Soon, they went to see The Lion King with the class. In the past, he and Taeyeon had taken such trips as an opportunity to arrive on time, show their faces to the teacher, and then quietly sneak out at a convenient moment to loiter about in the city and do whatever they wanted, which almost always involved sipping smoothies out of big straws.

To pull something like that with Jinki would be as fun as it was impossible: any hope for extravagant rebellion that Kibum might have was squashed early on when he overheard Jinki raving on about the cartoon to someone. He knew from then on that he would have to sit through all of it.

Because of the mandatory uniform, Arisa and the other girls mostly expressed themselves with the help of  their accessories, hair and a light makeup – as much as the school policies allowed. On the movie day, she arrived with her hair loose, cascading down her back in soft waves. The cute platform boots she had bought in Japan caused some envy in the girls, and the overall look that was all flower-shaped hair pins, bright nails, patterned tights – but mainly her, the way she was even without all the embellishments – got more than a couple of heads turned her way. Mrs. Hong complimented her girly charms, Choi Minho took a once-over with a big wet gulp, as if ready to declare her a goddess on the spot, and to Kibum she looked like the most flawless, fragrant, loveliest ticking bomb in the whole world.

He even had an impulse to pull Jinki out of the inevitable explosion’s way when he stumbled into the foyer of the cinema thinking he was late, even though he actually wasn’t, and Kibum’s saw Arisa’s eyes find him.

He'd begun to wonder if the fateful conversation had already happened, and Jinki wasn’t telling him about it to spare his feelings. But, seeing how quickly Arisa's face changed color and how she stopped paying attention to whatever her girlfriends were telling her despite having been so composed before Jinki’s appearance, he put two and two together and came to a conclusion that her mesmerizing look today indicated that she was planning to approach Jinki that very afternoon – or maybe even now.

Meanwhile, Jinki slowed down his pace to stop looking like a panting weirdo and scanned the crowd for his classmates. Both Arisa and Kibum waved at him.

Kibum saw how the girl’s chest heaved, as if she was trying to calm herself down by taking deep breaths. And all that for Jinki. Perhaps a few months ago he wouldn't have believed that someone like her could agonize so over someone like his now best friend, but the mind is a strange thing: it can get used to anything if you give it enough time, and it can no longer remember how things used to be before.

In spite of himself, he felt for her. He knew that nauseating feeling that she was likely having in her stomach, that stress of not being able to know another person's mind and longing to.

But he also knew that the number of victims who would suffer any real damage from the impending explosion amounted to just one – himself. How, why – that he didn't know yet, but right now it was of no consequence. There was nothing he could do.

“Where did you disappear to yesterday? Mr. Kim asked about you at the English club,” Jinki told Arisa after greeting his friends.

“I was… I was not feeling well,” she said hesitantly, like a person who isn't listening to what they are saying. She gulped. “Jinki, I kind of need to speak to…”

She was interrupted before she could finish her sentence, and because of someone whom Kibum had never been glad to see until now.

“Dude, I'm so bloated,” said Taemin, who didn't need to say hi to Jinki because, for him, their friendship likely resembled one very long hangout session.

“If it's about your ego, then it's always been that way,” Jinki shook his head.

Although he had a strange, irrational affection for the boy, at times his behavior towards him reminded Kibum of the times he treated Jinki the same way. He liked that Jinki had some sass in him.

“It's the curry rice, man. I had some about an hour ago,” Taemin went on. Sass was wasted on him. “It was, like, a huge mistake.”

His face twisted as he held a hand to his waist.

“Why, do you have stomach ache?” Jinki replied in a more concerned way.

“No, but I'm being this total fart machine. Do you have a pill or something?”

Arisa's eyes shifted to the floor. Anybody would feel deflated if an urgent matter of their heart was disrupted so brutally by an urgent matter of someone else's digestion. Kibum empathized, but saw the funny part too.

Jinki wasn’t carrying any pills around.

Arisa ped her bag.

“You need some flatulence pills?”

“If they’re anti-fart, sure,” Taemin shrugged.

She even let him drink from her cat-shaped water bottle, and Kibum sincerely wondered if she weren’t just the perfect match for her excessively caring crush. She looked like she was on the verge of a teardrop or two.

“Thanks, man,” Taemin kindly told her, returning the bottle.

And then he stole her crush, too, promising to 'show him something dope'. He was also in a hurry to change his location because the girls in his class were demanding for him to decide whom he'd rather sit next to, and he didn't have time for that.

Before leaving, Jinki turned around.

“Sorry, did you wanna say something?”

Arisa waved her hand with a mournful smile.

“It can wait,” she lied.

When they were left alone, but not in peace, Kibum complimented her bag, and the girl replied in a shaky voice that she had made it herself.

“It’s patchwork, is it?”

She nodded.

Arisa then went back to chatting with her girlfriends, and Kibum walked slowly around the hall without any idea if he would have his friend back for the movie or not.

They were already entering the movie hall when he felt a tug on his shirt: Jinki had picked him and his sarcasm over Taemin and his flatulence.

When they came back out into the light, Jinki was blinking his puffy eyes and Kibum – finishing the popcorn bucket they had been sharing together. Luckily for the latter, the former had gotten so absorbed in the story he forgot about eating.

“I had no idea you could cry for so long,” Kibum said as he threw more caramel popcorn into his mouth.

“Who said I was crying?” Jinki answered, giving his eyes one last wipe for safety.

“What was all the water streaming down your cheeks, then?”

“I was just sweating from my eyeballs,” sniffed Jinki. “Never heard of this anomaly?”

Kibum hadn't.

“You’re an anomaly.”

“Tiny guy had to watch his daddy getting trampled to death – how being bummed about that is not normal?”

Kibum tilted his head.

“Are you trying to blink off a tear right now?” he inquired, crunching on the popcorn.

“No, I'm not,” Jinki said unevenly, his chin trembling again.

Kibum’s mind entered a routine that was becoming all too familiar recently: finding something Jinki did endearing and mentally slapping himself on both cheeks for noticing it.

Over his friend’s shoulder, he saw Arisa emerge from the hall with her girls.

Was this the time?

“It can wait.” But could it really?

He couldn't tell if she was going to say bye to her pals and approach Jinki now or was heading in their general direction because the bathrooms were there, too – and he had zero motivation to find out.

“I think you could totally use a smoothie right now,” he suggested, tossing the paper bucket with the remaining popcorn into the nearby bin.

Jinki eyed him suspiciously.

Kibum rubbed his hands together to shake off the sugary dust with an innocent look.

“What?”

“I think that you could totally use a smoothie, because you just want to go to your favorite place again.”

“I'm so happy we’re on the same page about that. And if you’re suggesting my favorite place, hell, no protests from me.”

Kibum began leading the sighing Jinki away.

“Wait, did you toss that bucket while it still had popcorn in it?!” the boy realized, too late.

Kibum pushed him through the door.

“I was in a hurry because I could see how much you crave a smoothie.”

“You're unbelievable,” Jinki concluded, to Kibum’s amusement.

Kibum didn't have his umbrella with him that day. So, they shared Jinki’s – one of those cheap see-through ones which you can often see lying abandoned on the street or at the bus stop, because people don't hold on to them. They're too fragile, they dislike the wind too much.

Jinki's was still functional, despite some breakage here and there, from which you could tell that it had been confronted by wind before – perhaps more than once.

It was strange to Kibum, to share an umbrella with someone and not lock arms (and it was not romantic arm-locking that he had in mind – not the kind that he despised). The reason for that was, of course, Taeyeon – her arm had been weightless on his as they had floated down the street together on a gloomy day like this, playing word games and occasionally making snarky comments about all the 'campy' couples around them. And they had undoubtedly looked like a couple to everybody else, too. They just had never cared.

The memory of the body prompted him to forget himself once, and he almost grabbed Jinki’s arm the same way he had grabbed his previous best friend’s, but refrained just in time. He could see other school boys doing that – or even holding hands as they walked, or even more often one guy would have his arm around the other’s shoulders, like Taemin did with Jinki. But he, Kibum, couldn't do that with the other boy. Not because Jinki would have minded – he just felt that it was either too early for that, or he had missed the good timing to start doing that before, and now it would be too awkward.

They passed by a young couple who had been first tickling each other and laughing for the whole street to hear, and then laced their hands together before continuing their very slow stroll.

Once the distance between them was long enough, Kibum couldn't resist the temptation.

“’Look how smug we are, yapping like rabid seals in your faces, and we're so much better than you, because we don't need an umbrella when we’ve got…” He made a particularly disgusted face. “…Love.’ Ain't that the definition of campy?” Kibum added in a normal voice.

Jinki cracked up at that tiny poisonous outburst of his.

“Is this your stress relief?”

“You could say that, yeah. But mainly it's just fun, being mean about someone who's happy anyway. You should try it, too.”

Kibum said that in jest, but to his surprise, Jinki accepted the challenge and cleared his throat.

“We’re so smug that last time we laughed, only dogs could hear us. And we're so much better than you that our hands don't sweat – they glue.”

There was a prolonged pause.

“What was the dogs part?” Kibum asked with a confused frown.

“Well, because of the frequency,” Jinki stated it like an obvious fact. “When a sound goes way up and reaches a certain-“

Kibum broke him off:

“Didn't learn that at school, not gonna learn now, bless.”

Jinki chuckled.

“I at this, don't I?”

“Your snark is on the nerdy side, but it will do for a first time.”

They had almost reached the café now – it was just a few small, narrow buildings down the street.

“We're smug now, too, though, aren't we?”

“Feels good, right?”

“A little,” admitted Jinki. “We can even out-smug them by holding our hands ridiculously.”

The awkwardness of that suggestion sent Kibum into convulsions.

“What are you doing?!” he laughed, his guard down completely, his hands relaxed and pliant, and wholly given up to Jinki.

He tried a few very ridiculous options, but then found what Kibum agreed was the most ridiculous of them all: Jinki held his left hand – not with his right one, but his left, too, and walked behind him while he did that, as if they were ready to break into a tango any second.

Kibum almost didn't think about whether they were being looked at and what all those strangers were thinking of them, and when he did, he turned around to find that all those adults and college students walking about seemed to have other matters on their minds besides two schoolboys fooling around on the street.

The whole world of his worries existed nowhere but inside his mind.

When they were near the doors of the café, Kibum purposely stopped so that Jinki bumped into him from behind. With his free hand he found Jinki’s right one behind him, and their entrance became even sillier with that addition.

Inside, Jinki didn't let go: they walked like that, an inadequate couple of youths, all the way up to the desserts' case and the cashier's, and while Kibum was ordering, he felt Jinki hug him from behind while still holding his hands.

“Sorry, what?” he asked, because he was distracted.

“We’re out of chocolate muffins, only the blueberry ones are left.”

He could feel the warmth spreading up to his cheeks.

“Oh.”

The cashier girl looked exhausted.

”Do you want a blueberry muffin?” she pressed.

“Do we want a blueberry muffin?” Kibum asked, his voice oscillating strangely.

Jinki put his chin on Kibum’s shoulder.

“Boo, but okay,” he childishly replied right into the other’s ear.

“We’ll have one, then.”

The girl tutted and walked to the other end of the glass case.

Jinki used that moment to whisper:

“Boo-berry muffins.”

Kibum usually liked it when Jinki was in that kindergarten weirdo mood, even though outwardly he often pretended to be annoyed by it. But now he had no idea how he was feeling. He hadn’t told Jinki yet that he didn't believe himself to be a hugger anymore – and he didn't really feel like telling him now.

But what, in all truth, were they doing?

“Now it sounds like you're talking about s,” Kibum whispered back.

Jinki considered that, rocking left and right slightly, forcing Kibum to do the same.

”Dang, you’re right. Time to stop the erish.”

It felt like placing the order was taking forever.

His throat was getting dry.

Through the fog of his private thoughts, broke the worst possible thing. Even later, he couldn't fathom how, of all the memories he had of them together, all those countless hours of meaningless – and innocent – fun, and boredom, and interrupted conversations, his mind had picked the one most irrelevant, non-essential thing that had nothing to do whatsoever with the nature of their friendship.

The image that shot through Kibum’s brain at the very moment when he could feel his childlike friend’s breath on his skin, when he was locked onto him in the actual physical sense – was of Jinki, taking his shirt off in the locker room.

And not much else.

Just his fingers pulling on the back of the collar of his green tee shirt, the fabric moving up, concealing his wet hair from sight for a moment – and slipping off in unrealistic slow motion, revealing his flushed face, mouth exhaling with relief... and also his neck, his bare shoulders, and everything down below.

Kibum pushed him away by instinct, and covered it up by reaching into his tote bag to get his wallet with the pocket money. He didn't lift his face to see if Jinki was buying his maneuver – he needed a moment to go back to normal.

As a boy still going through puberty, he'd learned to deal with random thoughts popping up now and then, mainly by mastering the best poker face he could work and waiting for them to go away, but the difficult part was how some of them made him feel.

He was not in the sanctuary of his bedroom, where he could throw the blanket over his head and grind his teeth, so what could he even do, except focus on the fact that the chance of seeing Jinki shirtless that day was extremely low and he was about to have a very decent smoothie?

When Kibum returned to reality, Jinki had already brought the drinks over, and was in the middle of forcibly stabbing a straw through the lid of his smoothie.

“One day it will explode back in your face, and what are you gonna do then?”

”Cry about it like a man?” Jinki predicted.

Kibum didn't use excessive force to put a straw into his own drink.

“Maybe you can cry yourself a new smoothie? We know you can.”

“How come you didn't cry, though? Even the teachers were sobbing.”

Kibum shrugged.

“I might have welled up a bit.”

Jinki couldn't believe the absurd noise. He was still not over how indifferent his friend had been to numerous tragedies of some 3D lions.

“Do you not care about Mufasa at all?” he tried once more in disbelief.

Kibum failed to tuck his hair behind his ear again.

Honestly, it wasn’t his fault that almost everything Jinki did had a certain degree of sweetness to it.

He crossed his legs to shield himself from any more excessive charm coming his way and into his brain.

“I dunno, I guess I was traumatized enough by the original.”

Jinki stuffed the whole half of the blueberry muffin assigned to him into his mouth, in one piece, and chewed wistfully, like a particularly thoughtful hamster, or a squirrel – like one of those fluffy rodent guys, anyway.

“Yeah, man, that was rough. I remember getting the whole sofa cushion wet.” He added to clarify: “With tears. I didn't pee on the couch out of sadness, mind you.”

Kibum gave up his poker face and just laughed. He knew that Jinki wanted him to.

He stirred his smoothie and listened to the music. It was some Western ballad, the sound of acoustic guitar tricking softly through the air, making him sleepy.

He took another sip and his lips.

“I don't like crying, actually. And especially not in front of other people.”

Jinki was using his sleeve to wipe his glasses clean.

“Why? Do you think you’re, like, too good for that?”

“No, but I'm a guy, so…”

“My dad cries all the time,” Jinki countered with a shrug. “Like, I got him a pair of winter socks for his birthday with my first pocket money, and he wailed for ten minutes. He's embarrassing, for real.”

“I don't get the point of crying. It gives you a headache, you don't feel any better and none of your problems are fixed.”

Jinki put his glasses to the side.

“Yeah, but we don't cry to solve anything. We cry because we care.”

“But then others will know that you care.”

“And it's bad because…?”

Kibum felt that Jinki had got him there. But he wasn't ready to go further by explaining what his fear was based on – and that it was indeed a fear: he had already ventured some intimacy by sharing those thoughts, whether his friend was aware of that or not.

Instead, he told him to finish the muffin: Kibum was still full after popcorn.

“Oh, by the way. Talking of embarrassing…”

Jinki rummaged his pockets before slapping three crumpled ten-thousand bills on the table in front of Kibum.

“Actually – wait.” He lifted his off the chair to get some coins from his pants' pockets as well. His lips moved as he counted them on his palm.

Putting a couple of coins away, he placed the rest next to the banknotes.

“There you go.”

Kibum struggled to understand, and Jinki explained:

“It's for the headphones. The sound is crystal clear and I’ve finally learned that most songs do have a bass line, many thanks.”

“You already gave me ten thousands.”

“Yeah, but that was for the headphones that these are not.”

Kibum’s eyes flickered.

“They were on sale, weren't they?”

“In a sense that they were also being sold, sure. Just not for ten thousand.”

Kibum shifted in his seat. He was still planning to persist.

“What makes you so sure?” he answered vaguely.

“There's no sticker on the box.”

“Maybe it fell off.”

“It's a different brand.”

“Maybe it was also on discount?” Kibum argued, applying his debating skills as effectively as he could.

Jinki’s sleepy eyes were reading him too well.

“Bum. The ones I wanted were better than the ones I had before in the way that you could distinguish the voice from the music and the microphone was actually functional. The ones you got me sound like a bunch of angels doing the Masked Singer. A.k.a. really great.”

Finding himself backed into a corner, Kibum could only throw his hands up and say:

“You’re welcome, enjoy?”

“Not for forty-five thousands!” Jinki exclaimed, leaning closer over the table. “What on Earth happened to the ones I asked you to buy?”

“They were all gone by the time I got there,” Kibum murmured as if it was a shameful secret.

“Then you should've just told me so.”

“You said that friends pay for each other, that's what I did!”

“But not-“ realizing that his voice had gotten too loud for the small café they were sitting in, Jinki leaned over even more, his voice getting lower like his face did. “Not forty-five thousands. That's ridiculous.”

“Mine cost more than that.”

“Okay, braggy much?”

Kibum crossed his arms on his chest and prepared to make a reluctant confession.

“They were gone by the time I got there, because…” The rest of the phrase was unintelligible.

Jinki turned his right ear to him.

“What was that?”

“They were gone because I was distracted!”

“You got a phone call or something?”

Kibum’s eyes were looking to rest on anything but his friend’s face.

“I had... comments on my blog,” he confessed finally.

“Wow, you have a blog? Can I read?”

“No!” Kibum exclaimed, knocking his smoothie cup over with his elbow. It was pure luck that it was almost empty at that point. He hurried to put it upright, and his hand was met by Jinki’s again – there was no way he wouldn't have tried to help.

His emotional response hadn’t been the same as in the past: now it would be weird not to touch Jinki from time to time, whether it was to pinch him or hit him for saying something annoying. Just without locking arms when sharing an umbrella.

“I mean, I just post random stuff. Boring,” he hurried to explain.

“Because it's artsy fartsy and I wouldn't understand?” Jinki asked innocently, and Kibum gave an uncertain nod. “So, your artsy fartsy stuff was so important that you forgot about the one thing I asked you to do?”

You have no idea.

“No, I just noticed that I'd grabbed the wrong headphones and went back to get the proper ones, but there were none, so I got you these.”

Jinki nodded, puckering his lips.

“Got it. Now I just have one final thing to ask you.”

He raised his eyes at Kibum and for a moment resembled a detective who was interrogating a suspect who was particularly hard to crack.

Forgetting that his cup was empty, Kibum tried to take an uneasy sip from it.

“Shoot.”

“These wrong ones. Did they only have them in pink?”

Kibum had begun to suspect that this was the point the conversation had been leading to. It was hard to admit his unreliability as a shopping buddy, but he'd rather be doing that than trying to take the conversation away from his blog and the dangerous secret it now contained.

I seriously need to delete that.

He shook his head slowly.

“I didn't check the color.”

“Are you mad?” he asked after Jinki didn't say anything for a few moments.

“Not until you’ve taken the money back. Then I'll go to town on you,” he promised a little too placidly for that to ring true.

“Then you do realize it's not in my interest to accept them?”

Jinki rose to his feet and said that he was going to think of a solution on his trip to pee.

“Like you did when you watched The Lion King?”

Kibum’s shoulder got hit with a straw wrap rolled into a ball.

While Jinki was gone, his phone’s screen lighted up and the tabletop buzzed with vibration.

Kibum didn't mean to glance: his eyes just happened to catch Arisa’s username in KakaoTalk right before the message disappeared as the screen dimmed.

He felt uneasy in his stomach.

Why was that girl so impatient? Why couldn't she give Jinki just one more day of freedom? Why couldn't she let Kibum have his best friend for a few more hours?

He didn't mean to bend over the table and, after taking a furtive look around, click the button on Jinki's old Android phone.

And when the lock screen loaded and demanded a number password, he didn't mean to start tapping the buttons.

He rolled his eyes when '1234’ actually worked.

“,” he whispered under his breath, opening the message from the alarm panel (which, just like all the previous steps, he didn't mean to do).

Arisa hadn't resorted to confessing her love via text message. She was asking Jinki if he had the notes for a literature class she’d missed.

Kibum felt ashamed. And also anxious for a reason he didn't fully understand.

He hid his face in the palms of his hands and groaned.

Breaking into his best friend's phone hadn’t been the weirdest action of his lately, but it was the one that forced him face fact: things were getting bad. Not his-previous-school level of bad, but definitely somewhere in the pre-catastrophic spectrum.

Trying to make Jinki laugh, wanting to be near him, caring about whatever he was doing was natural – it was what close friends did. Not wanting him to get together with a girl totally deserving of him was leaning towards the problematic. Snooping around in his phone – a case of misjudged curiosity, but also unhealthy. Imagining him shirtless was… potentially world-ending. And all of that together?

Did that mean that he….?

Kibum's iPhone woke up and demanded his attention, and perhaps for the better: he didn't feel ready for digging deeper just yet. Instead, a whole other problem of global importance arose.

When Jinki came out of the men's room, he found his friend biting on his fingernails, eyes staring blankly into space.

Kibum looked up when the sound of Jinki moving his chair called him back to reality.

“So, you remember how I got you these amazing headphones that sound like angels and how I'm such a good friend for not accepting your crumpled money and for, like, generally being sweet and patient with you at all times?” Kibum said at a much faster pace than he usually did. “'Cause I want you to hold on to that thought for a minute.”

Jinki was intrigued.

“Sure, what's up?”

Kibum, who had resumed the biting, continued:

“Do you also remember how hardworking and diligent I am for going to the project discussion sessions by myself when you’re busy with the taekwondo class?”

Jinki nodded.

“Thanks for that, yeah.”

“And you do know that I'm overall very attentive and bright?”

“Um…” Jinki scratched the back of his neck. “Bright, yes, but attentive? Like, not in Math class?”

Kibum couldn’t disagree with that point.

“Fair enough, but I need you to think the big picture right now.”

“Oh, that I can do, sure.”

Kibum his bottom lip.

“So, you remember how the project we've been working on is not due for another couple of months and tomorrow I'm supposed to give the teacher the brief preview version which is not a big deal at all?”

“My memory is honestly okay, Bum. I remember most of the things that you remember.”

Jinki was not taking this seriously enough. He had no idea what was coming his way.

When Kibum, for whom it was unusual to be stalling so, still hesitated to tell him what was going on, Jinki asked if it would be okay if he went and grabbed another boo-berry muffin, and it was impossible to tell if he was joking or being earnest.

Kibum fired off:

“I went to every single one of these stupid discussions, and no one was saying anything remotely interesting or new, because everyone is doing basically the same thing, and considering that a half of the class have dropped out of the project anyway, what's even the point of all the time wastage when everything that the teacher told us could have been shared through email, or dropped into the Kakao chatroom, ‘cause it's the twentieth century, for God's sake, and I'm like-”

“Twenty-first,” Jinki corrected him. Seeing Kibum’s overwhelmed expression, he clarified: “Century. But never mind, go on.”

“Who can blame me for tuning out from time to time? I mean, who wants to listen to sudden patriotic mush from Choi Minho, like, dude, I get it, you can jump real high and you've never had an ugly haircut in your life, because everything looks passable on your freakishly small head, but it doesn't mean that everyone is dying to hear your preciousthoughts on any-”

“Going off track now,” Jinki remarked patiently as he put his glasses on. He was starting to get it.

“Right.” Kibum got so agitated that somehow he was speaking and biting his nails at the same time. “Like, is it even my fault that I couldn't concentrate every single second when my brain was physically shutting down from pure boredom? Yeah, maybe I was drawing in my notepad or scrolling through my blog while certain things were being said, but I'm only human! Okay?!”

“They want the whole thing done by tomorrow, don't they?” guessed Jinki, somehow looking like a middle-aged detective in his dusty office again.

Both he and the criminal seemed to be equally worn-out by that point, and the full confession was not far off.

Kibum put this hands down and gulped.

“The initial date I told you is for the presentation. All the files need to be sent to her by tomorrow morning,” he confessed at a slower pace.

“Okay, got it,” Jinki said, nodding. He pressed his lips. “And you didn't by any chance work only on the art part and left off all the text writing for the last moment?”

“Oh, Lee Jinki,” said Kibum solemnly. “You’ve obviously known me long enough to know the answer.”

The other boy sat quietly for a minute, taking it all in. Then, he picked up the money he'd tried to return earlier, to stuff them back into his pocket.

“Rude,” Kibum muttered.

“What, you want it?”

He scoffed.

“Of course, I don't want it.”

Jinki got up.

“Where are you going?”

“I think I deserve another muffin today,” the boy shrugged.

“But what are we gonna do?!” Kibum cried in a voice that sounded way too whiney even to himself.

He couldn't tell if Jinki was finally mad at him or not, and not being able to know for sure was killing him. That and the fact that, because of him, all their hard work might have been for nothing – all thanks to his inability to concentrate on other people and what they had to say for a long period of time.

He would have been mad as Hell.

Jinki half-smiled.

“We gotta finish what we started, right?” Kibum had already arrived at the conclusion that he didn't deserve such a good, forgiving friend, when Jinki pointed his finger at him and added:

“And then I'll go to town on you.”

As Jinki left, another shirtless flashback flared up in Kibum’s brain, but he wasn't even going to stress about that: things were officially bad now either way.

A/N: My dear readers! Thank you so much for your feedback and subscribing! I've been feeling inspired to write more lately, and a lot of it I owe to you and knowing that you still care about this story and its characters. Remember to take care of your health, physical and mental, reach out to people you trust when you're feeling down - and how about each of us do something nice for ourselves on the real Lee Jinki's birthday? It can be something as small as eating a special muffin! Whatever good thing we do for ourselves that day, we deserve, and I'm sure that our Dubu Leader would agree! And remember, if you want to talk, you can always drop me a message~ X Liza