Mina caught Chanyeol sitting in front of her apartment when she returned from seeing Minseok, and at first, she was taken aback at seeing him gathering his long and messy legs around his body, his arms wrapped around them to lock them in their place. Then, when she registered his presence, she sighed and continued her way to the door. Chanyeol instantly snapped his head upward to meet her eyes with his wide puppy ones, an apology glinting so clearly in the brilliant brown of his iris. 

She inserted her keys into the door’s keyhole, sighing again and wholeheartedly ignoring him. In a panic, he jumped to his long leg’s full height and waited beside her till she got inside of her apartment. Seeing that she wasn’t going to stop, he called her with a whimper.

“Mina, I—“

“Do you wanna come in?” She simply said, turning around in her apartment to give him a blank look and holding the door for him to enter. Hurriedly, he scrambled inside, dragging his long legs and bending down a little so he wouldn’t end up smacking the door frame. Tall people had that disadvantage, that’s why the doors at his apartment are built big for his special case.

She closed the door behind her, threw the keys in the fish bowl on the table right beside them, and then wandered inside to dispose of her coat— Chanyeol so awkwardly standing at the door, fiddling his large, calloused fingers nervously.

“Um, I—“

“Wanna a beer?” She called back as she walked toward the mini-kitchen, opening her fridge and taking out two bottles of beers. She gave him her back and she didn’t turn around to acquaint herself with his pleading eyes.

“Eh, no?” He answered nervously.

“I think it’d be better if you had one.”

She threw him one anyway, and he caught it messily, gasping at the unexpected throw. She went inside once again and dropped herself lazily on the couch Sehun always liked to possess with his tall self. Mina rarely had any time for herself to occupy it, unless she was drunk and had to lie down (then Sehun at least had the decency to give it away). 

Mina noticed the awkward potato standing beside her and so she began patting the seat beside her, looking at him. “Sit. Here on the couch, sit down.”

He did as he was told slowly, leaving a big space between them, knowing that calm and quiet Mina meant only angry Mina, or sad Mina, or sometimes both. He didn’t want to poke at her winds. He sat silently for a bit, eyeing his beer, the couch, the apartment, and then her as she drank her own beer with a big sip, clicking his fingers on his own cold bottle patiently. It was only when she finished her bottle and smacked it down loudly on the table across her, did he finally open his mouth. 

“Are you...” — Only to be interrupted.

“Angry, at you? Yes I am.”

He gulped, realizing with a purging intensity that he was pretty simply, ed. Not because she told him she was angry, but because he knew she truly was. Now he realized her teetering calmness as a sign of her massively welting anger, and that was never a good thing, not in Mina. She wasn’t a person who rarely blew things by anger. She had tons of anger episodes, especially a few years ago when she was still indulged with her stupidly abusive past. These anger issues of hers dwindled a lot recently, but they didn’t completely disappear.

And now he ed things up for them, for him, for her, and he was going to get his bitten really ing soon. 

He stayed silent for so long, limbs frozen and lips closed shut like a pussycat. He was a scaredy like that. Unlike his werewolf friends, he was gentle. He was soft. He was tender in a sense (except when he was angry himself— which made him blurt incredibly moronic ) so he didn’t know how to deal with anger, particularly Mina’s anger. He sat in his place like a statue, a fiddling in nerves one. 

Mina had enough of his silence, so she went ahead and got herself another beer from the fridge, falling back down on her couch with a huff.

“Aren’t you going to say what you’re here to say?” She raised her eyebrows at the boy, so big and tall yet, equally as awkward. It was a little bit adorable, but she didn’t let herself swoon by it. For now, she was pissed at him, and like that she’d remain. Chanyeol cleared his throat, the condensation of the now cool bottle of beer dripping in his palms.

“You’re oddly... calm about it.”

“Trust me,” Mina snorted, not unattractively, and in Chanyeol’s eyes, he clearly saw her fists tightening around the beer, eyes unkind and narrow. “I’m not genuinely calm. I’m just trying to soothe myself and give you an opportunity to explain yourself before going all Godzilla on you.”

Right. A chance to correct himself, she claimed. Even she could catch the lie beneath it. Well, not entirely a lie, but she was also doing this — staying calm and such — so she didn’t end up blowing things out of proportion. Mina knew and was pretty educated about her anger, she had blown such anger on enough people to last her into her second life. She didn’t wish to do the same for Chanyeol too. A part of her, for real, wasn’t just angry. A part of her was genuinely sad, heartbroken in a sense by his choices of words, and that side of hers softened her a lot. 

“I don’t deserve it.” Chanyeol quietly murmured in response.

“I know,” she sighed deeply, taking a sip from her cold beer. The taste burned her tongue. “But I do. I deserve to be given a nice apology with a nice explanation I can accept without fights or disagreements, don’t you think?”

Chanyeol, throughout the ten minutes he was here in her apartment, noticed that not even once did she smile at him. And what to smile at, or for, really? His presence obviously wasn’t something caressing a smile out from her, certainly not when she was angry with him. And he deserved it rightfully, his mind told him. This logical realization doesn’t help his fragile heart from breaking, though, and at this situation, plus her words, his eyes quickly brimmed with tears.

“I’m... I’m sorry.”

Mina was instantly alarmed, but she fixed herself with a logical explanation that for now, he didn’t deserve any shred of her sympathy, not when he said what he did, not when he had been cruel with her, so she swallowed her attempt to help him, but she didn’t turn her eyes away from him, watching as massive waves of tears trickled out of his eyelids, cascading down his rosy cheeks to his chin. God, Chanyeol, her mind supplemented, why do you do this all the time, you crybaby. 

She took a large sip of her beer to temper with her arisen gulp, softening it away. 

“I didn’t... I don’t know why I said what I did... “ Chanyeol tried to say, gasping and crying, his voice so low-pitched — more than normal — and shaky, tired too, just simply withdrawn. Her heart broke and he took a deep, steady breath in.

“I just said those horrible, horrible words without consideration, without thinking even for a slight minute what kind of impact they’ll have over you. I was selfish, I thought only about my own feelings, my own hurt, and disregarded you as a friend coming over for my own sake. What I said... — what I said, I didn’t mean any of it.”

She thought about not replying, leaving him hanging. But a part of her, the part that was sad, was insecure and ponderous. She had a question to ask, the question’s existence she had been ignoring and swallowing down ever since she had been presented with it, and she found herself speaking of it in front of its owner, the guy who elicited such inquiry from her.

“Am I really a cause of misery in your life?” She asked quietly, her voice nothing above a whisper and her eyes, upon closer inspection, looked sad, soulless in a sense, and lacked Mina’s usual fire. 

“No!” Chanyeol bellowed right away, eyes going extremely wide. He began waving his hands around excessively. “Absolutely not! No you’re not. You’re my best friend and the only person who will ever  understand me and love me for who I am and not for what I could become,” Chanyeol paused to take a deep, deep inhale, tears still falling.

“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, you and the boys, and you’ll never, ever become a source of misery. I don’t know what the heck possessed me to say those words, I have one awful anger and I blamed you, I blamed you when you didn’t deserve it. I was so influenced by that, and by her words that I saw you as the reason for everything that happened, when you’re not. It was all our fault, Yoomi and I, you were only caught in the crossfire and I dragged you further into it. You’re never a bad figure in my life, or the boys’. You’re never a cause of misery, never, you’re our joy, our whole lives literally circle around you.”

“Why did you say it then?” Mina hated how weak and minuscule her voice went. She almost forgot she had feelings as well. She was so used to pretending to be a stone, she forgot she wasn’t really one. “Do you know how much they hurt me?”

He climbed himself entirely on the couch and then he crawled closer to her so that he could reach over properly to take her hands, putting the warm beer he was holding away on the table.

“I know, I know, , I’m one of the biggest ing idiots, do you know that?” You know Chanyeol’s serious when he curses multiple times. “I should never have said anything like that, not to you, not to you Mina. I said that because I’m a coward, a stupid tard, come, slap me how many times you want, just please don’t believe in those words.”

Mina didn’t move an inch, she didn’t even crawl closer to him or hold his hands back. She, instead, broke their hands apart so she could dap her fingers under her eyes, checking if any tear of her suppressed water-play managed to break away and escape. Unfortunately for her, one tear fell down before she could catch it, and when she wiped it away quickly, Chanyeol had already caught it.

“, , I’m an ,” He squealed in panic. It was amusing seeing such a large boy squeal in panic like a girl, voice turning high-pitched. “Please don’t cry, please don’t cry,” he repeated, then he spread his arms around her. “Come here, let me hold you, please.” 

She rolled her eyes, going no where closer to him and crossing her arms over her chest. “Hold your own ing self, Park Chanyeol, your tears are way past your chin.”

True, he was still crying, ugly sheer water falling off of his eye-bridges, passing his fluffy round cheeks and chin, soaking the hem of his collar. He looked so adorable. He wiped his tears with the back of his hand messily and quickly, sniffling cutely, but still, more tears kept on gushing out.

“Can I know what happened without profanities now?” She asked, seeing as the water break wasn’t about to stop. She curled around herself and wrapped her arms around her legs, leaning against the end of the couch.

It was his time to roll his eyes, but he was still crying like a baby, which made all this consoling session funny. Mina didn’t point that out, or that his tears were a part of what made her soft. 

“Well, Yoomi appeared to be a whole lot more mature than I thought. She broke up with me.”

Well, Mina thought, what was so mature about breaking up with someone you loved? Mina didn’t understand, and so a snort came out of her nose rather loudly. 

“What? More mature than you thought?”

“Is this the only sentence you interpreted?” Chanyeol gave her a look through his veil of tears. 

She ignored him. “How mature did you think of her before? Like, more mature than Suho? Or, Yixing? Or... or, Minseok?”

He rolled his eyes again. “I don’t have to think of her as mature like someone else, she was just more mature, but as herself. She was already understanding more than usual people, she understood me, and I genuinely considered telling her about my true self, that I’m a werewolf. She was the awful nice kind of people, not just plain nice, like, so freaking nice, and she never judged anyone, like, never—“

“Okay, woah,” Mina broke her arms off from around her legs to wave her hands in front of his face, blinking her wide eyes. “Can we stop complimenting the that broke up with you? I don’t want to hurt her more than I already do.”

“See?” Chanyeol gave her a blank look, but his lips were slightly curling upward in a smile. “She was much less judgy than you.”

“I thought we weren’t comparing people.” She flatly replied. 

“Right,” Chanyeol paused. “Anyway, she was just different than the usual girlfriends I have had. She wasn’t even jealous of my relationship with you. I didn’t think she’d even have any reasonable, well, reasons to break up with me, but I understand why she did it.”

“That’s why you’re crying?” Her voice came out surprisingly soft, less edgy and gentle, in spite of the scowl on her face with the disbelieving words Chanyeol had for her. She couldn’t believe him, or his words. The Yoomi she had in her head was a whole lot different than the Yoomi he was d