Jongin leans on the wall by the entrance, waiting for Chanyeol and the rest before the movie starts. They’ve got today and tomorrow left before it’s the official start of the semester and the studying ensues. He feels a light tap on his shoulder and he turns around to see a guy he saw at the icebreaker party two days ago beaming down at him. Jongin smiles back, his hand coming up to wave enthusiastically.

“Whatcha doing here?”

“Ah, I’m catching a movie with my friends.” Jongin smiles while he explains, his brain trying so hard to recall the guy’s name. When he finally remembers, he grins wide. “Sorry, but you’re Johnny, right? The guy from the US?”

“That’s right! You remembered!” Johnny laughs, giving him a friendly pat on his shoulders once.

“Of course I did! You’re one of the taller guys within the cohort. And I noticed you’re quite good at drinking.” Jongin compliments him, gets the guy to drop his guard and treat him as a close friend. It may not look like it at first glance, but Jongin could tell that Johnny would be one of those guys people would really love to be around with. He’s got a mind of his own, an aura that pulls people to him and if people like Johnny, people would like his friends too. Thus, Jongin doesn’t want to get on his bad side.

“Are you kidding me? I’m not that good!” Johnny smiles wide. “But if you want to, we could go get a round of drinks soon.”

“Yeah, we should!” Jongin exclaims happily. He likes being included in anything.

“My baby!” Jongin’s head whips around in surprise as Jongdae’s voice booms across the whole place. Next to Jongdae was a frowning Baekhyun, furiously typing on his phone. For a second there, Jongin was worried Baekhyun would be in a bad mood but the latter looks up as the both of them approach Jongin with a huge, radiant smile. Jongin grins happily.

“You guys made it! Finally!” Jongin sags due to the weight of Baekhyun resting his elbow on his shoulder. “Where’s Chanyeol?”

“ said he would be late. He told us to take our seats first,” Baekhyun explains. “Why? You awkward without him?”

“Nah, I’m fine.” Jongin rolls his eyes. “Just asking, that’s all.”

Jongin turns to Jongdae who had his eyes on his phone, a blank expression occupying his face, and Jongin raises his brows. Seeing this, Baekhyun reaches his other hand out and snaps his fingers right in front of Jongdae’s eyes. The latter snaps out of his concentration on whatever he was watching and glares hard at his friend. Jongin can’t help but to laugh hard.

“Well, who’s this?” Jongdae’s eyes land on Johnny. “Did you invite a friend?”

“Oh, no, no! I bumped into him so I said hi. I’m just waiting for my friend too.” Johnny takes a step back, just to emphasise on not being there with Jongin. “Sorry if I kind of invaded something here.”

“No, it’s okay!” Baekhyun grins adorably. Jongin coos internally. “Which department are you from?”

“I’m in Linguistics, like Jongin here. You guys?”

“I’m in Psychology,” Jongdae says briefly and tops it off with a smug nod.

“I’m working to become an Orthopedist.” Baekhyun shifts onto another leg, leaning his chin on Jongin’s right shoulder while his left hand drapes over Jongin’s left shoulder. “You know, the bones and .”

“Nice, I’ll know who to go to when I break a bone.” Johnny laughs along with Baekhyun, then adds, “or breakdown,” as he turns to Jongdae.

The four of them chat a little more for a while before Johnny leaves with his friend who had one of the most gorgeous face Jongin’s ever seen. Jaehyun was his name. He catches sight of Baekhyun staring at the two a little longer before following after Jongdae and Jongin who walked into the theaters first. Jongin’s shoulders brush against Jongdae’s and apparently the latter found it annoying so he pulled Jongin’s arms up and wraps it around his shoulders himself. Jongin stares at him with a confused expression, hoping to receive an answer to his weird behaviour but Jongdae only laughs.

Once in the theater, Jongdae goes in first to sit at the end, and then Baekhyun follows right after. Jongin sits next and the last seat on his right is saved for Chanyeol. The ads on the screen were playing at a high volume, but Baekhyun’s laughter was way louder than that as he joked around with Jongdae who was laughing equally as loud. Jongin would laugh every now and then whenever Baekhyun tells a joke but most of his attention goes to his phone. He gets a text from his Mom, asking him if he was doing okay, another text from Judi asking him if he was free tonight and a few missed calls from his best friend. Jongin dials his best friend’s number back.

He presses the phone to his ear and waits a couple of seconds. The ads have stopped, the lights have gone out and Baekhyun has started to speak a little softer. Jongin knows the movie is starting soon enough so he was about to just hang up but his best friend answers then.

“Oh, Taemin. Why’d you call?” Jongin leans a little to the left in his seat, his shoulder grazing Baekhyun’s.

“There’s a party tomorrow. You want to come?”

“, Babe, I don’t know if I should. I haven’t gone to a party for a long time now.” Jongin pouts. “Plus, it’s easy for you to go out all the time. You got more friends.”

“Yeah, I get it, I get it. I’m a bad influence who has nothing else to do except partying. And you’re a successful university student majoring in Linguistics, contributing to the future of the society. You’re important, I’m not.” Jongin almost laughs at the way Taemin sighs after his pity speech.

“Shut up. If I could I would trade lives with you and you know that.” Jongin startles at the start of another ad on the big screen. He raises his voice, “Anyways, I’ll text you later or tomorrow if I’m coming or not. The movie is starting soon.”

“Alright then. Bye, Babe.” Taemin smacks his lips on the other end of the line to mimic kissing sounds. Jongin laughs.

“Mmm… bye, Baby.” Jongin kisses the air too, and then finally hangs up.

The movie starts a few seconds after that, so Jongin settles down and gets himself comfortable in his seat. About a few minutes into the movie, he catches sight of Chanyeol squeezing his way down the row to get to his seat next to Jongin. Once he finally plops on his seat, he sends a grin to his friends and quietly starts to watch the movie. Jongin was about to turn his attention back to the movie but saw Baekhyun snuggling into Jongdae’s side in the corner of his eye. He smiles to himself, and then he turns back to watch the movie.

Jongin quickly learns that while Jongdae and Baekhyun could be the noisiest in the group if they wanted to, Chanyeol would still be the most talkative. Throughout the rest of the movie since his arrival, Chanyeol asked too many questions, said too many words and definitely disrupted Jongin’s concentration way too many times. When the credit scenes rolled down and everyone was getting up, stretching their backs while commenting on how good the movie was, Jongin turns to Baekhyun and asks if Chanyeol could ever shut up.

Hearing this, the three friends laugh together. Chanyeol drapes an arm around Jongin’s shoulders and pats him on the chest with his other hand. He says with a cheeky grin, “that’s one of the perks of being my friend.”

Jongin rolls his eyes, but he still grins because he finds it humorous. They fall into a conversation about food next, deciding where to go to fill their stomachs. Jongdae decides to eat at a famous noodle house and both Baekhyun and Chanyeol follows along without any protests so Jongin does too. He feels a little weirded out. Usually, whenever he goes out to eat with his group of friends, they would take a long time to choose. First, they’d choose someone to pick and that by itself would take a really long time. Then they would take almost an hour to agree with a place to eat. But his new friends were so easy to decide.

Even though he chose it, Jongdae was the one following after Chanyeol and Baekhyun who were playing around with each other. He was at the back on his phone the whole time. Jongin falls back a little to match Jongdae’s pace and when he did, Jongdae gives him a look; a look that gave Jongin a visualisation of the question mark. Jongin smiles.

“I’ve been noticing something,” Jongin mumbles.

Jongdae hums, his eyes scanning through his phone for a second more before he pockets it out of respect to Jongin who wants to speak to him. Jongin smiles a little wider at that thought.

“And what is that?” Jongdae tilts his head to the side a little. Jongin coos internally at how adorable the sight was.

He clears his throat when he feels his ears heating up, like it was blushing when Jongdae stares at him a little longer than what he’s used to.

“That you’re, uh, always at the back. Like you’re not that close to them.” Jongin shrugs. “It’s just weird.”

Jongdae chuckles under his breath. He links his right arm around Jongin’s left arm and he leans into the latter’s side as they walk. Jongdae looks up at Jongin and smiles.

“You worried about me?”

“Kinda,” Jongin simply says.

“That’s cute.” Jongdae sighs. “I’m actually the closest to both of them. But between you and I, I feel more connected to Baekhyun. I met Chanyeol first, though. Back in middle school, Chanyeol was bullied because his family wasn’t as well-off as the rest and I was the only one who talked to him. I was kind of in the middle of this whole popularity level thing, you know? I was cool enough to hang out with the really cool kids, but I was also lame enough to be able to mingle with those who weren’t exactly liked by many people. When I helped Yeol, my popular friends, the ones who liked to laugh at him stopped. They respected me. To be able to hang out with them I had to have one thing good about me so I chose to have a good personality. That’s why they couldn’t just ignore my actions. I was aware that they talked behind my back but I brazened myself and still talked to Yeol.”

Surprise was an understatement for Jongin. The thought of Chanyeol going through all those bullies sat a little funny in Jongin’s imagination. And the thought of anyone helping… Jongin couldn’t think of it.

“Well, what about Baekhyun?”

“Baekhyun was just generally a quiet kid. He was always by himself everywhere. You could guess what happened; I talked to him, became his friend and we were inseparable ever since.” Hearing Jongdae talk, it makes Jongin feel appreciated, even though he wasn’t in any of his stories. Jongin could see that Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae, all three, grew up well, and they matured well, and they were nice people. They seem understanding too.

Jongin sits next to Baekhyun in the restaurant, with Chanyeol sitting across from him. Jongin takes the longest time to order his food, partly because he wants to try them all, partly because he’s just a really indecisive person, and partly because he keeps on seeing familiar faces inside the restaurant, outside the restaurant and he just hopes none of them comes up to him to greet him. Baekhyun jokingly glares at him when he changes his mind for the fifth time about his menu and he lets out a little squeak at the back of his throat as a response. He finally settles on what Chanyeol ordered, and he pushes the menu away with a pout so as to not reach for it and change his mind again. While they wait for their food, the four of them engage in a very loud debate on how to pronounce “library”. Both Chanyeol and Jongin share an incredulous look, hating the fact that their friends actually don’t know how to pronounce the word.

Before Jongin could