“I never thought Psychology would be so…”

“Difficult?” Baekhyun shoots out his guess.

“Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy?” Chanyeol looks up from his computer, his eyes wide open the size of saucers.

Jongdae gives him an exasperated look. “No, time-consuming. You’re a Linguistics major but you have such a limited vocabulary.”

“It’s true.” Jongin calls out from the kitchen. Romeo circles around his feet, before the huge mammal sits on Jongin’s left foot. Jongin spoons for some more of his dog food at the bottom of the can. “His vocabulary is . He didn’t know what was condescending.”

“Hey, in my defense, Linguistics isn’t about how great your vocabulary is. It’s about how good you are at communicating and also about the science behind language.” Chanyeol speaks, and Jongin knows he still has his face buried in his computer screen.

Jongin cracks an egg, raw and gooey, into Romeo’s bowl, scatters some berries and mixes some more ingredients that helps with his dog’s health. He hears Baekhyun telling him how one would expect good language skills before good understanding of it. Chanyeol retorts with a whine, and Jongin tunes them out as he lays the dog bowl on the floor by his feet. Jongin watches Romeo eat, pets his dog while he eats.

“Jongin, you have a guest,” Chanyeol shouts from the living room.

Jongin pads down the house, basically running into the living room once he hears a familiar voice greeting his three friends. “Taem?”

“Baby! I knew you’d be home.” Taemin practically throws himself into Jongin’s arms, hugging the lights out of the taller one. Jongin chuckles, wrapping his arms equally as tight around Taemin. “Ugh, I missed you.”

“Ew, don’t be so cheesy.” Jongin pushes him off gently, looking around at a very dumbfounded Chanyeol, a curious Jongdae and an awestruck Baekhyun. Awestruck?

“So, who’s this?” Baekhyun asked, his smile a little different than his usual goofy smiles.

“This is my best friend, Taemin.” Jongin smiles down at Taemin who was locked around his right arm. “Babe, this is Chanyeol, Jongdae and Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun stretches his arm out, asking for a handshake. Taemin takes it with a small smile, shaking Baekhyun’s hand. It lasts for about 3 seconds but Jongin could see the milliseconds of lingering. Baekhyun smiles a little longer at Taemin before he looks away. Chanyeol waves while he smiles and Jongdae grins at Taemin.

“Why are you here?” Jongin asks Taemin.

“I think I left my wallet here the last time I was here.” Taemin grins. “I had to call our friends to give me rides to everywhere. In fact, Moonkyu’s in the car right now, waiting for me.” His dog barks.

“Really? I haven’t seen him for a long time!” Jongin gets excited, and he hears his dog bark loudly, and equally as excited as him. Jongin laughs. “Alright, boy, I’ll bring you out to meet Moonkyu, okay?”

His dog loves Moonkyu. Taemin and Jongin has been friends since he was aged 5 but the former moved to the city just after elementary school. Jongin contacted him from time to time but they were never really in touch. When he ended High School, Jongin and Taemin reconnected when Jongin spent about half a year in the city trying to see which schools were good for him. He lived with Taemin and that’s when he started befriending everyone else. Taemin has created himself quite a reputation with the people, never specifically joining anyone of them on the streets but just lingering here and there. It could be an advantage but it could be a disadvantage. Taemin’s protected. If one threatens him, he has others who could protect him. Taemin has resources from everywhere. Being Taemin’s friend, once Jongin’s been introduced to every one of them, he gets the same treatment as Taemin does.

He meets Moonkyu the same year he started living with Taemin, and Moonkyu gifted him with a little puppy when he goes back to his parents’ home after six months. Moonkyu and him clicked better than he does with Taemin, and his dog does too. Jongin has a special liking towards Moonkyu because of how understanding he can be. The only problem was if there was anyone more daring and dauntless than Taemin, it would be Moonkyu. Moonkyu was fierce and he liked throwing himself into the center of problems, he liked daring people for fights. He was just really aggressive. But he looked like the nicer one out of them all. It was weird, but that was Moonkyu for you.

Jongin asks his three friends to wait a while for him as he goes out to meet Moonkyu. He puts Romeo on a leash and waits as Taemin goes into his room to retrieve his wallet. As they shuffle out the door, Baekhyun sends another smile to Taemin. Jongin tries to hide his amused smile as he hustles Taemin out of the door. Once the door swings shut and the darkness of the night greets them, Jongin slings an arm around Taemin.

“What was that about?” Jongin asks.

“What was what?” Taemin feigns innocence.

“Back there with Baekhyun.” Jongin grins.

“What are you talking about?” Taemin feigns innocence even further.

“Don’t bull.” Jongin laughs. “I know I saw something.”

Taemin ignores him for that, choosing to remain silent for the rest of the walk to Moonkyu’s car. Jongin doesn’t probe any further. He wouldn’t accept any bull, but he’ll accept a silence of denial. Romeo barks once they get close to Moonkyu's car.

“Hush, boy, people are sleeping!”

Moonkyu sees them from afar so he opens his car door and steps out. Jongin lets go of Romeo’s leash and shortens it before clipping the remaining length to the top of Romeo’s collar. He lets go of Romeo and watches as his dog runs up to Moonkyu excitedly.

“Hey, boy! You missed me?” Moonkyu crouches down on one knee and pets Romeo, ruffling his golden fur adoringly.

Taemin jumps up on the front of the car, on the hood, and he casually sits as if it’s his car. Moonkyu glares at Taemin and he glares even harder at Jongin when he jumps up next to Taemin on the car. With their legs dangling off the end, Moonkyu playfully tugs on them until Jongin’s shrieking in fear of falling while he clutches onto Taemin who’s shrieking himself. Moonkyu laughs, doubling over when Jongin starts hitting his head against the surface of the car while threatening Moonkyu, saying that he’ll bash his own head in and get blood on the car. Once they settle into a calmer setting, Moonkyu gestures to Romeo and asks if he’s doing okay.

“Of course he is.” Jongin squats down to his dog’s eye level, scratching him behind his ears right where he knows Romeo likes being scratched. “He was a little sad when we had to move but it only took about 2 days of running around with him, playing with him and unpacking with him for him to get used to the house and the area.”

“Is that so, Romeo?” Moonkyu squats down too, and Romeo skips to him. “You’re such a good boy.”

“Thanks, I know,” Taemin choruses after Moonkyu’s compliment.

“You—” Jongin smacks the side of Taemin’s thigh. “—are far from good, you Demon!”

“Hey! If I’m a Demon, what’s Moonkyu?” Taemin whines.

“Easy. He’s the Devil itself.” Jongin turns back to look at Moonkyu who was posing, framing his face on his palms, and he pushes Moonkyu, making the guy lose his balance. Moonkyu laughs as he falls on his . “You guys are so annoying.”

The three of them spend a few minutes chatting together while they smoke about two sticks of cigarettes, then Jongin heads back in with a very reluctant Romeo. Jongin has to drag Romeo back home while Moonkyu drives off with Taemin down the road. Once Moonkyu’s long gone, Romeo starts whimpering.

“Oh, don’t cry, you big baby!” Jongin picks Romeo up, carries his big dog in his arms before walking back home a little faster. “Let’s go home, alright? I still have a lot of homework to do.”

His three friends greet him once he stumbles into the doorway with his giant pet, almost tripping over Romeo who decided to run ahead first. Jongin shakes his head before he tosses Romeo’s leash on the kitchen counter. He heads to the couch and free falls on Baekhyun who laid on his stomach across the whole couch. Baekhyun groans upon the impact, coughing as he tries to push Jongin off. Chanyeol giggles, his face still stuck on his computer screen.

“That’s enough, Baekhyun, I have homework.” Jongin pushes himself off Baekhyun.

“You’re the one who literally jumped on me.”

“Yeah, Jongin, don’t be such a .” Jongdae throws himself down on a beanbag chair and groans when Jongin slaps his arm while he passes by to get to his room. Chanyeol giggles again.

“We have 4 hours left to the deadline, Yeol, let’s do this!” Jongin grins and pulls his own laptop out, starting it up so he could work on his assignment.

“Man, you’re just starting? I’m like halfway there,” Chanyeol nags.

“You took 5 hours for half of that? What?” Jongin frowns. “You’re so slow. Watch me finish this in 3 hours and 59 minutes.”

“Well, hey, in my defense, y’all were so distracting,” Chanyeol whines. “It’s not like I didn’t want to finish this earlier. I just have a really horrible attention span.”

“Whatever you say.” Jongin smirks. Chanyeol glares but says nothing more.

Before they know it, the four of them fall into a comfortable silence, too distracted by their own work. Jongin notices it but says nothing. It was one of the rare moments he could feel alone without being lonely.

         Chanyeol’s head heavily falls on Jongin’s shoulder, his eyes drooping close. He doesn’t even realise that he’s practically hugging the side of Jongin’s body like he was some pillow. Chanyeol really was too tired. Jongin almost laughs but he quickly realises that it would wake up Chanyeol up. So he decides to pay attention to class instead. Halfway through the lesson, when Chanyeol finally blearily woke up, only to fall asleep again on the table with his head buried in his folded arms, a new student none of them have seen before comes in.

Mr. Kim stops talking, his sentence cut short. He stares at the new student expectantly, hoping to hear an explanation or some sort of greeting. The whole class stares at the new guy, and were caught by surprise when he suddenly bows.

“My name is Wong Yukhei,” he spoke with an accent and Jongin questions what it is, receiving an answer almost immediately when Yukhei continues talking, “I’m from Hong Kong. Just arrived late last night. Uh, sorry ‘cause I was late. Yeah. Please take care of me.”

Something about Yukhei seemed a little too familiar for Jongin so when the guy was about to walk off to a seat at the front row, Jongin calls his name out, “Yukhei.”

The man freezes, looks around to search for the person who called him and when he meets eyes with Jongin, he lights up like fireworks in the night sky.

“Kim Jongin!” Yukhei almost trips in his haste attempt to get to Jongin, but he couldn’t because there were other students in the way.

Because of Yukhei’s loud voice, Chanyeol startles awake and quietly groans. He looks to his left and sees Yukhei standing there almost awkwardly so he shifts in a little to make space for him to sit. Yukhei gladly accepts it, greeting Chanyeol in a softer voice before turning to Jongin with a grin of his own.

“It’s me, Lucas! Minho’s cousin!” His voice is soft, but loud enough for the nearby students to hear him. Jongin wants him to stop, he hates mentioning Blue. “We met last year!”

“Yeah, I remember.” Jongin smiles. “The Halloween party, right?”

“Yeah!”

“Mr. Wong, you may be new but that does not mean I won’t send you out of the class.” Mr. Kim sends a glare