Of course not. I'm just having one of those days.”

“You've been having one of those days for awhile now. Plus, you said you wouldn't lie to me anymore.”

Mark flushed a little. “Yeah, but what if I was thinking about something dirty and don't really want to talk to you about it?”

Jinyoung's mouth fell open a little. “You were thinking about something dirty while staring at my crotch?” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

“W-was I staring at your crotch?” Mark stammered, looking horrified. “If I was, it was an accident. And I was just joking about thinking something dirty. I was thinking about...um...”

“If you have to come up with an excuse, you're clearly lying to me right now!”

“OK, OK, I was thinking about something having to do with you, but it wasn't necessarily dirty, all right? I was just wondering what your type is.”

“My type?”

“Type of guy. That you like. You said you hadn't been seeing anyone because you couldn't figure out who would match well with you if you didn't understand yourself well enough. And I guess I was wondering if you'd been able to figure it out at all, now that you know yourself better?” He crossed and uncrossed his legs. “I suppose I'm trying to test your growth of how much has changed since we started this whole thing.”

“Huh,” Jinyoung said. He wondered how Mark would respond if he outright told him that he was beginning to suspect his ideal type was a head to toe match to Mark Tuan himself. “Well...um...a nice smile, I guess.”

“Generic answer.”

“All right, fine. Someone who understands me.”

“Like your butler?”

“HELL NO,” Jinyoung snapped, feeling affronted. “I'd rather die a than do it with Kim Yugyeom, thank you very much.”

Mark grinned. This line of conversation seemed to be bringing back his energy. “So...nice smile, someone who understands you, and...?”

“I'd like to feel comfortable with them.”

“Uh-huh. Any physical details? Taller than you? Muscular? Dirt poor or filthy stinking rich?”

“I'm not picky.”

“You sure about that?”

“I don't have room to be shallow, considering I've been single all my life.”

“And here I thought that beautiful people have the most room out of anyone to be a little shallow.” Mark reached out and teasingly pulled on Jinyoung's earlobe. “What about idiots? Would you date someone who is a little bit stupid from time to time? Because you seem clever, and I wonder sometimes if you'd have no patience for people who can't keep up with you. People like me, for example.”

“Like you?” Jinyoung repeated. “How are you an idiot? And when haven't I been patient with you?”

“I meant patience in the long term,” Mark said. “And make no mistake, Park Jinyoung. I am a huge idiot, and I've only just realized it. That's why I keep zoning out all the time, because every other thought goes like, You know what, Mark Tuan? You have wasted so many years of your life because you were too big of an idiot to realize what Park Jinyoung so logically told you about taking responsibility for your feelings and not obsessing so much over what other people feel. You helped me figure out something that's been driving me nuts since I was a freaking elementary school student, so yeah, I'm an idiot, and yeah, you're amazing. Maybe you had a hard time figuring yourself out, but you pinned me down right away, and right now I'm just honestly in awe of you.”

Jinyoung's heart lept at those words. Right now I'm just honestly in awe of you. Was that why Mark kept staring at him? Was that why he looked to be piecing him together bit by bit, because everything he saw about Jinyoung was suddenly amazing and new?

“So, are you going to tell me what exactly has been driving you nuts?” Jinyoung asked, a little breathlessly.

Mark thought for a moment. “You know one of the books you picked out the other day...Atonement?”

Jinyoung nodded. He'd been reading it every night before bed for the past few weeks. “Have you read it?”

“Nope, but I saw the movie. The main girl misinterprets a single moment she witnesses in her life, and because of that mistake, she pretty much s everything up afterwards for herself and the people she loves, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I think I may have done that. Something happened awhile ago and I just got the whole thing entirely wrong and have been living with the wrong idea of it for over half my life. When I figured it out, I was just going to keep letting myself live stuck with my stupid misunderstanding because I'd already committed to it even though I know I was wrong, but now, thanks to you, I don't know if I can anymore and it just feels...” He looked up, meeting Jinyoung's eyes. It seemed like he lost his ability to speak for a moment, and just kept looking at Jinyoung with that lost, searching look he'd had earlier. Jinyoung wondered what Mark wanted from him, if he needed another little speech like the one from before that apparently made him question what he wanted to do with his feelings (his feelings for who? About what?). But Jinyoung didn't know what to say. He didn't know what this was about. Whatever Mark was talking about happened long before they'd met each other. Or met each other again, considering they'd barely known each other in the first place.

“It feels like,” Mark continued, finally finding whatever words he'd been looking for, “like I'm dangling right in between ing this up even worse for myself or becoming the happiest I've ever been in my life if I can finally do this right. I don't know. That's why I'm such a huge, massive idiot. So I'm just curious, Jinyoung. Is it possible for you to like idiots?”

Oh my god, Jinyoung thought to himself, his heart nearly dropping out of his chest. Is he asking me because he wants me to like him? Part of him was sure it was wishful thinking, but the other part of him, the stronger part, was sure it wasn't. There had to be a reason Mark had been staring at him so much while he'd been having these thoughts. There had to be a reason why he was staring at him now, eyes unblinking, breath held as if this answer somehow meant everything.

“Yes,” Jinyoung whispered, barely audible. “I could possibly like an idiot.”

Mark exhaled. “Mmm. You have a good heart, Park Jinyoung. I feel sorry that the world hasn't gotten a chance to realize that yet. Can I say something else? I've been wanting to say this for awhile, but I wasn't sure if it was my place, since I'm someone you're technically hiring. But contract or no contract, over the past few get togethers you've already become a very important person to me. I hope you can think of me as your real life, genuine...um, well, whatever it is you want me to be...without worrying if it's fake or not. Because I've meant everything I have ever said to you, OK? You really are a pure, straightforward, honest person, and I'm really grateful that Jackson sent you to me, because I feel like this whole thing was a perfect match.”

Jinyoung's breath caught. Wasn't that what Jackson had said right from the beginning? A better fit. A perfect match. “I...I definitely feel the same way about you,” he said, his voice coming out a little more wobbly than he'd been anticipating.

Still, Mark's eyes lit up. “You do? Thank you. I mean it. Glad I'm not just bombarding you with sappiness out of nowhere.” He cleared his throat. “Ahem. So...I think at this point I should be doing the things Youngjae is paying me for. Sorry for getting off track.”

“I think you owe me the answer to a question since you were interrogating me earlier,” Jinyoung protested.

“Uh... was I interrogating you earlier?”

“Yes. You asked me like ten questions about my ideal type without telling me a single thing about yours.”

“Ah, no need to ask me, then,” Mark said with an innocent smile. “I pretty much already told you the exact answer to that a few minutes ago.”

“Uhhhh...Young Master?”

Jinyoung snapped out of his dazed reverie and realized that another reflection had been added to the mirror beside him. In fact, Jaebum was standing right next to him, practically breathing down his neck. Jinyoung jerked back from his vanity, releasing a loud and embarrassing yelp as he did so.

Jaebum simply stared at him, looking a little bit vexed. “I'm not going to let you blame me for that one,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I knocked on your door, called your name five times, tapped you on the shoulder, bit your ear-”

“You bit my ear?!?!”

“No, but I'm glad to see I finally have your attention at last.” Jaebum folded his arms across his chest. “Yugyeom had been suggesting that you'd fallen in love, and it apparently seems he was right, for once.”

“I-I'm not-”

“Don't try that one with me, Young Master. You're not as subtle as you like to pretend you are. In fact, you're an outright embarrassment to the word subtle. You might as well have hearts pouring out your eyes and a sign that says, I'm in love with the guy I've been hanging out with! around your neck.”

“Shut up!” Jinyoung said, not feeling creative enough to think of anything else.

“Oh, my wounded pride, Young Master. You haven't come up with any new insults since you were ten, I'm so proud.”

“I'm not going to give you Youngjae's phone number anymore if you don't cut this out.”

Jaebum sat down beside him at the vanity. “Yugyeom told me about this. And yes, you are going to give me his phone number.”

“Oh yeah, why should I?”

“Because I happen to be in possession of a certain photograph of Young Master Tuan during one of his visits to this residence, which you've claimed to Yugyeom that you don't even remember.”

Jinyoung's eyes immediately widened. “Give it to me.”

“Not without Youngjae's phone number. I've been trying to hack your phone for years to get my hands on it, but you're the only person enough to wipe down your screen every time you punch in your password.”

“You've been trying to hack my phone?”

“Do you want that photo of Mark or not?”

Jinyoung hurriedly grabbed his cell phone, punched in the password, pulled open Youngjae's contact screen and it under Jaebum's nose. “Here. I'll sell out an innocent soul to your evil clutches, just give me that photo.”

Jaebum studied Youngjae's phone number for a moment, then pulled out his own phone and typed it in. “Thanks for this,” he said. “I'm not planning on bothering him right away since I know he's busy with his planning for his new businesses, but a few text messages won't hurt. And I don't know what innocent soul you're talking about, but you clearly don't really know Choi Youngjae.”

“The picture, Jaebum.”

Jaebum looked at him up and down. “No. Not yet.”

“What? Did you seriously just lie to me to get Youngjae's number, which I would have given you anyways if you hadn't gone around insulting me, by the way? You know I'm not the type to complain to my parents about anything, but I'm seriously considering it right now.”

“Call me a purist,” Jaebum said, “but I want to save this picture for when you're actually dating. As a congratulations gift. So if you don't mind waiting an extra week or so...”

“What makes you think Mark's even thinking of asking me out, much less in a week?”

Jaebum just smiled knowingly. “A few weeks ago, you were staring at the mirror with an unsatisfied lovesick look. Now you're staring at it with a very, very satisfied lovesick look. Who knows, but it looks like you'll be getting some before even I will.” Jaebum looked down at Youngjae's phone number regretfully. “Maybe I should call him up tonight...”

“Im Jaebum!”

“What?” Jaebum smiled innocently. “You're finally ecstatically happy about something in your life to the extent that you can barely think about anything else. Don't get mad at me about it, all right? Just let yourself be happy.”

The next time they met, they went to a cafe nearby Jinyoung's university after his classes got out. Mark had the day off of work, and was wearing a nicer outfit than usual—a collared shirt with name brand jeans. If you squinted a little, you could see the silver spoon lurking within him, dulled after many years of living the life of a normal person.

“If you have the day off of work, should you really be meeting with me?” Jinyoung asked. “We have a contract, and I am paying you for what you're doing.”

“This is off hours,” Mark said. “If you try to pay me for this, I'll set it on fire. We both have more than enough money to burn.”

“Clever. So why exactly did you call me out today?”

“I had something I wanted to talk to you about, but I'd thought it would be pretty inappropriate to do it during what is technically, from a financial standpoint, 'work.'”

“Mark, we've already talked about my first kiss and ideal types during work, and that never stopped you.”

“Well. Maybe it should have.”

“We pretty much agreed in our contract that we would be talking about personal things.”

“Fine. This isn't just a personal thing. This is...” He bit his lips, thinking of how to phrase it. “The personal things we talked about during the 'work' hours were things that would help you become more comfortable and used to the kind of talk involved in making friends. This isn't that. This has nothing to do with anything you willingly signed me on for.”

Jinyoung felt a sudden flood of nervousness. He knew exactly what he wanted this to be, but he was wary at the same time of getting his hopes up and misinterpreting what had been going on around them, just like Mark had claimed to have misinterpreted something that had changed everything for him, not exactly for the better.

“Go ahead,” Jinyoung said quietly. “Tell me whatever you need to say.”

“Great,” Mark said shifting awkwardly. “So, here's the thing. Right now, I'm a walking business ethics nightmare.”

“Uh...”

“I'm not supposed to do the whole conflict of interest thing with my clients, but to be honest, I've already done it twice. I mean, according to Anything rules, it's OK for me to have a personal relationship with my clients. For example, if one of my Dad's friends wanted to hire me, that would be fine. And with the contract between you and me, it's perfectly acceptable that we're real life...friends or whatever. But... I really think it's not acceptable to take that personal relationship to a certain point while under contract, especially if my client feels uncomfortable with it or, um, is even aware of it at all.”

“Could you please interpret what you're trying to say?”

“So...uh...the other day...you may have noticed that I was, um, maybe staring a little too much at inappropriate areas that may have made you feel uncomfortable.”

“Oh, yeah, that.”

“And I may have potentially downplayed the reason for that, saying I was zoning out, when in actuality...when it comes to you recently, I may have de-”

He was interrupted by a loud group of students coming in the front door. Jinyoung glanced at them, and immediately felt his stomach sinking. They were from his entrepreneurship class, the ones that absolutely hated him the most because Jinyoung didn't need financial backers or a savings account built up from nothing to achieve his dreams. All he had to do was snap his fingers and people would pay attention to whatever ideas he came up with. They didn't care that even Jinyoung wasn't capable of getting people to buy ty products they didn't need and that if he wanted to be an entrepreneur, he'd also have to invest time and money that might be lost into it. All that mattered was that he came from money and had money to fall back on, as if that was all by his deliberate choice. He really didn't want to deal with them while in the middle of an important talk with Mark, one that seemed to be heading in the direction of explaining everything he'd been wanting to hear.

One of the girls in the group caught Jinyoung's eye. “Oh look,” she whispered loudly. “Mr. Money Bags.”

“With a friend?” someone whispered back. “He actually has friends?”

“He's probably paying him.”

Jinyoung winced. That one hurt, hitting far too close to home than he wanted to think about.

“Yeah, that guy doesn't have a single charm but money, and he doesn't even earn it himself,” the girl from the beginning said. “Loser.”

Mark pushed his hands down on the table, about ready to stand up and say something, but Jinyoung stepped down on his feet hard, surprising him enough to make him pause. In that interval, he grabbed Mark's hands and held on to them tightly.

“I know you said you had something else to say to me, but wait a minute,” Jinyoung said to him. “I have something I want to say to you first. I just really wanted to thank you for everything this month. I know I'm shy and probably a little bit hard to talk to, but that you made the effort to get to know me means everything. I finally feel like myself when I'm around you, and I'm just so, so lucky that I have someone like you as my...friend or whatever. I think after meeting you, I can finally figure out how to make friends without having to worry about them being automatic  who think I don't feel anything just because I'm going to inherit a family business.” He took a deep breath. He hoped Mark realized he was saying his honest feelings instead of just acting for the audience. “I also want to say thank you for how generous you've been, buying me chicken and street food and letting me pick out all those books at the bookstore. You know you didn't have to do that, right?”

“Of course I know that,” Mark said. “I just like seeing you happy.” Jinyoung was pretty sure Mark also wasn't acting.

“Yeah. And since I'm happy right now, I'm not going to care about what anyone says anymore. So thank you. You don't have to worry about me. I feel perfectly fine.”

And he did, strangely. Even the pain from the he's probably paying him comment went away. He knew that didn't matter; money wasn't something important to Mark or else he'd be busy working at his parents' company instead of running errands for old ladies and filling bookshelves for Youngjae. Mark was doing this for Jinyoung, and maybe even a little bit for himself. That was what mattered. Nothing else.

“That's great,” Mark said, smiling. “Really great.”

“But it kind of stinks in here a bit, so let's pay the check. We can finish talking about what you were trying to tell me while taking a walk or something.”

Mark nodded, grabbing their bags. Jinyoung felt like he was on top of the world as he walked past his stunned classmates. He felt like he had finally done something in his life that had defined him, and he felt so fulfilled he could barely stand it.

Oh god, he thought. Please never let me come down from this moment. Let me never forget what this kind of strength feels like again.

“You are brilliant,” Mark said once they were outside. “Absolutely brilliant. Do you even need me any more?”

“Yes, yes I do.”

“I'm flattered, but I think you're in the right mindset now on your own. With that kind of attitude, people are going to want to become your friend, but just a warning, if they're anything like those s, I'd suggest turning some of them down. You don't need that in your life. Your life should be as warm and beautiful and good as y-” Mark paused all of a sudden. “Wait, Jinyoung. Are you crying? I thought you said you felt fine?”

“I do,” Jinyoung whispered through his tears. “I'm just... you don't understand, I've never gotten to feel like that before, and it just feels...I feel...”

“Jinyoung,” Mark murmured, wrapping his arms tightly around Jinyoung's back. A hug. It was a little sad, but Jinyoung was pretty sure this was the first time a friend (or whatever) had ever hugged him since his childhood. “It's OK.”

“I know, Mark, I know, it's exactly because it's OK, because it's better than OK...” He bit his lips, trying to blink back his tears. “You told me it would feel like this, this unmistakable feeling, but it's so much more than even that, it's...” Love. The word flooded into him. For the first time, I'm starting to love myself, and I love you for bringing me to this moment, I love you so much I feel like my heart will stop right this second.

Mark his back over and over again as Jinyoung cried. It felt so comforting, but not just that. It wasn't like Mark was just waiting out his tears or doing whatever needed to be done to make him feel better in the meantime. He didn't exactly feel everything Jinyoung was feeling, but he was feeling his own response to it, his own pride in what Jinyoung had become, his own sense that everything was going to be fine from now on, that what had been sleeping had now been awakened, that what had been broken had now been fixed.

When Jinyoung had stopped crying, Mark pulled away gently, looking Jinyoung in the eye and his wet face with the warm palm of his hand.

“Hey,” he said, smiling lopsidedly. “I never got to say what I wanted to say to you back there.”

“Yes?”

“It was going a bit non-poetically, don't you think? It's not like I wanted to kick this off by saying I was totally staring at your crotch or that the conflict of interest I'm worried about having is wanting to date a client while still under contract with him, because that's not romantic at all to admit, right? So please let me try this again.” He took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you again that thanks to how straightforward you've been, you've really gotten me to rethink something that's been bothering me for a long time. I think I may have finally gotten unstuck, and I'm ready for once in my life to move forward. So...Park Jinyoung?”

“Yes?”

“We have a few more meetings formally arranged in our contract, and I'd love to spend the time getting to know you a little better. But when our final meeting comes, I was wondering... would you like to try practicing going on a date with me?”