All three of the other members felt my sudden disheartened mood. The conversation that happened afterwards seemed to purposefully drift away from Jiyong. I suppose they were only trying their best to lighten the blow that I was feeling. It seems like they all knew about his relationship with this girl except for me.

That night, as I left the dance room to head back to the doors, Daesung hyung ran up to me, leaving the other two behind.

“Seunghyun, wanna have dinner with me outside? Just you and me?”

Daesung asked, bringing out his sweetest smile. One that was impossible to disappoint by saying no.

“It’s my treat.”

Well, I suppose being treated for dinner was one way to get my mind off my confusion.

“Yeah, sure. I’d love that.”

We sat down in a corner table in some rundown restaurant a few blocks down from our dorm. There was comfortable silence between the two of us as we started eating but if I had to guess the sudden reason for his invitation, it would probably to talk about Jiyong hyung.

“Seunghyun, you didn’t know?”

I guessed right apparently…

“No, hyung, I didn’t know at all. Not that it matters because, I mean, it doesn’t really have anything to do with me.”

“We all thought you knew. We all thought that was the reason he’d been sleeping in your room with you, instead of being in his and Youngbae hyung’s room.”

“No, apparently not… But it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.”

I tried to convince Daesung that it really didn’t bother me, but I knew he didn’t believe me. But the thing is that although I feel like he should have told me. I understand that logically, he wasn’t obligated in telling me jack . Hyung doesn’t owe me any explanations. If I wasn’t feeling comfortable about the physical intimacy, it was well within my capabilities to inform him… to get him to stop. It’s not as if I’m in love with Jiyong hyung.

I’m really not in love with him. I’m just confused.

That night, I tossed and turned in my bed. I wasn’t really in deep thought about anything. I was waiting… Waiting for a certain person to walk in and lie in bed with me as if this were his own bedroom, as if this were his own bed.

Unsurprisingly, like clockwork, at 2 am, he walked in and climbed into bed with me. He didn’t snuggle up to me like usual. He just lied down facing me.

I could feel his breath hitting my face as his face was a mere few centimetres away from mine.

“You went to have dinner with Daesung… just you two.”

He knew I wasn’t asleep, not that I was pretending.

“You two should have told me. I could have accompanied you both. Wouldn’t you have preferred it if I was there?”

I stayed quiet. I didn’t really have an answer for that.

“You asked about J… Youngbae told me… that you asked about J.”

“Youngbae and I fought just before. He’s angry at me because … because of what I’m doing to you. The confusing situation I’ve put you in… it’s making you sad… he said.”

I could hear it. There was sadness in his voice. Not that it was hard to pinpoint. His voice was cracking as if he was about to start crying.

Don’t cry…

“No, Jiyong hyung. You’re not confusing me. I was sad because I thought we were close enough for you to share your heartbreaks with me.”

That’s a lie. But that lie defined our relationship for the next twelve years.

A simple conversation at two in the morning between a clueless sixteen-year-old and a confused eighteen-year-old define a relationship… a friendship that lasted over a decade.

He thought that we were okay because I wasn’t going to misunderstand anything. He not only continued his physical intimacy, he escalated it. To him, it seemed like we removed all barriers between us that night.

But it didn’t.