It’s been about a week now since the last incident with Jaebum and the start of your regular lunch breaks spent with Brian and his group of friends. After seeing your stupefied expressions at his previous bold public displays of affection, Brian considerably tones down. Now, he holds you close with a loose hand hanging around your waist or shoulders and eats out from your plate freely, but he no longer attempts to kiss you. Somehow, that allows you to know Brian Kang better as a person, and not simply as your fake boyfriend. When you no longer have to be on your guard around him, you have time to observe him. Most of the time, you’d describe him as annoying. He’s always repeating after the members or mimicking them. When you walk past his class, he’s not even paying attention to the lesson, having either his legs or head propped laying on top of his desk. There wasn’t a single good point about him no matter how hard you tried to search – until today.

As usual, the lunch table was in chaos today. Wonpil, Dowoon and Brian were thoroughly engrossed in a game, occasionally letting out shrieks and attracting the attention of the neighbouring tables. Jae and Esther were off at the corner again, this time debating on politics. Jae looks at Esther a little differently these days; he’s more attentive, with a slight glow in his eyes that looks suspiciously like love and admiration. You were certain that you were going to hear good news from the two soon, and you smile slightly at the thought. This leaves you and Sungjin to be lone souls at the table, until he invites you over to watch a video.

“Ya Rachel, you look bored, want to watch Brian play?”

“Am I allowed to?”

“Sure, you can. Scoot over.”

He passes you the phone, and the first five seconds of the video already has your eyeballs popping out of their sockets. Brian was about to land a shot into the hoop and it was clear the opponent attacking from behind was aiming to snatch the ball from his hands. By some mistake, the opponent hooked onto Brian’s arm before landing, the downward force of the movement causing Brian’s shoulder joint to pop from its’ socket. For a split second, you can see his arm hanging limp, with a clear hollow between his shoulder and arm. Yet, Brian merely popped his shoulder back in as he spun around, before charging forward and carrying on with the game like nothing happened. You pause the video in shock, turning to Sungjin in disbelief.

“Is the game- is he- wait I mean, is the- is the game always… this…violent…?”

“Not always, this is one of the more violent games this season but only because it’s the semi-finals.”

“Does he not…feel any pain? How can he carry on playing like that?”

“Oh, that shoulder incident just now? That’s nothing to Kang Bra. It’s happened so many times I’ve lost track of the number of times he’s popped his own shoulder back lik