A/N: Flashback continues.

During the big break on Monday, Kibum finished his salad and fruits and wandered about the classroom, where the teacher had left the windows open for ventilation. The fresh breeze from the outside was making the curtains flutter, and it was a rare moment of quiet that Kibum could use to untangle his youthful anxieties.

He started thinking about something like that, but then his eye rested on the peach he was holding, cool and dewy, in his hand. He had eaten the other one, and it had been juicy and delicious, but he was feeling too full now to bite into its twin, too.

His solitary stroll had brought him over to Jinki's desk, where his Math copybook was lying open. And Kibum did a strange thing: he put his peach on top of his classmate's textbook and walked away.

“Oh, look, someone left you a peach,” observed Taemin, who had a habit of announcing obvious things.

“Or maybe someone lost theirs,” Jinki said, eyeing the gift with raised eyebrows.

“If they lost it on your desk, it means it's yours now.”

“Just like the pirate law.”

The older boy sat down to prepare for the next class.

Taemin frowned.

“For real?”

“Just guessing,” Jinki chuckled as he hid his copybook away.

“I'll eat it.”

But the tantalizing fruit was snatched away before Taemin could lay a hand on it.

“No, I'll eat it, 'cause it's mine.”

The tone of Jinki's voice was almost proud.

The younger boy pouted.

“People only give me candy bars, and they hide them in my drawer, so it looks like I just brought them myself.”

“Yeah, it when you can't make a show out of a gift you didn't ask for,” Jinki quipped.

Behind them, Kibum coughed to cover up his laugh.

“Do you know who gave it to you?”

“I might.”

Taemin watched impassively as Jinki tossed the peach with one hand and caught with the other, over and over.

“Has to be Arisa,” he mused aloud.

The older boy shook his head.

“How do you know it's not her?”

“She's allergic to peaches.”

“Who is it, then?”

Jinki was tossing the fruit higher and higher.

“I'm guessing it's someone who takes care of their health, someone confident, and it's clear that they're not afraid to stand out.”

“Why?”

Taemin failed to comprehend the logic behind that analysis, which was good for Jinki, as he was happy to explain:

“Well, they left the peach out here in the open, without caring if someone else noticed – they didn't even care if I knew exactly who they were. The fact that they laid it right on top of the Math textbook suggests that they don't have much respect for the Sciences. And all of that suggests a personality with a strong core, but with a layer of softness, too. Much like this little guy,” Jinki split the peach in two halves with impressive ease and stuffed one into his mouth. “Also, they do have good taste in peaches,” he added with a sound of approval.

Taemin made his own conclusion:

“Jinki, you're such a dweeb sometimes.”

His friend laughed, because he always enjoyed Taemin's insults.

“He's not wrong, you know,” Kibum sighed before walking out of the classroom. Behind his back, he heard Taemin demanding to have the second half of the forbidden fruit and Jinki insisting that it was ‘his and his only’ with calm resolve, and Kibum smiled.

Why had he left that peach on Jinki's desk? He wasn't sure. It had been an impulsive, thoughtless gesture, and he would've been embarrassed by it by now if he hadn't had this strange, warm feeling growing in his chest, like a tiny tree spreading its branches up towards the sun.

Maybe that peach was saying something. Some very simple words that he should've said on that bench after the big scuffle on the zebra crossing – and even if Jinki couldn't read his thoughts, Kibum still had the satisfaction of knowing that he had expressed them the one way he could.

Then there was, of course, the big cleaning day. As the weather was cold and muddy after a few consecutive days of nearly constant rain, they were instructed to leave their school uniforms at home and wear old clothes that were fit for labor and dirt. Then, they were all given a pair of gloves, a few trash bags, and tasks were allotted: the students who got rakes were supposed to take care of the fallen leaves and others – to collect trash, which all had to be sorted by type for recycle.

Unsurprisingly, everyone wanted a rake, and Kibum, who hated bending down for any reason, was no exception, but he sadly wasn't fast enough to get one: all he got were the trash bags and disappointment.

As he soon discovered, apart from the other obvious perks, the rake allowed the advantage of holding it in one hand and a phone in the other, and while crouching on the ground with his trash bags, it was hardly possible.

Jinki had shown up wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of old blue jeans that, in addition to being just a little too tight and too short on him, had a big tear on one knee that didn't look like a part of the original design. People quickly started making fun of him for that, but the boy took it on the chin and joked that the hole was there ‘for ventilation’. Hearing that, Kibum shivered, and he wasn't sure if it was because the wind was cold or he just cringed that hard.

“Something tells me you're really happy to be here right now,” Jinki said, sauntering over with a smile.

With a groan of pain, Kibum straightened himself up and cocked his head left and right. His own jeans were also tight, but in his case, fashion was to blame, and they were a little stiff after laundry, too.

“Elated,” he answered curtly. “I see you got a rake.”

“Yeah, I managed. You didn't?”

“You can guess.” Kibum gave his bags a sour look.

“Do you want the rake?” Jinki asked simply, and Kibum looked up at him in surprise.

Then again, at this point, he probably should've expected that kind of casual generosity from his classmate.

“Have it, then. I'll do the trash.”

Kibum was quick and happy to make the exchange, but still heaved a deep sigh.

“You can't just keep on letting others have the good stuff.”

“Why not? It's not a big deal,” Jinki shrugged, already inspecting the contents of Kibum's bags and resorting them again.

“Because you should put yourself first.”

“I got the rake first and was okay with it, but you wanted it more than I did, so why not just give it to you?”

“Because, if I wanted it so much, I should've been faster and got it first. It's supposed to be my problem and not yours.”

“Well, if you want to give it back…”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Kibum interrupted. “I'm just trying to teach you about life.”

Jinki chuckled.

“Then, using your logic, me giving the rake up to you is my own choice and, as you said, ‘my problem and not yours’. Right?”

As he said that, he looked up at his classmate with a little playful spark in his eyes.

It was one of the rare moments when Kibum was at a loss of words. He literally didn't know what to say to that.

“Whatever,” he muttered, turning away as Jinki laughed at him.

Soon, they were both absorbed: Jinki in collecting the trash, Kibum – in his phone. However, little by little, the eyes of the latter began shifting from his screen in a different direction, and what started as brief glances now and then, gradually turned into outright ogling. The source of his distraction was Jinki, or rather, a particular part of his body – namely, his .

Unlike Kibum, he didn't mind bending down for a good cause, so he toiled and huffed, trying to scrape some chewing gum off the asphalt with a plastic knife he'd gotten from the homeroom teacher. Again, if he were in the other's shoes, Kibum would've just pretended to not have seen any gum: he firmly believed that gum removal was specialized labor that should be paid for – at least, in some kind of award ‘for trying too hard to impress the teacher’. But the truth is, he didn't mind that Jinki had decided to do more than he was qualified for...

Those jeans were tight.

So was it his fault, really?

Jinki must have mentioned something about taking a taekwondo class, and Kibum must have zoned out as soon as his brain detected sports-related talk. But listening to baffling tales about people who voluntarily choose to move their bodies for something other than getting to places or dancing is one thing, and beholding the fruit of their self-torture is something completely different, as he realized, studying that denim-bound, firm behind and those no less firm thighs that had been concealed by the gray uniform pants all this time.

Of course, Kibum's interest was part philosophical, but mainly scientific: how come Jinki, being as mellow and awkward as he was, had such a well-developed physique, while Kibum remained generally slim and kind of angular, and looked every inch the teenage boy that he was, despite lifting weights about three times a month, when he did remember to?

He must look good in shorts.

“You're raking my foot!”

When Kibum turned his head, he saw Choi Minho, standing in front of him with a rake in hand.

“Move it out of the way, then,” Kibum shrugged, stuffing his phone in his pocket.

“But it hurt!”

“Well, be more careful next time.”

Minho's attractive face assumed a most dramatic expression.

“Don't you ever apologize to people?!”

“For what? It's your foot, and you should watch where you put it,” Kibum retorted with chilly nonchalance.

“And you should watch your rake!” the athletic boy insisted, his eyes round in sheer disbelief and indignation.

“I didn't maim you for life, did I?”

Minho pressed his lips together.

“You. Are incredibly mean,” he said in a more collected tone.

Kibum gave him an eye-roll.

“And you talk like a little girl.”

“I don't mind talking like a girl, because I hold women in high respect, and I think that we can all learn from them.”

Kibum suppressed a laugh: Minho came up with that tirade as a reply to his words, but was actually looking at Arisa, who was gathering candy wraps some dozen feet away with her friend. Tragically enough, throughout his short, but passionate speech, Arisa's eyes were riveted to Jinki – who, in blissful ignorance, was humming something under his nose and only looking down, with his rear end still up in the air.

Aren't we all pathetic.

“Why don't you speak a little louder for all womankind to hear?”

For a few seconds, Minho looked ready to take a leap and tackle Kibum to the ground, but he endured heroically.

“One day, when you're alone and have no friends, you'll regret being a jerk,” he said instead.

“Okay, little girl.”

Minho stormed off before the tensions escalated even more, and Kibum went back to pretending to be busy.

When they were finally allowed to rest, Kibum thought of dropping down on the same bench where Jinki was gulping his water and bullying him a little for some mood improvement, but the appearance of a third person made him change his mind and take a seat at some distance. Taemin approached his friend from behind with his sly grin and pressed his hands to Jinki's cheeks.

The cry that came out of the boy's mouth sounded a lot like a shriek.

“Why are your hands so cold?!”

Taemin beamed, happy with the result of his prank.

“I just washed them.”

Sitting down next to his friend, he promised not to touch him again – and proceeded to do the opposite: he slipped his icy hand into the hole on Jinki's blue jeans to put it on his knee. That provoked another shriek.

“Taemin!!!”

Despite his vague dislike for the boy, Kibum admitted to himself that he would've done the same thing. Somehow, making Jinki's life hard just felt more fun than it would have with any other person. To Kibum, he was the kind of guy that you just want to bother, if only to get a reaction out of him. And Jinki's reactions, which were either over-the-top if you caught him by surprise, like now, or placid and quizzical, were always entertaining for no particular reason.

Jinki then took out his phone to show his friend something, and Taemin leaned closer, resting his hand on Jinki's hip with a sense of familiarity, as if there it took its lawful place. They talked and laughed about something, looking at the screen together, completely in their own world, but Kibum couldn't take his eyes off that hand, those fingers that, instead of lying flat, sometimes pressed into that sturdy hip, as if in doing so Taemin unconsciously found some kind of comfort.

How had they come to that sort of closeness?

Just how much does one have to put their guard down to either offer or allow that level of physical closeness?

Minho's ominous words had not hit any sensitive strings in Kibum's soul, not really. He already knew what it was like to be alone. It's just that, sometimes, having to ask himself if there was anything wrong with him made him feel resentful with the rest of the world.

A few days later, Jinki strolled over and said: “Hey, Kibum”.

Kibum, who had been drawing something on the last page of his copybook, snapped it shut instinctively.

“What's up?” he replied, looking up from his desk.

“Did you sign up for the English Club?”

Kibum noticed the hair sticking up on top of the boy's head. He thought of an apple.

He had, in fact, signed up – he was still not losing hope to find a couple of cool kids in this school.

“Yeah, why?”

“I just saw your name on the list and thought it was pretty cool.”

“Did you sign up, too?” Kibum asked.

“Yes, but I'm kind of always there anyway.” Jinki smiled, cocking his head to the side.

He was making it really hard to avoid him.

Kibum sighed and began tidying up his desk.

“So, what are we gonna do there?”

“We have conversations in English, we read books and discuss them… oh, and sometimes we do plays.”

“Really?”

Kibum's ears pricked up: at the other school, drama had been his thing.

“Yeah, but last year it was kind of a disaster, so...” Jinki paused.

From the short history of their acquaintance, Kibum knew that he was dying to tell him the full story, but didn't want to bore him.

“What happened?”

Jinki rubbed his nose.

“We all got food poisoning the day before the performance when we went to Everland.”

Of course, you did.

“And?”

Jinki put his hands in his pockets, taking a triumphant pause.

“You know how there's normal vomiting? And then there's, like, projectile vomiting?”

He was obviously trying his hardest not to laugh at this point, and Kibum was having trouble keeping his own face straight, too.

“Please, tell me you were a main character.”

“And in full make up and costume, no less.”

Kibum bit his lip hard.

Jinki put his hands on the edge his desk and leaned closer.

“We were doing ‘The Wizard of Oz’.”

The other boy covered his mouth.

“Stop it.”

“And I was playing the Lion! Fur suit with ears and tail!”

That was the last drop for Kibum, who suddenly threw his head back and gave in to the laughter choking him.

He wasn't even sure why he was laughing so much: Jinki, with his face, and his voice, and his overly suspenseful delivery, just made things ridiculous.

The boy was happy with that reaction and joined in.

“Can you imagine – lion makeup, whiskers and all, and me being greenish white and sweating buckets?” he went on.

“Was your mom filming?”

“You bet. Auntie came with her kid, too. At the dry-cleaner's they said that I should just burn the costume.”

At this point, Kibum was almost in tears.

“Are you telling him your play story?” Taemin inquired, walking towards them with a bag of chips – to ruin their little personal moment as usual. “It's not that funny, actually.”

“Kibum thinks it's very funny,” Jinki argued and turned to his classmate for support.

Kibum was coughing from laughing too much.

“It's not too bad,” he choked out into his fist.

“See? From his mouth, it's a praise,” Jinki said, lifting his chin proudly.

“I don't know his mouth that well,” Taemin admitted with a shrug. “Have some chips, guys. They're nice neutral flavor.”

Of course, both Kibum and Jinki reached for the bag at the same time, making the former wonder if they were just destined to touch hands by accident until the end of high school.

“Oh, go first,” Jinki offered, as he would.

“Yeah, why don't you go first,” Taemin agreed with unusual kindness.

So, Kibum grabbed a few chips, Jinki did the same, they crunched on them for a few moments – and then they both pressed their hands to their mouths with a muffled cry.

“Is it wasabi?” Jinki wheezed with tears in his eyes.

Taemin nodded and grinned.

Kibum quickly reached for his water bottle.

“But you don't like spicy stuff!”

“No, I bought them without looking, so I wanted to see how bad it is first. Thanks, guys.”

Handing the bag to Jinki, Taemin said he had something to show him on his phone.

“Can't you show me here?”

But, apparently, it was absolutely confidential, as much as it was urgent, and Jinki was dragged out of the classroom by the sleeve of his jacket. Kibum always felt a little regretful when their conversations were cut short, and always relieved afterwards. Maybe the universe had sent Lee Taemin into his life to help him stay on track – even if his interventions were often annoying and at times jarring. Jinki and him had that unbreakable, almost palpable bond for a reason – so that other persons, who were maybe confused and maybe did not always do what was good for them, wouldn't get a chance of coming between them or get a piece of the wacky world the two of them shared.

We'll never get close. We'll never spend too much time together. It will never be a big thing, and nothing's gonna happen, a voice in Kibum's mind soothed him as his eyes followed Jinki's reluctant steps.

But he does talk to me often, doesn't he?

When he was almost out of the door, Jinki turned around, and Kibum looked away fast.

“Today's the first meeting, by the way. Don't forget!”

Yeah, right.

How could he forget now?

Kibum went home for lunch, and after retiring to his room, he threw himself on the bed and glanced at the clock on the wall.

Yes, he was interested in drama and needed more English practice. But he wasn't interested in too much drama.

Maybe I shouldn't go.

But that was okay – he still had some time to think, and what would work better at helping him think than a good-old Instagram browsing session? It started off well enough, with him ‘liking’ a bunch of hot models' pictures and responding to the comments under his own, but then something made him freeze: he was about to ‘like’ a picture of a friend from his old school, in which a few of his former classmates were having fun in a park, when among them he saw Lee Taeyeon.

She was tagged in the photo, and her comment below was the latest to be added: ‘5m’, it said in gray under her suggestion to ‘do it again soon, but without the crazy wind!!!’. Kibum really wanted to keep scrolling, and he definitely didn't need to click on her username – but his finger pressed on it before he could stop himself.

She still had her old selfie as her profile picture, her bio was still the same (just five diamond emojis without any words), and most of her posts were food and videos from the dancing class, just like they had always been. But she did have about a hundred more followers now, and... well, all the pictures of her and Kibum together were gone. Except for the one from her birthday party last year, which they had taken at Paris Baguette, and she was holding a heart-shaped balloon in one hand, while her other arm was wrapped tight around Kibum's shoulders. That photo must have been spared because a bunch of their mutual friends were in it as well.

She hadn't deleted the comments, and Kibum's silly “One year closer to legal alcoholism mwahaha!!!”, together with Taeyeon's cheeky “Hush child I dunno what ur talking about. What IS a beer??? LOL” were still hanging there like two restless ghosts that had never been allowed to find peace.

No, he got it. Really.

He'd erased their selfies, too – from Instagram, at least.

Kibum scrolled back up and noticed a few pictures of Tae with some new faces, but taken at places that were familiar to him – there was that cafe in Sinchon where the owner had used to give them free pastries sometimes, there was that back-alley Thai noodle place they'd discovered in Idae together, and their favorite karaoke place where the kind old guy had always given them bonus time. He tensed up as a wave of resentment crashed over him.

All of this was long before ‘boring nerd’, and yet longer before the punch that put an impregnable wall between him and Jinki forever. But the early messengers of the wrath in the form of sudden forceful sparks of emotions were already beginning to make circles around him, coming closer and bigger every day.

In those moments, anger became so unbearable that he wasn't even sure if he wanted to toss and break something or simply curl up in a corner and cry.

Right now, Kibum wanted to burst into her direct messages and give her a sample of his feelings.

‘I hope you're having lots of fun with your new friends’

‘Glad to know I was so easy to replace’

‘Sweet how you're hanging out with Sohee now. I thought she was a ‘stuck up manic ’’

The snarky comments he could possibly send her multiplied and intensified in his head, and when they ultimately turned into just series of insults, resentment morphed into despair, and a feeling of hopelessness cancelled it all.

He tossed his phone away. There were other, more pressing issues that needed to be taken care of.

Should he stay at home? Should he go?

He wanted to go to the English club, whatever that was. Caution was good, but what good was in it when it prevented him from living a normal life?

There was one thing – a ritual, one might call it – that Kibum did from time to time just to see how far gone he was, at the moments when it was hard to see for himself. It was kind of an extreme measure, but he was running out of time, and he needed answers, fast.

Kibum got up from his bed and sat in front of his computer. When the launch was complete, he craned his neck to make sure that the door was locked, and opened Chrome in incognito mode. Then, he drew a deep breath and typed in the search bar: ‘gay video’. One more look at the door (still locked) – he put on his gamer headphones that he hardly ever used for games and clicked ‘play’ as his pulse quickened. In part, it was the forbiddenness of it, but it was also his fate that was now being determined – it was ‘deadass serious’, as Taeyeon would have put it, so some nervousness was in order.

As certain events unfolded predictably on his screen, the pounding in his temples accelerated at first, his mouth went dry – and then it all died down as a sense of relief eased his stiff muscles little by little. He stopped the video and took his headphones off.

Kibum was certain that he would still call that type of content ‘trashy’, rather than ‘y’ or even ‘arousing’, and that only meant one thing: he was not past the possibility of salvation yet.

He emptied his water bottle and hurried to put the school uniform back on – he needed to run if he wanted to make it to the first session of the English club on time.

When he reached the third floor, panting after skipping up a few flights of stairs, he saw Jinki at the other end of the hall. The classroom they were gathering at was exactly half-way between them. Jinki waved at Kibum with a big smile, as if they hadn't already spent a few hours studying in the same room that day, and Kibum waved back at him, feeling super cheesy, but not at all put off by it.

Maybe he just wanted to be friends with him?

He had irrefutable proof of the fact that he had no weird stuff on his mind. Right? There was nothing to fear. Nothing to be paranoid about anymore.

He saw that Jinki was also a bit out of breath, and although he was feeling exhausted after running all the way here so fast, the strange euphoric agitation coursing through his body made him move faster and faster. Jinki quickened his pace, too, and when he realized that the game was on, he ran full-speed to make sure that he was the one who would reach the door first.

They both made it to the destination at the same moment, but Kibum still wanted to win, so he pushed Jinki away to get through the doorway, but he didn't calculate the amplitude of his movements well enough, so he ended up slipping up hard after the collision. Jinki caught him by the waist, pushed him to the side when he was steady enough, and entered the classroom with the aura of a winner.

When Kibum caught up with him inside the room and they walked between the desks to find an empty seat, he elbowed Jinki out of the way, making him fall forwards and use a desktop for support.

Jinki laughed and managed to catch hold of a loop on Kibum's backpack when he turned around.

“Where are you going?”

With those words, he pulled his classmate close to him as if Kibum was

only a bag of feathers, grabbed his wrist and sat him down next to him.

Only now Kibum noticed that the desks in this classroom were made for two people to sit together at.

“I don't wanna sit with you,” he panted, and started getting up, but with the same ease as before, Jinki pulled him back down.

“Too bad, 'cause you'll have to,” he smirked.

Kibum made to rise up again, and again Jinki seemed to make no physical effort whatsoever as he put him down once more.

“Control freak,” Kibum muttered, unslinging his backpack from his shoulder. He could feel his face burning slightly.

“Bird,” Jinki said back at him.

“Excuse you, did you just call me a ‘bird’?”

He took out his pencil case and the new clean copybook he had brought from home.

“Yeah,” the other laughed. “'Cause you're like a little bird. Easy to throw around.”

Kibum pretended to be offended.

“Do you usually throw birds around? What a savage.”

“Only if it's you,” Jinki smiled, and Kibum looked back at him.

He was feeling it again – the balloon state. The lightness and the safety of the cotton clouds.

He also found that he didn't mind being thrown around ‘only if it was’ Jinki. But, even though now he knew for sure that the energy that kept that balloon in the air was one hundred percent platonic, he was not going to say it out loud.

When Mr. Kim, who was in charge of the club, began an introductory speech in surprisingly smooth English, he was interrupted by a timid knock on the door and a soft little voice apologizing for being late. He invited the newcomer to take a seat, and Kibum's heart sank: Arisa tiptoed toward them, waving cheerily on the way, and took a seat at the desk right behind them.

“You came,” Jinki whispered, his eyes turning into happy slits as he smiled at her.

“Of course, I did,” Arisa whispered back at him and reached for the boy's shoulder to pick up a little feather that was stuck to his sleeve.

Kibum dropped his face on his hands.

He was never going to get away from this crap, was he?

A/N: Hello guys! Thank you so much for reading my story, I hope you enjoy this chapter as well. So excited about Kibum's and Jinki's solo albums! Those two wonderful people are going to get us through December~ Have a lovely weekend x L.