“The earlier you admit to your mistakes, the more time you would have to learn and grow from them.” 
― Edmond Mbiaka

“I wanna go to Starbucks,” Kibum declared, rolling the strawberry gum around in his mouth.

“It's too expensive for me.”

Jinki adjusted his backpack and began crossing the road.

“It's not my fault you're poor!” Kibum protested, poking himself on the chest. But his classmate didn't turn around and just kept walking, hands stuck stubbornly in pockets.

Kibum cast a last longing stare at the familiar green letters.

“They have a special offer,” he mumbled before giving up.

“It's not my fault I have to be here, either,” Jinki said when the other boy caught up with him. “Let's go here.”

Kibum's mouth twisted.

“Ediya? But it's so...”

His classmate's eyebrows flew up.

Cheap, he wanted to say, but thought better of it.

“Uh, whatever,” he grumbled out loud and pushed the door with his knuckles and an attitude.

Kibum claimed the couch by default: it was an unspoken rule that he did whatever his heart desired. Jinki unslung his backpack and set it on a chair without a word.

“Will you get me something?” Kibum yawned, pulling his phone out.

Jinki gave him a look and left with his wallet.

He did not get him anything.

“Get your stuff out,” Jinki said, pulling his chair up to the table.

“Yeah,” Kibum answered at his phone. He didn't budge. “You look dumb in those glasses.”

Jinki's round reading glasses glistened defiantly.

“Looks can be deceiving.”

Kibum shrugged.

“I am what I look like.”

He wondered how bad his test paper would really be. Maybe he didn't need that much help this time? Maybe just a few formulas that needed fixing? But Jinki's eyes, as they scanned one incompetent line after another, teacher's corrections and anguished comments galore, seemed to get wearier by the minute. By the end of it, he looked like he'd been to war.

“Are you serious?” he asked, holding a page up. Under one of the questions there was a manga-style drawing of a chubby little boy with fox ears, smiling innocently under the words ‘Sorry, I'm too cute to know things! ㅠㅠ’.

Kibum shrugged indifferently.

“I'm gonna be famous. I don't need physics.”

Jinki simply shook his head at his obnoxious self-confidence.

They were the opposite poles of their own wretched planet.

Their war was never consummated. It just hung in the air between them, like tiny particles of hostile electricity – the impossibility of them being at the same space at the same time and letting each other be. Not anymore. Neither Kibum nor Jinki were sure why exactly it had started, and each believed that the other was in the wrong. Somehow, they just brought out the worst in each other in the end.

“Did you just decide to become a boring nerd at some point or did it happen naturally?” Kibum remarked after Jinki had offered a particularly clear and effective explanation of what a displacement vector is.

He wanted to stop, but not really?

Jinki flexed his neck, no emotion written on his face.

“I really wanna know,” Kibum went on.

The brown eyes behind the huge glasses drilled him for a moment.

“You can figure out the answer from your own experience.”

Kibum laughed, his surprisingly okay Oreo cookie smoothie through a thick straw.

“I'm not a nerd, so not really.”

“Well, your social function is these days, and you must've started somewhere,” Jinki said boldly.

“Whatever, boring nerd.” Kibum tilted his head to the side.

He saw his classmate's hand ball into a fist, his knuckles becoming white. They stared at each other, the air around them beginning to glow red, and who knows what other pleasantries would have been exchanged if a disruption hadn't come their way. Kibum was a little disappointed – he might have gotten physically punished for his behavior, but he thrived on drama, too.

Jinki flinched as someone gave him a brisk hit on the back, but his face brightened when he saw who had inflicted it – it was his friend Lee Taemin.

They exchanged cheerful “hey”s and Taemin plonked on the couch next to the less than friendly Kibum, his almost landing on his bag – Kibum had snatched it away the last moment.

“I saw you through the window and thought, ‘what's hyung doing there all by himself?’” Kibum rolled his eyes. “So, what's up?”

Meanwhile, Jinki's iced chocolate was immediately extricated out of his hand, briefly examined and put to use – in sick fascination, Kibum watched as Taemin's pink lips closed around the same straw his friend had just been drinking from. Jinki laughed, his eyes softened and turned into crescents.

Kibum hated that.

“I'm breaking down the basics of physics for the royalty here,” Jinki replied, nodding in Kibum's direction as if he was a mute object, a nuisance.

Taemin groaned, still glued to that damn straw.

“You must've, like, stolen a mule in your previous life.”

“And then stolen the mule's mule.”

The two boys laughed while the third judged them.

“What a drag,” Taemin said, kicking Kibum on the knee when he changed his posture. “Let's ditch this one and go play games at mine.”

Jinki shot an amused look at said “this one” (who was not amused).

“You know I want to,” he sighed, picking up his pen to strike out a whole line on the paper Kibum had just flung at him. “But I have to do this. The teacher asked me.”

“Ah, come on.”

Taemin sprang up to walk behind Jinki's chair and began massaging his shoulders. Jinki cried out, doubling over in pain.

“Do you even know how to do this?!”

The younger boy smirked.

“My mom massages dad this way. Be still.”

Taemin's hands dug deep into his friend's shoulders, his fingers working their way toward his neck where he pressed his thumbs into the points beneath the collar of his school uniform shirt. Soon Jinki stopped writhing and visibly relaxed, his eyelids drooping on their own.

“Aaah.”

Taemin's lips stretched into a smug grin.

“Feels good, right?”

The noise of agreement that fell from Jinki's plump mouth as he nodded sounded mildly ic.

“Is that giving you a ?” Kibum asked coolly, watching them with crossed arms, as if careful not to let their weirdness rub off on his disdainful self.

“Is this giving you a ?” Taemin retorted before Kibum had even closed his mouth.

A thousand pungent things were dancing on the tip of his tongue, yet Kibum said nothing. Taemin's words were hard to predict and he looked back at him boldly, even mockingly. He was a force to be reckoned with.

When he finally left, Kibum took a shot at a much easier target.

“You and Taemin are so freaking gay for each other. Everyone says so,” he dropped matter-of-factly, scraping up the remaining Oreo pieces with his straw.

“Nobody says so, because it's not true,” Jinki argued, reviewing yet another submission from Kibum.

“He sits on your lap.”

“Everyone does that stuff.”

“Sure. If they're gay.”

Jinki raised his glasses at him.

“And what's it to you? Are you homophobic or something?”

“I just value public decency.”

Kibum checked his fingernails, and the other cracked up.

“Says the guy who flipped the PE teacher off.”

“Firstly, I did it behind his back, secondly, he was being indecent himself.”

“Didn't he just tell you to get off your phone and join the run?”

“He could've been more civil about it.”

Jinki laughed at him incredulously.

“You'll never admit you did something wrong, will you?”

Kibum bit his lip and looked away. He didn't feel like answering that.

He didn't say goodbye.

He just stuffed his papers and notes along with the helpful prints Jinki had prepared for him into a folder, shoved it inside his bag and was out of the door. The temperature difference was still strong in the evening hours and he hunched against the cool breeze as he walked to the bus stop in the dark.

“Kibum!”

He didn't turn around and didn't slow down his pace. The displeased pressing of the lips was his only reaction.

“Wait a sec!”

He wished he could just hop into his bus without ever slowing down, but the stop betrayed him by being soul-crushingly empty. The bus must have left just a moment ago.

“What? Stalker,” he grumbled, turning around.

Jinki, glasses off, had the look his mom sometimes had in those rare moments when she wasn't pleased with him. How dare he look at him the same way his mother does?

“We can't keep doing this,” he said very seriously.

“Fine, I'll ask for another tutor.”

“No, I mean the fighting. Let's just stop.”

Kibum dismissed him:

“There's no fighting. It's me being mean to you and you swallowing it down because you're so spineless.”

Jinki exhaled, looking at his shoes.

Just get angry, for Hell's sake.

“Is it because of Arisa?” he asked bluntly. “Is it because I went out with her that one time?”

Kibum had not expected that exactly, but said nothing just in case. So, his classmate continued:

“We had a good time, but we were never gonna be a thing.”

“You knew that when you said ‘yes’ though, didn't you?”

“Should I have said ‘no’ when one of the nicest girls at school approached me? Maybe it took courage, you know.”

That could have ended it, but Jinki said it like it was the obvious thing, and Kibum felt obliged to punish him.

“You shouldn't have committed if you don't like her back.”

The other boy shrugged.

“It's not like I agreed to marry her. We just watched a movie and dropped by the arcade. And I'm not going to apologize for hanging out with a girl.”

“Fine, don't apologize.”

Kibum was both too tired and irritated to keep waiting for the bus while that conversation continued, so he turned around and started walking away. Behind him, Jinki raised his eyes to the blackened skies as if asking for some strength.

“I didn't know you still liked her!” he cried out to his classmate's retreating back. He got no answer, of course.

“Kibum!”

Kibum shook his hand off his elbow when Jinki gave up and ran after him.

“She's going out with Choi Minho now and I don't care. Leave me alone.”

“Why do you hate me so much, then?”

Kibum gave a weary sigh.

“I don't hate you. That much.”

“Then what the hell is wrong with you?!”

When he still didn't stop, he was forcefully turned around and the two stared at each other. Jinki was rarely this tense, Kibum was rarely this mean. Everything was wrong about them.

“Just punch me once and we'll call it a day, okay?”

“I don't want to hit you, Kibum. I'm just trying to understand.”

“I don't hate you as much as I don't get the idea of you.”

Jinki's brow furrowed in confusion.

“What?”

“I have no idea who you really are. You could be a straight A student if you chose to, but then you get a B for some dumb thing like social studies because you wrote the right answers under wrong questions and you don't even seem to care. You're good at sports, but then you fall on your face during a marathon and let the whole team down. You're not ugly-looking, but you don't have the balls to be cute and popular either. And your jokes – yes, sometimes you say a funny thing, but then you ruin it by spewing a dozen cringe worthy ones. Can't you even feel how the whole room freezes when you do that? The thing is, you're lacking even at things you're good at, but you always manage to grab attention. You're neither here nor there, yet you are everywhere, and I don't know how to respect that.”

Somehow that unexpectedly long and extensive answer riled up one person even more and sedated the other.

Jinki's hands slid back into the pockets of his trousers where they usually stayed and, like Gandalf when he was done scolding Bilbo, he didn't seem as tall anymore.

“I never tried to be perfect, Kibum.” He explained, looking his usual mild, slightly tired self. “I just do what I can, how I can, and I'm okay with being a regular guy. You don't wanna be a regular guy, and you are not, and that's okay too. Everybody's different.”

“‘Different’ can mean a lot if things, right?” Kibum muttered, looking away.

“What it doesn't mean is ‘bad’,” Jinki insisted. The way he looked at Kibum's face, illuminated by the pale light of the street lamp, was almost concerned. Like he really wanted to reach him.

Maybe he should have stopped at that, but he took the risk and decided to push it further.

“Look, if it's that other thing...”

Kibum bristled.

“Be very careful about how you finish that sentence,” he warned with an angry tremble to his voice, pointing his finger at the other.

“…then we need to talk about it.”

“I'm serious, Jinki. I can do you some damage.”

Jinki fell quiet for a moment as a merry crowd of college students passed by them. Kibum was trembling in his uniform: he couldn't really bear cold.

“I'm not afraid of you,” Jinki replied, finally. “It's just that some things need to be discu-”

“Just let it go. I did.”

With those words Kibum sprinted back to the stop because another bus had arrived and he had changed his mind about walking. He knew he couldn't handle that talk anymore.

As the vehicle drove away, he could see Jinki's lonely figure still standing in the middle of the street, as if waiting for Kibum to come back somehow and listen to what he had to say.

Kibum sat down and shut his eyes.

Everything's wrong.

A freshly cooked dinner was waiting at home.

His mother was not angry at him for coming home late. Nor was she mad about his incompetence in the Sciences and the fact that he didn't seem motivated to do much about it. Kibum was perfect – and if not, he would get there soon enough.

At the door, he put the habitual kiss on her dimpled cheek and told her about his test fiasco.

“I don't think I was born to understand that stuff,” he sighed, removing his shoes.

But Mrs. Kim smiled and smoothed down his ruffled hair with her loving hand.

“You'll figure it out, honey. Don't worry.”

You'll figure it out. The phrase that had always given him courage and strength, that mantra he had grown up with, was somehow giving him even more anxiety now. How can he be sure that he'll figure out things that he does not understand? What if he doesn't, and if that is so, what will be the price?

She asked how Jinki was doing.

“You know. Five steps ahead, ten steps behind,” Kibum answered, pouring himself more meat broth.

Mrs. Kim laughed, knowing well enough what he meant.

“You studied at his house today?”

Kibum shook his head.

“But what did you eat?”

“We had some ramen at GS25 and went to a cafe after.”

The harsh truth hurt his mother's heart.

“That cannot be good for your health.”

“That fit into his spending limit.”

Mrs. Kim sighed, probably feeling both relieved and somewhat guilty about the fact that her son's spending limit was considerably higher. She urged him to eat more yet again and pushed the side dish plate closer to him, but Kibum was already feeling too full.

“You should just bring Jinki over next time. I'm sure your grandmother won't mind.”

“I don't… it's... It's fine.”

Kibum began loading plates into the dish-washer.

“Are you alright, son?” His mother asked with her uncanny insight.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” he lied before telling her that he would skip the tea because he was exhausted.

After a brief chat with his grandmother, Kibum finally retreated to his clean, spacious room where not a speck of dust, not a single misplaced item was present. The window was slightly open, not widely enough for it to be cold, but just as needed for the air to circulate freely. He put his bag on the floor beside his neatly organized desk and began ing his shirt. His exhausted eyes rested on the colorful postcards pinned to the corkboard, with heartwarming messages of gratitude written in clumsy Korean by the Japanese girls from his language exchange group. He liked looking at them from time to time, both to reminisce and to feel a little better about himself, but this time he wasn't even seeing them. Kibum undid his shirt half-way and stopped, dropping on the bed, suddenly drained. Then his gaze fell on the chair by the desk, and at that same second some unbearable, annoying thought must have pierced his brain, because he drew his knees up to his chin and covered his head – like a person trapped in an avalanche.

It just so happened that, in the safety of his comfortable home where he was loved and cherished, he was somehow unsafe and unloved in his own mind.

During the big break, Arisa discreetly asked Minho if he wanted to listen to the music on the roof together, and he was more than ready to jump up and follow her.

“Do you think they use tongue?” Taemin wondered, needlessly shaking a box of chocolate milk before opening it.

“I think headphones work better for those things,” Jinki joked, and they both cracked up.

“He's cool,” Taemin approved as the athletic boy passed them on the way to the stairs with his well-toned arm wrapped around his girlfriend's shoulders.

“Wow, he on a girl's face and knows how to spin a ball. That makes him so, so cool,” Kibum said sarcastically, shoving Taemin out of the way as he marched toward the trash can.

“Are you jealous?” Jinki with a little smirk.

“Why would I be jealous? He has nothing I don't have,” Kibum said quite unironically, unwrapping his banana bread.

“Maybe you're jealous of her?” Taemin suggested, his careless words somehow always coming hard like a slap.

Kibum's eyes darted from the boy to his friend, and his sharp gaze turned to suspicious and then accusatory when it rested on Jinki's face. A silent dialogue seemed to take place as the latter's eyebrows went up, there was a barely perceptible shake of the head, and the lips parted slightly in hesitation.

Jinki gulped.

“Good job at the debate today,” he managed, changing the subject altogether.

“What are you talking about? You squashed me,” Kibum countered, still fraught with suspicion.

“You still made some good points, so...”

“Leave the mocking to the masters,” Kibum's goodbye words were.

“I wasn't…” Jinki started. But the rest of his thought remained in the confines of his mind: it was useless.

“I kind of like him,” Taemin decided, his mouth full of cream cheese muffin.

But Jinki's sigh sounded like he was carrying a hundred rocks on his back.

Really. It was all useless.

Hi, everyone! Did you enjoy reading the first chapter? Please, let me know your thoughts and have a great weekend. x L