When he did step to the side, it made no difference: Kibum still charged at him like a wild animal, because that was what he'd been running for.

It felt like the ground threw a punch at him when it came into immediate contact with his back, but he had no time to count the stars – while Kibum was trying to ‘do him some damage’ as he'd promised, Jinki's aim was to prevent said damage from coming to either of them. Which was not easy: maybe Kibum wasn't the strongest one among the two of them to begin with, but he was relentless. When Jinki would manage to throw him off and block his hits by grabbing at his wrists, Kibum would throw kicks instead. When he would try to lock his legs with his own, he'd be punched in the stomach, and an attempt at a choke hold (not easy when writhing on the ground) would result in getting bitten.

A few buttons were torn off in the heat of the battle, but that and an occasional spurt of blood from the inevitable cuts was not all that would be lost if they went on with it – if he wouldn't be able to make Kibum stop, that is.

Kibum straddled his classmate again and grabbed at the collar of his shirt.

“Why can't you leave me alone?! Why?!” he cried, shaking him hard.

But Jinki, his hands wrapped around Kibum's, was tossing over different thoughts inside his mind. His body was getting tired from all the painful fussing, and unlike Kibum, he didn't have the wrath by his side to keep him going no matter what.

If this went on, he'd have to hit him back hard enough to make a point. But he'll get hurt. And if he didn't hit him, he himself would get hurt and, if seen, Kibum would be punished, publicly humiliated or even worse – expelled!

“Kibum,” he wheezed, voice lost from the strain. “Kibum, stop.”

“Why must you meddle in everything?! What part of ‘I wanna be left alone’ do you not bloody get?!”

You don't want this. I know you don't.

“I was trying to... trying to help.”

“It can't be helped!!!”

“You're wro–”

Jinki never got to finish his poorly worded remark – he was struck square on the face, and his vision went black for a moment or two.

The weight pressing down on his stomach was lifted, trembling, hot hands raised his head gently above the ground, and a quivering voice called out his name:

“Jinki.”

“Jinki, are you okay?”

When he managed to lift his eyelids, he saw Kibum's face hovering over him, his eyes b with tears.

“I'm so... I'm...”

Jinki propped himself up on his elbow, feeling too dizzy to sit up yet. He cast a look around him, as if wondering how he'd ended up like this. The hall was so quiet and peaceful, the light blue walls filled with rectangles of bright, cheery sunshine. Someone was playing Mozart on an old piano in the other wing of the building. His body was sore from head to toe. Surreal.

Kibum was kneeling next to him, his usually neatly styled hair disheveled, his usually ironed clothes rumpled. The conqueror, the winner.

“Did you want to fight me?” Jinki asked.

The boy nodded defeatedly.

“Then why are you upset?”

“Because I fought you.”

“What were you even trying to do here?”

“I don't know.”

Jinki grunted as he scrambled to his feet. He had to grab a hold of the windowsill for a second – he was swaying left and right.

“Did I bust your lip?” Kibum asked in a ghostly voice. “It's bleeding.”

The other boy felt the inside of his cheek with his tongue and winced.

“It got cut on a tooth, I think.” He looked at Kibum.

“Feeling better now?”

Kibum had no answer for that.

Jinki rubbed the back of his head, looking like he was trying to make sense of it all and failing.

“I think... I think I can't do much about… all of this,” he said slowly.

One sleeve of his shirt rolled up, the other not, he looked perfectly crumpled, too.

He limped a little when he walked away with his backpack in hand.

Mr. Kim caught sight of Kibum sitting alone on the floor in the hallway and changed his direction to walk over to him.

“What's happened here?” he asked, brow furrowed.

Kibum looked up at him apathetically.

“You missed it.”

“Are you hurt?”

The boy shook his head, and the teacher helped him get up.

“I didn't listen to your advice about not fighting,” he muttered limply, as Mr. Kim went down the hallway to get his bag as well. The man was too kind.

Mr. Kim sighed.

“What I meant was that you should listen instead of fighting yourself. Doesn't mean you can't throw a punch or two at someone who bothers you.”

The words that were meant to be comforting, ended up making Kibum feel even worse. How could he tell him that he was the botherer? Would Mr. Kim look at him as kindly if he did now? His grandmother always said that honesty is the best policy. But was it worth the aftermath?

“However, I'm not sure if the school is the best place for that,” Mr. Kim added, handing the bag to its owner after shaking some dust off it.

Kibum bowed.

“Yes, teacher.”

The man told him to go home and rest or, better, go home, rest and do his homework – because homework ‘is a superior distraction’. Kibum had no doubt about that, but wasn't sure if it would work on him.

On his tiresome (he had left his transport card at home and had to walk) journey back home, nothing could really distract him from the one strange and persistent thought: he had lost him now.

Jinki was right: he was a coward, and he had never been more so than at the moment when he raised his hand to hurt someone who hadn't wronged him in any real way.

He hated to look at the lone shadow lurking in the vaults of his memory now more than ever, not because it was as dark as he feared, but for the opposite reason precisely – because, just like his mom had done when he was a kid to show him that no monsters were hiding under his bed, he might lift the covers and point the flashlight at the true maker of his nightmares – himself, cowering on the floor with a wild look in his eyes. Yet, more than ever, he felt that he had nothing to lose anyway.

Everybody was whining about the art project. Who cares about arranging and gluing things together when there were so many Pokémons to be caught? So many popular guys and girls to be pursued? And the unofficial title of the coolest kid of the day, to be competed for and won, over and over?

“That's, like, for girls,” one of the jocks managed after half a minute's thinking when the class teacher had announced that everybody had to participate.

Kibum, for whom art was one of his stronger sides, was secretly excited about the project. He'd go to Starbucks and brainstorm ideas with himself over a tall latte with cream, and then go home and put together a tasteful poster, sitting on the floor in his room with some nice CD playing, and then – then he'd win the first place and the mayor of the city would shake his hand on television after presenting him with a free single ticket to London, hotel included. Or something.

But Kibum's joy was dampened by the other condition – they were to do it in pairs. A few girls squealed, clapping their hands and exchanging elated looks with their respective besties, but Kibum groaned under his breath, pinching his nose: that was just brilliant.

He was still a relative newcomer to their class. People he wouldn't mind being friends with were too invested in being friends with each other, people who took interest in him were not interesting enough. There was no way that looking for a partner would not be painfully awkward, and it was honestly the worst timing. He got desperate enough to start sorting through the ‘safe’ people he could theoretically approach and not feel too humiliated in case of rejection (mainly the quiet ones who'd just let him take charge and do everything himself), when it got even less endurable than that. The teacher placed a carton box that had once been home to egg cookies on her desk, and instructed the class to put paper strips with their names into it. The art project partners would be matched up through a draw – and he would be the first one to pull a paper out of the box.

I might get myself, though. Maybe they'll let me do it alone if I do?, Kibum bargained with himself naively as his hand dived into the box that held his future, apprehensively, as if expecting to be bitten by some tiny evil creature inside.

His first thought when he unfolded the piece of paper he'd picked was obvious disappointment: he didn't draw himself. And the second was confusion: the scribble that was supposed to be a name was barely readable.

“Who did you get, Kibum?” Mrs. Kang, the teacher, exclaimed with her unrelatable enthusiasm.

Kibum squinted, bringing the paper up to his eyes.

“Lee... Shinki?”

Everyone laughed.

“Oh, that must be you, Jinki? I see you didn't follow my advice on writing neatly,” the teacher said, looking at a guy who was at that very moment using his plastic ruler as a trampoline to launch an eraser into his pencil case.

He was unperturbed.

“No, that's Shinki. Anyone sheen him around?”

For some reason people laughed at that, and Kibum just had one hope: that he wouldn't have to resort to homicide.

The task and the theme of the project was “What would you like to show about our life to school kids your age in North Korea?” They wouldn't really be able to show their Northern counterparts anything, of course, and the purpose of the project was to remind themselves that they are living in a great country, blah-blah-blah. Kibum took little interest in patriotism, but it wouldn't be acceptable if he were surpassed by someone else in something that had anything to do with art. So, he was determined to win.

He was starting to think that maybe he hadn't had such bad luck with picking his partner. He could've gotten some chatty girl who'd distract him and then, if this school was in any way like his previous one, develop a crush on him that he wouldn't reciprocate and things would turn awkward fast, a jock who'd make him feel intimidated, or one of the quiet ones who'd be so quiet he'd be able to hear his hair growing, but never get an opinion on anything. Getting a smug nerd would not be traumatic, but merely unpleasant, and Kibum just had had a suspicion that this Lee Jinki was kind of smug, what with the jokes and being liked by every teacher, but he didn't really get that vibe when they got around to talking. He was just one of the livelier nerds with whom it was possible to have a coherent conversation without it feeling like pulling teeth.

When they sat together in the canteen and Kibum prepared to share his thoughts on the project (in the exact sentences he had worded in his head in advance), he was surprised to find that Jinki had something to say, too.

“So, I was thinking,” he started, daring to interrupt Kibum's preparatory silence, “and I had many ideas at first, but then it got difficult.”

Kibum blinked, watching him unwrap his ham sandwich.

“How?” he found himself asking.

“Because I was thinking, what people our age are really interested in,” Jinki went on, chewing. “And I got games, cool phone apps, karaoke, sports, technology and stuff...”

Kibum, who had zero interest in every single one of those things, except maybe for some karaoke on a rainy day, quipped:

“I thought they were really interested in covering up their pimples, Frenching and .”

“Well, of course, it's different for everybody,” Jinki agreed, accompanying his speech with abstract gesticulations. “But we've got to keep it appropriate, right? Anyway, my idea was to cover some of those to, like, show the kids from the North that we're the same and we like the same things, but then...”

Kibum's brows crawled up by themselves. He had yet more to say?

Jinki's eyes wandered around the canteen as he struggled to find a way to express his thought fully. He had a bit of mayo in the corner of his mouth.

“We don't know much about their lives, don't we?”

“Um, no, we don't.”

“They might be going through hardships that we can't even imagine, so I thought, wouldn't talking about selfies and Kakao Talk be…” Kibum's eyes followed the movement of the sandwich being waved around. “…shallow?”

Kibum gulped, hungry. Jinki noticed the trajectory of his intense gaze.

“I have a second half of the sandwich. You want?” he asked as he actually began to reach out for it.

Kibum smiled sourly.

“No, I'm happy with my dietary hard-boiled egg and coleslaw.”

Jinki looked surprised.

“You don't look like you need dietary anything. I mean, if it's a health condition, then, you might… might need to eat the low-calorie stuff, I just wanted to say that you're, like, uh...”

Witnessing that apologetic train wreck of an explanation together with all the gestures that went along with it was fun in some masochistic way, but it just might never end.

“I don't have a health condition,” Kibum sighed, as Jinki concluded his verbal stumbling with:

“…perfect. Look-wise.”

Kibum gulped again, but this time hunger had nothing to do with it.

Had this ridiculous boy just called him… perfect?

He cleared his throat even though he didn't need to.

“My mom and grandma cook too much because apparently they think that, if I'm not so stuffed that I'm falling over, it means that I'm still hungry. I got chubby last year as a result and I'm still fixing the damage.”

“Honestly, I don't think you ne–”

Kibum raised his hand to silence the other boy. Then he compulsively tucked his hair behind his ear, even though it was too short to stay there, and straightened his back.

“Shinki.”

“It's Jinki.”

Of course, he knew it was Jinki. Where did that come from?

“Jinki. You don't need to worry about being insensitive, because nobody cares. No one in the North will see our stuff. We're supposed to show that we're good patriotic kids who are proud of their country. It's less ‘let's put flowers in our hair and dance in the fields together because we're all the same’ and more ‘South Korea is the fourth largest economy in Asia and I definitely never snooze in the history class’.”

Jinki's face was that of a little kid who just dropped the ice cream that his mom bought him ten seconds ago.

“I like the idea of putting flowers in our hair and dancing in the fields,” he mumbled, disappointed.

Kibum set his water down.

“That's cute, but that idea is never going to win, because something meaningful and personal never does. And I want to win this thing.”

Jinki shrugged and bit into his sandwich again, but with way less enthusiasm.

Now that the spotlight wholly belonged to him, Kibum could finally lay out his plan without distraction.

“We need to cover our most successful industries. Like, I can take pop culture, fashion and cosmetics, and you can do smart technologies and all that... other smart stuff.”

He stumbled as soon as he was out of his area of interest. He wasn't even sure what other areas existed: they were just blurry spots that he never planned to explore.

“Like, what else do we have?”

“Food?” Jinki suggested with some amount of hope still glimmering deep in his heart.

“Sure, but the science-y stuff? Like, like drones or... rocket building? What are we good at?”

This was honestly very hard for Kibum.

“Medicine?”

“Huh?”

“We're pioneers in minimally invasive surgery,” Jinki elaborated, as if he simply knew those things.

The other boy was both impressed and immediately drowsy.

“Yeah, you can explore... that. Then when the spring comes and the weather is sunny, we'll go to the Gyeongbokgung and take pictures in front of the palace with faces that read ‘ready to serve our Motherland’, and we're done.”

“But the art part?” Jinki asked, worried.

“I'll take care of that.”

“But I want to be useful, too.”

Cute.

“Okay, how good are you with art? Design? Drawing things?” Kibum asked skeptically.

“Well…” Jinki faltered. “Not very good...”

The other nodded.

“Exactly. So, do your research part and worry not.”

Kibum was done with his egg and salad quickly and was ready to run off to his after-school English class. Jinki was biting his lip, still worrying about something despite his new boss’s order.

“Don't you think it's what everybody else is gonna do as well?” he mustered.

“Sure,” Kibum shrugged, wiping his hands on a paper tissue. “But I'm gonna do better. We're gonna do better, I mean,” he corrected himself.

Jinki nodded half-heartedly.

“Okay.”

When he was taking the bus, Kibum was confronted with a most unusual feeling: was he totally right in how he had chosen to handle it? Was Jinki happy about it? That second thought especially was so strange, it almost made him miss his stop. What do I care?

But, really, how come Jinki had used the one word that was both a dream and a curse to describe him? Perfect. It carried so much weight, that word. You don't throw it around, wasting it on random people. He wouldn't apply it to himself – not yet… but that kid just had.

He could have gotten Arisa, though.

He admired her style, her ease and nonchalance, her small face and perfect pout. She was kind of artsy too, and they could have had so much fun... He wasn't really sure if they really had much in common, but he liked to imagine that they did.

Arisa was the first person who had smiled at him at this inferior new school. Living out the old romantic cliché, they had both reached for the same last milk bun at the cafeteria and she laughed, and that laughter rang like a bell. Ever since, he'd gotten a personal hello from her almost every day, but they didn't really talk for some reason. Sometimes during a break she'd wander around the classroom and give him a friendly smile, and it would feel like she is expecting him to say something, and it would be a perfect moment to start a conversation – but it never worked out. It's not that he would enter a full panicking mode, sweaty hands, the shaking and all – his mind, always so full of quips and complaints, and ideas, would simply turn blank. And discussing something obvious like the weather or classes, just because it was close at hand? That was below his dignity.

Then Jinki would stroll into the class, Taemin following on his heels more often than not, and he would walk up to Arisa and erupt with a question about their latest biology test (“Which answer did you pick for number 34? I hesitated between Phylum Arthropoda and Phylum Echinodermata”) and then a comment on how it would be cold enough for wearing a hat soon, and Arisa would angle her whole body toward him and she would always have a lot to say about both of those tasteless subjects – and look quite happy and chipper while doing so.

Jinki would make that crystal-clear bell of her laughter ring again and again, as if his effortless jokes and childish puns were waves of whimsical breeze, and nothing was missing between the two.

Then, Taemin would cut the friendly movements of air between them right off by declaring that he was hungry/bored/had wiped his too hard that morning or a similar thing, because apparently, he would get physically sick if one minute passed without him being the center of Jinki's attention.

Could he blame Arisa for smiling at Jinki the way she did? Would he blame anyone? He put one at ease. He was safe. If the other boys, enslaved by the chemicals raging in their brains, were tirelessly searching for outlets to pour their insecure, competitive energy into, it seemed that Jinki had figured it all by himself somehow. As if, being the nerdy type he was, instead of running away from it in a whirl of unconscious panic, he examined the chemical disarray in his brain, set it apart and decided, “This isn't the only way to be”.

Jinki naturally gravitated toward calmness and peace, and when he did get angry or frustrated, his emotions didn't lead to destruction, and it didn't take him long to cool down and retrieve the balance that he always sought.

Kibum secretly admired and envied all that. He had an image in his mind of what he wanted to be: sophisticated, brilliant, a little intimidating, but gracious, invincible, but approachable, and above all – in full control of his emotions. He wanted to be able to decide what could be shown to others and what had to be concealed – and stick to that decision. He wished for both precision and freedom. Instead, he was living his days in rarely interrupted state of confusion.

But Kibum was not stupid or naive enough to forget that he was just a teenage boy, and due to that simple fact, his abilities were limited. And sometimes it felt shameful.

If his admiration was a big, sweet, nutritious apple, the envy that came with it was the pesky little worm living in it.

Jinki had decided that being randomly matched up for the art project meant that they had to be on friendly terms now. He'd ask Kibum how his weekend went, share his snacks and just randomly start chitchatting with him like you do with a good buddy. Kibum was not always interested in whatever subject Jinki chose to discuss with him, but he never interrupted, either. Maybe it was his voice, maybe it was his pleasant air, or something in his face, but Kibum would just look back at him, not necessarily listening, and let him go on and on about whatever, with his lively gestures and his lively cluelessness, and he would feel... at peace.

Maybe that's why he never really stood a chance. Once you are at peace with someone, you've let them in. It's the beginning of the end.

At least he had had the good sense to start avoiding Jinki at some point – as much as possible, considering that they were classmates who were also paired up for a project. Objectively, Jinki was not the type of person you would normally choose to avoid – kind of always sleepy, kind of bubbly, he was the opposite of threatening. But Kibum knew his own mind (or liked to think that he did) well enough to sense that something fishy was going on in there every time he got too close to that boy.

He needed to be careful.

However, it didn't exactly stop all the background thinking and overthinking, and the indirect result of that was that on one mild weekend morning Kibum suddenly got bored of lying on his bed with his manhwa books and went to see a movie instead. Which would not be suspicious in itself, if only it wasn't a rerun of a kind of movie that he usually had no interest in: too many explosions, too little style.

But there he was, standing in line for a ticket like some ‘regular’ guy indeed.

“I thought you hated action movies!” someone cried beside him and he turned, mid-yawn, to see… yes, him.

He shut his mouth quickly.

“That is nonsense,” he argued loudly, not wanting to be the oddball among the people of his own age. “Why would you ever say such a thing?!”

“Because your eyes glaze over every time I talk about them,” Jinki whispered, leaning closer, because he had read Kibum's emotions right.

Kibum was slightly embarrassed about that.

“Maybe I wanted to challenge my views,” he replied, straightening his back.

“Wow, that's a biggie,” Jinki .

“I can't see why.”

“Because you seem to be so sure about everything, one might say it's a... Mission Impossible.”

While Jinki beamed triumphantly, Kibum's mouth twisted.

“I'm gonna throw up.”

“You don't wanna share the popcorn, then?”

Kibum finally noticed the huge bucket of popcorn in his classmate's arms. Until then, he'd only noticed that he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

“I don't really like the salty one.”

Jinki looked almost offended.

“You think I don't know what's good?”

He had actually bought the caramel popcorn.

A few minutes later he got out his phone and chuckled.

“Lazy Lee Taemin overslept again.”

Kibum moved forward when a couple in front of him changed their minds and left.

“That's so irresponsible.”

Jinki shrugged.

“I don't know, it's so like him.”

“Aren't you a little mad?”

“Not really? I mean, it's just the way he is. What's the point of being mad?”

Kibum honestly couldn't relate to that magnanimity. He would've given such a ‘friend’ a good whooping.

He almost called the generous boy a doormat, but then wondered if it would be too harsh... Yes, there were definitely some fishy things going on inside his head.

“You're kind,” he told him instead, feeling as if someone else was talking with his mouth.

Jinki put his phone away and said simply:

“Do you want his ticket?”

There. That moment, that exact moment when those sleepy brown eyes met his expectantly, was when he should've said ‘no’ and left for the sake of them both.

But the Kibum from the past, who didn't have the same amount of life experience as the one in the present did, foolishly agreed and stepped out of the line. And now, it seemed kind of metaphorical: he had stepped away from normalcy to follow what he didn't know yet were the butterflies in his stomach.

He opened his wallet to repay him, but Jinki stopped him, saying that it was okay.

“You're okay with just giving out gifts to people? Are you some kind of conglomerate?”

“It's just what friends do for each other,” the boy said with that toss of the head he often did to push hair away from his eyes.

“I should've become your friend right away, then,” Kibum , that treacherous ease creeping up on him steadily.

“Maybe you should've,” Jinki smiled.

“Will you buy me a big coke too, then?”

“Buy your own coke,” the boy retorted cheekily, and Kibum gave him a light push.

“Dork,” he said, smiling back.

To say that he didn't enjoy the movie would be a lie. The action scenes were suspenseful, the actor in the main role could run, and... he was with Jinki. Jinki whispered explanations about the characters in the previous films, cracked jokes from time to time, and Kibum forgot himself in the fun he was having. He smiled and laughed, and gave his classmates playful nudges, and munched on the sweet popcorn with great gusto, and there was not a single thing that he felt compelled to be cynical about. But all good things must come to an end, and the first one that had to go was the popcorn: during a particularly intense car chase scene, Kibum stuck his hand into the bucket and, after groping about fruitlessly for a moment, it blindly wrapped around Jinki's. The other boy laced his fingers through his as a joke, and it would've been something entirely harmless, if only Kibum didn't get a distinct feeling that their hands were locked for just a split second too long for it to be a proper joke. And what's worse – he had no idea whose fault that was.

They pulled their hands out of the bucket at the same time, and Jinki still looked relaxed and cheerful as he reclined back in his seat, but Kibum was shaken out of their bliss for a moment. He felt wary, anxious, confused. But then, his pulse slowed down, he drew a deep breath and let it go. Couldn't he have a nice thing without feeling guilty about it? He had done nothing wrong. Not yet.

A/N: Hey everyone! What did you think of this chapter? Friday is near! This week has been busy and stressful for me because of the exams, I hope you're all okay and dressing warmly enough. Thank you, thank you for taking interest in my story! x L