Han Youngjae wasn't the handsomest guy at their school. But he was definitely in the top five, according to, pretty much, everyone. Height slightly above average, well-built, skin mostly clear, he did put basic effort in styling his hair by slicking it back – to success. He was aware of his good looks and had an Instagram page (Kibum knew that fact thanks to Tae) with a smattering of some well-lit, brow-arched selfies, and some hundred and a half followers. But he didn't let the fame get into his head: he was casual about his attractiveness and could pull a funny face when the situation called for it.

Han Youngjae had no enemies, which was an achievement at a school where the teachers' strategy for dealing with social situations of violent nature was to look away and hope for the best. His buddies were strong, boisterous boys who littered, cussed and never sat in a chair properly, but he was somehow never around when they took their aggression out on some poor quiet soul that was picked to be their target that day. He didn't take part in the cruelty. If he saw a geeky kid sweating near a classroom door with a stack of books under their chin, he'd open the door and hold it for them to pass through. He, technically, wasn't one of the bullies – he just happened to be their best friend.

Another thing about Han Youngjae was that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed ("not the sharpest pencil in the pencil box", as Jinki would have preferred to put it – only Kibum hadn't met him yet back then). Not anywhere near the top five, or top fifty for that matter. And on the basis of this… feature of his, he and Kibum had developed what could be called a working relationship.

That afternoon Youngjae sat across from him in the cafeteria to have a chat, which Kibum did hope other people would notice. The days when Taeyeon was off smooching with some new guy of hers weren't his favorite: he felt unprotected and just weird sitting at the table by himself, like some other smart losers in the room. The fact that Youngjae seemed so unaware about that was a point in his favor.

"Done everything?" the boy half-whispered, leaning in confidentially.

He wasn't wearing his tie and would never be caught with his top button unopened.

"English and Lit, as asked," Kibum said as he sipped his orange juice through a straw.

Youngjae was relieved.

"Did you make it look, you know, real?"

"I threw in some spelling mistakes and made the wording awkward here and there. Should be a solid B," Kibum added confidently.

The other boy was impressed.

"Cool, cool," he nodded. "Got them on you now?"

Kibum almost snorted. Did he have the look of a complete amateur?

"They're on your desk. Under your Geography book."

"Nice." Youngjae picked up a piece of radish from Kibum's tray. "You look slimmer these days."

Kibum tucked his hair behind his ear.

"It's still five thousand for each."

Youngjae grinned, his charm effortless and a tiny bit feral.

"I wasn't trying to haggle, just pointing stuff out."

He tried to steal another piece and was stopped by a pair of metal chopsticks hitting his fingers.

"I'm not doing your Math. Told you before."

The chopsticks didn't move until the offender gave up and leaned back in his uncomfortable metal chair, both hands raised in defeat.

"Got it! It's about your friend actually. What's, like, her deal?"

Kibum took a pause, sizing the other boy up.

"She's a girl. Female human. Heard of those?"

Youngjae chuckled.

"No, I mean, what's she like?"

"Well, first of all, she's taken. Second, she's..." As much as Kibum wanted to blow him off, he knew that Taeyeon would have a hard time forgiving him for that, so he had to tread carefully. If he followed up with the word 'smart', he risked scaring Youngjae away. If he used 'nice', it could be unwittingly translated into 'easy'. And 'interesting'? Might as well just refer to his best friend as 'one bat crazy '. "...cool," Kibum said instead. "And did I mention taken?"

That seemed to set the gears in the other boy's brain in motion. The feedback was an approving smile. 'Cool' was the correct code word.

"Sure, I just wanted to check in on her. Tell her not to faint like that again."

Kibum had already told her enough about it on his own, but he nodded anyway.

"So, what's the type of guy she likes?"

He rolled his eyes. You. You are the type she likes.

"I can tell you that she likes them short, quiet, and without any muscle mass. Also her boyfriend."

Youngjae laughed.

"You're a funny one, Kim."

Kibum bit his lip to hide an involuntary smile. He wasn't used to compliments anywhere outside of his house.

He stood up to return his tray, and his classmate rose to his feet too.

"You should go cut that hair," Youngjae said in a second. "Makes you look like a chick. Just saying, bro."

The 'bro' part made him feel seen. The hair part made him ask his grandma for a haircut as soon as he got home that day.

Taeyeon made Kibum retell the story of his conversation with Youngjae a few times on the phone, down to the smallest facial expressions and exact words used, even though there weren't that many words to speak of. She was flattered.

"I mean, he's a for commenting on your hair like that, that was uncalled for and you shouldn't change a thing, but..."

"But he's hot?" Kibum continued for her.

He'd already changed a thing, and was studying his new, shorter hair in the mirror. He liked it, but he'd definitely have to style it now.

"So hot," Tae sighed, hopelessly.

She wasn't flattered enough to go to her current beau and break up with him on the spot just because a much more handsome guy seemed to be interested in her now, but, to Kibum, it was only a matter of time before his friend would be re-stolen from him again. And Taeyeon, while having a good head on her shoulders, simply couldn't resist another attractive mistake.

Kibum imagined himself to be the protagonist of a particularly angsty music video. He was lip-synching to the heart wrenching lyrics that, while penned by someone way older and more experienced than him, spoke to him on an emotional level, when the door to his room opened and his mother walked in. He sat upright and pushed pause on his phone, a hot flush spreading over his face. His drawings were scattered around him on the deep blue carpeted floor.

"You're supposed to knock, mom!"

Mrs. Kim tilted her head to the side.

"But, honey, I did knock. Didn't you hear?"

Kibum hadn't heard. He'd been too busy being a star of an imaginary video with very real sadness.

He cleared his voice.

"You need to knock louder, then," he insisted as he began to pick his sketches and finished works up from the floor to put them back into the folder before his mom would make a comment on any of them. He was in no mood for receiving compliments: everything he'd created looked ugly to him in his current state of mind. It was just a pile of useless garbage for all he cared.

One sheet slipped out of the stack, and the draught carried it over to Mrs. Kim's fluffy slippers.

It was a sketch of a young man propping up his cheek with his fist, looking bored while sitting at a table.

The woman bent down and took the paper in her hands.

"Who is this?" she asked immediately.

Kibum stretched his arm toward her.

"Not a real person. I was just practicing." Now, please, give it back.

Mrs. Kim rotated the drawing left and right, studying it from different angles with her eyes narrowed.

"He looks a bit like Jinki… But he also looks a bit like you."

Kibum grew impatient.

"Can you give it to me, mom?"

She flipped the paper to show him what she meant.

"The lower part of the face here is very you," she continued, pointing a manicured finger to the mouth of the drawing. "But the eyes and the forehead…" She covered the nose and the mouth with her hand. "...look a lot like him. Don't they?"

The blush on Kibum's cheeks deepened.

He would have to burn it now.

He told his mother that he needed to look closer, but once she handed him the paper, he slipped it back into the folder.

"Can you run over to his house for me, honey?" Mrs. Kim said suddenly.

Kibum gave her a blank stare.

"Whose house?"

He had heard her very clearly, but still hoped that he had somehow misunderstood.

Mrs. Kim sighed.

"Mrs. Lee mentioned wanting a tupperware set, and I've been trying to give her ours for a while now – I don't need this many anyway. But she's such a proud woman!" Contrary to her son's silent wishes, she plopped on his swivel chair to continue the conversation. "Why can't she just take it?"

Kibum flexed his neck left and right and sighed. His mother wanted to talk to him, and he didn't want to talk to anyone. He gave up.

"Some people don't like getting gifts. They see them as a burden."

"But why? It's a trifle."

"For you, yes, but not for her. She's gonna feel like she needs to return the favor, and maybe now is not a good time."

A crease appeared between Mrs. Kim's brows. When she wasn't on a mission to embarrass her son in front of a friend at the dinner table, she could be an earnest listener. She must have seen some sense in his words, and that came in handy, because he wasn't sure why he was saying what he was saying.

Still, he was given a stage and now he had to fill it.

"Or maybe she finds gifts to be suspicious and weird in general," he went on. "When a person gives you something for free, it's kind of like they have control over you, no? Unless it's compulsory, like for a holiday or anniversary, why would they do that? They are either not well in the head, or planning to use you somehow."

He didn't have a consistent sleep pattern anymore, and was prone to rambling.

"'Not well in the head'?" His mother repeated, somewhere between confused and disturbed.

Kibum gave a theatrical shrug.

"Kindness without reason is a character flaw. It makes no sense in the context of evolution. It's all about survival of the fittest, you know? You need to put yourself first to survive, and those who lie down so that others run over them are trying to undermine the whole thing. So why trust them? They're clearly hiding something."

She looked both confused and concerned now.

"Are you well in the head, though, my love? I mean, you're not feverish, are you?" Kibum moved away before she could touch his forehead.

He said he was fine, vexed that he had to be so verbal all the time. He wanted to see himself as hidden and undiscovered, but he was a bitter blabbermouth, openly craving attention. Easy to dismiss. Less important than a classroom plant.

Kibum lay down on the carpet, putting his hands on his stomach. He was tired of himself, the weekend, the thoughts.

"That just doesn't sound like Mrs. Lee at all." In the midst of his self-flagellation, Kibum felt a pang of tenderness for his mother. She was trying to find meaning in his verbal vomit. "But you may be on to something… I don't want her to feel like she owes me anything."

"Or you could set a price," Kibum offered. "Before she does."

His mother grew quiet. He wondered if she was doing that thing when she tapped her chin with her knuckle, thinking laboriously. He didn't feel like lifting his head to check, now that he was in his despondent pose.

"I could ask her to teach me her rice cake technique in return," she pondered aloud. "Only that's worth more than just a few containers." Loving and caring she was, but there was no denying Mrs. Kim's practical side.

She stood up to go.

"I'll bake her a tray of my green tea muffins and put them into the tupperware while you finish lying on the floor with your drawings."

Kibum groaned.

"Look how sunny it is outside! You're growing pale."

"I'm not growing pale."

"Don't you want to spend time with Jinki, too?"

Yeah, that would be such fun.

"Can't you take them yourself?"

She said she had housework to do. Kibum insisted she could do it later.

"Will you stay and help around, then?"

He was caught between a rock and a hard place and gave no answer. His door creaked open and shut, and in about a half an hour the familiar scent of baking wafted in, making his stomach rumble.

"You can have a few," Mrs. Kim said when Kibum was tying his laces at the door. "Split them with Jinki, don't go around hungry."

Incidentally, he'd rather go around hungry than split anything with that person anymore.

He was walking to the bus stop when he realised that he had been duped. His mother had cajoled, and bargained, and promised him a gay afternoon just so he did what she wanted. He must have gotten the calculating streak somewhere.

Last time he had run into Mrs. Lee, there was a winking Pikachu on his chest. He had slurred his greeting and couldn't look her in the eye. As well as the whole being shattered to pieces after losing another friendship thing. 

Oh, hi, Mrs. Lee. Sorry I left so abruptly last time. Trying to make out with your son must have worn me out. Wat up?

Could those kisses have been Jinki's first? That would be intriguing in a wrong sort of way, but also just wrong. No, he'd had a girlfriend before, and they must have done things. And now he'd be doing things with Arisa. Kibum didn't want his mind to go there. Either way, he refused to see Jinki as an innocent flower. Him storming out that night had had to be a show. Look what you've done, I don't even want to breathe the same air as you – curtain down.

He got off the bus and walked to Sinchon first, the paper bag dangling by his side confusedly. Are you really going to go there, it seemed to ask, after what you've done? After what he's done to you? Kibum's mind raced ahead of itself, coming up with one hypothetical scenario after another: Mrs. Lee greeting him warmly in her blissful ignorance, because she knows nothing, her pulling him into the kitchen for tea and chat, the rectangle of the door to Jinki's room a menacing shadow down the hall. Mrs. Lee giving him a cold look of disgust because she knows everything, and he is now a monster in her eyes, too. Jinki is away hanging out at Taemin's house or wasting his life in some other uncreative way, and Kibum is sitting in his kitchen, on his chair, and befriending his mother to make him feel bad afterwards. He's gracious and a little pensive, so that Mrs. Lee feels like telling her son later to cheer his best friend up. No. Pathetic.

Or, Jinki is at home. He ambles into the kitchen and stops, mid-yawn, with a look of terror on his face at the sight of the man he's wronged so badly. No, he's in the kitchen and he spills hot soup on his pants when Kibum comes in with his muffins and his straightened back, because he is the bigger person. He grows quiet and guilty as Kibum modestly declines lunch. Or, he pretends that everything is peachy and makes Kibum feel sickened by his fake carefree banter. Or… he is actually carefree, because now they're even and he doesn't care.

Plot twist: it's Jinki who answers the door. With a smile, with a frown, with a yawn, with a bewildered look and a gulp. Over and over. Him wearing his hot dog T-shirt. His pajama shirt. His school uniform shirt. No shirt.

Kibum loathed seeing him happy or righteous. He didn't mind seeing him crushed, angry or guilty. All three would be a perfect mixture.

His cellphone buzzed on his hip, and he whipped it out, stopping in the middle of the street. It wasn't him. Jinki wasn't apologizing for stealing the girl his best friend had confessed to have feelings for, or for implying that he is crazy. The angry boy from the vending machine wasn't coming back. It was the damned Smoothie Prince, offering a discount for couples.

Kibum chuckled, putting the phone away. How pathetic was he for waiting, after shouting from every roof that he didn't want to talk? To think that Jinki owed him a thing. To even imagine that he could ever set foot in that house again.

He might as well just have a smoothie, sans discount.

He had not dropped by the café since the day. That window table must have still remembered the old, oblivious Kibum that had thought that an impending art project deadline was the biggest catastrophe coming his way. Something as insignificant as a Kakao message had rattled him, a two-second long locker room flashback had made him feel like he was losing his mind. It was a pity that, by returning and pushing that heavy glass door again, he would be erasing that no longer relevant version of himself forever.

The café was mostly empty: either smoothie-loving couples were not yet out and about, or their advertising trick wasn't working. Kibum hoped that they weren't about to go bankrupt: this area of the city was not famous for its constancy. But he was getting used to having things that he liked slip through his fingers. Can't have too much of a good thing.

A young couple was standing a bit to the side, heads raised as they took their time studying the menu above the main counter. The girl wore a burgundy beret on top of her wavy long hair and an oversized denim jacket over her dress – a picture straight out of a Japanese magazine. Kibum low-key wondered if he would get beaten at all at his current school if he got himself a copy of that beret. Have you seen that guy? He kissed a dude, and he wears a beret. He had it coming. 

The girl's boyfriend, whose hand hovered on her dainty waist like even he couldn't believe his luck, was a nonentity in a shirt jacket that would have fit him better had it been the right size. Life obviously wasn't designed to make sense or be fair, and mediocre guys everywhere continued to date people way out of their league.

Kibum knew what he wanted, and walked straight to the cashier as soon as he worded his order in his mind. The same girl from last time was working today: he'd seen her here many times before that too, but doubted she remembered him. She was probably the most sullen cashier in Seoul under twenty five, and didn't seem to care at all. He respected that.

"We're out of bananas. No chocolate muffins either," she greeted him flatly.

Of course, she remembered: he was halfway through his third stamp card.

Kibum asked for a strawberry smoothie instead and thought of the last time he had eyed the same jar of almond cookies near the cash register. Jinki was being silly and hugging him from the back. His hands were somewhat smaller than Kibum's.

He hated Jinki and his hugs.

He was taking his check when his thoughts wandered back to the young couple behind. His stomach sank.

The hand.

He had seen that hesitant, hovering movement before.

No. No, no, no, no, no. N-

A girl's voice called his name and he turned around gingerly.

That burgundy beret matched Arisa's skin tone beautifully.

Jinki's hands immediately disappeared inside the pockets of his jeans.

Kibum waved to Arisa despite not having a habit of doing that normally. Jinki quirk.

"Hi," he said, his voice cracking.

"Hi," Jinki said quietly.

It was strange that in a not-so-far-gone past they had laid on the grass together in the heat of the sun, talking about the L-word and whether or not Kibum should make his feelings known, connecting through their inexperience, and now they were connected through being torn apart by an experience they had shared together.

Dark feelings bubbled deep in Kibum's veins as he perched on a stiff wooden stool by another window, because his ex-best friend was sitting at his favorite table, in his favorite place, with his supposed crush.

How he wished he had asked for a takeout.

Was he really waiting for an apology? After his mouth had deliberately found Jinki's in the shadow of his room, without a warning?

This was a damn good smoothie. Too bad it would take forever to finish it. Too bad he would never be able to come here again.

Jinki was able to connect the dots. He had seen through the charade by now, and knew that no hearts would be broken. He didn't owe Kibum, the crazy guy, an explanation for why his hand now hovered over this particular girl.

"Kibum, why don't you just sit with us?" her voice trilled through the café.

He leaned further back to be able to see Arisa's face. There was such unaffected geniality in her smile when she beckoned him over that there was no way for him to stay put. That smile told him that of course he was welcome to sit with her, it was a no-brainer, and he missed simple and nice things. He was tired of being intense.

Arisa removed her bag from the chair on the side to make a place for Kibum. Jinki was not there: he must have slipped into the restroom.

Kibum sat down next to Arisa and set the paper bag on the floor.

"Did you drop by to check on him?" she asked humorously.

Arisa had bags under her eyes: she must have had a sleepless night too. But she had made no effort to conceal the evidence or distract from it, and was not wearing eyeliner. Kibum liked that.

"No need. Just met a girl and he's already off to do a number two. My guy has it all under control."

That was not his usual speak. He said it to make Arisa laugh into her hand like her laughter was a secret, which she did.

"He's not off to do a number two," she replied, in denial. "We met up early and it feels like a whole day has passed since then..."

Kibum released his straw to interject:

"Because he's so tedious?"

He needed to be out of here soon, but he also wanted to keep talking to Arisa. To someone.

She shook her voluminous bangs.

"No, he took me to Yeouido park and we rented bikes there. Then we had sandwiches and took a bus here. Oh, and before that we watched a movie. Got an early bird discount. It was a long morning."

Is there a single cell that's original in that guy?

"Cheapskate," Kibum said aloud.

"No, it was fun. Did ruin my tights, though." The girl turned to the side and stretched out her right leg to demonstrate a small rip on her cat-patterned tights on the ankle.

It was sweet that she did that, Kibum thought. It was like they were friends, and he had never grown distant and stiff when she had approached him to talk in the past.

It was impossible to make amends now, so he kept on making jokes at Jinki's expense.

"Sue him."

"I will if he makes me walk again." Arisa nodded at the bag. "What's in there?"

Kibum took a discreet peek around. He asked Arisa if she had a small plastic bag on her, and when she found one inside her patchwork bag, he took out one of his mother's green tea muffins and handed it to her under the table like it was illegal contraband. Kibum and Jinki had gotten into trouble once when they had brought "outside food" to a different coffeeshop, and he wasn't willing to take that risk again.

"It's a green tea one. My mom made it."

Arisa was delighted.

"Just for me? None for Jinki?" she asked, lowering her voice to play along.

"Just for you." Kibum winked.

He was aware that perhaps a certain part of him was flirting, and he would be lying if he said that it didn't feel good.

Arisa smelled different today. It was no longer the dramatic, contemplative rose. It was a vibrant, confident citrus. He wished he could lean in and smell her hair. Maybe he would forget all his torment then.

Jinki came over and the magic fizzled out. He didn't stab the straw into his smoothie this time: he was not in the mood for showing off. Unless being more sensible than usual was a form of showing off, for him.

"Had something in my eye, couldn't get it out," he explained, referring to his absence.

"Want me to check?" Arisa offered, already leaning closer.

"It's fine now," Jinki said with a little laugh that didn't ring true.

Kibum looked into his plastic glass: it was still about forty-percent full.

His former best friend was uncomfortable sitting next to him. Kibum was torn between his rebellious nature telling him to sip his smoothie at a glacial pace just to punish the boy, and the anxiety urging him to dump the drink unfinished and get out of here like his life depended on it. There was a third voice, telling him to raise his glass above Jinki's head and pour its contents down on his unruly hair, and he didn't hate that option completely.

The tension was palpable in the silence that followed. Each of the boys seemed to be okay with letting it continue, but poor Arisa still wanted to have a nice time.

"Are you going to be in the play?" she asked, turning to Kibum. "It's gonna be fun."

"There aren't enough parts for everyone," Kibum shrugged. "And I don't wanna play, like, the priest."

"You might get Romeo, though."

He shook his head.

"I bet it's gonna be Jongin."

Jinki nodded, not acknowledging him with a spoken word.

"Are you happy with your project?" he asked, looking at Arisa.

Kibum wondered if that was Jinki's sly way of reminding him about the coming presentation day without talking about it with him directly. They were technically supposed to be talking directly in order to get it ready, it was their thing.

"Overall, yes, but I like yours better… He showed me pictures," she said to Kibum. "Putting something like that together in just a few hours must have been intense."

"Intense is one way to put it," Kibum agreed ambiguously, because he couldn't resist a double meaning.

He was the one who had told Jinki not to talk to him anymore, but what was happening now was less like a coveted online purchase that had finally made it to his doorstep, and more like one that was already on the way to the trash bin because it had looked so much better in the website picture than it did in real life, and all he had left was dull disappointment.

He wasn't going to finish that drink, and if he wasn't about to pour it onto Jinki's hair, there was no reason for him to keep on ruining both his afternoon and somebody else's date by sitting there forever.

He got up, trying to accept reality as it was: they were done, Arisa was great to hang out with (and was it really a charade?), and Jinki had gotten there first. 

"Can you reply to Jungmi, though? She says it takes you 'literally years' to answer her messages," Arisa remembered.

Jungmi sent him messages and memes from time to time, and Kibum neglected them chronically just like he did school homework. He wasn't trying to make a point with his silence – he just was never in the mood.

But it was nice that she somehow liked him enough to keep up the messages. I really, really should reply.

"Some people just aren't bothered, Ari."

Kibum's eyes darted to Jinki's face. Was his imagination inventing words? Had he heard him right?

Ari.

'What's that supposed to mean?' Kibum wanted to ask – only he was not doing that in front of Arisa. And becoming a 'crazy guy' who cared was something that he wanted to do even less.

A fleeting look of contempt would be wasted here: Jinki was staring at Arisa's cup standing in front of him. Coward.

Kibum ended up on the same wooden bench on which Jinki had sat and wiggled his foot, waiting for him. The muffin bag sat by his side, and there was something uncertain and uncomfortable in its slightly rumpled shape. He had missed a perfect opportunity to give it away, and now it felt like it was staring at the boy reproachfully.

"I know, I know", Kibum was tempted to say. "But how many of us end up where they're supposed to, really?"

He could have just given the bag to Jinki. Seriously.

Kibum sat, hunched forward, his chin resting on his palms, not a single straight line in his figure. Mr. Kim had said, quoting some story they had had to analyze, that, in his hardest moment, one has to look for a ray of light, and if their eyes were open wide enough, the light was always there. Waiting to be found, to shine over their misery, to suggest a way out of the cold cell of one's loneliness.

Kibum didn't have to exude confidence that he didn't have in front of anybody now, so he directed his energy to trying to find that ray of light that he was cynical about, but also needed.

It was nowhere.

His problems were so small and unimportant, but they were all he could think about. He had been trying to frame the whole situation as a conflict based on betrayal: he had been disregarded, cast away, then beckoned back and lied to, and now he was being disregarded again. He had made a mistake, had been punished, and was now humiliated and sore over it. Plus, a girl that he might have ended up with in some alternative dimension had been snatched away. Simple and nice. Perfectly dumb and juvenile.

But there were too many blind spots in that narrative, too much relying on selective memory loss. If they had fought over a girl (they hadn't), and were now enemies (he had no idea what they were), then what had exactly taken place in front of that computer, in that room, in that electronics shop, at the park, at the locker room, at the movies? That just didn't fit any of those neat little boxes that were reserved for much simpler ideas inside his mind. BOA is an iconic female artist. Grandma makes the best bone soup. Puppies are cute. School is dumb. Neat and indisputable.

There was nothing neat in the way Jinki's behavior made his skin crawl at times. The very idea of him couldn't be packaged prettily, because it crumbled apart and then reassembled itself a few times an hour – sometimes in less than a minute, depending on the angle of Kibum's perception.

What do you want, Kibum? What do you want?

What he wanted at the moment, he discovered, was to eat something. It was past his lunchtime, and the dire straits he was in called for a gastronomical intervention. He promised himself he'd have just two – three at most – of the muffins that were now accompanying him on his walk of shame back home.

Why was he so hung up on this? Why couldn't he just strike him out of his 'people to care about' list?

Maybe another bite would clear all that up. (It didn't clear up anything, but the pastry was delicious.)

How could he, Kibum, have been so careless? How could he have dropped his guard that low – and expected it to end well somehow? What were those pictures he had glimpsed inside his thoughts when he had touched himself that morning?

That called for another muffin. Just one more. The last one. Pinky promise.

Why did you stare at him? Why did you let him lie on your bed? Why did you kiss him? Why?! Why?!?! You dumb f-

"You'll get big if you keep that up," an older lady warned him wryly from the other end of the bench. "Just saying."

Tumbling back into his body, Kibum found that the bag was now placed on his lap, the containers inside it were empty and a heavy weight seemed to press on his stomach. He was chewing the last mouthful and on the verge of tears. A wave of shame crashed over him.

"Maybe I want to get big," he muttered, meaning to be defiant, but instead sounding like he was just a very sad boy.

Mrs. Kim didn't understand the vague, broken explanation her son gave her of why he had never delivered the bag to Mrs. Lee's house. He marched straight to his room and didn't seem to be in the mood for sharing stories. Rather than looking upset, he had the same absent expression he had had in the past, when there was trouble, but he wouldn't talk.

She wasn't going to push him to open up. Stressing him out more was not something she wanted to do – and also, Mrs. Kim was not sure what she was supposed to do. When Kibum was like this, there was no way to move him.

She soothed herself by thinking that he had to be going through one of the necessary, if painful trials of youth, and his silence meant that he was smart enough to deal with it on his own, like the mature adult he was already on the way of becoming.

One worry that would not leave her was, what if he is too smart for his own good? 

The mature adult was busy deleting a wall of text on his iPhone, symbol by symbol, as he bit the fingernails on his other, less busy hand. He was sprawled on his bed in his street clothes, hands unwashed, the paper bag and the plastic containers that he had carried around for hours scattered on the floor as if left behind by a fleeing criminal.

The text he was slowly erasing was indeed a wall, as it contained no commas, no periods, and only sparse and random capitalisation. It was a gigantic essay of a message. A whole manifesto born out of sheer outrage. An epic shopping list of affronts and grudges – Kibum himself was taken aback by how many of them he had.

Even though it was typed in the text window in Kakao Talk, and only one tap at the 'Send' button separated it from being delivered to one particular person, it was clear from the start that the message, if it could even be called that, was never meant to see the light of day.

Writing it in a state of wounded frenzy had been therapeutic in a strange way, but it could easily turn into a double-edged sword if he wasn't careful enough.

He was on the verge of understanding the true meaning of the insults he was hurling at his no-longer-best-friend, and as he reread the message now, backwards, watching the words disappear, Kibum found the lone piece of comfort in knowing that this secret world of vulnerable emotions would only ever belong to him. His oversharing days were over. He was not a slave to his impulses anymore.

Similarly, he had written and never gotten to send those angry messages to Taeyeon before, when he had still been resentful towards her, and that had somehow helped. Maybe one day he would no longer be resentful with Jinki.

When just a couple of words remained, Kibum did what he should have done to begin with: he dragged his finger across the screen to select and delete them all at once.

He tossed his phone to the side and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, waiting as his heartbeat slowed down to its normal pace.

If he was easy to get used to, shouldn't it be just as easy to throw him away? Shouldn't it?

His phone buzzed.

Having already drifted to sleep, Kibum pried his eyes open with some effort and closed them again for a second when the light from his phone screen was too harsh for the darkness of his room.

He tapped on the notification and stared at the message. He was not sure what he was looking at.

He gulped – "Nerd" was the sender (Jinki no longer deserved to go by his own name anywhere in Kibum's contact lists). But what the hell…?

The message seemed to be a reaction to something, a correction. Had Jinki dropped it into the wrong chartroom by mistake?

'You're*' was all it said.

But Kibum had not sent him anything?

Still muzzy from sleep, he propped himself up on one elbow and scrolled up.

Jinki was replying to the last, unfinished message Kibum must have sent him without knowing:

"Your gross and a waste of spa"

He cussed so loud that his grandmother almost heard him in her room.

Another message followed up soon.

'Don't forget the presentation day on wed. It starts at 3. Be there at 2:45'

He dropped back on the pillow and covered his face with his hands.

A/N: Hi readers! Congrats on Jinki's discharge from the army! Thank you for reading and waiting for updates, hope to hear from all of you soon. Stay safe and I hope that you and your loved ones are in good health x L