Kai opened his eyes. It was another day. Another day he wasn't ready for. His body felt heavy and the day seemed endless and insurmountable. He didn't want to leave his bed. He wanted to live under the soft, warm covers forever, and let them shield him from all the bad things in life.

His phone beeped. It was probably Taemin again. Kai had skipped two days of rehearsals, which on a normal day would be cause enough for the teacher to make him walk the plank, but his sin was much greater than that, since the most important performance of his entire dance career was looming ahead. He couldn't afford to miss practice, and it wasn't like him either. He was treading a thin rope that had almost reached its end, he was facing expulsion and the worst part was that he wasn't sure he cared.

Usually, no matter what was going on in his life, happy or sad, worried or carefree, ballet was the constant that gave his life meaning. He expressed his emotions through dance, and once he was on the dance floor, petty real life problems seemed small and inconsequential. But not this time. Suho had fundamentally changed something inside him. And that something was broken. And he didn't know how to fix it.

He thought he could just continue as he had been doing, since he had been living the gray, tasteless life of heartbreak for a while now. He had gotten used to it. But this time was different. Apparently, before, he had had a glimmer of hope that Suho might return after however long it took him to come to terms with being in love with a guy. But now, after Suho had actually come back as he had predicted, and tried to accept him, failing horribly, the last sliver of hope had been swept away by the wind.

Now Kai had nothing.

Kai got up with difficulty. As a ballet dancer, his body was more limber and graceful than most bodies, but today it was a cold, hard rock. An uncooperative stone whose objective was not to move. For two days he had given in to its wishes, but no more. Today he was going to get up, no matter how hard it was, and he was going to get dressed and go to that rehearsal, if it was the last thing he did.

He checked his phone. Taemin had indeed sent him about a million messages, but those weren't the ones that caught his attention. Like a rusty machine that hadn't been used in years, his heart started beating again.

He had a message from Suho.

***

Taemin sent Kai a message, trying everything he could think of to get him out of bed. His heart couldn't take much more of seeing Kai self-destruct like this. Couldn't Suho just have stayed on that vacation forever. His coming back had done nothing good. But at least Suho had been a man of his word where the part time internship was concerned. He had honored that promise before he disappeared, even though he hadn't honored his promise to love Kai forever, no matter what.

And Taemin had ruled that internship. Two weeks and he was already a pro.

He stormed into the conference room, having been entrusted with the most important task of all. The fate of the remainder of the entire day for everyone in that conference room rested on his shoulders.

“Coffee!” he announced as he burst inside with a dozen to-go cups of hot coffee.

He skillfully distributed each personalized coffee order to its owner, serving Jinki's coffee with a side of sassy, sending him a sneaky wink.

“Cappuccino! Americano! Plain black! Frappuccino! Latte Macchiato! And last, but not least, espresso!”. As if doing a ballet routine, he elegantly circled the big table in the middle of the room, carefully but stylishly planting each coffee cup in front of its rightful owner.

He had mastered the art that was interning, but he still hadn't made much headway with Jinki. Jinki was usually very bright and nice to him, and they definitely had a spark going on, there was no denying it, and there was no way Jinki didn't feel it too, but it was like there was some invisible wall between them. Taemin was determined to demolish that wall, with whatever means necessary.

There was a moment of awkward silence after he delivered the last coffee cup, and then everyone giggled and started exchanging cups.

Oh well, almost had it.

***

'Sorry I left so abruptly, that was crappy of me'

Kai had read it a thousand times, and had already written a million replies, erasing every single one of them without sending them. There was so much he wanted to say, but he was afraid of scaring Suho off again.

He decided to think on it a little longer, it was time for Suho to do a little suffering, like he had been doing for the past weeks. Or he hoped Suho would suffer at least a little bit, since that meant he cared. Mostly, Kai just needed time to confer with Taemin, and get his opinion on how he should reply. Taemin was way better at this push and pull type of thing than him, Kai was too simple for such a complicated relationship. If he disliked someone, he avoided them and if he loved someone, he loved them with all his heart. And usually, there wasn't much space in the middle for any namby-pamby half-hearted feelings. Either you were on his bad side or on his good side. He didn't do gray very well.

Kai bounced to school, feeling like he had been injected with a shot of helium, hovering over the ground, gravity having a harder time than usual keeping him attached to the planet. Suho had returned the ghost of vague hope to him, and it made him feel alive again.

“Taemin-ah!! You've got to help me!!” he pushed through the crowd of students to get to Taemin.

Kai locked himself in the bathroom. He had five minutes until he had to return to class. Taemin had refused to write the text message, saying it was important that he wrote something himself. He had given him a task though. Kai was supposed to write the first thing that came to his mind and he was forbidden from erasing it. Taemin said that after building their whole relationship on lies, it was time to be completely honest. That was the only way they could go forward.

“Here it goes...” Kai whispered to himself and took a deep breath, his fingers typing away.

'No. I'm sorry.'

'I promised we could take it slower than a sloth.. but then I pushed it...'

Kai pressed send and ran back to class, vowing not to look at his phone until the end of the school day.

He lasted an hour.

With his heart sprinting in circles inside his chest, he held his breath as he checked his phone. He had one new message. From Suho.

'Don't take the ring off'

Kai stared at those five little words. His brain was frozen. There was no further explanation, just those five words, which could be interpreted in a hundred different ways. But the ring symbolized their relationship, and if Suho was asking him not to take it off, it was the same as him not giving up on them, right?

He knew he was supposed to be patient and let things develop in their own time, but he couldn't stand the uncertainty.

'What does that mean?'

He stared at his phone, waiting for a reply.

He skipped lunch to stare at his phone, as if that would make the reply come sooner. But then it finally came.

'I don't know.. but that's as much as I can give you right now...'

It was a no-brainer. Kai sent a reply right away.

'I'll take it! :)'