“Baek, I don’t feel so good,”

Baekhyun immediately stops in the middle of his conversation, leaving the girl he’s currently talking to absolutely hanging, eyes immediately finding its way to where my hand is placed—right on top of his left arm. There isn’t even a split of a second before he’s all over me, right hand finding its’ way to my forehead and the other holding my extended hand, his brows knitted together into one, bushy line.

“What—what’s wrong? Did you drink something weird? Was it the chocolate bar that I gave you on our way here? I knew giving you that was going to be a bad idea,” normally, the way his face looks when it’s etched with pure concern like this and the way his voice had risen an octave in utter panic about my wellbeing would have sent the rhinoceros-butterfly hybrids living inside my stomach absolutely livid. But right now, all I want is to groan and roll my eyes at how impossibly oblivious he’s being.

I look past his shoulders, right at the girl that he had been talking to—whether she’s called Hyejung or Hyojung, I can’t remember—and she sends me a sour look shamelessly, probably for interrupting her conversation with Baekhyun. (If you could call that a conversation, anyway, with the way that the girl had spent the entire time trying to make a move on Baekhyun when he was so obviously engrossed in whatever he was trying to say.)

“I think I’m going to head back to my place,” I tell Baekhyun, eyes still trained on that Hyo/Hyejung chick. My statement only deepens his frown. “It’s that bad? Where does it hurt?”

I press my lips into a thin line, as hard as I can, to prevent myself from breaking into a grin at Baekhyun’s adorable pout that he probably doesn’t even know he’s sporting right now. I’m not actually sick, if you can’t tell already. The words “I don’t feel so good” just flew right out of my mouth when I found him at the corner of the living room, body way too close to Hyo/Hyejung’s to my liking. The way that she had been staring at him with obvious bedroom eyes made my stomach turn, and I hate it when girls objectify Baekhyun like that. So I did what I had to do—interrupt him before things go south for both the girl and him.

Okay, I also did that because I’m jealous that I’m not the center of his attention tonight. But it doesn’t matter any more now, because Baekhyun doesn’t seem to realize that I’m jealous anyway. He never does.

“I’m fine, but I think it would be better if I just turn in early for tonight, you know?” I really do want to go home. I may not be physically ill right now, but I’m feeling borderline sick knowing that there’s nothing I can do as I watch a bunch of people constantly flirt with Baekhyun, fighting for his attention. Jealousy doesn’t sit well with me.

Baekhyun’s face falls. He looks back to where Hyo/Hyejung is standing behind him, and then at the rest of the room where the rest of the party is still going on full force.

“Come on then, I’ll drive you home,” my heart skips a beat. I know Baekhyun loves partying, and it would kill him to leave a party before it’s midnight—before the fun actually starts.

“You don’t have to,” I pull my hand away from his grasp, even though it’s hard for me to do so.

“No, it’s fine. Just give me a few seconds to say goodbye to the boys and get my coat—you wore your favorite teddy coat here, right? I’ll go get yours too,”

He remembers. No one aside from myself can really tell my coats apart, because they’re all just different shades of brown, but Baekhyun remembers.

Can you see now why I find it impossible not to fall for him? It’s always the little things that gets me—like right now, with how he’s this willing to drive me home in the middle of a party that he’s been talking about for weeks on end. When he’s the only person that remembers I have a favorite coat.

He turns around to disappear into the crowd, but not before flashing me his perfect rectangular smile that takes my breath away. I have to blink away the stars in my eyes, because that’s just how perfect Baekhyun is. I stand there for a few minutes in silence, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

Baekhyun returns still wearing the same gorgeous smile he’d flashed me before disappearing into the crowd, hands now occupied with two coats—one his and one mine.

“Did you wait too long?” he asks, unfolding my coat with his hands, gesturing me to put my hands into the sleeves of my coat as he holds it up.

“Not at all,” I reply, sliding my left hand into the left sleeve of my coat. I can feel his breath on my neck as he moves to my right side, chasing my right hand away with my remaining sleeve. His breath smells fruity and nice, and it finally awakens the rhinoceros-butterfly hybrids that have been living inside my poor stomach.

I’m so ing whipped. “You’re the best, Baek.”

“Anything for my best friend.” And he’s so ing not.

**

There’s this one line from this song I used to listen to back in middle school, that goes a little something like this: when you smile, sun shines. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which famous boy group had sang that song, but what I remember vividly was fourteen-year-old me thinking about how cheesy that line had sounded when I first listened to the song.

Six years later, Baekhyun walks into my life in a stupid Balenciaga sweater paired with these hideous trackpants, sporting a smile that instantly made me recall that cheesy line from that cheesy boy group song. Then my whole life changed. Suddenly, all the idiotic love songs in this world made sense.

Granted, it had been only six short months since I got to know him, but it’s enough for me to realize that if my life had a brightness setting, all this time I’d been navigating through life with the brightness set to dim. When Baekhyun came along, it’s like he’d pressed a magical button that made me see everything in a positive, bright light, making my day a hundred times better just by having him in it, standing there and simply breathing.

Baekhyun is a breath of fresh air—a frustratingly good-looking breath of fresh air. I’d be lying if I said that his looks weren’t what had attracted me to him in the first place, but it’s true that his personality was what made me want more.

I’d met him in a small, underground concert of an Indie band I had been dying to see live since I turned fifteen, accidentally spilling beer all over his expensive sweater while trying to find Wendy—my other best friend—that had disappeared into the crowd of drunken fans. The moment my eyes had landed on the Balenciaga logo on his sweater, I knew I was ed.

When I looked up to see his face looking down at me with worry, I knew I was twice ed. I had bumped onto him so hard I fell on my , and I’d graciously accepted his extended hand to help myself stand up without looking up. It was a total meet-cute situation, and my heart still races every time I recall that night.

“Oh my god, I’m so ing sorry,” I remember apologizing profusely, my thoughts clouded with the possibility of the beer permanently staining his white Balenciaga sweater, and nothing else. It was at least a thousand bucks, and I don’t even make that much in a whole month. I remember thinking that I should just make a run for it, to go home and trust that Wendy wouldn’t get herself lost or something, until he placed both of his hands on top of my shoulders gently, making me look up to face him nervously.

Baekhyun looked absolutely breath-taking that night—as he does on all the other nights that followed after. His hair had been light brown at that time, the tips of his bangs lightly touching his eyelids—it had looked so soft, and I wanted to reach over to brush his bangs out of his eyes. His clear, bright eyes had looked down at me with a look of worry mixed with curiosity.

“Are you okay?” he’d asked, voice firm and gentle. Despite the concert fully raging around us, his voice had sounded crystal clear to me. Dumbstruck, I’d nodded silently to answer his question, head still finding it difficult to wrap around the fact that this extremely attractive man has his hands on top of my ing shoulder.

“I—you… your sweater, though,” I managed to breathe out, “you need to take it off now so I can like take it to the dry cleaners or something because it looks expensive and I don’t think I can afford to buy you a new one or like pay you the amount of money it had cost you to buy it Jesus .”

He had laughed. His eyes had disappeared into these tiny, adorable crescent moons, his dimples just barely there when his mouth stretches into a rectangular smile. My heart had skipped a thousand beats, and all I wanted to do then was disappear into a speck of dust.

“Sorry, I’m babbling, I just—”

“Oh god no, you’re not babbling. It’s just that—” he stopped to rub the back of his neck sheepishly, “you look super terrified it’s kind of cute. No worries about the stain, I’ll take care of it. It’s my fault—we should get you cleaned up, though, so I can buy you another glass of beer.”

That had been the start of our friendship. He’d introduced himself as Baekhyun right after, saying that I shouldn’t worry because he’s wearing one of his loaded cousin’s sweaters, and how his cousin wouldn’t give a flying even if he’d torn the sweater into tiny little pieces or used it as his bathroom carpet. I didn’t buy it though—partly because I still felt bad for ruining a perfectly good sweater, but mostly because I wanted to find an excuse where I could ask for his number, clearly for scientific purposes.

I remember very vividly when he’d taken off his sweater the moment he agreed that I should at least take his sweater to the dry cleaners, how my mouth went dry at the sight of his toned body under a form-fitting black t-shirt that he had previously hidden with the thick layers of the stupid sweater. But—his personality, though. His personality was what sealed the deal for me.

Everything went smooth sailing after that faithful night of our first encounter. It turns out that we’re the same age and we live very close to each other, despite attending different universities. He ended up introducing me to his friends and vice versa, and we’ve been inseparable ever since.

Baekhyun and I enjoy a lot of things in common, despite the fact that Baekhyun turned out not to be a fan